Europe As Europe Grasps for Answers, More Migrants Flood Its Borders

Europe

As Europe Grasps for Answers, 

More Migrants Flood Its Borders

 By RICK LYMAN and ALISON SMALE  SEPT. 6, 2015

HEGYESHALOM, Hungary — Throughout the day on Sunday, train after packed train arrived at this border town from Budapest, the passengers smoothly shifting to a gleaming Austrian train on the opposite side of the platform and being whisked on to Vienna and beyond — 13,000 of them in the first 36 hours after Hungary allowed throngs of refugees and migrants to travel toward Germany.

But that is not the end. Thousands of migrants continue to flow through the Balkans toward Hungary every day, rapidly approaching its southern border with Serbia, government officials said. Two Greek ferries carrying more than 4,000 migrants were scheduled to land Sunday in Athens, a first stop on the migrant trail through the Balkans.

 In Hegyeshalom, Hungary, migrants wait to board buses for the Austrian border.

Marko Drobnjakovic/Associated Press

 

Pope Francis spoke to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday. Credit Riccardo De Luca/Associated Press 

On Sunday, Pope Francis called upon Catholic parishes and religious communities to take in refugees. And Germany has called for a quota system to distribute the migrant population evenly throughout Europe.

But the European Union remains deeply divided over what should be done, a debate that has strained relations and threatened the 28-nation bloc’s proud policy of open borders.

Far-right politicians, mostly quiet so far, found their voice on Sunday with Marine Le Pen of France, the National Front leader, complaining that a widely dispersed photograph of a drowned Syrian child that had shocked the world was being used to make Europeans “feel guilty.”

A gathering of foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Sunday produced only more discord. More talks are scheduled for this week. Germany, which has admitted by far the largest number of migrants — it expects to accept 800,000 this year — has called upon other nations to accept more, but found much resistance, especially in Eastern Europe.

“We have been facing this challenge for several months, and we continue to take in refugees,” said Peter Altmaier, chief of staff to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “But we need a readiness in other European countries to join in.”

Human rights groups say that, for the foreseeable future, there is every reason to expect migrants from Syria and other countries in crisis to descend on Europe in ever greater numbers. In Syria alone, 11 million people have been displaced by war, seven million within the country’s borders and four million outside, mostly to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

The number of Syrians requesting asylum in Europe rose steadily for years before attracting international attention, reaching an estimated 348,000 since April 2011, the month after the civil war there began. The numbers are accelerating as the war worsens — from 8,000 asylum claims in 2011 to 56,000 in 2013 and 150,000 in 2014, according to United Nations figures. Those numbers reflect only asylum claims, not the far greater flow of those claiming refugee status.

                       

Migrants in Roszke, Hungary, on Sunday after crossing the border from Serbia. Rights groups say Europe should expect extensive migration for some time. Credit Marko Djurica/Reuters

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Another factor in the increase is the discovery of routes through Turkey and Greece that are safer and often cheaper than the old route through Libya, which involved a perilous land trek and an equally dangerous ride across the Mediterranean Sea. Human rights experts say that the combination of the new routes, an apparently welcoming Europe, deteriorating security in Syria and the higher socioeconomic status of the recent migrants virtually ensures increases.

Hungary, on the front lines of the crisis and led by an anti-immigrant prime minister and governing party, has sent mixed signals on its intentions. While allowing migrants already in the country to head to the West, officials began a crackdown over the weekend on new arrivals. Hungary opened a new holding camp with space for 1,000 people — surrounded by razor wire and guarded by dogs and the police — in the southern border town of Roszke, and rights groups quickly assailed the camp as inhumane.

Hungary is also building a razor-wire fence along its 108-mile southern border with Serbia, and it has passed harsher laws involving the treatment of migrants and penalties for helping them. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cast it as a fight for Christian values against a Muslim surge.

On the Austrian border on Sunday, however, cooperation between the Hungarian police and Austrian rail officials created a seamless corridor through Hegyeshalom, the main crossing between Budapest and Vienna.

Magdalena Frank, a real estate agent from Vienna, squatted with a circle of volunteers on the dusty platform at the Hegyeshalom station, part of an assembly line of sandwich makers. “We are waiting for a train of refugees due in a few minutes,” she said, pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

All around were piles of diapers, bananas, savory pies, dates and enough bottled water to fill a swimming pool. “When we heard what was happening, I contacted some friends and we decided we had to come and help,” said Barbara Secka, a mechanical engineering student from Vienna. “We all began cooking.”

