By Scott Brinton
The field, at Nassau Community College, is a battleground, noted Gulotta, a NCC biology professor from North Merrick.
On the plains, foreign invaders such as mugwort and Himalayan bushclover, both highly adaptive weeds, are rapidly choking out native plant species like blacked-eyed Susan and the endangered sandplain gerardia.
The Hempstead Plains are New York's last prairie, the remnant of a once-great tract of field that measured 60,000 acres and covered much of central Nassau. The plains, a preserve run by the non-profit Friends of the Hempstead Plains and the Nature Conservancy, remind us of the county's pastoral roots, before suburbia was born, Gulotta said. (A wagon path, dug deep into the ground from years of use, still runs across the center of the plains.)
In many ways, the plains are as they would have been when Native Americans roamed Long Island and European colonists arrived here in the 1600s, except for the six-foot, chain-link fence that now guards them - and the invasive species.
The invaders are spreading across the plains - and fast. Scout troops, many from Merrick and Bellmore, come regularly to the plains, and under Gulotta's direction, methodically dig out each weed by hand. The work is toilsome, but it is the only way to kill the invaders, which, if not controlled, could destroy the plains - and with them, a piece of Nassau's history.
The Nassau County Unprotected Woodlands Taskforce is sponsoring a "BioBlitz" to catalog the flora and fauna that live in the forests and fields along the Meadowbrook Parkway. The event will take place, rain or shine, Sept. 19-20 at three sites: the Hempstead Plains, the county-owned Roosevelt Preserve, and the bays south of Merrick and Freeport.
Gulotta, who is conservation project manager for the Friends of the Hempstead Plains, and Havasy, who is with the Center for Science Teaching and Learning at Tanglewood Preserve in Rockville Centre, are among the environmentalists spearheading the BioBlitz. They recently took this reporter on a tour of the plains to show how the BioBlitz will work.
A massive undertaking
The effort, Havasy said, "is hugely ambitious."
Sector leaders, all biologists and environmentalists from local universities, will coordinate the cataloging effort at each of the three sites. They will lead more than 350 volunteers, all of whom are lay people, including scouts and students. The volunteers will photograph the plants and animals, and, at times, count them by hand. Sector leaders will identify the species and record them in computer databases at Hofstra University.
In the case of the Hempstead Plains, Havasy said, a sector leader might have a team of volunteers count the number of mugworts in a corner of the plains, and from there, search for the weed throughout the 19-acre site. After that, the team could develop a fairly precise estimate of the number of mugworts that have invaded.
It's an important figure for biologists. Mugwort is a tall, bushy weed that is drought-tolerant and highly resistant to disease. Determining to what extent the mugwort has spread will give the Friends of the Hempstead Plains a way to gauge how much time they have before the weed overruns the plains - and how many volunteers are needed to get rid of it.
At the same time, native species like the sandplain gerardia, a flowering plant that pops out like a firecracker in a burst of pink in September, need to be counted to determine whether the population is increasing or
declining. The sandplain gerardia is an endangered species, and lives in only a handful of places beside Nassau County, including in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland and on Cape Cod.
On the tour, we treaded lightly on the one narrow path that winds through the plains. Gulotta pointed out a wild indigo plant. She noted that Native Americans once squeezed the purple juice from the berries to make their clothing dyes.
At the BioBlitz, Gulotta said, volunteers might spot predatory birds such as hawks and kestrels hovering above the plains. The birds often circle overhead in wide arcs, searching for field mice and rabbits. Mocking birds can also often be found perched on the telephone poles surrounding the plains, chirping away, and ring-necked pheasants hide in the scant underbrush. If volunteers are fortunate, they might catch sight of a red fox. Foxes live in the woods on the North Shore, and once in a while, one heads south in the forests along the Meadowbrook Parkway.
We continued walking until we arrived at a swath of switch grass hemmed in by a short, rusted wire fence. The sandplain gerardia lives amid the grass behind the fence, Gulotta said. It had not yet bloomed, as it was August, but a month later, she said, the field would become a sheet of pink.
On the trip back to the plains' entrance, Gulotta stopped short. She pointed to a tiny speck of red resting on a light-green stem, centimeters from the ground. It was a British solider lichen, she said. Lichens, the biologist noted, are the earliest known life forms on Earth, and were the foundation for all creatures that followed. Scientists speculate that lichens grew out of rocks hundreds of millions of years ago, and as they died, they decayed, forming the rich soil from which plant and later animal life sprang.
At the plains' front gate, orange-and-black monarch butterflies flitted among a patch of Queen Anne's lace and blacked-eyed Susan. It was how the plains should be, Gulotta said - a biologically diverse habitat. Mugwort, though, surrounded the patch, closing in on the flowers like a tidal wave.
Why the woodlands matter
Havasy said she hopes volunteers have fun at the BioBlitz. But, she said, "I want them to understand how important this is to Long Island." The hope, she said, is to show the ecological value of the forests and fields along the Meadowbrook, which, for the most part, are state-owned.
For six years, the New York State Department of Parks has balked on a county proposal to perpetually preserve the woodlands, which have suffered decades of damage at the hands of vandals. County Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, and Legislator Norma Gonsalves, a Republican from East Meadow, hope the BioBlitz will at last convince the state to preserve the woodlands.
Dr. Russell Burke, a Hofstra University biology professor, is among the BioBlitz's organizers. At the event, he said, volunteers could expect to find raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels, Norway rats, mice, voles, painted and snapping turtles, brown and garter snakes, green frogs, bullfrogs, newts and wild cats, which were once domestic, but were released and may have lived in the woodlands for generations. There will also likely be a host of birds, including common and fish crows, red cardinals, black-capped chickadees, English and house sparrows, European starlings, yellow warblers, blue jays and herring gulls.
Burke, of Bellmore, said the woodlands are of critical importance to Nassau. "Green spaces always have value," he said. "Trees cool down the Earth. Trees raise property values. Trees are amazingly effective as sound barriers. Trees pull pollution out of the air."
How to volunteer
For more information on the BioBlitz or to volunteer for it, go to www.meadowbrookbioblitz.org. To learn more about the Friends of the Hempstead Plains, check out www.friendsofhp.org.
Comments about this story? Sbrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
