Outdoors Maryland; 27

Ears or ears. THE MAN.

The Beast. The man about to do battle with the beast is 35 year old Robert Colonna. His orders are to bring the beast back alive and well to become an unwilling participant of the state of Maryland's relocation program. The beast is a trapped twenty two pound Eastern Shore author whose natural instincts and the order of things are to fight the man who wants to relocate. The battle begins. But there. Are you guys. You're. My first concern is to ensure they are marking her campaign. But I'm going to. Get it out of expediently of powerful without causing damage if. We're going to get damaske and what's going to happen when we're trying to take out the trash.

My second concern is. This may be. Extremely powerful of a cross clamshells. For their teeth. She is a healthy female author who is being prepared for an airplane flight to western Maryland. She is one of dozens of Eastern Shore authors who have been tagged with the responsibility of repopulating Garrett County is decimated. Otter population throughout all of Appalachian and depart of the Midwest. Or were actually paid it. Essentially became extinct around the turn of the century. In western Maryland and West from. Tempering operations on steep slopes as well as coal mining. Were the main called. Bodies of water out there just became too acidic or. Too much sediment pollution to support any forage fish or other to feed. Capturing Otter is not a series of exciting days wrestling with animals in the water

is often day after laborious day of walking and fighting to get into secret places where authors live and getting there is only part of the job. The rest has to do with interpreting subtleties that most of us would literally walk over. The. Real world. Around a little bit open does not have complete belief. One way otter or Mark or territory of the role of deposit and anal sacs creation called spring. And you can see where they came out of the pond over there. That's what they've done here. And this is. Their happening can't tell or yet so this is relatively fresh for the day. The old stereotype about the dumb trapper is a forest thing from the truth because no other. Occupation of sport requires such an intimate knowledge of the animal you have to know. Habitat use

seasonal habitat use. How and what use cover how it pushes on where they're going to step because you have to build or predict an animal's movement down to essentially you know circle the down and around and that's kind of a trap. There's wrestling trap daughters setting traps for authors and then there's checking drafts for authors the latter can be the most frustrating. Thing in here. One of the real churned up it's real obvious if you have one. But there. Was an author through here last night. And an author of. The water levels will fluctuate. That determines where the author is going to step because they're really short legs and the water level

dropped last night and that shifted to where it planted its foot to get up the bank and step right across a trap planted its front foot right there. I need to. Dig this out a little bit and reposition the trap. You can sense it a lot of times before you can see it. You can sense where an animal's band. And go look in. Sure they'll be fine. Where's. Brown. Churned up someone's been trap. Or sea otter. I've.

Got to tell you Jack not. Only. That. You are. All one so we won't be able to fly out today. The ceiling was too low. What do you we want to do with it. The authors are grounded. That's a problem. How do you keep a healthy wild animal in a small box until the weather clears for flight and release into the wild without the creature injuring itself away. I have starlings think you know there's a call for saying the moorings if you can pull out a collar can tackle. I meander on I'll take the outer up to the veterinarian and get a shot of I am. So they are for the Wings a white box.

You're all right. I gave it about I got a set of around 11:45 when I talk about the threats. That were to go in for. Sure. That's probably for a. Fairly loose. Definition good flash. It like you fell asleep pretty good tonight. I'm trying to find this you are we're seeing more. Finally the authors are given permission to fly. Personally this is the most rewarding professional thing I've ever done. I know that I've worked to put an animal back into an ecosystem that hasn't been there for a hundred years. I can't think of anything else that would be as rewarding as that.

