Outdoors Maryland; 611

The Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is to most people an area of natural mystery surrounded by a successful fee if Misty history the fortunes of a dapper canvasback Duffy the cryptic whooping crane. And the emblematic bald eagle have been immeasurably improved by the work done at Patuxent since its inception as the nation's first field laboratory and Research Center in 1939. Naturally for the sake of the integrity of the research the public has never been invited. We were behind our research is such that disturbance can be a factor. And. We got to the point when we wanted to share our research with other people. Nell bowl to Chino is the director of the brand new 18 million dollar national wildlife visitors center on Patuxent property. Department of Interior administrators had concluded that a supportive informed and involved public would make a powerful ally for the continuation of their research

and the realisation of their goals. A few years ago the idea for the National Wildlife visitor center came to being where we could tell the story of research not just toxic but wildlife a search that goes on all over the country and even internationally and that's what the visit is that it tells the story of wildlife research research that fires knows unique for her to spread the good news about the visitors center. An enthusiasm that never seems to wane. The doctor has for years been known in the scientific circles. But. Not. That one. Either through public works. Just coming here I dasn't. Tons of opportunity for the fair. Information about research information about. The environment that we all share together. Much of the visitor centers emphasis is aimed at the curiosity of the next generation. Encouraging little scientists to become big scientists and challenging curious mind to ponder the future. Course not just environmental science issues. Some will become active in politics

for example. Some may become or be involved on city council and they'll be in positions where they need to make decisions in their lives and have an influence on what happens. Hopefully. They're going to come. Up and when they're our age are going to say you know this is important we need to take every measure and every precaution to protect our environment only for ourselves but for the wildlife as well. Greg Lewis works for the Maryland National Capital parks and Planning Commission. His first visit to the visitor center included about 30 of your average rugrats from a Prince George's County summer camp. Who upon their arrival get to handle the skins and bones of dead animals in the eyes of a 10 year old. That's a respectable start to any day here. There has a lot. OK great wealth as a car water meter. Pass us around to guys so you can see that. This is a deer skull and the deer have flat teeth and that's how we tell the difference between a deer and a wall

for art and herbivore or carnivore. I passed this one around so you guys can take a look at this too. This hands on demonstration signals a day filled with opportunities to better appreciate and understand the natural world. To be among the first to glimpse the long hidden world inside the Patuxent Research Center. Next we have here is a red fox and this is found in the local area. The visitor center offers a tantalizing peek at that wilderness with an electric tram ride through the grounds. No. Matter. What. Your house or apartment what would you do. The tram takes these impressionable minds through the whole riot you have attached through woodlands and weaponless by lakes and by matter in the very warm day today. You know them. Very much. And the first thing is. To let him have a good time. I think first experiences out of doors.

Should be fun whether they just enjoy watching a squirrel in their backyard or a beautiful carnal form of Earth beer or something at the City Park a chipmunk or are whatever are the deer in the woods. They will become sensitive. And find pleasure in these and then the next step is to learn more how things fit together and what their role is. And they get excited if they see a duck or a deer particularly. Down there. Once. They're.

Coming along the ride the lesson of nature's endless creativity has combined with an all foreign power to. Receive the three. Right here in the street here. Oh yes I. Know. Eating a mammal.

When they see the wolf exhibits in the huge beautiful cranes when they get out on the trails in the tram and the actual in the woods you know I think that's. Wrong. About this one. How many other kinds of animals. Cranes are there when they were doing that and I was a little environmental game so I was quite surprised at how intense some of the kids were about it you know I was trying to go through there and say oh well you know here's the answer to this is here's the answer that they're well done and I'll do this on my own and I want to do the whole thing. I want to put number 14 like that. The mission of the visitors center is in Nelson eyes to spread the enthusiasm hoping everyone but particularly children appreciates the wilderness a bit more when they leave than when they entered. Oh.

