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....July 16, 12:31 PM |
| Going Wild In Queens: Naturalist Works To Encourage Next Generation Of Enthusiasts
By Vladic Ravich “Do you hear that?” said David Burg as he led two of his interns through a winding trail in Cunningham Park, red hedge clippers in hand. “That sounds like a Woodthrush, which was Thoreau’s favorite bird.” We stopped and listened, waiting for another call to punctuate the dull hum of the Long Island Expressway that carried through the century old trees.
We heard a distant flutelike trill and knew it was the right one when Burg’s eyes lit up with recognition. Then he turned his attention back to the underbrush, resuming his hunt for the invasive Multifloral Rose, Japanese Snotwood, Garlic Mustard and many other species that crowd out the young native plants that make up the ecosystem of these urban islands of wilderness. “Grab and pull, so I can cut it near the roots,” he said to Megan Szrom, a summer intern from the University of Florida, and pushed aside the branches to cut down the intruder. Burg has led and trained hundreds of volunteers to remove invasive species throughout the borough. Today he was here to catch up with Professor Jason Munshi-South from the Natural Sciences Department of Baruch College, but once his interns spotted and correctly identified the Multifloral Rose, they could not resist applying their new found knowledge of the local flora. They carefully cut around the native plants and then hurried to catch up with the professor’s team, which has fanned out to check on their mouse traps to collect data for a study on the evolution of small mammals throughout the City. Burg is a lifelong naturalist who has worked with scientists, enthusiasts and advocates for the better part of his life studying and fighting for natural spaces. He has worked for universities, real estate companies, and even served as president of the New York City Audubon Society before starting WildMetro. New York might not be the first place a naturalist would move to, but for Burg it made perfect sense. With over half the world’s population now living in cities, WildMetro’s focus on protecting wilderness “in places people actually live” has created a truly grassroots movement right in the heart of our metropolis. The Extinction Of Experience “My father grew up in Bushwick and we always joked that while we were pretty sure he knew the difference between a tree and a light post, we didn’t want to test him,” Burg said. He said the idea for WildMetro came to him late 2001, “a depressing year,” which took a surprise turn for the naturalist community when two rare Calliope Hummingbirds suddenly showed up in the City, even though the birds are native to the Pacific Ocean and typically breed in Mexico. According to Burg, there was a great deal of confusion and debate over how to respond. Should they place them in the zoo, set up feeders, or just let them go? “Even with this good news, we didn’t know what to do with them,” Burg said. For him it was a perfect example of how city dwellers had become alienated from the natural world. The birds were never seen again. Soon thereafter, Burg received an inheritance from his aunt, Flushing resident Mildred Pincus, which he used as seed money to start WildMetro. The organization has grown substantially and it now draws upon an international group of experts to study and address very local issues. “High level expertise, on the cheap” is how Burg described it. He said the goal is stopping the downward spiral that leads to what he termed “an extinction of experience,” wherein people are not exposed to nature so they ignore it, which leads to more destruction and even fewer places to rediscover it. “Queens has a great deal of wildlife and natural spaces and the task is understanding its ecology – here’s what we used to have, here’s what’s left, and here’s a reasonable goal to protect it,” Burg said. WildMetro has fewer than 10 staff members, all volunteers, and works to facilitate the work of researchers, students, advocates and volunteers. The group has a mailing list of 2,000 with about 250 active volunteers. Burg likens Wildmetro’s role to that of a movie producer, connecting students to active studies, volunteers to specific projects and otherwise catalyzing projects that explore and rejuvenate the urban natural world. “The first step is just getting people outdoors,” Burg said. “We want people to have a personal awareness of nature, right in their backyard, and we unravel their safety blanket one thread at a time.” He said WildMetro welcomes volunteers from all corners of life, whether their motivation is to get in shape using an “outdoor gym,” to escape their routines, to learn about nature, to study science or even to get a leg up on their college applications. |
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