The first Otter we we sent out I stood at the airport and watched the airplane take off and I just got goosebumps all over it was undescribable. I knew that we were on our way. You're putting an animal back were. Firing in the woods. And a lawn sounds in our sight. Dangerous. Fire. Is the enemy. Fire is also the agent of rebirth. At soldier's delight a regular fire regime could save the largest remaining serpentine prairie in eastern North America. Three hundred fifty years ago nearly 100000 acres of serpentine grassland swept through Maryland today. A 2000 acres retreat near Owings Mayo's is the largest remaining outpost of serpentine prairie on the East

Coast and even here the Serpentine is under siege. The fast growing Virginia pines march through the fields creating forest where tall grass is once flourished. If you were back before 1900 there were few to no trees in this area. You're back a little ways further back before around 1750. The American Indians were in the area and they used to do fire hunting. They built a big fire maybe one to three miles in diameter. Leave one hand open and when the animals running away from the fire came screaming out they stood there and shot him. If you get this cat We need stuff we get on your horse and you're chasing me. If you get them to run toward you. So that's what they did. This had several effects. Number one they kept all the trees and everything that started to grow burned off. So the area was basically open meadow Prairie type grassland with the Indians gone. The trees were allowed to slowly start growing in every case no tree here occasional triggers there. After a while the trees started blending together and the whole area's becoming forest the

problem with that is with the Serpentine area here in the open barren areas is where all the rare plants are at last count we had 34 rare endangered species of plants. If we do nothing in this area all these rare plants will be destroyed because of the pine trees taking over at soldier's delight. Virginia pine challenge the native Posto in a battle for valuable sunlight. Here are two plants found only among the mineral beds of the Serpentine grassland fight for survival. Sand plain Gerardia. The endangered brings. Gentian. Certain team Ashton. And fame flowers could be saved by a program to reinstate the landscape to a time when Native Americans lived and hunted the area. The key to the program is fine. We mimic the Native American Flyers then we don't have to worry

about impacts to the rare and endangered species because for thousands of years these species evolved as a community to the primary environmental factor in fact it's fire that these species are directly dependent upon for survival. Volunteers and conservationists work together to remove pine trees in preparation for a controlled burn. After the initial clearing the plan is to torch the remaining pines stand in a massive fire. Some people say well wait a second I thought we're supposed to be planting trees. That's the governor's thing right now is to plant trees and that's good in some areas in this particular case. It's destroying what we're trying to preserve here. With this fire we were hoping that the ground fire would move up the

tree that would climb the trees and that heat from the fire would kill the plant. But that didn't happen and it looks like with pine tree roots we're going to have to go in to physically remove them and then come in with fire to restore the grassland. The soldiers delight restoration project will continue using volunteer muscle to remove the encroaching ponds and heating lessons from fire hunting Native Americans. These serpentine grasslands remain a living link to our past. It's been called the New Ark. A grand hope for the future of money disappearing wildlife species from around the world. No longer a home to animals caged for the mere purpose of human amusement. Zoos are experiencing a dazzling rebirth at the hands of the conservation movement.

At the Baltimore Zoo that's meant big changes for animals and people. One part of the transformation experts call habitat immersion. A large animal but their body is here to hold black rock. We're building natural habitat spaces that bring people not only to the animal but to its home and into with home so that they can relate to that animal and its needs for visitors that means a new zoo experience devoid of traditional Victorian era iron cages and a metaphor for the new more holistic approach to zookeeper. Nurturing captive species is one of the biggest roles played by zookeepers. But it demands a delicate balance between active health supervision. And a hands off attitude. So keepers can study normal animal behavior. Finding creative means to deliver routine medicine becomes a challenge. Today and magnet the zoo's two polar bears are scheduled for a rabies vaccine.

Here we have our delivery systems for getting medicine into animals and the Baltimore Zoo is a third oldest zoo so we have some antiquated methods in the most modern technology and this is the capture rifle from long time ago. The darts were large and heavy to be accurate they had to be traveling at a fairly high speed when the dart hits the animal. The drug is injected under gunpowder pressure. So basically to be accurate the projectile had to go to high speed in going at high speed. It made it have a lot of inertia and with that much inertia it was basically a bullet. Darting has really taken off I would say in the last 15 years as you handle medicine and what it does is it allows us a couple advantages. We can get medications or vaccines to the animal without having to restrain him or

grab a sensor. You're only powering this with your own air. It's hard to do any damage with it sometimes if you have to dart animal with a rifle or pistol there's the potential of doing some damage. The really big shot of Anon are right there. When I got her in the right ruling hell she doesn't like me much at all. Nag her male polar bear. With degrees out there 90 degrees to the left rear. I just want to see if the dart went off or not that's what you wanted to be. The zoo's species survival programs are many times the last hope for some

