Wetland Park Quotes

Deep underground, microbes turn half a century's worth of city waste into methane. The gases and leachate are extracted through an extensive network of subterranean pipes and then used to power 22,000 nearby homes. While 150 million tons of garbage gradually decomposes unseen below the surface, above ground, the former dump reverts to meadows, woodland and saltwater marshes, providing a haven for wildlife and a massive park for the people of New York. This is Fresh Kills in the 2020s. In 2001, the infamous landfill received its last, and saddest, consignments - the charred debris of the World Trade Center. Since then, it has been transformed into a 2,315-acre public park. Three times bigger than Central Park, it is the largest new green public space created within New York City for over a century, a mixture of wildlife habitats, bike trails, sports fields, art exhibits and playgrounds. This is poisoned land: fifty years' worth of landfill has killed for ever one of the city's most productive wetland ecosystems. Restoration is impossible. Instead, a brand new ecosystem is emerging on top of the toxic garbage

Beyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. “Isn’t this extraordinary?” Ed Regis said. “Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course.” Ellie paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant found abundantly in fossils more than two hundred million years old, now common only in the wetlands of Brazil and Colombia. But whoever had decided to place this particular fern at poolside obviously didn’t know that the spores of veriformans contained a deadly beta-carboline alkaloid. Even touching the attractive green fronds could make you sick, and if a child were to take a mouthful, he would almost certainly die—the toxin was fifty times more poisonous than oleander. People were so naïve about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction—and defense. But Ellie knew that, in the earth’s history, plants had evolved as competitively as animals, and in some ways more fiercely. The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved. There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication. When a Douglas fir tree was attacked by beetles, it produced an anti-feedant chemical—and so did other Douglas firs in distant parts of the forest. It happened in response to a warning alleochemical secreted by the trees that were under attack. People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals—discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process which she never ceased to find fascinating. And which she knew most people simply didn’t understand. But if planting deadly ferns at poolside was any indication, then it was clear that the designers of Jurassic Park had not been as careful as they should have been.

Because ibis don’t eat silverside and pickles sandwiches,’ Dad says. ‘You’re only giving it the sandwich chunks because you want to feel good about yourself. That’s a selfish mindset. You start feeding that bird from this window every day then it’ll start dropping by every afternoon like we’re fuckin’ Big Rooster and it brings its friends and then none of those birds get the strength and exercise they usually get from finding food the hard way so you drastically alter their metabolisms, not to mention cause widespread civil war among the Bracken Ridge ibis community as they battle to be the first to chomp into your silverside and pickles treat. Moreover, you suddenly get an unnaturally high level of birds in one place, which affects the ecological balance of the whole Bracken Ridge area. I know I don’t always practise this but, basically, you know, the whole point of life is doing things that are right over things that are easy. Because you want to feel good about yourself, suddenly the ibis are spending less time in the wetlands on a tree and more time on the ground in a fuckin’ car park rubbing shoulders with the pigeons, and then we start getting inter-species contact and weaker immune systems in the birds and higher stress hormones and from that little petri dish of dynamite springs salmonella

For Charleston and Rossville residents, the forest around Clay Pit Ponds was an irreplaceable natural area with native and industrial history. In 1951, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses proposed filling in the freshwater wetlands with trash to prepare the land for development. The Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists, the Staten Island Museum, and the Audubon Society teamed up to save the seven ponds in the preserve, home to herons, ducks, muskrats, and bitterns. “I can’t imagine any park commissioner in the world permitting the dumping of garbage into such beautiful ponds,” said W. Lynn McCracken, chairman of the Park Association of Staten Island.

It had preserved nearly 50,000 acres of land in 23 countries, which had had a tremendous positive effect on the enviroment and the communities of northeast Ohio. It has permanently preserved meadows, streams, wetlands, forests, camps, parks, and family farms, enabling flora and fauna to flourish.

mostly the park was a humid, stinking wetlands of reptiles and amphibians croaking from the muck.

The adjective “intact” is earned by encompassing at least 500 square kilometers—which is roughly 125,000 acres—free of roads, power lines, mines, cities, and industrial farms. That’s the size of about 60,000 soccer fields, 146 Central Parks, or a single square of land 14 miles on a side. “Landscapes” is added to the term because natural forests have vital treeless places, such as rivers, lakes, wetlands, and mountaintops mixed in. In 2008, the group helped map all such forests globally. Worldwide, there are currently around 2,000 intact forest landscapes, or IFLs, comprising nearly a quarter of all the planet’s wooded lands. They are heavily concentrated in the five megaforests.

And you can use my cute little leopard-print briefcase. But I want it back. And don’t drag it through the woods either.” “There shouldn’t be a lot of woods between Edmonds and Bellevue.” “I’m sure you can find wetlands or a park if you try.” Amber’s scowl promised she did not want Arwen to try.