Constructed Wetlands in Ottawa

Monahan Drain Constructed Wetlands

I found out about the Monahan Drain when I was reading about the Ottawa 2017 maple groves that were being planted all over the city.

From the website:

"This artificial wetland complex, with approximately 230,000 m3 of overall storage, consisted of three storage cells sized to provide both flooding and erosion control, a wetland cell, and five sedimentation forebays designed to meet the water quality objectives of the Rideau River.  The wetland complex was designed to offer diversified wetland plantings that are native to the Ottawa area.  Plantings consisted of numerous species for each of the five zones: deep aquatic, deep emergent, shallow emergent, riparian, and upland zone.  The intent was to direct storm flows through all zones to maximize the wetland’s ability to remove nutrients, TSS, and E.Coli.  Various complex engineering analyses were carried out to size the different elements of the facility: hydrological to simulate synthetic design storm events, long-term simulations to evaluate removal of bacteria and TSS, long-term simulations to assess erosion and investigate rain-on-snowmelt events, and steady-state and hydrodynamic hydraulic analyses. The wetland is now an important community feature of Bridlewood, used for many passive recreational pursuits."

Designed by J.L. Richards

P.S. Check out my latest "urban wild" nature blog: Wild. Here.
(2016 update)

Transforming Business Campuses into Habitat!

When I was at the ICLEI conference in Montreal in 2011 there was this young woman who presented her master's thesis about creating new habitat for wildlife in business campuses.

All that space, green lawn, large property and typically it's a dead zone or they plant exotics like hostas - so she was proposing to bring back native habitat including ponds and streams and develop these spaces as greenspace corridors.

Such a brilliant idea!  And now I have found The Wildlife Habitat Council which promotes and certifies habitat conservation and management on corporate lands through partnerships and education!  Exactly what she was envisioning!

Check them out - they have a white paper for download and on-demand webinars (free of charge).


From their website:

"The opportunity exists to re-examine the way corporate campus lands are managed. New and existing corporate campuses can incorporate nature in their designs, realizing the cost savings of native landscaping, the human benefits of a more natural setting, and the opportunity to restore productive habitat and reconnect a fragmented suburban landscape."

http://www.wildlifehc.org/about-us/vision-and-values/

Landscape Renewal of the Garden of the Provinces and Territories

From the NCC website:

Inspired by the design principles of the New Perennial Movement, the Garden of the Provinces and Territories will receive over 10,000 plants representative of species found across Canada’s provinces and territories. More than ever, it will be a national garden. In keeping with the movement’s principles, the design entails a mixture of long-flowering and strong-stemmed perennials, as well as ornamental grasses. The work taking place this spring will allow for two years of plant growth, resulting in a significant floral display that will mature just in time for Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017.

The design will take shape in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories according to the following themes:

• Prairie Garden (1,000 square metres)
• Tundra/Rock Garden (275 square metres)
• Woodland Garden under existing mature trees (450 square metres)
• Canadian Horticultural Pioneers Garden, showcasing early cultivars and hybrids, bred specifically for the harsh Canadian climate by horticulturalists across Canada (190 square metres)

New Boblink Habitat in Hamilton

Interesting project in Hamilton - so great that they are creating Bobolink habitat!  From the webpage:

Hamilton’s Bobolink community is getting the boot from their current home in Greensville and being re-located to a former dump. 

The city is hoping that the “threatened” bird species, will feel right at home at the old Upper Ottawa Street dump. 

Bobolinks had been living behind Greensville Public School but their habitat has been taken away by the construction of a new Johnson Tew park and arboretum. 

“The likelihood is that they will continue to be there until the trees start to grow up, then the Bobolink don’t like that habitat as much.” said Cynthia Graham. 

The city is hoping to entice the Bobolinks to move here, to the old Upper Ottawa Street dump, but the Bobolink is a very picky tenant, and the city will have to cut down some trees and plant prairie grasses in order for the birds to feel more at home. And the Bobolinks don’t like visitors. 

