Fairborn Daily Herald publishes feature story on Wright State woods

Tom Rooney encourages students, faculty and staff to take a break and go for a walks in the woods.

Excerpt

It has played host to ecology labs, anthropology digs and studies on garlic mustard, orchids and honeysuckle. Art students capture it on canvas, ROTC students use it to train, and others use it to bird-watch, hike and seek refuge from the helter skelter of daily life.

It’s the Wright State University woods — 225 acres of forest that is home to up to 110 species of birds as well as foxes, coyotes, deer, salamanders and even the rare Indiana bat.

In December, the university created a 15-acre conservation easement in the woods to protect the bat and other endangered species from habitat-destroying development.

“Fifteen acres of the woods is now permanently protected,” said Thomas Rooney, professor of biological sciences. “It’s a single 15-acre plot, and it protects that really rare forest that is less than 1/100th of 1 percent left in Ohio. So it’s protecting that really, really unique stuff.”

Read the entire story at fairborndailyherald.com