All posts by Iesha Clement

Salt Marsh Restoration

Marsh Restoration, Uncategorized

The interactions between man and nature have not always been positive.  Sometimes, the actions of man are detrimental to the health of the environment around them.  However, as badly as people affect nature, they try to make up for it by putting in efforts to enhance it.  Because of manmade objects, salt marshes have been harmed and even destroyed.  The ecosystems and nutrients in these salt marshes were interfered with.  Now, there have been many attempts to try to reverse that.  Scientists have been trying to figure out ways to restore salt marshes back to their original, healthy state.  As with anything that tampers with nature, there are a variety of factors that they must take into account.  The question is, are the risks worth it?

To restore salt marshes, there must be a lot of monitoring of the environment.  Once one thing is changed, it affects many others.  If it is a negative change, restoration may further ruin the salt marsh.  Scientists have been trying out different techniques and plans on small plots of land to monitor how one change affects everything else.  Through this process, they can determine what may work for the salt marsh as a whole.  Another aspect that will be affected is the animals that live off of salt marsh plants and nutrients.  Although objects and actions of humans destroy some plants, new plants grow in their place.  With these new plants, new organisms make this new environment their home.  What will happen to them if this new ecosystem is reverted back to its original state?  They may be relocated or displaced, but that would result in another ecosystem that is negatively affected by human interference.

The restoration of salt marshes affects almost everything in and around it.  In order to maintain the harmony between the environment and the organisms in it, humans should let it be or closely watch and fix all of the negative changes that are a result of our interference.  While it may be worth it to make an unhealthy ecosystem healthy, it takes a lot of time and careful observance.  Modern science may have the technology to fix what is wrong with the salt marshes, but it may not be advance enough to deal with the consequences of one little change.  To fully and successfully restore salt marshes to its original health, we must be willing to put in the most amount of effort needed.

Destruction of Nature: Ignorance or Careless Intention

Destruction of the Salt Marshes

There has always been the question of whether the Earth is being ruined because of human’s inability to develop the means to take care of nature or their careless and lack of concern towards a healthy environment.  What we do know is that man has not always destroyed the Earth to the level that we see today.  When humans first started to live off of the land, they learned how to exist peacefully with and respect their environment.  Some of these early people include Native Americans.  As people from more developed places, like Europe, began interacting with them, they introduced them to more destructive ways of using nature for their own good.  This is what started the thoughtless of the nature around us.

Unlike Native Americans, European settlers did not have the mindset of taking care of the land around them.  They considered all land that could not be used for planting food as useless.  Once they came to America, they came across an abundance of open land that could, as they thought, be used for whatever they desired.  This also gave them the idea that they could afford to waste however much land they wanted.  Because of this idea, Europeans found ways to “get rid off” the land that they deemed useless.  For example, when the Dutch settled in New York, they decided to drain the salt marshes because there was no way to grow the food that they needed.  Although the settlers needed some land to live off of, for planting food and spices, they felt entitled to all of the land.  This may have been where the problem began.  Europeans were using the land for their survival and there were not enough of them at the time for their disregard towards their environment to make a significant impact on the Earth as a whole. Unintentionally, this set the standards for the world we live in today.

Compared to today, Europeans had less information about what wasting land and nature could do to the planet.  Though their actions were still relatively careless, they did not have the advantage of technology and science to give them a look into what their activities would do to the Earth as a whole.  Since then, we have learned that land is a great resource.  Even if it cannot be used for agriculture, it can contain nutrients, oil, and even precious metals and gems.  Perfect examples of that are swamps and salt marshes.  They cannot serve as planting ground, but the unique nutrients and organisms that live within them can be used for many different purposes. Without these valuable minerals, nature is still important to our environment.  It provides the oxygen we breathe and a balance in the world’s ecosystem.  We have also learned that because of careless and wasteful behavior our environment is at an extreme risk.  We are already facing problems with global warming and shortages in natural resources.  Even with this information, we continue to disrespect the environment.  People still litter and cause excess pollution.  Business still cause harm to bodies of water and waste large amounts of land that could be valuable in many different ways.  Unfortunately, we have not learned from our past.  People continue to destroy nature without thinking about how much of a difference caring for our environment would make.

Lenape’s Medicinal Practices

Land of the Lenapes

Today, medicine is an exact science.  Without precision and caution the effects of pharmaceuticals can easily turn from positive to negative.  What could possibly soothe a sore throat or cure strep throat can cause pain if made with one wrong chemical, or even taken with the wrong liquid.  As medicine becomes more and more complex, there is one thing that will stay the same.  The reason we have medicine today is because, many generations before, man found a way to use plants as a healing agent.  For example, Indian sage was used to cure “break-bone fever”, which is now known as the flu, and can now be used to remedy the common cold and rheumatism.  They created a way to cooperate with nature in order to survive.

