Draut Park beaver talks continue
Members of the St. Matthews city parks committee plan to meet this month with St. Xavier High School student Ian Timothy to further discuss strategies for dealing with beavers in Draut Park, which also serves as a water retention area for flood control.
The dam is back, and councilman Rick Tonini said it, too, will be cleared away. “I understand your love of beavers,” Tonini said. “But it’s not a beaver park.”
Okay, the Courier-Journal has given very specific instructions that they are not to be quoted in any way unless dollars change hands, but I must risk the full wrath of Kentucky copyright law to share with you councilman Tonini’s breathtaking explanation of the issues, in which he considers civic hydrology, cultural demand, and agrarian richness and boils it all down to the Hallmark-worthy greeting, ‘Son, its not a beaver park”.
Wait, does this mean that the City of St. Matthews is going to build a designated ‘Beaver Park”?
In the mean time the councilman should know that every park with trees and water is potentially a “Beaver Park”. Since the dam is back again two months later and you’re going to use manpower hours and the bulldozer again to rip it out, I have to ask is it a “Department-of-Public-Works-Overtime Park“? Is it a “pay-to-relocate-beavers-every-12-months park“? Or maybe a “Generating–bad-press-for-the-city park”?
The article (which you really must go read in its entirety) describes the AWARD WINNING Ian who has lobbied long and hard for a flow device (in his enviable earnest and snark-free manner), talked about sand- painting trees, and pledged support including this lovely sentence:
The Worth A Dam group in California would match the city’s contribution to the $500 cost of a “deceiver” structure, Ian said.
Gosh, those meddling Worth A Dam folks are everywhere! Now technically, we are generally trying to keep the scholarship in California but this is IAN we’re talking about and there’s no question its the best place for it.
At the moment there are two comments for this story, one from me and one from Sharon Brown of Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife.Why don’t you go leave one too?
Of course I sent a letter to the editor – since it has not yet been printed I have no qualms about quoting it.
By now the city of St. Matthews easily has enough public support to get 25 young people working to help wire wrap or sand paint trees in Draut park by this time tomorrow. The city already has matching funds pledged for a culvert protecting flow device. It has been provided an award-winning DVD to teach them how to do this work themselves, and the city is just 15 hours away from the top experts in the country if it wants to bring help in to do it for them.
Surely Mr. Tonini understands that any park with water and trees is potentially a ‘beaver park’? Even if the city could get rid of these beavers, with adequate habitat you can be certain that more will move in to take their place. Why not solve the problem for the long term, and use our matching funds to install a flow device?
At this point the notion of beavers at Draut park is looking pretty IANevitable.
And speaking of our own ‘beaver park’ this morning, there were some very lovely looking dams, a million swallows, several landing mallards and two happily munching beavers.
