Volunteer Shoutout – Purple Loosestrife Biocontrol
2025-05-16
Volunteers Raising Beetles to Deal with Troublesome Plant There are so many ways that people are helping out our waters. People are picking up trash, planting rain gardens, and growing cover crops in their farm fields (just to name a few). This time of year, Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance is starting up the annual Purple [...]
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Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance
https://fwwa.org/2025/05/16/volunteer-shoutout-purple-loosestrife-biocontrol/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=volunteer-shoutout-purple-loosestrife-biocontrol
the Fox is a family-friendly event that celebrates World Rivers Day and the Fox River. Activities offered during the event include guided crayfish and critter hunting, guided nature hikes along the Fox River, fishing instructions for children with the KHS Fishing Team, Fox Lock demonstrations – Lock #3 with shuttle available, paper making, photo scavenger hunt, viewing of “The Power of the River” documentary, and river cleanup with Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance
to see that registration filled during the week prior to the event. Amcor employees made up a majority of the group, along with a Boy Scout troup and other conservation-minded volunteers.
cigarette butts, 130 plastic bags, and 53 straws. After weighing up all of the trash, the total was 134 pounds of trash and debris! Other interesting finds include: a tire with rim, orange cone, metal trash can lid, fireworks, baseball, tarp, and a container with two hard-boiled eggs from Costco. Check out the infographic!
kelly@fwwa.org
920-915-1502
Reyer paddled alongside Oshkosh North High School students and staff cleaning up a total of 23 pounds of trash. Included in this total was one large cooking pot, a slimy yellow bucket, a fishing pole, and lots of plastic bags and wrappers.
along the Fox River. Team-building events are a new opportunity offered by the Trash Free Waters program that strengthens employee relations, allow for employee connect outside the office, and makes an impact by protecting our water resources. The event took place on Wednesday, August 30th, will Foth volunteers meeting at Voyageur Park and learning about Fox-Wolf’s efforts in the basin. Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) prevention coordinator, Chris Acy, discussed his work in the watershed, highlighting both nusiance plants and animals in the area, efforts to prevent the spread of invasive species, and
different ways volunteers can get involved in this work going forward. The group then traversed to the park’s south side fishing island to identify and properly remove more purple loosetrife plants along the banks of the Fox River. Foth volunteers worked in small teams and efficiently removed over 20 purple loosetrife plants!
Watch program, and were given Salt Watch kits, containers, maps, and instructions for monitoring along the riverbank. Volunteers grabbed their water samples and used the Quantab test strips to get the chloride reading for their respective monitoring locations. The chloride results were all between 1.2 and 1.4 Quantab units, which is 31ppm(mg/L) or less. As expected, the chloride levels were relatively low as it was August and the Fox River is large which results in the dillution of chloride. Five Foth team members signed up to volunteer for the upcoming Salt Watch season.
and given a pen and a clipboard with blank paper. The non-blindfolded team member was given an image of a skeleton key and had to use their communication skills to describe how to draw the image without saying what the image was. This activity produced a wide variety of drawings and lots of laughter. We discussed what methods of communication resulted in drawings that most closely matched the provided skeleton key image.
up the park and along the Fox River Recreation Trail for over two hours, and removed 116 pounds of trash! Specifically, the Foth crew cleaned up 22 bags of trash, 727 cigarette butts, 76 platic bags, and 38 straws. Additionally, three volunteers won awards for “heaviest haul”, “weirdest item found”, and “largest item found”. The Foth environmental team did an outstanding job of improving the park and protecting our waterways.
continue this partnership, we jumped at the chance to work with students on a litter prevention effort. The plan was to have Communities students build and install fishing line receptacles at public fishing locations in the greater Oshkosh area.
Kelly Reyer who runs the Trash Free Waters program at Fox-Wolf, met with the students several times throughout the semester, setting a project schedule and helping to coordinate with the Winnebago County Parks Department.
members, other Communities students, project partners, and local TV media. The students shared their experience working on this project and were interviewed about their experience by both WLUK Fox-11 and WBAY TV-2.
waters through targeted campaigns, cleanup events, and outreach and education.