In the field with Wild Woods Restoration Project
Walk the Trout Brook trail in northeast Fahnestock State Park in Philipstown, and you may feel as though you’ve stumbled upon a zoo: Fenced-off exclosures, each about 30 by 30 feet, line the route in a patchwork pattern, surrounded by thick, massive tangles of invasive Japanese barberry. Inside are freshly planted native species such as spicebush, raspberries, witch hazel and green briar.
“We’re trying to restore New England Cottontail habitat,” Linda Rohleder explained to two dozen volunteers who gathered last week to fill the latest exclosure. Unlike the populous Eastern Cottontail, which bounds across lawns and municipal parks, the New England Cottontail is the only native cottontail in Dutchess and Putnam counties. New York State considers it a “species of special concern” (versus “endangered,” which indicates an immediate risk of extinction) because its preferred habitat — scrubby forest understories — is being diminished.
The rabbits are making do with the barberry, but the berries don’t provide enough food, and the bushes are a favorite spot for blacklegged ticks. But, as Rohleder explained, ripping out the barberry would leave the cottontails nowhere to hide from predators. Hence the patchwork pattern, which gives the rabbits enough connected shrubs until the natives take root.
Even if the invasives are removed, they will come back without restoration efforts. When she was director of land stewardship for the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, Rohleder kept running into this problem: It’s easier — and cheaper — to assemble volunteers to rip plants up for a day than to organize a yearslong restoration process.
In 2022, shortly after leaving the Trail Conference, Rohleder created the Wild Woods Restoration Project, which is run almost entirely by volunteers. (The nonprofit has one paid, seasonal staff member.) They harvest seeds from native plants, sow them at home or at a nursery on Rohleder’s Orange County property, care for the plants as they grow and replant them at restoration sites throughout the Hudson Valley. This year, Rohleder and her volunteers grew 38,000 plants.
“You can be actively involved in the entire process of helping to restore an area in your local park,” she says. “That really inspires people.”
In addition to Fahnestock, Wild Woods has been active at Wonder Lake State Park in eastern Putnam County, the Hudson Highlands Land Trust’s Granite Mountain Preserve and Black Rock Forest Preserve in Orange County. “Linda brings a lot of experience to the table in terms of invasive species and habitat recovery that we may not have otherwise,” said Declan Hennelly, who manages Fahnestock and the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve.
The group at Fahnestock last week included people who have been volunteering with Rohleder for years, as well as a contingent from the Trail Conference’s Invasives Strike Force, the state parks department and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in the Finger Lakes.
“Most people think about bees in meadows and parks and agricultural landscapes, but the research world in the last 15 or so years has started to realize how many of our native bees rely on forested habitats,” says Kass Urban-Mead of Xerces.
The health of a forest’s understory is the clearest indicator of its biodiversity, since that’s where native caterpillars find leaves to munch on, native bees find flowers to pollinate and birds and mammals find berries to eat.
But over time, invasive plants and an overabundant deer population have thinned Hudson Valley understories to almost nothing. That isn’t immediately evident because the understory hasn’t flourished in decades. Environmental scientists call this the “shifting baselines” hypothesis: Whatever an ecosystem looks like when first encountered becomes “normal.” No one misses the species they don’t know are supposed to be there.
“I’ve seen videos where people are hiking through the forest and saying, ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful’ — but there’s no understory,” said Rohleder. “What I see is a sick environment that needs help.”
Along with growing 38,000 plants from seed, Rohleder and her volunteers are branching into plant rescues: Before Scenic Hudson and the state parks department built parking lots at Black Creek Preserve and Harriman State Park, Wild Woods dug up the native plants at the construction site and replanted them elsewhere in the park. It’s a practice that’s catching on: Last week, staff members from the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail replanted blueberry bushes they dug up from what will become the Wade’s Hill lot.
“Parks should do that more often,” says Rohleder. “They often don’t have the expertise or the staff time to take care of that, but every park should have it in mind. Otherwise, those plants end up under a parking lot.”
