Bowne Park is a disaster

Hello Crapunzel,

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the need to contact you. Recently in the blog you’ve mentioned North Flushing, sidewalks and street digging, and since I am a resident of the Bowne Park area of NF I figured you might have an interest in this.

The Department of Parks and Councilman Paul Vallone in their infinite wisdom have determined that Bowne Park should be ignored. We have made several requests for more trash cans on the 159th street side of the park, by the playground, where ice cream vendors ply their trade and parents allow their issue to drop litter, to no avail. Attached are photos of their solution, black plastic bags hung over fences.

We’ve also complained to Vallone about the pond. For OVER TWO weeks the fountains have been shut off leading to an algae bloom that is not only unhealthy for the fish and turtles in the pond but to the olfactory senses of the local residents. See attached photos.

Repeated calls to Vallone’s office have not alleviated this problem. Contacting the Parks department at the Overlook is a total waste of time, they do not care about one of their park “Jewels”.

Also, take a gander of the bocce court that the department added a couple of years ago for about $500,000...no one uses it.

Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,

Philipe the pissed

Bowne Park ain't what it used to be

Ah, a lovely stroll through one of Queens' premier parks on Sunday afternoon. But there's literally trouble in the air and water.

So the pond is contaminated and you should avoid exposure to it, yet the mist from the fountain was hitting yours truly in the face for a good 1/4 of the looped path around the body of water.

Dead turtles were seen floating on the surface.

This guy was still alive and kicking but with the shape that water's in, it might not be for long.

This cool stand of trees caught my eye but the grass is in serious need of cutting. The lawn is unkempt.

The pond walls have issues as well.

Hopefully these little guys sprout wing feathers soon and get the hell out of this mess!

What's killing the Bowne Park turtles?

From NY1:

NY1 VIDEO: The Parks Department has a mystery on its hands after a number of turtles washed up dead at Bowne Park in Queens. NY1's Ruschell Boone reports.

Bowne Park set for upgrade

From the Queens Courier:

After years of issues with garbage, dead wildlife and a lack of maintenance in Bowne Park, the green space in Flushing is set to receive a $2.45 million facelift.

Councilman Paul Vallone, whose district oversees the park, allocated $1.45 million in discretionary funds to upgrade the water fountains and filtration system in the pond of the nearly 12-acre park.

Residents complained in the past of the grimy pond, in which dead turtles reportedly have been found. The funds will also go to restore the asphalt pathways and lawn areas.

Borough President Melinda Katz will allocate an additional $1 million from her budget to the park to upgrade the playground, installing new play equipment with safety surfaces and benches.

“$2.45 million dollars will go a long way to restoring the natural resources of our precious park for wildlife, residents and neighborhood children alike,” said Robert Hanophy Jr., president of the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association.

Turtles at JFK getting in the way

From NBC:

Wildlife biologists working to keep turtles from wandering onto the runways of Kennedy Airport are beginning to see their efforts pay off.

JFK Airport, situated in the middle of Jamaica Bay, has been a favorite habitat for diamondback terrapin turtles, which only leave the brackish waters and step on shore to lay eggs.

But airplane and turtles sharing the same runway could pose a threat.

"Anything can be a hazard to aircraft, so we monitor all kinds of wildlife population here," said Laura Francoeur, one of Port Authority's wildlife biologists helping to keep the balance between passenger safety and nature preservation.

"Keeping terrapins off also saves the terrapins so they don't get run over potentially, and it also helps eliminate any operational impacts delaying flights at the airport," said Francoeur.

June is the main nesting season for turtles, making it the busiest time of the year for biologists working on the terrapin tracking project.

Epidemic of turtle deaths hits Bowne Park

Hi Crappy,

Let’s start with the Deserving – the dying wildlife.

Why are the turtles dying off in such large numbers at Bowne Park? Every day there seem to be 5 or 6 new ones – it’s extremely upsetting. If the city wishes to populate the pond with wildlife then that wildlife DESERVES AN ENVIRONMENT THAT DOESN’T KILL IT!!!!

Not only is the pond filled with scum, discarded fishing lines (a big problem – the turtles get entangled AND SUFFOCATE!!!) and fast-food trash, the large stones that comprise the edge are falling into the pond at an alarming rate and probably crushing even more turtles.

