A Tree Falls in the Bronx - and it is Good.

Jake Young just drew my attention to one of the most wonderful signs of Bronx revitalization I've heard of in years - a beaver is making its home on the banks of the Bronx River near the Bronx Zoo. This is absolutely fantastic news - more so than I think Jake, who is a fairly recent arrival to NYC, realizes.

I grew up in the Bronx, not all that far from the Bronx River. In fact, the river ran through French Charlie's Park, where my brothers and I played little league baseball. Back then, the thought of a beaver - or almost any other mammal - making a home in the Bronx River would have been an absolute joke. The closest thing to a beaver you could find would be a beaver-sized rat. (Literally - I can remember at least one occasion when someone I knew thought that they had seen a beaver swimming in the river, until they saw the tail.)

To describe the Bronx river, at the point where it oozed through this park, as "polluted" would have been an understatement of epic proportions. To describe the river as "water" would, for that matter, have been an overstatement of equally massive proportions. The river was not quite as bad as a third-world open sewer, but it didn't miss by much. The water was stagnant, the smell was bad, particularly in the summer, and there were several places in the park where the surface of the water was entirely covered - bank to slimy bank - with floating masses of garbage.

I'm not talking about ancient history here, and I'm not talking about a location that is much deeper into the city than the zoo. I didn't pay much attention to what happened to the river after I moved out of the city, but I know for sure that it was still really bad as recently as 1996. I also know, just from remembering my Bronx geography, that I was looking at the river within about a half-mile or so upstream of the place where this beaver is making it's home.

A beaver making its home in the Bronx River today might get attention mostly because it's the oddball story of the day, but it's actually the product of a huge amount of work that's been carried out by a large number of people over the last decade. In particular, the folks at the Bronx River Alliance have made massive contributions, and one of the local Congressmen, Jose Serrano, has done a lot to secure the necessary funding. They, and everyone else who has worked to turn an urban disaster of a waterway around, deserve a massive round of applause. There's still a long way to go before a mature, healthy ecosystem is firmly re-established in the Bronx river - but the beaver certainly represents a sign that the efforts are really paying off.