A larger project, constructed in the way capital projects usually are, which includes architectural reconstruction, may span several seasons, during which time nearly all valued wildlife is displaced from the site. The Ramble, for example, which is a temporary resting site for migratory warblers crossing the vast urban wasteland may be irreplaceable in the region. Even a project affecting only a portion of the site may deny critical habitat to these birds who cannot wait out a one-or-two year hiatus. Struggling natural vegetation is similarly impacted. When forest restoration is viewed in the spirit of a capital project, the sheer amount of work undertaken becomes a severe stress to fragile remnant systems. Large-scale grading operations, extensive soil reworking, and massive planting efforts are, in this perspective, sources of disturbance and should be undertaken only where the landscape is in collapse, completely overwhelmed by knotweed, or with extensive and severe erosion. Similarly, where the vegetation is a mix of desirable species and pests, complete elimination of all invasives at once may actually open up the landscape so much that a reinvasion, perhaps even greater in scale than before, is invited. This habit of "V holesale reconstruction is poorly suited to forest restoration. Forests themselves take a long time to develop. This approach also requires that the designer must make many assumptions about the site with very little information. Trees, for example, are routinely.evaluated and only healthy specimens preserved, yet in a natural landscape many misshapen trees are the norm, and every stage from birth to mortality is found. . A common approach to dealing with these problems is fragmenting a project into smaller capital reconstruction pieces. However, though this confines damage to more limited areas at one time, it does not address the fact that this is simply a stressful way of working, and antithetical to establishing healthier, more self-sustaining natural systems. Another difficult aspect of restoration to comprehend, and the reason behind many unsuccessful capital projects, is the assumption that a complex living system can simply be installed in a season or two and then requires only maintenance. This misperception also lies behind the idea that a detailed comprehensive plan should, or even can, be developed before any restoration is initiated. Effective restoration should be carried out over decades. Many sensitive species should not be planted until greater levels of stability have been achieved. In some areas this will take many years because native canopy and understory layers need to be established before enhancement of more fragile groundlayer vegetation can be undertaken. Elsewhere it is impossible to assess the potential of natural recovery processes until the destructive impacts of misuse and exotics are controlled~ This is especially true in the North End where reproduction of native speices is still locally vigorous and may prove in some areas to minimize the need for replanting if competition from exotics can be reduced. Restoring a landscape is quite like raising a child; you can't really do it all at once or even plan for it all at once. This appraisal, however, should not be taken to mean no planning is necessary, only that a continuing planning process, with assessment and revision over time, is more realistic than a fixed
Phase One: Landscape Management & Restoration Program for the Woodlands of Central Park
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