Times Beach Nature Preserve - A Gem in Downtown Buffalo

Few would argue that downtown Buffalo isn’t undergoing a renaissance – new offices are springing up, eclectic housing is bringing people back to the core, the Erie Canal is being celebrated, UB is finally coming home, and new markets, shops, and cafés are making downtown a destination once again. But the heart of downtown is not just in its buildings; nature is running through its veins.

One of the city’s most unique and most recently recognized natural amenities is the fifty acre Times Beach Nature Preserve. Located in downtown Buffalo where the Buffalo River converges with Lake Erie, Times Beach was formally designated a nature preserve in 2006, although it has been an important habitat for decades.

The Times Beach site was at one time an actual sand beach. The growth of industry along the Lake Erie waterfront and the Buffalo River caused its use for recreational bathing to be discontinued. From 1972 until 1976, after much of the city’s industry had disappeared, the site was used by the Army Corps of Engineers as a Contained Disposal Facility where dredging from the Buffalo River shipping lanes were pumped and stored. These spoils, which were highly contaminated with various pollutants, remain today.

Since 1976, nature has reclaimed Times Beach. Cattail marshes, forests, and meadows have grown over the site. Consultants have identified diverse habitat including aquatic, shoreline, upland and forest ecosystems at Times Beach. Over the last decade, a group now recognized as the Times Beach Oversight Committee, made up of citizens with broad backgrounds including local politics, environmental and ecological activism, and ornithology, worked with the City of Buffalo, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Erie County, to designate Times Beach as a nature preserve. The County helped build trails, boardwalks, viewing blinds, overlooks, fencing, and interpretive signage within the Times Beach Nature Preserve.

The Niagara River and the Buffalo shoreline of Lake Erie are part of a Globally Significant Important Bird Area. Times Beach Nature Preserve is part of the flyway for migratory birds and provides habitat for many visiting and breeding birds and other animals including endangered, threatened, and protected species. Ornithologists have counted 240 bird species at Times Beach.

Times Beach also benefits the people of the region. Representative Jack Quinn said that "increasing access to Times Beach for the residents of Buffalo and Western New York is an integral part of the waterfront development process” (Governor’s Press Release, 2004). Many bird watchers and families now go to Times Beach each year. Recently, the bike trail that runs along the Niagara River from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie was extended to Times Beach Nature Preserve, connecting it to other outer harbor waterfront amenities including the NFTA Small Boat Harbor, Tifft Nature Preserve, Gallagher Beach State Park, and the new Bell Slip park.

Times Beach and these other natural and recreational amenities could help improve Buffalo’s economy as the city hopes to capitalize on waterfront and natural recreation with projects that include the proposed Bass Pro in downtown and the recently opened Erie Canal commercial slip. An emerging field of study called ecological economics quantifies the value of ecological services and has shown that the monetary value of natural areas, including forests and marshes, is greatest if they are left intact, and not developed, logged, or paved. These ecological services preserve biodiversity, clean the air and water, and sustain human life. By cleaning the air we breathe and the water we drink, they help save money that would otherwise need to be spent to do the same. Stormwater, which would otherwise require costly infrastructure to collect and clean, is absorbed and purified for free at Times Beach. Instead, the money can be spent on education and job creation.

Public access to ecological wonders like Times Beach is an important part of conservation – when people, especially kids, have a chance to experience nature, they will undoubtedly learn to cherish it. The strength to protect Times Beach and other places like it can only come from new generations of people that recognize their value. Enjoy the preserve, walk through it, experience the sights and sounds of the natural world, and marvel at the regenerative power of nature. But if you do get a chance to go to Times Beach, tread lightly – it is a nature preserve, a sanctuary for exhausted wildlife desperate for shelter that is increasingly rare along the waterfront. Be mindful that protecting its natural inhabitants is the only way to protect Times Beach.

The future of the Times Beach Nature Preserve is uncertain. Adjacent to Times Beach, a 130 acre parcel of land is the target of future condominium and retail space. To many people in the Buffalo area, including most politicians and developers, this adjacent parcel, which is currently controlled by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, symbolizes the city’s potential for successful waterfront development. There are also new bridge proposals to connect downtown to the outer harbor to improve accessibility. However, in many ways, the Times Beach Nature Preserve is threatened by proposed waterfront development. An ecosystem, especially one that is an important flyway for migratory birds, will be harmed if it is surrounded by high rise buildings, parking lots, and a steady flow of traffic.

In February, Times Beach may seem lifeless – blanketed with ice and snow and battered by cold lake winds. But if you can brave the temperatures or have some time to explore Times Beach on one of our rare sunny and “warm” winter days, you’ll see many fresh animal tracks in the snow and notice some feathery fluttering in the trees. Raccoons, Red Fox, White Tailed Deer, and Eastern Cottontail Rabbits are abundant. Chickadees will call to you, White-Breasted Nuthatches will claw their way up and down tree trunks in search of food, Turkeys will run from you in the underbrush and the soft knocking of Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers will catch your ear.

No, winter at Times Beach is not lifeless – many animals are alive and well – but winter is a time of dormancy. Life is incubating all around you, in the trees, beneath the snow, and under the ice. In less than two months, new, green spring shoots will rocket through the warming earth towards the sky, wildflowers will bloom, insects will begin buzzing again, and thousands of migrating song birds including warblers that have spent the winter in the American south or even as far as the Caribbean and Central and South America will return tired from their journey but jubilant to start anew.