Using a thermal monocular at night in the park has opened up a window into the park’s nocutural wildlife. While it has let me discover the habits of our Coyotes and watch a Southern Flying Squirrel, it has also shown me some of the problems in the park. The worst is how bad the park’s trash management has become. I see scores of raccoons and rats around all of the park’s trash cans and restaurants. Not only has led to an overpopulation of rats and raccoons, but could also habituate the park’s coyotes to human food. This could cause them to become aggressive toward humans.

Let’s help keep our wildlife, wild and manage the park’s trash properly.

There are a number of factors involved:

• The efficient collection of trash, which was optimized while Douglas Blonsky was president of the Central Park Conservancy to ensure trash was not left accessible to rodents, seems to have been abandoned.
• The trash cans, a gift from Alcoa years ago, do not prevent animals for accessing the trash and are in a state of disrepair.
• The transfer stations, where park employees aggregate trash leave the garbage accessible to animals, with trash often being left overnight.
• The recycling refuse is not taken offsite, but stored in tractor trailer sized dumpsters at The Mount.
• Ignoring NYC Department of Health regulations, many of the park’s restaurants leave their refuse in open trash cans or dumpsters.
• The feeding of wildlife by park patrons either by not disposing of trash properly, or intentional feeding.

When Douglas Blonsky was President of Central Park, an effective progress for managing trash in the park was put into place to minimize consumption by Brown Rats and Raccoons. The park removed some trash cans in the Ramble and the North Woods, and developed a system of trash collection, that aggregated garbage and ensured that it was collected promptly rather than letting it sit overnight.

This system, while it could have been improved upon, allowed Chipmunks to make comeback in the north woods. Unfortunately, in other areas of the park, Brown Rats and Gray Squirrels still dominate and prevent the Chipmunks from reestablishing themselves.

Douglas Blonsky’s replacement, Betsy Smith was hired primarily to focus on fund raising in 2018. Betsy Smith has done a fantastic job raising funds for important captial projects, such as the refurbishment of Chess and Checkers and the Conservatory Garden, the replacement of the Lasker Rink/Pool with the fabulous Davis Center, and the soon to be completed North Meadow Recreation Center and Southern Grand Army Plaza renovations. However, basic operations of the park have declined since Douglas Blonsky’s departure. Some of this was caused by a reduction in city funding by Bill de Blasio, put I suspect it is also a change in focus from by the President and the Board to larger projects, ignoring day-to-day operations.

I would hope that once this round of capital projects is completed, the conservancy would focus on providing long term funding for staff positions and smaller projects. Universities have endowed professorships, and orchestras endowed performers. Isn’t it time to start raising funds to endow arborists, gardeners, a naturalist, and multiple maintenance positions?

Basic maintenance is lacking and smaller less glamourous projects that would have a huge impact on the park are being neglected. It seems as though if it can’t have a brass plaque attached to it, the project doesn’t get done. Sidewalks, fence repairs, signage, hand railings (a ramp with railings was recently installed in Shakespeare Garden, but railings which would have helped the majority of the park’s older patrons were not installed on the stairs going up to Belvedere Castle), wheelchair cutouts and ramps (only two steps prevent wheelchair users from viewing the wonderful ceiling tiles of the Bethesda Fountain arcade), and bathroom renovations all seem to be forgotten since they aren’t donor friendly.

But basic trash management and rodent control might be the worst failure of the current management team. This decline has allowed the park to become overrun with Brown Rats and Raccoons. There is also a serious risk our Eastern Coyotes could also become habituated to human food and loose their fear of humans.

Trash Cans
The park’s trash cans simply need to be replaced with more modern trash receptacles that prevent animals from accessing the trash and there need to be enough of them to prevent trash from overflowing on busy days. Walking through the park at night and you’ll see families of raccoons jumping in and out of the trash cans. The raccoons often pull out food containers, spilling the food and then feeding nearby rats. The receptacles don’t need to be “bear proof”, just raccoon and rat proof.

In addition to not being animal proof many of the current trashcans are in poor condition. Here is a picture of two without lids.

Depots and Collection Timing
The park’s trash is collected by employees driving electric carts and consolidated at depots along the drives. Originally, this was supposed to be timed, so trash wasn’t left unattended only briefly. But today, if you visit these depots in the early hours of the evening you’ll see raccoons ripping open trash bags, with rats cleaning up the scraps.

The problem is made worse by the recycling trash which often gets left at the depots. Because park patrons often put food waste or liquids in the can/bottle trash cans this trash attracts animals but is treated as though it contains only recyclables. This trash is often left for a longer period, which exacerbates the problem.

Liquids (and odors) leak out of the trash, but the depots are not cleaned, nor are they hosed down after the trash is collected. Some of the depots smell so bad, you can smell them from a block away. Walk into the park from Grand Army Plaza at 59th and Fifth Avenue and after you pass the Zoo and before you arrive at the Mall, you’ll be greeted by the worst smell you may ever encounter. That what greets NYC tourists daily.

Leaving the trash and recyclables out in the open just isn’t working. The trash needs to be stored in containers that are animal proof and the sites need to be hosed down after the trash is collected. The city is piloting large dumpsters to collect trash in city neighborhoods, and these might be a perfect fit for Central Park.

The Mount
The Mount, also known as the Compost Heap, has three large tractor trailer sized dumpsters where recycling is stored. (There are also two additional dumpsters on the bypass road that goes across the park around 103rd Street.)

