The staff and volunteers from across the DMV region at Ward 8 Woods Conservancy work to keep the forested portions of the area’s namesake free of trash and pollution, collecting a total of 1,211,509 lbs of trash. Recently, in collaboration with urban planner Hung Trong, the conservancy has published an interactive map tracking their 813 cleanups since 2018.
Covering the dates, locations, hours of labor, the number of invasive species and the amount of trash collected from each cleanup, the map conveys to viewers the details behind all of the work that the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy puts into reviving the environment.
With color-coded dots to reflect each year, from 2018 to the present day, the map’s features display the attention that the conservancy has placed on parks along the Suitland Parkway, Fort Staton, Shepherd Parkway, Oxon Run Parkway, Congress Park Woods, Bald Eagle Hill, Shepherd Branch, Anacostia Park, and Fort Davis Park. It also includes the necessary cleanup initiatives that the conservancy has done on private residential properties where people’s homes have been polluted by trash over the years.
After following the state of pollution in Ward 8, Trong, a Virginia resident, became involved as a volunteer for the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy in 2020. Through his experiences of assisting the conservancy once every month, Trong was inspired by the positivity of the environmental restoration initiative.
“My experience has been nothing, but positive,” said Trong. “The idea of being able to contribute directly, not only being on the ground with my two hands to collect trash, but also to highlight the history of neglected parkland and being able to make an impact on that was what I found to be very rewarding.”
Trong was astounded by the results of the work he contributed to prompting him to propose that Ward 8 Woods Conservancy publish a map. With the help of a grant from ArcGIS Online and using ArcGIS software, Trong was able to create the cleanup tracker in four months.
“I already had data going back to 2018 of what we had done, but I had to spend quite a few hours sort of reformatting it so that it could be uploaded into the software that populates the map,” said Nathan Harrington, leader of Ward 8 Woods Conservancy.
The interactive map shows just how integral Ward 8 Woods Conservancy’s work has been to progressively cleaning up the region’s wooded areas. The color-coded dots are spread all along the map in each of the major parks, revealing that the work has been repeated over the years to clean up the legacy trash that accumulated over decades while maintaining these areas. Now, the conservancy is spreading its activism across the Ward 8 border.
With work starting September 2023 and finishing in January, Ward 8 Woods Conservancy map came to life. Every month, the map will be updated to include the upcoming cleanups that are done to maintain Ward 8 and those that have begun outside of the ward.
“For the most part, we’ve been able to remediate all the legacy dump sites, so we are continuing to maintain those areas, but in looking for new areas that haven’t been cleaned in decades we have been moving beyond Ward 8 a little bit – across the line into Prince George’s County,” said Harrington. “This is logical because the trees and the animals don’t really know or care which state they are in. These lines and political boundaries are irrelevant to them, and it’s irrelevant to the watershed.”
To access the cleanup tracker for the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy, visit arcgis.com.