Hike reveals woodlands vandalism

North Bellmore environmental activist Richard Schary was hurrying through the woods behind the Brookside School in North Merrick on Monday morning, dashing from tree to tree in search of graffiti. He had little trouble finding it. Vandals had spray-painted dozens of oak and maple trees along a well-worn path through the forest.

Schary crossed the Meadow Brook on a rickety bridge constructed of branches and plywood, plunged through a patch of brambles and came upon a massive fire pit framed by four logs. Schary said that teenagers party late into the night at this spot on most Friday nights. Surrounding him was the evidence: hundreds of beer bottles smashed in small pieces and strewn across the ground. In the background was the din of cars whizzing by on the Meadowbrook Parkway just to the west.

Schary was leading four members of the Nassau County Unprotected Woodlands Task Force and this reporter through the forest to show the devastation that vandals and partying teenagers have wrought on the land, which is owned by the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and is supposed to be maintained by the state Department of Transportation. Among the task force members on the tour were the group’s chairpeople, Nassau County Legislators David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, and Norma Gonsalves, a Republican from East Meadow, as well as Kyle Strober, Denenberg’s chief of staff, and Brian Schneider, a county hydrogeologist from Merrick.

The task force was preparing for an “Envirothon,” which is scheduled to take place at the Brookside School on Saturday, April 30, from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The event is intended to encourage local residents to get involved in preserving the woodlands and to lobby the state to open the forests to law-abiding hikers and mountain-bikers, who would act as a citizen patrol that would alert authorities when vandalism occurs. The woodlands are currently closed to the public, but teenagers get in through breaks in the fence that separates the forest from local neighborhoods.