SUNDAY, MAY 16, 2010

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Md. box turtles face a tough road ahead

turtles from C1

Two years into the three-year

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

A plastic forest nurtures honest-to-goodness trees

exit, you’ll see a field with many three- and four-foot poles sticking up. If they were higher off the ground, I would think they’re for cellphone reception, but they’re low to the ground. Can you find out what they are?

— Rochelle Follender, North Bethesda

I

What appears to be an antenna array designed to contact alien life forms is actually a forest, or rather, a proto-forest. Those poles are plastic tubes. Inside are saplings. They were planted by the

Maryland State Highway Administration as a direct result of the construction of the Intercounty Connector. As land is cleared for the ICC, trees are planted elsewhere. Planting of maples, oaks and tulip poplars started in mid-March and was completed toward the end of April in four spots: at the Capital Beltway and Connecticut Avenue and on Interstate 270 at Shady Grove Road and routes 121 and 117. With 19.4 acres in those four locations, and a density of about 350 trees per acre, that’s almost 6,800 trees total. “The tubes are what are called tree shelters,” said Rob Shreeve, environmental manager for the ICC. “You plant a small little sapling tree, about 18 inches high, and put a tree shelter overtop of it.” There’s a net on top that keeps animals out. The translucent plastic allows light in. It also keeps the tree warmer than it would be were it not snug and sheltered, safe from wind and weather. The shelters, made by an English company called Tubex, act like little greenhouses. “It actually grows faster that

way than it would if you just put a little sapling out in the field,” Rob said. The actual work of planting them was done by inmates from the state’s corrections agency, part of a program to train them in landscaping skills. A tool with the wonderful name of “dibble bar” is used to make a hole. In goes the sapling, over it goes the tree shelter, which is attached to a stake in the ground. “When the tree gets tall

f you’re driving on the outer loop of the Beltway, just past the Connecticut Avenue

enough it comes out of the tree shelter and pushes that little net off the top,” Rob said. “Then we let it grow for a year after that. It takes about three years for them to get out of the tree shelters. When they’re tall enough we come back and take the tree shelters off.” The trees look awfully dense to Answer Man, but state officials insist they are far enough apart to grow properly and to let a mower in between them to keep the grass under control. The contract stipulates that 90 percent of the trees have to be alive after the first year, 85 percent after the second year. For now, the eerie plastic forest looks like an installation by the artist Christo.

Georgia on My Madre

In last week’s column about

criminal figure Odessa Madre,

Answer Man placed the District neighborhood she grew up in, Cowtown, along upper Georgia Avenue. In fact — as several readers pointed out — it was on lower Georgia Avenue, near Howard University.

Cows did once roam the area.

Why? In the 1870s, it became illegal for livestock to roam freely the streets of Washington City — the area below Boundary Street, today’s Florida Avenue. “Thus keepers of livestock concentrated just north of Boundary, west of Seventh Street (later Georgia

Avenue),” wrote Jane Freundel

Levey of Cultural Tourism DC. “There used to be a stream running along today’s Sherman Avenue, and that made it possible to have slaughterhouses and other ‘nuisance’ activities . . . Eventually the livestock were banned there too.” Jane wrote that through the

1940s, Cowtown was populated with working-class Irish, Germans and African Americans. “Residential segregation was a ‘luxury’ they couldn’t afford,” she wrote. “Hence Odessa’s early friends across the color line.” A Georgia Avenue/Pleasant Plains heritage walking trail is in the works, Jane said. It will include information on Washington’s “female Al

Capone.”

Have a question about the Washington area? Send it to answerman@washpost.com.

study, researchers have deter- mined that the protection fences aren’t effective unless they are diligently maintained, said Rich- ard Seigel, chairman of Towson University’s biological sciences department. Researchers have found 80 “trespass” instances in which turtles in the ICC study sneaked back onto the construc- tion site. Box turtles’ strong in- stinct to return to nesting and foraging grounds led them past plastic fences that had been chewed through by groundhogs or damaged by vandals, he said. But the ICC turtles have also

revealed something more dis- turbing, he said. They appear to be headed for extinction, with or without the ICC. Twenty-three of the 97 turtles in the sample have been found dead — most of those deaths suspected to be due to a respiratory virus striking turtles in Maryland and several other states, Seigel said. One turtle was hit by a car, and four were killed by construction equipment. “That’s a very worrisome [mor-

tality] rate,” Seigel said. “That population is clearly not viable based on that data.” Box turtles are not listed as

rare, threatened or endangered, but studies show that their num- bers have been declining in Mary- land since the 1950s, experts said.

Loss of habitat

The loss of wildlife habitat was

a key issue in the 50-year debate over whether to build the 18.8- mile, six-lane highway between Gaithersburg and Laurel. Efforts to protect box turtles are part of the project’s $370million envi- ronmental program that helped it win federal approval. Most animals, such as deer and foxes, fled when tree-clearing be- gan. The box turtles stayed put. In addition to being slow, those that sensed danger hunkered down in their brown shells and

PHOTOS BY TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST

Sandy Barnett began saving turtles two years ago. She says all of the turtles will eventually be released.

