Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 24, 1994 TAG: 9405240055
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Beavers and shrikes and coneflowers, oh my!
Building a trail or a yellow brick road can be a scary experience. Sometimes the woodland locals gang up on you.
That's what backers of the new Huckleberry Trail have discovered.
The bike- and footpath-to-be winds among fields and forest along its six-mile path from Blacksburg to the New River Valley Mall. Few people live along the way, yet the trail's new neighborhood is crowded. Nearby are lodges named after animals (beaver, not moose) and subdivisions of rare species.
Federal and state agencies have notified the Huckleberry Trail to be on the lookout for threatened birds, plants, animals and American Indian artifacts.
The presence of any of these could cause construction delays or force relocations of the path:
The loggerhead shrike, a bird common to old fields and forest edges, known for impaling its prey on a sharp object, returning later to eat this Darwinian shish-kebab.
The Ellett Valley pseudotremia, a many-legged bug that lives in cracks, caves and fissures.
The smoothcone flower, a small flowering herb.
The New England cottontail rabbit, which has wandered farther from home than Peter Cottontail ever did.
And the so-called "nuisance beavers," which are not rare enough and, as a result, may be in danger.
Trail planners are leaving mounds of paperwork to mark their path as they tiptoe through the habitats.
They say the special species live too far from the trail, which follows an abandoned railroad line, to create serious conflicts.
Yet hacking through thickets of environmental regulations "slows everything down," said Joe Powers, Montgomery County's planning director.
Environmental compliance is a well-intentioned if nettlesome fact of life that all public construction projects deal with these days.
It's mostly a matter of memos and bureaucratic hoops - except for those pesky animals like the beavers who have built a sturdy new dam next to Huckleberry Lane.
They've turned lazy Lick Creek into an instant wetland which floods the footpath when it rains. Hence the biological classification as a "nuisance."
The beavers' new public works project has prompted some serious head-scratching among trail planners.
"We could kill it," said Duane Hyde, Montgomery County assistant planner. "But that would be a public relations nightmare."
Besides, Hyde hastened to add, the Huckleberry Trail wants to co-exist peacefully with its new neighbors.
In that spirit of accommodation, Hyde and Betsy Stinson made a dam site field trip Monday.
Hyde wore a "Far Side" T-shirt depicting two deer, one with a red bull's-eye on its chest, the other remarking, "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal."
Stinson, a wildlife biologist, was attired in the business-like olive drab of the Virginia Game Commission.
"They've done a really good job. That's a fabulous dam," Stinson said, admiring the mucky assemblage of twigs and debris.
Hyde agreed, but furrowed his brow as he indicated deep ruts in the adjacent roadbed caused by cascading water.
The troublesome beavers could be trapped and relocated, Stinson said, but they might return. "They're pretty determined creatures."
Likewise, destroying the dam could only be temporarily effective, she said.
Perhaps the new trail could be elevated as it runs beside Lick Creek, Hyde replied. "We're wondering what the beavers would like."
"And will they cooperate?" Stinson said.
Costs of redesigning the footpath might be offset by contributions from local environmental groups - sort of an "Adopt-A-Beaver" campaign, Hyde said.
Stinson said she would draw up some beaver bypass plans and get back to Hyde in two weeks.
Meanwhile, some field work and a letter or two asserting that the Huckleberry Trail runs nowhere near the habitat of any pseudotremia, shrike, Yankee rabbit or coneflower should put the project in the clear, Hyde said.
More thorny could be the state archeologist who asserted his right last week to survey part of the trail route.
He wants to look for Indian artifacts and has every right to do so, under environmental regulations.
"If they find something we could be in real trouble," Hyde said.
Once again, project supporters don't expect that will happen. But they still have to foot the bill for the unexpected survey and wait while the paperwork is processed.
All this will be more costly and time-consuming for the trail, which received a $454,424 federal grant last October, then had to wait six months to spend the money because of bureaucratic snafus.
It's all only natural for any governmental project - even a trail, Hyde said. "We're used to it. And we're still along for the ride."
by CNB