“It already is grassland, so there is the potential to establish the habitat they like which is mostly grasses. It’s restricted to public access and bobolinks are birds that don’t like a lot of disturbance.” 

They are an elusive bird, and are considered “at risk.” 

“Certainly the Bobolink are suffering because of habitat loss across their range, so whatever we can do to create habitat suitable for them is within our mandate to do so”
When they are in town, the nesting birds prefer staying on the ground in tall grass or crops. 

“The reason we chose that is because it has potential to be Bobolink habitat, but they’re not currently using it to full extent, so there’s an opportunity for enhancement.”
The move is estimated to cost $120 000 and another $200,000 is being requested from the city’s park project budget next year, to cover consultation with bird experts, and ongoing monitoring of the success of the project over the next 20 years.

http://www.chch.com/relocating-at-risk-bird-species/

Chimney Swift population decline is not due to lost habitat.

Just came across this Chimney Swift study "Swift Watch - Summery Report" published in 2012.  It has some great findings about the preference of Chimney Swift habitat and the availability in Ontario urban cities.

"These descriptions revealed that Chimney Swifts preferentially used chimneys with a greater length exposed above the roofline of the building and a greater inside area than those available to be used. The average chimney used by swifts extended 2.86 m above the roofline and had an internal area of 1.0079 m2. 

We also found that 73% of active chimneys were found on non-residential buildings. Interestingly, the majority of building types surveyed by volunteers were residential houses (63%), followed by commercial buildings. However, the building types with the highest number of sites occupied by swifts were commercial (mostly found in downtown urban habitat), churches and schools.  

... We found that among 139 open and suitable habitat chimneys available, only 24.4% were actually occupied by swifts. These results suggest that in urban areas there is more nesting habitat available than being used by Chimney Swifts and it is likely that declines in Ontario’s swift population are primarily driven by a process other than habitat loss, such as prey abundance and availability."

They also did a study on natural nesting sites in both logged and unlogged areas in Ontario.  It would be great to know more about the study area (is it in Southern Ontario or Northern Ontario?) and whether there are preferred spots and distances away from cities where Chimney Swifts choose these sites. I've never read about chimney swifts nesting in anything other than chimneys!

Here's a bit on that study:

"Deciduous trees hosted 24 used sites, whereas 17 used sites were in coniferous trees. The most commonly encountered tree species to host nesting or roosting Chimney Swift were: white pine, sycamore, yellow birch, and cypress. In three reports, the entrance used by the Chimney Swifts was an entrance previously created by Pileated Woodpeckers."

You can read the full report here: http://www.birdscanada.org/download/CHSWONReport.pdf

And this newspaper article reports on Chimney Swifts nesting in hay barns out on the East Coast:

"NOVA SCOTIA NATURALLY: The world of spectacular swifts" 

written by Donna Crossland  published on July 19, 2015 in the Chronicle Herald.

Other Posts on Chimney Swifts:

All about Chimney Swift Towers and the Birds (2011)
Chimney Swift Tower in Toronto (2011)

More about SNAP - Lake Wilcox (TRCA - Toronto)

Great examples of front yard landscaping that helps with biodiversity, stormwater runoff and xeriscaping.  (Wish they had some estimates of costs - that would be great to know about!)

From SNAP - Lake Wilcox:

Two Front Yard Makeover demonstration projects were installed in July-September 2012.

These projects play an essential role in communicating the objectives of SNAP and profiling many of the key practices of residential eco-landscaping.

Regarding the new gardens - noted comment from a neighbour was ‘Environmentally friendly garden yet artistic and multi-use’.

Both watered, on average, once a week using only water from the rain barrel, no potable water was used. Neither design includes a lawn, thus both time and water were saved.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 BEFORE:

AFTER:

Photos from SNAP website.

Some details:

• Roof leader discharges to a bioswale or soak away underlain with AquaBlox units.
• Discharge of another roof leader into a rain barrel with overflow directed to a dry river bed that leads to a soakaway or rain garden.
• Discharge of a third downspout onto a permeable driveway/walkway.
• Water efficient native plantings of trees, shrubs and plants.

