User:Timmy Thyme/Inwood Hill Park

Usage

"The park contains three children's playgrounds, baseball and soccer fields, and tennis and basketball courts. The Inwood Hill Nature Center at the north end of the park is both a location for educational programs and the local headquarters of the Urban Park Rangers. Inwood Hill Park's ball fields are heavily used by local and other city leagues during the baseball season. This usage places extreme pressure on the park, which, as a result, has required more active management in recent years." Copied from Inwood Hill Park

The peaceful environment of Hill Park also provides space for barbecue, dogs runs complementing, kayak, and canoe launch. The park highlight specific activities that contribute to the park usage such as the hiking trail and the Hudson River Bike Trail.

User:Ecology(Species)/sandbox

The group plans to provide a background of the manner flora and fauna in Manhattan was before the Inwood Hill Park was built and how species varied by that time. Based on this background, the group will discuss and compare it with the actual park in the urban area as their differences are analyzed in the habitat species live. Pictures of the species currently found and invasive species will support the analysis of the project. Also, the group will discuss the expected predation based on the changes found over time leading to new changes in species for survival. Moreover, the group would like to include how changes in the park's flora and fauna directly affect nearby neighborhoods in terms of their economic well-being. It is also pertinent to note how the park obtains funds to maintain the plant life in a routine manner.

Article Draft

Lead

Inwood Hill Park is a public park in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. On a high schist ridge that rises 200 feet (61 m) above the Hudson River from Dyckman Street to the northern tip of the island, Inwood Hill Park's densely folded, glacially scoured topography contains the largest remaining old-growth forest on Manhattan Island, known as the Shorakapok Preserve after an historic Wecquaesgeek village. Unlike other Manhattan parks, Inwood Hill Park is largely natural and consists of mostly wooded, non-landscaped hills.

Fauna and flora (Not edited yet)

The area of the park along the Harlem River includes Muscota Marsh, one of Manhattan's last remaining natural salt marshes, the other being Smuggler's Cove, which attracts large numbers of waterbirds. These waterfowl can be studied further via educational programs held at the Nature Center at the north end of the property. Mallards, Canada geese and ring-billed gulls are year-round residents, using both the water and the nearby lawns and ballfields. Many wading birds and waterfowl pass through on the spring and fall migrations, and herons and cormorants often spend the summer. Also in the salt marsh can be found fish, mollusks and crustaceans among the cordgrass and bulrushes which can tolerate both salt and fresh water.

The woods support a wide variety of birds, including common species such as blue jays and cardinals, as well as wild turkeys. Birds of prey that breed in the park include red-tailed hawks and owls. A five-year project that began in summer 2002 attempted to reintroduce the bald eagle to Manhattan using hacking boxes in the park and eaglets brought in from the Midwest. In the first summer, three of the four introduced eaglets fledged successfully; three or four fledged each year of the program. The nesting structure was removed in 2009.

Animals found in the park include Eastern and meadow voles, red-bellied salamanders, southern flying squirrels, opossums, white-footed deer mice, and cottontail rabbits, as well as the expected eastern grey squirrels and raccoons. Foxes were also once residents, but the increasing number of coyotes spotted in Central Park and in the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park may account for the foxes' apparent current absence.

Though the park does not support large wild mammals, the local wildlife does include raccoons and skunks as well as the usual city rodents. Both locals and people from outside the neighborhood fish from the riverbank at the north end of the park.

The park has both native and invasive plant species. While the presence of plant life is obvious, the fauna may not be as revealing.

Economic Impact

The development and evolution of Inwood Park's flora and fauna are intrinsically linked to the financial stability of New York City and its residents, which should be investigated in order to gain a deeper understanding of Inwoods development and evolution. The fiscal endeavors of the state have some impact on the health and species diversity of flora and fauna in New York city parks. During New York Fiscal crisis in the 1970's, New York state government decided it would be prudent to cut funding for the maintenance of New York parks and redistribute the money to other areas of public and private services. Consequently, many public workers in New York City parks were laid off due to this decision. It is fortunate that the Protected Native Plants Program was created in 1989 and that other regulations have been adopted since then.

Funding for public services in the state of New York can be divided into three categories according to how it is allocated. Neostatism, neocorporatism, and neocommunitarianism.

User:Ecology(Species)/sandbox

Species Diversity

References

6.^Krinsky, J., & Simonet, M. (2017). Who cleans the park?: Public work and urban governance in New York City. The University of Chicago Press.