Okay, there’s some significant beaver challenge to talk about this morning from Maryland, but before we brace ourselves for that bitter pill, here’s some ambrosia to start our mission.
The Awesome Things These 6 Cities Are Doing for Wildlife
With little effort, conservationists argue, cities can provide habitat for birds, butterflies, pollinators, and other creatures great and small.
When conservationists worry about the prospect of a world without wildlife, they often focus on two related developments: the sprawling growth of crowded cities and suburbs and the push to farm more land, and farm it more intensively, to feed those cities. Together, these two forces have worn the natural world down to tattered remnants.
So it may seem contradictory to suggest that cities can also be part of the solution. But conservationists, who used to focus on protecting landscapes that were pristine and full of wildlife, now often work instead to improve the margins—to make roadsides, backyards, idle fields, and working waterfronts wildlife-friendly. They argue that with a little effort, cities can provide habitat for birds, butterflies, pollinators, and other creatures great and small. According to this line of thinking, re-wilding the cities will be better not just for wildlife but for the cities. The idea is that the metropolis is a far richer place to live—more magical even—to the extent that it is also a zoopolis.
Really! A zoopolis! Imagine how he’d feel if he walked into our festival? And wait until you see his favorite example:
My favorite case study is New York City’s Bronx River. For much of the rest of the 20th century, the Bronx River {was} a ruin of rusting bedsprings and junked cars, along with sewage and industrial pollution. But an extensive cleanup effort by the Bronx River Alliance and other groups has restored the eight-mile-long lower river, with turtles, alewives, glass eels, great blue herons, and other species back at home there. Beavers returned in 2007—after an absence of several hundred years. City programs now focus on making the river a source of green pleasure for neighboring residents, many of them, like my great-grandfather, immigrants.
The restored habitat is providing homes for wildlife—but it’s no doubt also producing new stories to entertain children, and to be passed down for generations. That makes the city a much richer and more magical place for everyone.
Isn’t that lovely? Richard Conniff is the author of The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth, which has been talked about everywhere including the Smithsonian. He also maintains the blog “Strange Behaviors“. He may not realize it yet but he SO needs to visit Martinez. Thanks Richard for a great look at how cities can contribute.
Now it’s off to Maryland, where contributing to wildlife is the very LAST thing on their mind.
“What they’re doing is taking what has been a public park for 77 years and turning it into a wildlife preserve,” Baker said. “You don’t allow wildlife to proliferate in your backyard. Why would you allow it in a public park?”
Destruction wrought by beavers at Buddy Attick Park
Barbara Simon, 71, said she has lived in Greenbelt for almost her entire life. The destruction she has seen the last few months at Buddy Attick Park is unlike anything she’s witnessed in the city.
She wasn’t talk about unruly teenagers or environmentally careless residents. It’s beavers who are tearing into dozens of trees and collapsing them in their wake. Simon said she and her husband, Tom, walk around the park every day and are dismayed by damage they’ve seen.
“We’ve always had a few beavers in years’ past,” Simon said, “but I don’t remember the beavers ever being this bad.”
Yes, those wanton detructo-beavers, ruthlessly chewing down trees just so they have something to eat in the winter months. I don’t know how you can stand it. Certainly it’s not like you can wrap the trees and protect them, or paint them with sand. Or wait for them to coppice. Or plant more.
She said they volunteered with the city’s Public Works department to put bands around trees. That may have protected some trees, but dozens — maybe a hundred — have been felled.
City Administrator Michael McLaughlin said that last fall, the Department of Public Works met with Peter Bendel, a wildlife response manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, to evaluate the spike in beaver activity.
According to a report provided to the City Council, Bendel said a second, younger beaver colony at the park is likely the cause of the increased activity — due both to its proximity to the first colony, which is unusual, and to the beavers’ inexperience.
Those young beaver thugs! Moving in and chewing everything in sight. Funny how the older beaver tolerate them, I mean because beaver are territorial and all and generally kick out anyone that’s not a family member…Ohhhh. You mean these young beaver are yearlings? Living a little apart on their own before seeking their own fortune? Exactly like ours do? And chewing more and bigger trees than they need because they are teenager who want to show off? Ohh that almost never always happens.
In February, volunteers and members of Greenbelt Public Works put wire fences around trees in beaver-threatened areas. Alex Palmer, a volunteer coordinator with the Greenbelt-based environmental nonprofit Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society, said approximately 250 trees were caged.
Resident Justin Baker said the city needs to do more than place wire cages around trees. Baker declined to make any specific suggestions, but said the city needs to do something to curb the beavers’ appetites.
Force the beavers to go on a diet? How do you do that? Oh I get it. The LAST diet. The one where you never, ever eat food again, and you’re sure to loose weight every single day. Well, except for maybe the first 1 or 2 where you’re soggy from being trapped underwater.
Maryland gets a letter.
Oh and speaking of wildlife preserves, Jon saw three beavers this morning and a little skunk in the annex so it seems a great time to re-post this.
