New York City: Wildlife Refuge
There’s been a lot of nonhuman activity in the city lately and the good ship Gothamist has been all over it. The latest: a dolphin in Brooklyn, a coyote in Manhattan, and a seal in Staten Island. Sadly, when marine animals start swimming in our waterways it’s usually cause their sick and the high pollution they encounter doesn’t help them any. But good news for the coyote, the NYPD gave chase and it escaped!
Photo: Ann Fraioli/Gothamist
by Bucky Turco on March 3, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Editor-in-Chief:
Not to discount your argument, but the fact that animals are able to survive in the water actually shows that it has been cleaned up a lot – the rivers used to be so polluted that animals couldn’t inhabit them.
In 2007 (pretty sure) there was a big fuss because beavers were found in the Bronx River for the first time in 200 years: http://www.furman.edu/president/colbeavers.html – http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/33648.html
If the waterways are cleaner, it's probably because NY dismantled its industry and replaced it all with commercial and residential. Remember when playing Sim City how adding industrial units increases pollution? Well our industry is gone now, and though we still have plenty of murder victims getting dumped in the rivers, human corpses are organic and biodegradable.
That makes sense, dead bodies definitely have less of a carbon footprint.
poor dolphin…