Earlier this summer 40 City Year Rhode Island volunteers, aged 18-22, spent the better part of a day working in the Conservation District. They tackled an enormous patch of Japanese knotweed on Irving Avenue and River Road, leaving an easier job for Conservancy invasive species experts to follow up on through the rest of the summer and fall. In the central woodland they went after bittersweet with some success and wheel barrowed mulch to the new habitat planting.

Second-year volunteer Eric Calogianes pauses from his job of disentangling a bittersweet vine from a sapling to talk about his experience in a Providence school.