ITC | A Wildlife-Friendly Rain Garden to Manage Stormwater Runoff Charms Employees and Partners Alike

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En Español

Managing stormwater runoff can prove to be a significant challenge for sites in urban areas and other highly-developed locations. It causes problems with flooding, erosion, and water quality, as well as a multitude of indirect impacts associated with these issues. Green infrastructure projects like rain gardens are becoming increasingly embraced as a way to help alleviate stormwater runoff impacts at corporate facilities while also improving site aesthetics and providing habitat.

Faced with issues from erosion caused by excessive runoff, employees at ITC Holdings’ Wayland Warehouse constructed a rain garden in 2012. The garden is designed to intercept and absorb several thousand gallons of runoff from the warehouse’s roof during a rainstorm—water that would otherwise flow across the lawn and into the parking lot. The team sought the expertise of Environmental Consulting & Technology (ECT) for help with designing the garden and selecting a variety of pollinator-friendly native plants that tolerate the fluctuating conditions of a rain garden. Another contractor, MJA Landscaping, conducts routine maintenance and monitoring of the garden and, according to ITC Environmental Manager Mike McNulty, both contractors and employees genuinely enjoy these activities and “really take pride in the rain garden.”

The rain garden is designed to capture thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff from the warehouse roof and provides foraging and nesting habitat for native pollinators and songbirds.

This is the third rain garden installed at an ITC facility and was the first project implemented at the Wayland Warehouse. The team has partnered with another facility, Belleville Warehouse, to reach out to community groups through educational workshops about the sites’ rain gardens. They also hosted a workshop about nest boxes for students at the Child Discovery Center in Grand Rapids.

In 2016, because of the success of the rain garden and employees’ enthusiasm for it, the team planted an adjacent 1,200-square-foot upland garden as an expansion. The rain garden has also been enhanced with tube bundles to provide nesting habitat for native bees, and a nest box to provide nesting habitat for wrens and chickadees.

While small in scale, the Wayland Warehouse conservation program provides a valuable island of habitat in an area dominated by the hallmarks of urban development — non-native turf grass lawns, buildings, gravel and pavement, and ornamental hedges. In fact, butterflies, bees and songbirds have all been observed in the garden area since its installation. In addition, the small scale of the program has allowed the team to focus its time and energy on ensuring its success. As McNulty described, “It’s a small enough, focused project that we could devote time and effort to it.”

The Wayland Warehouse team has successfully implemented a focused, comprehensive program, and to reward these efforts, the team was awarded the 2016 WHC Green Infrastructure Project Award.

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Freeport-McMoRan | Teaming Up to Protect the Burrowing Owl in Arizona

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En Español

Burrowing owls are unique among owls — not only are they often active during both night and day, they are also the only owl species that nests and roosts underground. As they aren’t able to dig their own burrows, they create homes from abandoned spaces dug out by other animals like ground squirrels. Unfortunately, burrowing owl numbers are declining, and they are considered a species of concern in Florida and many parts of the western United States. In an effort to protect the burrowing owl, companies like Freeport-McMoRan are implementing large-scale installation of artificial burrows, providing valuable and much-needed habitat for this unique and beautiful creature.

Located in the Gila Valley of Arizona, the Freeport-McMoRan Safford Operations program has made great strides to conserve burrowing owl habitat with artificial burrows and relocation procedures. The conservation project site, known as the San Jose Burrowing Owl Habitat, was selected for its ideal conditions — the adjacent agricultural fields support ample prey for burrowing owls, and the Gila River and riparian areas are far enough away that dangers such as flooding and predation by raptors are minimal.

Seeking expertise in burrowing owl habitat, the Freeport team partnered with WHC and Wild at Heart, an Arizona-based raptor rescue organization. The first phase of the project was launched in the spring of 2013 with the construction of 100 artificial burrows. Each burrow is paired with a wooden perch that owls use to watch for predators. Several clusters of burrows were opened later that year to encourage natural recruitment of owls to the site.

Collaboration with a diverse group of local partners is the key to this project’s success.

The second phase began in 2014, when the team worked with Wild at Heart to relocate 16 displaced burrowing owls to the site. Over two dozen volunteers from Freeport, Wild at Heart, WHC, local schools, and Boy Scouts troops constructed release tents and then placed the owls inside these temporary “homes.” The tents provided a safe space for the owls to acclimate to their new surroundings and the artificial burrows. After 30 days, during which the owls were provided food and water, the tents were removed. This relocation technique is commonly referred to as a “soft release,” with different variations used for relocating other wild animal species. The team was thrilled to discover that several breeding pairs had already established nests in the burrows; others moved to adjacent burrows after the tents were removed. The release tent construction and owl placement was repeated the next year with an additional 20 displaced owls, again with much success. Freeport employees continually monitor the habitat and the owls using it to ensure they are thriving.

