College Internship in Suburban Ecology 2024

Landon Highbloom and Emily Valenti, students engaged in MRG’s College Internship in Suburban Ecology, are getting hands-on experience in trail stewardship and riparian corridor restoration at the same time. They are planting over 100 wetland plants along stream edges. The white turtlehead, cardinal flower, and blue lobelia were all grown in MRG’s restoration garden. MRG’s […]

Wildlife Technician Program – Worms!

Yorktown H.S. graduate Sofia Natasi recently completed her three-year tenure in MRG’s award-winning Wildlife Technician Program (WTP). Sofia was mentored by Director of Research & Education Chris Nagy who has led the program for the past 10 years. Sofia studied the change in distribution of invasive earthworms of the genus Amynthas spp., which were introduced […]

Redevelopment of the Havemeyer Falls Spur Trail

Ever since Mianus River Gorge Preserve opened to the public, Havemeyer Falls has been a destination for hikers ambitious enough to put in the extra effort to visit it. Located approximately two miles from the trailhead, the beauty of Havemeyer Falls on a spring morning is rarely replicated in our region. However, the path leading […]

Bridging 70 years of wildflower monitoring to examine regional climate change

In the earliest days of the Mianus Gorge Conservation Committee, as Mianus River Gorge was originally known, the founders were fascinated with the flora and fauna they found here. They contacted biologists, botanists and other professionals to help them catalog the biodiversity of the Mianus River Gorge. Beginning in the mid 1950s, Dr. Henry A. […]

A Visit to Hobby Hill Quarry

By the end of the 18th century, the quarry industry began to take off in Westchester County, providing stone for roads, lime, and iron production. As New York City continued to expand toward the end of the 19th century, the demand for granite increased and granite quarries began to open up across the southern parts […]

Celebrating 60 years as a National Natural Landmark While Looking to the Future

Mianus River Gorge was one of the first National Natural Landmark (NNL) sites, designated by then Secretary of the Interior Sewart Udall, on March 7, 1964. The other sites included Elder Creek and Rancho La Brea in California, Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Florida, Fontenelle Forest in Nebraska, Bergen-Byron in New York, and Wissahickon Valley, Pennsylvania. […]

GORGE+ous

Mianus River Gorge was featured in Bedford New Canaan Magazine’s May / June issue. Read the article here. Photo by Bill Abranowicz

Fire as a Control Method for Invasive Plants

Fire as a Control Method for Invasive Plants As our climate changes, plants and animals shift their distributions by colonizing and establishing new territory to find suitable microclimates that allow them to persist and producing offspring to continue the process. The problem is that this process takes time, often generations; and the process is complicated […]

MRG’s Chris Nagy interviewed on Fox at 5

Watch the video here. An especially large coyote–that looked a lot like a wolf–was sighted in Central Park. Gotham Coyote Project co-founder Chris Nagy was called in to explain that the eastern coyote is indeed part wolf, the result of decades of cross-hybridization between the two species. “They all have some wolf ancestry, meaning that […]

Flooded Trails

We ask that you wear appropriate footwear and stay on the trails. Stepping off the trail can damage the landscape. We appreciate your cooperation. Thank you!