Link to SNAP Lake Wilcox Project Page.

What is SNAP?

SNAP Eco-Landscaping: Program and Information Guide

From their website:

The Sustainable Neighbourhood Retrofit Action Plan (SNAP) is an innovative pilot program led by Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA) in collaboration with many municipal and community partners. The SNAP program aims to accelerate the implementation of environmental improvements and urban renewal at the neighbourhood scale. It takes an integrated approach to overcome urban retrofit challenges and address a broad range of objectives with locally tailored solutions. Each SNAP neighbourhood features unique initiatives to inspire residents, businesses and governments to take action. 

In partnership with local stakeholders including residents, businesses, local groups and institutions, the project seeks to develop action plans to improve the local environment on the neighbourhood scale and build resiliency against climate change by greening local infrastructure and encouraging positive behavior changes among residents. Based on existing conditions of each neighbourhood the project sets neighbourhood-level targets and identifies key actions on private and public property to address environmental objectives in the context of social and economic considerations for each neighbourhood. Each plan builds the business case for implementation by measuring individual and community benefits and cost savings.

http://sustainableneighbourhoods.ca/wp/eco-landscaping-how-to-information-and-garden-designs/

Urban Ecology Lectures (Ottawa)

This year the Friends of the Farm offered various Tree Walks in the Arboretum.  I was really thrilled to hear how popular these free tours were - with up to 100 people attending!  Some of the walks planned this year were on traditional topics including Flowering Trees, Tree Identification, Maple Tree Species and Fruit Trees while others introduced newer "urban ecology" topics such as:

BIRDS AND THE URBAN FOREST - Sunday, May 17, 2015
Tour leaders: Rachelle Lapensee and Owen Clarkin

From the website: "Birds and Trees are inextricably connected. Trees provide food and shelter to many species of birds, while birds act as agents for seed dispersal and greatly influence the relationship of trees with their insect and fungal pests. Come for a tour of the majestic trees at the Dominion Arboretum during the busy spring birding season, and learn more about Ottawa's birds, trees, and their relationships with each other."

TREE FORMS AND SHAPES IN WINTER - Sunday, November 15, 2015
Tour leaders: Owen Clarkin and Bettina Henkelman

From the website: "When the leaves fall, serious tree-watching can begin. Firstly, trees that were often obscured behind the leaves of others suddenly are visible; this is especially true of evergreens. Secondly, individual tree species tend to grow in recognizable patterns, and for deciduous trees this is best observed in winter. Techniques for how to learn tree recognition from a distance will be explained."

Image from Friends of the Farm newsletter

Update on Guelph's Pollinator Park (decommissioned Eastview Landfill site)

I first blogged about this Pollinator Park project in 2012!  Glad to see that it continues to expand!

From the website (Pollination Guelph Planting Sites):

(The) pollinator habitat (is) on the 45ha (112 acre) decommissioned Eastview Landfill site. (It) will be one of the first and largest pollinator initiatives to occur in Ontario, Canada, and internationally. It will also highlight the City of Guelph's commitment to being a leader in environmental initiatives.

The Pollinator Park is a long-term, multi-stage project. Work began in the fall of 2012 and the first hectare was seeded in Fall 2013. We plan to seed another two hectares in Fall 2014 and if we can raise the funds, add two hectares a year in future years.

A bee hotel was added in June 2014 through the "Wild for Bees" initiative, which Pollination Guelph was a site partner in. This initiative is sponsored by Burt's Bees, Sustainable.TO, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, and Pollinator Partnership Canada.

The park borders Speedvale Ave, Watson Road, Eastview Rd

From Guelph Mercury article (written by Chris Seto):

(The) project had to use the herbicide Roundup to get rid of the fescue grass, a species planted to help prevent soil erosion on the mound.

The Eastview Landfill was decommissioned in 2003 after collecting the city's garbage since 1961. For the past 10 years it sat empty, gathering various weeds and invasive plant species. Some flowering species grew out of its clay, rocky soil, but the field hasn't been much of a hot spot for wildlife.