This collaborative endeavor spearheaded by Freeport proved to be the key to this project’s success. Bringing together a diverse network of partners, such as WHC, Wild at Heart, Gila Watershed Partnership and Eastern Arizona College, was invaluable to accomplishing the various phases of the project and it generated broader enthusiasm about the habitat.

Both employee and community participation has also been instrumental to the project. This was evident at the first community event, which hosted over 100 participants. The Freeport team continues to engage the community in the project and increase awareness about the burrowing owl by hosting events such as Conservation Days, field trips with hands-on learning for nearby schools, and a celebration of the project’s success for the team and its partners.

The team’s exceptional efforts in burrowing owl conservation were recognized at the 2016 Conservation Conference, where they were awarded the 2016 Avian Project Award.

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Bridgestone | Community and Company Come Together to Restore Habitat in Northern Mexico

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En Español

Located in the town of Ciénega de Flores in Mexico’s state of Nuevo León, Bridgestone Neumáticos de Monterrey manufactures tires for passenger cars and light trucks. More than half of this 190-acre facility is also home to a wildlife habitat primarily consisting of submontane scrub forest– a habitat that develops between the mountain slopes and lowlands of the Mexican Plateau.

Providing educational opportunities for employees, students, and the community is an important aspect of the program.

The main conservation project of the employee-led team is restoration of the submontane scrub forest ecosystem using seed propagation and reforestation efforts. These efforts began in 2010 with the construction of a greenhouse and nursery that can grow up to 1,500 plants at a time. Using seeds collected in the spring and summer, and compost made from food waste from the employee cafeteria, the team grows native plant species such as anacahuita, honey mesquite, Texas ebony, and Yucca filifera.

The seedlings grown are then used for reforestation endeavors in several areas of the property. So far, more than 500 trees have been planted by the team and community members during a series of reforestation events held each year, such as tree planting for employees and their families during annual open house events. The team also hosts tire collections that directly connect to its reforestation efforts. Employees and community members bring in old tires to be reused on-site as pathway markers and planters, and the team plants or donates a tree for every tire collected.

Providing educational opportunities for employees, students, and the community is an important aspect of the program so, unsurprisingly, these efforts extend beyond the topic of reforestation. Students from the local elementary school often help the team out with seed planting efforts while learning about the importance of native plants and how to avoid waste in their daily lives. Employees learn about composting and waste reduction as part of the on-site composting initiative and the Zero Landfill Project, and participate in river clean-ups to remove tires and other debris from local waterways. The team also hosts community events focused around Earth Day, Arbor Day, and Environment Day, and produces field guides of local flora and fauna.

A model example of the power of community engagement, the Bridgestone Neumáticos de Monterrey team and the surrounding community have made great strides in restoring submontane scrub forest on-site and improving awareness about local biodiversity.

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CEMEX | A Local Mine Partners with Schools to Provide One-of-a-Kind Educational Opportunities for Students

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En Español

Conservation education programs benefit greatly from well-developed and integrated partnerships with local schools. These partnerships not only facilitate meaningful educational outcomes for students, but can connect the site – and the company – to the local community in a significant way.

The team at CEMEX’s Center Hill Mine has developed a strong, long-standing, integrated partnership with the local school systems in and around Sumter County, Florida, where the mine is located.  The Center Hill Mine is comprised of a 996-acre active rock quarry, and includes 229 acres of actively-managed habitats like lakes, wetlands and forest.

Since 2006, the team has hosted classes of fourth and sixth graders from local schools, beginning the curriculum with a mine tour to provide a context of where they are in relation to factors such as habitat, geology and site operations. Students then participate in activities that correlate with Florida Sunshine Standards, Common Core, and the Next Generation Science Standards and allow students to engage with the site’s wetland habitat and its resident species, which include great blue herons, sandhill cranes, osprey, American coots, wood ducks, cormorants, anhingas and frogs.

The elementary school program includes fourth graders visiting the site over a three-week period in October and November, with all students participating in a set of four activities focused on recycling, runoff and erosion, water conservation and the food chain. Sixth graders visit the site over a three-day period in March, with students choosing which two of the six available activities on water quality that they will participate in. To ensure that its educational goals are met, the team coordinates with teachers to evaluate the learning impact of the activities, conducting pre-tests on-site and post-tests in the classroom that assess factors such as the desired vocabulary students should have learned during their visits.