endangered species. But they called for some tough choices. The management process is really a form of tree. We have to go down the list and say this species will survive because we have room for it. And this one won't because we don't and it's not an easy process for us at all. And then turn around turn around that the lion tailed macaque is one of the lucky species all we're doing is trying to capture the genes of the ones that were brought in from the wild that didn't reproduce before they're too old. What I'm doing right now is putting estrogen implants into a menopausal monkey. This so she'll be ready to accept embryos from an under-represented line tell me. I think what's going to happen is that we either have to succeed very very soon. Where the monkeys the ones that we caught in the wild that haven't reproduced they're going to be too old to reproduce so it's a now or nothing sort of effort that the techniques can be

applied to other primates. So that has wider application not just the narrow one that we're looking at right here. In the back is another species whose collapse can be traced to an all too common source man. In this case the people of its native India. They say there's between. Two thousand fifteen hundred and about 3000 in the wild. They live in a very. Mountainous area so it's hard for the for the people to get an accurate survey. I mean they're way deep in the forest. But that's pretty severely endangered. The habitat is basically being destroyed Plus they're setting up hydroelectric dams and transportation systems through the habitat which fragments it. And that sets up instead of having males migrating from troop to troop and spreading the genes that way they're getting an isolated gene pools. Closer to home. Deep in the western forests of marrow lives another species

the zoo has taken under its wing. The Allegheny wood rat. Here in Fulton is an associate mammal curator. This goes once range from southern New York state all the way down through Pennsylvania Maryland into West Virginia and Virginia. And it appears the population census seen in the last five years these guys are gone they're extinct in New York State. They're disappearing from Pennsylvania. They're disappearing from western Maryland. The predominant theory for the wood rats slow but steady demise once more points to man's destructive environmental influence in Maryland development pressures have brought the wood right into close contact with the raccoon. Right mentality of the right makes it vulnerable to a deadly parasite found in raccoon feces. Unfortunately for them because they pick it up and they are contacted by the parasite is transferred to them. And they only have about a week to live after that.

The part that I'm trying to understand these guys understand their biology and trying to make a contribution that will potentially be able to reintroduce what we decide we need to do that. That's the idea is to come up with a management plan for these guys so that other facilities or the would read population in general can benefit from it. The modern zoo the new ark. Man's urgent attempt to right his environmental wrong and in the process save thousands of endangered species. We try to meet several masters in education is the overall the overall effort. But there are many things that go in the other we have survived. Is that without them. We don't have any in the future. Not only do we live in the wild. You have to be well. And I don't think. We're good.

The environmental sins of our fathers left us this. A stretch of the once pristine head waters of the Potomac River. Now so poisoned that it can carry only the remnants of life. But the sins of our fathers also left us some valuable lessons. For looking. Is your age coming out of a bore hole that goes down into the abandoned Kempton mine the Kempton mine was actually mine from 1914 to 1949 and I've been told that between this bore hole and one that's a few thousand yards from here approximately two to three million gallons per day of asinine green. Comes out of these holes with drainage itself has a pH that ranges from two point eight to about 3:1. And. Is loaded with iron manganese and other metals that

the acid in the mines dissolve. And when it hits the air that Iron Man used for support they'd sell it in and they give the earth round here the Army's red color. It's an eerie red color that makes one feel the pain of this poisoned earth. And it's not an injury easily man with. Underground abandon didn't mind. There is no simple answer. You had a hole like this you think well perhaps you could just seal it with a stop at the problem is are so much pressure that are in these mines that the water would only find another or release point below the sea a louder would come up natural fracturing rock. No way to peace. But modern technology like this alignment officers serves as a bandaid. Used in Sweden for many years to buffer acidic lakes and streams for dozers now operate on the north branch of the Potomac

