Parks volunteers help beautify UC

From bird boxes to bridges, plantings to trail repairs, parks volunteers make a difference Some take off a day from work. Some come the first Saturday of the month. Some are teens earning community service hours while others, like Boy Scouts, need projects to advance in rank. And then there are the retired, who have the flexibility to turn out whenever the whim strikes.
But what they all share in common is a love for the outdoors and a deep concern for Union County’s parks, whether it is ripping invasive plants out of Lenape Park in Cranford or repairing the trails that weave for miles through the 2,060-acre Watchung Reservation.
“As a kid, I was up in the Reservation all the time,” said Lawrence Russo, who grew up in Plainfield and now lives in Cranford. “Now that I’m semi-retired, I can give back. It’s a beautiful area and I want to maintain it.”
Russo is just one of nearly 550 people who volunteered their time this past year to work in the county’s parks. All totaled, they put in nearly 2,700 service hours, according to officials. The volunteers are an indispensible part of maintaining the county’s parks, said Alfred Faella, director of Parks and Community Renewal.
“These volunteers enable us to get to projects that we would never be able to get to because of limited resources and staff,” Faella said.
Recent Boy Scout projects have included the building of footbridges, kiosks and nesting boxes for birds in several parks. A fishing area on Lake Surprise was redesigned to be accessible to the disabled while in the Rahway River Parkway, a turtle crossing was created to increase protection for the snapping and box turtles living near Munsee Pond. A number of larger projects, such as the removal of invasive species and their replacement with native plants have been tackled on group days. While groups of volunteers have come from area churches and civic associations, a number of area corporations give their employees release time to work with a range of community service projects.

Read more in this week's UC LocalSource, Click Here to SUBSCRIBE TODAY