Perhaps it seems urban to Mr. Rose and others. But someone forgot to tell this to the woodpeckers, the herons and all of the other animals that live along the Creek. And the saddest fact is, unless the park is managed with these and other animals in mind, the area has little or no chance of thriving. Without them, visiting this park would be a much emptier experience. It would also suffer greatly, and need a much heavier human management hand.
Animals provide many ecosystem services that ecologists find hard to replace.
They play a vital role in maintaining the Creek, and without them the system is missing a important element. Instead, they ought to manage the area as a forest system. Urban forestry practices, widely used by other agencies and employed by park managers throughout our region, should be explored and adopted. It is also clear that the agency should be managing this and other open space areas in order to prevent future tree damage. If the area had been managed that way from the beginning, we wouldn't be dealing with the decline of many of these trees which were damaged when construction was initially done along the Creek several years ago.