Westchester Square News: Baby Giraffe

Westchester Square News: Baby Giraffe: Baby Giraffe Makes his Zoo Debut Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © Wildlife Conservation Society BRONX, NEW YORK, MAY 29- A mal...

Baby Giraffe

Baby Giraffe Makes his Zoo Debut

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © Wildlife Conservation Society

BRONX, NEW YORK, MAY 29- A male Baringo giraffe calf is one of the newest animals at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo.

The young giraffe was born during the winter and lives in the zoo’s African Plains exhibit.

The giraffe’s mother is Margaret Sukari, and the father is James Michael. The Bronx Zoo names all of its giraffes in memory of Mr. and Mrs. James Carter, benefactors for whom the Carter Giraffe Building is named.

Newborn giraffes are approximately six feet tall at birth and can weigh more than 100 pounds. As adults, they can be more than 17 feet tall and weigh more than 3,000 pounds. Giraffes are the tallest animal in the world and have an 18-inch-long tongue that they use to grasp branches and pull leaves from trees.

The gestation period for a giraffe is 14 to 14.5 months. The newborn calf stands and starts walking within the first couple of hours of birth. The calf will nurse for approximately one year, but will begin eating some solid food at three months old.  Eventually it will transition to a diet of leaves, alfalfa, hay, kale, pelleted grain, and other produce.

Giraffes are native to grasslands, savannas, and open woodlands in central, east, and southern Africa. The Baringo giraffe (aka Rothschild’s giraffe) is found in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. While some populations are still robust, the overall population is declining. The Wildlife Conservation Society works across the globe and throughout the giraffe’s African range to save wildlife and wild places. WCS is working to protect giraffes in key African landscapes like Zakouma, Chad, Murchison Falls, Uganda, and in the Sahel of South Sudan.

To plan your trip, visit bronxzoo.com or call 718-367-1010.

Westchester Square News: Puerto Rican Day Parade

Westchester Square News: Puerto Rican Day Parade: Puerto Rican Day Parade Set for Sunday By Dan Gesslein BRONX, NEW YORK, MAY 29- Forget about Fleet week. The real kickoff to su...

Puerto Rican Day Parade

Puerto Rican Day Parade Set for Sunday

By Dan Gesslein

BRONX, NEW YORK, MAY 29- Forget about Fleet week. The real kickoff to summer in the Boogie Down is the sound of salsa wafting through the Grand Concourse during the annual Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade

This year some 110 groups from throughout the country and South America will march on the Grand Concourse in a celebration of the Bronx’s rich Puerto Rican heritage. The opening ceremony takes place in front of Poe Park at 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 1st. The parade will kick off 1 p.m. at 192nd Street and the Grand Concourse.

“The Bronx Puerto Rican Parade is no longer a local activity. Now we have international organizations participating,” said Francisco Gonzalez, chairman of the parade. 

Citing the bands and cultural groups from South America and the Caribbean who will be on hand, Gonzalez said, “We embrace everybody.”

Marriacchi bands, Jamaican steel drum bands, car groups, salsa dancers, school bands, West Indian, salsa, Hip Hop and Ragaeton musicians, bicycle clubs, culture groups etc. from various cultures will all participate in the annual event.

The parade will honor the work of non-profit groups who have been struggling to make their communities a better place and promoting culture despite having a hard time getting funding in this tough economic time. 

Elected officials of all stripes are expected to march in the parade during this heated election year.

In addition to the fun and music, the parade serves a more noble purpose. The event funds the scholarships for the parade prince and princess. The message is one that children from the Bronx can go on to achieve great things.

“If people like (Supreme Court Justice) Sonia Sottomayor can come from humble beginnings so can you,” Gonzalez said.

Fun in the Sun

Summer Guide 2014:

Where to go and what to do this summer

Click here

Westchester Square News: We Need Cops!

Westchester Square News: We Need Cops!: Hey Blaz: We Need Cops! Too Many Shootings, Too Few Cops! COMMUNITY BOARD NEWS N’ VIEWS by Father Richard F. Gorm...

We Need Cops!

Hey Blaz: We Need Cops!

Too Many Shootings,

Too Few Cops!

COMMUNITY BOARD

NEWS N’ VIEWS

by

Father Richard F. Gorman

Chairman

Community Board #12 (The Bronx)

BRONX, NEW YORK, MAY 22- Our newly arrived Commanding Officer at the Forty-seventh Precinct, Deputy Inspector Raul R. Stephenson, is certainly receiving his “baptism by fire.” The number of shootings as of late has placed our Precinct in the top tier of shootings in our beloved Borough of The Bronx and the entire City of New York.

I trust that the good Deputy Inspector has not, and will not, become disheartened. I suspect not. Something tells me that he is fired up to make our numbers in this category go down and stay down. I can tell you that my colleagues and I on Community Board #12 (The Bronx) stand ready to support our Commanding Officer in any way that we can. I can tell you that one course of action for which the Community Board will be advocating will remain sizably increasing the number of Police

Officers in our Forty-seventh Precinct.

Traditionally, our local Precinct has been routinely short-changed when it comes to the assignment of new and/or additional Police Officers. In terms of territory required to be policed, the “4 – 7” ranks right near the top in our Borough. I hasten to add that the confines of the Precinct are by no means contiguous and compact. The Woodlawn Heights neighborhood juts out on the northwestern margins of Bronx Community District #12 and the Pelham community that includes that portion of The Bronx that bears a Pelham Manor / Westchester County Zip Code and that one must traverse through Westchester in order to access correspondingly hangs out like an appendage along the District’s northeastern boundaries. This geographical idiosyncrasy, with its nonconforming peculiarity, does not make for easy patrolling.

Add to this the fact that the population of Community Board #12 (The Bronx), thanks to the haphazard, pro-development-despite-the-detriment policies of the prior Municipal Administrations of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, has substantially shifted upward and you have, in my humble estimation, a cogent and reasonable argument that more cops are called for in the “4 – 7,” and sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, One Police Plaza, “1 – P – P,” as it is affectionately called, the Headquarters of the New York City Police Department (N.Y.P.D.), stubbornly clings to the outdated and specious argument that the Precinct is adequately staffed by a sufficient number of cops.  Maddeningly, the powers-that-be at Police Headquarters cite alleged scientific and statistical support for this rather unscientific determination that totally and obviously ignores the aforesaid significant facts. They routinely allude to the rather mysterious and not-ever-to-be-faulted “RAND FORMULA” that supposed provides a systematic, precise and infallible methodology for assessing how many Police Officers are needed and justified in any given command.

“RAND FORMULA” be damned! Whatever it is, it does not suffice for our Forty-seventh Precinct. We genuinely and straight away need more Police Officers and we should not continue to be short-changed. A new Administration sits tall in the saddle at City Hall. It has promised to be more attentive to the needs and concerns of our neighborhoods.

Let it hear this concern of Community Board #12 (The Bronx) and be attentive to this need.  Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised and signaled that he is neither enamored nor bound to the priorities and approach of Administrations past. This issue of ours would be an excellent opportunity and venue to so demonstrate.

Our men and women in the Laconia Avenue stationhouse do an outstanding job protecting us day in and day out. It is about time that they got more help to do so. They deserve it . . . . . . and so do we! What do you say, Your Honor? May we have more cops . . . . . . PLEASE?!?!?

Until next time, that is it for this time!