Since 2009, Pollination Guelph has had its eye on this open space as a potential haven for bees, butterflies, birds and native plant species, but it needed to raise enough funds to be able to act on its plan. This year, the charitable organization reached its goal of raising $15,000 – the amount it cost to prep and seed one hectare of land – and was able to sow the seeds of a variety of native species.

These species include coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, milkweeds, Indian grass and several others. The first flowers are expected to appear in the fall, with the majority of the bloom occurring in 2015.

The site will have to be monitored and mowed every couple of years to ensure it isn't overrun by invasive species.  (Burning isn't an option above the methane gas producing landfill.)

Elaine Williams, executive director of Wildlife Preservation Canada, said her organization joined up with Pollination Guelph earlier this year. She hopes the pollination park will become a healthy sanctuary for various species at risk, including the meadowlark and the bobolink bird. She said once the park is more established, it may even be a good place to reintroduce the endangered rusty patch bumblebee.

P.S. Check out my latest "urban wild" nature blog: Wild. Here. (2016 update)

ASLA's video on "Designing Neighbourhoods for People and Wildlife"

This is one of the American Society of Landscape Architects' videos in a series called "Sustainable Landscaping".  Other topics include:

• Building a Park Out of Waste
• Designing for Active Living
• The Edible City
• Energy Efficient Home Landscapes
• From Industrial Wasteland to Community Park
• Infrastructure for All
• Revitalizing Communities with Parks
• Leveraging the Landscape to Manage Water
• Urban Forests = Cleaner, Cooler Air

The webpage also provides reasons to consider wildlife design and benefits from this type of design for both people and wildlife.

It's great to see this association promoting a different approach to landscaping both public and private yards.  Hopefully more and more graduates of landscape architecture will make Native and Sustainable Landscaping a priority when working with clients!

Check it out here: ASLA: Sustainable Landscaping

an urban meadow in Ottawa...

One of the inspirations for my career change was a presentation I saw in 2010 by Mathis Natvik on "urban meadows".  The presentation was for the Ottawa Field Naturalist Club and it was held at Fletcher Gardens.  I was enamored with the idea of urban meadows and attracting more song birds to the downtown areas.  He presented a great case (as part of his Master's thesis) and was hoping to work with the City of the N.C.C. to do a pilot project here.  Unfortunately it never happened.

For the presentation he talked about the decline of wildlife including song birds and other pollinators and how an urban meadow could be located along the parkway or as a replacement for an expanse of lawn as part of an office campus.  Ottawa's a perfect opportunity with Tunney's Pasture, Lebreton Flats and parkways along most of the Ottawa River.  It would just require choosing an area (which could already be a meadow) and then converting it to native meadow species so that more native habitat could be available for wildlife.  He suggests a 90% native species cover as shown below. Ottawa could even consider the Agriculture Farm - convert some of this farm area back to native species.

I've shown the above image of the Prenzlauer Berg District in Berlin (Photo by Westrich/laif/Redux) before as I couldn't imagine anything more beautiful in a city than a field of wildflowers that you could sit in.  Having seen the bobolink near the Aviation Museum, it makes me wonder again, could this be possible?  Wouldn't it be amazing to try out a pilot project and provide some alternative habitat for this endangered species where it wouldn't conflict with the needs of farmers?  We don't know if it is possible but wouldn't it be amazing to see if it was?

*Three bottom images from Mathis Natvik of Natvik Ecological in Guelph.

On a quest to find the Urban Bobolink (Ottawa)

As mentioned in a previous post, I had read about sightings of bobolinks by Dave Collyer from an online post of Manor Park News in 2006 and I was wondering if it was still around.  Pretty amazing sighting of this grassland bird in a more urban setting if it is still here!

I thought I heard it on Monday in the field between the Rockcliffe Parkway and Sandridge Road (there's a path down the middle of the field for dogwalkers).  Using my binoculars I spotted a black bird with unusual markings in the top of a dead tree on the edge of the field close to Sandridge and Placel but it was a faint shadowed view through my binocular lens. I had no camera that day to take a picture and confirm the sighting.  

