Josh Cherubini’s favorite trail in Denison University’s Biological Reserve is the long and winding Taylor Ochs Trail.
“It’s the most secluded place,” Cherubini says, “and it has really nice woods.”
Medium-sized deciduous Osage orange trees flourish along these paths dropping weird, globed fruits — bright green and textured like the surface of a brain. Bitternut hickory trees tower over the forest floor and the flowering dogwood and hornbeam grows in its understory.
This is where Cherubini, Denison’s new Bioreserve manager, feels most comfortable: surrounded by trees.
On an afternoon in early November, Cherubini was once again strolling through the Bioreserve’s 350 acres of forest, orchards, ponds and research fields, reflecting on the space he manages.
Trees were the vital ingredient in Cherubini’s pursuit of higher education.
At 27 — after years in the U.S. Air Force and servicing industrial heating and air conditioning units in office buildings — Cherubini left his steady job with benefits and decent pay to return to school. He spent two years at Columbus State Community College before transferring to the Ohio State University, where he earned a Bachelor’s in Environment and Natural Resources.
He was 34 years old when he finished his degree.
“I was working full time and going to school full time. It took me a little bit longer than it takes most people,” Cherubini, a Galena resident, said. “But I kept my nose down and kept striving for that goal.”
Cherubini went on to work numerous environment-oriented jobs across the country, including those for the U.S Forest Service and the National Audubon Society, as well as in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, a sector of the Yellowstone ecosystem in Wyoming.
Walking north on the Whitetail Loop trail toward its intersection with the Catalpa trail, Cherubini looked to the white ash trees. He took a deep breath in, inhaling the smell of the white pine trees that dot the landscape.
“The white pines are really nice. I love the smell of it, and I love that it makes me feel like I’m walking out west again. It just has a different feel to it.”
The smell, he said, reminds him of the two years he spent as a seasonal wildlife technician in Wyoming, where he conducted research on Canadian lynx populations.
But the Heath native returned to Ohio, where he met his wife and eventually settled into his dream job at Denison in 2023.
“It’s interesting being back here,” he said in early November. “Now, whenever I have to go to Lowe’s [in Heath] or whatever, I’m just driving down memory lane.”
Cherubini became the Bioreserve manager after George Whitney Stocker, the previous manager, retired last year.
“I grew up hunting, fishing and hiking, camping, so it’s always been my passion to be in nature,” Cherubini said. “I knew I was never going to get rich in this career field, but I knew I wanted to do something that would keep me occupied and happy. I knew sitting in a cubicle working in an office building wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Now, Cherubini spends his days in the sprawling woods, surveying the trails and maintaining the grounds.
In prior years, teams have worked to manage the invasive garlic mustard and poison hemlock populations, but Cherubini’s main goal for the Bioreserve is controlling the woody invasive species.
Privet, Japanese barberry and oriental bittersweet are some of the most abundant in the reserve.
These plants are non-native species that have been introduced into the area and cause harm to the surrounding ecosystem.
Although most of the wooded areas of the reserve have turned beige and barrenfor late autumn and early winter, small bushels of invasive green life pop up between logs or beneath the soil.
Invasives are sticklers.
The plants thrive late into the winter and are some of the first to bloom in the spring.
According to the Woody Invasives of the Great Lakes Collaborative, invasive species grow and reach maturity faster than native plants, produce many seeds each year, will rapidly colonize areas after clearings, reproduce from the root systems and can regrow after damage if roots are intact, and display high genetic variability.
Oriental bittersweet vines climb the native trees, smothering the trunks and branches, cutting off water flow and nutrients. As the vines reach the treetops, they weigh down the trees and can rip them from the ground.
The bittersweet removal began outside of the Polly Anderson Field Station on the Waxwing Loop trail. As Cherubini prunes and unravels the woody vines, the canopy will reclose and begin shading out invasive vegetation on the ground floor.
The Bioreserve “didn’t get like this overnight, and it’s not going to get fixed overnight either,” Cherubini said. “And it’s going to be nonstop [work] to try and get this whole property under control. It’ll take years and years. Decades.”
Over the summer of 2024, Cherubini and two Denison students worked tirelessly to kickstart the removal of these woody species.
The entire circumference of the Spring Peeper Pond, located at the intersection of Whitetail Loop and Swallow Trail, was overgrown with invasive species. One could barely see the pond.
Denison students in the biology department utilize this pond for research, and the heavy vegetation limits its use, so Cherubini and his team were asked to clear it.
“Any green left is pretty much a native tree or bush,” Cherubini said. “My students literally left their blood, sweat and tears down here. There were a lot of multiflora roses and the thorns tore them apart.”
“They worked hard,” he continued, scanning the landscape, “and it was rough work.”
In Cherubini’s eyes, the work is already paying off. In under a year, he feels significant changes have been made in restoring the landscape’s native species populations and tackling the overgrowth of invasive species.
“We’re making a difference, definitely,” Cherubini said.
Cherubini shares that some vines in the reserve are native, like the thick and twisting grapevines, often used by squirrels for nests. The fluffy milkweed is being outcompeted by the invasives, along with the slippery elms and white pines, overwhelmed by non-native red pines.
“They [invasive plants] leaf out first in the spring, and they lose their leaves last in the fall,” Cherubini explained. “So they steal resources before and after. They’re the first ones to start taking resources out of the ground, and they’re the last ones to quit.”
It’s a competition between the plants, and some competition isn’t bad, but Cherubini wants to give native species that leg-up.
The Bioreserve also receives help from volunteers in Granville and the greater Licking County area.
“Last year we did an Earth Day event. There was a good showing, we had a lot of people,” Cherubini said.
“Also one retired gentleman comes out and he likes to weed, so he cleans up around the buildings, and he’ll take a little pair of nippers with them and just walk the trails and cut branches back,” he said, “because he wants to do it — he likes doing it.”
With a year of this work coming to a close, Cherubini recognizes those dedicated to visiting and loving the bioreserve: The daily jogger descending the hills of Taylor Ochs; the bird watcher who frequents the Whitetail Loop; the Granville High School cross-country team journeying across the billowing land.
“Not everyone knows about this place,” he said. “People in Granville definitely do, but outside of here, in Licking County, the interest and acknowledgment tapers off.”
But, Cherubini pointed out, the Bioreserve is not a park or a place for big get-togethers.
“We don’t have restrooms or trash cans. It’s not someplace you’re going to bring your family for a family reunion and stuff like that. It’s more of a ‘what nature is,’ kind of thing.”
“It’s quiet,” he said. “It’s nice.”
There are the daily walkers and hikers. Sometimes four or five. Sometimes ten or eleven.
A mountain biker here and there.
A dog sniffs through the shrubs, pulling its owner along.
Those who wish to walk through the outdoors in its natural state.
Cherubini recounted encounters with hikers he’s met with a grin.
“I met a couple two days ago that had never been here before, and they’re like, we just discovered this last week, and we’ve been here two or three times in the last week.”
Although Cherubini spends most of his time out on the trails, his main office is in the Field Station.
Right outside the Field Station a large section of prairie grass and wildflowers thrive..
“There’s a ton of different plants in here that, you know, through the summer, it’s kind of fun to watch everything, because everything blooms at a different time,” Cherubini said, admiring the now-faded grass.
But in the summertime, “we get all kinds of stuff. There’s almost always something blooming, which is really cool.”
Standing outside the field station, providing the perfect overlook of the rolling hills and swath of forest, Cherubini just looks.
“Yeah, it’s gorgeous out here. It is,” he finally says. “I’m lucky to be here.”
Brin Glass writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.