The Wilderness Center

1) Hello everyone! Most of you know we hosted 2 vernal pool workshops this year. Well, yesterday, we started digging our very own new pool. This Saturday (October 31st) we are looking for volunteers to help us finish the digging. We’ll provide all the tools and lunch. It will be muddy work, but should be fun! We hope to do the final grading and berm-building, and seed it with annual rye. We’ll start at 10:00 and work until 12 or 12:30, then have lunch. You might want to bring a change of clothes! Please let me know if you plan to come so I can round up enough shovels, etc.

2) The other opportunity is setting up salamander transects on Thursday, Oct. 29th . Jack Taylor (OCVN 2009) and I laid out the lines and got everything ready. We need help hauling and laying out the brick coverboards. We’ll start at 9:30 and should be done before lunch.

Sorry for the short notice on theses events!

Carrie


Carrie Elvey, Naturalist
The Wilderness Center, Inc.
PO Box 202
Wilmot, OH 44689
330-359-5235

Portage Parks

The Park District has an opportunity to do a wetland plant survey near Potter Creek in Suffield Township in order to fill some grant match hours we’ve promised.I am looking for volunteers and I thought of you right away, since you may be knowledgeable in this area! I would need a few helpful leaders to help out the other volunteers who may not be quite as experienced, but willing!
Would you be available Saturday November 7, Saturday November 14 or Sunday November 15?I am surveying a few key volunteers before I set the date.
Please let me know if you’d be willing and available to help out!
Thanks,


Susan Blair
The Portage Park District
128 North Prospect Street
Ravenna, OH 44266
330.297.7728

Friends of Wetlands Velvet Revolution?

There has been a very interesting series of emails bouncing around among some of our members. I am taking the liberty of posting this discussion to the blog and hope that the discussion continues and broadens. A FOWL reformation may occur as these ideas bear fruit.
I have invited those people who were included in these emails to join the blog. If you would like permission to post, contact me, ray@fowl.org. If you would just like to read and comment to what others post, you do not need any additional permission.

It began with an email from Kathleen Bradley to the OEC.

I did not bring up Friends of Wetlands when we were discussing individual groups because our situation is different than most. FOWL is run under a benevolent dictatorship of John Katko (OEC board member), who is a renowned expert on Carex species and other flora and fauna related to wetlands. He lives for the environment and he is wonderful in that respect. And he is afraid on nobody.

We have gently suggested to John over the years the benefits of becoming a 501c3, but he does not want the restrictions on our political activities that come with that IRS status. We exist on donations and memberships. We do work with other organizations such as OEC, WRLC and CMNH.

We do primarily education on wetlands- their functions, values and why they need to be protected. We lead field trips in the spring to vernal pools- open to all. We publish a FOWL Newsletter several times a year and have a website, www.fowl.org that also keeps the information out there. We also have a blog. Ray Stewart is our knowledgeable web & blog guru and John's right hand man. Ray is a high school biology teacher in Elyria.

We also lobby for wetlands with elected officials, EPA and USACE reps and against, most times, developers and others with bad reputations for damaging the environment.

Since John has retired from teaching, he does consulting, free, as far as I know, on wetlands delineation type things. He is widely respected by Jim Bissell and others. He scopes out some wonderful properties to save them from the bulldozer. He has assisted at several of the OEC Vernal Pool trainings, as has Ray.

One of our most active members, Daryl Davis, has split off and helped organize the Brooklyn Center Naturalists. I'd like them to come on board as one of our groups, if they are interested.

Memberships in FOWL are still $5.00 a year for individuals, $10 for families and $50.00 for lifetime memberships. Be sure to check out our website- you'll learn a lot. Hope to see you at our spring field trips.

Best regards,
Kathleen Bradley