Most of the box turtles rescued by Barnett are so small that they fit in the palm of a hand.

burrowed in, Barnett said. That defensive instinct might fool predators like raccoons and coy- otes but not bulldozers and back- hoes. The toll highway is sched-

uled to open in sections between late 2010 and early 2012. Barnett has taken in 60 sick and injured ICC turtles in the last two years. She said she paid near- ly $5,000 for turtle care and med- ical expenses last year. She is re- tired from the National Aquari- um in Baltimore but now spends 30 hours each week tending to the turtles. She said her husband, Colin, who works in computers, only half-jokes that she takes more care in preparing the tur- tles’ meals than their own. Bar- nett says most of the turtles will average three years in her care, even after the ICC opens, but all will eventually be released. “I find them to be charming animals,” said Barnett, who, like a dozen other turtle enthusiasts, volunteers her time. “The free- way is going in regardless, so let’s do what we can to mitigate the damage.” Bill Park, environmental man-

ager for the joint venture of three contractors building the ICC’s middle section, said construction workers routinely move frogs, snakes and other animals that they come across. However, he said, this is the first time he’s aware of an organized effort to rescue animals before work pro- ceeds. Construction workers who make a find get a turtle sticker for their hard hat. “It’s sort of a sense of pride for

them,” Park said. Seigel said the box turtles’ fate is far from certain. Researchers want to know the effects of relo- cating them to nearby parkland, including if they overpopulate new habitats or spread disease. Seigel said he hopes to clinch more funding to answer the most pressing question: How well will the turtles that survive the ICC’s construction adapt to living in its shadow?

shaverk@washpost.com

Rail work chases off some Tysons customers

tysons from C1

ect spokeswoman Marcia McAl- lister said.

Andre Edwards, marketing di-

rector for Rosenthal Nissan on Route 7, blames the construction for a 15 to 20 percent decrease in sales. The dealership is acces- sible from Route 7 only through a slight opening between Jersey barriers.

“If you want to turn right, God forbid, man,” Edwards said with a sigh, shaking his head. “We have to talk to clients like it’s a national emergency.” And the worst is yet to come.

JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST

Delays and distractions

Construction will soon begin on Route 7’s two rail stations and the piers that will carry elevated tracks down the road’s median. Lanes in both directions will shift into the former service roads to make room for the rail line.

Over the next 18 months,

JOHN KELLY/THE WASHINGTON POST

Plastic tubes shelter saplings planted to make up for clearing along the Intercounty Connector route.

ANIMAL WATCH

Cat gives up on its carryout meal

HYATTSVILLE, Kennedy St., 3700 block, April 21. A person re- ported seeing a cat with a bird in its mouth. The cat dropped the bird upon being approached, and an officer picked up an injured brown songbird and took it to a

wildlife rehabilitator.

Among cases received by the Prince George’s County Department of Environmental Resources Animal Management Group.

McAllister said, the delivery of construction materials will cause traffic delays, and the concrete piers being erected might be a visual distraction for drivers. “It’s not going to be free-flow-

ing traffic,” she said. “There’s go- ing to be big construction going on in the middle, and when you have that going on, you have peo- ple looking.”

She said the major traffic

shifts will stay in place until the rail line is built, which means that the constant lane shifts and closings of the past two years will be reduced somewhat.

Losing customers

LOTTERIES

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DISTRICT

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Meanwhile, businesses are try- ing to remain visible among the work trucks, traffic cones and re- taining walls. Edwards said Ro- senthal Nissan has increased its online advertising to try to at- tract customers. Other business- es have erected signs saying they are open during construction. Thomasville Furniture, al- ready tucked away in a shaded corner below road level, is al- most out of sight. Late last month, frustrated store employ- ees placed a 16-by-16-foot-sign with an arrow pointing to the en- trance near a concrete barrier. Elizabeth Belardinelli, the store’s operations administrator, said the sign was a last-ditch ef- fort to stop the loss of sales and customers to other Thomasville stores. “We had a lot of complaints from clients saying, ‘We couldn’t find your store,’ and ‘We couldn’t find the entrance for your store,’ ” she said. “We had a lot of those questions, so we figured we’d do something.”

Other businesses moved. The Business Bank and Merchant’s

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Negotiating work trucks, traffic cones and Jersey barriers has become difficult for customers trying to get to Route 7 businesses.

Tire and Auto Center vacated the buildings they leased on Route 7 to make way for rail construc- tion. The Metropolitan Washing- ton Airports Authority, the rail project’s builder, bought the

buildings from private owners. It paid the Business Bank and Mer- chant’s Tire $25,000 each for the inconvenience and covered some of their moving expenses. The agency is in the process of

negotiating an additional con- struction easement for the for- mer Cherner Isuzu dealership at the northwest corner of Route 7 and Spring Hill Road. The land is the site of a planned bridge en- trance that will serve the future Tysons West rail station. The dealership’s owner also received a $25,000 fee from the rail proj- ect. The move was bittersweet for the Business Bank, which relocat- ed to an office building near the Tysons Galleria mall. The bank had leased its Route 7 location, a two-story brick building, for al- most 30 years. During the first year of construction, it lost be- tween $15 million and $20 mil- lion in deposits, the bank’s presi- dent, Harold Rauner, said. “People would just not come

there,” he said. “The access was so challenging, at the end, you could barely get in and out. We are so glad to be out of there.”

hoshk@washpost.com

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