Week of 3 August

I would like to start right off stating that I can’t fully remember what it was we REALLY did this week, I recall sitting around a lot and discussing what options we had on several of our short term and long term projects. We were also given the responsibility for a loon raft, this is a floating island where loons can nest…It is a fake island in essence. We also wandered around an area of Marsh for about an hour or two looking for beaver activity on ANP land. After much slogging around and searching this incredibly large area we found no lodge or other signs of beaver. Which means it is not our problem, yipee!

Management is starting to have doubts about moving as many beavers that we are suggesting, so there has been little done with beavers other then keeping an eye on where they are working.

GIS work – I have finally completed all the maps for the vernal pools (5) and the map for beavers (1). These have been printed and are going to hung around the building and used for field researchers when they arrive to find these locations. I fret that i missed something or that i put the wrong things in but Bruce loves them and is happy to have something he can work with.

Friday was a day of actual labor, we grabbed the fire team that was on and had them bring pumps to a pool constructed by Rockefeller at one of the carriage road bridges. It has been negatively impacted by the gravel that lines the roads of the park and from the carriage roads. this impacts the historical resource and the natural resource that this pool represents. We shoveled it out by hand for a few hours and until the dump truck was full…we were only half done…I think we will be headed back this week. I will hopefully get some of the photos that Maddie shot while it was being done.

there is one other portion of the Stanley Brook that is impacted by run off water from the town of Seal Harbor. We have some impoundments set up to allow the silt to settle out but they are filling up entirely too fast so we went out to set up further sitl fence lines to allow for more of the silt to settle out. we cut down dead wood and placed it in the way in an attempt to slow the flow down and allow for more settling. We shall see what happens with the next big rain and see if what we have done helps or hurts.

One final accomplishment that we achieved this week was completely taking seven years of data and transferring it into an electronic format (excel). it was supposed to have taken much longer but we spent so much time in limbo this week we worked on it every time we were sitting around. Bruce was really ahppy and surprised.

Well that is is it for this week. And so we go into another week of fun!