Mailing Address:
Pollinator Conservation Association 1902 Ridge Road #415 West Seneca N.Y. 14224 |
Pollinator Conservation Association
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Dear Friends
Today we want to both thank-you for your support of our organization in the past and to update you on our work and accomplishments during 2022-23. Our mission promotes conservation through the lens of pollinators. Our primary focus is to protect, conserve, and encourage native pollinators in our region, but we also promote conservation opportunities for a variety of wildlife including birds, fish, and mammals and the biodiverse habitats that sustain them. Our work includes education, interpretation of outdoor needs and opportunities, consulting, and in-the-ground conservation projects.
Please consider a donation to the PCA today!
During 2023 we continued work on projects including:
Today we want to both thank-you for your support of our organization in the past and to update you on our work and accomplishments during 2022-23. Our mission promotes conservation through the lens of pollinators. Our primary focus is to protect, conserve, and encourage native pollinators in our region, but we also promote conservation opportunities for a variety of wildlife including birds, fish, and mammals and the biodiverse habitats that sustain them. Our work includes education, interpretation of outdoor needs and opportunities, consulting, and in-the-ground conservation projects.
Please consider a donation to the PCA today!
During 2023 we continued work on projects including:
Buffalo Harbor State Park
This site has served as our flagship demonstration project on Buffalo's outer harbor. This small site provides tremendous benefit, especially since it’s located at the terminus of the Empire State Trail and just across Fuhrmann Blvd. from the Tifft Nature Preserve entrance. This site evokes the former dune and marsh of the Buffalo Outer Harbor shoreline from what recently had been hardened lawnscape. Today it’s a robust, regenerative, year-round habitat of native plants, providing food and shelter for a variety of pollinators, other wildlife, and of breeding and migrating birds. During the next few years, we anticipate expanding this site to include a stormwater runoff feature with bioswale and rain garden. For more about this site CLICK HERE |
Ohio Street - New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Site
This site, developed in partnership with the NYS DEC, is directly adjacent to Father Conway Park, DEC’s Ohio Street Kayak Launch, and central to an upcoming urban neighborhood including the Buffalo River Landing Apartments. The site has a cluster of regenerative plants that has drawn accolades about its beauty from neighbors, and strong support from scientists and naturalists as an excellent example of urban biodiversity. For more on this site, CLICK HERE |
West River Parkway
Grand Island, N.Y. New York State Parks Funded by a Niagara River Greenway grant and in partnership with NYS Parks, we are creating a conservation area at the Southern end of the parkway near to Beaver Island State Park. It’s a biodiverse demonstration that provides an ecologically substantive alternative to lawn in the 12-mile-long median strip that runs along the Niagara River. We are working with neighbors and local groups to integrate the beauty of nature, and the importance of a native plant habitat for pollinators, and other important wildlife. |
Town of Tonawanda Aqua Lane Park
This fall we received another Greenway grant and are partnering with the Town of Tonawanda to develop a portion of Aqua Lane Park. The park is located right on the Niagara River, just onshore from an archipelago created wildlife habitat islands including Motor Island, Strawberry Island, Frog Island, and the newly created Tern Island which is a man-made nesting island for increasingly vanishing Common Terns. Our plans involve shoreline plantings, and the restoration of lawn areas to a more natural site more supportive for pollinators and wildlife. Community groups will help to provide long-term maintenance.Our goal is to make this beautiful park a destination for outdoor lovers and wildlife enthusiasts. |
Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve
This organization, founded in the late 1970’s by Jay Burney, George K. Arthur, Paul MacClennan, and Robert Andrle, continues under the leadership of our Special Projects Director, Jay Burney. In 2016, the Pollinator Conservation Association adopted the Friends group as a PCA project. Our intent is to provide activities at the site, including planting and restoration projects, and to provide input in the future design of this preserve. The Nature Preserve, owned by the City and managed by the County, was severely damaged by the powerful Halloween Seiche of 2019. Since then, most of the preserve has remained closed as restoration funding has been challenging. This November, we hosted a work party with 50+ community volunteers, to reopen one of the preserve’s primary trails. With the PCA's leadership and the help of community volunteers, Times Beach Nature Preserve, Buffalo's only waterfront nature preserve, will return to its full value soon. |
Citizen Science
Buffalo Outer Harbor Bioblitz During the past two years we have hosted a citizen-science-based iNaturalist biosurvey of Times Beach, Tifft Nature Preserve, the Union Ship Canal, and other publicly-owned sites on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor. Our work engaged over 200 citizen scientists and improved our data base, cataloging species of pollinators, birds, native plants, and other biota and fauna that are found on the Outer Harbor. This data base is new, and we hope that it influences a better understanding of what this fragile area has to offer in terms of protecting biodiversity and linking the ecological productivity of the area to climate change and climate safe communities. |
OBSERVATION LOCATIONS
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Birds On the Niagara
www.birdniagara.org Join us for BON24, February 16-19, 2024 The PCA is one of the founding partners of North America’s only International Bird Festival. Its programs celebrate birds, and promote conservation and social inclusion in conservation strategies. International partners include state and federal agencies, community groups, nature clubs, and conservation organizations. Showcasing the abundance of winter birds on the open waters of the Niagara River, such as 19 species of gulls which migrate through this region, a phenomenon unique on the planet. Waterfowl including almost 40 species of ducks and geese and Tundra Swans, and irruptive species including Snowy Owls and winter finches make this region, in the winter, an important ornithological place and event. This event in the Niagara River Greenway and the Niagara River Globally Significant Important Bird Area—where all our habitats are located— is fundamental to our PCA mission to educate, restore, conserve, and promote conservation as an economic development strategy. |
In addition to our bioblitz activities, the PCA is dedicated to promoting science and educational programs with schools, universities, and community groups. Below, the PCA works with University at Buffalo students to band Monarch butterflies.
Before the end of 2023, please consider a donation to the PCA. Help us continue our work in the region doing science, education, advocating for, and actually planting conservation projects that continue to shape our future in order to protect a more biodiverse region. CLICK HERE TO DONATE or mail a check to the address at the top of this page. THANK-YOU!