City officials plan to reforest an area inside a deer enclosure near a pond at the Cortland Waterworks, where dying trees were removed last year, and have sought suggestions from a city commission to do so.
Crews removed dying trees last year from the 15-acre deer enclosure on the 53-acre waterworks property. The chair of the city Landscape and Design Commission, Mike Dexter, said that replanting in the enclosure would begin this summer.
“It's a test market because we’ve got deer in there and we have to protect the young trees from the deer,” Dexter said this week. “We’re going to try a few this year and will plant more in the fall and next year. We may do more later but at least this is a start, and people will see trees going in the deer pen.”
The Landscape and Design Commission typically plants trees only along city streets, but Dexter said they've been involved with the project because it has planted trees in the Waterworks area as well.
The commission – or the portion made up of Diane Batzing and Dexter who were the only members who attended Wednesday’s meeting – was joined Wednesday by Amanda Barber, manager of the Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District, who is working on sourcing trees for the project.
“Our focus and access to funding for trees has been mainly for riparian forested buffers, so any time we can have trees near water, that’s where we've been trying to do most of our plantings,” Barber said. “The feedback was that, although we’d love to plant something along the pond as a riparian area, obviously it’s in the deer enclosure.”
Barber said that serviceberry trees and river birch were on the list of trees that the Soil and Water Conservation District was considering for the Waterworks and that a list of appropriate tree species is still being developed to adhere to the standards of city officials and proponents of the waterworks.
“We tried to pick species that are native and will be of a size that was expressed as a concern,” Barber said. “I thought a diversity in terms of color and foliage would be aesthetically pleasing as well.”
Dexter said the deer pen is controlled by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, which tags the deer and ensures their health. He added that the deer ate many prior trees planted in the waterworks.
“It’s a very unique situation to have a deer enclosure that you’re trying to plant in,” Barber said. “Most people try to exclude deer from the area they're planting in, they don’t try to protect trees from deer in an enclosed area.”
Barber said this year would be a pilot year for tree plantings at the waterworks, giving its stewards a chance to test out planting enclosures, and buying time for the trees to grow.
“It’s going to be a long time, probably 10 years,” she said. “The birch will grow a little bit faster so those would probably be all right by then. The idea was to come back again next year with an alternating staggered row and depending on how these enclosures work, we’ll determine if it’s worth it to try and plant more.”
Dexter has worked at the waterworks for 30 years and has been around the waterworks for 50 years, including in his retirement, he said.
“The waterworks have always brought a social event to Cortland, be it Christmas lights and decorations, Easter celebrations, be it the deer, the fish, the ducks or the geese,” Dexter said. “It’s a community where people come together, and the deer have been there for over 70 years.”
“It's a concern of mine that we plant more trees in the deer pen,” he said. “I tell you the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. If you didn’t plant it 20 years ago, then start today so the people in 20 years will know that you’ve done something.”