When the 5 p.m. train from Budapest arrived, a half-hour late and with standing room only, more than 500 migrants poured onto the platform. “Welcome!” the volunteers shouted in English. “Have something to eat!” With stunning efficiency, the volunteers distributed the aid, moved the migrants into the adjacent train and waved goodbye as it pulled out of the station.

Meanwhile, a convoy of more than 100 Austrian vehicles made their way to Budapest on Sunday, vowing to offer rides to Vienna for any migrants who wanted them — and ignoring warnings from the Hungarian authorities that this violated that country’s refugee laws.

Along Hungary’s border with Serbia, the scene was anything but smooth.

“While Europe rejoiced in happy images from Austria and Greece yesterday, refugees crossing into Hungary right now see a very different picture: riot police and a cold, hard ground to sleep on,” Barbora Cernusakova, an Amnesty International researcher, said in a statement released by the group.

The new camp in Roszke was being called a “reception center” by Hungarian officials, though the police on the scene referred to it as an “alien holding center.”

Both migrants and relief groups were reporting harsh treatment and a hostile reception from the border authorities. On the Serbian side, officials temporarily blocked at least some trains headed north, amid numerous reports of the police demanding bribes to allow the migrants to pass.

Photos on social media from the new camp showed the police with dogs guarding a desolate compound surrounded by high fences.

Omar Hadad, 24, from Dara’a, Syria, had been at a nearby camp along the border before he was shifted on Sunday to one west of Budapest, in the town of Bicske.

“The Hungarian police came into the camp and they beat me with batons,” he said of his time in the holding center near the Serbian border. He peeled off his socks to show a bruised foot and leg.

Journalists were not allowed into the Bicske camp, but the migrants could come out or speak across the entrance gate. Several other migrants rushed toward Mr. Hadad when they saw him displaying his wounds.

“Here, here, look,” said Salam Barajakly, a student from Damascus who began counting off the wounds and scars on his arms, legs and neck that he said he had gotten on the journey to Hungary, some by accident, some from the police, some from crawling under razor-wire fences.

Two men held out smartphones showing videos of the camp where they had been held near the Serbian border. Hundreds of people squatted in the dust while the police tossed sandwiches and bottles of water to them over a barbed-wire fence.

“Like a zoo,” Mr. Hadad said. “Like we are dogs.”

The group had arrived at the Bicske camp an hour earlier and was waiting to make the mile-and-a-quarter walk to the rail station to catch a train toward Hegyeshalom. The Hungarian guards at the camp were encouraging the migrants to go.

Confusion and lack of information were endemic, as they have been throughout the migrant crisis in Budapest. Even the various Hungarian authorities could not agree on the latest rules.

On Saturday, migrants in Vienna crowded onto trains headed for Munich.

By NABIH BULOS on Publish Date September 5, 2015. Watch in Times Video »

At the Bicske station, a midafternoon train to the border was held up for 10 minutes as an angry conductor tried to throw migrants without tickets off the train.

“Off! Off!” she shouted. “No tickets, then off!”

A group of police officers on the platform called out to her to let the migrants travel. “Don’t you know they are supposed to travel for free?” one asked.

“Says who? They need tickets,” the woman said.

Even when the chief of police told the woman to allow the migrants to travel, she resisted.

Finally, a railroad official showed up and told her to leave the migrants alone.

“Oh, so no tickets are necessary,” she said. “I guess I don’t have a reason to work anymore, do I?”

And she stormed off, taking no one’s ticket.

HICKOK

A Volcanic Eruption That Reverberates 200 Years Later

 By WILLIAM J. BROAD    AUG. 24, 2015

 

    

 The deep volcanic crater, top, was produced by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April 1815 - the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded history. Credit Iwan Setiyawan/KOMPAS, via Associated Press

In April 1815, the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded history shook the planet in a catastrophe so vast that 200 years later, investigators are still struggling to grasp its repercussions. It played a role, they now understand, in icy weather, agricultural collapse and global pandemics — and even gave rise to celebrated monsters.

