People use their open spaces and parks in varied ways. Some go there for exercise, others to find a sunny spot for a picnic or a chat with friends, but many people, young and old, go to study nature. They’re interested in identifying the various, trees, shrubs, wildflowers, mushrooms, etc. as well as any living creatures they encounter, and they enjoy following changes in the vegetation and wildlife through the seasons. In 1995, Conservation officials in the City of Newton, MA hired a professional naturalist to perform an extensive survey of all life-forms existing in its major open areas and public parks. Ten years later, members of one of the city’s major environmental groups, the Newton Conservators, decided to undertake a similar study to find what changes had occurred in these same urban wild areas. This 2007 film shows how their group, with its members skilled in various fields of natural history, made the rounds each season of all the city’s conservation areas and parks to find out how things stood after a decade had passed. Their search for what’s new, what’s missing, and what’s crowding out the native species in these places might be of interest to environmentalists in other cities around the nation.
This video is not presently available online.
