By Jon Chown
Most days, you’ll find Andrea Lee sitting in front of a computer at her job at UC Santa Cruz, but she’s a weekend warrior and looked the part on Sunday, June 21, marching along a trail at the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park with a large chainsaw slung over her shoulder.
Andrea Lee of Felton and Ryan Brady of Santa Cruz remove a tree that was blocking a trail at Forest of Nisene Marks State Park on June 21.
Lee was one of 50 local volunteers who showed up for a trail cleaning day hosted by the Advocates for Nisene Marks State Park.
“I love this park,” she said.
Lee, who lives in Felton, also works with a Big Basin volunteer trail crew. She got more involved in the work after the CZU Lightning Complex Fires in 2020.
She took a Cal Fire Wildland Firefighting Chainsaw class through the Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewards soon afterward and then continued her education through hands-on work and more instruction.
“I won’t do anything outside of my comfort zone, and that’s why I always work with an assistant,” she said, while strapping on a pair of kevlar chaps. “And I’ve got a stop-bleed kit if something goes bad.”
Lee and her assistant, Ryan Brady, came to a rotted tree that has fallen across the trail. She inspects it and looks at the other trees near it.
“Oh gosh, she’s hollow,” Lee said while looking inside a dead limb. “I could stick my whole hand in there, but something might bite me.”
She looks this tree over, still standing, and decides that when it falls, it won’t hit the trail and leaves it be. Then turns her attention to the tree blocking the trail.
“You have to figure out what you’re going to do and what could happen,” she said. “I’ll cut the high side first. This should be a pretty easy cut here, and then I’ll cut it there,” she said, pointing. “I’ll probably have to do a cut in the middle and then we can kind of roll them into the abyss.”
She made three cuts, turned the obstruction into short logs, and she and Ryan rolled them off the trail.
“There they go, into the sea of ivy,” she said.
The ivy is what the other 48 volunteers were working on.
Volunteers cross a seasonal bridge that was recently erected by the volunteer group.
“Ivy tends to choke out native ferns and other native plants and then when it climbs trees, it’ll choke a tree eventually,” said Robin Stockwell, president of the board of directors of Advocates for Nisense Marks State Park. “And when it climbs a tree, it gets to a maturity that it’s dropping seed from there down into the lower forest area, and then birds spread the seed. So if we can kill the ivy on the trees, we can eliminate that propagator. And if we pull the ivy on the ground, eventually we’re making progress clearing the ground of ivy.”
Stockwell said the group began Native Forest Restoration program just over a year ago, on June 6, and the results are already evident. “You can see where we removed the ivy over the last year, you can really see the sword fern is starting to blossom more. The sword fern really appreciates that exposure, plus they’re not competing for the nutrients and water and all that.”
The Advocates nonprofit has been in existence for about 35 years, Stockwell said, but it’s been recently rejuvenated. He came to the board three years ago. After he’d joined, he discovered the Advocates had lost its 501(c)(3) status.
“It’s been a rebuilding process,” he said. “We’ve rebuilt the vision of what the Advocates is for, what we do and we’re rebuilding the relationship with the park. It’s required a lot of work.”
Brady, who joined the organization two years ago, is an ultra marathon runner who lives in Santa Cruz. He likes to run the trails, but noticed they needed work. He said when he first started coming to help on trail days there were less than a dozen people. “And now it’s like 50 people; it’s grown a lot.”
Volunteers used to meet at kiosk at the park entrance, where a few parking spots would be saved. Now they meet every third Sunday of the month at the Santa Cruz Community Foundation in Aptos at 9:30 a.m. and carpool to the park to claim about 10 spots that are saved.
“Our goal has been to increase numbers,” said Stockwell. “Today we had 50 signed up, so our productivity has gone way up. Our trail day is a fun, exciting event and what we’re tapping into right now is that a lot of people love this park and they’ve never had an avenue to share that. We’re that avenue. We’re the boots on the ground.”
Stockwell said among the Advocates’ future goals are to map the trails and create better signage, improve the interpretive section of the park.
TOP PHOTO: Volunteers remove invasive ivy at Forest of Nisene Marks State Park on June 21.