If you have an update on this, please let me know. http://www.mayfieldschools.org/News_item.aspx?menu_id=68&parent_id=68&ni_id=740
FOEC and the Mayfield Board of Education are partnering to protect wetland property and educate students with their agreement to place a conservation easement on 12.5 acres of a 37-acre parcel which the board owns in Highland Heights.
* The easement is in exchange for $273,600 from the FOEC Natural Resource Assistant Council (NACR) which awarded FOEC a $297,000 grant for the conservation project. The agreement allows the Mayfield School District to continue to own the property, located between Bishop Road and Highland Heights Municipal Park.
* "We consider this a win-win situation,” said Sue Groszek, president of the Mayfield Board of Education. “The Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District will hold and monitor the easement. The 12.5 acre property will remain intact for educational purposes.”
* The diversity of the easement property includes 408 plant species, including meadows, wetlands and deciduous forest, according to a report by the Ohio Journal of Science.
* “The educational value of this land is high, and if it were protected from development could become the site of long-term studies for classes in the nearby high schools and colleges,” states an excerpt from the report by the Ohio Journal of Science.
* The meadow also has been identified by botanists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Cleveland State University as a “unique prairie remnant with rare and endangered Ohio plants.”
* The meadows of the easement property most notably contain the Dusty Goldenrod plant which is not known to be growing anywhere else in Ohio. The property also contains other plants that are not known to be growing anywhere else in Cuyahoga County.
* Virginia Aveni, a past president of the FOEC, said the agreement is the “first project to protect important ecological resources in the Euclid Creek Watershed and the citizens’ group hopes to help preserve valuable green space resources in other watershed communities.”
* Ms. Aveni said FOEC have begun a capital campaign to raise $70,000 needed for repayment to the Conservation Fund for its interim support.
How the dusty goldenrod meadow looked in the fall of 2008. Notice the yellow butterfly in the close-up.
