Beyond a mountain of garbage, there are signs of wetlands returning to an area near the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.
Students from Farnsworth Middle School are helping to monitor that development. Science teacher Alan Fiero on Tuesday, May 14, took a class of seventh-grade students to just past the City of Albany’s Rapp Road Landfill, where the students looked for signs of life native to the Pine Bush at restored portions of land. This is the first time such a project has been undertaken at the Pine Bush.
“This will be the first step in a long-term research program to monitor the restoration of this area of the Pine Bush,” Fiero said. “The data students collect will provide valuable information to the Pine Bush Commission.”
The student involvement is funded through a $5,000 grant Fiero was awarded from the Bender Scientific Fund and in collaboration with the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission. Grant funding is used to cover student transportation costs and the purchase of research equipment for the project.
“What the kids are doing here today is part of a project called Habitat Watch, where we’re collecting baseline data on the wetlands,” said Erin Kinal, education program director of the Pine Bush Commission.
Students were tackling four different areas, Kinal said. They were observing what birds were coming to use the new wetlands and also what aquatic insects were present. They also monitored the water quality and took “photo point” pictures that involved taking a picture from the same spot over and over to document the wetland’s progress.
“They get a sense of how things are changing, and how does it change over time visually?” she said. “They are actually doing real research and collecting real data on a project that is happening right here in the Capital District.”
Neil Gifford, conservation director of the Pine Bush Commission, said the area was private property before the landfill purchased it for its fourth phase of expansion. The land was a mobile home park, but it has been transformed into a man-made wetland as part of the landfill’s fifth phase expansion remediation efforts.
The landfill and the mobile home park had separated two areas of the preserve, Gifford said, so once the land is fully restored it will connect the two pieces of the preserve. Around 3,200 acres are protected, but he said the goal is to expand that to 5,300 acres.
“The landfill expansion is only going to give them around seven years of space and when that’s done, they are going to cap the entire landfill with native plants to effectively bridge this gap for wildlife,” he said.
Two new stream channels and seven wetland communities have been constructed, along with a pond. All of the invasive plants have been mitigated from the area and native plants were brought in. That quick recovery has impressed those working in the Pine Bush.
“We are already, just a couple years into this project, seeing native wildlife moving back in,” Gifford said. “We are giving the students an opportunity to learn about how we monitor ecological restoration.”
Gifford said protecting the rare ecosystem is important. The preserve is home to 45 species of rare wildlife, he said, with dozens of species of rare plants.
“We want to keep all those species here and it is a phenomenal recreational resource,” he said. “The landfill, when it is fully restored, we would like to see a trail going up and over, because it gives you a phenomenal view.