Four years ago, the CEMEX team expanded its educational opportunities to the AP Environmental Science class at South Sumter High School. This year-long curriculum is focused on teaching students about the mine permitting process from start to finish, and how mining and environmental stewardship can go hand-in-hand. The students, who dubbed themselves “APES” (for AP Environmental Science), go on field trips and attend on-site trainings at the Center Hill Mine and other nearby CEMEX facilities, such as CEMEX’s Brooksville South Operations, where students viewed a blast of explosives used to free aggregate. CEMEX also provides a variety of in-classroom guest speakers, including geologists and hydrogeologists, lawyers, public relations staff, and archaeologists. The curriculum culminates in March when the APES present their mine permitting plan at a mock community meeting and mock permitting meeting with the Board of County Commissioners, who are represented by teachers and at least one actual commissioner.

Students from other grades in the local school systems are also given opportunities to participate in the site’s education program. The site’s annual Earth Day event, started 9 years ago, includes over 35 educational booths focused on habitat and the environment, which are led by local schools, community partners and government agencies.

Through these programs and partnerships, the Center Hill Mine has established itself as a vital member of the community, producing meaningful educational opportunities benefiting hundreds of local students.

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Toyota | From Grasslands to Wetlands to Gardens

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En Español

Located in the rural town of Blue Springs, Mississippi, TEMA’s Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi, Inc. (TMMMS) program encompasses 1,540 acres, with a variety of habitats for wildlife including grasslands, forest, wetlands and stormwater ponds. This large and varied site aligns its program with Toyota’s sustainability initiative, which lays out three conservation themes: native habitat restoration, green landscaping, and pollinators.  Reflecting these themes, TMMMS conservation efforts include maintenance of wood duck nest boxes and pollinator gardens, monitoring stormwater ponds and wetlands, and providing a number of employee and community engagement opportunities.

When beavers unexpectedly moved in and created dams in the ponds, the team gladly added it to their already extensive project list.

After careful research to determine where they should be placed, the wood duck boxes were assembled and installed with the help of a team of staff volunteers and a local Boy Scout troop. Through regular monitoring, team members discovered that several of the nest boxes were successfully housing breeding wood ducks within the first year. The team also worked to plant three pollinator gardens across an area of almost 6 acres, replacing former parking lots with pollinator-friendly plants, including milkweed, to benefit the critically-imperiled monarch butterflies. The team even partnered with Mississippi State University to develop an official Pollinator Management Strategy and conduct annual evaluations of the gardens. This solid partnership has helped the team improve the species composition of the gardens over time to better benefit pollinators.

Toyota When a landscaping glitch resulted in an unexpected habitat, TMMMS added a new conservation project. Retention ponds that were created during construction of the TMMMS facility were not originally intended to hold standing water. However, when beavers moved in and created dams, the team decided keep the ponds because they provide habitat for many other animals like waterfowl, fish and wading birds. The TMMMS team now monitors wildlife and plant growth, and is evaluating opportunities for additional projects in the ponds.

Employee and community engagement are a valued component of the TMMMS program. Employees have been encouraged to participate in annual events for Earth Day and National Public Lands Day, as well as cleanups, tree and shrub planting, invasive plant removal, painting, and construction activities at local landmarks. The team has also provided access to a graduate student from Mississippi State University to conduct thesis research on the root stimulation of oak trees, and to professors in Japan to identify afforestation opportunities.

It is a testament to the TMMMS team that the program has flourished from day one, and has even been able to convert several unexpected situations into successful, highly-beneficial projects for wildlife and the community.

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WM | Helping Boy Scouts Achieve Their Goals through Conservation Projects

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En Español

WM’s El Sobrante Landfill and Wildlife Preserve spans 1,333 acres in the town of Corona, California, 27 miles east of Los Angeles. This site is comprised of both active landfill and undisturbed open space, with nearly 700 acres actively managed as a habitat preserve. The team works diligently to protect sensitive and rare species by implementing the landfill’s Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), which was developed in 2001. The HCP covers 31 species of concern, including the federally-endangered and state-threatened Stephens’ kangaroo rat and federally-threatened coastal California gnatcatcher.

Miriam Cardenas, Community Relations Specialist and team leader for the conservation program, noted the popularity of the program among volunteers from the surrounding community. One particularly keen group of volunteers is the local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Through this successful and long-standing partnership, the Scouts have completed a variety of conservation projects at the site, including those that helped fulfill badge requirements and at least 11 Eagle Scout and Gold Award projects, and contributing to the landfill’s goals for the HCP in the process. The team provides interested Scouts with a list of potential projects that would be helpful in meeting conservation goals, allowing the Scouts to choose a project that best suits their interests and requirements.

