The Dawn Of A New Northeastern Hardwood Ecology

In an agrarian landscape peppered with the villas and 'gentlemen's farms' of New York aristocrats, the forest to the south of Montgomery place was among the very first areas in America to be set aside for conservation. An oasis of wilderness in the sprawl of modern suburbia, the forest south of Montgomery place is the habitat for a motley crew of coyotes, foxes, salamanders, shrews, possums, frogs, and chipmunks. However, the woolly adelgid insect, introduced in Virginia in 1950, devastated hemlock populations up the coast and arrived in New York in the 80's. The Montgomery Place forest was only recently thick with Hemlocks, the dominant species of the ecosystem. Now, as the vast majority of these cool shady trees are either dead or in decline, sunlight pierces the canopy, placing this one-time bastion of ecological stability on the cusp of a profound transition.