I contacted Metro Parks about mowing Goldenrod fields in October and here is the reply I received:


Thank you for your inquiry about our succession mowing at Blendon Woods.  We appreciate your concern about our habitat quantity and quality and the importance of our Metro Parks to migrating birds.   We plan to move our succession mowing to November in the coming years in the field of concern.  Please be aware that sometimes canada goldenrod needs to be mowed during it's flowering time to preserve plant diversity in a meadow.  Which ultimately benefits a variety of wildlife species.

There are many considerations that go into what the management goal is for a specific field and our guiding resource management mission is to 'manage the available resource base in a manner, which provides the optimal amount of quality habitat, preserves or restores the composition of the native communities, and benefits the largest diversity of native species possible.'

Metro Parks manages over 28,000 acres of park land and each park has a resource management plan that is a working document to guide habitat management activities within each park's set of managed fields.  There are some timelines that can be adjusted and altered based on weather, invasives species, and other park management priorities.  We are very careful about not removing entire fields of habitat when conducting our succession mowing and incorporate a phased approach where a percentage of the field is mowed/burned/treated and the remaining percentage is mowed/burned/treated the following year, so as to completely reset the successional stage within 2-3 years.  

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

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