Here are some recent pictures:

Recently Deceased Graffiti Turtle (dried-out shell but flesh not decomposed)

Multiple Dead Turtles In Pond Scum – All Different Sizes - Old and Young

Upside-down Dead Turtle in Pond Scum

Don’t they deserve better? They Sure do!












Now – turning to the Undeserving at Bowne Park…

This picture below shows the condition of the bocce court area as it looks every morning!!! The Italians and Croatians that use it are total slobs!!!! They litter, argue constantly and openly gamble. The new crowd (mostly Croatian) is so unruly that many of the original Italian clique have departed!

What’s the matter with these pigs – won’t their wives let them smoke at home? Complimentary ashtrays have been provided multiple times only to be tossed in the trash. This is not the refuse of kids hanging out at the park at night – this is directly due to the bocce and card players – many of them esteemed seniors (hah!).

Did these people really deserve a $500K new court? Hell no!!!

It’s time for the Department of Sanitation to inspect and ticket these slobs! It’s also time for the Department of Parks is clean out and renovate the pond! And have the water tested while you’re at it.

The condition of Bowne Park is emblematic of the abuse and neglect that Queens has experienced over the last few decades – both by its inhabitants and our local government! Greatest city in the –world - more like filthy, broke-down Third World Ghetto!

We’re Queens – We Can’t Have Nice Things!

Turtles dying at Bowne Park

This is a large, bloated, dead turtle with its mouth open in agony in the pond at Bowne Park. One of its legs is probably entangled in a discarded length of fishing line. This has happened before. It’s disgusting and extremely upsetting. The turtle most likely drowned and then bobbed to the surface as it started to decompose and filled with gas. Last summer an enormous turtle died in a similar manner.

When is the Dept. of Parks going to wise up and BAN FISHING AT CITY PARKS???? I don’t think the dead wildlife find it all that sporting!!!

Something is extremely wrong with people that feel the need to torture animals with their children for fun. Their justification of fish not being able to feel pain is just painfully stupid! Haven’t they ever seen a fish out of water? Does it look like it’s not suffering?

PEOPLE NEED TO STOP TORTURING AND KILLING ANIMALS FOR FUN!!! ESPECIALLY AT OUR PARKS!!!

Regards,
Flooshing Rezident

As always, thanks again Crappy!

Dead wildlife and filthy conditions at Bowne Park

"Bowne Park is exceptionally filthy and filled with dead animals this year. Last year we had a great young girl there every day cleaning up the park and looking out for everyone and their pets. This year, the Parks Dept. has really dropped the ball. Perhaps Bloomberg moved all the money into his Canadian Geese Extinction Program!

Here are some not-so-lovely images.

There are about four garbage pails for the entire park.



They are always overflowing with garbage and are rarely emptied.


I like a beer as much as the next person but this is ridiculous. We need webcams beaming to a website that we can all monitor.


Chairs, shopping carts and baby strollers are regularly thrown into the pond and are left there for weeks at a time. The wooden platform by the seating area has been removed and a crappy metal barricade on wheels has been positioned in front of the missing platform for months now. Would it really cost that much to replace a few pieces of wood???? Yesterday, the temporary (HA!) metal barricade was in the pond – along with the chairs, shopping carts and baby strollers!

The pond itself is filthy and there are new dead turtles every day. It’s a really nice sight for the kids and the animal lovers!




When notified of four abandoned baby ducklings, the Parks. Dept. lied to PETA and said they had been taken care of, but they were, in actuality, ignored and eventually killed by the snapping turtles (12 out of 13 died, 4 had been abandoned by their mother – perhaps she was killed as well).

I guess it would have been too difficult to put on waders and go out with a net. They were trapped in the water – it’s not as though they could fly away! This was the only day they got out of the pond and it was because the pond had overflowed – a common occurrence due to the jerry-built fountains!

Trees bases are filled with garbage (perhaps a drugs stash – note the Marino’s bag – I guess these slobs are local!)


It’s absolutely disgusting!

Yet the Parks Dept. has $700,000 (that’s the number people are throwing around) to WASTE on a bocce court!!! And even that’s a complete disaster!

Two guys show up perhaps once a week and work for perhaps an hour. They must be getting a  monthly fee and, as such, are majorly dragging their heels. This should have been a $30,000 two week job! At the very least it should have been finished for the summer.

Why hasn’t it been completed? Why don’t the contractors just put the damned benches in and take their fence home? Because they get paid thousands every month on the fence rental!!! This entire project warrants an investigation. It just reeks of corruption!