I wasn't while. I was one of those loans. This is surreal. It's one particular warning for us to see the amount of enthusiasm that can be generated for young people after they've been here to visit us and. Thank you. Each year at the Easton water fall festival there's an outdoor attraction that speaks volumes for one of Maryland's true love's retrievers. With nearly 5000 registered. Goldens Chesapeake and Labradors have become the companions of choice and with time water is 8000 miles of shoreline and rich waterfowl hunting tradition. It's not hard to see why.

Such retrievers are born and bred to retrieve. A retriever is one of the best conservation tools a hunter can take into the field. Many times where you hunt ducks it's marshy. There's lots of cover around the water. And birds fall into areas that are really rather inaccessible to a human. If you have a well-trained retriever very few birds are lost. Dogs have a remarkable sense of smell and if you send a dog. To the downwind side of where the area you think or know the bird is it dog ninety nine times out of 100 will come up with that. There are basically two kinds of retrieves. One is a market retrieve where the dog sees the bird go down and knows where it is. The second type of retrieve is a blinder a tree.

The wise that's a bird that is down that the dog doesn't know where it is he didn't see it go down. He doesn't have any idea where it is. But in a BT and straining you teach the dog for commands he'll sit stay and hear and use voice commands to introduce these commands. But before you leave the BDM you teach the whistle command to stop which is one blast of the whistle and you teach the here command. When the whip with the whistle. And that's a multiple. Blowing the whistle beep beep beep beep. And you want the dog to be as BDM to that whistle command as he is to the voice command. Right.

And he'll point fine and eleven hundred acres regulated you know preserving wins County preserve manager Bobby Burress put spin tales energetic retrievers through their paces whether a lab golden or Chesapeake Bobby has trained and hunted with them. We have one dog up there that we own up on a blind retrieve to get him knowing that he's getting ready to do a blind and there's a bird cell that he does not know where the bird is will tell him dead bird. And then when we line him up when he gets in line with the fall we're telling That's it that's it. And then we'll we'll cast him on that point. And till he gets off line of that bird if he long as he's going in a straight direction of that bird we will not say a word to him. If he gets off line then that's when the whistle comes in effect you blow the whistle one time to stop the dog and at that point in the water the dog doesn't sit but he turns around looks at you and then you give him a cast rather that's to the

left or to the right or you can give me a back you know like that and a lot of times you can make it verbal or you can just do it without saying anything. You know it's not too bad when the adults only you know 50 60 75 yards from me but when you're talking you know you've got a crippled bird he's out there a couple hundred yards in an eye dog looking back and he's relying on you direct him to the home and you've got to give him as much help as you can. You're good good here. With a retriever However the actual proof is in the pudding and I don't count on a bitterly winter's day shows where breeding and training all come together to make a top notch guard dog. We've got a couple dogs up there one in particular that is retrieved. He's maybe six

years old and two years ago he did 15:00 last 30 13:00 news we're expecting a big year and that's because of the release of the program yourself you know that kind of action you just don't get in the average dog you know some of these doctors treating more than a month and most people. Do you know when to seize an occasion. There's nothing that is no prettier than watching a dog specially when the sun coming down the dogs coming in in the in the sunlight on a dog whether it be black or yellow lab or a baby all the whatever and you've got a big old brain hanging out a dog's mouth and they're in the sunset in the dog's eye. It's just yeah you just don't see that every day and it's for these people that come here it's just a treat to see that. And believe me they get just as much enjoyment out of seeing the dog for that as they do of actually pulling the tests. All American Kennel Club registered breeds Goldens labs and chassis these are derived from varied backgrounds Goldens were first developed

in Scotland by Lord Tweed now an avid sportsman in the late 1800s. I was on a skiing trip with my three small children in Vermont and I had just gotten out of the car. We were on loading and this big yellow hairy dog came bouncing across the parking lot and knocked me down. Well he proceeded to rape me and kiss me and jump all over my kids and kissed them and I got up and I was hugging him. The owner came over apologizing and I said not to worry because I loved animals anyway. My hands around him and I said I have to go home and get one of these. He was so lovable and so willing to show that affection towards a stranger and my children. And it was just it was love at first light. Instead of like.

