John Hartog wrote:
>Wow Dan, what an urban nature experiance. Are you thinking
>this frog relocation prank was designed just for you? Or is the
>real prank on the group that shows up tomorrow to get video
>taped?
Well, I don't know if it's a prank; more likely an attempt to
monkeywrench the construction project. Certainly not aimed at me,
though I'm proud I'm the only one who did reconaissance on it. A
biologist would bust the fake, too, because it's the wrong time of
year for the breeding calls. BTW I didn't hear a peep of any wildlife
in the brush on either of my trips there today.
I went back late in the evening to show my intern Zach and his friend
Claire. Zach found the player wrapped in a plastic bag.
The artist colony that lives in converted warehouses there doesn't
want to have their front yard torn up. But the sewer pipe has to be
fixed, there's no avoiding it.
It's a lovely little strip of wild land along the shore of the
slough, and it's certainly worth preserving. Part of it was torn up
to put that sewer pipe in a decade ago, and about a quarter of it
will have to be torn up again to fix it now. In another ten years it
will be back to wild land again. Actually it will be improved for
land critters, because the construction plans include a berm to
prevent inundation by astronomical high tides.
If the volunteers create some fresh-water ponds after the
construction, Pacific chorus frogs would be able to breed there. And
mosquitoes. There's no natural surface water there; indeed, the land
isn't natural to start with. It's 19th-century haphazard fill over
salt marshes, same as where I live.
-Dan
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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