River. The cost of the lime application is less than three hundred thirty dollars a week. A small price to pay for bringing life itself back to a 40 mile stretch of the legendary river. Is. The result. People take. A look at. The area that has. Been. Pretty much. Like that. A long long. Time. Looking at. One of the. Things. You. Think. They stick. Out. Have. Dulled it. There are. People. Out there. I think it's. For men to say that. After all these. Years. By the first. Round part of the sacred. Portion. Of the brain. Has been. Made. Already. But. It's. Just a real. Thrill. Come down to people right. Now approve. Of. The reintroduction of life in the upper branches of the Potomac represent something larger than fishing areas closed for more than a hundred years. Being a LEO that is only a symbolic part

of this story of writing some past wrongs. The answer in preventing future disasters lies in planning ahead. Coal mining is an essential industry one that can be undertaken without a long term environmental disasters. This soil and the play beneath it is being say. Once the coal is removed in a modern mining operation the land will be restored. You can use a ground for a short period of time and put it back as play better than what it was before. Originally this area behind me on my right here was about 400 acres there was mined in 1900 there early 1900s by the mine method it was surface violator and not reclaimed it was a moonscape and as you say it now it looks nice as a as a as a value. You see the case of them our docks on it they come back every year and reproduce here.

Last year I think there was 25 guys and raised here had been raised and I am a Maori but there are more this year than they were last year seems like every year gets to be a war. But restoring land from current mines is only part of the bigger picture of giving new life to the river. The Jennings Randolph dam can draw water for release from five different levels allowing selected layers of water with different ph levels to be mixed. This enables the dam managers to regulate water quality down river. The reservoir itself is what actually provides a better quality of water downstream which supports the trout rearing pens right at the base of the dam. This supports better quality water for me US politics and industry downstream. The effort by industry and government to clean up the headwaters of our nation's capital river is a drastic change from the previous attitude about coal mining and

rivers. The old attitude and its aftermath. Was part of the coal mining town of Kempton that closed down a 950 that then. I don't know Fig. I don't I guess they get really didn't care because down here they used to pump. Water out of the mine in the later years where they fit a right into the Potomac River. And when my dad first came here you know one of the things. That there was a lot of the river down here. Later on they started pumping. With nothing. But their feet down the. Moon's. Mistruths for a day. It's almost our. Symbol it's our state custody. Sure it's what everybody thinks of when they come here. Cakes and soft ground.

We're talking about a fishery that's the most valuable fishery in the state of Maryland and in Virginia both commercially and recreationally. It's enough to say well we're catching a lot of. Crabs But the point is we are catching a lot of crowds. And. That effort appears to be. In the past of the start that we really had very little control. Over what the population of us of the blue crab was in the bay. And that's just not the case. We would advise caution to sustain this last valuable resource and just be. Sunrise on the Chesapeake. Time for Waterman and pickers to go to work from April through November. They harvest crops. To sell. Something different all the time. I mean. This king or your sister industry is in total decline right now and I don't really

think it's going to come back. The pressure put on special time Travis has been good to us. The product is in demand both in the retail stores as a fresh canned product or as a carry out item for steam crabs soft shell crab is in great demand. But. The crate can only be depended on for sometime in mid-April until maybe about. Around Thanksgiving. And this really impacts the thoughts of the younger woman and you know makes you wonder what am I going to do this one. Waterman had a good life. Then the baby was seized by repeated traumas some related to overharvesting some to bad luck. Politicians environmentalist and scientists intervene or watermen a part of the problem or part of the solution. Waterman see the need for

conservation in the bay but they resist regulation. They believe resisting crab harvests may further damage the seafood industry. Besides they ask how can you write a law that satisfies the very different needs of watermen in the upper bay middle Bay and the lower Chesapeake. I just do not trust. The state and the different environmental groups to control their industry. It wouldn't have done a pretty good job in a free market system. I just don't want to be let them learn it either by state bureaucrats or federal bureaucrats or environmental groups. They'd like to find a problem so they can solve it. The crab industry works better for less it and I think if we didn't catch him so viewers would have enough to come ashore with the people of. The Department of Natural Resources works with Waterman but has a different point of view. He was most people don't understand is that.

