Making a Good Thing Better
The Robertson Addition to Bow in the Clouds Preserve
Bow in the Clouds Preserve just got BIGGER!
There’s satisfaction when that missing piece fits into the puzzle – the link between the snowy mountain and the neon-blue lake, or the one that connects the old red barn to the golden hayfield. It’s kind of like that when SWMLC protects a parcel that’s next to one we’ve already conserved: the essential piece that joins two separate parcels into one large protected natural area.
Thanks to land owners Phil and Ellen Robertson, who deeply discounted the purchase price of their property, SWMLC recently protected nearly 13 acres adjacent to Bow in the Clouds Preserve, creating almost 73 acres of protected urban wetlands and uplands, a tranquil place for both people and wildlife within the city limits of Kalamazoo.
Like Sister Virginia (Ginny) Jones and the other members of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Nazareth, who generously donated the original 6o-acre Bow in the Clouds parcel to SWMLC back in 2007, the Robertson’s were delighted to know their property will now be protected forever.
The Robertson Addition is adjacent to Bow in the Clouds’ western edge and extends protection of the Spring Valley Creek corridor to nearly half a mile between busy Nazareth and Mount Olivet Roads.
Like many urban natural areas that have been surrounded by neighborhoods for decades, it has its share of invasive plant species.
But it also provides much-needed habitat for many kinds of plants and animals in an area that’s already densely occupied by humans – nesting places for marsh wrens, open water for migrating ducks, hidden nooks for blue lobelia and swamp milkweed, hunting posts for hawks, tall treetops for warblers, wet meadows for sun loving Joe-pye weed, and dense cover for shy critters like mink and water snakes.
It improves habitat for people, too. Located entirely within a Wellhead Protection Area that supplies Kalamazoo residents with clean drinking water, the Robertson Addition includes 545 feet of frontage on 10-acre Averill Lake and 851 feet of frontage on Spring Valley Creek. It also has four acres of uplands where mature oaks and brushy shrubs keep soil and other pollutants from spilling down the steep slopes into the lake and stream.
