Today I volunteered once again at the Palos Verdes Land Conservancy, but this time the task was different: instead of getting rid of invasive species, we would be creating “barriers” to block off unwanted spur trails. To my surprise, it turned out that the barriers that we used as barriers were cacti! Once the work session started, we jumped into action planting cacti at the sides of a popular trail to prevent people from intentionally going off the trail where they could damage the natural habitat. We also used another more interesting blocking method in areas where cacti-planting was difficult: We used dead bushes to block the spur trails, and then we placed small pieces of cacti in the bushes so anyone who went off trail would get cacti stuck to them! Overall, I felt that this volunteer activity was the most interesting one so far, mainly because our progress was more tangible. It was clear when we successfully blocked off an unwanted trail, and it was easy to visualize the positive impact our effort had on the area.
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