Volunteers fence trees near Strawberry Creek to deter rodents

7/8/12

The chances of spotting coho salmon, steelhead and other fish at the lower end of Strawberry Creek near Orick has increased thanks to the efforts of volunteers.

But after planting thousands of trees to curtail the growth of invasive reed canarygrass, a group of beavers has thrown a monkey wrench into the proceedings, creating a bit of a dilemma.

”About three months ago, they took down a couple hundred to 300 trees in two nights,” said Bob Pagliuco, a habitat restoration specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service. “So we banded together to come up with a solution.”

Some people wanted to remove or relocate the beavers, Pagliuco said. Others wanted to kill them. But beavers are important to the ecosystem and to coho salmon, Pagliuco said, so they came up with another solution.

About 30 volunteers descended upon Strawberry Creek on Saturday for the AmeriCorps' volunteer day to help fence off the trees, which include willows, alders, spruce and redwoods. The volunteers come from the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, the California Conservation Corps and the non-profit group Pacific Coast Fish, Wildlife and Wetlands Restoration Association.

The volunteers will also apply a latex-sand paint to the trees to try to dissuade the beavers from eating them, said of the Watershed Stewards Project. Carlin said he and his partner, Matt Bray, helped organize Saturday's restoration project as an individual service project.

”We're trying to keep mindful of the importance of beaver in the ecosystem, especially with coho salmon,” Carlin said. “We jumped on (the project) to serve as an example that you don't need a depredation permit; you don't need to relocate the beaver -- they can cohabitate here. We're just trying to see if this will be successful, and then we can apply it to other projects.”

Volunteers planted roughly 1,600 trees about a year ago as a way to stop the growth of the reed canarygrass, said Mitch Farro, projects manager for the Pacific Coast Fish, Wildlife and Wetlands Restoration Association.

Canarygrass, which can grow in mats thick enough and strong enough to walk upon, depletes oxygen levels in watersheds, increases flooding and crowds out other plants, Farro said. It has caused problems up and down the West Coast as far away as Alaska, he said. The only way to deal with it is to create shade.

”If you lower the light down enough, it kind of goes away and isn't a problem,” Farro said.

The volunteers are currently working on privately-owned ranch land. Farro said the landowner realized that if the canarygrass can be thinned out, it reduces flooding in his field.

”It's a win-win,” he said.

But then the beavers began causing a problem. Pagliuco said even though the beavers have destroyed the trees either for food or to build a dam, they're very important.

”These dams they build back up water and create a pond environment,” he said. “What we've been finding in the winter and in summer, these pond environments are extremely productive. There's lots of fish growing in beaver ponds, and they're found to grow significantly faster than the fish growing higher up in the tributaries.”

Farro said the beavers have also created a problem with trees on a ranch near the Smith River. Volunteers planted trees there a few years earlier, and the beavers moved in there and completely destroyed them.

Once the trees near Strawberry Creek get big enough, the fences will come down, and the latex paint will be taken off, Farro said.

”There will be enough trees that if the beavers take a few, it's no big deal,” he said.

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Sierra Club California is pleased to announce the release of the 2011 California Coastal Commission Conservation Voting Chart. 

6/26/12
 
NEWPORT -- Nadine Fuller brushed sand away from the beak of the turtle and saw its eye blink.

But it was so still, so lifeless, she figured it had to be dead. "I thought ... maybe that was just a reflex," she said.

Fuller took some photos, then went back up to Moolack Shores Motel where she was a guest, to report her find. 

Motel manager Frank Brooks called the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Then someone saw the turtle lift its head, someone else thought they saw it move a flipper, and so the race was on to save the 135-pound green sea turtle.

Now more than a week later, caregivers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium are cautiously optimistic that this turtle far from its native warm waters may make a full recovery.

"He's doing pretty well," said Jim Burke, director of animal husbandry at the aquarium. "We still need to get him stabilized. But he's behaving OK. He's right on track as far as the rehabilitation plan is concerned."

When Jim Rice, coordinator of the stranding network, got the call, he knew there was a good chance the turtle wasn't dead, but rather "cold stunned," or hypothermic. While this is the first live sea turtle he's rescued off the Oregon coast in the seven years he's been here, he's seen plenty during his time at the New England Aquarium in Boston, where the staff rehabilitated sea turtles that washed up on Cape Cod.

"These animals will often appear dead when there is still some life left inside of them," he said.

Green sea turtles normally are found in waters 75 to 80 degrees and are the same turtles you could expect to see snorkeling in Hawaii, Rice said. This turtle was most likely from the tropical or subtropical Pacific Ocean.

