First Three Visits with MROSD

Ben Zdasiuk
05/08/2016
Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District
Paul Mckowan
email: volunteer@openspace.org
phone: (650) 691-1200

Over the past six month’s I’ve done a variety of volunteer projects for the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District.  My volunteer projects have generally fallen into two categories: trail monitoring and patrol duties, and trail or ecological restoration projects. My first visit with MROSD was an ecological restoration project in a property that was to be annexed to Montebello Open Space preserve. Prior to opening new trails on a property, MROSD attempts to restore the ecosystems on that property to an ecologically stable state. On the property that I was working on, overgrowth from invasive French Broom was outcompeting native plants, so my group was tasked to remove any invasive species we spotted on the hillside. Talking to other volunteers on the project, I found that most of them decided to volunteer to give back to the outdoor community, and had been doing so through volunteering for a very long time.

My next two visits with MROSD were trail patrol and surveying assignments after large storms. After large storms, erosion, downed trees, and general debris take their toll on the hundreds of miles of trails serviced by MROSD, and it’s largely up to volunteers to get the trails up and running again. After large storms, I went out with a few other volunteers and mountain bikers to go find downed trees and eroded pieces of trail. We would then move any debris off-trail, repack and rebuild eroded sections of trail, and mark and report any large trail obstacles for chainsaw teams to remove.