Biologists with the Wildlife Conservation Society, for the first time in over 200 years, and marking the come back of an animal, claims to have detected and photographed a North American beaver, which once considered indispensable to the city’s economy. The North American beaver has been named as ‘Jose’ in Serrano’s honor, in the Bronx River, a once-filthy waterway that flows along the Bronx Zoo and has since been washed up.
John Calvelli, a spokesman for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo said,
There has not been a sighting of a beaver lodge or a beaver in New York City for over 200 years. It sounds fantastic, but one of the messages that comes out of this is if you give wildlife a chance it will come back.
Once the Bronx was considered as identical with urban decline and till the1970s, the Bronx River began to be utilized like a dumping land that was almost blocked off with refuse. However the city government and residents set to make it clean, an attempt supported by $14.6 million in federal financial support obtained since 2000 by U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano of the Bronx.