My job in the states job is to be fair to the Crab not to the water to be fair the waterman or the recreational gram really catches all the grab then you get it and it's a privilege to get these it's not a right it's not a right for you to take what belongs to everybody until you damage it. Has to be regulated. We're going to keep the record. At media events in 1903 proposed crab regulations were discussed in 1900 for protective measures were approved the idea is to cap the fishing pressure on crabs at current levels by controlling the amount of crabbing you're allowed and how it is you missed the goal also includes time limits for commercial and recreational crabbers policy makers simply hope to keep crabs more plentiful in the bag. Instead of waiting until the crab is in trouble like we did with the shared rock in the park we started ahead of it we've

put regulations for them to limit the amount we can take. In the erratic and we believe if we keep these regulations I mean for some commercial effort and the recreational effort will not increase and the crowd will be fine. Scientific data has been collected from around the Chesapeake that indicates it takes more time and effort to catch the same number of crabs each year. That's what convinced lawmakers to pass new legislation. Many people assume that because the crabs have a large reproductive capability that the reproductive capacity is is infinite and that's simply not true the mortality rates are very large for those larvae and juveniles are produced as well. And it's important to understand which Reg what regulates the mentality. All those guys and how. All that can be managed in a way that will

help provide long term stability for that evolution. Scientists aren't willing to limit their wish list for the continued success of the Jessop explode crap. They now know the old model of fisheries management which assumed abundances determined each year by the number of live AIs settling in the lower bay doesn't tell the whole story. Availability of habitat for various stages of crab growth throughout the bay is vital. Understanding currents and climatic conditions that might affect the number of law by coming back into the bay is important. Predation and cannibalism as well as the availability of food are also strong factors. And increasingly scientists see ominous signs on the horizon. If management isn't enforced. The last 20 years the last two decades have been decades of relatively lean

years in terms of our catch for you know effort so our abundance is according to the fall so relatively low. Our juvenile survey is only over the past 10 years so historically we're in a period now. Where pierced us that abundances can be on might be fairly low. So what looks to be an average year is actually over the long term are fairly low you. And it's when a population is in its lows and in particular at the low part of the fluctuations. That be given the right conditions of poor environmental conditions. Intense fishery harvest when all that comes together then you can potentially collapse of a cause a long term and severe decline in a fishery similar to what's happening on the fisheries. Most. Of. Us. That are working on a fishery. Would advise caution given the long history of. The collapse of many of the other fisheries and just.

How do scientists know this. We're asking better questions. We're improving the questions that Rana asking were not just in proving that the answers that we're getting and by asking after research is going to ask a better question. And it's if we are not doing that then I think we're in serious trouble because. It's a complicated world out there. There are many things that are changing outside the boundaries of Maryland certainly outside the boundaries of Maryland and Virginia that are impacting the quality of coastal resources fisheries throughout the entire world are in serious trouble. Without better management tools and without a better understanding of the causes and consequences of these population dynamics. We're just not going to allow the fishery resources available to us in the coming century. Whatever happens this much is certain watermen are no longer a

part. Fifteen million people live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. It has become our collective responsibility to maintain our bounteous bay its heritage and fisheries to do it. Regulations and management seem necessary and a few rules are worth it if it means we'll all be able to crack open a steamed crab wharf side on a hot summer day for a good many years to come. Plunging over the fall line just above Washington DC the Potomac River flexes its muscle. One final time. So on the river will quietly surrender to the tides of the Chesapeake Bay. But the river does not come empty. And to this merger.

It brings with it all of his gathered along the way while the fresh water is a welcome asset for the silt chemicals and waste. Do a little for the fragile A-story. Up. The Potomac watershed drains hundreds of thousands of square miles of Maryland and Virginia. From the headwaters in Garrett County downstream to its mouth. Urban suburban or rural If it can be carried away by water. It will very likely end up in the dock. These are troubled times for the Chesapeake. The health of the Bay has become a serious issue for the rich from its very survival is a question. Once the oyster capitol of the world harvests are now down to critical levels. The plentiful blue crab could soon become an expensive delicacy. These warning signs have given rise to a renewed environmental consciousness. And a

move to restore the bay. One of the organizations spawned by the restoration effort is the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Started the nine hundred eighty five. The trust provides funding for community based organizations involved in cleaning up the bay. The key to cleaning up the bay is obviously getting to the small streams and stopping the effect that snowballs as it goes down the stream towards the bay. So when we're talking about restoring the Bay we're going everywhere from the smallest stream in someone's backyard in western Maryland down to the actual Bay itself and I don't think any area can be ignored. The public involvement may clean up for some people means doing a tree plantings and some trash pick ups but public involvement for the Chesapeake Bay Trust and through our grants has gone well beyond that. Tom Miller is a field coordinator for the University of Maryland's Cooperative Extension Service. He's also a volunteer water quality monitoring.

