Park resources being misused

After 20 years of trying to protect Kissena Park from foragers, rule-breakers and land-destroyers, Beverly McDermott – president of the Kissena Park Civic Association has had enough.
“Park officials are not interested in making people comply with the rules,” said McDermott. “People have been using the park as their private garden shop and grocery store for years and the ranger’s response has been ‘I’m not walking in that direction’ or ‘my vehicle does not go there’ on multiple occasions.”
Recently, Assemblymembers Rory Lancman and Grace Meng stood with McDermott at a press conference regarding the misuse of city park resources including illegal foraging of plants and poaching of wildlife in Kissena Park. They announced the addition of multilingual signs to prevent further abuses. The signs placed by the Department of Parks and Recreation will read “Please do not harm or remove wildlife” referring to the illegal introduction of bamboo on the property, poaching of water turtles in Kissena Lake, the depletion of planted flowers and more.
“People are turning the park into their own salad bar,” said Lancman. “If you go to a playground, you can’t take home a see-saw . . . As community leaders we have one message for those who steal our parks’ plant and animal life, stop eating our parks.”
While signage is a step in the right direction, McDermott believes that steps to preserve Kissena Park are overdue.
“We talked about the park with fourth graders and they didn’t know there were any rules in the park,” said McDermott. “Offender will have to adjust to us. We shouldn’t have to adjust to them when it comes to conservation.”
“Park regulations explicitly state that ‘no person shall…remove from the ground any plants, flowers, shrubs or other vegetation under the jurisdiction of the department,” said a Park’s Department spokesperson. “While it has long been against the rules to collect or destroy plants in the city’s parks, with potential fines of $250, we prefer education as the most effective means of enforcement and have not issued summonses for foraging in recent years. It is listed as a prohibited use because our parks could not sustain the impact if the public was given blanket permission to collect berries or flowers. We encourage park users to report incidents with as much information as possible to 3-1-1.”
McDermott hopes that the issuing of fines to park offenders will begin the process of staving off foragers. She says the only way that will happen is if people start respecting park rangers.
“They have a uniform and a badge but none of that seems to count,” says McDermott. “My intelligence tells me that it’s going on in other parks, too.”