Environment

In the ruddy dusk, a white shorebird spread its wings and glided to a silent landing on the East Pond at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.  In the distance, another bird, this one made of aluminum, prepared to land at Kennedy Airport. 

 

Andy Bernik, a birdwatcher from Virginia, stood on the flat moss at water’s edge, peering through a telescopic lens.  “There’s a Glossy Ibis over there,” he said quietly as an A train rumbled in the distance. 

 

Bernik was here as a participant of the Jamaica Bay Bioblitz, a 24-hour mad dash to identify hundreds of species of plants and wildlife inside the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.  Before darkness fell, he was trying to catalogue as many bird species as he could find in the delicate ecosystem inside the Gateway National Recreation Area, a federally protected area spanning parts of Queens, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey shore. 

 

Working from 3 p.m. Friday to 3 p.m. Saturday,  he and 272 other participants, ages 2 to 81, treked through the wetlands of the Jamaica Bay in order to learn more about the park and how development is affecting its inhabitants. By the time they were done, they had identified over 650 species of plants and animals, including several that may turn out to be entirely new species.

 

“Getting people out there makes people realize our city was built in what I think is a very interesting and diverse estuarine area,” Gillian Stewart, an assistant professor at Queens College, said in a telephone interview after she had time to recover from the event.  “From an ecological standpoint it would be a fascinating study to see what would have been here had Manhattan never happened.  I hope that the thing most people take away is thinking that, really, we’re just part of a much bigger system.  We’re just one part of this amazing, diverse place.”

 

Stewart organized the BioBlitz with Kim Tripp, director of the Jamaica Bay Institute, along with other professors and scientists from local universities and the National Park Service, which runs Gateway National Recreation Area.

 

Peter R. Warny, 54, a research affiliate at Western Connecticut State University, took a group of participants to Big John’s Pond early Saturday afternoon.  Kneeling down into the still waters, he plucked a gray tree frog from a lily pad before the frog could scamper away.  He showed the group the suction cups on the little frog’s feet, and then proceeded to net two blue dragonflies for collection by Queens College senior Corinna Singleman. 

 

Plant expert Jon H. Sperling, a professor at Queens College, examined a large seed pod on a stalk that was sprouting from the edge of the water.  Looking around at the diversity of wildlife in and around the small pond, he said, “I think this is a pleasant run.” 

 

Meanwhile, Claude Bertin, a teacher at Teachers Preparatory School in Brooklyn, encouraged a group of students to get closer to the turtles, frogs, salamanders and insects that the experts were finding.  “We just want to get the students involved,” he said.

 

Warny, in a later telephone interview, said of Big John’s Pond: “it’s a pond that biologists have put much time, effort and money into.  It’s been studied.”  He was referring to the effort by himself and others to reintroduce populations of amphibians and reptiles, which were coming from areas affected by Long Island’s suburban sprawl.  “Almost all those places are gone,” he laments.  But Big John’s Pond showed encouraging signs.  “All those newts, in pretty good abundance for a coastal pond,” Warny said, noting that most of the newts and salamanders would have to be descended from species that were reintroduced here over a decade ago.

 

BioBlitz participants signed up for group tours of diverse areas within Jamaica Bay.  A group seeking mammals hiked for hours near the old military buildings in Fort Tilden, before finding a small garter snake hanging out next to a slab of wood near the let where their van was parked. 

 

Other groups, like the bird watchers, had more success. “There was an adult Black Crown,” said Bernik, a biologist who drove from Virginia to participate in the BioBlitz.  “Did you get the Pie-Bill that was here?  Close!  Kingfisher over there!”  His excitement at the sightings punctuated the otherwise placid scene.  “This is a huge place for overwintering water fowl,” he explained on the way back to the Jamaica Bay Visitor’s Center.

 

Hundreds of species were collected and brought back to the center where a staff of scientists and students identified specimens of oddly-smelling fungi, wriggling leeches and hapless tree frogs clinging to the sides of plastic bags until their eventual release back into the wild.

 

By Stewart’s measure, the BioBlitz succeeded.  “We almost doubled our expectation as far as numbers of people,” she said.  “I don’t think it could have gone much better.” The final assessment of the BioBlitz results will be completed by March 7, 2008, when investigators and the National Park Service will find out the true diversity of the first urban national park.