The attention today will focus on Chuck, the groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo honored with making the weather prediction. However, though they are hibernating now, a few dozen others will emerge as weather warms from burrows around the parks, gardens and cemeteries of the city, baffling naturalists as to how they got there.
It is particularly curious how they arrived in Central Park, as it is surrounded on all sides by concrete. When they are found there, it is in small numbers, causing naturalists to doubt their existence there before the park was isolated from other green space in the 19th century.
David Burg, president of the urban conservation group WildMetro, has stated, “Big parks in urban areas very often get nuisance animals released.” They therefore speculate that the groundhogs in isolated city parks, such as Central Park, were captured elsewhere and released there, or are their descendants.
The wild population has difficulty multiplying, since the populations are so small and cut-off they would most likely have difficulty finding a mate to reproduce.
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