Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Please don't eat the daisies (or the turtles)!

From the NY Times:

Maybe it is the spiraling cost of food in a tough economy or the logical next step in the movement to eat locally. Whatever the reason, New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms, American ginger and elderberries.

Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say. In recent months, the city has stepped up training of park rangers and enforcement-patrol officers, directing them to keep an eye out for foragers and chase them off.

Just what gets taken can vary from park to park, often depending on the ethnic makeup of the surrounding neighborhood.

“There are groups going around and collecting things that they recognize from their home countries,” said Gary Lincoff, an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden, who admitted foraging in the parks for juneberries. “The Chinese gather gingko, and I’ve talked to Koreans who are gathering white wood aster.”

Beverly McDermott, director of Friends of Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, has confronted foragers directly when she has seen them hauling away everything from plants to top soil to turtles. A garden in the 242-acre park that Mrs. McDermott helped revive a decade ago has been repeatedly pillaged, with herbs, flowers and a whole weeping cherry tree disappearing.

“I have caught them leaving the park with coolers full of fish and turtles,” she said. “You need signs throughout the park. I find the rangers to be totally useless. They’re walking around like Boy Scouts.”

9 comments:

Cherokeesista said...

This is because The Newcomers think they can doband take whatever they want ;-( Failure to Assimilate ;-( Just uncivilized !!!

Anonymous said...

Those damned low class, uncivilized Taiwanese and Fujian Chinese peasants!

They'll eat anything (in whole or part) of any creature that walks, crawls, swims or flies!

Keep a watchful eye on your pet tabby for they're considered a "delicacy"!

I once grabbed an Asian woman's turtle pail from her and threw the whole damn thing back into Kissena Lake after I shot a video clip of her caught in the act!

Then I yelled, "police, police!"

She ran like a bat out of hell....she couldn't catch to eat!

F--k those park rangers!
Take matters into your own hands.

These kind of "people" are a scourge on society!

Anonymous said...

Ah, Bev, remember the newies are the Tweeded and unless they start doing stuff like pitched gun battles in the middle of a street, have free reign to do just about anything they like.

Its called living under Tammany Hall.

Anonymous said...

Thanks to the jew man pushing multiculturalism and immigration reform out the ass. Sanctuary city baby!

Anonymous said...

Signs throughout the park ?

In how many languages....LOL!

"Solly, no speekie Engrish"!

Anonymous said...

All of this was going on before your "jew man" which gets a cap "J".

Uh...unless you want to call Koch another "jew man"....LOL!

Anonymous said...

Then set up a Kissena Park Conservancy!

Yeah, LOL, righto!

This wouldn't be tolerated in NYC's premier attraction Central Park.

Folks, let's face it....
this is an immigrant park!

People go there to relax, have sex, harvest plants, steal flora, kill wildlife, barbecue them, pee, pollute, do emergency BMs, bathe, sell drugs, etc.

A few unfortunates have even chosen to committ suicide there....found by police and cut down hanging from trees.

With all apologies to Billy Holiday...."Strange Fruit" in Kissena Park!

Won Hung Lo said...

Wait til my octopi start to mature...

Anonymous said...

over 800,000 new arrivals in the last decade, and you can bet they are NOT living in Manhattan.

All these new savages that were dropped into Queens WILL destroy what is left of our community.

They simply come from a backwards culture and dont understand how to be part of a civilized society.