Programs of Nature Network
Nature Network is a framework within which member organizations can work together on programs that promote their organization's goals more effectively together than separately. There are now six Working Groups open to all members. They are expected to continue as long as fruitful action emerges. Seed money is available to facilitate their work. If more funds are necessary, the Working Group, with Nature Network support, can seek outside grants which would be used by member organizations.
Quarterly meetings of the whole are programmed to guide Nature Network's activities and to provide substantive discussion with outside speakers. Agendas are circulated and posted here in advance.
Speakers April 16, 10 a.m.:
- Eric Sanderson, Wildlife Conservation Society, on the Mannahatta Project: The aim of the Mannahatta Project is to reconstruct the ecology of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609 and compare it to what we know of the island today. The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down to the level of one city block, where in Manhattan streams once flowed or where American Chestnuts may have grown, where black bears once marked territories, and where the Lenape fished and hunted. Commentators will respond to this question: In environmental restoration, how decide to what previous time we should restore an area?
- Michele Byers, Executive Director, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, on land use policy improvements in New Jersey that might interest New York.
Working Groups
1. Environmental Education
The goal is to advance ecological literacy in the NY-NJ-CT metropolitan region and promote environmental stewardship through education. Currently, members are preparing a white paper aimed at improving teaching about nature in NYC public schools.
Members: Mary Leou, NYU, chair; Michelle Ashkin, Academy for Conservation and the Environment; Meredith Comi, NY/NJ Baykeeper; John Davenport, Fordham University; Sara DeAngelis, Brooklyn Children's Museum; Mariya Deren, Center for Humans and Nature; Maria Grace, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey; Carole Griffiths, Long Island University, Brooklyn; Teresa Ippolito, EPA; John Jordan, Prospect Park Alliance; Veronique Lambert, Cornell University Cooperative Extension; Sharon Livesey, Fordham University; Paul Mankiewicz, Gaia Institute; Regina McCarthy, Environmental Education Advisory Council; Joseph McDonald, NYU; Shino Tanikawa, NYC Soil & Water Conservation District; John van Buren, Fordham University; Lucy Waletzky, Taconic (NY) State Park Commission
2. Monitoring with Volunteers
The goal is to improve the scientific validity of data gathered by volunteers and increase its use for policy and management, then to increase volunteer monitoring programs. The Group also will work toward common protocols in programs seeking similar data. A research-based conference followed by a Best Practices manual is planned.
Members: Co-Chairs: Nellie Tsipoura, NJ Audubon, and Susan Elbin, Wildlife Trust; Bob Alpern, Pratt Institute; Michelle Ashkin, Academy for Conservation and the Environment; Meredith Comi, NY/NJ Baykeeper; Robin Dublin; Paul Gallay, Westchester Land Trust; Maria Grace, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey; Steven Gray, Rutgers University; Emily Gunter-Gayton, Cornell University Cooperative Extension; John Jordan, Prospect Park Alliance; Rebecca Jordan, Rutgers University; Aubrey McMahon, NYC Soil and Water Conservation District.
3. Sustainable Development
Sustaninable development beginning in the Mid-Hudson in partnership with several Mid-Hudson environmental organizations. Ted Kheel provided the impetus and seed money to try to minimize the environmental impact of new construction in the Region. The strategy is to produce five brief papers describing environmental goals for (1) location and site design, (2) water, (3) protecting species, (4) landscaping and (5) green building standards. Then we would find local officials interested in attaining those goals and find technical assistance to help them do it. Successful projects would become models we would promote for later projects, eventually raising standards.
Members: John Davenport, Fordham University; Susan Elbin, Wildlife Trust; Paul Gallay, Westchester Land Trust; David Levine, Green Harvest Technologies; Sharon Livesey, Fordham University; William Schlesinger, Institute of Ecosystem Studies; Shino Tanikawa, NYC Soil & Water Conservation District; Nellie Tsipoura, NJ Audubon; John van Buren, Fordham University; Lucy Waletzky, Taconic (NY) State Park Commission.
4. Biodiversity Atlas and Database
The goal is to provide the public, citizen scientists, land managers, policy makers and researchers with detailed, place-based maps and information for current ecological status and human impacts as well as past and future trends—on paper and electronically.
This working group is just being organized by Bill Solecki, wsolecki@hunter.cuny.edu and John Mickelson, john.mickelson@yahoo.com. Member: Lucy Waletzky, Taconic (NY) State Park Commission.
