Lisa Shore

Lisa Shore has been involved in environmental education since their sophomore year of college. After graduating, they spent a year working on a farm in northern Germany before moving to NYC. They now manage volunteers at the Riverside Park Conservancy and are passionate about the vital role of green spaces in urban environments.

Lisa Shore

They/them

Volunteer Outreach Coordinator at Riverside Park Conservancy

Morningside Heights 

How did you get involved in the Riverside Park Conservancy, and what does your job entail? 

I started about six months ago, and I moved to New York about a year and a half ago. I found [this job] because I was looking for something local, and I live very close to Riverside Park. It's a nice mixture of working in the park, outdoors, and in an office. My job is to manage all of our ParkTender volunteers who work in our horticultural spaces, which are a cohort of very long-time volunteers – like people who've been here for decades. We're working on expanding our cohort of PlacePartner volunteers who come weekly or monthly, or who work with a specific gardener. 

I realized I don't know too much about the importance of gardening. Could you briefly explain that? 

Gardens make people happy; they are a curated version of nature. For many decades in the United States, gardens were purely ornamental, filled with non-native and invasive species because people thought they looked pretty—and that is still the case in many places. However, in Riverside park [and other city parks], it is very possible to garden with ecological purposes in mind: ensuring there is food for birds, butterflies, moths, and caterpillars; providing host plants for insects; and creating enough places for birds to nest. 

I think gardening provides a way to connect with the natural world and create your own little pocket of space while finding ways to actively create an ecosystem that fits in with the larger area. And another important thing in cities is the more segments of natural space, the less fractured the natural spaces. If there's a little network of community gardens, rooftop gardens, and people's gardens, there's a little patchwork of green space that is far better than nothing. 

What are some examples of what people can do when they volunteer?

We mostly offer horticultural opportunities – that's traditionally the volunteering that we've had in the park. This morning we opened bee houses and took out bee larvae to check for parasites and to clean them out. In the summer there’s a lot of weeding. Year round, there's spreading mulch. We also do pruning and general ecological restoration and management with volunteers. We've done some volunteer painting projects (painting railings or lamp posts), which you might not think about that often, but actually needs to be done. 

Could you talk about the importance of conserving parks and green spaces?

I definitely used to think of New York as just a city [without] any green spaces. So I'm really happy to have learned so much about the green spaces that we do have. Riverside Park is a safe haven for so many people who live along the West Side – places where people can walk their dogs, hang out with their friends, spend time with their kids, and genuinely see so much beautiful vegetation. [Also,] many migrating birds move through New York every year and they stop in the parks. 

We can't exist without nature. So even though we live in a city, the trees clean our air and we need some sun on our faces. I think living in general is very difficult without being around something green, or in the winter being around living creatures. The parks that we do have in New York provide so much respite and also contribute to the ecological health of New York City in a way that is absolutely essential. Also it's one of the few places you can go to in New York for free. 

What drew you to the environmental sphere?

I kind of fell into it. I think it's because my parents really raised me to be comfortable outdoors. My mom is German, and Germans are very “go play in the dirt.” So that always stuck with me. My mom gardens as well, so kind of enjoying getting dirty and just being close to the Earth.

I've just always been very preoccupied with the state of the planet and I genuinely love being outdoors, and I think [nature] acts as a good grounding mechanism when so much of our lives is spent on screens. I think this role in particular has helped combat some of the climate anxiety by really focusing on a local effort to help. It helps to not just drown in the horrible news and the horrible state of the world. It's been really nice to work in my own neighborhood and to meet a lot of people who live around here who are really concerned about the world. 

What scares you the most about the climate crisis? 

We're just so deeply unprepared for what might happen. I don't think a lot of people realize that the disastrous effects are already happening and are having devastating consequences. And I think one of the things that scares me is the potential of how many climate refugees there are and can be in the future, and how unprepared we are for that reality.

What is something that you really enjoy about your job? And then what's something that's challenging?

Getting to know the behind the scenes work that has to be done for volunteer programs and getting to be in the field rather than just [doing] one side of it is probably my favorite part. I think it's a kind of ongoing process to get on the same page as all of our volunteers in terms of what environmental restoration means and how they can help, because I think everybody has the same goal to make the park beautiful and accessible and well maintained, but there are sometimes a lot of conversations that need to be had about how the park’s ethos on horticulture is changing. 

The biggest change recently has been that we've almost 100% embraced planting native instead of non-native. There's a transition from the types of plants that we're planting in the park that even just five years ago might have been a totally different kind of plant palette. And the volunteers are still not necessarily trained horticulturalists, so there was a lot of information that had to be passed on to to contextualize the decision. 

What skills or characteristics do you think people need to have to do the job that you do?Liking both indoor and outdoor work – having an openness to both being outside in terrible weather and staring at a screen. It's also a lot of working with people, because there's a lot of volunteers and a lot of different individuals who have different histories with the park. 

Do you have any mentors or inspirations in the climate field?

Rachel Carson definitely made a big impact on me, and I think also underscored how important this work is because she was talking about it 50 years ago, which is kind of depressing to think about, but she definitely feels very present in the way that I interact with the world. I will also say Mary Oliver, the poet, because she's been in my life for years.