By Sean Fogarty, Courier Staff Writer:
Around Todd’s Pond
there will soon be low-cut blueberry bushes that will allow the birds to forage
for themselves, a development important not just to the birds but to the entire
ecosystem of the pond.
A joint effort
between the Quinnipiac River Watershed Association (QRWA) and the master
gardeners’ program at UConn, the two groups are working hard to rejuvenate
Todd’s Pond, part of the Quinnipiac River watershed.
According to QRWA
Executive Director and Assistant Majority Leader of the 85th Assembly District
Mary Mushinsky, there has already been five years of labor invested in the
river, and now it’s the pond’s turn.
Kathryn Scott and
Cheryl Damiani are both master gardener interns who selected Todd’s Pond for
their university project. Scott explained how the pond reached this point of
need. In her time working on-site, Scott she has seen one woman who brings 14
bags of bread every day to feed the geese and another man who brought a
40-pound bag of dog food for them.
“People think they
are doing the right thing feeding the birds. Actually, it cripples them,” she
says.
It’s not just the
birds that suffer–it’s actually killing the ecosystem, says Mushinsky.
“At the pond there
is too much nitrogen and too many geese in too small an area,” she says. “The
environment should decompose and manage their waste material, but when they are
concentrated and fed, the environment just can’t handle the waste.”
Mushinsky said each
goose produces about one quart of waste per day, and there are about 400 geese
at any given time, far too many for the ecosystem to maintain naturally.
The first stage of
the restoration is for the public to stop feeding the birds.
“It’s a big
coordination effort to get everyone on the same page and not feed the birds,”
said Scott.
The second part of
the process involves planting blueberry bushes, native to Connecticut, along the edge of the
river. As the plants take hold, and the
berries grow, the birds will forage naturally, bringing the ecosystem back to
equilibrium.
But the bushes also
play a role for the residents of the area; they won’t block the view of the
pond, one of the reasons previous individuals, who unknowingly were harming
their beloved pond, had removed vegetation.
Scott says the
endeavor is largely educational, including signs that will explain the new
vegetation and reasons for not feeding the animals.
The work began on
Sept. 19 with the planting of the first blueberry bush by First Selectman Janet
McCarty. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and the Greater
New Haven Quinnipiac Fund support the project.
The QWRA is looking
for volunteers to help with the restoration of Todd’s Pond; call 203-237-2237.
Pictured: Natalie Mastroianni,
Bernadette Casella, Jonathan Martinek, John Graef, and Angelo Verdini get to
work on the Todd's Pond cleanup on Oct 4. Their labor was the first part of an
effort to rehabilitate the pond, which had been stripped of shrubs on the banks
and overrun by geese.
Photo by Sean
Fogarty