First things first. Mike is sending this letter in response to the editorial I posted yesterday.
To the Editor,
The 9-15-15 Gazette editorial regarding the Lake Fitzgerald beaver issue failed the public miserably. In addition to incorrect information about the chain-link fence, the editor chose to mock the efforts of a committed group of Broad Brook Coalition and UMass volunteers, city officials and myself, with comments such as “Callahan cooked up the idea “, “beavers pretty much made sawdust of Plans A through C” and “start working on Plan E”.
In 18 years of solving over 1,200 human-beaver conflicts with water control devices I have never seen more ingenious beavers than those at Lake Fitzgerald, nor such an amazing coalition of dedicated volunteers and city officials. It is sad that the editor did not celebrate the efforts of these local citizens, but rather chose to mock them.
Also, it’s been over a month since the rocks were installed and our creative solution is working fine. The lake level remains normal and the beavers have been unable to block the drain. So editor, please avoid negative, uninformed, mocking opinions. The public gets enough of that from Donald Trump.
Michael Callahan, Owner Beaver Solutions LLC
Take that snappy beaver critique editor! I hope it gets printed because it deserves to be read. People shouldn’t go around insulting valiant effort. Especially when it keeps getting better and better and folks are just trying to do the right thing.
Personally, I kind of love when the big players get called into the game. Like remember that time that paper dissed our historic research as a misinterpretation of the evidence in a footnote and I got happy that he was getting Rick’s dander up.
Speaking of Rick and our historial research this was released yesterday, and is the hard work of Greg Kerekes for the Guadelupe RCD. There’s someone in it you’ll recognize but I had just gotten back from another speaking job and think I sound like a lunatic with a cold. If you don’t have time to watch it now watch it later, it’s really informative and well done.
How much do you love that footage? And those under/over shots. Rick is such a great teacher, I want to read our paper again right now! Greg is doing an awesome job in the South Bay spreading the beaver gospel through his non profit (Urban Wildlife Research Project). If you don’t remember him from the festival you probably remember his wife dancing in the beaver costume a couple years ago. She was awesome.
Goodness we’ve been in this business a long time. In fact we’re about two weeks away from our 3000th post. Which is a lot of things for one woman to say about beavers. Our website has been around so long and has SO much info it’s starting to stretch at the seams so I was thrilled to hear from our webpage designer Scott Artis yesterday that he will help us get back to sailing velocity. He has his hands full with a paid environmental job now but I think he noticed the long nonprofit list for Sunday’s event and saw that his group (Audubon Canyon) was the Alpha and WE (Worth A Dam) were the Omega, and was prompted suddenly to write back. So HOORAY for updating websites!
Yesterday I immersed myself in this project, which I should share at a later date because we already have one film on this post, but I have no delayed gratification. Or very little. And I’m feeling proud.
