Keep Westchester's Nature Centers Open

Lots of organizations and environmental advocates are mobilizing to convince the Westchester County Board of Legislators to restore funding for the county's six nature centers in next year's budget. I had a few more thoughts about it this morning.

When County Executive Rob Astorino says he's shutting down the six centers, he means the buildings at six preserves; the preserves themselves will stay open for passive use, though they will not be staffed. All the programs will end, including camps and whatever conservation-maintenance work is done by the six curators. But the public will still be able to visit those preserves and, in the cases of Marshlands and Edith G. Read preserves, in Rye, have access to Long Island Sound.

Nevertheless, those curators play an important role. They help educate visitors -- an in particular, the curators at Marshlands and Read help educate visitors about the Sound and its habitats, which helps build support for restoring and protecting the Sound.

The curators keep an eye out for vandalism or other destructive behavior. They pick up trash on the shoreline, which makes the experience of visiting a whole lot nicer.

They watch and record the goings-on in the natural world, which I happen to think is a valuable function. When I worked in Mamaroneck and New Rochelle, I would not occasionally call Marshlands and ask for information (When was it that the dead sea turtle washed up onto your marsh? When do you start seeing terrapins nesting? What year was it that a black rail visited?) and the curator would look in her records and tell me. The record-keeping at Trailside Museum, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, is even more comprehensive. They have an old-fashioned library-type card-catalogue for all the species seen in the reservation (which is 4,300 acres and very varied) going back to the first curator, in the 1930s. At Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers, a rufous hummingbird (a rare visitor from the west) has been visiting the hummingbird feeder this month, to the great excitement of birders. Those observations and activities will be curtailed if the centers close.

Are they essential? No. Are they important and do they make life here in Westchester better for a fair number of us? Unquestionably.

I hope the county board puts money for the nature centers back into the budget.

Closing Westchester's Nature Centers: Will the Backlash Succeed?

Federated Conservationists of Westchester County emailed an action alert today, asking Westchester residents to call their county legislators and tell them to restore funding for the six nature centers that County Executive Rob Astorino wants to shut down:

Dear FCWC Members and Friends,

As you may be aware, Westchester County's proposed 2012 budget includes 210 layoffs and further cuts across many departments. A large percentage of these layoffs and cuts have come from the Conservation Division of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation, including the defunding of all six (6) nature centers and the wildlife biology monitoring program. This Division is tasked with protecting the natural resources of County parkland, and these layoffs further erode environmental programs that have already been reduced.

In the past when such cuts have been proposed, FCWC and its members have acted aggressively against them, as they undermine the importance of the environmental aspects of County government and Westchester County as a whole. That time has come again. We urge you to reach out to your local legislators through emails, phone calls, and letters, and to attend one of the public budget hearings to let your concerns with these proceedings be known. Further information on the budget hearings, and a directory of legislators can be found here.

And someone else -- probably Friends of Trailside but I'm not sure -- has started an online petition to keep it open. I read about it in Patch, here.

We Regret to Inform You that Trailside is Closing

The staff at Trailside Nature Museum, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, responded to the news that County Executive Rob Astorino is laying them off and closing Trailside with this email, which I received from someone else today:

It is with great sadness that we inform you that after 74 years of continuous operation Trailside Museum will be closing its doors effective January 1st. This includes a layoff of all museum staff. Built during the Great Depression by the CCC, the Museum has provided countless learning and enjoyment opportunities to Westchester and other area residents. While the Reservation will remain open, the programs and camp run out of the Museum will cease to exist. We apologize to all of you who will be personally affected by this change, and urge you to let your local County legislators know how you feel. For more information on how you can help, please contact us at: (914) 864-7322.


I haven't heard if any of the Friends groups that support the six county nature centers are planning to rally the troops. If anyone knows, email me.

I publish anonymous comments, by the way, but only if they're substantive and avoid attacks on individuals. If you're going to attack someone, I'd like to know who you are.

What Westchester Means When It Says It will Close Its Six Nature Centers

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino is planning to close the county’s six nature centers -- Marshlands Conservancy and Edith G. Read preserve, both in Rye; Trailside Museum, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation; Croton Point; Cranberry Lake, in North White Plains; and Lenoir Preserve, in Yonkers.

The decision was part of his 2012 budget, which was released yesterday.

The Parks department is only a small part of the budget, and there are social services that are more important, but nonetheless there were few details either in the budget message or in today’s Journal News story.

For example, I wondered whether by closing Marshlands, did Astorino mean that the building will be shut and the staff laid off but that the park and the pubic access to Long Island Sound will remain open? Or did he mean a chain will be put across the driveway and no one will be allowed in? Ditto for Edith Read.

Other nature centers pose a different question. If he closes Trailside and the Croton Point nature center, obviously he will not be closing those entire parks. But in the case of Trailside, it's not just a nature center; it's a museum with collections that have some value. What will happen to them?

This morning I emailed Donna Greene’s, the county’s deputy communications director. She responded that the buildings at all six centers will be closed and the staff laid off, but the preserves themselves will remain open for passive recreation. Here are the reasons, from her email (with my interpretation in parentheses):

Least impact on revenues. (Nobody pays to get into Marshlands or Cranberry Lake, for example, so no revenue will be lost by closing them.)
Facilities can be physically "closed."
Local facilities offer similar services (Beczak, Greenburgh Nature Center, Rye Nature Center, Teatown) (Westchester County has many nature centers -- which is true -- so we can do without these, or so the reasoning goes.)
Conservation continues at Muscoot, Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Lasdon Park, Bronx River Parkway Reservation (presumably this means that the staffs at those parks will continue conservation work -- whatever conservation work is: habitat management? -- but that conservation work will not continue at Croton Point, Lenoir, Cranberry Lake, Lenoir, Marshlands or Edith G. Read).

One question that Donna did not yet know the answer to is what will happen to the collections at Trailside. I’m familiar with only a little of what is there but it’s impressive: a detailed card catalogue of biodiversity data at the park going back decades; a big, important nature library; a collection of Native American literature and artifacts. The museum even has the fossilized bones of a mastodon dug up in the 1970s on the shores of Lake Kitchawan in Pound Ridge.

Great curators and naturalists have worked for the county nature centers -- Nick Shoumatoff, Ed Kanze, Beth Herr, Alison Beall, Jason Klein, Ken Soltesz, Leah Cullen, to name just the ones that pop into my head now.

It’s a shame their legacy is being washed downstream.