When I mention the name “Walton Oaks Park” around Whitewater, I rarely get any nods of recognition.  When I explain it is a park managed by the City of Whitewater and even describe its location, I get even more confused or bewildered looks.  This park is literally on the edge of the map and is buried in a new subdivision that is still far from its full scope of completion.  As it stands, it is on a short, dead-end road with only one immediate next door neighbor, although the park runs along the back edge of several private landowners, including the donor of the land herself.  In fact, it’s not even listed on the City’s Parks and Recreation page!

On the map below, you can find the typical residential lot with the large sentinel burr oak tree dominating the view, but the path leads back to a memorial bench for the Walton Family and a single path encircles the bulk of the park, which is populated with a  wonderful variety of mostly burr oaks, from saplings to several individuals estimated to be over 200 years old.

The Sustainability Office was approached to assist with the restoration effort by the Urban Forestry Committee (UFC), an advisory committee that reports to the City of Whitewater Parks and Recreation Board.  The UFC has been focused on identifying unique trees around Whitewater by accepting nominations for Notable Trees.  The existence of pre-settlement trees in the city limits are becoming more and more rare, so this park is special because it has a high concentration of these individuals.

However, the real importance of this park is in its potential classification as an oak woodland or oak opening/savanna, the two dominant ecosystems prior to European settlement.  These ecosystems are extraordinarily rare, primarily due to agricultural and residential development,  so the importance of this park is highlighted as a beneficial ecosystem for local birds and other wildlife.  The opportunity to restore this increasingly rare ecosystem was too good to pass up, but the work is labor-intensive and the UFC needed help.  Our office works to connect students to this project through internships and community service hours.  Our first intern on this project, Elizabeth, is an Environmental Science major interested in ecological restoration and our first volunteer event occurred March 5, 2017.

These trees are primarily under threat from some very common and notorious invasive species.  Common or European Buckthorn is well-known in prairie, savanna, and woodland restoration efforts.  Combined with its less common but equally problematic cousin Glossy Buckthorn, a variety of Honeysuckle, and White Mulberry, these small trees can overrun native species and degrade ecosystems very quickly.  As recently as 10 years ago, the Walton Family mowed beneath these trees to maintain more of a savanna landscape, but our ecosystems and native plants are adapted to fire to survive and thrive.  Fire also eliminates many invaders we now see as commonplace in disturbed ecosystems.  Once the active management ceased, buckthorn thrived.

Buckthorn causes problems in a few significant ways.  First, they tend to densely populate areas and reproduce very easily by seed, which are inadvertently dispersed by birds.  The seeds are eaten, but contain a chemical diuretic that causes the birds to pass the seeds quickly and relatively unscathed to new areas.  Additionally, when buckthorn is cut it does not die, but often will aggressively re-sprout, which requires a strong herbicide to control and completely kill.  The dense buckthorn stands tend to leaf out before most native plants in spring, which eventually crowd out native forbs and shrubs.  Additionally, scientists suspect that the leaves contain a chemical that disrupts the germination of native plant seeds, including the burr oak.  The oaks will generally compete against buckthorn because they grow to be larger, but the dense stands prevent sapling oaks to reproduce and establish, eventually changing the entire ecosystem.

Our first battle in this war against these invaders was on March 5, 2017.  With a relatively small group of hard-working volunteers from the Urban Forestry Committee and SAGE, we were able to make some significant headway against the target species, as the picture below indicates.  However, there is much more work to do in this area.  Much of the buckthorn is small and can be handled quickly with a small chainsaw or hand-cut with loppers, but each individual stump must be treated to prevent re-sprout.  This is labor-intensive work and we need your help!

Until next time, please enjoy a few images of our first foray into this restoration project.  We hope to conduct similar work in our very own UW-Whitewater Nature Preserve, where the very same species threaten our own Friar’s Woods in a significant area near Perkins Stadium.