Tifft Nature Preserve

[Odie 0]

County budget woes force further cuts at Tifft Preserve

By TOM BUCKHAM

Buffalo News Staff Reporter

7/1/2005

 

Erie County's budget woes are forcing Tifft Nature Preserve, the nation's only urban wildlife sanctuary, to further curtail operations.

 

The Buffalo Museum of Science, which operates the waterfront preserve, said Thursday the big log cabin near the Fuhrmann Boulevard entrance, which functions as a combination visitor and educational center, will close to the public indefinitely late this month. The equivalent of 21/2 museum staff positions will be eliminated.

 

Meanwhile, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, renewed his call for the state to take over Tifft as part of the new Outer Harbor State Park.

 

In light of fiscal problems confronting the county and other local governments, the state "remains the best-suited and best-equipped" entity to maintain and enhance the site, Higgins said.

 

Museum leaders said any such change of ownership would have to be agreed to by the city, which owns the property. The museum has run the preserve under a lease since the early 1980s.

 

School trips, research programs and special events will continue at Tifft, and gates will remain open Thursday through Saturday for those who want to explore the 254-acre sanctuary on their own, the museum said.

 

The scaling-back is a direct result of the $523,000 reduction in operating support that hit the Science Museum during the county budget crisis. No other cultural institution lost that much funding.

 

Though internal cuts made in the fall of 2003 helped soften the blow, the museum was still left with a $100,000 budget gap, which dictates further belt-tightening, said David E. Chesebrough, president and CEO.

 

"We were swept into a trauma we were not anticipating," added Herbert F. Darling Jr., a businessman and longtime museum advocate who will spearhead efforts to drum up new operating money for the nature preserve.

 

"We are going to slow down and back up a bit, until we see where the funding is coming from," said Darling, an outdoorsman and naturalist. He predicted Tifft will emerge from the crisis stronger than before.

 

"We were forced into this position, but we're not going to let it take us down," he said. "We will find the very best approach."

 

Losing Tifft would be unthinkable, said Karen Wallace, director of the museum's Center for Science Learning, not only because it is America's sole urban wildlife sanctuary but:

 

It is a vital component of Buffalo's history, from the Native American chapter through waterfront industrialization and brownfields reclamation.

 

Its 79-acre cattail marsh is the largest wetland on the state's Lake Erie shoreline.

 

It is a nationally important bird sanctuary where nearly 70 species are known to breed, and many others drop in during migration.

 

In other words, Tifft "is not a typical walk in the woods," Wallace said.

 

Higgins, who proposed a year ago that the state take over Tifft, said the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation "has the ability to fund capital projects and operational improvements to the preserve over the long term."

 

About $1.1 million in state and federal money is currently available to build a pedestrian way linking the nature preserve with the Tifft Street playing fields to the south and the new 90-acre Outer Harbor State Park to the west, he said.

 

Though Parks Commissioner Bernadette Castro initially expressed interest in the proposal, nothing further has been heard from Albany.

 

"Part of getting the state to act is showing a united front," Higgins said.

 

Chesebrough said the Science Museum is open to any suggestion for Tifft. "We're anxious to get as many solutions on the table as possible," he said.

 

If the Tifft Preserve closes forever it will be big blow the the Buffalo Community. :P :P :P