Act-knowledment

On Thanksgiving Day my husband and I made a point to spend some time picking up trash. I focused on this median strip in a parking lot near the motel where we stayed. My husband did a close by area nearby. (Map below) Those white dabs are plastic bags and film. There was much more I pulled out of there that is not visible in this photo.

Do you see the tree all the way to the right in the photo? See the vines? Much to my surprise, it is a Riverbank Grape.

Riverbank Grape or Vitis riparia is a native vine to the eastern and central US. It's all over the wooded areas in Pierre so I was able to ID it quickly. I was not aware it was so common in upstate New York where I grew up. I of course added it to iNaturalist.org

I've never eaten Riverbank Grape even though the literature says it is edible for humans although not particularly tasty. Riverbank grape is a food, however, for small birds and mammals which in turn are food for larger birds and mammals. And, indeed, I saw a raptor fly by my motel window that morning. I'm weak in raptor ID, but I'm guessing red-tailed hawk.

This underscored the need have these micro areas of habitat. Close by but not pictured was a larger wooded area which was a buffer zone between the developed strip with hotels, office buildings and parking lots and the highway. My guess is that the raptor I saw lived in those woods. Was it an ideal home? Probably not. But there were enough elements of habitat—food, shelter, water—that it could survive and the Riverbank grape on the median strip was part of that habitat, fragmented though it was.

This experience also underscored the need to keep these micro areas free from debris as possible. I pulled 13 gallons of trash out of that small strip. Most of it was plastic but some was glass and metal. I got most of the visible trash.

My husband, who was working near the treed buffer area, also picked up a full 13 gallon bag. His pick up barely touched the amount of trash there.