Labradors originated from Newfoundland where Hardy St. John water dogs were taken to England in the early 1900s to be developed into retrievers for a state holiday. And our own native Chesapeake steer ride from two Newfoundland puppies Canton and Sigler which were shipwrecked off the Maryland coast in 1907. Bred by Waterman to local duck dogs chess has evolved to become the favorite of Tidewater hunters by the mid eighteen hundreds a time when market gunners would require retrieval of over 100 ducks each day. Stamina. Only a Chessie could provide. The devoted companions all three breeds are superb working dogs as well. As a waterfall biologist with the Department of Natural Resources we on occasion receive phone calls from the public reporting die offs of waterfowl and to prevent a die off escalating to where you lose thousands of birds.

We monitor the population by investigating every dieoff that's reported to us but the dog comes in handy especially when you've got sick birds that you can't run down and you can't catch but the dog has ability to do it has ability to retrieve the bird from water and. In that respect they are quite helpful. And across the state in western Maryland the natural resources police Labrador Apache searchers out illegal bear poachers with drive and determination. Patsy is a black Labrador retriever he was trained and skilled in Vienna redirector school with dogs she's trained through the attack the illegal deer very same way the narcotics the Texan who are looking into the illegal drug. Like an arrow. Girl. When their paws are used for a delicacy called their

policy and. Their gallbladders hung and dried. Stall Parker got off the ground. They're at it through a post that are just all purposeless. So whether you prefer a gorgeous golden charming Chesapeake. Or loveable Labrador. Retrievers have become top dogs here in outdoor Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay is the nation's largest estuary. And one of its most valuable and treasured natural resources. Nearly 95 percent of Maryland's land drains into the bay through 17000 miles of strain. We're now battling some of the bay's pollution problems upstream through the formation of tributary management teams. The state's been divided into 10 tributary basins. The Patapsco Back River

Watershed is one of them. The Patapsco covers parts of Carroll Frederick Baltimore Howard and Anna Rundle counties as well as Baltimore City. The watershed suffers from problems common throughout the state and it's the job of the tributary management team to tackle those problems. Most of the tributary team's primary goal is looking out towards the Chesapeake Bay. We have here in Piney run I guess you could call it a safe area that any pollutants that come off the land are being captured here. But that also means that we have a responsibility for the health of this water body as well as the Chesapeake Bay. Carroll County like many counties in the state is experiencing growth and the problems that come with the changes in land use. I think one of the things that have happened over time is.

Have learned that development can be a problem. And what we've done is Institute storm water management regulations. What storm water management does is it slows the flow of runoff. When you change land use is from a foreign land where most of the rainwater is absorbed into the soil. When you change that to a lot of impervious surfaces by impervious services I mean roofs rooftops roads things like that what you do is increase the runoff. Storm water management is one of the biggest challenges facing the tributary management teams. Multi bridge branch is an example of a stream that's been targeted for restoration in 1997. This is what a bridge bridge should say. First Order stream it means it's the smallest. Free flowing stream that runs year round. What's significant about this particular area is that it's a. Nice stream channel this is the base flow the normal regular flow when you don't have storms going

on and you can see that pretty much fills the channel from one side to the other. What you're also seeing behind me right here are sand bars up on the in the floodplain itself and that's really the definition of a flood plains an area where the water goes when it gets at a bank. As you can see this part of the floodplain is in pretty good shape. But you come along and you have a road crossing Well in this road crossing was built they just laid two pipes in the channel and then built a berm across the top that constricts all the water so that all has to go through those two small pipes. You can see that one of the pipes is completely blocked up with debris. Some of that's natural but some of it's excess material. It's very typical of a stream in a with any amount of development in the watershed. Most of these road crossings are 40 to 50 years old and we didn't anticipate the changes in runoff characteristics are going to happen as we gradually developed our watersheds. And it's something that we see all over the state of Maryland. On the other side of the road crossing the stream has changed dramatically.

