New trails, bridges and signage planned for the Mill Brook Preserve

Prevailing thought is that the best way to protect the homes of non-human beings is to invite human beings into those areas as much as possible, but not let those humans pave, or build, or otherwise utterly destroy those areas. To that end, plans are coming together to put in a handful of new trails at the Mill Brook Preserve in New Paltz, along with bridges and signage. The balancing act between human and non-human needs involves avoiding sensitive breeding areas, as well as trying to minimize the inconvenience to preserve neighbors when visitors wander out onto private property. 

The Mill Brook Preserve came together after many years of effort to protect this ecologically essential wetland area from human development, although it came too late to prevent the construction of the Woodland Pond and Lent Farms developments. Located between Henry W. Dubois Drive and Shivertown Road, it’s largely surrounded by suburban development and as such, is one of the few places non-humans can live their lives in relative peace. It’s all public property, with part of it listed as village property and another part deeded to the town. The entire tract is covered by a conservation easement and administered through the nonprofit Mill Brook Preserve, Inc. 

Navigating the layers of bureaucracy to make any changes in the preserve is a process that involves updating the formal recreation plan, which must in turn comply with the restrictions laid out in the underlying conservation easements. This is the first time that the recreation plan is being revisited since its approval in 2017. First the nonprofit board members decide on changes they’d like to see, and then they must secure approval both through the Wallkill Valley Land Trust — guardian of the conservation easements — and whichever of the two elected boards oversee the particular land affected by the changes. This update will require approval at both the town council and the board of trustees of the village. 

Alex Bartholomew, chair of the trails committee, walked town council members through the alterations that are proposed. The executive director of Mill Brook Preserve, Inc. is Julie Seyfert-Lillis, who is also a town council member. As speaking on both sides would be a blatant conflict of interest, Seyfert-Lillis did not participate in any capacity. The meeting was held virtually due to an incoming storm, and Seyfert-Lillis switched off the camera to signal that recusal. 

Four new lengths of trail are in the plan amendment, Bartholomew explained, totaling just under three-quarters of a mile that would be added to the approximately three-and-a-half miles of trails already in place. There’s a piece that will extend to Old Mill Road, and another that will allow access from Hummel Road via a strip of town land that is what’s called a “paper road,” land set aside for a street that hasn’t had a street built. Had the Mill Brook Preserve instead been built into “Stoneleigh Woods,” one of the development proposals that was floated before preservation was taken up seriously, that paper road may well have been paved; under this scheme, it will see use, just not with cars. Two other trail lengths will complete internal loops, including one that will utilize a bridge that will be paid for through grant funding secured for the village. 

There are two engineered bridges that fall under that grant, along with four “extra-strength bog bridges” to aid in crossing smaller streams without causing damage to the sensitive ecosystem by tromping over delicate riparian banks. 

Controlling the aimless wandering of humans is a consideration in this update. For one, trail and bridge placement involved avoiding pools where turtles congregate and a site where fishers are known to nest. Humans also tend to disturb other humans, or at least their property rights. One of the new trail loops is hoped to result in fewer humans trespassing at Woodland Pond, as it’s built onto the end of a trail that terminates abruptly near the property line for the senior-citizen compound. More signage is intended to keep preserve visitors from leaving via a convenient back yard as they try to make their way to parked cars. 

As a park without parking, the connectivity of the trail system is also seen as helping to minimize impacts by making it easier to use the preserve as a shortcut to other places, as well as a destination in itself. Supervisor Neil Bettez envisions children walking to school, and humans of all ages walking to the commercial center of town via these trails. Proposed changes also include installing benches for sitting and log circles for gathering; at least one of the latter was already put in with special dispensation from land trust leaders in part because pulling out invasive honeysuckle and native poison ivy was involved in clearing the space. While honeysuckle chokes out native food sources, Hudson Valley birder Rich Guthrie has said that some local species get half their calories over the winter from poison ivy. Neither benches nor log circles may be located within the “core biodiversity area” proscribed in the easements, but Bartholomew said that in the future changes may be proposed to that line, as well. 

Once the various votes have been taken on this plan, the changes will then be able to be reflected on the ground as neighbors find it’s easier to walk into and through this woodland getaway.