In Prospect Park, Trees Barbecued Along With the Burgers

Signs throughout Prospect Park might advise against throwing coals into trees, but it appears some spring barbecuers have gone one step further – by actually barbecuing inside of the trees themselves.

Leftover ketchup packets, ash and tiny bones littered in the hollowed out trunk of a tree near Prospect Park Lake – still smelling of barbecue and teriyaki sauce – were just some of the many grisly grilling scenes that have already begun to take place in the park.

As the grilling season kicks off in earnest over the coming Memorial Day weekend, some wonder whether the illegal grilling situation might soon get out of control.

“People are not only using the lake a dumping ground, they’re using the lakeside to barbecue,” said Anne-Katrin Titze, a state-licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Titze and her husband Ed Bahlman say that they have even found entire barbecues discarded in the lake.

“People think fire, water,” said Titze. “They don’t realize that they are doing anything wrong.”

On a recent Patch survey of just the areas surrounding Prospect Park Lake, there were remnants of coals dumped along the lakeside, in the grass and in the marshland, and evidence of grilling in illegal areas, despite over a dozen designated legal grilling areas in the park.

“I see illegal grilling all the time,” said a parkgoer, who requested to be identified only as George S.

The park is one of the few parks in Brooklyn where barbecuing is allowed at all.

Eugene Patron, a spokesperson for the Prospect Park Alliance, said that illegal grilling can be a problem on holiday weekends like this coming one, “when the number of people who can be accommodated at the designated BBQ areas is pretty much maxed out.” The rest of the summer, he said, illegal grilling is not so much an issue.

The park can slap fines of between $50 and $250 on anyone caught grilling outside of designated areas, but only two such summonses were issues last year according to the Parks Department, for illegal barbecuing on the Neathermead. Fines for dumping coals into the lake – considered littering – could be up to $250.

Patron said that during the summer, one of the main tasks of park officers is to make sure folks stick to the designated barbecue areas.

According to park rules, barbecuing is only allowed in designated areas, at least 10 feet away from trees and overhead branches, with fires contained in grills at least two feet off the ground. There are 13 designated grilling areas in the park, including six surrounding Prospect Park Lake.

Patron said that this year, the park will continue its “charcoal kills trees,” campaign, posting signage in multiple languages throughout the park and wrapping trees with ribbons printed with information about the damaging affects of charcoal on trees. The campaign was launched last summer, because “hundreds of trees are injured each year from hot barbecue coals dumped against their trunks and exposed roots.”

But while people should certainly not dump coals in the lake, he said that ongoing water tests have revealed that thus far any such practices have not polluted the waters and that last year a Department of Environmental Conservation test found the fish in the lake to be healthy.

Still, environmental enthusiasts like Titze and Bahlman press that more enforcement of barbecuing activities is necessary in order to keep the situation from growing any worse – especially surrounding the lakeside.

“More money needs to go into enforcing against irresponsible and illegal grilling,” said Bahlman. “The lake cannot become a garbage dump in 2011.”