Events

NOTE: Exact start and end time and meeting point will be provided by June 1, 2025

Guide: Brooks Curtis

Join Brooks Curtis for a walk in the Bird Hills Nature Area. We will learn how to identify and eradicate many invasive species (spring and woody invasive). We will discuss the restoration successes and the challenges. We will also discuss the history and explore some of the features of the Bird Hills Nature Area. Most of the walk will be on the trails, but there might be an opportunity to go off trail in a few areas. 

Brooks has been a park steward at Bird Hills Nature Area, Ann Arbor’s largest at 146 acres, for about nine years. During that time, there has been a substantial reduction in the number of invasive species due to the involvement of many volunteers and City of Ann Arbor staff support (Nature Area Preservation).

About Our Guide

Brooks Curtis began doing ecological restoration work around 2005 by volunteering at the University of Michigan Arboretum and Matthaei Botanical Gardens. After a few years, he found out about the City of Ann Arbor's NAP Stewardship Workday program, and realizing that they were in worse shape and had the fewest resources, he started focusing primarily on the Ann Arbor nature areas. 

In 2013 Brooks became the Ann Arbor Park Steward for Sunset Brooks Nature Area, which he selected because it is small (7.5 acres) and in very bad shape; he figured that whatever work he did he couldn’t make the nature area any worse. Sunset Brooks Nature Area receives a tremendous amount of stormwater from four different streets and now, after a decade of restoration work, it absorbs most of the stormwater, due to the clearing of woody invasives and the introduction of native wet area plants.