Environmentalists are concerned about LGA plan

From AM-NY

Flushing Bay, once derided for its unseemly smell and murky waters, has started to make a comeback in recent years.

Thousands of people use it to practice and race dragon boats. Families stroll along the promenade, no longer repelled by the powerful rotten-egg smell known to permeate cars driving by on the Grand Central Parkway.

But advocates worry the slow but steady progress will be wiped out by a controversial proposal to build an AirTrain that links LaGuardia Airport with the subway and the Long Island Rail Road.

The first steps in the environmental review process are slated to start later this week, and advocates for the bay are hoping they will get an opportunity to be heard.

“I think it would really take away so much of the work we have been advocating for — clean water, increasing community access,” said Hillary Exter, an avid dragon boat racer and board member of Guardians of Flushing Bay, a watchdog group. “Building the AirTrain either in the water or along the promenade really destroys what is a tremendous resource for the city.”

You can swim with dolphins off Fort Tilden

H/T Kent Parson

SI wetlands are too dangerous for development

From Crains:

The de Blasio administration is adding a new type of neighborhood to its zoning arsenal: ghost town.

The City Planning Commission will hold a public meeting next Wednesday on a proposal that would discourage new development in the three Staten Island neighborhoods hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy: Graham Beach, Oakwood Beach and Ocean Breeze. The areas proved to be so flood-prone that they were included in a state program that purchased damaged homes at prestorm prices, then tore them down so the area could be returned to nature. The city's zoning proposal aims to aid that process by preventing new houses from being built.

"In some limited locations … conditions are not appropriate for significant new development," a Department of City Planning spokesman said in a statement. "Given the high risk of flooding in these areas and their proximity to ecologically sensitive wetlands, [City Planning] is moving forward with a proposal that will limit future residential density while maintaining the ability of existing homeowners to invest in making their homes safe and resilient."

The new rules would allow only single-family homes to be constructed in the future and only if the builder is able to obtain a permit from the planning commission, which would likely frown on most applications.

Nature wins out at the Ridgewood Reservoir

From QNS:

The city Parks Department recently took an important step toward preserving one of Ridgewood’s most beautiful places.

The Ridgewood Reservoir‘s status as a dam was reclassified by the New York City Parks Department after the agency completed a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) application, effectively lowering the site’s hazard rating from Class C “High Hazard” to Class A “Low Hazard.”

This new classification removes the need to create any breaches in the dam, allowing the Ridgewood Reservoir to remain as a natural treasure for all those who visit. Since the reservoir was taken off‐line as a water supply source, it has become a uniquely naturalized area in New York City, serving as an important ecological resource as well as a public recreation space.

The NYC Parks Department said it is fully committed to preserving the Ridgewood Reservoir as a natural open space for the community.

Valentine's skunk seems oddly appropriate

From NBC:

Pepe the Love Skunk will spend this Valentine's Day in a safe, secluded part of Forest Park in Queens after he made a surprise appearance at a greenhouse, according to NYC Parks Rangers.

The skunk, affectionately named for the famous cartoon character, was captured in the Forest Park Greenhouse in Queens on Tuesday.

Parks wildlife experts said that the skunk is in good health and has been humanely relocated elsewhere in the park.

Rego Park bioswale serves as butterfly habitat

From Wall Street Journal:

The sighting didn’t occur in some flower-filled field but in Queens, perhaps better known for shopping malls than wildlife. When I heard that an employee of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection had discovered three chrysalises in a planting bed near 97th Street and 63rd Road, I boarded the M train to join the festivities.

“They were munching on Asclepias incarnata,” otherwise known as milkweed, the species’ favorite food, said Maria Corporan, the supervisor gardener who discovered them earlier this month. “I always look at the plants to see if there’s any diseases. I was like, oh my God, I guess we’ve got monarchs here.”

She wasn’t referring to fully formed butterflies but the humble caterpillars that precede them. The caterpillars create chrysalises, or pupas, the cases that protect and envelope them as they transform.

