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ST. LOUIS — The tornado that tore through Forest Park on Friday has likely changed the landscape of the well-loved recreation area.

Officials with the park are still assessing the damage, but Forest Park Forever spokesman Dominik Jansky said probably more than 1,000 trees were damaged in the park.

Forest Park Forever maintains a database of 16,000 trees in the park, not including the ones in the woods or on the golf courses.

Many or most of the affected trees will be able to survive the storm’s damage, but many others were blown over or damaged beyond repair. Some blocked paths or damaged pathways or pavement as they fell.

“We’re going to assess damage, clear hazards, make the area safe for visitors again. We’ll strategize on if we’ll replace a tree directly, or do we want to rethink it?� Jansky said.

“If nature has taken away a hundred-year-old tree, how do we landscape this part of the park to give the best experience to the visitors?�

Jansky said the city and Forest Park Forever will have to replant trees in a way that balances the needs of visitors today with those of people generations from now.

Trees remain standing in every section of the 1,300-acre park. No portion was completely leveled by the tornado, he said.

Damage was particularly heavy in the southwest corner of the park. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Forest, which is located in that area, was extensively harmed. At some places, falling trees crushed the wooden boardwalk that runs through the forest, and the transitional Kennedy Forest Savannah in the northern part of the Kennedy Forest also lost a lot of trees.

“We’ve had a lot of restoration efforts in that area for a few decades. I don’t know what (the damage) does to the savannah ecosystem,� Jansky said.

The Dennis & Judith Jones Visitor and Education Center remains without power and closed. The roof was damaged, too, but it has been covered so the building can reopen when power is restored perhaps later this week, Jansky said.

The visitor center is also where Forest Park Forever has its offices. The private, nonprofit organization supports the city-owned park and manages certain portions of it. The rest of the park is managed by the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry.

The Norman K. Probstein Golf Course remains closed because of fallen trees, and the Anne O’C Albrecht Nature Playscape is not holding scheduled events until the hazards can be removed, Jansky said.

Some windows in the Jewel Box display greenhouse were also broken by the storm, he said. The city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is working to accommodate wedding parties and other events that had reservations for it and for the picnic pavilions, he said.

“We didn’t have a lot of structural damage, thankfully,� he said.

Forest Park Forever is privately funded through donations and grants.

“We will probably look to fundraise more specifically when we get a better sense of what the need is. We welcome all financial support, whether it is memberships or one-time donations to get us through this,� he said.