Once a week I take a sample of honey creek and just measure some typical indicators of stream quality Ph. Or dissolved oxygen so that we know fish can survive in it how cloudy it is how much soil erosion is in it temperature. I take weather data too every day I record how much rain we receive and what the weather is like. One of the things that I've noticed through the years in the last three years of sampling in which really pleases me I think we are making a difference this creek is extremely high right now a lot higher than it would normally be. It's relatively clear looking. We've had an awful lot of rain in the last couple weeks. And normally this creek if it would be this high would pretty much be. Just muddy. Controlling agricultural runoff. So what you step in saving the baby. Hostile farms twelve hundred acres near Harper's Ferry.

We have a place down the bay. Been down and seen the water muddy and dirty and filthy. In the last four five years we can see a big difference and the way the bay looks. And that is has helped me to want to do a better job on my land but the main reason I want to you have to take care you can land in order for it to take care you. We put twelve hundred feet of Tao underground and got grass waterway put in here and God put this big stone it where the culvert is slows the water down. And you can look on the other side of we're in a creek and you can see where we have clean water coming out of this waterways and that's still a lot of these grass waterways just build and. You can see what we've done here Tom a foot 40 foot strips and then they run for about three miles starting back at Mountain Road run all the way to the mountain is on the way and you don't see any any chemical runoff into the alfalfa strip if you had any chemical spots in it right. And there's none whatsoever so you can see with no tilt Plus the strips are really working.

When oxy is one of the main three leading in one of the main tributaries with the bag as more people move into the Nazi watershed and concentrate on making their impact felt as lightly as possible. What they do to that X and X is going to. The bank. The Monaca sea watershed Conservancy has many ongoing projects. One of them involves creating a major center of the park. We're about a mile from the Nazi river. And it's interesting because glade creek comes right down to the tributary of the mouth of the sea and passes right along the park and into the park just a little bit and then it just keeps going for another mile through farmland and it is it is not right here it is a. Actually what it is is a sewer pipe. Standing up on it and it's about 14 feet. Deep. And it's put. Right over the top.

Of one of the largest springs on the East Coast. And. Spring head itself. Gives 3.2 million gallons of water a day. And it was at one time free flowing and would fill this whole area was about knee deep water. And in the master. And. Count on. My. Posting from me that you can't. Take it. And that the money can flow. Freely again down to great freaking flowing to the Nazis. I think notable water. Very clean clear water very good in NC. Root. Of all this land is in the wash of the river actually is only about 100 yards down that way. This is. Pretty severe slope right here it's going to drain directly eventually get all wound up in the air. You know historically people dumped back here in places out of sight along the bluffs of the river and so on because one they're out of sight to the next big flood takes away the problem and it washes all downstream and comes you know Washington D.C. is a problem.

The Minox the watershed Conservancy was started back in 1990 which basically was a group of concerned citizens. Who cared about the river and the watershed because it is a thousand square mile watershed here and simple Maryland runs from the Pennsylvania line to the Potomac River. It was started. Because there was a tremendous amount of dumping. Two years ago we did clean up an entire river about 50 miles and we took out 100 tons of trash. And last year we planted 15000 trees along the river this year were helping the National Park Service clean up some of the downsides. For a very low budget organization is trying to go out and make a difference by asking people to roll their sleeves and help a citizen in a check for the few thousand dollars we're going to put that they trust are probably getting in excess of a hundred thousand dollars for. Anything for quite. Some miles farther on the Monaca sea joins the Potomac it decreases. For all the efforts upstream.

