Designing the Ideal Project at Ricoh Group’s West Caldwell Site

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When Yoko Perez started working for the Environmental Team at Ricoh Americas Corporation’s West Caldwell Office in June 2013, she started working to align their Wildlife at Work program with the priorities of Ricoh Group’s biodiversity policy, as well as to better engage employees in the program. She and her team recognized that working with WHC offers the Ricoh Americas branch a unique approach from Ricoh Group’s other branches to aligning with the company’s biodiversity policy.

The West Caldwell Office’s program includes five pollinator gardens, which were installed last November with the help of the site’s landscapers to pick the garden locations and 20 volunteers to plant the garden. The Environmental Team chose plant species such as lupine, bee balm, Joe-pye-weed, and black-eyed Susan that would be shade tolerant and provide nectar to pollinators. A small rain garden planted with pollinator-friendly species was also planted in an area near the building that tends to collect water.

In addition, invasive species such as multiflora rose, Japanese knotweed, phragmites, autumn olive, and Bradford pear have been observed on the property, so the Environmental Team is looking into controlling these species with the help of employees and local partner organizations.

Yoko and her team work hard to monitor and document their projects, including information on where each species was planted in the gardens and which of those plants survived. Monitoring is a critical part of every project because it provides information about what worked and what didn’t work.

Employees at the West Caldwell Office use the company’s intranet site, RWorld. Yoko attributes the success of her team’s program and the thoroughness of project documentation to their access to this interactive site, which allows employees across the country to post news and information, post comments and feedback, and share photographs. This makes it easy for the Environmental Team to share their monitoring data, wildlife photographs, and other documentation for the program.

Ruby-throated hummingbird observed in one of the pollinator gardens at the West Caldwell Office. Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

Ruby-throated hummingbird observed in one of the pollinator gardens at the West Caldwell Office. Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

Yoko says she also uses RWorld to spur employee interest in and support for the Wildlife at Work program. For example, she told me how she posts articles for her garden blog on RWorld, and also posts information and videos for events such as National Pollinator Week and Ricoh’s Global Eco Action Month this past June.

If you’re looking for ideas to better engage your employees or document your program, please WHC.

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This Year’s Christmas Tree, Next Year’s Habitat

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With the winter holiday season upon us and Christmas only a few days away, many living rooms and office lobbies are now decorated (or soon will be) with live evergreen Christmas trees. But once the holidays are over, what should we do with all of those trees?

I suggest using them to create habitat!

A post-holiday Christmas tree collection drive through a local school or community center is a great way to reach out to your local community and spread awareness about your habitat enhancement program, while also providing valuable brush for your projects.

As part of my Three Rs blog series a couple of years ago, I briefly mentioned using old Christmas trees in brush piles. Start by removing the branches from a few trees and using the trunks to create a base that lifts up the brush and provides space for wildlife to move around under cover. Intact Christmas trees or their brush can then be loosely piled on top. The needles can be left on the branches, as they will provide more cover and will be used by many birds for nest building in the spring. Creating these kinds of brush piles along the edge of your woodland or grassland will provide cover for small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians to escape from predators, find shelter from the elements, and build nests and dens.

If you have a pond or lake, Christmas trees can also be used to create underwater cover for fish and aquatic invertebrates. You can tie together branches from the trees into a brush pile to be partially or fully sunk. Alternatively, you could sink single intact Christmas trees. Wood floats, so you’ll probably need to weigh the trees and brush piles down with a cinderblock.

It may seem obvious, but it’s still a very important to note: be sure to remove all decorations, including lights, artificial snow, ornaments, and tinsel, from the Christmas trees prior to using them in projects. These items will create litter that could harm wildlife and contaminate the water and soil nearby.

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Calling Nature Back: Celebrating Random Acts of Conservation

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A presentation entitled “Avoiding Random Acts of Conservation” recently came across my desk and my first thought was, Why would anyone want to do that?

The point of the presentation was that by avoiding random acts of conservation, we ensure that resources provided for conservation are used strategically and outcomes are evaluated efficiently, but we also create a barrier to entry, exacerbating the growing distance between people and nature. The presentation had an important message for conservation professionals, but an unfortunate title for everyone else engaged in efforts to improve our natural world.

Imagine if random acts of kindness were strategic, objective-based and measurable. Little old ladies would be abandoned, forced to cross the road by themselves. The injured and old compelled to stand on crowded trains. Doors no longer held open for the burdened. Tips for services no longer rendered. A generation would emerge for whom kindness becomes something that is done by organizations with core competencies in the practice of kindness, and the resources to set kindness objectives and measure the outcomes.

Levity aside, my point is a serious one. The distance between humanity and the natural world is large and growing. Studies, books, presentations and TED talks illustrate this fact. According to the United Nations, more than half the world’s population is now living in cities, migrating further and further from natural places. A recent report on outdoor recreation in the U.S. shows that participation in outdoor activities has fallen and that the biggest motivation today to get outside is not exploration of nature, but getting exercise to overcome a sedentary lifestyle. Across the planet, efforts are underway to encourage children to spend unstructured time in nature following studies that find technology, perceptions of danger and lack of easy access to the outdoors all culpable in keeping a generation of children indoors.

The language we use accelerates the growth of this distance. A child will not rejoice installing a unit of carbon sequestration, but will always remember the first tree they plant. A school group will never fondly recall the productive use of natural capital on a localized basis, but will enjoy the salsa and pesto made from their school gardens. A team of volunteers will never proudly wear t-shirts that proclaim them ecosystem service engineers, but will gather as wildlife teams, river stewards or nature clubs to perform the same acts.

We need to call nature back. Let’s bridge the growing distance, arresting some of the trends or at least mitigating their impacts, not just on nature but also on future generations of nature lovers. Let’s celebrate random acts of conservation and ensure that children, volunteers and others see a role for themselves in making a difference in small but significant ways.

The Wildlife Habitat Council, along with our members and partners, is doing its part. At our 26th Annual Symposium in November, over 400 individuals engaged in random and non-random acts of conservation gathered to celebrate their individual and cumulative impacts on nature through projects as simple as pollinator gardens and trails, to more complex efforts like wetlands restoration, site cleanup and restoration and reclamation projects.

During our awards banquet, extraordinary efforts are honored not only for their contribution to conservation, but also their efforts to engage employees and community:

  • Vulcan Materials Company, at its Liberty Quarry in South Carolina, manages 400 acres for upland and wetland ecology and, through its partnership with Liberty High School, has installed nesting structures for waterfowl, migratory songbirds and bats involving students in designing, implementing and maintaining natural areas.
  • In Indonesia, Freeport-McMoRan’s extensive restoration of its Grasberg facility will reclaim hectares of mangrove swamps, create a herbarium and a butterfly sanctuary, and engage 70 local schools in using the lands for learning, providing internships and on-the-ground practice for budding ecologists and restoration professionals.
  • General Motors in Arlington, Texas, has built a trail and outdoor classroom for students to learn from the on-site wetland and prairie that is part of this assembly plant, and at their facility in Lansing, Michigan, efforts to control invasive species and restore meadows is being carried out in partnership with a local congregation.

These examples represent four of the more than 100 newly certified and re-certified projects we recognized at our Symposium this year which, when added to existing efforts, brings the efforts of our members and their employees to over 800 acts of conservation worldwide. Each one serves to call nature back by giving it a place to thrive in a corporate setting and connecting people through access, education and recreation. These acts of conservation are truly worth celebrating.

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