Gearing up for a Green-Up

Community outreach events are a great time to get together with family and friends to help the community. One such activity is a planting event to help the Las Vegas Wash Coordination Committee enhance the native vegetation out at the Wash. Although hard to imagine with the current temperatures, it is almost time for another Green-Up. As in years past, the Las Vegas Wash Coordination Committee will sponsor an outreach planting event in the fall. But, that’s not the only time the planting takes place. Recently, the Las Vegas Wash Project Team Office was contacted by corporations interested in giving back to the community and chose to do so at the Wash.

American Evergreen Foundation, which spends their time trying to make the community more aware of the environment, brought over 40 Stroller-Navarro employees to the Wash May1, 2004. Looking to ‘adopt’ a community effort, these volunteers represented their company by planting over 500 various species at Historic Lateral South. Many employees brought their children along to experience the beauty of the out doors. The event was captured on camera and featured on the American Evergreen Foundation television show. Species planted included honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, Gooding willow, four winged saltbush, desert willow and wolfberry.

The most resent planting involved Parson’s Engineering employees with over 40 volunteers representing the company from all over the country. Their planting event was held on May 15, 2004. This group planted over 300 species, including willows, cottonwood trees, mesquites, wolfberries, four-wing at the Demonstration Weir South. While there, the group also pulled non-native weeds.

Green-up Fall 2004
There is no need to feel that you are left out. Each year we have two main plantings or as commonly known, Green-Ups, that are open to everyone! In each case the event lasts as long as we have plants or until our volunteers are tired. We want all our planting events to be a positive experience for all involved and most of all for everyone to have a good time while enhancing native habitat.

The LVWCC is looking for volunteers to plant trees and shrubs at this fall’s Las Vegas Wash Green-Up. The event is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 2, from noon to 4 p.m.

The LVWCC was created specifically to manage and protect the Las Vegas Wash, the waterway through which the Las Vegas Valley’s urban flows return to Lake Mead. Its members include local, state and federal agencies, environmental groups and the business community. During the past five years, volunteers working with the LVWCC have added more than 15,000 plants and removed approximately 500,000 pounds of trash from the environmentally sensitive area.

Participation is limited, so please call 822-8584 if you would like to volunteer.