Today, as part of a White House-organized, daylong environmental roundtable at the People and Parks Foundation in West Baltimore, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it is expanding that partnership to include the Middle Branch watershed throughout South and West Baltimore. The goal is to bring the city, environmental organizations, and neighborhood groups together with the Fish and Wildlife Service to rebuild community green spaces, improve water quality, and create wildlife habitats while encouraging local environmental stewardship.

The effort does not include the federal purchase of land for protected purposes—or immediate funding—but does represent a broader shift at U.S. Fish and Wildlife toward more urban-focused work.

“The population is becoming more urbanized in the country,” says Chris Guy, with the Chesapeake Bay office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “And one thing we want to do is, rather than people come to us [at federally protected lands], is connect the public with nature up close and personal in their own neighborhood, which in many cases, has been lost.”

The expanded U.S. Fish and Wildlife watershed designation was just one of the new federal-local initiatives announced by the White House, however.

The city, working with the USDA, will launch Baltimore’s first permanent “GROW” (Green Resources and Outreach for Watersheds) Center, where residents and community leaders can access free/low cost materials as well as gather practical education on managing storm water and revitalizing vacant lots—whether for park or garden space or another use. The project comes on the heels of a “pop-up” GROW center effort last spring at Baltimore Community ToolBank in Southwest hosted by the City Office of Sustainability.

The EPA and U.S. Forest Service, along with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and CSX Corporation, have also come together to fund schoolyard habitats at 10 schools across the city. The flagship project will start at Green Street Academy, in the renovated Gwynns Falls Junior High School, in West Baltimore. The project, according to the White House, will also engage 20 teachers and 10 facilities managers at a series of workshops to learn about the benefits of taking action to improve habitat and water quality.

The EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey will also be launching a partnership with Blue Water Baltimore and the Waterfront Partnership to install new technology on the Inner Harbor’s popular “Mr. Trash Wheel” that will provide online, real-time water quality data for community and business leaders and environmental advocates—as part of a clean water outreach and education effort.

The Friday roundtable at People and Parks was scheduled to include presentations by Blue Water Baltimore, the Waterfront Partnership, the Chesapeake Conservancy, and the Chesapeake Center for Youth Development, as well as various city, state, and federal agencies involved in a variety of Baltimore City environmental issues.

One other initiative—with $75,000 in seed money from the National Park Service and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources—will help the Baltimore City Department of Recreation & Parks begin the development a new comprehensive plan for the city’s park system – the first such plan since 1926.

One of the ideas behind the environmental roundtable is for local, state, and federal agencies and environmental leaders to update each other on the issues they’ve been tackling. But also to look forward at what issues should be addressed in the next five and 10 years. “I think we’ll be looking at what is the next mission, what is the next major project,” says Adam Lindquist, director of Healthy Harbor Initiative.

The event, designed to foster collaboration among various stakeholders already working on environmental issues, grew out of a broader White House Task Force on Baltimore that was formed in the aftermath of the riot last year. Baltimore-native Nate Loewentheil, a senior policy advisor at the National Economic Council, is heading up task force, which largely has focused on more purely economic issues thus far, such as jobs, housing, and youth employment. “You can’t cleanup the harbor without cleaning up the surrounding city,” says Loewentheil, explaining the White House’s interest in Baltimore’s steep environmental challenges. “And, in order to attract new economic activity and investment,” he adds, “the city needs livable, sustainable, healthy neighborhoods.”

Though not directly related to roundtable announcements today, a new collaboration between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the City Department of Recreation and Parks led to an urban bird “treaty” earlier this month, which will help create habitat in the Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park are for migratory birds.

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The fast-flying pair’s three eggs, laid in mid-April, hatched two weeks ago and as far as the Chesapeake Conservancy folks can tell—they launched a 24/7 live-streaming webcam on the Transamerica Building earlier this spring—”all three chicks look healthy and thriving,” says Jody Couser, director of communications for the Annapolis-based nonprofit. (The above photo, a screen shot from the conservancy’s webcam, was taken earlier this afternoon during lunchtime as the baby falcons were being fed by one of their parents.)

“When they get banded, they will get checked for parasites, which is always a risk in young birds and something that we would most likely not be able to tell from the camera,” Couser wrote in an email. “Their nestling period is 35-45 days, so they will begin trying to fly towards the end of that period and will continue to stay in the nest for a while to learn how to fly and hunt. The juveniles will usually stay regional, for instance, our current ‘Barb’ is from Philly. How far they will go depends on the availability of nest sites, territory, and mates.”

The banding of the three eyases, as baby falcons are called, will be done by an eagle/raptor biologist with Chesapeake Bay field office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The new falcon webcam comes on the heels of the conservancy’s popular Kent Island osprey cam, which garnered more than 500,000 unique visitors last year from 123 countries. Those birds, nicknamed “Tom” and “Audrey,” can be viewed here. Ospreys, similar to peregrine falcons, faced a 90 percent population decline between 1950-1970 in the wake of DDT and other pesticide poisoning.

According to a chronology provided by the conservancy, a 1-year old falcon named Scarlett, released by ornithologists from the Edgewood Arsenal area on the Chesapeake Bay in 1977, turned up a year later on what was then the USF&G Building near the Inner Harbor. Now known as the Transamerica building, Scarlett successfully hatched four eyases in 1984—three females and a male. When she died later that year from a throat infection, her mate, Beauregard, was said to be heard mourning loudly from the ledge.

Although peregrine falcons generally mate for life, Beauregard would later mate with a banded falcon brought from New Jersey, producing numerous eyases into the early 90s. Ever since, pairs of peregrine falcons have been making their home—and baby falcons—with a skyline view of downtown Baltimore and the harbor.

“A building mimics a cliff for them. It gives them a high perch to be able to look for prey and swoop out and get them,” Joel Dunn, of the Chesapeake Conservancy, recently told WJZ, adding that the young falcon family has already received more than 200,000 camera views this spring via its feed.

Below is an earlier webcam shot from two weeks ago after the first two eyases had hatched.

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Two decades earlier, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had set aside the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Virginia’s southern end of the island. However, according to the National Park Service, most of Maryland’s northern portion of the island—which includes 32,000 acres of marine and estuarine waters—had been purchased for private development.

Residential construction, roads, and other infrastructure work were well underway, according to the story, when the powerful Ash Wednesday nor’easter washed over the island, destroying most of the development.

Ultimately, President Lyndon Johnson, with his signature, officially established the Assateague Island National Seashore on Sept. 21, 1965. The Dispatch of Ocean City recently recounted the events here.

Assateague is one of the largest and last remaining Mid-Atlantic barrier islands largely untouched by development. The state of Maryland manages two miles of the Maryland portion of the island as Assateague State Park. The National Park Service, which says it’s planning special events this year to commemorate the national seashore’s 50th anniversary, reports that more than 2 million visitors took in the island last year.

Oh yes, about the horses. According to the National Park Service, those “wild” horses are, in fact, feral horses, which means they are descended from domestic horses that have reverted to an undomesticated state. And not to worry, they’re plenty tough to bear the winter—even this one. Local folklore, the NPS goes on to explain, has it that the Assateague horses are survivors of a shipwreck off the coast of Virginia.

More likely, but not as good of a story, the horses were brought to the island by late 17th-century mainlanders. Either way, don’t miss an opportunity to visit them once the snow melts. This July marks the 90th anniversary of the annual “Wild Pony Swim” from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island.

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