Topo for a new fish passage culvert.?ÿ
Boy do I hate Devil's Club!?ÿ
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Explain "fish passage culvert", please.
"an 18-month-old mountain lion recently separated from its mother and seeking its own terrain was hit and killed on the 405 freeway"
Did it have a letter of introduction tucked into a hind pocket that provided such specific information?
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The community of Silo Tech already had something like that over 50 years ago.?ÿ A fraction of the University-owned cattle herd could roam both sides of a fairly new major street for the growing city.
But, back to the basic fish question.?ÿ Is this to assist them in going upstream or downstream??ÿ What is the root problem?
Explain "fish passage culvert"
Simply a culvert which fish - specifically the small fry and those returning to creeks to spawn - can swim up.?ÿ Typically that means slowing the rate of flow and providing a natural creek bed bottom. Check out the April 2022 edition of Scientific American for a good article on restoring stream health.
Our current laws on culvert and bridge installations require the bottom be twelve inches lower than the natural flow line, so as to allow upstream travel and temporary homes during dry times.?ÿ The dirt-saver culverts of the 1960's were a brilliant idea for slowing soil erosion but were a complete block to upstream travel.?ÿ Thus, any modern culvert is a fish passage culvert.
Carharts are the only pants that??ll stop those thorns.
Darn, I wish the picture quality was a little better in the upload????
You can see the old culvert has eroded a big drop. Once the plans are made, they divert the creek and build footings and set a big dome over it like in Mark's picture. They use to use big squash pipe and lay rocks in it but haven't seen that done in a few years.
I made one wrong swing with the machete and layed one of those devil's clubs against my thigh with great force. Thorns went through rain pants, double leg carhart and long jons. I think the tips should work their way out by the end of the week once some puss builds up????
Plans??ÿ Plans??ÿ We don't need no stinkin' plans.
You bring in a trackhoe.?ÿ Cut out the area upstream of the culvert, plus dig down a foot where the culvert goes, slap a new culvert into place, add soil and rock to return firmly packed to road level.?ÿ Now, the culvert is no longer the cause of the lack of fish passage.?ÿ The problem is the erodibility of the native soil.
We have some cactus in this area known as prickly pear.?ÿ They grow close to the ground but develop "ears" that stand up a few inches.?ÿ Proper maintenance of the pasture will choke them out eventually.?ÿ But, they are covered in a billion little thorns per "ear".?ÿ When I was maybe 12 or so, I tripped while chasing after a cow and landed fully prone in a bed of those heinous plants.?ÿ Palms, arms, legs and other places were pierced thousands of times in an instant.?ÿ Seemed to take forever to get all of the little black dots in my skin to go away.
@holy-cow Reports say that he didn't have on a tracking collar, but was identified later. They don't say how, but there was DNA on record from an earlier capture. Then there's P-022 who's living in Griffith Park and has crossed several freeways multiple times.
This approach may work in rocky soil areas but simply will not work in areas with large amounts of top soil.
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Notice the man at the left upper quadrant looking into the gully.?ÿ
One can spend a fortune making things appear to work along the area viewable from the roadside, but, when you have soils like this, you are kidding yourself that you have achieved anything.?ÿ There will be a one- or two-foot jump a few hundred feet either side of the road, negating such efforts.?ÿ Then another and then another and ..........................
Here is a scene from five to ten miles west of where Mrs. Cow grew up.
@holy-cow That is indeed sad. Loess doesn??t have the cobbles that armor a stream bed against erosion. Around here a great deal of care goes into using inverted stumps and shot rock to prevent washouts. Ideally fish friendly culverts would mirror the natural stream bed. The older round culverts tend to channel water into a hydraulic dredge at the outflow and when they can??t handle the volume in a storm, the road gets washed out. Lots of them have gone in around here and they are definitely an improvement.?ÿ
They sound like a good thing, where they will work.?ÿ We depend a lot on fish eggs coming in on the bodies of birds traveling from water body to water body.?ÿ Just this afternoon I stopped to look at a little pool next to the county road.?ÿ There were numerous fish visible in the clear runoff water from the pond on the other side of the road.?ÿ Last Summer both the little pool and the pond were bone dry for a few weeks.?ÿ The pond has no stream or pond above it, merely runoff from rain or snow on the hill above it, so no other source of fish.
ugh.... devil's club is really one of the worst.?ÿ ?ÿnasty stuff.?ÿ
@williwaw Filson waxed tin pants are pretty good if you can stand the stiffness.?ÿ I had the Filson chaps instead and wore them over my useless blue jeans.?ÿ Consequently, I would "only" end up with devil's club spines in my hands.
Ugh, I remember that stuff well.?ÿI'm not as sensitive to it as the guy who wrote this article, but I do remember a few AK survey jobs where I got hit. I was also bad about bushwhacking up drainages while backpacking, that didn't help either. The time savings were negated by the blisters.
I grew up in Texas and was darn near immune to poison ivy, but devil's club always got me within a few hours of contact.
@frozennorth That sounds like some decent devils club armor. Years back I had a 'club' spring back on me like VC booby trap and plant a bunch of thorns in my hand, one of which broke off in a joint in my finger. Couldn't dig it all out and it left the joint swollen and inflamed for months until my body absorbed it I guess. A guy should get combat pay for working in the stuff.
We have it here. Aka ??devil??s walking stick?. ?ÿ
we harvest it, tie it in bundles, and stuff it under the office. Or other dry place. Then, the kids peel them, and make walking sticks. They are very light, very strong, and everybody who has received one, likes them.?ÿ
as others have said, they aren??t friendly. But, hey, tell Eve not to eat of the ??tree of knowledge of good and evil?.
🙂
Nate