Around the lush isles of the Dutch East Indies — modern-day Indonesia — the eruption of Mount Tambora killed tens of thousands of people. They were burned alive or killed by flying rocks, or they died later of starvation because the heavy ash smothered crops.

More surprising, investigators have found that the giant cloud of minuscule particles spread around the globe, blocked sunlight and produced three years of planetary cooling. In June 1816, a blizzard pummeled upstate New York. That July and August, killer frosts in New England ravaged farms. Hailstones pounded London all summer.

In April 1815, the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded history shook the planet in a catastrophe so vast that 200 years later, investigators are still struggling to grasp its repercussions. It played a role, they now understand, in icy weather, agricultural collapse and global pandemics — and even gave rise to celebrated monsters.

Around the lush isles of the Dutch East Indies — modern-day Indonesia — the eruption of Mount Tambora killed tens of thousands of people. They were burned alive or killed by flying rocks, or they died later of starvation because the heavy ash smothered crops.

More surprising, investigators have found that the giant cloud of minuscule particles spread around the globe, blocked sunlight and produced three years of planetary cooling. In June 1816, a blizzard pummeled upstate New York. That July and August, killer frosts in New England ravaged farms. Hailstones pounded London all summer.

A recent history of the disaster, “Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World,” by Gillen D’Arcy Wood, shows planetary effects so extreme that many nations and communities sustained waves of famine, disease, civil unrest and economic decline. Crops failed globally.

 

The Mount Tambora eruption's profound aftermath influenced the skies of 19th-century paintings like “Chichester Canal,” above, by J.M.W. Turner. Credit Tate, London 2015 

“The year without a summer,” as 1816 came to be known, gave birth not only to paintings of fiery sunsets and tempestuous skies but two genres of gothic fiction. The freakish progeny were Frankenstein and the human vampire, which have loomed large in art and literature ever since.

“The paper trail,” said Dr. Wood, a University of Illinois professor of English, “goes back again and again to Tambora.”

The gargantuan blast — 100 times bigger than Mount St. Helens’s — and its ensuing worldwide pall have been the subject of increasing study over the years as scientists have sought to comprehend not only the planet’s climatological past but the future likelihood of such global disasters.

Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, who has studied the Tambora catastrophe, put the chance of a similar explosion in the next half-century as relatively low — perhaps 10 percent. But the consequences, he added, could run extraordinarily high.

“The modern world,” Dr. Oppenheimer said, “is far from immune to the potentially catastrophic impacts.”

Before it exploded, Tambora was the tallest peak in a land of cloudy summits. It lay atop the tropic isle of Sumbawa, its spires rising nearly three miles. Long dormant, the mountain was considered a home to gods. Villages dotted its slopes, and nearby farmers grew rice, coffee and pepper.

On the evening of April 5, 1815, according to contemporary accounts, flames shot from its summit and the earth rumbled for hours. The volcano then fell silent.

Five days later, the peak exploded in a deafening roar of fire, rock and boiling ash that was heard hundreds of miles away. Flaming rivers of molten rock ran down the slopes, destroying tropic forests and villages. Days later, still raging but by then hollow, the mountain collapsed, its height suddenly diminished by a mile.

Locally, an estimated 100,000 people died. Sumbawa never recovered.

The repercussions were global, but no one realized that the widespread death and mayhem arose from an eruption halfway around the world. What emerged was regional folklore. New Englanders called 1816 “eighteen hundred and froze to death.” Germans called 1817 the year of the beggar. These and many other local episodes remained unknown or unconnected.

                                                                                                                                                                                               

An early rendering of Frankenstein. In the cold and stormy summer of 1816, while on holiday in Switzerland, Mary Shelley came up with her lurid tale. Credit The British Library Board

                                                                                                        It was scientists who began to stitch together the big picture, especially the peculiar link between fiery volcanism and icy weather. An overarching goal was to separate natural climate fluctuations from those of human origin. One after another, studies came back to New England and its frigid summer of 1816.                                                                                                     

Dr. Wood expanded the portrait in his book, which is due out in paperback next month. It draws on hundreds of scientific papers as well as Dr. Wood’s knowledge of 19th-century literature to lay bare three years of planetary mayhem as well as the origins of fictional demons.

“My interest was to understand a global event,” Dr. Wood said in an interview, “and that meant serious detective work in lots of unfamiliar archives.” Five years of inquiry took him to China, Europe and India.

