Our town, like yours maybe, was an old industrial town with lots of smoke stacks from steel mills, towering pipes spouting flames and burning gases from chemical companies, huge solid block warehouses along the river banks, hundreds of big trucks coming and going. Places where a man could get a job and provide for his wife and kids. It used to be like that.
Then in the 1980s, the mills closed, the warehouses caved in, erosion took away the roads. The store fronts emptied. Restaurants shortened their menus. Even drug stores went out of business. Cities faced financial crisis and funding was cut to parks and recreation.
During this time of economic collapse, nature did what she wanted with the human habitat called parks. Birds dropped berries that grew into trees. Ground hogs and muskrats clambered out of the riverbank and dug holes in the hillsides. Deer swam across the river to graze on what used to be corporate lawns. Owls flew through broken windows to build nests in abandon warehouses. The wind blew seeds from distant wild meadows. Native wildflowers began to grow.
Finally, after the passage of two decades of doom, our town re-invented itself. Not an easy thing to do, but we did it. Now robots have jobs and people train the robots. Cameras are everywhere, especially in the hands of nature lovers. The Nature Club was created so that everyone could share photos of the birds and animals that they saw living among us in our town.
Soon the pictures filled the pages online and the chatter increased. An osprey on a nest here. Blue Jays nesting in a tree over there. A groundhog with little ones had tunneled under a tree near the pond in the park. More and more Great Blue Herons were seen preening. Great Egrets, looking like angels when they lifted their wings in flight, gave mystical visions to believers. Children chased after newly arrived flocks of fearless Canada Geese. A Snowy Owl visited the park one winter and thousands of people came to have their very own photo of the white feathery puff with the big yellow eyes.
During summer, two young Bald Eagles were seen piling up sticks on a weather station off a pier near the old oil tank farms. “Bald Eagles in Our Town!” the post announced, with photos of the young birds and their nest. Everyone in town was jubilant. It was as if Mother Nature had given us a blessing. It proved something—didn’t it?
Our community was a success! We could be proud of ourselves.
It was true. Developers came and built new shopping centers and big luxury apartment buildings. The population of the town grew and grew. Everyone wanted to live in our town. Money was now available that was never there before.
More and more photos of wildlife appeared on the Nature Club’s social media. Word spread. More people took up bird watching and photography. It was a wonderous social experience. You could always start a conversation with anyone about a bird. “Did you see the photo of the Oyster Catchers?”
The parks department and the city council decided that it was time to fix the parks. Brick borders were placed along road edges to reduce damage to lawns. Drains were repaired, walk-ways restored. Playground equipment was replaced. More trees were planted to clean the air. Everyone breathed easier. More joy, more fun, more photos.
The parks were looking good. Clean. Safe. More flowers were being planted, even a few native flowers to show that as a community, we were deep into restoration of habitats. The park lawns were mowed every two weeks, leaf blowers and weed-whackers whizzed around corners and borders removing any discrepancies.
Then the questions came in. Where were all the ground hogs? None had been seen in months. They don’t hibernate until late October, isn’t that true? A response: Fish and Wildlife Dept. were seen poking around the groundhog holes last week. What were they doing there? Responses: Angry, fearful, threatening. “They came to remove varmints. They took 200 Canada Geese from the park last week.” Another response: “Well stupid, we live across the bay from the airport. What do you want—more planes crashing?” The residents were starting to take sides.
Another report: “Rats have been seen at the bird feeders. Shouldn’t we contact the county to have them removed?” A response: “The county will put out poisons that will kill the Red-tailed Hawks if they eat the rats.” Reactions piled on. “Yes, more poison—no to rats.” “No, save the Red-tailed Hawks! How can you call yourselves nature lovers? Rats are part of nature.” Response: “You’re feeding invasive birds, House Sparrows! Why is the Nature Club spending hundreds of dollars feeding invasive birds? Now we have rats! What next?”
Someone then asked: “What happened to the Bald Eagle nest? It’s gone!”
Everyone ran to the site of the nest on the weather station. Took photos. Posted. Empty weather station with no sticks piled high as a nest. Angry responses. “Aren’t Bald Eagles protected by law?” Quick look at Google: “In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Bald Eagle from the federal Endangered Species Act. Bald Eagle is still protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act.” Someone added, “It’s protected by law here in New Jersey.”
Then another report in mid-summer: “Why do they keep mowing down the Common Milkweed that grows near the pond?” A response: “They think native plants are weeds.”
What went wrong? The ground hogs disappeared. The Bald Eagles lost their nest and flew away. Even the wildflowers were cut down so the lawn could look tidy. The park was like a Barbie Doll, it had the shape of Nature, but not the Reality.
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