Troy Students Pitch In

On May 16th, 47 students from Troy Athens High School met at the Gilbert Lake Wild Link property for a morning of habitat improvement work. The students removed invasive autumn olive, constructed two deer exclosures to monitor browsing impacts on the forest, and built two large brush piles for small mammal and reptile habitat. The management plan for the property was recently completed by Daniel Schillinger of Schillinger Forestry, LLC in conjunction with CRA staff and paid for by a grant from the Michigan Coastal Management Program and Rotary Charities of Traverse City. This project was a continuation of a spring tradition of working with the Troy Athens AP science classes during their spring trip to the Leelanau School. Previous projects have had the students planting trees and working to restore degraded sections of northern Michigan rivers.