The suburban watershed of Montgomery County. Here the Audubon naturalist society is busy training new volunteers. Everything just. Pretty crazy stuff. Like that. I'm used to you. Know. You were. Sending me stuff you got a lot of. Orange. Yeah this is really. OK. And now we have to check our. Net. Crawlers were on the banks of the north branch of Rock Creek in the Rock Creek watershed. We're running a water quality training workshop today and we have teams working in the stream and basically what they're looking for is diversity. How many different kinds of Mecklenburg are they finding in the water and they're having fun in the meantime getting wet. Bats in transit. Time. Sure.

They are. The. One thing I always look for what I'm looking at it is does it or does it not have tails on it on the. ARM that helps me sort out things very quickly. And. For all intents and purposes this animal and this animal they don't have tails. But if we start looking at something like this over here. You can see what I would call three tails or technically you can call them caudal filaments but let's call them. I'm interested in the stream near where I live. It has a naturally reproducing trail. But I understand it because the increased development. That the trout. Are endangered. So. I'd like to see the trout survive like CDs stream stay healthy. But I realized that I really don't

know what a healthy stream is. I mean when I talked to really knew the health history was just looked at it and said oh you look so. So I wanted to really find out how to really tell the Chesapeake Bay Trust has made all this possible. They have provided the financial support for the program for workshops like this so we can offer them free of charge to the public for follow up training and for staffing for the program. So without them the program would be happy. Maintaining the quality of the Potomac want to share and cleaning up the base are formidable tasks. Especially when taken on by volunteer groups working with small drones in their backyards. But it's in those backyard. Where changes must occur. One of the things that's very important to the tribes. Is doing what we can to help prepare for the day when we will have that proximately three more million people to the watershed. You

know it takes time to change attitudes to change behaviors to change opinions and the way we look at things and what we're trying to do is simply to have people understand that we all share responsibility for what becomes of the bad. We all have a war to play and it's important that we all know that the vitality of the entire region depends on the vitality of the test. It's been a real nightmare my wife who worked very hard to work this home. For me. Roy was very very. A simple looks you straight you know you don't go away when you're strong. Focus on the nice deprecate on the beach in the morning they regurgitate and they eat your food

and the kids come by on the beach and you know they had a hand in hand they pick it up. But now it's going to get that. They have a right to who are poor who do serve a purpose for whoever. They've had millions of years to master the skies. Time enough for practice to make perfection. There is a beauty to the effortless flight unequalled in any other species but the problems with both the turkey vulture and the black vote in the Frederick County community of Lenin or are more down to earth. This is the type of wood damage that's done on our picnic tables in the boats here just the turkey buzzards eating away the wood from I pretty much will eat anything. It's been a real nightmare for my wife and I because we work very hard to board this home here. And to have the birds come in and destroy it. Wasn't great wasn't to make us very happy. The damage that was done to the roof mounted to

around say. Thousand dollar. Offer then fifteen hundred dollars with the next flight out. So you talk in you know Seventy five hundred eight thousand dollars with them. Hold on this is the air conditioning tubing coming out of the house through the air conditioning unit as you can see they like neoprene or rubber. They chew it off and you can see that they're picking away at a rate here. They also enjoyed Ford products very much as you can see they rested on the Bronco a tire cover and yes pecked away at it and they've holes through that so they really had a great love for rubber products for some reason and probably explains to why they like the roofing because of the asphalt. They are the roofing. This is a piece of what you see on my roof and what it is is a bunch of needles that come up and across. So when the buzzards come down this is what they had and they did. They don't like it at them and they take off. This doesn't work this time our insurance company

has pretty much indicated that if we have a continuing problem of the roof. They will cancel you like nature I mean part of living here is a lot of birdlife those creatures we enjoy immensely. We wish we would just like to see them go somewhere else. We're going down to the lake Lincoln or dam which is the focal point of the entire lake Leonor community this is a the largest planned unit developed in Frederick County started out 20 years ago. And here's what we're doing now is going to take a look at the the dam that has created the lake itself. And in doing so has created an entirely different home environment for the for the turkey buzzards that are indigenous to this area. In a sense we've replaced a creek bed for these turkey buzzards to know a rather grand lake with

