Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 05:53:17 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Re: Huntley Meadows (what's happened?) In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 1 May 2001 23:50:01 EDT from Kurt and others: The question to ask -- if one suspects beaver damage to Huntley -- is "has the population of beavers changed significantly in the last two-three years? In the last decade?" Do they even know? My understanding is that beavers have been at Huntley -- in fact are one reason the reserve exists at all -- for decades, yet the changes we are observing are fairly recent. Geese will and do eat seedling of shrubs but of course they cannot be blamed for loss of mature shrubs, however they also are known to be aggressive towards nesting water birds of other species in their territories, a factor not mentioned but which has to be considered as well. This is not to discount the possibility of beavers causing a problem. At Finzel Swamp, beavers caused changes in water level which adversely affected the survival of the key Tamarack tree species there, yet the Conservancy was very loath to control the beavers. Hopefully the Park authorities will do more than idly speculate, and get some expert help in addressing the issue. Cheers, Gail Mackiernan Colesville, ND ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================