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It's not every day that New Yorkers are treated to new patches of green land.
Last week, city officials hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Fallkill Trail inside of Prospect Park, an area that has been closed off since 1995 and is home to the beautiful Fallkill Waterfall.
“We have monitored how people are engaging with the park and we adapt our uses to meet them where they are,” said Morgan Monaco, president of Prospect Park Alliance, in an official statement. “This new trail will invite visitors to explore a previously fenced area of the park and enjoy the beautifully restored landscape. The long-term health of our natural areas requires us to be champions and strong stewards of the park and I urge all who come to experience the park’s woodlands to stay on the designated trails, carry out all trash that you bring in, and always keep dogs on-leash to protect these delicate habitats.”
To create the new trail in the previously fenced-off area, Prospect Park Alliance staff had to remove invasive plants while planting new species “to continue to strengthen [the] ecosystem, hauling logs [and] grading paths,” reads an official press release.
It’s important to note that, although the waterfall, which is manmade, is technically visible to the public at the moment, it has been temporarily shut off to prevent the Prospect Park Lake from flooding, explains the New York Times.
“Lake levels are still high after flooding from a storm in late September and continued rainfall since then,” reports the paper. “It is unclear when the waterfall will be turned on again.”
The update surrounding Fallkill Falls has been a long time coming: the area was first shuttered in the mid 1990s in an effort to restore the park as a whole given the subpar funding it was receiving.
Fencing off the zone with an eight-foot-tall gate to protect the botanic life within it, officials started planting trees and shrubs to revitalize the section of the park. In 2004, the gate was cut in half to allow people to actually see the waterfall while walking around the park. However, as reported by the New York Times, during the pandemic, a lot of park goers would hop the fence to see the area up close.
Unfortunately, many visitors ended up abusing the area and leaving it in disarray—until the recent recovery efforts by the park's staff. Here's to hoping things will only get better from here on out.