Basically. This is the same stream with the same viral water going through it but it's not in connection with this flood plain anymore. When they built this road they weren't thinking about changes in the runoff characteristics of this watershed. So they built the road crossing the most economical way which is lay a couple of pipes in the stream but what it's done is act as. A particle accelerator all the water is concentrated in one area and shot through the other side it's creating a huge erosion problem and a plunge pool which can standing in right now. And if you look underneath the banks even those vegetation it's all slumped over the edges it's surface vegetation is not really stabilizing the system. But there's a lot of trees down behind us because all this floodwaters underneath of the forest cover and it's eating away and making you fall in constantly. A residential section of Sawmill creek was cited for restoration in 1905. The stream was basically. Highly eroded by storm water

runoff from old subdivisions didn't have any type of quantity control the banks were five to seven feet high and the walls were vertical. The stream bed was soft sand and a little bit of gravel that was constantly moving. It was done in this particular stream system. There were no opportunities to try and do what we call storm water retrofits to control quantity. So basically the channel was reshaped. In some places the banks were cut back laid back and in some places there actually channel bans were made larger in other places bins were filled in. We used a variety of different structure. We used raw queers are these series of large stones here they're kind of slightly upstream pointing these they go. They point upstream but they also are curved up along the banks and what they do is funnel the flow towards the center as you're coming around a turn. What you're looking at down here are a series of root water revetments it's actually a crude work of tree logs and the root

wads. You see willows. Growing in here a lot of other vegetation was planted. Something else that's really changed in the stream system in that a year and a half since the project was build is the amount of vegetation We've got three or four species of submerged in emergent vegetation that were not were not found in this Thousand Foot restrain was done and this is all recruitment from wetlands upstream we didn't do any stocking of those types of materials they've all been able to come back and re-establish themselves after we finished with the physical stabilization of the system. The most impressive thing about the sawmill Creek restoration is that it works. We had a storm here a couple of days ago and the stream flow is still within the floodplain within the active channel if you look here were all the grasses beat down over to the edge. That shows you how high the water came up. Much of the water in the watershed runs through Baltimore City as its last stop before the Chesapeake Bay. Rivers like the Jones falls manage intense amounts of water and

debris from the surrounding counties. Baltimore City joins and around the county Baltimore County. How can you count that. We're talking about over 500 miles. Baltimore City is like 25 26 miles for the five miles. Cordoned off. A 25 points. We have an extensive storm drain system. And or so and we've been very fortunate. We're on a slope you know the wards were down hill from what we think is flowing down to us in a flow that. So and naturally occurs they close them kill them. Baltimore City began to address the problem of floating debris over 10 years ago with a new boat that collected trash in the water called a skimmer. We have five of course the United States or was in the open. It was the opposite but you look at the harbor the Garrick you know how it was playing. Its clean because the boats were on the homes of the bridge and everyone on the upper reaches of the Joe Hall.

Carroll County is the headquarters where the headquarters of not only Patapsco River but also the gunpowder and upper Potomac system. So although sometimes it's easy if you're upstream to think that you're not impacted that that you're not affected I think the change has been the recognition that what happens here does make a difference and I think the challenge that we're going to face is assimilating our larger population at the same time maintaining knowing the role character of Carroll County but also the environmental quality of the county. We have worked real hard to be good stewards. The watershed and where we are and it's one of the reason people want to move here. But as population spreads out into the counties and the headwaiter systems it becomes harder and harder to assure that. What's valuable is really maintaining and what's valuable is the

preservation of the Chesapeake Bay. It's watersheds and our treasured natural resources. We are. We were eight

hundred one.