Brooklyn Wildlife Trail Grows Back To Its Roots

If you're looking to get away from it all without leaving the city, residents will soon have another option as an ecological hideaway that's benefitted from a multi-million dollar facelift nears completion. NY1's Roger Clark filed the following report.

It's hard to believe you're in the city when you visit the area surrounding Gerritsen Creek in Southern Brooklyn.

"It's a tremendous opportunity living in the city, to come out and have a horizon and have green open space, the sense of openness," said Mike Feller of the Parks Department Natural Resources Group.

The Parks Department and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent more than $8 million to make sure that experience will be possible for years to come.

Officials gathered at the Marine Park Salt Marsh Nature Center on Monday to talk about improvements to the ecosystem designed to provide a better habitat for plants and wildlife.

"You can restore, you can certainly work to undo that which humans have done, and I think this is the most remarkable wetland and upland restoration that's been done in the City of New York," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe.

The project added 18 acres of tidal marshland and 23 acres of grasslands and rooted out an invasive species of reeds known as Phragmites which make it hard for other native plants to grow. They also removed tons of sand that had been dumped in the area over the years, much of it from the dredging of Jamaica Bay.

"In fact, we moved 60,000 cubic yards of sand and soil here which ends up being more than 2,000 big truck loads, so it was a significant amount of earth moving activity, and a specific amount of planting," said US Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Dan Felt.

The project was paid for by a mix of federal, state and city funding. It also includes a new nature trail, which gives a better perspective of the area than the former trail.

"You were walking under a tunnel of 12-foot high Phragmites, so you would walk through the Phragmites and sometimes come out to a place like this and have a glimpse of the marsh and then you were back into your tunnel, it was much more claustrophobic. This is tremendous," Feller said.

The restored area has been closed to the public for three years during construction. It is scheduled to re-open to the public in October after the summer growing season.

NY1