Meadow Lake is located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. This park is the second largest park in NYC (after Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx). A former saltmarsh turned coal ash dump, the marsh was filled by Robert Moses in for the 1939-1940 World Fair. It is a brackish lake and has a tidal influence of two inches. The lake
is surrounded entirely by highways: the Van Wyck to the East and Grand Central
to the West. NYC Parks has a grant from the NYS DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) to improve the water quality of
the lake, which you can imagine is quite poor due to all of the highway runoff
and the pollutants leaching from the coal ash to this day. Due to poor design, the two paths that line the lake's shore are flooded whenever it rains. Some sections of the shoreline are even reverting to native wetland plants in place of lawn. Despite its environmental and design
problems, it is a highly used lake. Every day people are boating on the lake,
running on the paths, or fishing from the shoreline. Below is a photo of one of
the rowing teams that practices on the lake daily.
Besides poor water quality, the lake is also plagued by
invasive species. The entire shoreline of the lake is lined with Phragmites australis, common reed, which is highly invasive. The slightly brackish water
of the lake is ideal for Phrag because no other plant can compete with it. However, Phrag is not all bad. Red-winged blackbirds love to nest in its dense stands and
whenever we go there, they are everywhere. See the blackbird hanging out in the Phrag with
the ducks below.
The most threatening invasive is found lurking in the water.
Snakehead is an Asian fish species that is also highly invasive. The snakehead is a top
predator that can grow up to five feet long and can even “walk” on land short
distances to get from one body of water to another. The fish was likely
introduced to the lake by Chinese immigrants. It is a common fish in
their diet and in their culture, releasing a fish into the water brings good
luck. Flushing, a neighborhood bordering the park, also has a very high Chinese
population. The following photo is from wikipedia because I don't have a photo of the snakehead yet. I plan on getting one soon though... either when we go out electrofishing with NYS DEC or when I land my first snakehead after I remember to get my fishing gear down here from NH. : )
I always see fishermen at the lake. My last visit, two Chinese men fishing on the shoreline caught a very fat fourteen inch Asian Carp (another fish that Chinese people probably introduced to the lake). They took it home along with some plants
that their wives had collected from the side of the highway, probably to make a
nice fish dinner. I wouldn’t eat either the fish or the plants. Both are likely
loaded with pollutants from the coal ash fill and runoff from the highway. I am
in favor of foraging in parks, but only when the plants have been growing in
non-contaminated soil away from major roadways.
The lake is also home to some native species that are under
threat. I have seen a few dead American eels on the shoreline, which had
probably been caught by a fisherman and then discarded. American eels are being
overfished due to the popularity of unagi sushi, which supposedly rivals
bluefin in taste. Since the eel’s life cycle is still not fully understood, further
fishing pressure on this species could cause this fish to become extinct if
regulations are not put into place.
Besides plants and fish, there are also several avian
invasives as well. Canada geese are a fixture and decimate plants along the
shoreline (well, everything but phrag…). I have also seen a mute swan. Although
these big birds are beautiful, they are very vicious if they feel that they are
threatened and compete with native species for resources. They were introduced
to the United States from Europe and their population has exploded, so much so
that their populations are now regulated. Below is a mute swan framed by Phrag.
We are planning two main projects to improve water quality:
the daylighting of a drainage pipe from the Grand Central and a wetland
restoration project along the shoreline that might include floating wetland
islands. The project is still in the design phase and will probably experience
many changes in the next four months. I will provide further details once they
are finalized.
