On Nov. 1, the Oregon football team cut down Stanford and its dancing tree mascot in Autzen Stadium. One day later, UO student-athletes and staff were among more than 100 volunteers who helped plant some 1,250 trees and shrubs as part of a local sustainability project.
The project to help restore a four-acre parcel of Mt. Pisgah, nicknamed “Mud Stains for Floodplains,” was a partnership between the Oregon athletics department, the UO Office of Sustainability, UPS and a local non-profit, Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah.
Crew leaders showed participants how to ‘scalp’ the soil to prepare it for planting, and then transplant potted juvenile trees and shrubs from the Mt. Pisgah nursery into the ground. Mulch was applied as the final touch to ensure drainage and offer protection from weeds.
The volunteer group was comprised of UO athletics staff, student-athletes and ‘O Heroes,’ environmental studies students, UPS staff and volunteers from Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah. Athletes from the lacrosse and softball teams turned out in particularly large numbers, including ace left-handed pitcher Cheridan Hawkins.
“It was important for me to get involved with the community, and along with my other teammates we just wanted to come out and help,” Hawkins said. “We really like to be outdoors, we think Oregon is beautiful, so we’re glad to play our part.”
“To see a partnership that some might consider an unlikely one emerge and become a tangible project with clear benefits to the place the Ducks call home is great,” said Shelley Villalobos, the athletics liaison from the UO Office of Sustainability. “It’s part of who we are as Ducks and Oregonians, to be good stewards of the land and help to protect and restore it.”
UPS, which provided financial support to the project in addition to volunteers, sees the effort as part of its Global Forestry Initiative, which set the goal to plant one million trees each year starting in 2011.
Northwest district division manager Allen Goodall spoke of the company’s commitment to service and stewardship at the event.
“At UPS, giving back to the community has always been extremely important for us; it’s something our founder started in 1907,” Goodall said. “As a company that actually takes in fuel, it’s important that we give back and try to do everything we can to offset that, and planting trees is a big way that we can offset our carbon footprint.”
Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah hosts several opportunities for those interested to get involved through volunteering at the park. See http://www.bufordpark.org/ for more information.
—From GoDucks.com