“A society will be great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit under”
Obviously the unwritten corollary of this proverb is that a city will be respected when they plant willow for their beavers to eat. Worth A Dam has been hard at work to push the slow-moving boulder of progress in this matter, so that we can use our generous donations for a second planting project. Surely you remember lasts years’ feel-good/feel-bad adventure, where responsibly donated labor and hard working beaver friends put 30 trees in the ground. There’s footage in the sidebar, that sadly lost its original “I’d like to teach the world to Sing” soundtrack when WMG decided to fight with You Tube. Meanwhile these finely installed trees were obviously so deeply planted their roots reached all the way to the underworld and awakened the cloven-hoofed property owner who demanded that they be moved out of the channel to “prevent flooding”.
Ahh those were the days.
This time the city engineer is taking no chances and asked us to begin with a biologist report on the habitat to see whether or not there is actually a good reason to plant the trees in the first place. Apparently declining songbird habitat, increasing water temperature, and decreasing fish population just isn’t compelling enough on its own. One might argue that It seemed almost like the kind of hoop designed to discourage jumping, but we were up to the challenge. I started writing our ecological contacts, and was told by our friends at the Urban Creeks Council that we had a perfect environmental consulting firm here in town!
Of course I put on my sunday come’a courting email and introduced myself to Condor Country Consulting to explain our predicament. I heard back from the Principal biologist and President Wendy Dexter that she could probably offer some pro bono assistance, but maybe not until after May. She gave me some other names, one of which I recognized as the gentleman who is helping us with the Interpretive Signs Grant (if we get it). We talked a little more and she volunteered that her four year old daughter loved the beavers. I immediately confessed that the affections of children were the secret weapon of Worth A Dam and I hoped she could find a way to help us take care of our beavers and our creek.
Can I get an Amen? Yesterday she assigned biologist Felix Ratcliff to work on this issue and he contacted me to arrange a survey visit.
So that’s part one of the tree operation. Part II is the Eagle Scout Project for a local beaver fan who contacted us to be involved with the planting and tree maintenance. He came to our Sierra Club talk in Antioch to catch up and then met last week with the City Engineer, his Scout Leader, and our VP Linda Meza to talk plans. In addition to planting and wrapping trees, he is offering to install a few wood duck boxes which the scouts could help make. He and the city engineer can hand select tree sites and install survey flags for people to plant later. In addition to fellow scout help, Rona Zollinger’s ESA class and another High School class want to assist.
So on to Part III which will be buying the trees and helping the city engineer to convince the council to let us plant them. Stay tuned.
You’d think we were planning the invasion of Normandy.