No one knows why the turtle wound up in the 50-ish-degree water off Oregon's coast, but Burke speculated that it may have been in warm water that became surrounded by cold water, which mixes in and causes the previously warm water to chill. When that happens, the turtle goes into what is essentially a state of hibernation.

"They slow down, they get weak, they get dehydrated," Burke said. "They don't have the energy to retreat from these cold waters and get to the warm waters they left. They don't have the strength to reverse what time and temperatures have done. They become victims of the seas, wind, waves."

Of the dozen or so sea turtles that washed up on the Oregon coast in the past 15 years, only about half were alive, Burke said. Two sea turtles, a green and an Olive Ridley, washed up in 2010. Both were rescued and later sent to San Diego. They were released into the wild last summer.

By the time Rice got this green sea turtle to the aquarium -- about two hours after it was first discovered -- it was barely alive, with little sign of respiration, some muscle reflex and a core temperature in the 50s. Its eyes were swollen, one likely pecked at by a bird.

It's being treated with antibiotics and getting fluids via IC-- that is, through the intracoelomic or inner body cavity. It isn't eating on its own yet, but Burke is hopeful that will come soon enough.

"We are working with the permitting agencies," Burke said. "What will happen is they will identify a rehabilitation center in a warmer area. Most likely this animal will go to that area for feeding and observation. The goal would be to release it back to the wild, ideally later this summer."

And that's the news Fuller's waiting to hear.

"This is the best place in the world he could have come ashore with the aquarium people right there and the motel people knowing Jim Rice," Fuller said. "It just all fell together. When they were carrying him up the steps, he raised his head up and I knew he had a good fighting chance and I was just thrilled. It was a wonderful moment for me."

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7/1/12

The big Independence Day celebration is Wednesday, but this is sort of the unofficial holiday weekend, so it’s time to pack up the family and head to the beach.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, that might not be the most sanitary place to spend some quality time.

The council has released its latest beach water-quality report, and it’s not good — at least for Californians. While beach closures and advisories nationwide dropped 3 percent last year, the number of closures and advisories increased in California in 2011. And even the report on the nationwide situation came with a caveat — though daily episodes decreased from the prior year, 2011 had the third-highest number of closures in the past two decades.

Nearly half the beach closures are the result of runoff swept into the ocean by rainfall. For folks living along the upper rim of the Gulf of Mexico, the BP oil spill — which occurred more than two years ago — remains among the main reasons beaches are shut down.

As pristine as we believe our own Central Coast beaches to be, they suffer from runoff and high bacteria counts, too. In Santa Barbara County, the most dangerous spot in 2011 was East Beach at the mouth of Mission Creek in Santa Barbara, which was the site of 88 closures and/or advisories last year.

Even away from the population glut on the South Coast, North County beaches had problems. Jalama was in closure/advisory conditions 48 times last year. Guadalupe Dunes had only six bad days, but Gaviota State Beach was in shutdown/advisory 47 days, El Capitan 21, and Refugio 35.

The problems are mostly caused by stuff we consider part of our everyday lives — oil and grease on our streets and roads, pesticides on our lawns, litter, etc. It just sits there until the winter rains come, then much of that junk washes down to the coast.

Making the problem worse in and around urban centers is that so much of the ground is covered by pavement, sidewalks and anything that prevents storm runoff from soaking into the ground before it reaches the ocean. It’s called “impervious cover,” and that cover increases along with the general increase in the population. And because more than half the U.S. population lives in coastal counties, it’s not hard to see the magnitude of the problem.

Making this situation potentially far worse is climate change. Most models predict Earth’s warming will increase the amount and frequency of heavy rainfall, which has a direct, adverse effect on water quality at our beaches.

Solutions to the beach water-quality problem are complicated and could be painful. It could start with something as simple as not putting pesticides or certain types of fertilizers on your lawn, things individuals can do.

But the real solutions will have to be collaborative. It won’t do a lot of good for you to stop adding to the pollution runoff if your neighbors don’t join in the effort. Adding to the problem is that a lot of people simply aren’t aware that their everyday actions contribute to diminished water quality at a beach that may be miles away.

The solution to this problem starts locally, spreads to the community, then the region and finally nationwide. With half of all Americans living so close to a beach, it’s vitally important that we work together to take the steps necessary to ensure that our beaches — part of our franchise here on the Central Coast — are protected.

The threats to that franchise are real. We need to take them seriously.

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