Erin McKenna

Wildlife Tech Class of 2017High School for Environmental StudiesMentor: Chris Nagy (MRG) Project: Variability in Detection of Coyotes in New York City Parks and Implications for Research Project Status: Completed Project Description: Since 2012, camera traps have been deployed in 10 parks in New York City to study the occupancy dynamics of Canis latrans (eastern […]

Animals Nobody Loves

I always loved the book by Ronald Rood called “Animals Nobody Loves” or the poems by Ogden Nash on the same subject.  I still remember Nash’s rhyme:  “God in all his wisdom made the fly, and then forgot to tell us why”.  The truth of the matter is that there are legions of critters that […]

Studying Pollinator Assemblages

Last summer, Sydney Lonker (White Plains HS) and Madeline Bueher (Pelham HS) began studying the pollinator assemblages at three of the Preserve’s meadows. The abundance and diversity of the bees and other insect pollinators found at each meadow will help MRG determine if our restoration and management of these areas is providing habitat for the […]

Signe Forsingdal

Wildlife Tech Class of 2016Scarsdale High SchoolMentor: Nicole Fusco (Fordham) and Chris Nagy (MRG) Project: The Effect of Habitat Fragmentation on the Movements of Eurycea bislineata Project Status: Completed Project Description: Steam salamanders, such as the two-lined salamander Eurycea bislineata, are important members of the terrestrial and aquatic food webs. They can be used as indicators of […]

Brilliance hidden in forest canopy

In the northeast we are fortunate to have our forests growing older.  As forests age, soils become more complex, topography more undulating, species composition more diverse, and the layering of the forest more apparent – herbaceous, understory, and overstory habitats more defined.  One indicator of this change, is the presence of a distinctive group of […]

Isabela Yepes

Wildlife Tech Class of 2018Carmel High SchoolMentor: Chris Nagy (MRG) Project: Wetland functional assessment in the Mianus River Watershed Project Status: Completed Project Description: There is extensive evidence that natural wetlands contribute to ecosystem biodiversity and natural improvement of water quality which can impact the drinking water of a watershed (Beam, 2004; Alho, 2005). Specifically, the health […]

Monika Ryczek

Wildlife Tech Class of 2018High School for Environmental StudiesMentor: Chris Nagy (MRG) Project: Using count (N-mixture) models to model habitat and socioeconomic factors as predictors of coyote site use in NYC Project Status: Completed Project Description: Coyotes have now colonized several parks in the borough of the Bronx, the only mainland portion of NYC, and are poised […]

2019 Summer Interns

Kristofer Yee, SUNY Brockport Gowri Anand, University of New York Sam Badia, University of Delaware Interns worked on: Vegetation survey plots, invasive species removal, the study of mycorrhizae fungi in the forest soils, and estimating the population of the deer herd in the Preserve.

The Early Years

In the early 1950’s a group of concerned citizens led by Gloria Hollister Anable discovered in the Mianus River Valley a wild and free river running through a primeval forest, a natural area which had taken hundreds of years to create. They realized this was no ordinary forest. With development threatening to destroy this irreplaceable […]

Gotham Coyote Project

Our research on coyotes in NYC has been featured in a number of TV spots and articles.  Below are links or embeds to many of them. You can also learn more about this specific project here. 2/2019: Catapult magazine, “An Icon of the American Wilderness is Alive in the Bronx” by Lenora Tedoro 7/2018: amNY, […]