It also transported him to Tambora, where he braved leeches and razor-sharp leaves to peer across its yawning caldera, four miles from rim to rim.

The exploding mountain, the book notes, heaved some 12 cubic miles of earthen matter to a height of more than 25 miles. While coarse particles soon rained out, finer ones traveled the high winds in a spreading cloud. “It passed,” Dr. Wood wrote, “across both south and north poles, leaving a telltale sulfate imprint on the ice for paleoclimatologists to discover more than a century and a half later.”

The global veil, high above rain clouds, reflected much sunlight back into space. So the planet cooled. The pall, Dr. Wood said, also spawned tempests far below.

His book reprints an 1816 oil painting of Weymouth Bay, a sheltered cove on England’s south coast, by John Constable — the sky above churning with dark clouds. “Everywhere,” Dr. Wood said, “the volcanic winds blew hard.” He noted that both history and computer models speak of fierce storms back then.

The particles high in the atmosphere also produced spectacular sunsets, as detailed in the famous paintings of J.M.W. Turner, the English landscape pioneer. His vivid red skies, Dr. Wood remarked, “seem like an advertisement for the future of art.”

The story also comes alive in local dramas, none more important for literary history than the birth of Frankenstein’s monster and the human vampire. That happened on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where some of the most famous names of English poetry had gone on a summer holiday.

By 1816, Switzerland, landlocked and famously rugged, was beginning to reel from the bad weather and failed crops. Starving mobs stormed bakeries after bread prices soared. The book recounts a priest’s distress: “It is terrifying to see these walking skeletons devour the most repulsive foods with such avidity.”

                                                                                                  

 

A harbor scene by  Caspar David  Friedrich, painted after the Tambora eruption, depicts a vivid sky. Credit Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y. 

 

That June, the cold and stormy weather sent the English tourists inside a lakeside villa to warm themselves by a fire and exchange ghost stories. Mary Shelley, then 18, was part of a literary coterie that included Percy Shelley, her future husband, as well as Lord Byron. Wine flowed, as did laudanum, a form of opium. Candles flickered.

In this moody atmosphere, Mary Shelley came up with her lurid tale of Frankenstein, which she published two years later. And Lord Byron hit on the outline of the modern vampire tale, published later by a compatriot as “The Vampyre.” The freakish weather also inspired Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.”

Dr. Wood’s book documents many other repercussions of the planetary chill, devoting a chapter to a cholera pandemic of 1817 that began in India and globally killed tens of millions of people. Dr. Wood attributes its rise to a deadly combination of monsoonal changes and pounding rains — a main theory of leading cholera detectives.

The pandemic spread and eventually reached the Dutch East Indies. On Java alone it killed an estimated 125,000 people — more, Dr. Wood noted, “than died in the volcanic eruption itself.”

He also profiles the wintry chill in Yunnan Province in southern China, a land of mountains and jungles roamed by tigers and elephants. Rice crops there quickly failed, and famine gnawed deep for years. In July 1816, Dr. Wood noted, the province had “unprecedented snows.”

The poet, Li Yuyang, who was 32 as Tambora began its global rampage, wrote of cold downpours and flash flooding in “A Sigh for Autumn Rain.”

Water spilling from the eaves deafens me.
People rush from falling houses in their thousands
And tens of thousands, for the work of the rain
Is worse than the work of thieves. Bricks crack. Walls fall.
In an instant, the house is gone.

Dr. Wood closes with a portrait of the eastern United States in 1816, focusing first on upstate New York. One day that June, four young classmates walked to school, most barefoot. Then a blizzard struck. Dismissed early, the children ran for their lives as the snow rose to their knees. They succeeded in reaching warm cabins and fires.

For Thomas Jefferson, the pain lasted longer. The retired third president of the United States, at his estate in Virginia, faced a disastrous summer in 1816 because of the remarkably short growing season. The next year was just as bad.

In a letter, Jefferson expressed concern about the possible ruin of his Monticello farm “if the seasons should, against the course of nature hitherto observed, continue constantly hostile to our agriculture.”

The countless victims and occasional beneficiaries of Tambora’s fury were oblivious to the volcanic roots of their circumstances, Dr. Wood noted, making the challenge of writing about it formidable and “occasionally mind-bending.”

