Marine Park Getting A Facelift With Habitat Restoration & Trail Development Project

The local volunteer and conservation groups have kicked off a multi-year project to preserve and improve Marine Park’s unique ecosystem and create new trails for hikers and birdwatchers, the Parks Department announced last week.

“Marine Park is one of Brooklyn’s undiscovered treasures, with miles of land and sea and countless species of flora and fauna to explore,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said in a press release. “For decades, this unique ecosystem has been neglected, but I am pleased to be a part of a newly invigorated effort to polish this natural gem for the full benefit of the community.”

Work has already begun and the project is scheduled for completion in 2017, according to the Parks Department. This fall, volunteers cleared 200 bags of storm debris and trash from the park — the largest in Brooklyn. The Student Conservation Association (SCA), one of the project’s contractors, will organize youth from the surrounding communities — Gerritsen Beach and Marine Park — to do further clean up and trail work this summer.

Other groups participating in the effort are the Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC), The Nature Conservancy, and the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC).

“As Brooklyn’s largest park and one of its most ecologically significant natural areas, Marine Park’s visitors will greatly benefit from our improvements to this special place,” said NAC Executive Director Sarah Charlop-Powers. “The Natural Areas Conservancy is excited to help lead restoration of Marine Park’s unique coastal forest and creation of a safer and easier to follow trail network.”

The Natural Areas Conservancy will lead improvements on a 133-acre site on the western side of Marine Park, according to the press release. The project will close several unofficial trails that have fragmented the park’s sensitive ecology and replace them with more formalized trails with better signs and markers.

Marine Park is an ideal habitat for migratory birds and other wildlife and is one of only two remaining coastal habitats in New York City, according to the Parks Department.

“This park is a gem and will be beneficially improved by this conservancy project,” the community group Gerritsen Beach Cares said in the press release. “[We] are in deep gratitude to the Natural Areas Conservancy and NYC Parks for selecting Marine Park South in the Gerritsen Beach Peninsula as the beneficiary of the grant to conserve and promote a sustainable natural seaside forest in our community.”