Data can save forests, too

A mature forest in the middle of the Bronx is a home to more native species than decades ago. The success in conserving the forest is due to hard work, good management and data.

ByLaura Kukkonen

It's a brisk Sunday morning in late February. The sun is shining, the fingers are freezing, and the chirping of birds is almost covering the humming noise of traffic nearby. Squirrels and robins are rustling beneath the understory as you enter the old forest in the New York Botanical Garden.

This 20-hectare mature forest is left for what once covered much of New York City and was a hunting ground for Native Americans. It has been taken care of by the Botanical Garden since 1895, and currently goes by the name Thain Family Forest.

It may come as a surprise that there even is a forest this old left in the city. To add to that, it is even thriving.

But that's not by coincidence, says Eliot Nagele, who used to manage the forest as part of the New York Botanical Garden. Now Nagele works as Director of Lands at the Nature Conservancy, a global environmental nonprofit.

“One of the huge things here is 'management is key', right?” Nagele says.

Mature forest in the middle of the New York Botanical Garden

In urban environments, forests and their surroundings have a lot going on that can make conservation efforts ineffective. The Botanical Garden has over a million visitors every year, the air quality changes, cities have gotten acid rain, and unwanted new species could travel to the area.

“We're dealing with all of those negative impacts. So to think that we shouldn't try to mitigate some of those negative impacts, would be crazy. We have to actively try to do something.”

The forest has become more diverse when it comes to the number of tree species and it hosts more native woody species than at any point since the 1980’s. In 1985, researchers were able to find 23 different species in the forest out of all the 32 species. Now the most recent numbers were 37 out of 55.

This also means that some tree species have had to give space to others. The forest used to be called “Hemlock Grove” because it dominated the canopy. Also different oaks were very common in the forest.

Nagele says that the decline of Eastern hemlock in the forest was already noted in the 19th century and efforts to revitalize the species were taken. Later researchers found out that a pest was killing the hemlocks, and now they control only a few percent of the forest's tree count.

At the same time, new native species have emerged, like white fringetree, chokecherry and American elderberry.