Outdoors Outdoors THE FREE NEWSPAPER OF OUTDOOR ADVENTURE JANUARY / FEBRUARY / MARCH 2010 iinn NNewew YYorkork CCityity Includes CALENDAR OF URBAN PARK RANGER CHILDREN PROGRAMS Artist: Anne Yen| ©2009 NYC Department of Parks & Recreation 2 CITY OF NEW YORK PARKS & RECREATION www.nyc.gov/parks/rangers URBAN PARK RANGERS Message from: Ken Struve, Executive Director, City Access New York If you’re a kid, what’s long school-based residencies in social studies and science adapted better than munching on to the needs of EVS students, and aligned to state learning standards. a chocolate chip cricket Since 2005, Adapted Arts & Science has also co-hosted a week-long cookie? Or seining in a inclusive science camp, Summer Science, with its partner Rocking salt marsh? Or rowing the Boat — an environmental education organization located along on the Bronx River in a the Bronx River. Like the Citywide Science Scholarships, Summer handmade boat? It’s a Science is an inclusive program where EVS students attend on-the- great way to spend your water programming alongside sighted peers whom they invite. summer. But if you’re a kid Adapted Arts & Science is made possible by generous support from with a disability, chances the J.E. and Z.B. Butler Foundation, the Reader’s Digest Partnership for are you won’t get to do Sight Foundation, and from the Foundation for the Supporters of the many of these things. Disabled. If you would like to view a new video documenting Adapted City Access New York is Arts & Science, please visit www.viddler.com/explore/cityaccess/ a non-profi t organization videos/1/. that focuses on bringing Adapted Arts & Science is just one of many collaborative projects mainstream resources that CANY provides for people with disabilities in NYC. Our programs into the lives of people for people of all ages with developmental or sensory disabilities, with disabilities. Among promote inclusion and lifelong access to educational, vocational and the many programs that City Access New York (CANY) implements, cultural opportunities. We work collaboratively with our partners to we are especially proud to partner with the Urban Park Rangers identify barriers to participation in schools and in the community, and (UPR) to provide Citywide Science Scholarships to youngsters who adapt the content and delivery of programs to diverse needs. Please are visually impaired or blind. For the past two years, CANY and the contact us at [email protected] if you would like to learn Rangers have provided more than 75 scholarships for Ranger summer more about CANY, or visit our website at www.cityaccessny.org. camps and school holiday programs. Best of all, CANY and the Rangers worked together to adapt content and develop inclusive settings so that kids with and without disabilities can learn and play together The Urban Park Rangers encourage all New Yorkers through accessible hands-on science in real world settings. to visit city parks and connect with the natural world. Parks’ goal is to go beyond mere compliance with the Citywide Science Scholarships are part of a larger inclusive project Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide greater called Adapted Arts & Science for EVS Students. Educational Vision access and increased opportunities for recreation and participation Services, or EVS, is the largest education program in the world serving by removing obstacles to participation, and through strategic children who are blind or visually impaired, and serves about 1,100 partnerships. For more information on accessability in New York students in New York City. Adapted Arts & Science also provides year- City parks, visit us on the web at www.nyc.gov/parks. parks. When complete, the Bronx River Greenway will span Outdoor News 23 miles and extend the full length of the Bronx River, from CONCRETE PLANT PARK OPENING SIGNALS A NEW VISION FOR Westchester PUBLIC SPACE County through the Bronx to the On October 12, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe joined Deputy East River. Parks Bronx Borough President Aurelia Greene, Council Member Maria and its non- del Carmen Arroyo, Assembly Member Marcos Crespo, Community profi t partner Board 2 District Manager John Robert, Alexie Torres-Fleming, the Bronx Executive Director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, and River Alliance Bronx River Alliance chairperson Joan Byron to cut the ribbon on are working Concrete Plant Park, situated along the western shore of the Bronx to complete River between Westchester Avenue & Bruckner Boulevard. the New York The seven-acre park, New York City’s newest waterfront public City portion of space, is the latest link to be developed as part of the Bronx River the greenway. Greenway. A reclamation of a former industrial wasteland, it now Approximately includes a multi-use recreational path for running, cycling, and 