Bridgestone devotes 600 acres to wildlife refuge
Children and young adults in Warren County often complain there isn’t much to do outside of events like school and sports.
While it may be a convenient expression and may not always be true, area youth might have a harder time saying it now that a local corporation has reached out to offer them an opportunity to take part in environmental stewardship programs.
Bridgestone/Firestone has embarked on a journey to return about 600 acres of land at its Warren County plant to its natural state, beginning with a recent controlled burn of invasive grasses with the help of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and clearing 30 acres of shrubbery, according to the corporation’s environmental director Greer Tidwell.
Corporate leaders are hoping the habitat eventually becomes a haven for area youth to learn about conservation and the environment – including those involved in clubs like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, to those considered at risk or in legal trouble.
Plant manager Dennis Ringgenberg said he couldn’t stand for most of the plant’s 900 acres to go unused and referred to the custom of using every inch of available land in his native Iowa for farming.
“This is not the first idea I had that was a little different. But I saw all this ground and we had 900 acres and saw it from an aerial shot. Then we started riding around and actually getting out and looking,” Ringgenberg said.
“He looked around and saw an extra 600 acres here and said, ‘We have to do something about this and we ought to focus on the kids in the community,'” Tidwell added.
In addition to having hopes of restoring the land to native prairie, Bridgestone officials hope to establish several strains of the American Chestnut tree there with the help of the University of Tennessee and the American Chestnut Foundation as well as create a bluebird habitat, which is already a project of local Boy Scout Troop 309.
Troop 309 has already started working and built 30 bluebird houses they planned to install on site this week. They spent Monday morning touching them up at the plant’s learning center minutes before corporate leaders made the habitat announcement official.
Juvenile Court Judge Larry Ross, who facilitates the local Kids of the Community program that caters activities for foster children, children considered “at risk” or children in the juvenile justice program, said the Kids of the Community will be involved. Tidwell had hoped the group could adopt the chestnut trees.
Boy Scout troop member John Weitzel and other scouts of Troop 309 said they are just as excited to get going as their elders are. They will be earning merit badges from their bluebird project, which will include monitoring the birds.
“I’m glad they asked us to do this,” Wietzel said. “It feels good to actually participate in something that’s helping our environment and our community.”
Project organization will be overseen locally by the plant’s senior environmental engineer, Sean Fisher, who said he will be coordinating volunteers over the next several weeks and then organizing a planning session. Programs are expected to not only be extended to groups like Kids of the Community or the Boy Scouts, but to schools and other groups dealing with children.