They’re Trying To Get A Count On The Squirrel Population In NY
There’s a group of researchers who want to count all the squirrels, one-by-one, in New York City’s Central Park, and they’re asking for volunteers.
By nowproducerdave on October 5, 2018
And they’re asking for volunteers to help them get a gauge on just how many squirrels are in Central Park. Seriously, they’re conducting a squirrel census. The big park in New York City that’s about 1.3 square miles – that’s a lot of squirrels.
The group conducting the research is actually called “The Squirrel Census.” Their goal is to travel around to various parks around the country and count the squirrel population. They work with groups of people from many different industries, like cartographers and animal science experts. The ultimate goal of the census is to make a sort of map of the park, have it be interactive, and educational. For me, just figuring out how to count the squirrels would be educational enough. They constantly move! How do you know one squirrel isn’t counted multiple times, or missed completely?
So why are they counting squirrels? Don’t know – it’s a sort of odd project. I guess it could be useful to know the squirrel population of a park. There were almost no squirrels at all though, they were nearly totally wiped out. Back in the 1800s there was even a hunt and reward system in place. Read some more about the count here, and see The Squirrel Census’ website here.
