Hey, there! Log in / Register

Watching Cambridge like a hawk

The Globe reports an environmental group says the Fresh Pond hawks are reason enough to block a planned apartment complex in the middle of Alewife Brook Reservation. Meanwhile, at the other end of town, Harvard's resident hawk couple have a new nest of hawklings.

Neighborhoods: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

This is of the same category as the sweeping vistas of Nantucket Sound - NIMBYism masquerading as sincere environmentalism. Using trumped-up issues to fight against local development plans gives actual concern about the environment a bad name.

Red tailed hawks are not endangered. They are not threatened. They are, in fact, thriving and abundant - in large part because of the clear-cutting of forests and other man-made alterations of the environment, which have provided them with new nesting sites and open hunting grounds. That's no surprise, given that the hawks in question are nesting on a building! So if you want to go there, this new development could just as easily be seen as creating new, hawk-friendly nesting sites.

Density is good for the environment. Putting large new housing developments next to shopping areas and transit hubs is much, much better than the alternative - dispersing an equal number of housing units over a large tract of undeveloped land, far from services and amenities. There will inevitably be some degree of deleterious impact on the local ecosystem. That's inevitable. But in this case, the impact is fairly small. And the proper question is one of relative costs and alternatives. There's demand for housing. Are we prepared to make it so difficult to build at scale that developers will instead build atomized developments with a large multiple of the damage?

This isn't environmentalism. It's selfishness.

up
Voting closed 0

that Robert Moses' abject failure and the rejection of the late-'60s, early '70s high-rise urban density model would have put a cork in this argument. This area, time an again, rejects the urbanism of failed projects like Co-op City and Cabrini Green and retains greenspace to the benefit of residents and businesses alike.

Cynic's made this argument before -- most recently in reference to development along the Greenway -- but the continued deforestation of a region that until recently was experiencing woodland growth is cause enough to maintain these patches developers salivate over. The "housing demand" argument fueled the real-estate boom and bust of the last decade, mostly because there is more than adequate housing stock to meet said demand. It is not a dearth of housing, but market forces driving the cost of real estate in the Greater Boston area. To continue clear cutting and the disjointing of the ecosystem is both mad and unnecessary. Developers can take cues from the projects at Causeway and Congress and in Fort Point that use existing urban structure as a base and build up from there.

Pale Male may nest in a co-op, but it's because it's located directly across from a big swath of feeding ground and nesting materia in Central Park. Same goes for the Fenway hawk, which feeds and culls material from the Fens. Building into open space at Alewife may not deprive the hawks of a home, but it would strip away the habitat of its food supply and the basic elements of its nesting grounds.

up
Voting closed 0

Correct me if I'm wrong, but every time a see one of these hawks feeding it's on rats, squirrels and pigeons. Not many of those live in the habitat under question.

Just sayin', let's be truthful here on why the hawks are now flourishing that pesticide and pollution is going down, allowing them to raise viable young. Plenty of city food source and high, cliff like structures to nest is giving them an advantage.

Not to say other species will be detrimentally impacted.

up
Voting closed 0

So have the developer design the building(s) with nice ledges so the hawks can make nests.

up
Voting closed 0

Seriously - one reason that hawks have made a comeback is successful adaption to urban environments. High rise buildings are a favorite of Hawks all around the world, and there are plenty of pigeons to go around.

Once upon a time, Harvard had an extreme squirrel problem. When walking through Harvard Yard in the 80s, one ran right up my mom to see if she had food! They had no fear of humans. Then Rabies made a comeback in New England and Harvard got into the standard Harvard tizzy about whether it was appropriate/humane/would work to poison some of them.

Then, Mr. Adolescent Hawk arrived on the scene. He scored himself a fabulous hi-rise nesting ledge that would surely impress any hawk female, and couldn't get enough of that Harvard Yard food court! Soon enough, he found himself a lady hawk to share the bounty and a fabulous nest on the Holyoke Building. They even had privacy, as Harvard moved people out of the adjacent office.

My dad was totally amazed the next time we walked through Harvard yard. Not only were there many fewer squirrels, they were very careful where they moved.

There must be other reasons to argue not to have that high rise in that area - like, for instance, the very poorly thought out and highly congested roadways that flood all the time. Creating new hawk habitat should not be a problem.

up
Voting closed 0

You'd think they were building a shopping mall in Yosemite. There's nothing "environmental" about this group - they just fetishize a plot of land and pretend it's some kind of untouched paradise, when it's just another urban strip of dirt and trees. If you want "fragile ecosystems," move to the rain forest.

up
Voting closed 0

Urban parklands provide nice buffers, opportunities for recreation, floodwater control, air pollution control, urban heat island mitigation, etc. The Alewife area, formerly known as The Great Swamp, has never fully gotten the message that it isn't a swamp and preserving land helps with the serious flood water problems in the area.

However, what I don't get is where the hell these people were when limits of a reservation or zoning or any of that stuff was decided?? Seems like Cambridge is intentionally excluding all but the developers and city planners when it comes to planning and zoning decisions, then letting the neighborhood wackos run amuck and demand constant concessions, file lawsuits, etc. because they think that zoning isn't like, you know, LAW?

We ran into this when a printing company left a residential neighborhood for the suburbs. You would think they would be happy to get rid of 60 employees and free up 1.5 acres for housing built at the same density as the rest of the neighborhood? NO! Craig Kelly and his friends, the Abusers of Public Employee Disability, couldn't run for office if the actual zoning of the land meant anything and they couldn't lie, slander, and grandstand! The North Cambridge Stagnation and Extortion Committee threw fits that a group that had every right to build 51 units might actually build 33 units when they thought the site should have 3 1/2 acre lots with single family houses! I shit you not. Oh, and some of the same winners thought it shouldn't be redeveloped at all, but that new owners should just clear and hollow it out to retain water to solve flooding issues (without benefit of any actual water flow studies, mind you).

The way zoning is decided in the first place and the way it means nothing in the face of Community Extortion Agencies who think it's a big cookie jar to sue and delay to get Special Prizes is one reason that the cost of living in the area remains extreme, and that business has moved to places where these things are worked out in advance and you build according to the rules without drama or spiteful stupidity.

When my father's neighborhood in Portland Oregon was concerned about the zoning in their area, they organized and worked with the city to get the zoning changed. This resolved the issues they had for the entire neighborhood for good. Sheesh.

up
Voting closed 0

Block the apartment complex and build elsewhere. There are plenty of abandoned strip malls that would benefit from the revitalization an apartment building would bring.

up
Voting closed 0

"I'm not against building it - just build it somewhere else."

up
Voting closed 0

Build in a place that makes sense. I'm sure those who have homes and businesses near abandoned lots would much prefer to have a new apartment complex than a vacant lot. Does this not make sense to you?

up
Voting closed 0

Gee, one would think that a community would welcome a condo complex instead of a 3-shift printing business or a lumber yard, too.

Why does this "somewhere else" always seem to be the case when people are talking about affordable housing?

This isn't NIMBY - this is BANANA!
(Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything)

up
Voting closed 0

I work in the business park next to Alewife Book, and if they plan on building condos good luck.
I was out of work almost a week this spring after all the rain we got; my building as well as others were completely inaccessable. The swamp overflowed and majorly flooded the roads (including RT 2 ramps) and parking lots (one car got stranded handle high), as well as the first floor of a building.

up
Voting closed 0