We, the local residents, are disgusted by the conditions present at Bowne Park and we are angry!  Joe Moretti – your homegrown activism is starting to spread to Flooshing!!!! Thanks for the forum Crappy!" - Flooshing Rezident

Turtle preservation plan

From the NY Post:

In a desperate bid to keep slow-moving turtles from causing delays at JFK, Port Authority officials are installing a massive barrier that will keep the critters in their natural habitat.

The plan is to deter the diamondback terrapins’ path with 4,000 feet of 8-inch-wide plastic piping along runway 4L, which juts into the bay near some of the native reptiles’ favorite area marshes, according to researchers.

“We’re trying to find a balance between nature and aviation,” said Port Authority spokesman Ron Marsico. “We don’t want to see the turtles get hurt, and this should keep the airport running smoothly.”

The turtles have made the airport’s runway part of their annual trek as they come on shore to nest, slowing service by forcing pilots to use other runways.

Marsico said airport employees removed around 1,300 turtles by hand last year during June and July, and that the new barrier will encourage the animals to nest elsewhere.

Dr. Russell Burke, a professor of biology at Hofstra University and a researcher at Jamaica Bay, thinks the plan will be effective, but is concerned that the barrier could make turtles more vulnerable to predators like raccoons.

Bowne Park looking worse for wear

Hi Crappy,

I’m an enormous fan. Thank you for shining a light on the problems in this sorry, run-down borough.

I took these pictures at Bowne Park in Flushing this morning. The two dead turtles are about 10” and 15” in length. Look at how filthy the water is.

I walk my dog and pick up garbage with a number of friends at Bowne every morning. We have lately been seeing a lot of dead squirrels and turtles. The park is poorly maintained with rarely a Dept. of Parks presence. Please note today’s addition of a discarded mattress.

We’re all so pleased that the Dept. of Parks allocated 500K for an additional bocce court when they can’t even afford a minimum wage full-time employee!!! Could you please post these pictures and possibly embarrass the hell out of our local pols and the Parks Dept.?

Thank you so much.

Regards,

nycRed714


Follow up:

Hi Crappy -

I sent the two Bowne Park pix to Tony Avella and he wrote a letter
addressing the situation on the same day! He's just an amazingly great guy!

Regards,

nycRed714

Bowne Park letter

Electeds want to stop Kissena Park poachers

From the Village Voice:

Earlier today in Flushing, Assembly members Grace Meng and Rory Lancman, and park advocate Beverly McDermott, said the theft of flora and fauna remains especially egregious in Kissena Park.

McDermott, the president of the Kissena Park Civic Association and unofficial mayor of the park, has witnessed people leaving with coolers full of turtles and fish from the park's pond, and come upon hidden snares. And, she said, thieves are not just looking for food. It appears some are looking for beauty too, and are "luxury" poaching. Hundreds of daffodil bulbs planted one day have disappeared by the next day. (Note to the thief, before he/she gets any ideas: Daffodils are poisonous to humans.)

Lancman announced that in the next two weeks "Please do not harm or remove wildife" signs in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean will be posted around the park. The Parks Department has not wanted to post similar warnings in Central Park in the past, to avoid giving markers of where all the best treats can be scavenged.

Lancman also called for the Parks Department to step up the loosely enforced $250 fines against illegal foraging.

And to perpetrators: "Stop treating the park like their personal salad bar," Lancman admonished. After detailing the array of adorable -- and possibly mouthwatering -- bounty that calls Kissena Park home: fish, turtles, rabbit, pheasants, he warned: "That's not your personal buffet table."

Turtles & fish disappearing from Bowne Park

From the Daily News:

Something fishy is going on at Bowne Park in Flushing.

Local residents say turtles that live in the park's pond have been disappearing at an alarming rate and that the park's fish population also has plummeted.

"I've been hearing from people who noticed there are no turtles sitting out in the sun," said Wanda Beck Antosh, president of the Bowne Park Civic Association. "They have also caught people poaching fish and turtles from the pond and not putting them back."

The turtles are popular with park visitors, who sit on surrounding benches and watch the reptiles glide through the murky water. A stone turtle statue, a favorite of neighborhood children, stands sentry by the side of the pond.

Some days, it is the only turtle in sight.

Please don't eat the daisies (or the turtles)!

