Our mission

Founded in 2019, Nyack Pollinator Pathway is a volunteer-led community project that aims to provide habitat for pollinators such as bees, butterflies, birds, and beneficial insects.

Our mission is to educate our neighbors about pollinator-friendly gardening practices, to promote the use of native wildflowers in pesticide-free landscapes, and to bring community volunteers together to convert underutilized green spaces in Nyack into lush oases for pollinators and other wildlife—and beautiful landscapes for humans too.

WHAT IS A POLLINATOR PATHWAY?

Pollinator pathways are green corridors that allow pollinators to move through human landscapes and still find the habitat and nutrition that they need to survive. As their natural habitats disappear or become heavily fragmented, our winged pollinators have to cover greater distances and work much harder to find food. Some species, like the monarch butterfly and ruby-throated hummingbirds, migrate thousands of miles every year and struggle to fuel their journey due to heavy human development.

While true wildlife corridors are typically long unbroken swaths of natural landscape for species to move and migrate through, most urban and suburban areas today are too heavily developed to accommodate this ideal scenario, and so we must use a “connect the dots” approach. Our own backyards, sidewalk gardens, and public parks can become dots along that pathway.

By creating more oases for pollinators—more yards that provide nectar-rich flowers, more lawns that go pesticide-free, more public parks that use native plantings, and more woodland corridors—we are building a stronger pathway, and taking one more step towards the future we want to envision, where both humans and wildlife can more lovingly coexist in the same neighborhoods and backyards.