Summit County: Tree-planting volunteers needed

VOC is coordinating a family friendly cottonwood tree-planting day this weekend.

300 cottonwoods to go into the ground at McDonough Flats Campground, at Green Mountain Reservoir

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Reforestation efforts in the high country aren’t focused exclusively on lodgepole pines these days. In one of the first big projects of the year, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado will coordinate the May 19 planting of 300 cottonwood trees at the McDonald Flats Campground in Heeney, 15 miles north of Silverthorne.

Cottonwoods are iconic trees in Colorado’s riverside zones. They’re an incredibly important part of the riparian ecology, providing habitat for cavity nesting birds like rare Lewis’ woodpeckers and stabilizing soils along rivers and lakes. Being adapted to growing near Colorado’s fast-flowing streams, new cottonwood trees can grow from a sprig or a branch that breaks off and gets stuck in some sand or riverside cobbles. (more…)

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