Survey

The 2021-2 survey conducted by the NCBP of the New Hope Creek corridor in Durham County included the Hollow Rock Nature Park but focused primarily on the floodplain habitats along the creek itself. An upland area located east of Pickett Road was noted, however, for the maturity of its stand and its somewhat unusual composition, with a large number of Shortleaf Pines and Post Oaks intermixed with Northern Shagbark Hickories and Florida Maples. In 2024, Steve Hall and Carol Tingley conducted a more detailed habitat analysis of this site in a project funded by the Durham Open Space Program.

One of the noteworthy, but troubling, finds of the 2021-2 NCBP biodiversity survey of the New Hope Bottomlands was a strong decline in the number of breeding bird species compared to what had been recorded in a survey conducted in the 1980s.