huge air currents that they get to float on and so they do enjoy living here but in the process it's created a conflict between the living community as it's growing rapidly in the last five years it started out 60 80 families living here 20 years ago and today there are fourteen hundred families at Lake clinging or and it's growing every day in the morning calm and then a decade on the beach they regurgitate their food and then they turn around and put their hands there now and then I worry about them picking up some kind of bacterial virus. The association is illegally shooting pyrotechnics into you know into their nesting is going to dawn. We're trying just to get them to develop where it's ready to fire. Rather shoot birds are protected birds they come out with the three four sometimes five six times a day to keep harassing the birds you know to hurt them or nothing you just try to move to a different area. To me the noise programs a lot more handing us than they have the boats or problem. We figure that this is the wrong

way to go. The boats were here first. Learn to live with. The vultures who are down on our deck this morning because this was an overcast cloudy morning and they tend to come down out of the trees at that time in the morning when we have those kind of conditions. You can see on the table here some of their footprints that they have left. These tend to be and they're done. And it tends to be water soluble so we don't worry about it because the first heavy rain washes it away. The vulture. Eradication program that's going on here is very similar to what we did to the Indians I mean when the unions got in our way we tried to move them or get rid of them and we're doing the same thing sort of to the vultures and this bothers me the vultures were here first. They should be they should have first claim to the land and I believe that. You can do for you if you got some information for you here. I just want to get an update on what's going on with a turkey baster program where the people are like eating them or you know I think that there is some of the

members speeding the turkey. The turkey letters and so forth but we've been successful in moving the turkey buzzards further down the lake and also up to some distant areas in Frederick County so I'm just kind of amazed. People moved out here to be closer to nature. This used to be farmland at one time and. Now that our housing development of intruding. On nature now apparently people are beginning to think that the time for nature to move out we need to learn to respect and the beautiful birds they have. Great aviators. As a pilot I like to watch them while I watch and that's a thermal everyone a while and. The tremendous fires. I only hope that we can work it out with the community association and with nature. There's a big one right there. Whine away from them or we can come back. With you to watch

them cut the. Leg not make the grade. This is about the third or fourth vote that the Hiltons for example had to replace there is a an example of a turkey buzzard regurgitation. Basically what residue that's left by these birds that stuff eats away at plastic enamel it just eats through metal. The surface of metal the that's the sort of thing that the residents of the community are faced with. The interesting thing about these guys is how they protect themselves. They have very very weak. The Talons are strong. He could scratch it but it just be another scratch the big isn't very strong. The carcass he needs has to be a couple days old so that the body's tender so he can break into it. All right. So he's up there he finds it it's already tenderized and he comes down and he eats it now. How do they defend themselves. They may be

so for food before it's all up in their crop that they're too heavy even to get up in your hair so you're approaching one you want to take its picture and you get to close it he can fly away. Then how does he defend himself. Well a simple looks you straight in the eye. And if you don't go away then your throw up line. If you've ever been thrown up on by a vulture. Probably the best thing to do is just go bury yourself. That isn't the black belt you're comparing it to the turkey vulture one. You notice when he opens his wings you see the white square on the outside. When he is flying you look up you see the white squares on the ends of the wings. Now it's not as common and most much more common bird of the turkey vulture. Of course you look at the head the head of the black vultures the turkey vultures read one really interesting thing is you notice his nose you can't smell it like the other birds don't have much of a sense of smell how he finds his food follows a turkey vulture. They've got a symbiotic relationship which means they help each other. This guy is thriving on the turkey vulture turkey vulture

finds if. He comes down he's got a stronger beak. So he rips open the carcass allowing the turkey vulture to feed. So they work is that. The struggle between people and the vultures of ling annoy is not unique in Maryland. That is why their story is important. So they represent nature in one of her robust farms trying to survive with humanity's continuing encroachment into outdoors tomorrow. Outdoors Maryland is a production of Maryland Public Television which is soley responsible

for its content. Please write with your comments or suggestions to outdoors Maryland Maryland Public Television Owings Mills Maryland 2 1 1 1 7. 0.