Sometimes people’s hearts are in the right place, but there simply aren’t fund to pay for a flow device. Well now if you live in the right place there might be a foundation to help.
Lauren R. Stevens: Living with our friend the beaver
Thanks to Nion Robert “Bob” Theriot’s Foundation, the MSPCA in Boston accepts requests for assistance from individuals or entities in the four western counties of Massachusetts “to humanely, non-lethally and ecologically mitigate beaver-related flooding.” The property owner is asked to share the cost. The local Conservation Commission must give permission.
Theriot, who died December 31, 1998, owned Tall Pine Farm in Monterey. He helped conserve many acres in Massachusetts and California, working here with the Berkshire Natural Resources Council and Monterey’s Preservation Land Trust, of which he was a founding member. Clearly he was also a friend of beavers. So may we all be.
This was a pretty surprising group of sentences to read. I never knew that there was a foundation that could help install flow devices. I had to go look up its benefactor. But I was pretty blown away by what I found.
Nion Robert “Bob” Thieriot, a dedicated conservationist and a great-grandson of Chronicle co- founder Michael H. de Young, died yesterday at a hospital near his home in Massachusetts after a five- month battle with brain cancer.
Mr. Thieriot, 52, had a lifelong passion for the outdoors and for working with his hands, leading many efforts over the years to preserve open space and woodlands in Massachusetts and California.
Mr. Thieriot also helped create the Sonoma Land Trust in Sonoma County, dedicated to preserving open land and forests in the county. He ran a vegetable farm on more than 300 acres there, in Cazadero, in the 1970s. When it burned in a forest fire in 1978, he donated the land to the land trust.
So this man first formed a preserve and then when it was burned to the ground in the made one of the biggest donations to the Sonoma land trust asking that they continue to expand and preserve more land.
The Thieriots left their mark on geography and history by donating Little Black Mountain to Sonoma Land Trust, anchoring our conservation efforts on the Sonoma Coast and presence in the region. Their intent was to preserve Little Black Mountain as open space and dedicate it to the community. The grant agreement includes a request that SLT expand the preserve whenever possible, which we have since accomplished through our acquisition of the 5,630-acre Jenner Headlands property and recent 238-acre Pole Mountain purchase, creating a 6,368-acre protected landscape.
After the fire the couple move to the east coast and start a new foundation and historic farm and continued to focus on conservation.
From a young age, he was enamored of the forest and wild spaces,” said his brother, Peter E. Thieriot of San Francisco. In his conservation work, “he tried to move strategically just in advance of the developers” to preserve as much open land as possible.
This effort was so successful that through the Berkshire Natural Resources Council in Pittsfield, Mass., alone, Mr. Thieriot bought and either donated or restricted for preservation more than 4,500 acres of land. Mr. Thieriot was a director of the council as well as a founding member of the Monterey (Mass.) Preservation Land Trust. Through his estate, 3,600 more acres of land will be preserved, including his Tall Pine Farm.
He cultivated vegetables for sale on his 200-acre Tall Pine Farm in Monterey, Mass., living there in a historic 275-year-old farmhouse and specializing in craftsmanship with antique hand tools.
He also maintained a sawmill, and was so skilled in traditional carpentry that when he built a vegetable stand on his farm a decade ago he did the whole thing from scratch, handcrafting the boards out of trees and constructing the sturdy stand with pegs instead of nails and screws.
I’m guessing that MSPCA pursued a grant from the foundation for preserving habitat and wildlife by preserving beavers. I sure wish I could read about that story and how it happened.
WILLIAMSTOWN — It might not be a good idea to fool Mother Nature, but fooling beavers might be in their best interest. And, thanks to the generosity of a former Berkshire resident, financial help is available—for people and beavers.
In fact Bob never, ever stopped working to make things better. Before he died the governor of Massachusetts presented him with THE award for saving open space in the state. Earlier in his life he started another foundation to help children called “Janet’s fund”.
His brother, Peter, said that at the time of his death, Mr. Thieriot was halfway through negotiating, in conjunction with the Berkshire council, for the preservation of a 430-acre milk farm in north Berkshire County. His family and the council intend to continue the negotiations, to buy development rights ensuring the farmland will have logging restrictions and protection from subdivision.
What a thrillingly fulfilled life that was stupidly cut short by brain cancer. How incredible to have a foundation that helps install flow devices. Have you ever noticed how all the wrong people seem to die of cancer? And the useless nasty ones survive to be president of bomb Iran?
And hey, if you are sitting back and feeling kind of useless like you’ve never done anything in your entire life even the tiniest fraction of good compared to Bob, you’re not alone.