I went out with my camera today and couldn't find it in that field.  Was wondering if it was in another field close by (or perhaps up at the old Rockcliffe Base?) so I went to the Airport-Marina Road and I ended up finding it in a narrow strip between the Aviation Pathway and the Rockcliffe Airport fence line.

WOW.

FOUND.

Other Urban Bird Posts:

- Barred Owl Visit to Parklette in Toronto (2014)

- Urban Bobolink in Ottawa (2012)

- The Pigeon Paradox (2012)

- Urban Chimney Swift Towers (2011)

- Purple Martin Nesting (2011)

- Roosting Crows in Ottawa (2011)

Wildlife Construction Protocols (Ottawa)

From Ottawa Community News:

April 17, 2014

Board Looks at Alternative School Site (Kanata):

WILDLIFE PROTECTION

Measures were in place to mitigate the effects of tree cutting on birds and animals in the area, Wilkinson said.

Cutting can only be conducted until April 15, the councillor said, to avoid the nesting season of birds in the area.

If tree cutting didn't happen before the deadline for bird nesting season, there would be no way for the school to be built in time for kids to attend in September of 2015, Wilkinson said.

That tree-cutting deadline is needed to comply with the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act, Snedden wrote. In addition, KNL was asked to follow the tree-removal protocol followed by the city's forestry department. That procedure involves tree inspectors searching for evidence of animal use or habitat, which is shared with tree-cutting crews, who do a second inspection of flagged trees to see if animals are present. If there is an animal in the tree, the tree is not disturbed and the crew returns to remove it once the animal has moved on. Nesting boxes were placed around the area to lure animals such as squirrels out from trees.

A similar policy is being considered for the wildlife construction policy the city committed to drafting as part of an update to its wildlife management strategy last year.

City staff conducted surveys to identify areas where trees and wildlife habitats were to be retained, Snedden said. They also monitored cutting to ensure the removals complied with the urban tree conservation bylaw.

Snedden said Blanding's turtles are still hibernating at this time of year based on population monitoring data. Wilkinson said KNL Developments has a certificate from the province allowing it to go ahead with work because the area isn't part of the main habitat of the protected Blanding's turtles. If turtles are found, they must be protected and removed from the area, Wilkinson said.


Image from: Unpublished Ottawa

summer pond

Missing summer?  Check out this video by Catherine Forster entitled pond!  (It reminds me of Fletcher Wildlife Garden's pond)

POND from catherine forster on Vimeo.

when Nature and Numbers don't meet

What a great topic!  Someone emailed me a link to this symposium.

Information from the website:

The Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies will host a three-day symposium on the intersections and tensions between sensory or emotive experiences of nature and the bureaucratic, political, and scientific quantification of the environment.  

We are especially interested in reflexive moments when numbers become lived experience; moments of cooptation when quantification appropriates the language of experience; and moments of resistance when the mismatch between experience and quantification overwhelms the discussion.  Potential research questions include:

• How is nature defined and valued, and for or by whom?
• How have sensory and emotive experiences of the environment been translated into numerical or monetary terms, and are there examples of the reverse phenomenon?
• When and why have environmentalists adopted numbers or monetary values for conservation ends, and what are the trade-offs of this approach compared to, for example, arguments for the intrinsic value(s) of nature?
• Who has determined the correspondence between qualitative and quantitative measures of value?  How?  To what end?
• How have the values societies ascribe to nature changed over time, how are social and political conflicts over these values adjudicated, and what has been the role of scientific expertise?

 Link to Event


Symposium organizers:
Kristoffer Whitney, Postdoctoral Fellow, Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies
Melanie Kiechle, Assistant Professor of History, Virginia Tech.

Suburb Re-Do

Images: Sherwood Eng, Washington Edu, Seattle PI, Mithūn Arch.

From Ecobuilding Pulse:

"Revitalizing and rethinking suburban developments offers a wealth of opportunities to builders and architects, says Ellen Dunham-Jones, who is overseeing Sustainable Communities for the Hanley Wood Sustainability Council.