From the NY Times:

Maybe it is the spiraling cost of food in a tough economy or the logical next step in the movement to eat locally. Whatever the reason, New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms, American ginger and elderberries.

Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say. In recent months, the city has stepped up training of park rangers and enforcement-patrol officers, directing them to keep an eye out for foragers and chase them off.

Just what gets taken can vary from park to park, often depending on the ethnic makeup of the surrounding neighborhood.

“There are groups going around and collecting things that they recognize from their home countries,” said Gary Lincoff, an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden, who admitted foraging in the parks for juneberries. “The Chinese gather gingko, and I’ve talked to Koreans who are gathering white wood aster.”

Beverly McDermott, director of Friends of Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, has confronted foragers directly when she has seen them hauling away everything from plants to top soil to turtles. A garden in the 242-acre park that Mrs. McDermott helped revive a decade ago has been repeatedly pillaged, with herbs, flowers and a whole weeping cherry tree disappearing.

“I have caught them leaving the park with coolers full of fish and turtles,” she said. “You need signs throughout the park. I find the rangers to be totally useless. They’re walking around like Boy Scouts.”

Turtle traps found in Prospect Park lake

From The Brooklyn Paper:

Turtles better hide in their shells — it appears someone is poaching the precious creatures from the lake in Prospect Park!

Two regular parkgoers, Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman, discovered the shocking trap in the water last Tuesday while cleaning the area around the nest of one of their beloved swans.

The trap, which is slightly bigger than a shoebox, had a long line tethered to it, which was secured under a fallen tree.

Bahlman and Titze even said they found another trap the day before.

But park officials were hesitant to declare the traps a clear sign of poaching.

“I can’t say [if that is] a turtle trap or what kind of trap it is or what animals someone was trying to trap with it,” said Eugene Patron, a spokesman for the Prospect Park Alliance, who was shown a photograph of the apparent trap. But regardless, he added, “Trapping or capturing of wildlife is absolutely prohibited.”

It is hard to imagine what other purpose the trap could have served. The basket is not meant to capture fish, and the area where it was found is preferred among turtles, which bask on the many fallen trees on the edge of the lake.

The Daily News reported the following:

Forget the Gowanus Canal: Prospect Park's lake needs a federal cleanup - stat.

The Brooklyn lake is brimming with garbage like charcoal briquets tossed after cookouts, plastic bags and discarded fishing lines - including one that strangled a baby swan last week.

"Some parts of it are just terrible," said frequent visitor Oleg Priymak, 54, a Windsor Terrace videographer. "I've never seen anyone going around to patrol it."

Hidden among the reeds on shore are remnants of camps made by homeless people. Food wrappers, toilet paper and human waste lurk underfoot.

"This is the reality lakeside tour," said Ed Bahlman, 60, a retired engineer from Windsor Terrace. "This is what the park doesn't want you to see."

A walk around the 60-acre lake also turned up picnic trash, old clothing, beer bottles and a trap, possibly for turtles.

Please pass on the turtle!

From the Daily News:

MARINE PATHOLOGIST James Cervino stood silently in a crowded Flushing supermarket recently as a fishmonger used a giant meat cleaver to hack at a still-writhing turtle.

Cervino watched as the turtle was gutted, stuffed in a bag, and handed over to a female customer.

"That was terrible," said Cervino, 48, of College Point, as he walked out of the Ou Jiang Supermarket on Main St.

Cervino, now a visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, said he fears that the types of unusual seafood that can be found in local supermarkets and aquariums may be fished using illegal and dangerous means.

Not knowing the true provenance of their seafood could expose New Yorkers to bacterial infections or mercury poisoning. Cervino wants to change that.

"There's no documentation or chain of custody that can be proven to the consumer what the source of these animals is," Cervino said. "If people are eating it wrong, they can get salmonella poisoning and cholera."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies turtles as seafood, said Jessica Ziehm, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. The FDA uses the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points program, or HAACP, to ensure that the fish for sale comes from an approved and inspected source.

"We always make sure that we see the papers to ensure that the turtles did not come from a pond," Ziehm said.

But turtles don't always make for good eating, Cervino said. The salmonella bacteria can often be found on the skin and shells of pet turtles, according to the FDA.

Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski said her department has received complaints of people poaching turtles from Kissena Lake at Kissena Park, though the agency has yet been unable to confirm it.

Who Mike Bloomberg is really fighting for