Ms. Corporan showed me a picture on her phone. To my surprise, the caterpillars were rather attention-grabbing on their own—large and with a monarch’s characteristic orange, black and white pattern.

She pointed out two of their chrysalises in the planting bed. I was surprised she found them, even though she saw the caterpillars at work. The chrysalises hung like jade-colored dewdrops, hidden on the underside of a dogwood shrub’s leaves.

Ms. Corporan feared that the third one, hooked onto a sweet pepperbush, was too close to the bed’s guardrail and could get knocked loose by a passerby. She took it back to her office, hoping it would emerge there.

I assumed that the butterflies would require a habitat at least the size of a vest-pocket park, but the planting bed appeared to be no more than 20 feet long and less than 10 feet wide. And butterfly habitat wasn’t even its primary purpose.

It was a bioswale, a piece of land designed to filter silt and pollution from surface water that might otherwise overwhelm water-treatment plants during heavy storms. “We’ve built over 2,500 around the city,” with thousands more planned, said Vincent Sapienza, the Department of Environmental Protection’s acting commissioner.

Great natural area on the northern shore of Queens

Nathan Kensinger/Curbed

From Curbed:

Running roughly 6,000 feet from its head near Northern Boulevard to its mouth in Udalls Cove, this diminutive stream travels through a bucolic backyard ravine in Little Neck, Queens, which has largely been saved from developers by several generations of local volunteers. Their successful battle to preserve their neighborhood’s waterfront, and to restore it to health, continues to be one of the most impressive community organizing efforts in the city. And yet, like Hook Creek and Bridge Creek, Gabler’s Creek remains a relatively unknown Queens waterway, flowing out of sight at the very edge of the city.

The fact that Gabler’s Creek even exists today is largely due to the work of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee (UCPC), a small neighborhood organization founded in 1969 by the concerned residents of Douglaston and Little Neck. "A golf course had been planned, filling in the wetlands. That was the pivotal moment," says Walter Mugdan, who has been the president of the group since 2002. Their initial efforts helped to create the 30-acre Udalls Park Preserve, a protected area now jointly managed by the NYC Parks Department and the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation.

In recent years, the UCPC has continued to protect the preserve from overdevelopment, invasive species, erosion, flooding, and a host of other challenges. "Altogether, our organization has spent between $225,000 and $250,000 over the last 12 years on various large projects," says Mugdan. "For a tiny organization like ours, that’s pretty good."

Funded by grants and donations, these projects include planting over 1,000 new trees, removing more than a million pounds of concrete rubble, building and maintaining numerous new trail systems and foot bridges, and helping the city to identify and purchase the final few properties that would make Gabler’s Creek into a single, continuous public space. "This is a last little remnant of the natural world here," explains Mugdan, reflecting on the importance of the preserve. "It is hardly a pristine wilderness, but you make the best of what you’ve got."

Kids destroy Udall's Cove osprey nest

From CBS 2:

Little Neck residents are outraged after an osprey nest was deliberately set on fire.

CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported that state investigators are trying to find who started the blaze along the Nassau-Queens border by the Long Island Sound.

Chris DeGeorge witnessed last Sunday someone setting fire to the osprey nest in Udalls Cove as neighbors said it was set by two boys and a girl.

Udalls Cove is a designated bird sanctuary and ospreys are protected under both federal and state law.

Joseph DeGeorge said it appears the ospreys are trying to build a new nest, but it may be too late in the season for any hatchling to survive.

The reward leading to an arrest has grown to more than $4,000.

Eagles have landed at FMCP

From NY1:

If you take a walk through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, you can find a variety of species. But a pair of bald eagles are definitely getting a lot of attention.

"This year, we finally confirmed that we have two adults again," said Jeffrey Kollbrunner, a local wildlife and nature photographer. "It looks like they are a pair or trying to become a pair, which is exciting for our area."

Kollbrunner has two decades of experience documenting birds in Queens. He has spotted immature bald eagles in the area over the past seven years but says the mature eagles have been sighted more recently, in the past two years.

"Having these birds of prey are phenomenal for the region, and you know, people can enjoy them from a distance," Kollbrunner said.

