While human beings looking down from an airplane at the Blackstone parks on the morning of Earth Day, April 22nd, would have seen clouds of pink and green, an eagle cruising above could have seen far more detail: a blossom on a cherry tree on the Boulevard, for instance, or the millipede in the outstretched palm of a child in the Blackstone Park Conservation District.
The millipede was being admired by 30 three-, four-, and five-year-olds from nearby Lincoln School who were listening to environmental educator April Alix talk about the creatures–including earthworms and forest cockroaches–that make earth. Shepherded by members of the Blackstone Park Conservancy (BPC) education committee and several teachers, the children excitedly hugged a large tree and each other. No movie, no matter how exquisitely photographed, is likely to generate the thrill of actually being outdoors in the woodland.
The children’s exploration of the Park was the first of many Conservancy events scheduled for young people for 2015, all introducing the wonders in these partially protected acres. With the backing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and support from the Providence Parks Department, the BPC seeks to help compensate for the lack of exposure to nature among city children today.
Habitat Restoration – Through the pale green leaves just unfolding in Blackstone Park in early May, the eagle on the lookout for small mammals would have paid no mind to a yellow backhoe beside a pile of gravel—the beginnings of a second chapter in the BPC-CRMC (Coastal Resources Management Council) partnership in habitat restoration, which began last year with help from the Department of Environmental Management (DEM). But while the work might not interest the eagle, it will have a small impact on the Park’s hospitableness to all wildlife.
Natural gullies have been carrying soil down the slopes of the sandy coastal woodland for many years, and people trudging up and down have exacerbated the process. The BPC is supplementing a $30,000 grant from CRMC with about three thousand dollars of its own and managing a project to repair the badly eroded gully down to the Narragansett Boat House. Carefully built terracing will help hundreds of new woodland plants anchor the slopes beside the trail.
The erosion in Blackstone Park—which Blackstone Boulevard Park also suffers from to a lesser extent–is a small example of the damage stormwater runoff is doing throughout Providence, depleting soil and nutrients and carrying pollutants into the Narragansett Bay, undermining all the creatures in the skein of life. As a member of the Stormwater Coalition, the Conservancy participates in city- and state-wide efforts to protect land from runoff, erosion, and flooding.
Habitat loss is a major obstacle to bird survival, which is one reason we need to protect not only the parks, but also in the green swath that extends north through Butler Hospital, Swan Point Cemetery, and Riverside Cemetery. Caring for street and yard trees and avoiding pesticides in flowering nursery plants is also important.
It is partly thanks to the Blackstone parks that Providence residents frequently glimpse raptors, from Red Tail and Cooper hawks to owls. Eagles are less common, but many people do see them, especially along the Seekonk River. The great migration that occurs every spring and fall is a good time to see many birds.
Jane Peterson