A lot of your work focuses on the suburbs. What are the opportunities there?

The opportunity is that we get a do-over. We built so much, but no one was thinking about environmental issues, especially when it came to the immediate postwar buildings. We drained wetlands. We built with excess. Now that so many of those properties are failing or underperforming, we have a great opportunity to redevelop them into more mixed-use, urban places, or to regreen spaces where we never should have built in the first place.

What do you mean by “regreen” them?

In some cases, especially if there is a slow market, it makes the most sense to simply tear a building down and replace it with a park. Sometimes it means reconstructing wetlands or daylighting creeks that had been put into culverts under parking lots, or putting in community gardens. Outside of Minneapolis in the low-income suburb of Phalen, there was a big strip mall built in the 1960s. It was built before the Clean Water Act, when it was perfectly normal to drain wetlands and put a culvert under the parking lot. The site also happened to be on a major migratory route. Well, the strip mall died and so did the culvert. People at the University of Minnesota’s landscape program made a case for reconstructing the wetlands. They built a beautiful lake and created lakefront property that attracted the first new private investment in over 40 years, which also happens to be next to a big public housing development. This helped trigger improvements to the public housing. The dead strip mall was bringing property values down. So, regreening the space served multiple purposes.

Another thing that’s happening is the daylighting of creeks. One of the most dramatic examples is the Northgate Mall in Seattle. The project has received a lot of press because it features new housing and senior housing on the sides of Thornton Creek, which used to be a culvert under the mall’s parking lot. Now it’s an amenity for housing, the headwaters of a major stream, and can handle the area’s flooding."         (Image: Lisatown - Inspirational Wall)

From Ecobuildingpulse.com By Katie Weeks

Leitrim Wetland (Ottawa)

Image from: Green Space Alliance Website

From Green Space Alliance Leitrim Wetland page:

 Located in the southern part of the City of Ottawa, Leitrim Wetland is one of Canada’s finest examples of a complex wetland ecosystem and has been identified as a North American “biodiversity hotspot”. According to the Canadian Wildlife Service, “Leitrim Wetland is clearly an area of outstanding ecological significance”. Aside from containing a range of plants that is unparalleled in North America, Leitrim Wetland supplies cool, clean water to Findlay Creek – one of the most important streams in the South Nation River watershed. It is home to many rare and threatened species as well as plenty of wildlife and even boasts an old growth forest, including white pine in which Great Blue Heron nest. It is a Provincially Significant Wetland (Class I under the former classification). 

Local conservation groups launched a lawsuit late last week challenging the Ontario Municipal Board for allowing the second phase of the Findlay Creek Village housing development to proceed despite concerns that it could devastate the 9,000 year old Leitrim Wetland in the south end of the City of Ottawa. 

From: Ottawa Riverkeepers (2007)

Seven years later what has happened to Leitrim Wetland?  Greenspace Alliance has a great page providing many of the details: Saving Leitrim Wetland but nothing has happened on the forum for over two years. Looks like another wetland lost for Ottawa.

And it still seems that the wetland continues to be threatened:

In November 2010, further to a quick decision by the City of Ottawa Planning Committee in October, developer Shenkman Corporation began cutting trees before the winter freeze (reason given) in the Leitrim wetlands complex north of the Ottawa Airport. The project aims to build a hotel and convention centre. The trees were cut down in a wetland in which the Province of Ontario is conducting an assessment in order to designate it as a Provincially Significant Wetland. The National Capital Commission (NCC) was advised of the issue very recently, but the notices given to the City of Ottawa were ignored. Despite the location of this land in the Greenbelt, it is the property of Transport Canada but leased to the Ottawa Airport Authority, which claims that land belongs to it in the context of the agreement between Transport Canada and the Airport Authority. 

From: Auditor General's Office (Canada)

Photo image from John Sankey - Leitrim Wetland and the Findlay Creek Development.  

Detailed summary of the project is provided at J. Sankey's blog (information on the project from the 90's onward at John Sankey.ca)  This affects Blanding Turtle habitat - see other blog post "Wetland Area in Greenbelt (2012)" for more details.