That's exactly what we did. We spotted one of the eagles sitting on ice in the lake. Twenty minutes later, he had company.

Kollbrunner says the state's conservancy efforts have proven successful.

Fox visits golfers at Kissena Park

From DNA Info:

A young fox was spotted on the fairway at the Kissena Park Golf Course in Flushing Saturday by a group of golfers, and he wasn't too shy.

The fox came out from a grassy area surrounding the course near the 11th hole at about 1 p.m., the golfers said.

It spent a little time sniffing around a player's club before scurrying away, according to video.

Glendale birds fall victim to carelessness

From the Queens Chronicle:

[Paul] Graziano went to the site — on Union Turnpike between Myrtle Avenue and 88th Street — to collect the small birds. The poor creatures were covered in the white tar all over their bodies and wings, and one of the two had its beak sealed shut.

Someone had caulked a gap in the sidewalk next to a fire hydrant, which Graziano said implies that a city contractor was involved. “This is negligent on part of the city for not taking proper precautions. If whoever laid the cement down would have waited for it to dry or at least protected the area, this would not have happened,” he said.

It was 7 p.m. on a Saturday when Graziano rescued the birds, so many veterinarian offices were closed. A 24-hour animal care center in Manhattan told him it could try its best to help the birds, but that the best thing to do would be to euthanize them. Graziano found this to be unacceptable and decided to take matters into his own hands.

He picked up Palmolive and Dawn dish soap, which is what wildlife rehab centers use on animals caught in oil spills. He proceeded to remove the caulk with the soap, a small needle and a tiny pair of sewing scissors, working for six hours. He was successful in removing almost all of the material and the sparrow that had its beak closed was able to open its mouth, but it died an hour later.

The second bird only had a little left on one of its wings and tail feathers, and started to fly around Graziano’s kitchen after being cleaned. He wanted to keep the bird in a box under a heat lamp outside, but the bird escaped and flew into the trees behind his yard in Flushing.

This is not the first time Queens has seen such an incident which, for Graziano, is a big issue. In July 2012, the same situation of small birds trapped in cement filler occurred on 67th Avenue in Rego Park, and was covered by NBC news. (See video above) “It’s standard procedure to cover this wet rubber tar with plastic while it’s drying and remove it the next day, which they failed to do back in 2012 and again last week,” Graziano explained.

Baby falcons hatched on Throgs Neck Bridge

From CBS New York:

A dozen new peregrine falcon chicks have been born atop the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge, the agency said.

The falcons remain on the New York State’s endangered birds list.

The MTA has participated in the state’s nesting program since 1983, providing a nesting box atop the bridges, the agency said.

Red fox discovered in Queens

There's a blog called Queens Coyote that tracks sightings of unusual wildlife in the borough. It caught a red fox on its camera recently. The author will not reveal where in Queens it was spotted, other than "not in Alley Pond Park".

Thar she blows!

From the Times Ledger:

Whale and dolphin sightings in the Rockaways have increased over the last five years, making American Princess watch and adventure cruises that launching from Riis Landing in Breezy Point the new popular pastime.

Tom Paladino, owner and captain of American Princess Cruises, said the abundance of sightings is due to cleaner waters and an increased food chain.

“There is definitely an increase in bait food called bunker [menhaden] along with sand eels and the mammals go where the food is,” Paladino said. “A possible contributing factor can also be warmer waters and climate change.”

The most common species of whales and dolphins, which have been spotted in the Rockaways, Long Island and the Jersey shore, have been humpback and fin whales and bottlenose and common dolphins, according to Paladino.

“I have been giving four-hour tours for the last seven years to view these mammals in the wild, but the last few weeks there have been multiple whale and dolphin sightings every day and the boat has been packed — it’s amazing,” Paladino said. “Last week there were humpback whales breaching and putting on a terrific show during all our tours and dolphins have been spotted in groups.”

The cruises are scheduled Wednesdays through Sundays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Killing wildlife hasn't made flying safer

From NJ.com:

When a flock of Canada geese collided with US Airways flight 1549, forcing Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger to ditch the plane in the Hudson River in 2009, the threat that wildlife poses to aviators exploded onto the national stage.

