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It ain't just humans who revel in Forest Park
(by Tim Woodcock - June 11, 2008)
Forest Park: It’s much better than it was.
What do you think of when you hear a statement like that? It’s a hard one to dispute — but how, exactly, would you interpret it?
The park’s better maintained these days, you might think. It feels safer, and more people use it. A fitness fanatic might point to the quality of the bike paths and walking trails, while a culture vulture might praise the quality of the programming in the museums.
All those viewpoints are quite reasonable, but they are the kinds of observation the human population would make. How about the raccoon population? What would it say? Or the park’s herons? Or the native Missouri plants that face an onslaught from invasive species? Is life in Forest Park getting any better for them?
These were among the questions that the organizers of BioBlitz 2008 were trying to answer. The event was a 24-hour survey of the park that attempted to take a snapshot of all of the species living within its bounds (excluding the zoo).
The event took place from 4 p.m. May 30 to 4 p.m. May 31, with experts from local environmental and scientific groups assisted by a bevy of volunteers, each given the exalted title of “citizen-scientist.” From the presence of lichen to tall grasses and towering trees, from hummingbirds to hawks, from chipmunks to coyotes, the BioBlitzers wanted to record it all.
The point was not to estimate the size of the population of each species, but simply to note that at least one example of these species lives in the park.
And yeah, I was a little perturbed to learn about the coyotes, too. The presence of a coyote was verified during the first BioBlitz in 2004; there was nothing conclusive this year.
Other notable discoveries at past BioBlitzes: a species of bat unknown to the area and a kind of parasitic wasp unknown to science!
In terms of the big picture, the organizers had some kind of baseline measurement to work from, having done the event twice before. However, it should be noted that this year’s event was in the early summer, while the ’04 and ’06 events were in the fall, so it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. But that was the idea. It allowed the researchers to learn about migratory birds that are elsewhere in the fall and in-bloom flowers that are dormant later in the year.
The data will take several months to fully collate, but it is clear that Forest Park remains a startlingly rich environment. It is a park loved by critters as well as humans, and that’s not by accident.
The Forest Park Master Plan of 1995 called for the creation of new environments within the park, such as wetlands and prairies, and greater effort to be expended on fighting the invasive plant species in areas such as Kennedy Woods. As a result, certain species of plants and animals that might otherwise have a marginal place in the park are now thriving, said Steven Buback, nature reserve foreman for the park.
Buback said that the River Des Peres, which runs under the park in a channelized form and makes itself visible only in the eastern part of the park, has always done what rivers do: It attracts more water. Hence the areas around the river’s path, even those covered with concrete, were regularly waterlogged, and eventually the park managers conceded it’s better to work with nature than against it. So the park managers created new wetland ecosystems in certain portions of the park, and the BioBliz is a useful tool for measuring the health of these reinvented areas, Buback said.
Let me just cast aside my objective reporter’s hat for a moment, and ’fess up. Although it was not the plan, I did actually take part in this year’s BioBlitz, and — despite my profound lack of scientific training — I earned the title of “citizen-scientist,” at least for an afternoon.
My dad and I attended just to get a flavor of what was going on and found ourselves tagging along with a lake-bound group of BioBlitzers led by Leonard Sonnenschein of the World Aquarium.
We stayed on dry land while four folks who knew what they doing waded into Jefferson Lake — the big one by Steinberg Skating Rink — with a dragnet. When the net was brought in, we all picked through the slimy vegetation to see what kind of animal life we could find. Some life forms were easy to spot — it’s hard to overlook a flopping fish — but for the smaller species we had to carefully comb through the goo that had been dredged up.
My dad came across a helobdella, a kind of leech, and Sonnenschein said it was the first time its presence had been recorded in the lake. Let me tell you, it was one hell of a helobdella.
OK, so it wasn’t as cool as discovering a bat or parasatic wasp, but it’s something.
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