Tips For Developing An Outreach Or Management Project

No project is too small nor too large – every effort counts. Fourth- and fifth-graders at Clarendon Elementary School have pulled enough garlic mustard from the woods behind their school that once-scarce native wildflowers have started growing again. Employees from Smugglers’ Notch Resort have turned the Jeffersonville Town Triangle into an invasive-free site. Town residents and others have participated in more than a dozen volunteer workdays to start treating the impassable jungle of invasives at the290-acre Charlotte Park and Wildlife Refuge so eventually native tree seedlings will have room to grow.

These are only a few of Vermont’s invasive plant success stories. So whether you’re a conservation commission member, school teacher, a volunteer-minded employee or a concerned resident, you can make a difference.

Click on the links to the left or below to find information and resources that can help you initiate outreach and invasive plant management activities in your own community. With organization, planning and persistence, people can make headway against this serious ecological threat, allowing for the restoration of native plant populations and the wildlife that depends on them.

Click on the links below for help with your project:

Getting started a project

Project ideas

Recruiting and retaining volunteers

Working with town government

Engaging youth in your project

Funding  your project

Downloadable resources

For more detailed information, click here to download The Nature Conservancy’s handbook for developing community outreach and management projects or email vtinvasives@tnc.org and ask us to send you a copy in the mail.