More generally, he said, the revelation of global volcanic ruin — a portrait 200 years in the making — offers a kind of meditation on the difficulty of uncovering the subtle effects of climate change, whether its origins lie in nature’s fury or the invisible byproducts of human civilization.

It is, Dr. Wood remarked, “hard to see and no less difficult to imagine.”

Correction: August 26, 2015
Because of an editing error, a picture caption on Tuesday with an article about the effects of the Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 misidentified the painter of a harbor scene depicting a vivid sky shadowed by ash clouds. He was Caspar David Friedrich, not David Caspar Friedrich. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HICKOK

                                                

WNY should begin taking the steps needed to tap into the ‘blue economy’

First question: What does the Buffalo area have more of than the vast majority of American communities?

Answer: Water.

Second question: What abundant resource are other communities taking smarter advantage of than Buffalo is?

Answer: Water.

Last question: Who is going to do something about it?

To that question there could be several answers, but if Howard Zemsky’s phone isn’t ringing, then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo must be distracted.

The issue arises from reporter Tom Precious’ fascinating story on the front page of today’s Buffalo News. As other American communities become increasingly parched, especially those in the West, cities that border the Great Lakes are presented an opportunity that they overlook at their own peril.

Those that don’t take advantage of the best responsible use of the inland seas that border them are ceding that economic potential to those that do. So far, that appears mainly to be Milwaukee and Chicago, both on the western shore of Lake Michigan. With two Great Lakes to make use of, Western New York needs to get in on the act quickly.

The possibilities are practically endless, beginning with offering more hospitable locations to companies in areas besieged by drought and without ready access to reliable sources of water. Milwaukee is already doing that.

But the potential goes much deeper. That city, heretofore known for making beer, is in the midst of growing a “water technology” sector in its economy. For example: What are the ways to sustain water and improve its quality? How, why and when do people and industry use water?

This is not a scattershot approach to the subject. Milwaukee is treating water the way Buffalo treats bioinformatics. That is to say, like a business.

Rich Meeusen is a businessman in Milwaukee and a founder of the Water Council, a nonprofit organization that brings together start-ups and established companies, along with scientists. Their goal is to attract new water technologies to the marketplace. Entrepreneurs with marketable ideas can secure seed money in return for a small amount of equity in their companies.

The council is also affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, whose computers and testing equipment can assess the potential of ideas. Mentors are easily found. This is a synergy with remarkable potential for economic growth.

Meeusen described the opportunity for all Great Lakes communities aptly: “What oil is to Saudia Arabia, we are to water,” he said.

Water is so common to most people in the Northeast that its potential has been routinely overlooked. But drought, geography and climate change have put other regions of the country at a disadvantage when it comes to water supplies. The communities that border the Great Lakes are sitting on a 21st century gold mine of staggering proportions and seemingly inexhaustible yield. The Rust Belt, some prescient observers say, will soon become the Blue Belt.

There are concerns. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just spent $50 million to dredge and clean toxins from the Buffalo River, which, like the Great Lakes, was once used as an industrial dumping ground. Taking economic advantage of this great resource cannot mean repeating such mistakes, or making disastrous new ones. Given modern environmental sensibilities and regulations, that shouldn’t be difficult. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind.

Buffalo needs to get busy with this, and there is no one better to lead the charge the Zemsky, the president and CEO of Empire State Development. In addition to his responsibilities for economic development, Zemsky is a Western New Yorker and is close to Cuomo, who has identified himself as one of Western New York’s best friends.

The region is fortunate in that it borders two Great Lakes, Erie and Ontario, each with significantly different characteristics offering different benefits.

Chicago is already taking an interest in water technology, and it’s hard to imagine that Cleveland, Toledo, Hamilton and Toronto won’t also soon follow Milwaukee’s lead, if they aren’t doing so already.

It’s time to jump in. The water’s fine.

