A $25,000 Constellation Leading Environmental Accelerators Network (CLEAN) award will support at least five more years for SUNY Oswego's Rice Creek Field Station playing a key role in a reforestation project supporting trees important to the ecosystem.

The Canal Forest Restoration Project (CFRP) is an initiative to restore white oak, swamp white oak and white pine trees to areas along the New York State canal system, including Oswego. The project’s co-founders, George and Jane Pauk, funded Rice Creek’s role for the first five years, and Constellation’s interest coincided with the sunset of those funds.

“We were really excited last spring to be contacted by Constellation Energy and told about how Constellation’s corporate office has an interest in funding environmental initiatives,” said Kirsten Haynes, assistant director of Rice Creek. Conversations with David Victome (a recent SUNY Oswego graduate) and Eric Kraus of Constellation showed this project would be a magnificent fit. “It was such a great partnership. They did the legwork for us and successfully pitched the project for Constellation funding.”

The grant will support paid intern positions and the purchase of materials, which will go a long way because they work on keeping other expenses low on the project, said Kamal Mohamed, director of Rice Creek Field Station and a biological sciences faculty member.

Because these types of trees provide good lumber, they were logged extensively to support canal industries of shipbuilding and barrel construction. The CFRP looks to reverse that damage by collecting, nurturing and distributing seeds and young plants for replanting.

“One of our missions is to spread awareness, especially on the importance of trees,” Mohamed said. “These trees are just not found in the wild anymore in our area. So it’s an effort to restore these American trees into the landscape.”

Student experiences

It’s a nice October day and Sarah McCauliffe, senior zoology major, is out behind Rice Creek Field Station doing one of the many steps in the large process. McCauliffe points to a large plot of nursery land and notes the project has bare-rooted – stripped to the roots and cleaned – almost the whole field to prepare the saplings for planting elsewhere.

“We have to remove invasive jumping worms,” McCauliffe explains. “When the worms are young, they are tiny – about the size of a strand of hair. Their eggs look like specks of dirt.” 

Bare-rooting trees can involve soaking roots in soap and water for up to 30 minutes before packing. 

Collecting seeds, including on campus, is part of the effort as well. Seeds also have to be cleaned, and bleached to remove fungus if putting them into a refrigerator over winter.

“There is only about a three-week period where we can collect seeds,” McCauliffe said, including near Marano Campus Center. “When we just went over, we got a lot of burr oaks and swamp oaks and a few white oaks.”

EJ Seale, a sophomore adolescent education major with a focus on English, enjoys the combination of educational outreach and direct work with trees. 

“I focus on making sure the trees gain healthy growth so that we can get them out to the community and also make sure the community is aware of our presence,” Seale said. “Some examples of this would be our social media and the events we hold. One event we are currently working on is one in which we would hold an Adopt a Tree event where we hand our trees out to local community members.”

The grant ensures that Rice Creek can continue incorporating one or two interns during the academic year and one over the summer, supplemented by the SUNY Internship Impact Fund, which supports McCauliffe’s research.

“That is very beneficial because they often need a paid job on the side, so concentrating on a paid internship that gives them this experience sometimes changes their career trajectory,” Haynes said.

“This really does make a difference in their lives,” Mohamed added.

The students agree that the experience has provided great value beyond the paid opportunity.

“I’m really interested in conservation,” McCauliffe said. “I’m hoping to get a job in conservation, either with the DEC (Department of Environment Conservation) or the Forest Service, so this is perfect.”

“As an education major, being able to get hands-on experience at the events that we host has been an incredible gift,” Seale said. “A large quantity of the events we host are tailored toward younger audiences so that we can hope to inspire the next generation with our mission. Because of this, I've been able to teach a wide range of classes since I started working with RC allowing me experience I never would've hoped to have at this stage in my education.”

Many of the Rice Creek volunteers are retired people showing lifelong commitment and providing mentorship opportunities for Seale and others. “Seeing the community that RC has fostered amongst educators inspires me every day to work harder, and hopefully, one day be a mentor for another student who comes through RC,” Seale said.

Efforts bear fruit

The combination of working with trees and outreach is already bearing fruit and making it a successful year for the project.

Around 500 young trees total went to the Central New York, Genesee and Otsego Land Trusts – with direct plantings for the first two while Otsego redistributed the trees to more than 100 local property owners. These partnerships spread awareness and bring more stakeholders into the process of gathering seeds and restoring these types of trees.

“We were happy to branch out and find additional partners in the state,” Haynes said. “This is all about getting trees in the landscape, and this allows us to work with partners to spread awareness and plant more trees. The grant can actually allow us to expand our outreach.”

She added that the project faced challenges from the pandemic, which kept efforts more local, but the funding and additional connections are leading to more engagement, and could fund student travel for outreach across the state.

The grant and the project also fit into a larger reforestation plan New York State is working on, which ran into a challenge in that there aren’t enough state nurseries to meet the capacity of planting goals.

“So they’re going to be relying on mobilizing a workforce, and SUNY institutions will be important,” Haynes said. “This is a really great opportunity for us.”

About Constellation CLEAN Awards

Constellation, the nation’s largest producer of emissions-free energy and a leading supplier of energy products and services, announced $1 million in grant funding on Oct. 15 through the Constellation Foundation to support 35 conservation projects – including the Rice Creek initiative – as part of the company’s commitment to creating cleaner, healthier environments in the communities it serves. 

The annual Constellation Leading Environmental Accelerators Network (CLEAN) Awards directly fund efforts to combat the climate crisis, protect ecosystems and advance sustainability across the company’s clean energy center communities in Illinois, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. 

A total of 25 nonprofits received grants ranging from $5,000 to $125,000. The Foundation, in partnership with Constellation’s environmental and sustainability teams, selected the projects, examples of which include installing living shorelines, restoring native habitats, advancing environmental education, and supporting an aquatic recovery center for reptiles and amphibians. 

“Running the nation’s largest fleet of zero-emissions clean energy centers comes with the responsibility of preserving natural resources, protecting wildlife and strengthening biodiversity in our communities,” said Bryan Hanson, executive vice president and chief generation officer, Constellation. “The CLEAN Awards uplift our nuclear plant communities by supporting local and regional environmental stewardship organizations that share our commitment to creating a cleaner, healthier future.”