The Alley Pond Environment Center is a nonprofit that operates a building where visitors can learn about the local wetlands and trails as well as nature on the whole. The center is dedicated to educating individuals about the environment, protecting and preserving the park, open spaces and waterbodies, and advocating for sustainable environmental policies and practices. Inside scoop: The Douglaston Estate Windmill is in Alley Pond Park. Built around 1870, it pumped water to nearby farms. The original windmill was converted into a two-room house in the early 1900s, when the borough’s population spiked. But in 1985, a group of local residents constructed a working replica that pumps fresh water from the ground that the park uses. Address: 228-06 Northern Boulevard, Douglaston, and www.alleypond.com. Gateway National Recreation Area Operated by the federal government, Gateway National Recreation Area encompasses 11 parks in three regions. The entire park covers over 26,607 acres of land and straddles three boroughs (Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island) and two states (Monmouth County, New Jersey is included). The entire circuit includes locations for outdoor activities, such as swimming, hiking, camping, boating, and bird-watching. In Queens, the Jamaica Bay unit stretches from the shoreline below Brooklyn’s Shore Parkway to dozens of uninhabited islands in Jamaica Bay to the Rockaway Peninsula, which leads to the Atlantic Ocean. The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, one of the best bird-watching areas in the Northeastern U.S., is located in this unit. Roughly 9,155 acres, the refuge features salt marshes, woodlands, estuaries and sand dunes. A few miles down the road is Jacob Riis Park, a public beach by the Atlantic Ocean. The stretch has a boardwalk and a landmarked bathhouse. The 200-acres Breezy Point Tip is adjacent to Riis Park. Consisting of dunes, marshes, and oceanfront beach, it is a nesting area for many birds, such as the piping glover. During their migrations, different kinds of hawks rest and nest there. Plus, diamondback turtles lay eggs and horseshoe crabs mate in the sand dunes of the Wildlife Refuge at certain times. 65
QIP2015
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