Since then, ridding New Jersey’s airport runways of animals has become daily business for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Since 2008, the agency has killed nearly 6,000 animals, mainly birds, that have congregated in areas it deemed to be a threat to aircraft safety at Newark Liberty International and Teterboro airports.

The problem is, these efforts are having no significant impact. The birds, it seems, don’t know that they are supposed to be scared away.

An analysis of Port Authority and Federal Aviation Administration data by The Star-Ledger shows that though the agency has expanded its wildlife management program considerably since 2009, wildlife collisions with aircraft at New Jersey airports have not declined.

Though most wildlife strikes do not cause any issue, several planes arriving or departing from New Jersey airports typically do sustain damage each year.

An aircraft at one of the Port Authority’s New Jersey airports collides with an animal, typically a bird, about once every two days — a figure that has remained virtually unchanged every year since 2008, the year before the Flight 1549 crash.

During that time, however, the number of animals — from European starlings to foxes to the threatened American kestrel — killed by the Port Authority has skyrocketed. In Newark, for example, just 10 animals were killed by the agency in 2008, while 1,267 were killed two years later.

Idlewild Park getting a nature center

From the Queens Chronicle:

People from Brookville to Borough Hall are celebrating the city’s approval of $5.3 million for the construction of a nature center at Idlewild Park in Rosedale.

Borough President Helen Marshall, in a statement released by her office on Monday, said the city’s Office of Management and Budget has approved $4.9 million that Marshall had designated from her capital funds, and an additional $400,000 requested by Mayor Bloomberg.

“The Idlewild Nature Center will be an extraordinary educational resource for children and anyone else who wants to learn about the rich variety of plant and animal life that can be found [there],” Marshall said.

Community activists, led by the Eastern Queens Alliance, have been fighting for years to get a center built on the site. The EQA already hosts regular afterschool science and nature workshops in the park for school-age children.

The center will be built near 149th Avenue and Springfield Lane.

It is slated to have two classrooms, exhibition space, offices and handicapped-accessible bathrooms.

Marshall’s statement said construction is scheduled to start next fall, with completion in 2015.

Idlewild Park covers more than 150 acres and was designated as a city park in 1956, but also served as a Department of Sanitation dump for construction debris between 1970 and 1976.

A great deal of toxic material is known to have been buried there.

The city did some remediation in the 1990s, restoring some of the former wetlands and cleaning up some of the contaminants and soil.

Parks opening up Willow Lake Trail

The Daily News has a story about the Parks Department suddenly deciding to open up the Willow Lake Trail on weekends. Check out the photos and compare them to the ones featured on this blog a few short days ago.

Did that story light a fire under someone's ass at Parks? Or, are they opening up the trail with all that eyesore crap still there?

Looks like fodder for a future post.

Red-tailed hawks near Rufus King Park

From DNA Info:

Seven years ago, when Thomas Crater looked through the bedroom window of his sixth-floor apartment in Jamaica, he saw a big bird sitting on his fire escape.

“At first I thought it was an owl,” he said.

The unusually large bird, which turned out to be a red-tailed hawk, was sitting and watching the surrounding buildings and streets from the rail on the top floor. The raptor must have liked the location and has continued coming back, keeping Crater company.

Last fall, the bird, now even bigger, found a mate and the pair hangs out on his fire escape on 164th Street, near 89th Avenue, about seven blocks from the popular Rufus King Park, where the hawks have also been spotted.

It’s a love-hate relationship, jokes Crater, who said he both admires and fears the birds. He watches them with a wary respect as they sit on his fire escape for up to an hour, searching for prey below.

Where the water went

These were taken from the Hurricane Sandy Storm Tide Mapper. Notice the areas flooded. Never build or buy a house on: a barrier beach, landfill, low-lying areas, or within 1/4 mile of a river, whether at the surface or buried. You can't fool Mother Nature, and she can kick your ass.

Banding owls at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge