It isn’t just any day that you wake up to find whopping beaver mistake coming out of Portland of all places, but this is a doozy. You see Westmoreland is one of the most desirable sections of Portland. It’s victorians and craftsman homes are some of the wealthiest places to live in the region. So they of COURSE have enough money to know better or at least hire someone to correct their mistakes.
Crystal Springs Creek becomes an urban salmon sanctuary; city council proclaims Sunday ‘Salmon in Our City Day’
What happens when humans build and develop without much consideration for other species. Well, sometimes it means using millions of dollars to go back and correct mistakes.
In Portland’s case, it meant spending $16 million to backtrack and widen culverts — the circular or square piping that sometimes runs through streams —at Crystal Springs Creek so that salmon could adequately pass through them.
The nine manmade culverts that support roadways and pass through the sparkling, 2.5-mile long creek, which snakes through Southeast Portland’s Westmoreland Park, until last year were too small, impacting salmon’s ability to spawn and swim through them and ultimately migrate to the ocean.
So far so good. A wealthy community spending money to fix its culverts and protect salmon. Having a festival to create awareness. That”s a good thing, right? Ahh but its when they talk about WHY salmon matter that we get interested.
But why are the salmon important at all? Turns out, for a lot of different reasons. It’s not going to be a food source for people from that creek, but it will be for other animals, including beavers and other critters. Additionally, according to Karl Lee, co-chair of the Crystal Springs Partnership and retired hydrologist for the U.S. Geological survey, they’re a “giant package of nutrients.”
The Crystal Springs Partnership is a lush coalition of agencies and advocacy groups working to protect the waterways in the fanciest way possible. (Did I mention that Portland is the city in the US with the highest density of nonprofits per square foot?) Well you’d think that ONE of them would explain that beavers don’t eat fish, wouldn’t you?
Apparently not.
