How it all Started...

It seemed strange that the open area in this picture, formerly an "old field" community/habitat type, with milkweed and a wide variety of other plants was mowed to ground level. This coincided with a period during which the park trails elsewhere had been ignored well beyond the regular summer maintenance interval and were returning to nature. I first thought it was just stupidity in play or make-work mowing but it turned out to be preparation work for intended soccer fields.

This "old field" which was originally an abandoned farm field was undergoing a process of succession in which nature restores a place through a transition of growing states sometimes back to what it may have been when the country was first discovered. Progress of succession was somewhere along in the order of 30 or more years at least. Thus recovery to bring it back if this project ceases will be lengthy but worthwhile in order to preserve wilderness and wildlife habitat.

The local citizens realized that something was about to happen when the heavy equipment moved in after the mowing job and removed the "upland shrub" which was forming around the "hedge row" behind the bull dozer and along the "deciduous forest" not visible in the photo to the left. Approximately 100 relatively large trees were also removed along the southern deciduous forest and the western hedge row.

This was the point at which the concerned citizens succeeded in stopping the next intended phase of the project for the grading of the site into two level and terraced soccer fields. The basis for halting the work was the "minor oversight" by the County that this project covered 3.5 acres and not the considerably smaller acreage originally claimed in the initial documentation which put the project forward. At this point the County proceeded to amend the first erroneous documentation into a newer more advanced level of erroneous documentation. The efforts of discovery by the "Friends of Oatka Park" to contest the new version went to Judge Barry of the New York State Supreme Court and were successful in stopping the dozers at least until 16 September 2009. Unfortunately just prior to the temporary restraining order, considerable excavation had already commenced in the process of producing the terraces for the soccer fields.