---{-=@

Hickok

Restoration of Frog Island hailed as Buffalo comeback story

After spending the last 30 years submerged under the Niagara River, Frog Island is being restored as a habitat for fish, birds and vegetation

By T.J. Pignataro | News Staff Reporter | @TJPignataro | Google+

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Crews excavated sediment from the river bottom and placed nearly 16,000 cubic yards of stone, gravel and sand in a fast-moving current to build an island between Motor Island and Strawberry Island. Photos by Derek Gee/Buffalo News                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Frog Island is back on the map. ¶ The tiny 2-acre or so archipelago between Strawberry and Motor islands spent the last three decades submerged under the current of the Niagara River. ¶ But one of Buffalo Niagara region’s newest ecological restoration projects brought the island back above water this year. ¶ With it, fish are already returning to spawn in large numbers. Birds are flocking to Niagara’s newest island. And, young willow and dogwood trees are taking root. ¶ The effort, by the state Department of Environmental Conservation with funding from the New York Power Authority’s Niagara Power Project relicensing, created new habitat underwater for fish like muskellunge, a shoreline “transition” zone for various native plant species and upland areas for families of Caspian terns. ¶ It’s a bona fide Buffalo comeback story, according to scientists involved with the $4.1 million project.

It happened a few hundred yards off the shoreline and can be seen from the stretch of the Niagara Thruway by GM’s Powertrain plant in the Town of Tonawanda.

Once a place where fish spawned and birds nested, this Niagara River island was obliterated a half-century ago, along with so many other places along Buffalo Niagara’s waterfront, in the name of industrial progress.

Today, the Great Lakes face new threats – toxic algae, Asian carp and microbeads, to name a few. But positive territory is being reclaimed here for nature.

It’s seen at places like Times Beach, the Buffalo River corridor, the new Stella Niagara Preserve and the Frog, Motor, Beaver and Strawberry island archipelago.

Future ecosystem restoration is in the works at the newly renamed Unity Island, at the same time groups in Lackawanna mobilize to take back a 2-mile stretch of contaminated waterfront land where Bethlehem Steel once stood for future cleanup and an eventual return of the property to a productive lakeshore habitat.

But the re-emergence of Frog Island in the Niagara River is special.

“As far as I know, this is the only project of this type seeking to restore habitat in the middle of such a large, fast-moving river,” said Tim DePriest, a biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “It’s basically engineering an ecosystem restoration from the bottom up.”

Fixing a battered island

If the story of the new Frog Island is distinctive, so too are remnants of the old Frog Island.

Thousands of motorists whiz over it along the Tonawanda shoreline every day. It’s now part of the foundation of the Niagara Section of the Thruway.

That’s because the island – and some of nearby Strawberry Island – were mined for gravel and hauled to the nearby shoreline in the 1950s at a time before there were any significant environmental laws in place to stop it.

Then in the mid-1980s, when Great Lakes water levels were at their highest, wind-driven waves, boat wakes, ice scouring and the river current constantly chipped away at Frog Island until it slipped beneath the surface of the water. Shallow shoals – about 1 to 3 feet deep – remained at that part of the river.

Construction to restore the island started in 2013 after a nearly six-year process of planning, design and permitting. It was one of many habitat improvement priorities put forth by the DEC during the New York Power Authority’s 50-year license renewal of the Niagara Power Project in 2007.

The authority estimates it has already provided benefits exceeding $274 million to the region in the form of direct payments, power supply and improvements to recreation and the environment through habitat improvement projects, including those at tiny Frog Island, since the relicensing eight years ago.

“This is a relatively small effort to just put some of that back,” said Stephen M. Schoenwiesner, a New York Power Authority manager. “Give the wildlife a little bit back of what was lost over time.”

It’s not a big area – less than 5 total acres – but a lot happens in that small space.

The four-tiered habitat being put back includes:

• Submerged aquatic vegetation areas, where native plants like root sedges, wild celery and other key aquatic plant species were planted. Experts expect other native plants, such as pondweeds, will colonize the area on their own. The area will prove an important food source for diving ducks, a species that flies south from the arctic region by the tens of thousands to spend the winter in the Buffalo Niagara region, and will provide a protective spawning and nursery habitat for young muskellunge.

• A transition zone for deep emergent wetland species like arrowhead, pickerelweed and bur-reed were planted.

• A second transition zone where shallow emergent wetland plants like sedge, rush and bulrush varieties occupy places in less than 6 inches of water.

• Upland areas, which consist of plantings like dogwood, willow, grasses and other species. It’s about 4,000 square feet of wet meadow habitat designed to help lure and promote pollinators. DePriest said air photos show the upland areas occupy roughly the same land area as the original Frog Island did.

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper – the organization chartered with the environmental stewardship of the river corridor, enthusiastically endorsed Frog Island’s restoration.

