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Reforestation Efforts Continue along Wallkill River with Sparta High Students

On Wednesday, students in Ms. Paiva’s ecology and zoology classes participated in a riparian reforestation planting day along a tributary to the Wallkill River. The juniors and seniors worked alongside the staff of the Wallkill River Watershed Management Group and planted 1,440 saplings in the course of one day. The native trees and shrubs that were planted included box elder, red maple, silver maple, smooth alder, red-twig dogwood, chokeberry, pin oak, and arrowwood viburnum. The wet floodplain conditions at the site will allow these materials to thrive over time, helping to suppress the dominance of invasive reed canary grass that has prevented a forest from naturally regenerating in the years since the property was retired from agriculture.