In 1606, four hundred years ago, local folks hunted and gathered clams and oysters on the mud flats of the Charles River Estuary, on the great International Atlantic Flyway.

I imagine them on Captain's Island, watching the moon rise over Boston Harbor, and the small islands protecting the mouth of the estuary from the sea. This stony island was surrounded by salt marsh and hearty grasses, and was washed twice a day by the tide. This spot, now called Magazine Beach, was filled with animal sounds and bird song. Today it remains a rare inner city river bend park. A treasure to us all.

A river or an estuary? The “Charles” was so wide in its lower reaches that when Captain John Smith explored it in 1614, he was sure it was a great river continuing into the interior. Therefore he named it after his patron, Prince Charles of England.

However, Smith was wrong, and when the Puritans came to colonize the area, they discovered they could not sail into the interior to establish themselves. They set about altering the estuary almost immediately. The urge to develop the Charles continues to this day.

It’s a river, dammit!

At public meetings, officials from the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), presenting plans to develop the last remaining open space on the banks of the Charles in Cambridge, continually refer to the Charles “Basin” or “River.” When I point out that in Cambridge the Charles is actually an Estuary they say, “Not any more, it’s been dammed! So now it’s no longer an Estuary!”

Gee, I wonder, did they send a telegram to Mother Nature explaining that now that the river is damned she can’t use it as an estuary, nor for flood control? Look what happened to all the dammed rivers north of Boston during the three huge rainfalls we had this spring. Surely, the dams did not prevent flooding. Downtown Peabody looked like parts of New Orleans for over a week!

The DCR does not admit that “Magazine Beach” is a wetland. They claim that it has been altered too much to be considered a habitat to any living thing. They are wrong. Despite all the “restoration” the DCR contractor, Modern Continental, has inflicted on Magazine Beach, wildlife cling to the natural resources there as if to a life preserver. Last week I saw dragon flies and Canada Geese, just back from their molt migration. I saw the most destructive of all “invasive species,” purple loosestrife, which has appeared as a result of the DCR’s restoration efforts!

Some DCR experts will tell you that the Canada Geese you see on the Charles are “resident” and not wildlife at all. They claim, without any evidence, that the geese stay here because they are lazy, and like people to feed them. So they campaigned to run the geese off the “reservation,” and when that failed, painted their eggs with oil so they wouldn’t hatch.

The DCR fails to understand that the bread that folks in Cambridge offer the geese is no better than the bread the folks along the Chesapeake offer, and no better than in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. They are not settling down here so they can be fed bread!

The sad story is that all around the world, the travel patterns of migratory animals have been disrupted by the dual challenge of human activity and climate change. This is happening to fish, birds and other wildlife. Loss of habitat due to development on farm land in the south, the building of shopping centers and airports on wetlands, and the construction of organized sports fields next to rivers, lakes, and ocean front, has left open only a small portion of “open space.”

Climate change is even more of a challenge, especially for the migratory waterfowl, who find their summer lakes have disappeared due to melting ice and permafrost. In the south, up to 50 percent of habitat has been destroyed due to ever more fierce and frequent storms, and rising water levels.

Adapting to human activity

Here on the Charles we see Canada Geese settling down, in response to the severe loss of habitat to the north and south. This is how they are adapting to the challenges. In Alaska we now see song birds, and in New Hampshire, hummingbirds. In the Pacific Northwest, salmon won’t migrate up stream due to the increased temperatures of rivers. We see flora native to southern climes taking root here in temperate zones. Ask yourself, are these changes due to the human activity of throwing a few scraps of bread on the water? I think the human activity called development is the culprit.

Instead of attacking the animals trying to survive loss of habitat by taking refuge along a controlled river like the Charles, we should welcome them, and preserve a little open space for them. Fortunately, we can do this here at Magazine Beach, as the DCR has not yet destroyed all the habitat there. But we must prevail upon the DCR to stop the development of Magazine Beach and allow one small section of this “basin” to be reserved for passive recreation, and for the wildlife who who are so desperately seeking survival.

At 8:00 PM on August 14th, the Cambridge Conservation Commission will take up the DCR's request for an extension of their permit to develop Magazine Beach and take it away from wildlife, and folks who like it as it is. I oppose this extension. I hope the Commission can find the will to deny the request, and to look for more responsible ideas about all that open space down there! We should insist on a balance between developed areas on the Charles and natural habitat preserved for wildlife and passive recreation.

Must we develop every square inch of the river front?

Have we no ability to limit our lust for land?