June 2025 Announcements

Visit our Society booth at
Garland Red, White & You
Date: Thursday, July 3, 2025
Time: 5:00 – 10:00 p.m.
Location: The downtown square at 6^th Street and Main, Garland, TX
Have an unforgettable Independence Day celebration featuring great music, delicious food, games for all ages, and fireworks, all in the heart of the Downtown Garland Square. It’s the perfect way to honor our nation’s independence with FREE admission and vendors adding to the festive atmosphere!

The event starts with the Presentation of Colors at 5 p.m., followed by Military songs by Vocal Majority.

Special Event – An Evening with Moths
Sam K will be here for the 5^th annual event!
Date: Saturday, July 19, 2025
Time: 9:00 p.m. until late
Location: 1770 Holford Drive

This family-friendly event honoring International Moth Week is an opportunity to experience the Preserve at night! Most moths are nocturnal, so we set up several light sheets to attract moths and other night flying insects. Volunteers will be on hand to answer questions and help with identification.

Sam Kieschnick, Texas Parks and Wildlife Urban Wildlife Biologist for DFW, will be here again with all his energy and expertise.

          Notes: All children must be accompanied by an appropriate number of adults. Bring water and a flashlight. Wear close-toed shoes – no bare feet, no sandals! Wear insect repellent. Parking is limited so car-pool if possible.
We hope to see you there!

          One of Sam K’s favorite quotes by Bradley Miller:
“Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.”

Results from the City Nature Challenge 2025:
Excerpts from iNaturalist –

Worldwide, as of the end of May, 103,657 people joined in and made 3,238,296 observations of more than 73,172 different species all around the world with help from 24,852 expert identifiers!

City Nature Challenge is one of the largest international community science events in the world. In 2025, it took place April 25-28. The goal is for enthusiasts like us to make observations of wild plants and animals and record that on the free phone app, iNaturalist. The event helps us better understand – and therefore, take care of – nature that lives in and around urban areas.

2025 Highlights:

• For the first time ever, over 100,000 people took part!
• It passed 3 million observations during the challenge — compared to 2.4 million last year!
• In just one day, 1 million observations were uploaded to iNaturalist (it took nearly 7 years to reach that number when iNaturalist first started!)
• More than 50,000 species were recorded in a single day — about 1 in every 40 known species on Earth!
• Dallas/Fort Worth region came in 5^th in the world with the largest number of observations submitted.

All of this data is important. It helps scientists learn more about plants and animals living near us, and it supports efforts to protect nature and save species around the world. This link shows a summary of 2025 information: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025

Work Session Volunteer: Now is the time to get into our “garden”! 
          Our prairies and woods are bursting with new growth, and now is a great time to do habitat management.

Habitat management can be work such as removing invasive plants, rescuing native plants from building sites and replanting them at the Preserve, keeping the trails clear and safe for walkers, maintaining our Wildscape demonstration gardens, and of course picking up trash.

If you’d like to volunteer for a variety of habitat work, Preservation Society experts are ready to meet you – supplies in hand – and work alongside you. If you cannot help at our scheduled sessions (see below), we will try to meet you on a more convenient day at your available time.

Most volunteer activities are limited to no more than 1.5 – 2 hours. For Master Naturalists, all volunteer work gets VH hours from the Texas Master Naturalist program.
To set up a time to work, please contact Dana Wilson (text or email) at 469.531.6856 or danawilson59@yahoo.com.

Trail Monitor Volunteer: If you walk the trails, we need your help!
Duties generally include: 

• Walk your selected part of the trail weekly.
• Perform light maintenance such as litter pickup.
• Be familiar with Garland’s eAssist program that is accessed through an iPhone app and use it to report major maintenance issues such as trees fallen on the trail, vandalism, criminal activity, etc.
• You will soon learn some of the unique features of your trail and share those with the Executive Committee.
• Contact springcreekforestpreservation@gmail.com

G.G. Norris, red shirt is Hannah Byers, Ying Wang, and Steve Boeding working to move the trail.

Henry and Judy Aschner have made the wildscape garden at 1787 Holford a haven for native plants and pollinators.

Gustavo and Bethany came prepared to clear and protect our prairie.

Stephanie and Nancy get an upper body workout and do a good deed, too.

Steve points out problem plants, then these great volunteers go to work.

The Executive Committee usually meets once a month. The meetings are open to the public. For information, please contact us at springcreekforestpreservation@gmail.com.