Winter Ecology at Pleasant Valley Park, Feb. 4th
by Dick Byers
Nineteen people braved single digit temperatures and moderate winds to walk the trails of PV Park. Tom Pearson was the main leader in this annual WBNC winter outing. Had the weather been warmer we might have had too large a turnout and be forced to split into several groups. As it was, nineteen people on a narrow trail was still a large group to handle and I missed some of the species Tom discussed because I was too far behind. When I got Tom’s additions to the list a week later we had over 100 species and a better idea of what this park is like. Of interest to me were some steep ravine sloops that could be possible wildflower refugia from white-tailed deer over-browsing. Consequently, I asked the Western Pennsylvania Botanical Society to consider scheduling one of their field trips here in the months to come.
WC President Mount Fitzpatrick, Vice President Shelly Tichy, board member Richard Wagner and two conservancy members came on the walk. The other 14 were from the Botanical Society and Nature Club. It was a nice mix. Tom Pearson kept us out in the cold for four hours and 15 minutes and never ran out of things to talk about. A list of species can be found on Ed Straub’s PV Park website: http://www.pvpark.org/. We warmed up at Hoss’s Restaurant for a late lunch.
This park is very valuable ecologically because of its size. Biologists have found that when a wooded area gets smaller than 100 hectares (247 acres) the probability of finding certain species of wildlife drops sharply. PV Park is over 15 acres larger than the critical point where biodiversity begins
to plummet, so it could serve as a valuable refuge for certain species of birds. For that reason alone, it is worth saving and a valuable asset to the community. Besides serving as a possible wildflower refugia, it may also be important someday as wildlife corridor. It is another place to control the deer population and a place for old growth to develop. Its terrain is particularly scenic, and like Duff Park, when the trees mature it could draw tourists. It is worth keeping, now and even more so in the future.
