The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Our outdoor spaces, including our urban parks, have seen huge increases in usage while also facing budget cuts that have limited maintenance staff and operations. This fall, volunteers supported Freshkills Park by removing invasive species and planting a biodiversity garden at Schmul Park.

Freshkills Park bids a fond farewell to the herd of goats who have spent the past few weeks “mowing” the invasive phragmites at the North Park Wetlands Restoration Site. This quirky group of goats, with names like Mozart, Haydyn and Van Goat, not only did a fantastic job of removing the vegetation from the site, but also seemed to thoroughly enjoy their pleasant surroundings at Freshkills Park.

With the support of a New York State Environmental Protection Fund Local Waterfront Revitalization Program grant, the Department of Parks & Recreation is undertaking restoration of two acres of wetland habitat along Main Creek within Freshkills Park that will include goat grazing as a method of invasive plant control.

Goats are spending the summer on Governors Island in New York Harbor and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island as a sustainable resource for park maintenance – eating weeds, trimming trees and grass. Not only do goats graze on invasive plant species, including poison ivy, they can ‘recycle’ some food scraps from visitors as part of a composting program, which is happening on Governors Island for this first time this summer.

Earlier this year, Dani Alexander was selected as the winner of the Urban Wild Writer Residency. The residency is a collaboration between Urban Omnibus and Freshkills Park that seeks to bring a firsthand perspective to topics like the environment, technology, urban life, nature, and waste.

Phase one of North Park will be the first section inside the Fresh Kills Landfill boundaries to open to the public, connecting visitors to spectacular views of the site’s hills and waterways. NYC Parks and NYC Sanitation broke ground on the project in July 2017.

In mid-August, Freshkills Park staff and interns conducted the annual monitoring of the North Park Wetland Restoration. Each year we record how the native plants are doing, whether any invasive plant species are coming back in, and what kinds of wildlife are using the restored site.

As invasive species become a greater problem and harder to deal with, New Yorkers are looking to more creative solutions to control their presence. Parks in the area incorporate a wide array of methods to control invasives including manual removal, pesticides and even controlled burnings.

Happy National Invasive Species Awareness Week! An “invasive species” is a plant, animal, or other organism that’s not native to the ecosystem under consideration whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.

You may have read our recent blog post about the herd of goats that were used in Freshkills Park to clear the invasive reed Phragmites, but did you know that goats were once a common fixture in New York City?

At Freshkills Park, conquering rapid growing invasive plants is no simple task. For a human it may be daunting manual labor, but for goats and sheep, it’s just lunchtime. Two years ago, Freshkills Park enlisted the assistance of goats with large appetites to clear a portion of phragmites on site.

This summer marks the one-year anniversary since the restoration of salt marsh wetlands along Main Creek in North Park. During the spring of 2013, a crew that specializes in ecological restoration completed construction in an area formerly dominated by Phragmites into a successional wetland.

The silver lining to the recent unrelenting cold snap is that many types of invasive insects can’t survive the frigid conditions. These invasive insects include the emerald ash bore, known for killing millions of trees in the last decade, and the gypsy moth, which eats the leaves of trees, such as those used to grow agricultural crops.

On September 29^th, Freshkills Park opened its gates to the public for the fourth annual Sneak Peak event and attracted 3,500 people, a steady increase from previous years.

They came on bikes, on ferries, and in cars; with family, with friends.

Our third annual Sneak Peak event is just one month away!

Sneak Peak is a rare opportunity to go inside the park and preview the incredible transformation of the site. This year’s event will take place on Sunday, September 23rd, from 11 am to 4 pm, and will feature all sorts of fun things to see and do, including birdhouse building, kayaking, kite-flying, bike riding, pony riding, mural painting, bag sewing, instrument making, and much more.