5. Survival
Based on a belief that the state of the global environment is disastrous and requires a rapid and wholesale change in human practices, this Task Force has discussed how environmental experts should be contributing to fast change—in two meetings with the Environmental Sciences Section of the NY Academy of Sciences and participating in planning a meeting of municipal leaders as part of the Yale Climate Change program and two preliminary Focus-the-Nation conferences. Further discussions will be organized.
Members: John Davenport, Fordham University; Carole Griffiths, Long Island University, Brooklyn; Bruce Jennings, Center for Humans and Nature; Paul Mankiewicz, Gaia Institute; Deborah Popper, College of Staten Island, CUNY; Lucy Waletzky, Taconic (NY) State Park Commission
6. Invasive Species
The goal is to conceive strategies for combating invading species. Nature Network is co-sponsoring a campaign to reduce the destruction of trees from Asian Long-horned Beetles and from the strategy to protect against it. Wildlife Trust and Harbor Herons are partners. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) cut some 10,000 trees to protect Prall's and Staten Island's trees after a few trees were found to be infested Following a November 2 information meeting with APHIS, Wildlife Trust outlined this action program: 1) ALB identification training workshop for harbor field researchers and volunteers; 2) Pre-infestation planning, risk assessment, and prevention for highly valuable habitats in NY Harbor; 3) Investigating the possibility of prophylactic chemical treatment of valuable potential host trees; 4) Approaching environmental grant making associations to increase funding for ALB prevention; 5) Considering education and outreach needs for ALB prevention and detection; 6) Reporting on ALB research findings presented at the January 2008 USDA meeting In addition to the ALB partnership, Nature Network maintains liaison with the Lower Hudson PRISM (Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management), which is fostered by NY State and includes several dozen government and Non-Governmental Organizations working together to establish a strategy for combating plant and animal threats from the Mid-Hudson south to Manhattan.
Members: Chair: Susan Elbin, Wildlife Trust; David Burg, WildMetro; Steven Clemants, Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Elizabeth Craig, Wildlife Trust; Helen Forgione, NYC Department of Environmental Protection; Paul Gallay, Westchester Land Trust; Elizabeth Johnson, American Museum of Natural History; John Jordan, Prospect Park Alliance; John McLaughlin, NYC Department of Environmental Protection; John Mickelson, Landscape Ecology
Advocacy
Nature Network is not primarily an advocacy organization, and some member organizations have not signed the two advocacy statements we have so far issued.
In Response to PlaNYC
Dear Mayor Bloomburg:
Nature Network, a consortium of 50 organizations that do research and education on the natural resources of New York City and the Tri-State Region, have studied PlaNYC and offer these carefully developed observations. They emerge from interchanges within our own organization and furthered through extensive discussions with Ariella Maron of your Long-Term Planning and Sustainability staff and Bill Tai, Director of the Natural Resources Group at New York City Parks.
We admire your foresight and courage in leading New York to face the demands on the City and prepare for 2030. We appreciate the outstanding competence of the staff who prepared the Plan. We applaud the focus on sustainability. Our member organizations (list attached) are eager to participate in the task forces translating the Plan into details and implementing it.
On the whole, we enthusiastically support the Plan's recommendations, including congestion pricing and using the resulting funds to substantially improve public transit. However, there is an important consideration missing from all but a few sentences: the importance of the nature on which human health and survival depends.
Our organizations are dedicated to preserving and restoring nature in the City and the Tri-State Region as an essential foundation of our sustainable future as well as using it to teach and infuse a respect and love of nature. PlaNYC does not mention preserving the remnants of the City's natural areas, and many sites are under siege. Nor are sites for restoration identified. We are convinced that NYCitizens will not easily be mobilized to combat environmental degradation if they have never developed an affinity for nature.
Here are a few examples in which we see nature has been slighted or omitted:
- Regional and large parks are said to provide "a full range of experience: athletic, cultural, educational and relaxing…." (p. 33)
- Regarding eight park sites being brought to "their potential….One site lies within a nature preserve but could safely be developed." (p. 33)
- The former Ridgewood Reservoir's three basins are to be brought into park use, partially for a nature preserve but "the largest will be transformed into a 60-acre active recreation center." (p. 33)
- Fort Washington Park is to get improved highway access for soccer and volleyball. (p. 33)
- On Staten Island, most of Ocean Breeze Park "must remain in its natural state. But there is a large parcel of approximately 10 acres where active recreational activities can take place." (p. 34)
- Even in Soundview Park, where there is to be a restoration of a salt marsh, the sentence begins: "New athletic fields…." (p. 34)
- An example outside the Plan—on the ground: The Torrey Botanical Society has observed "considerable damage to the flora" of Cunningham Park from recent allowance of mountain biking on the trails, despite the Park's designation as "forever wild."
