Friends Donations Supported 260 Hours of Additional Conservation Work by Madison Parks

A new initiative by the Friends of Cherokee Marsh in 2024 was providing $5000 each to Madison Parks and Dane County Parks, to support additional conservation work in the Marsh public lands.

Madison Parks conservation resource supervisor Paul Quinlan reports that the funds donated to the City were used to support 260 hours from seasonal staffers Gerald Vaughan and Ethan Reisman. They conducted a survey of invasive purple loosestrife at Cherokee Marsh–North Conservation Park and a species inventory of plants, birds, and insects at Meadow Ridge Conservation Park. Through the summer at the Meadow Ridge, North, and South units of Cherokee Marsh, they battled invasive Japanese knotweed, reed canary grass, burdock, bird’s-foot trefoil, thistle, miscanthus grass, and phragmites grass. Vaughn also provided support to the herd of goats doing prescribed grazing at the North unit, collected native seeds for future sowing, and participated in the October prescribed burns at the North and South units.

Goats at work, clearing brush.

Other park maintenance activities supported by the Friends donation included clearing downed trees from trails, cleaning up dumping, posting signs, mowing and trimming trails, and establishing native plants from seed and growing stock.

The city's Cherokee Marsh conservation parks are no longer overrun with invasive Wild Parsnip, thanks to ongoing conservation efforts by Madison Parks staff and FOCM volunteers. (Photo is from a few years ago.)

“On behalf of Madison Parks, I want to express our sincere gratitude for the support the Friends of Cherokee Marsh has provided to aid in stewarding our conservation parks. This support not only ensured that we were able to devote sufficient effort to ecological management activities at Cherokee Marsh, but it increased the total budget available for seasonal labor, which allowed staff to reach more parks and extend the seasonal employee season, allowing us more people to accomplish invasive species control, native seed collection, and prescribed burns throughout the system,” Quinlan notes.

The Madison Parks Foundation, headed by executive director Stephanie Franklin, served as fiscal receiver for the donation from the Friends of Cherokee Marsh.

You can support these conservation activities with your donations. Donors make a difference! Visit our donations page.