GRBT in St. Louis / GRBT in the Twin Cities

The Mississippi River is a national treasure for the United States with international significance for birds.

As stated by the MVVA design team, 40% of North America's waterfowl use the Mississippi Flyway for their annual migration (Cardinals however are neither migratory nor waterfowl...). 

Most North American birds funnel down through Central America, but some brave little birds are crazy enough to fly across the Gulf of Mexico.  This means it is critical for them to get as much food as they can on their way down the Mississippi.  They need habitat and food in multiple places, or they tucker out and fall into the oily water below.

In his summary of the MVVA designs for the arch grounds, Alex Ihnen at UrbanSTL claims they strike out on the objectives of the competition and the needs of the region.  While their ecologically informed narrative is a wonderful read, and their ideas are worth consideration by the winning team, there are some glaring omissions from their plan.  Most notable is the failure to do much of anything to Eads Bridge and to push the idea of a pedestrian bridge across the river back beyond 2015.

Regarding MVVA's aviary on the east side, Ihnen says the following,

There exist exceptional wetland preserves very near to St. Louis in Illinois. The plan proposes an "avian research center," a use unlikely to draw casual tourists despite the relatively large number of birding hobbyists. A "wetland hydrology research center" would likewise not be a draw. The small restored wetlands would not create a unique birding opportunity for serious birders and the research center would be better placed on nearby Horseshoe Lake or in proximity to the Chain-O-Rocks Bridge, a regionally famous spot for observing Bald Eagles. The plan also emphasizes the natural wetlands landscape on the Arch grounds, making the east side preserve even less of a draw.

He rightly points out that while birding is big, the space could hardly compare to other nearby birding sites.  He makes a reference to the success of Eagle Days, and doesn't dismiss the importance of birding economics.  He just says it isn't the best use of the competition space.  This is reasonable.  Such an important civic area should not be exclusively for used for one purpose.  There must be more than birding.

While it is true that better birding exists elsewhere in the St. Louis area, there is no reason why the competition site couldn't also be spectacular.  We are talking about a national park at the center of the US and the center of the Mississippi River.  It needs to incorporate the Great River Road and the Mississippi River Trail, but also the Great River Birding Trail.  This is the GRBT map for St. Louis,

The trail is thin with birding sites just south of the city, a few spread around the region, and then thinly dotting the river as they go north.  None of  those pins are national parks.  Contrast this with the Twin Cities,

While Minneapolis may be in a land of lakes and bike trails, it is clear from the GRBT map that it also has a lot more birding sites in its metro region than St. Louis.  A diversity of habitats doesn't just mean a diversity of birds, but healthier birds that can handle the long migration.

Good birding sites exist in St. Louis because of investments made over time in the individual sites. The Riverlands area especially took quite a lot of effort to create. Each birding site enhances the others. Good habitat created by the arch ground competition would be successful because there are already successful sites nearby, and conversely those sites would be even more successful with the addition of a valuable space like SOM's mound park or MVVA's aviary

For those unfamiliar with what is proposed, here is a summary of the MVVA plan.

East St. Louis is a nightmare from an environmental health perspective.  The water and soil need to be remediated and cleaned up.  MVVA would design all the drainage in East St. Louis to send runoff into a wetland reserve to be filtered before entering the river.

This wetland would not be the kind of place you could walk around in and damage, but the kind you see from some distance.

You'd walk along these elevated walkways and see canopy birds only.  Waterfowl, worm-diggers, and all other types of birds would be a bit harder to spot down in the brush.  It'd be a specialized birding attraction complimenting the mosaic of other bird habitats around the area.

It would attach to the end of that horrible handicap ramp build by HOK.

Does MVVA do the best job of cleaning up the water and the soil?  Hard to say.  Most of the teams, except PWP and their inevitable fertilizer and pesticide runoff, have some plan to improve the local ecology.

The important thing is that MVVA recognized the Mississippi Flyway in their narrative as an asset for the St. Louis region.  Birding should be a part of the park's vision.  This is the problem Ihnen points out with the MVVA aviary.  It should be part of the vision, not the entire vision.  As mentioned before, the mound park proposed by the SOM team covers birding better than the MVVA team by creating a greater diversity of habitat options with the same canopy walk effect while offering a greater diversity of uses for park visitors.

Most people looking at the mound park probably see the potential for picnics and bike trail connections, but just as clear is the potential for birding.  Creating space for birds in the city and in the arch grounds is not an either/or situation.  Birds and humans can coexist without either needing to steal space from the other.  Picnics in Forest Park are more enhanced by egrets flying overhead than by honking golf carts. 

The arch grounds and the east bank of the river should be an important stop-over oasis for great varieties of flying wildlife.  Why not hang purple martin gourds under the bridges?  Why not make the area a one-stop shop for birders looking to tick species off their list?  With the right diversity of birdfeeders and habitat integrated right into the experience, there could easily be room for dozens of species singing, preening, and strutting about.  It's good economics.

The international birdwatching community is huge.  Depending on which statistics are being used, ten to twenty percent of Americans (mostly white) are into birding.  In the UK, the scene is even bigger.  Wikipedia suggests that the US economy saw 32 billion in spending related to birding in 2001 and 36 billion in 2006.  MVVA's idea to make St. Louis a major benefactor of those billions is worth considering.