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To block development, group wants College Park to buy Route 1 Metro property
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Michael Theis/Route 1 Reporter
This property in southern College Park, just north of the Riverdale Park Station redevelopment, is for sale. Some nearby residents want local officials to purchase it to preserve the land as green space.
Just north of Riverdale Park Station, a wooded tract of land sits for sale. On state property records, its listed at 4535 Albion Road. If you've ever driven between College Park and Hyattsville on Baltimore Avenue, you'll recognize it by the grove of bamboo that fronts the eastern edge...
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Pingback: Riverdale Park Lot Along Route 1 Up for Sale
Hello,
I pass by this property often when I commute to work via the Trolley Trail.
I believe there is a natural seep on the property that provides a home for a variety of frogs and other amphibians (toads, salamanders). In the spring, I have heard the calls of spring peepers. Spring peepers are tiny, charismatic little frogs whose mating calls signal that spring has arrived (https://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/amphibians/frogsandtoads/northern-spring-peeper/northern_spring_peeper.php). The calls are so loud in the spring that they can be heard from the parking lot of the new Whole Foods. I would imagine that this indicates a fairly substantial population.
While peepers are not an endangered species, it is important to recognize that amphibians (frogs, toads, and salamanders) are experiencing world-wide declines in population levels that are alarming and disheartening. Scientists believe some of the decline is the result of disease, but that some of the decline can also be attributed to loss of habitat due to development (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/10/14/13147056/amphibian-extinction-frog-bd).
Frogs and other amphibians require wet, soggy areas that aren’t populated by fish to complete their life cycle: they NEED damp places like this bit of property to breed and lay their eggs. If peepers live here, I’d imagine a host of other amphibians do as well. It would be a disappointment to loose even more green space in our community, especially green space that provides the much-needed habitat that frogs and other amphibians require. If the land here is developed, none of these amphibians will survive.
While seemingly inconsequential to our daily lives; frogs like the spring peeper are a crucial part of the complex web of animal and plant life in our local area. Their loss locally would be disappointing, and that local loss contributes to the devastating global decline that is alarming scientists around the world.