Dense, muggy forest. Clouds of mosquitoes. Crawling ticks. Stinging nettles. Poison ivy. This is the workplace of a summer ecologist aide managing Ginn Woods, one of the Ball State University Field Station’s protected and preserved properties.
Student ecologist aides are the unsung heroes of the Field Station, laboring to maintain University land for educational and research use. These students spend their summers in deep forests and thick prairies managing Field Station land to keep them in pristine, natural condition. John Taylor, Restoration Ecologist and Land Manager of the Ball State Field Station and Environmental Education Center, guides their efforts in the field. The Field Station is a collaboration between the Department of Biology; Department of Environment, Geology, and Natural Resources; and Department of Landscape Architecture. The Field Station includes Christy Woods, the Dr. Joe and Alice Rinard Orchid Greenhouse, Hults Environmental Learning Center, Cooper Farm, and several more properties.
Working in Ginn Woods
The aides carry everything for the day’s work with them into the forest. Safety vests, gloves, protective clothing, water, GPS units, trash bags, lunch, and DEET. Lots and lots of DEET.
Ginn Woods stands tall and proud over the corn and soy fields north of Muncie. Standing before it is like staring into a wall: thick, dark, impenetrable. There are no entrances, and it has no trail system; workers and visitors must blaze their own path through the wilderness.
The canopy shades the forest floor and keeps the temperature tolerable. A cool breeze blows through the trees and freshens the air. The understory is thick, but not choked with exotic, invasive species like many other forests in the area.
A sense of calm pervades the forest. The ecosystem is balanced and protected from human interference. The plants and animals can live undisturbed. Melodic birdsong fills the air. The exhalations of countless plants fill the air with a woody and sweet scent, and the trees sway gently in the wind. You can feel the earth breathe.
“We saw a tree yesterday that had fallen and burned,” Lauren Linzmeier, a natural resources and environmental management major, said. “We think it was from the lightning. It was just the top half and the whole thing was charred, but nothing else around it looked burned.”
Ecological Aides Safeguard the Forest by Removing Invasive Species
The Field Station ecological aides are the last line of defense for these valuable natural areas. Natural landscapes face many threats in today’s world: climate change, illegal hunting, habitat destruction, and invasive species. The ecologist aides spend their summers learning about these threats and maintaining the land.
One of the invasive plants they focus on removing in Ginn Woods is garlic mustard—Alliaria petiolata. This heart shaped plant from Europe takes over ecosystems and crowds out native plants, blocking them from getting nutrients. The students spend their days hunting pockets of these plants, marking their locations, pulling them out of the ground and then disposing of them.
“As long as we get them out of the ground before they drop their seed, we’re good,” Lance Dillingham, one of the ecological aides and a botany major, said.
Tagging and Bagging Invasive Plants
Students take their work seriously and perfect invasive plant removal to an art form. The team splits into two groups and head off in opposite directions to find their targets. When they come across garlic mustard, they mark the location via GPS to check the location for seedlings in the future. John even has a high-powered GPS antenna snaking from his bag to his hat to more accurately mark the coordinates through the thick canopy.
“We put [the garlic mustard] in bags,” Carter Hollems said. “We try to take the bags out, although that’s variable in practicality.” Lugging large trash bags full of invasive plants through dense forest and undergrowth is a challenge, even for these hardworking college students.
The student ecologist aides know where to go and what to look for in these deep woods, and their diligence pays off. Most of Ginn Woods is free from invasive species, and the small patches that remain are tracked through the data collection and GPS marking efforts. This is a marked success compared to most other forests in the area, which are slowly being strangled by invasive species that take over the habitat but lack anyone to remove them. After the work at Ginn Woods is finished for the summer, the aides will go to Cooper Farm and Miller Wildlife Area to remove other invasive plants like teasel, autumn olive, honeysuckle, and European buckthorn.
A Unique Property
Ginn Woods is unique among the properties that Ball State University manages. The 161-acre forest is the second largest protected old-growth forest in the state and has escaped human disturbance, despite the region’s heavy deforestation and agricultural use.
