Defense Team on KPFT Tuesday, May 20, 3-4 p.m.
May 19, 2014
Members of the Save Buffalo Bayou defensive team will be on the Eco-Ology radio show on KPFT Tuesday, May 20, from 3 to 4 p.m. Listen to Olive Hershey, Brandt Mannchen, and Frank Salzhandler talk about why bulldozing the riparian forest on both banks of Buffalo Bayou as it flows through our historic Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary is an appalling idea.
Hershey is a poet, novelist, and environmental activist. Mannchen is a biologist and chair of the Forestry Committee of the Houston Sierra Club. Salzhandler is a former All-American UT swimmer, rabble rouser, director of the Endangered Species Media Project and chair of the Natural Heritage Program for the Harris County Historical Commission.
Houston Chronicle Outlook Editorial: Plan Could Ruin Buffalo Bayou
Invasive Erosion Control Plan Could Destroy Buffalo Bayou
Memorial Park plan would reduce unique waterway to a ditch
Reprinted from The Houston Chronicle.
By Olive Hershey and Frank Salzhandler, Houston Chronicle OUTLOOK, May 18, 2014 Section B
A Harris County plan to alter Buffalo Bayou as it runs through our publicly owned Memorial Park would destroy one of the last remaining river forests in Houston, an ecologically important riparian wilderness that cannot be replaced.
The county intends to bulldoze both sides of the bayou – up to 100 feet from the water’s edge in places and including a tributary in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary – stripping wide swathes of native trees, vines and undergrowth from the bayou’s natural sandy banks.
Vital habitat for hundreds of species of birds, animals and water creatures will be lost. The slow-moving bayou’s shady banks will be denuded and replanted as a sun-baked lawn.
This is their plan for Buffalo Bayou.
May 7, 2014
Tell the Army Corps of Engineers you oppose the proposal to bulldoze the natural ecosystem of our last urban wilderness. You have only until June 30 to tell the government it’s better to restore the native habitat than to destroy it.
Restore. Don’t destroy.
A riparian forest cannot be replaced.
Join us to learn more at a public meeting of concerned citizens on May 22 at St. Stephen’s Community Hall, 1805 W. Alabama, beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Images of Buffalo Bayou Now.
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- Great blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive
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- Photo by Jim Olive
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- Buffalo Bayou riparian forest. Photo by Jim Olive.
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- Photo by Jim Olive
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- Photo by G.O. Jackson Jr.
And this is what they want Buffalo Bayou to look like when they are done scraping it bare, stripping the native habitat, and planting it with grass.
A photo of Cypress Creek after “restoration” by the Harris County Flood Control District.
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