There is an invasion taking place on Needham’s Ridge Hill Reservation in Massachusetts. The enemy? Glossy buckthorn, oriental bittersweet, pine tree seedlings and other invasive species.

Left unchecked, these plants could eventually transform the Reservation’s grassland meadows back into a forest filled with undesired alien species.

Fortunately, an army of volunteers from TripAdvisor’s Needham headquarters turned out on May 5 to remove plants from the grassland meadows just inside the entrance to Ridge Hill Reservation. Working in conjunction with the nonprofit Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, 28 volunteers labored for three hours to pull plants and remove litter and debris.

“These types of maintenance projects are extremely labor-intensive,” said Matt Varrell, Needham’s director of conservation. “So we truly appreciate the efforts of TripAdvisor volunteers and Keep Massachusetts Beautiful to help us maintain our conservation lands.”

This community service event was part of Keep Massachusetts Beautiful’s “Community Service Concierge Service.” The program matches up corporate volunteer groups with municipalities in need of volunteers for environmental protection and maintenance projects.

“Our employees learned about the threat of invasive species here in Massachusetts, while also gaining a real sense of accomplishment by the end of the project,” said Tali Golan, director of philanthropy and inclusion, TripAdvisor. “We’re grateful to Keep Massachusetts Beautiful for coordinating this event and to the town of Needham for allowing us to lend a hand and maintain this important property.”

The organization worked with the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation, the corporate philanthropic arm of TripAdvisor Media Group.  Since 2010, the Foundation has donated approximately $20 million to charitable organizations across the world addressing key humanitarian and societal issues. The Foundation was established with the mission to inspire and enable TripAdvisor’s employees to volunteer their time and skills for causes they care about and to help strengthen human lives and communities around the world through a variety of grant programs.

Keep Massachusetts Beautiful is a nonprofit organization that is taking action to make Massachusetts a cleaner, greener place to live, work, and play. To learn more, visit www.KeepMassBeautiful.org.