The Mount which used to be free of debris have been left a complete mess by the contractors who worked on the Davis Center and Conservatory Garden. (This seams to be par for the course this season. In Shakespeare Garden, to meet an opening deadline, the lattice work for the new rustic fences was left unfinished and the lumber thrown behind some shrubs.) A cynic would say that it shows the lingering racism and classism of the Conservancy’s staff and board, that an acre of the park “uptown” has been left in such disrepair. Or it simply is incompetence. Either way, the site needs to be restored to a natural state and a better solution found for the dumpsters.

Every evening Brown Rats and Raccoons feed on the garbage in the dumpsters and often the coyotes come by at some point in the night to fed on the Brown Rats. The dumpsters would be fine if they contained only recyclable materials, but those bags often have mixed trash. Just like with the transfer stations, rodent proof dumpsters are needed to replace the tractor trailer sized dumpsters.

I’m including some pictures below, not only of the dumpsters, but of the leftover construciton materials at The Mount. The area truly is an embarrassment. The remaining construction material included a mountain of large boulders left over from the restoration of the stream from The Loch to The Meer.

Restaurants
Most of the park’s restaurants are not complying with NYC Health Department regulations requiring the use of lidded, rigid containers for all trash, including food waste. As a result, there is a feeding frenzy at most of the restaurants nightly.

Some of the restaurants, simply don’t have enough containers. This is the case with the Le Pain Quotidian at Mineral Springs (just north of Sheep Meadow). NYC law requires restaurants to have enough containers to handle 72 hours worth of waste.

Walk by the restaurant at night and you’ll see a collection of Raccoons and Brown Rats feasting on the garbage. One one night I saw over 20 Brown Rats and three Raccoons eating the trash.

At the Loeb Boathouse the situation is much worse. Here you have open dumpsters, filled with trash. Whole families of raccoons and armies of Brown Rats descend on the open dumpsters each night.

It’s a shame that the area north of the Loeb Boathouse continues to be just a parking lot filled with cars, dumpsters and shipping containers. With car traffic in the park having been banned years ago, why hasn’t this being redesigned? There must be a way to discreetly hide the trash and provide a more attractive way to store materials for the restaurant and the special Achilles’ Bikes. (The same goes for the Tavern on the Green’s unused parking lot, which could be reclaimed and turned into a garden, with a nice round driveway for taxis.)

Park Patrons Feeding Animals
Unfortunately park patrons are feeding animals either by littering or intentionally. Littering will always be a problem in a public park.

However, the intentional feeding of animals is a serious problem.

The feeding of birds, squirrels, and raccoons by park patrons has seriously increased the population of non-native birds, squirrels, and raccoons in the park, but also the rat population. This displaces native bird species and native animals such as chipmunks.

There are individuals feeding birds and raccoons regularly, and at these areas at night you will see scores of rats, and can find large established burrows of the rodents. The over population of raccoons has also led to two disease outbreaks in the Central Park population, both rabies and distemper.

Sadly, when the Park’s Department proposed restricting the feeding of animals in city parks, there was a public outcry, and new regulations were not approved. So, what I consider to be littering is still allowed by regulations. It’s sad to see how many people interact with wildlife as though the animals are their outdoor pets, rather than wild creatures.

For the coyotes, an individual who leaves high quality fish and meat out for raccoons, has meant that they visit a feeding location nightly. But also about 30 Brown Rats visit the same spot nightly! And this spot is right next to a children’s playground.

It’s time to prohibit the feeding of wildlife in city parks. The people doing it are doing it for their own enjoyment and not for the welfare of the animals. There needs to be a clear boundary between humans and wildlife.

In addition to banning the feeding of wildlife, I’ve always believed New York City Parks should also adopt the Canadian National Park’ s language prohibiting harassment of animals in for NYC park regulations. Their guidelines say, “It is against the law to touch, entice, disturb or otherwise harass any wild animals big or small.” I especially like the use of the word entice, as it would restrict the use of audio playback or the feeding of animals using bread or nuts to bring them closer.

Rodent Control
Even with the best management of waste disposal, there will always be some rats. While the Conservancy occasionally uses rodenticides, it does so on a very limited basis to protect the rodent predators in the park, such as Red-tailed Hawks. While this was the correct approach a decade ago, two new and effective methods of controlling rat populations have recently become available, CO2 and rodent contraceptive bait, and should be concidered.

The use of carbon dioxide as a method of fumigation for burrow systems, either by using dry ice or devices such as the IGI CO2 Liphatech, can be very effective at killing brown rats, without the risks of secondary poisoning of other animals. This method has been successfully used in smaller parks in Manhattan, including Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park.

Rodent contraceptive bait is being experimented with in NYC, and is available in both a liquid and solid form. The solid form is being used quite effectively in Bryant Park. The Conservancy should be encouraged to pilot the use of these baits, especially in infested areas, such as the shore of the Pond.

Moving Forward
The health code violations are the easiest to address. I’m going to start photographing the violations when I see them and report them to the health department. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. If you’re walking your dog at night, take a picture and make a complaint.

The Park’s Department also has a department that manages concessions and I’ll be writing a letter of complaint and copying the health department.

Pressuring the Conservancy to revised their trash collection and rodent control procedures will be much harder. I’m still trying to figure out how to influence them. Email me with any suggestions!

Lastly, I’m not sure how to mobilize naturalists to influence park regulations. The “animal lovers” who feed wildlife are a strong lobby. Fixing this issue might not be possible politically. But it’s time to give the Urban Park Rangers and P.E.P. (Park’s Enforcement Patrol) regulations that let them crack down on habitual feeders of animals, who bring so much food into the park that they end up feeding more than a few bids or squirrels but an army of rodents.