6.5 miles of New York City’s rollerblading, and is a model for 21st century vision in parks across Photographer: Malcolm Pinckney | © NYC Department of Parks & Recreation the country. portion of the greenway are currently in place with the full portion anticipated to The new park features a waterfront promenade, kayak/canoe be completed within the next fi ve years. launch, green lawns, a reading circle, native tidal wetland © THE FREE NEWSPAPER OF OUTDOOR ADVENTURE plantings, landscaping, and established park entrances at Westchester Avenue and the Bruckner Boulevard. Silos fromom thethe old concrete plant remain as sculptural elements and remindersnders ofof the site’s past. Funding for the $11.4 million project was providedoviv ded by Mayor Bloomberg ($6.3 million), a federal grant secured byby Congressman José E. Serrano ($3.9 million), mitigation funds fromfrom OutdoorsOutdoors the construction of the Croton Water Filtration Plant through thethhe iininn NNewNewew YYorkYorkork CCityCityity New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the Municipal Water Finance Authority ($592,000), Bronx Borough Planning Sarah Aucoin, Director President ($540,000), and a grant from the Recreational Trails ProgramsP Bonnie McGuire, Deputy Director Program of the NY State Offi ce of Parks, Recreation, and Historicriic OperationsOperaatio Richard Simon, Deputy Director Preservation ($100,000). ProgramsPrograms Marta Arroyo, Program Manager The site of Concrete Plant Park served as a concrete mixing plant Graphicraphic DesignDesign Elizabeth Green, Graphic Artist which operated from the late 1940s through 1987. Concrete Plant Park is the latest link to be developed along the Bronx River Researchch Shalini Beath, Grants Manager Greenway, a ribbon of multi-use pathway linked by waterfront Urban Park Rangers • 1234 Fifth Avenue • New York City 10029 URBAN PARK RANGERS www.nyc.gov/parks/rangers CITY OF NEW YORK PARKS & RECREATION 3 A Child’s Sense of Wonder By Bonnie McGuire, Deputy Director, Urban Park Rangers the three-foot wide trail. Two campers were chosen each time to Early on in my career as an Urban Park Ranger, I was leading a group make sure the caterpillar made it safely across the path and didn’t get of 25 Junior Ranger summer campers around the Salt Marsh Nature stepped on, while the others observed and tried to count the steps it Trail in Marine Park. I was trying to teach them about the importance took! of salt marshes. It was a very clear, summer day; a great day to spot By the time we got back to the nature center, I didn’t want to see a wide variety of animals in the marsh. At the beginning of the another woolly bear caterpillar in my life. But as a Park Ranger, not trail one camper screamed “Look at that thing!” All the campers to mention and an academically trained entomologist, I was pretty crowded around him, while I made my way over. Expecting to see a happy about sharing those moments with the campers. And I’m quite snake, turtle, or possibly something dead, I was slightly taken aback sure they will remember that experience for a while, if not the rest of to fi nally discover the source of their excitement. It was a woolly their lives! Later in the summer some of the campers came back to caterpillar, the larval stage of the Isabella Tiger moth. And that was it; camp, and they were still fascinated by those woolly caterpillars. the end of my salt marsh program. In the blink of an eye, the program shifted from what I wanted to talk about to what they wanted to hear To see a camper’s eyes light up the fi rst time they see a woolly about. For the rest of the hour we had together, we talked about caterpillar, green frog, egret, or garter snake, catch their fi rst fi sh, caterpillars, moths, butterfl ies and their life cycles, what they eat, shoot with a bow and arrow, paddle a canoe, or pitch a tent is one how they fl y, of the greatest parts of my job as an Urban Park Ranger. And making where they these activities available right here in New York City is an honor and a live and even privilege. if they sleep Junior Ranger Summer Day Camp is off ered at Blue Heron Nature or not. Where I Center in Staten Island, Salt Marsh Nature Center in Brooklyn, Inwood could, I threw Hill Nature Center in Manhattan, and Crotona Park Nature Center in tidbits in the Bronx. The camp off ers the best of the Urban Park Ranger about the salt experience, combining instructional elements (ecology, birds, insects, marsh and plants, trees, reptiles and amphibians, fi sh, Native American Pathways the oceans, and much more) with hands-on recreational elements (canoeing, but our focus fi shing, seining, orienteering, archery, and more) and park restoration was where projects (tree plantings, native plant gardens and more). Campers © Robert Hambley | Dreamstime.com they wanted earn patches to celebrate each accomplishment.