“Nearly half of our historic coastal wetlands have been lost in the past century,” said Renata Kraft, Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper’s director of bioregional and urban design. “Riverkeeper’s soon-to-be-released Greenway Habitat Conservation Strategy prioritizes protection of coastal wetland habitat and this project serves as an important step toward creating critical habitat for heron, osprey and bald eagles along with many freshwater fish populations.”

Picking a natural design

Engineers focused on constructing the new Frog Island in a way to shield it from its predecessor’s fate.

Their impulse: Create a lasting habitat by building bigger and stronger, taller and wider, berms around the perimeter of the new island to stand up to waves, wakes and ice. An initial round of drawings called for building a “battleship-design” fortress, Schoenwiesner said.

For sturdiness, the plan seemed sound.

But, practically, it wouldn’t provide the sort of benefits to wildlife that ecologists hoped for because it would restrict access to the island for some wildlife.

They were sent back to the drawing board to come up with a more natural – and less “man-made” – design.

“The challenge was achieving the right balance,” Schoenwiesner said. “They had to really sharpen their pencils to come up with something that had enough strength to stand up to the forces that we’re going to see from time to time without going overboard.”

The result: a four-tiered habitat that gradually slopes from upland areas above the surface of the river down into the submerged vegetation zones.

Developers and biologists became satisfied that would provide the most natural approach while still preserving the integrity of the island.

Experts cite the mid-century gravel mining as the primary catalyst in the disappearance of the former island – something unlikely to recur thanks to environmental laws. So engineers re-focused efforts on mitigating some of the lesser factors – like the forces of the river, ice floes and boat wakes – to help shield the newly crafted river island.

They incorporated smaller berms, designed to disperse ice floes around the island, into the final plan. Also calculated were mathematical computations allowing for the wave “fetch” from 1¼-miles upstream converging on Frog Island during wind storms and high water levels. The plantings anchor the soil of the new island in place.

The first major test happened sooner than anyone expected.

In the fall of 2013, just after the first year of construction ended on the project, a “huge lake storm moved a lot of the water into the river,” according to Schoenwiesner. The river covered all of the berms and all of the upland parts of the newly created island.

“When it was all over, everything was in place just fine,” Schoenwiesner said. “It was a once-in-50-years storm.”

Heavy construction work wrapped up at Frog Island last year. With some plantings and other finishing touches, the project now progresses into the “monitoring phase.”

Over the next five years or so, scientists will gauge the growth and productivity of the ecosystem on Frog Island.

“We’re at the beginning stages of the foundation building,” DePriest said.

Recuperating ecosystem

If fixing past wrongs along the Niagara River corridor is the aim of the ecosystem restoration, nature will decide the success of man’s efforts.

So far, signs look good.

Rookeries of great blue herons and egrets populate nearby Motor Island.

An American bald eagle family now nests on the south end of Strawberry Island.

The Caspian tern wasted no time colonizing upland areas of Frog Island.

As an added bonus, smallmouth bass started spawning around the new island in its first year, DePriest said.

“So far, there have been good signs of success,” DePriest said.

The Power Authority agreed to fund the Frog Island project with seven other habitat restoration projects under its relicensing agreement.

Several of the others are in the neighborhood, including just north of Strawberry Island, where a pair of yellow-gold excavators recently began restoring habitat. Habitat restoration efforts are also occurring in Strawberry Island’s horseshoe lagoon, hollowed-out years ago from past mining of gravel and sand.

Crews finished ecosystem restoration projects at Motor Island and Little Beaver Island.

On Motor Island – once a recreation island in the river that long-ago housed a hotel and yacht club and even a speakeasy – projects included habitat restoration and erosion control. Motor Island, now off-limits to the public, operates as a DEC-protected bird rookery.

Remnants of a nearby golf course were used to fill in some of the Little Beaver Island shoreline.

A marshland habitat there was also restored with native plantings.

Of the Frog Island restoration, DePriest emphasized its importance as “not a stand-alone project.”

“It integrates into the rest of the ecosystem – Strawberry Island, Motor Island, Beaver Island,” DePriest said. “This kind of contributes to the overall synergy of the area.”

email: tpignataro@buffnews.com   

  

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How America's truck, the Ford F-150, became a plaything for the rich.