UPDATE (2020): 

Part of the wetland has been transferred to South Nation Conservation - see post on their website:

07-Sep-2018 - SNC Continues Restoration Efforts at Leitrim Wetland

 There is a rail-trail to the left of the wetland off of Albion road that goes all the way to Kemptville. 

The Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club has also written three articles about the Albion Roads Wetland - found here: "Leitrim Wetlands"  Some great points from OFNC about the significance of this wetland include:

- Its flora is not duplicated elsewhere in North America. 

- It is unusually complex, resulting in a high degree of biodiversity. (It has been listed as one of Canada’s “hotspots” of biodiversity.1038 species of organisms identified to date). 

- It contains regionally, provincially and nationally rare species over 200 species of regionally significant plants. 

- It contains more regionally significant plants than the Mer Bleue, a Ramsar site, even though it is only one-tenth the size. 

- It harbours patches of old growth trees — up to 250 or more years old. 

- It contains 90 species of resident or breeding birds, including a sizable rookery of Great Blue Herons nesting in the tops of ancient White Pines. During migration times, up to 150 species of birds can be seen in the wetlands. The Red-shouldered Hawk, a vulnerable species, nests in wooded part of the wetland.  (OFNC)

Urban Wild "Express" - Bird Architecture Art

Photo by Austin Kennedy

Thanks to PARK-ing OTTAWA for this great post that linked to Sarah Sze sculpture on New York’s High Line. The piece is called Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat).

"The architecture, complex and dynamic, acts as a bird, butterfly and insect observatory, with perches, feeding spots and birdbaths throughout.

The artwork is simultaneously an observatory, an experiment, and a metropolis, evoking urban construction, scientific models, and attempts to capture nature in situ."   

From: The Highline Art

Check out this other outdoor nature art installation called The Bird Tornado!

Habitat Stepping Stones (Australia)

Link to a new project from the Australian Research Institute for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) at Macquarie University, which is seeking to enhance the complexity of urban biodiversity.  The website provides information to urban citizens about how to help out wildlife who are "doing it tough".

Individuals pledge to provide three or more "stepping stones" (schools and community centres can participate also) and then the address can be added to an online map so illustrate the number of stepping stones across the city.  Participants can also share stories, photos and videos through social media.

Three cities are already participating: Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Discounts and/or free plants are available to participants at their local garden store, who also receive a sign to put up in the front of their home.  They also received local wildlife tips and news.

All details here: Habitat Stepping Stones

Nature in the city (San Francisco)

Nature in the City is a non-profit working in the City of San Francisco to help connect people to nature though both restoration and stewardship programs.  They provide public education and also habitat and plant consultations for both public and private spaces.  There was a great article in Earth Island Journal about a specific project that helped restore butterfly habitat in the city:

From Earth Island:

One of our keystone projects is the “Green Hairstreak Corridor,” a butterfly habitat restoration project situated in the inner Sunset District. The iridescent green, nickel-sized green hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys viridis) was once common throughout the area. It was often seen with the now-extinct Xerces blue (Glaucopsyche xerces), the first butterfly in the US said to go extinct due to urbanization. But today, the green hairstreak survives only in small and isolated populations. Because this butterfly can only fly a few hundred feet from its original habitat, the species might vanish unless we intervene to save it.

Credit: Michael L. Baird

To help the butterfly, in 2006 local lepidopterist Liam O’Brien launched this wildlife habitat corridor project, which aims to connect two isolated green hairstreak butterfly populations via strategically placed “Street Parks” full of host plants and nectar sources.

It’s working. With the help of a handful of paid staff and volunteers, Nature in the City is recreating more of the upland dune habitat on which these butterflies depend. In spring 2011, the first green hairstreak butterfly was seen in a restored plot, and in spring 2013, dozens were witnessed darting between plants or perched in the sun. We have successfully connected the two isolated breeding populations and, for the time being, secured this threatened butterfly’s survival.


Such a great project to read about during these cold winter months and while hoping for a resurgence in the Monarch population in 2014!