Several of the Scouts’ projects have involved artificial nesting and roosting structures, which help the Scouts strengthen their STEM skills through activities like measuring materials and using design schematics to construct the structures. For instance, the Scouts built 20 artificial nesting burrows for burrowing owls, a species covered under the HCP that has a low population in the area near the site. This species typically nests in abandoned burrows made by other species like ground squirrels. Although no nesting activity has occurred in the burrows yet, a male burrowing owl was observed scouting the burrows, spending about a month in two of them. Other structures built by the Scouts include barn owl nest boxes and bat houses.

The Scouts have also participated in several habitat restoration and protection projects, including native cactus plantings, trash cleanups of over 60 acres of historic illegal dumping, and closure of illegal ATV trails with the use of rocks, brush, and native cactus plantings to block and disguise the trails. When one Boy Scout wanted to help rapidly-declining monarch populations, the team provided him with an opportunity to plant native milkweed plants and seeds that have successfully been used by monarchs. This project was also recently completed by a local Girl Scout troop. Several Scouts created an artificial rock outcrop to help propagate the rare many-stemmed dudleya plant, and with instruction from the site team they processed collected seed pods and spread the seeds onto the outcrop using salt shakers. Several groups of Scouts also helped the team to replant native sycamore and western cottonwood trees in an area burned by wildfire in 2007, restoring important trees that in 2015 became nesting habitat for the state- and federally-endangered least Bell’s vireo.

The WM El Sobrante team has fostered a successful, integrated partnership with the local Boy and Girl Scouts by accommodating the interests and needs of the Scouts with projects that benefit the site’s conservation goals. It is a fine demonstration of how to create impactful, long-lasting partnerships that fulfill the goals of both partners.

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WIN Waste | Ensuring a Home for Migratory Birds

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En Español

Located on an upland island off the coast of Massachusetts and surrounded by the 1,300-acre Rumney Marsh Area of Critical Environmental Concern, the Wheelabrator Saugus Inc. Bear Creek Wildlife Sanctuary provides 340 acres of upland and intertidal habitat for migratory birds and a variety of other wildlife.

This program serves as a model of how active operations and a wildlife sanctuary can easily co-exist without conflict, and indeed, to the benefit of both wildlife and business needs.

The Wheelabrator team members who manage the Sanctuary’s habitats are primarily focused on providing quality habitat for migratory birds, particularly the 24 rare specialized species in the area that are suffering the most from habitat loss. The team’s active management of the site’s 9 different habitat types maintains the signature tones and textural features that birds use to identify stopover habitat from high in the air during their migratory journey along the Atlantic Flyway. These efforts have been so successful that as of 2016, employees and community volunteers have documented 178 bird species at the Sanctuary, including 15 of the 24 specialized bird species and several vagrant species that arrived by accident, likely as a result of being blown off-course during migration by a storm. Without active management, these bird species would not be enticed to come and stay at the Sanctuary.

Along with migratory birds, the team also maintains a number of other projects to manage the 9 habitats in an integrated manner, including control of several invasive and nuisance species. These efforts to benefit wildlife began in the mid-1990s with construction of the various upland habitats as part of the post-closure reuse plan for an older landfill.

Wheelabrator’s conservation efforts are not limited to the Sanctuary. The Bear Creek facility also includes an energy-from-waste plant and an ash monofill. This program serves as a model of how active operations and a wildlife sanctuary can easily co-exist without conflict, and indeed, to the benefit of both wildlife and business needs. The team attributes much of their success to regular meetings between the various operating units on-site, which have been held since the mid-90s when construction of the habitats began. Collaborating has helped to enhance understanding of each group’s needs and overcome various facility limitations or misconceptions, which in turn helps promote harmony between habitat and wildlife management efforts and facility operations. Frequent communication through these meetings also allows the team to identify opportunities, such as the potential for reforestation when a portion of the property will become inactive for the long-term.

Community volunteers, who visit the site for bird walks and tours, make a significant contribution to the achievements of the program. The core group of birders who regularly attend the walks and tours provide invaluable assistance in identifying birds and documenting these observations on Cornell University’s eBird.org. These dedicated birders also serve as unofficial ambassadors for the program, sharing the program’s achievements with other members of the community.

The Bear Creek Wildlife Sanctuary serves as a model of success for any program wishing to balance habitat management with business needs. By maintaining active management of the site’s habitats and working closely with both the site’s operational staff and a core group of community volunteers, the team ensures that migratory birds can continue to find quality habitat on site for the long term.

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