Two months after a violent windstorm toppled more than 500 historic trees and damaged 1,000 more in Central Park, the replanting effort is getting ready to begin.
The new trees will encourage greater diversity of wildlife and remain close to the vision of the park's designers, officials told USA Today. The fallen trunks will be chipped.
"For a while, the north end of Central Park was looking like an Adirondack logging camp," Adrian Benepe, city parks commissioner, told the paper.
"It was a very frightening and dismaying sight for all the people who know the park and love it," Benepe said.
An Aug. 18 storm with 80-mile-per-hour winds devastated the park, cutting down irreplaceable trees that had grown from saplings when the park was designed in 1858 by Frederick Olmstead and Calvert Vaux.
It took 70 workers eight days to clear the damage from the storm, according to USA Today.
The Central Park Conservancy recently held a fundraiser for the estimated $3 million cost of replanting the park. Although the park receives $5 million annually from the city, the bulk of its budget comes from private donations totaling around $20 million.
Since the recession, private donations have gone down, Benepe told the paper.
Replanting will begin in the Spring, according to Doug Blonsky, president of the conservancy. It will take two years to fully replace the affected areas.