The Lenapes had a special relationship with nature.  They respected and tried to mimic the ways of nature in order to use plants for their own purposes.  In City at the Water’s Edge, they state that American Indians “experienced and evolved with the indigenous native flora.”  Because of the relationship they developed with their environment, they knew almost everything there was to know about the indigenous herbs.  Those who knew the special properties of every single native plant had what was known as “green medicine.”  Especially skillful men and women had dreams or visions from the spirit world and became “medicine people,” which were basically healers and meditators who used herbs and medicinal brews to redeem others’ health.  They made medicine from plants, toots, bark, and herbs that they found around in their surroundings.  However, the Lenapes did not just take away from nature, they found a way to give back.

In order to live in peace with nature, the Lenapes performed many rituals before gathering certain herbs and plants.  If these rituals were not done correctly, or at all, the remedies made from these plants would not be effective.  They would first stop at the first type of plant that they needed and drop a tobacco offering in a hole that was dug east of it.  Only after they have given the offering would they pick the next plant of the same kind.  When taking bark from a tree, they would only strip bark from healthy trees and from the side facing the sun.  Although this procedure was probably more for their benefit, they used what they knew about the health of the wildlife around them to help their own health.  When herbalists were preparing a medicinal brew, they stir it counterclockwise “to simulate the direction the sun travels.”  Using patterns of nature to enhance their quality of well-being shows that the Lenapes respected it enough to learn from it.

My BioBlitz Experience

Bio Blitz

Waking up early on the very last day of summer vacation to walk around a park would not be ideal to most college students.  However, for the BioBlitz in Central Park many Macaulay students were more than excited.  Having gone to Central Park many times, just for fun, I was ecstatic to hear that our class was picked to explore the wildlife of the park.  Studying the plant life, watching the animals in their natural habitats, and exploring parts of Central Park I had never seen before sounded like a perfect way to spend my last day of summer vacation.  Especially since we had the opportunity to be in the park before most New Yorkers were even awake.  With this excitement and motivation to find wildlife I never knew existed in Central Park, I set off to the train station at 4:30 a.m.

The trip to the park was less than enjoyable, having to deal with the usual annoyances of waiting for trains that do not run too often before the morning rush hour, but after about two hours of riding and waiting for our trains, we made it to the West 97th Street entrance to Central Park.  The first nervous thought I had was that I would end up not seeing much of the park, since we were a little late.  Thankfully we ran into the director of the BioBlitz, and she helped us find a group to join in on.  I ended up in a group that was searching for birds.  We started walking down a path where we saw a group of cardinals, a few morning doves, and some robins.  Already five minutes in and we were learning something new!  The director explained to us that there are two robins in the world.  The ones we saw were not actually robins; they were thrushes.  The Europeans named them robins when they came to America because of their resemblance to the European robin.  We also learned that the morning dove was a relative of the pigeon, which explained why they were moving their neck in pecking motions.  Sadly, this was the highlight of our Central Park adventure.

Once we found the rest of our group, we set off on a mostly uphill journey.  At first, the trip was not that uneventful.  We saw a few other birds, but they were so fast that by the time we moved our binoculars to our eyes, they were gone.  Beautiful flowers were out and blooming on almost every bush we walked by.  We passed a couple of calming waterfalls and very cute bridges.  A turtle even graced us with its presence as we walked across one of the bridges.  This was the experience I was hoping for.  Seeing different animals in the park that we do not usually come across and finding new areas of the park that I didn’t know existed.  However, this did not last long.  After we passed the friendly turtle, we barely saw anything new.  Aside from the geese swimming in a line across a pond, there was nothing new and exciting in our part of the park.  Even all of the plants began to look the same.  Our guide began telling us, about once every half hour, that because of the weather it would be a quiet day.

Overall, the BioBlitz was not a complete let down.  I still experienced some of the purposes of the event, despite the weather and travel issues.  I would have loved to see more of Central Park and its inhabitants during this event.  However, what it made me realize is that there is more to Central Park than meets the eye.  It is not just a place to hang out on the weekend or where tourist must go when they visit New York City.  It is a place for many of New York’s organisms to call home, and we got to take a little look into that.  It has changed my outlook on not only Central Park, but also New York as a whole.