Sunday, June 10, 2018

a pond evacuation adventure







The evacuation: the beginning of the pond restoration.

As sad as it is for Ijams to admit or accept, but our beautiful Plaza Pond in front of the Visitor Center has developed a leak or leaks and is not holding water. It has to be dredged down to its 8-inch-thick, circa 1998, concrete liner and repaired. 

We have no idea how long it will take until we locate the problem.

We began the process yesterday when a group of courageous volunteers—the A Team of critter catchers—joined me to rescue and evacuate all the aquatic life we could catch and move them to a second pond. It was hot mucky work. 

Our team also conducted a biological inventory of all we found: hundreds of tadpoles, plus frogs, newts, turtles and numerous aquatic invertebrates including two leeches and two hellgrammites! But oddly, no snakes.

A huge thank you goes out to Annabel, Oliver, Abby, Jacob, Linda, Tess, Bruce, Gloria and Evelyn.

Supplied photos by Linda Knott, Clare Datillo and Jack Gress. 






















Don't try this at home. Snapping turtles will bite and won't let go. 



The A Team of muckrakers, plus Tess and Bruce.


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