NYC Urban Field Station Hosts Delegation from Beijing
On November 3, 2009 the Urban Field Station, a joint program of the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, hosted a delegation of 14 forestry professionals from Beijing, China. The visit was arranged through the USFS International Programs division. The Chinese delegation of 10 men and four women are traveling throughout the United States to learn about urban forestry in America. New York City was their first stop, with Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles, California also on their itinerary. The group is comprised of senior management from the policy, afforestation, nursery, planning, water protection, and international cooperation divisions of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Parks and Forestry.
New York City Parks staff, including Assistant Commissioner for Forestry, Horticulture & Natural Resources Fiona Watt, took the delegation to a mixture of urban forest sites over the course of the day. They learned about New York City’s reforestation and invasive species management programs while hiking in Alley Pond Park in Queens, and then visited two greenstreets sites in the borough. One of the greenstreets is a demonstration site for New York City’s storm water mitigation initiative, in which water is physically channeled into the planting bed and then assessed by a system of solar powered water monitoring spikes.
The delegation also viewed a street tree planting site in Flushing, Queens (the heart of New York City’s Chinatown) where they were especially interested in the costs of planting street trees and the methods employed for irrigation, including tree gator bags. After lunch in Flushing at a Chinese restaurant, the teams gathered for presentations about urban forestry in New York City and in Beijing. New York City Parks is fortunate to have two foresters fluent in Mandarin Chinese who were able to describe City programs to their Chinese colleagues without the help of the translator to cap what was a truly valuable cultural and professional day of exchange.
Submitted by Fiona Watt
GO GREEN! ECO TIP OF THE DAY
It’s almost the holidays and now you can string up energy-effective lights on your house. Make sure the lights are an energy star approved product. Many decorative lights are made with led technology, which will last much longer than old lights and consume less energy.
QUOTATION FOR THE DAY
“Nature provides exceptions to every rule.”
Margaret Fuller
(1810 – 1850)