THREAD: More thoughts about Leila Phillip's book #Beaverland. I made it to chapter 13, where Phillip meets up with Scott McGill at Long Green Creek within the #Chesapeake Bay #watershed. McGill owns an #environmental restoration company called Ecotone.
He is one of the founders and sponsors of #BeaverCON and I attended many a zoom with him while serving on the planning committee for the 2022 conference.
#beavers #beaverrestoration #ecosystems
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Phillip writes: "McGill is proud to be known in the #environmental restoration industry as the 'beaver whisperer.' He's evangelical in his belief that #beavers can help solve environmental problems. He thinks it is a tragedy that they are part of our history, but not part of our culture. Here in the #Chesapeake watershed, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey...he has been striving since 2016 to help shift the culture around beavers and #stream restoration...
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"...by showcasing what he calls the 'ecosystem services' of #beavers. Let the rodents do the work is one of his mottos."
Phillip continues: "[McGill] has done enough #restoration work with beavers now to prove that these efforts work and can make a difference, saving his clients, which include individual landowners, farmers, towns, and municipalities, a great deal of money."
Here is the Ecotone website: http://www.ecotone-environmental.com/
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So the #Chesapeake Bay is such an interesting example of a #watershed in need of help. The pollution is so bad there that the EPA has it under a Total Maximum Daily Load or TMDL: https://www.epa.gov/chesapeake-bay-tmdl
From #Beaverland: "the Chesapeake is the largest watershed on the Atlantic seaboard, intersected by over a hundred #rivers and thousands of #creeks. And every drop of #rain that falls in the watershed...finds its way into the Chesapeake Bay.
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In 2010 EPA established the Chesapeake Bay TMDL, a comprehensive "pollution diet" with accountability measures to restore clean water in the bay and local waters. It set limits for nutrients and sediment to meet water quality standards across the watershed
All of the rivers on the #Chesapeake watershed feed into the Atlantic Ocean, and at that #estuary, 350 #species of #fish plus #oysters, #clams, and #crabs, rely on that water quality, which is now tainted with pollution and sediment. Plus harmfal algal blooms cause dead zones. Sigh.
Scott McGill believes that #beavers can help clean this all up FOR FREE!
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Rachel Siegel