Each spring since 2009, a female peregrine falcon has laid eggs in a nesting box in the tower of MacKay Heating Plant on the South Campus. Classified as an endangered species in New York State, peregrine falcons were completely eliminated from the eastern U.S. in the 1960s, mainly due to pesticide residue in their prey.

Thanks to a collaborative effort between UB, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Historic Preservation Office, there are now more than five dozen in New York State.

The addition of cameras provides the public with a window into these fascinating raptors, from the laying of eggs to fledging from the nest.

The UB falcons have provided both entertainment and valuable ornithological documentation for future research in the habits of these birds.

In an ongoing collaboration, UB and the NYSDEC are developing procedures to facilitate the ability of people and nature to co-exist in an urban environment.

In 2010, UB Campus Dining & Shops acquired a food waste decomposer and began sharing compost and soil amendment with individuals and groups both on campus and in the community, including the Massachusetts Avenue Project and Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo.

Fluid Culture is a lecture, arts, and media series of the UB Humanities Institute that focuses on water, globalization, and culture. Its goal is to better understand and evaluate our increasingly fluid world due to globalization, including our different relationship to water due to globalization.

Buffalo is the ideal place to contemplate such issues because it is located around Lake Erie, Niagara Falls, and Lake Ontario. Globalization has changed residents’ connection to the waterfront. They once viewed it as a thriving industrial base but now they view it as a deteriorating area in need of revitalization. Fluid Culture further explores this connection and how new cultural connections to our water can be made. UB professors Justin Read and Colleen Culleton curated Fluid Culture.

UB supports the alliance’s work and lends the research and educational expertise of its faculty and staff to the organization. The WNY Environmental Alliance boosts collaboration among more than 90 organizations working on environmental issues throughout Buffalo Niagara, and works to advocate for the region’s environmental agenda.

The mission of the Massachusetts Avenue Project is to nurture the growth of a diverse and equitable local food system and promote local economic opportunities, access to affordable, nutritious food and social change education.

UB faculty, staff and students have worked with the Clean Air Coalition toward a goal of protecting Western New York residents’ right to breathe clean air. The group has taken on local industrial polluters in Buffalo and its suburbs and, in the process, has made great strides in reducing toxic emissions throughout the region.

More than 20 years ago, faculty from the Law School and Architecture and Planning joined with community members to form what is now Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper.

This organization has a long track record of success in protecting our area’s most precious natural resource—20 percent of the world’s fresh water.

This community/university partnership continues today with Riverkeeper coordinating a unique $50 million public-private partnership (including the U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office, Honeywell, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), and the United States Army Corps of Engineers) to clean up the Buffalo River through environmental dredging.