Now this is sounding better. Yesterday’s post about the repairs to Ballston Park in Arlington Virginia prompted a response from Beaver fan and writer/photographer Ann Cameron Siegal. She said that when she was working on her recent article about urban beavers for the Washington Post she actually asked about the baffle and was given this wonderful response from an undisclosed county worker.
“I apologize for my inaccurate statement about Ballston Pond a couple of years ago – we had not yet installed a beaver baffle/pond leveler in Arlington and I didn’t truly understand how they worked nor had I seen them in action. I was going off of what I had been told by others, and I was wrong!
What? A public works representative that actually learned things and changed his mind? Is such a thing possible? It certainly wasn’t in Martinez, where even when the flow device had successfully for years they still were complaining and misrepresenting it.
It wasn’t until the EcoTone team came out and installed the one in Sparrow Pond this spring that I understood that this was a tool that could actually allow the beaver to stay. It was a complete mind shift for me, and I know we have a lot of work to do to disseminate that information both internally (among County staff) and externally among the public, which is why I thought it was so important to emphasize it in your article. The Ballston project will be going to construction relatively soon, I’ll try to make sure that everyone involved internally understands this important point”
Well that’s an amazing quote and I feel better just reading it. But ONE of the people you need to convince is the reporter who is writing about your story, right? got it sooooo wrong. Set them straignt so that they don’t repeat your mistakes and make all their readers repeat your mistake,