“An old-growth forest has several different characteristics, including a history of no human-caused disturbance, but also multiple size classes of trees…how much dead wood there is on the ground, certain plants that are rare that only occur in undisturbed or high-quality forests…Part of it is a lack of human disturbance and also the biodiversity that occurs here,” John Taylor said.
When asked if this is what Indiana originally looked like, Mr. Taylor said, “This is as close as we can get.” Only a few hundred years ago, most of Indiana resembled Ginn Woods. In 1800, 87.7% of land was forest, 9.6% wetland, and 2.7% dry prairie. Now, only 21% of Indiana is forest—a decrease of 75%. Most of the land in the state has been converted for human or agricultural use; little native habitat is left.
The History of Ginn Woods
The recorded history of Ginn Woods dates to the 1830s, when the Ginn family settled the land. The Ginns were Irish immigrants and arrived in the United States in 1818. John Ginn, the head of the family, settled them near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they started a farm. The Ginns stayed there for seven years before moving to Ohio, where they farmed another six years. Finally, they moved to Delaware County, Indiana, where John would spend the rest of his life.
John Ginn was a self-starting man and successful farmer. He planted the first orchard in the county and became a community leader. But perhaps his greatest achievement is preserving the woods that now bear his name.
Unlike most property owners at the time, the Ginn family left a portion of their land undisturbed. They let the woods continue to exist as they had for thousands of years while the surrounding land transformed into barren monoculture crop fields. The Ginn family never cut the trees, burned the understory, or grazed their animals there, and so the woods avoided the ravages of farming, logging, and commercial interests.
The Ginns owned and stewarded the land until 1971, when they sold the property to Ball State, which recognized the immense ecological value of this forest. The original parcel of land was much smaller than the Ginn Woods of today. However, when natural areas adjacent to the woods were threatened with development, the University intervened and annexed Nixon Woods and Wesley Wetland as part of Ginn Woods.
Preserving the Forest for Future Generations
Ginn Woods isn’t open to the public so that it can be preserved in its natural state. However, the University does utilize the land for research and teaching. Classes from the college and local high schools come to Ginn Woods to study native Hoosier flora and fauna.
Researchers and students study different aspects of the unique ecology here. Botanists took a full inventory of the vascular plants in the woods and examined the micro-topography of the area and how it impacts plant growth. Wildlife, ornithology, entomology, wetland characterization, and soil composition classes regularly visit to observe animals, birds, insects, and water. Scientists also visit Ginn Woods to band birds, which allows them to be tracked during migration.
The Field Station properties offer many training opportunities for interested students. Students can take a course in wildland firefighting that ends in managing a live, controlled prairie burn. And in October, the station will build a wetland at Cooper Farm and give students the opportunity to put into practice what they learn in the classroom. Beyond class work, these opportunities give students plenty of experience for careers in nature.
“I kind of like the idea of what John does, being a land manager, and his variety of tasks,” Lance Dillingham said. “But I’m not sure how available those types of positions are right now in this market. So even if just out of the gate, I’m doing seasonal work in parks or things like that, I’d be totally fine with that. It sounds cliche to say, but I don’t want to be a desk jockey. I want to get out and be in the field. So, really conservation or restoration ecology work type of stuff.”
State Protections for Ginn Woods
In March 2021, Ginn Woods became a state nature preserve. This will safeguard the land from threats and ensure the forest is conserved for future research.
“That’s an added layer of protection. Ball State already protected it as an area for study and nature education, but now the state also has control. If there’s a violation, then the state can take action to either prevent that or to address that,” Mr. Taylor said.
Ginn Woods is a unique asset to the University. Protecting it aligns with the University’s commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability. Caring for the forest and allowing students to involve themselves in its preservation will give them the opportunity to appreciate Indiana’s natural areas and encourage them to preserve these habitats. Furthermore, current students will develop the skills necessary to preserve other endangered areas in the future through their continued work in the Field Station.
By studying this unique habitat, students, scholars, and community members can get a glimpse into the past and learn about the beautiful natural history and ecology of our state.
Learn more about the Field Station on our blog.