Razan Asombrado
Professor Alexandratos
MHC 200
BioBlitz at Freshkills

Fortunately for me, I didn’t really have to go to the Staten Island Ferry at 5 AM like most of the other students who were attending the 7 AM – 11 AM session at Freshkills Park. As a resident of Staten Island, this is probably going to be one of the only Macaulay events where I have an advantage. Welcome to my world. Even when I had this leg up however, I still managed to come to the St. George Ferry terminal 15 minutes late. I was lucky again, since the bus got delayed from driving to the park. Seven in the morning is too early, even for park rangers.

The BioBlitz at Freshkills was extremely exciting to me, since I had always heard stories of the days when Freshkills was a dump. I got off the bus, and thanked my past self for being clever enough to pick a spot when the sun wasn’t high in the sky, and the mosquitos weren’t too active. We got placed into different groups, and I was placed in the mammal taxon group. I already knew that we probably wouldn’t see any warm-blooded, furry creatures; it’s just too soon after the “renovation” of the dump. So instead, we just took some pictures of various species of plants, some of which were invasive. I am not a stranger to exotic animals, residing on Guam in the past has made me aware of the dangers of invasive or exotic species such as the brown tree snake, the coqui frog, and the Asian longhorn beetle. It’s a little bit surprising when you learn of the invasive species in this artificially made park. You would think that when creating the park, ecologists and botanists, those who created the park, would be aware of which species should be introduced to the park. If the plants came to the park as seedlings in the wind that would be spontaneously be mildly impressive and worrying.

Along with the plants, we have seen a few dragonflies. The closest interaction we had with mammals, our designated target, were a few raccoon tracks in track pads baited with peanut butter. Unfortunately, the nocturnal cameras didn’t go off the night before when the raccoons came for a midnight snack. To give the park the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the mammals were in the larger restricted areas of the park, where there aren’t any noisy college students or Dunkin Donut-scented park rangers. I kind of wish we had seen some mushrooms since Staten Island’s original geography was mostly swampland, which is like the Hilton for decomposers.

As for aesthetics, I thought that the park was very beautiful to look at, thanks in part especially to the little lake it had in the middle. Whoever renovated the dump into a park did a good job. My only criticism was that there are still remnants of junk peeking out at the soil, like tires and beer bottles. Natural recovery is slowly but surely occurring. This BioBlitz left me feeling proud that I’m from Staten Island, the borough of parks.