 

Posted: Sunday, August 2, 2015 2:18 am

Drew Harwell The Washington Post |

 
WASHINGTON — Ford's first F-Series trucks were no-frills workhorses built for no-frills workers, promoted as if they were carved out of stone for the blue-collar, meat-eating, all-American man. In 1969, the pickups came in three editions — the Contractor Special, the Heavy Duty Special and the Farm & Ranch Special — and with few upgrades, except more space for toolboxes.
But now the once-spartan F-150, America's best-selling pickup for 38 years straight, is looking more dolled-up, and less middle-class, than ever. Its new Limited model, Ford's most "luxurious truck ever," comes with "genuine fiddleback eucalyptus" trim, heated-and-cooled massaging Mojave leather seats and "unique scuff plates with ice blue backlighting." Starting price: About $60,000, an F-150 all-time high.
The truck's turn from rugged backroads to glitz and luxury has driven its price twice as high as the average car or truck sold in the U.S. this year, pricier even than upscale SUVs from Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. But it has also highlighted the growing distance between American trucks' classic market of middle-income buyers, and its newer, more moneyed clientele.
"The market has grown quite ravenous for products and features and technology that would be very comparable with luxury cars," said Erich Merkle, a U.S. sales analyst for Ford. "A pickup truck is designed for work. But just because you haul doesn't mean you don't want all the luxury accommodations, or that you don't want to make a statement."

  How America's truck, the Ford F-150, became a plaything for the rich

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TRUCK

Ford’s F-150, the nation’s best-selling truck, has taken a star turn towards luxury, and new editions run twice the price of the average American car. From top, 1974 and 2015 editions. CREDIT: Ford.)


The truck's turn from rugged backroads to glitz and luxury has driven its price twice as high as the average car or truck sold in the U.S. this year, pricier even than upscale SUVs from Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. But it has also highlighted the growing distance between American trucks' classic market of middle-income buyers, and its newer, more moneyed clientele.
"The market has grown quite ravenous for products and features and technology that would be very comparable with luxury cars," said Erich Merkle, a U.S. sales analyst for Ford. "A pickup truck is designed for work. But just because you haul doesn't mean you don't want all the luxury accommodations, or that you don't want to make a statement."
The F-150 has become the king of trucks regarded "as much of a status symbol as they are a tool," said Karl Brauer, a senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book. And it's not just that a nation of office jockeys wants a meaty truck to boost their egos: Successful contractors, small-business owners and others are increasingly opting for upgraded trucks that make a rumbling statement about their success.
Automakers are more than happy to accommodate the high-end demand for "Cowboy Cadillacs," believing the recession-era stigma surrounding indulgences-on-wheels has disappeared. So far this year, about 50 percent of sales of the F-150 have been its high-end editions, including the Lariat, Platinum and King Ranch editions.
"During the recession, if you could afford to buy a fancy new truck, it was not socially acceptable to flaunt it," said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at AutoTrader.com. But "the acceptance of conspicuous consumption is back."
No other $50,000-plus vehicle sold more in the first half of this year than the Ford F-Series, making trucks like the F-150, in one big way, America's premier luxury automobile. About 350,000 Ford F-Series trucks sold with price tags over $50,000, TrueCar data show: That's more than the next six top-selling models over $50,000, combined, including the Ram Pickup, the BMW X5, the Chevy Suburban and the Mercedes-Benz M-Class.
In truck-loving Texas, where drivers buy about 16 percent of all pickups sold in America, Ford's high-end truck sales — like its Lariat, King Ranch, Platinum and Raptor editions — make up a quarter of the entire Lone Star state's luxury-vehicle sales.
Americans are buying new cars and trucks at the strongest pace since 2001, and plunging fuel prices have helped steer them toward pickups, like the F150, Ram 2500, Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra. Truck sales also tend to rise alongside the starts of new home construction, which has climbed this year to the highest point since the housing bust.


But the newfound fancification of mine-is-bigger trucks like the F-150, analysts say, points to a growing sweep toward luxury in the American auto market. With the average vehicle on the road now 11 years old, car buyers are heading to lots ready to splurge, and carmakers are responding with models that are increasingly upscale.
Though nationwide wages may be stagnant, the infrastructure is all set up to help them spend, with commonplace offers for six-year loans and low interest rates. "They want the treat they've been putting off for a decade or more, and they've got the tools to do it, even if their finances aren't as strong as they need to be," Brauer said.

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