Who decides which parts of Ward Pound Ridge Reservation stay open meadow and which turn back into forest? For most of the year, nobody walking the trails would think to ask. Then, on November 14, 2025, a crew set fire to 20 acres of the county's largest park on purpose. The Pound Ridge and South Salem fire departments provided ground support, and the burn followed two years of preparation.
That burn is the clearest sign of something easy to miss on a Sunday walk. The 4,315 acres off Route 35 and 121 South in Cross River are actively managed. The burn window opens October 15 and the county's bow season runs through December 31, so much of that work lands in late fall. The fire, the deer program and the rare plants turning up since 2022 all come from the same commitment to managing the land.
Twenty acres, one November day
The final report on the burn, dated January 9, 2026, lists everyone involved. The Lower Hudson Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management contracted the project, using Environmental Protection Fund money administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Westchester County Parks' Conservation Division and the county's Department of Emergency Services coordinated it. The Pound Ridge Fire Department and South Salem Fire Department provided ground support. Star Tree Prescribed Fire LLC supplied the burn boss and the ignition team. The Friends of Trailside Nature Museum and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation added supplementary funding.
The goals were practical and specific. The burn was meant to knock back invasive woody saplings and vines, clear out built-up thatch, increase seed production from desirable plants, and improve habitat for locally rare wildflowers. It also served as a training event for first responders and land managers, and it was meant to draw attention to historic Indigenous land management techniques.
According to Friends of Trailside's bluebird update, the reservation's meadows support Eastern bluebirds and tree swallows. Nest boxes stand in for the natural tree cavities the birds would otherwise need, and the latest reported season counted 85 fledglings from 119 eggs. If woody growth took over those fields, the boxes would end up standing in young forest.
What the fire did, field by field
The report's first assessment reads like a field notebook. Results varied from unit to unit, depending on the grasses, the slope and how damp the ground was, and one field never burned at all.
| Management unit | Acres | Initial assessment in the report |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.5 | First unit of the day; patchy, with goldenrod and mugwort not fully burned and woody invasives likely unharmed |
| 2a | 3.2 | Some woody stems at the southern end likely to survive |
| 2b | 1.3 | Efficient despite wet ground on the east flank |
| 2c | 1.4 | Not started; the field was damp and the burn window closed |
| 3 | 2.2 | Big bluestem made this likely the hottest burn; mature Callery pear charred at the base |
| 20 a and b | 5.6 | Last attempt of the day; humidity window closing, fire not self-sustaining |
| 22 | 2.5 | Little bluestem with sprawling vines; hotter going uphill on the eastern slope |
| 23 | 2 | Efficient; effect on mile-a-minute, Morrow's honeysuckle and privet to be determined |
Even the units that burned poorly did some good. The report says woody plants that survived "have lost their ability to remain undetected amongst tall grasses," which makes them easier to pull out by hand in spring, when the soil is soft. Crews are resurveying the fields in 2026 and beyond. They are checking whether the invasives came back and whether natives such as Culver's root, purple milkweed and pale green orchid recover.
Why the burn waited for the cold
The timing was a deliberate trade-off, and the report spells it out. To protect terrestrial turtles, insects and birds, the burn window opened no earlier than October 15. The burn took place a month later, and the shorter days had a measurable cost.
"On 10/15 there are eleven hours of daylight in Cross River, NY. On November 14, there are 9 hours and 45 minutes of daylight. The delaying of a burn by one month resulted in over an hour of lost burn time translating to up to five acres in our case."
Unit 2c is where that cost shows. The report says the field was still damp when the burn window closed, so it was never started. The report's lesson for next time is to start the morning on a field facing east and save a field facing west for the late afternoon.
The same late-fall reasoning shows up in a second program running on the reservation right now.
The forest side of the same problem
Meadows fill in with woody plants when nothing holds them back. Forests have the opposite problem, because young trees struggle to grow where deer eat the understory. Westchester County's Deer Management page says its program is meant to "reduce deer impacts and support forest health and regeneration." Under that program, designated sections of Ward Pound Ridge Reservation are open to registered bow hunters from October 1 through December 31, 2026.
Ward Pound Ridge is one of six county properties on the 2026 list. The others are Alfred B. DelBello Muscoot Farm and Lasdon Public Gardens in Somers, Sal J. Prezioso Mountain Lakes Park in North Salem, Hilltop Hanover Farm in Yorktown Heights and John E. Hand Bald Mountain Park in Yorktown. The county's Natural Resource Management Plan traces the program to a 2008 final report from the Westchester County Citizens' Task Force on White-tailed Deer and Forest Regeneration. It also notes that the program has grown from four facilities to six.
Only registered members of the program may hunt. The 2026 roster is full, and the county won't accept new applications until 2027. The county page doesn't map the designated sections. Anyone with questions about where they are can call the program at (914) 864-7326.
What a spillway repair brought back
The best evidence that this kind of management works sits beside the mill pond near the Michigan Road parking area. In the Friends of Trailside spring 2026 flora update, botanist Patricia Butter describes hundreds of American featherfoil, Hottonia inflata, blooming there. The plant is listed as threatened in New York State. Its only previous record at the reservation was a 1999 New York Natural Heritage report from somewhere near Honey Hollow, and repeated searches had failed to find it again. Butter credits the park's restoration of the mill pond spillway in 2024 with creating the conditions the seeds needed to germinate.
A repair to the pond's spillway brought back a plant that hadn't been found since 1999. That's the clearest case for why the park's caretakers want detailed data on the ground before they manage it. The Friends started the flora project in 2022 for exactly that reason. Surveys by Butter, Devon Cummings and Daniel Atha have raised the reservation's list of rare plant species from about half a dozen to 25. Of the 835 plants documented in the newsletter's count, 45 had never been recorded in Westchester County before.
One of those plants reaches well beyond Pound Ridge. A bladderwort, Utricularia tenuicaulis, is an aquatic carnivorous plant. Its discovery at Ward Pound Ridge is the first record of the species in northeastern North America, and it is being added to the upcoming revision of Volume 18 of the Flora of North America. Pressed specimens are kept in the herbarium at Trailside Museum. The survey has run longer than planned because new records kept turning up, and anyone can follow the work through the Flora of Ward Pound Ridge project on iNaturalist.
This November on the reservation
The reservation's parking lots are back to normal now that REV FEST 250 is over. For the Battle of White Plains festival on October 24 and 25, park parking was closed and visitors rode free shuttles from off-site lots. Here are the details for the rest of the month.
- Hours and parking. The county lists the park as open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to dusk, all year. Between Labor Day weekend and Memorial Day weekend, the parking fee applies only on weekends: $5 with a County Park Pass and $10 without one.
- Dogs. Dogs must be leashed, and the county also asks visitors to stay on trails.
- Saturday, November 14, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Late Fall Shelter Building with Friends of Trailside, a year to the day after the burn.
- Saturday, November 14, 1 to 2 p.m. Mini Scientist Saturday, Microscope Safari.
- Saturday, November 21, 1 to 2 p.m. Mini Scientist Saturday, How Do Animals Prepare for Winter.
- Through December 31. The county's bow season continues in designated sections of the reservation.
The Friends of Trailside is a nonprofit founded in 1974. The group's membership supports programs at the reservation, it funds the flora project, and it added funding for last November's burn.
Whether you know the reservation by the Michigan Road lot or by a regular loop past the meadows, Tara Siegel is glad to talk about the places that shape daily life in Pound Ridge and the hamlets around it. Schedule your Westchester consultation.
