Earth Day Festivities Offer Life Lessons at Tifft Preserve: More Photos
By Louise Continelli, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Apr. 21–ALL CREATURES — cold-blooded and warm — do their ecological part — even rattlesnakes.
Before he became Tifft Nature Preserve ecologist this year, David Spiering helped threatened timber rattlesnakes find a home.
“Farmers like mice even less than a timber rattlesnake,” maintains Spiering, who notes that this type of “narrow fellow” is shyer than a more aggressive cousin.
No need to be concerned about the buzzing of rattlesnakes a few miles south of downtown Buffalo at the Fuhrmann Boulevard preserve on balmly Sunday afternoon as Spiering helped out at free Earth Day festivities that included nature walks, fossil making and crafts from recycled materials.
It’s part of Buffalo Museum of Science’s “Earth Week” sponsored by National Fuel’s Conservation Incentive Program and supported by several organizations. The museum operates the preserve in South Buffalo, a 264-acre urban wetland preserve on reclaimed former industrial property, now dedicated to environmental education and science.
“Ecology improves the quality of our lives,” says Spiering, who adds that the preserve includes “a 75-acre remnant cattail marsh, the largest remaining in Erie County. Tifft Preserve provides habitat for many plant and animals species.” At Tifft, he aims to “restore native plant communities.”
Hundreds of visitors thrill to five miles of trails and bird watching — more than 260 species observed on the nature preserve.
“I’ve actually seen deer out here,” maintains Robin Wilson, who’s walked the trails several times before.
Spiering has done research on “cavity-nesting” birds like woodpeckers and chickadees.
He encourages respect for “the natural world and lifelong learning.”
Growing up outside of Milwaukee, this ecologist says he enjoyed “camping with my parents, I always liked the outdoors.”
He went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied zoology and the environment, graduating in 1999. There he worked on an independent project to control garlic mustard — a nonnative invasive plant — in the campus natural areas.
After earning his degree, Spiering worked “field jobs” in several Midwestern and Southern states where he says he “mainly chased after reptiles, amphibians and small mammals but also conducted vegetation surveys.”
After gaining three years of field experience, he attended graduate school at Colorado State University, where he received a master’s degree in ecology.
On Earth Day, his goal is to help others “gain an appreciation for the world we live in.”
When we take clean water and clean air for granted, Spiering says, we risk “degrading the home we live in.”
lcontinelli@buffnews.com
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