<
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/09/01/new-yorks-waters-are-being-reborn>
"For reassurance that Americans can still work together with patience and
vision, look to the waterways of New York. Nine humpback whales recently
surfaced there together, spouting and breeching against the city skyline as
though vying for the most dramatic selfie. Fin whales and right whales are also
appearing in startling numbers—along with bottlenose dolphins, spinner and
hammerhead sharks, seals, blue crabs and seahorses. Oysters, which all but
vanished decades ago, are clamping themselves to bulkheads from Brooklyn’s
Coney Island Creek to the Mario Cuomo Bridge, almost 20 miles up the Hudson
from the city.
Humans, too, can be seen in profusion, on the water and in it. One can forget,
when the horizons are bounded by skyscrapers a bus-length away, that New York
City is an archipelago, a fringe of North America trailing into the Atlantic.
Only one of its five boroughs—the Bronx—is on the mainland, and the three
rivers that wind through them, and the harbour into which those rivers drain,
are cleaner than they have been in 100 years. They are becoming New York’s
great decentralised park.
New Yorkers paddle-board on the Hudson; they cruise the Harlem river, blasting
music as they sun themselves on the foredecks of sleek motorboats; they chase
each other on jet skis under the Brooklyn Bridge; they surf at dawn in sight of
the housing projects of Far Rockaway, in Queens, then take the A train to work.
And they catch whale-watching tours from Brooklyn. “It’s amazing,” says Howard
Rosenbaum, who grew up in New York when sighting a single whale off the distant
tip of Long Island was a big deal. He leads the Wildlife Conservation Society’s
Ocean Giants Programme, which happens to be based at the Bronx Zoo. “I’ve
worked in every ocean basin, and people associate these wildlife spectacles
with other areas of our planet. Yet they’re right here in our backyard.” He
suspects the whales’ return owes to some combination of the Clean Water Act of
1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and a decade-old, multi-state
initiative to stop the overfishing of one of the whales’ favourite foods,
menhaden, known locally as bunker.
Mr Rosenbaum had the foresight to begin asking questions about whales in the
region some 15 years ago. The Conservation Society’s research project has
matured as they began appearing in greater numbers. He is now working to
deconflict the big marine and terrestrial mammals, to prevent ship strikes and
ensure that forthcoming wind farms take the whales into account."
Via
Future Crunch Sep 12, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-measles-indonesia-conservation-us-solar-europe/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
