Under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty there are actually alien species that are working to clean up the park by detoxifying the soil that just a few years ago people couldn’t go anywhere near. These “alien plants” are vegetation that are not native to New Jersey and are brought in from other places because they help suck up toxins and store them in ways that are not harmful to animals or humans. Rutgers Professor Frank Gallagher and some of his students are using a combination of landscaping and ecology to remediate what used to be a wasteland of toxic dumping at Liberty State Park.