Tags: audio/video

Explore the native grasslands, restored wetlands, and natural woodlands of South Mound at Freshkills Park like never before.  This video leads you through a 2.5 mile loop through the back hills of South Mound, virtually on foot! 

Before there was the Draft Master plan in 2001, South Mound was the first of 4 mounds capped in 1996. 

Join us for a kayak tour on Freshkills Creek. See the shoreline grasses and mounds of Freshkills Park and experience the water while someone else paddles!

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For your next movie night, check out the Freshkills FreshFlicks staff picks. Take a trip down memory lane with a Fresh Perspective, with films that are just as environmentally relevant today!

Explore different environmental topics by clicking on the titles in our queue.

In 2018, Freshkills Park researchers conducted a study to learn more about grassland bird nesting preferences. Currently, a significantly greater number of grassland birds are nesting in an area known as East Mound than in the other areas. One species of special concern, the grasshopper sparrow, has been found nesting exclusively in East Mound.

In the Summer of 2019, Freshkills Park researchers set up wildlife cameras to record animal activity on site, in hopes of capturing footage of the red foxes that call the former landfill home. The camera footage shows a snapshot of some of the larger mammals that inhabit the park, with a few surprise guests!

Every year, Osprey (Pandion halibuts) make their summer homes at Freshkills Park, where they build nests on high structures above the Park’s creeks. They hunt for fish in the waterways and raise their young. Since 2018, parks researchers have been monitoring the breeding success of the Osprey at Freshkills Park.

Make your own kinetic paper animals with Deborah from MakerSpace NYC! How many things can you make from paper? From just one piece of copy paper, you can create a flying animal. Cut pieces and adhere them together so you can manipulate the wings of a paper bird, dinosaur – or any animal you can imagine!

Moth Painting is a time-based painting-photography hybrid that serves as a visual record of the moth and insect population of Freshkills Park. Artist Ash Ferlito suspended a large sheet from a plastic framework and then shined UV light on the material to attract insects on the panel to document them.

Join artist James Powers for a plein-air drawing lesson on North Mound looking out at Main Creek and the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. James is the artist and instructor behind Fastnet, a 20-foot shipping container that he outfitted as a gallery and outdoor drawing studio from which he teaches landscape drawing workshops at Freshkills Park.

Welcome to Discovery Week!

There are so many different ways to Discover Freshkills Park and this week we hope you will find out about some that are new for you.  By way of a quick introduction, we have posted a series of three videos that provide a snapshot of what Freshkills Park is and what it is becoming as it continues to develop. 

Join us for a special tour of the construction at North Park Phase 1, the first Freshkills Park project to be built within the former Fresh Kills Landfill boundary. See the progress on building the bird tower and the wetland observation deck as well as the spectacular views of Main Creek.

At 2,200 acres, Freshkills Park is almost three times the size of Central Park and the largest park to be developed in New York City in over 100 years. It also has a significant history as the site of the Fresh Kills Landfill, which was the largest landfill in the world before closing in 2001.

Are you new to Freshkills Park and want to learn a little bit more about the exciting changes occurring at what was once the world’s largest landfill? Freshkills Park is excited to announce the release of new videos that introduce newcomers to the park in three themes: “Welcome”, “Freshkills Park Science and Research Program”, and “Landfill Infrastructure at Freshkills Park”.

An upcoming documentary entitled Landfill Harmonic chronicles the work of Favio Chavez, who is using trash to inspire his local community in Cateura, Paraguay.  The documentary follows Chavez, landfill technician and director of the appropriately named Recycled Orchestra, as he constructs musical instruments made of trash sourced directly from the landfill.  

Freshkills Park just received a great write-up in the New York Times!  The piece, available in print today and online here, written by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, emphasizes the Park’s role in buffering surrounding communities from the impact of Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/32527263 w=507&h=284]

A recent video on Urban Omnibus, featuring Garbage Land and Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte, offers a glimpse behind the complex process of everyday garbage collection in New York City. Combining interview, animated graphics, and often poetic archival and present-day footage, the video tells a succinct story of one citizen’s look into the past, present, and possible future of municipal solid waste management.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvYsnJuoYZ8&w=507&h=370]

A clear and compelling promotional video by the Dan Region of Towns in Tel-Aviv for their transformation of the Hiriya Landfill into a 2000-acre park focused on environmental sustainability.  Sound like a familiar type of project? The many folks involved in planning, building and educating about the site and the lessons it can teach have been great supporters of the Freshkills Park project. 

We’re excited to introduce a new way of engaging with the Freshkills Park site: Freshkills Park+, an augmented-reality guide to the site’s many facilities, vistas, natural and manmade features.  The experience, which is available to users of iPhone 4, iPad, Android and Blackberry devices, was constructed using the Layar browser, which makes use of a phone’s camera, GPS, compass and accelerometer to enhance what is seen with a layer of digital information. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXABlDk4cYU&w=507&h=370]

A clip from 2008 History Channel program “The Works” features Staten Island’s Pratt Industries, where more than half of New York City’s paper is recycled.  This is a terrific clip that explains the infrastructure required for paper collection and processing as well as spelling out the steps of paper recycling. 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/18507807 w=500&h=300]

Another animated video in the American Society for Landscape Architects (ASLA)’s sustainable design series demonstrates how to sustainably reclaim building materials for use in new park construction.  The clip highlights ways to convert a former building site into a new open space while minimizing waste and maximizing use of recycled materials.