We understand that the City's scarcest resource is land and that outdoor activities are important for New Yorkers. We note that drafters of PlaNYC recognize the importance of ecological services (e.g., expanding the Blue Belt and other natural solutions, the wetlands study, p. 12, and benefits from trees, p. 38) and the importance of more open space ("The City has fewer acres of green space per person than almost any other major American city [and]….the need to create new parks and open space will increase." We suggest that the balance in trade offs for the use of land should favor protection of natural areas more than the Plan now does—more open space and within the open space, more for active and passive enjoyment of nature—hiking, bird-watching, photography, fishing, examining and learning.
Our premise is that New York City already is too deprived of natural areas both to assure a connection between humans and nature and to benefit from ecological services. Therefore:
We Recommend:
There are a large number of extremely valuable natural areas in the City that should be preserved and are not now legally protected. Other sites could be beneficially restored We will submit a list.
Within parks, please survey for existing sites suitable for nature education or sites feasible for restoration to that quality.
For ecological services, recreation and nature education, the most important discussion of tradeoffs relates to this PlaNYC sentence: "New York City's 578-mile waterfront offers one of the City's greatest opportunities for residential development." (p. 22)
We urge reconsideration of waterfront use. To Nature Network, the waterfront provides an essential ecological service of preventing widespread flooding in the City as ocean levels rise. This interface between land and water is habitat for wildlife and vegetation that can exist only there. The waterfront also offers one of the greatest opportunities for outdoor recreation and nature education. Given these invaluable services that only the waterfront can provide, we urge reconsideration of extensive waterfront use for residential development.
Regarding housing the projected million more people by 2030, all of the sites proposed in the Plan except the waterfront are exemplary, especially increasing density at transportation hubs. (We would suggest working with Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road to develop housing at existing and potential in-city stations, coupled with appropriate fare and schedule changes. Other world cities make much more use of commuter rail service within the city.)
If inland sites not needed for open space cannot accommodate all projected population increase at densities neighborhoods will tolerate, what are the alternatives? Since the 1920s, Regional Plan Association has proposed a regional answer. The population projection is based on the job projection, and job growth in the City is based on the growth of the kinds of jobs that are attracted to a NYC location. Without diminishing the City's attraction, a regional plan for sustainable growth could siphon off those jobs linked to City activities that don't have day-to-day need to be in the center of the center. They could be located in sub-centers with good rail connections to Manhattan. White Plains, Stamford and Jersey City are examples. Nassau County's incipient county downtown, Newark's rejuvenated downtown and New Brunswick all could house some of the projected jobs and attract around them some of the projected households. To assure the sustainability of this planned decentralization, New York should convene state and county leaders. Both Tokyo and Paris use a sub-center strategy.
Environmental education is our final recommendation. While English and mathematics scores are rising under your new schools management, science education has been neglected. We are pleased that a new science curriculum has been introduced and the Cloud Institute has been engaged to advise on sustainability education, but we want to be sure that every New York City child is properly introduced to nature. Opportunities for all of the City's children to connect to nature in woodlands, wetlands, ponds, rivers and streams are important developmentally and important to foster a stewardship ethic. Many ecologists and educators have documented the importance of an early connection to nature. PlanNYC should include a program for educating teachers who in turn can educate students—outdoors. Nature Network, which includes several organizations pioneering in academic and community environmental education, offers to organize a task force on environmental education for PlaNYC.
Our members are eager to help implement those aspects of PlaNYC within our areas of expertise. We hope to be called on.
Don McCrimmon
In Response to Arlington Marsh Preservation
June 8, 2007
Daniel Doctoroff
Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding
City Hall
New York, N.Y. 10007
The Honorable James P. Gennaro, Chair
Committee on Environmental Protection
New York City Council
250 Broadway, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10007
The Honorable Michael E. McMahon
New York City Council
250 Broadway, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10007
Gentlemen:
On January 10, you were sent the enclosed letter from 18 distinguished Non-Governmental Organizations urging transfer of Arlington Marsh to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation to assure its protection.
For a large majority of the Directors of Nature Network, I also endorse the enclosed statement.
Sincerely,
Donald A. McCrimmon, President