West County Park, one of five Monroe County Parks, is devoted to providing natural habitat for plants and wildlife as well as enjoyment for visitors through trails, scenic views, and a natural landscape that changes with the seasons. Managers actively maintain the health and diversity of native plant communities through controlled ecological burns that preserve open prairie areas and through the removal of invasive species such as honeysuckle, buckthorn, autumn olive, and other exotic plants that can crowd out native vegetation. Before this area was settled with towns, farms, and roads, Monroe County contained a diverse mosaic of landscapes including large marshes on Lake Erie, dense lowland forests in floodplains and valleys, upland forests of maple, beech, oak, and hickory, and vast prairies and savannas that once covered thousands of acres before being converted to farmland and other uses. The park exists in part to recall what this land was like hundreds of years ago. Not long ago, the land was entirely farm field, but beginning in 2002 efforts were undertaken to restore habitats that naturally occur in this area by seeding grasses and wildflowers and planting hundreds of seedling trees and shrubs, and as the habitat returned, diverse animal life also began to come back.