By Azriel James Relph
azriel.james.relph@gmail.com
Gliding into the East River from Barretto Point Park in the gray light of a recent early morning, four boats set off for a destination only a handful of New Yorkers have ever visited.
The Myriad, Essence, Phoenix and Pride-–classic wooden rowboats, handmade by students from Rocking the Boat–carried a band of teens and their mentors to the rugged shores of North Brother Island, where giant “Restricted Area” signs loom over rusted antique wheelbarrows and 30-year-old beer bottles.
“I was pretty scared,” said 17-year old Kyeesha Fountain. “It was my first time on a boat.” But she was not dissuaded. “Not many people get to go there,” she said, “so I was like ‘Yes! We’re making history!’”
Abandoned and off-limits to the public for nearly half a century, North Brother’s landscape is a tangle of vines that climb over the dilapidated remains of the 19th-century hospital that once occupied the island and entwine themselves around its trees.
Now it is the site of an ambitious effort to enlist local teens to save those trees and other native plants from being strangled by the vines, and to ensure a safe haven for the largest nesting ground in the Northeast for herons and egrets, whose numbers have been shrinking in recent years.
Funded by a grant from CITGO, the American arm of the Venezuelan National Petroleum Corporation, the teenage members of ACTION (Activists Coming To Inform Our Neighborhood) and Rocking the Boat, are working to restore the island to a healthy and balanced ecosystem.
The island once housed the hospital where Typhoid Mary spent the last two decades of her life, and where over 1,000 people spent their own last moments in 1904, when the steamer General Slocum caught fire and ran aground there. The wreck of the excursion ship claimed more lives than any disaster in the city’s history, until September 11, 2001.
The island later served as a base for military housing and a drug rehabilitation center, before it was closed to the public completely in the early 1960s. Vines and trees now shroud the buildings.
“It’s technically the Bronx, but it is a completely different place,” said 16-year old Misra Walker. “You get almost like a Twilight Zone feeling there. You can see all the trees from the Bronx, but when you get there and see all the old buildings and artifacts, it is just a crazy place.”
New York has been an inviting place for foreign nationals, but immigrant plant life is not always welcome. The mission on North Brother Island is to curb the growth of species like English Ivy, Asiatic Bittersweet and Norway Maple –whose names are dead-giveaways to their foreign origins.
None of these plants were meant to be in the area, and some of them are extremely hostile to native species. The Kudzu vine for instance, comes from sub-tropical Asia. It can grow up to 20 feet in one season, and will twist around smaller trees, choking them to death.
Birds carry the seeds to nesting areas like North Brother where rising temperatures have allowed the invasive plants to gain a foothold, according to Rich Love of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s Natural Resources Group.
The foreign species compete with native plants for sunlight, water and soil on the small island. Experts believe their invasion may be responsible for the recent decline in the number of birds nesting on North Brother.
“We can’t be entirely sure what conditions are causing the birds to nest here less,” said NYC Audubon’s Erik Karff, but “we need to carefully take what measures we can to enhance nesting.”
Over the past four years the Natural Resources Group has been clearing areas on the island to plant natives like Gray Birch, Ash, Dogwood and Sycamore, which are all fast growing and good for bird-nesting. However, the cleared areas are already being swamped anew by the intrepid invasive species, so the help of the South Bronx teens couldn’t have come at a better time.
“A lot of bird species go there that you would never see anywhere else,” said 14-year old Victor Davilla. “The native plants that most of these species of birds feed on are getting killed by these other plants.”
Representatives from the Natural Resources Group and NYC Audubon guided the members of ACTION and Rocking the Boat through the overgrown island, helping them identify areas of concern. The teens worked to remove plants that threaten to overtake the island, by digging up and hacking off their roots with tools they referred to as “loppers.”
“We’re getting rid of the invasive plants, and saving the plants that the birds like to eat and nest in,” explained 13-year old Kendrick Martinez.
“It’s important because we are saving the environment and something can start from here, just by helping out,” said 16-year old Jon Ortiz.
Seventeen-year old Dave Odon described the importance of their mission, saying “even though I’m just chopping trees, I’m actually doing something positive for the community and I’m learning something, instead of just hanging out.”
“What we do is important, and people should know that we are involved in our own community,” said Walker. “I hear all about how Hunts Point is growing and has so much potential. It’d be nice to have more people who wanted to join us, do work, get down and dirty and help out.”