 So I have an additional. Excuse me. Good afternoon. It is 12 past 12. I'm Alex for. We're starting the conservation commissions. Subcommittee on land use on conservation land. And we have President Aaron Jock, who's a wetland administrator and commissioner. Bruce Steadman. And commissioner Michelle law present. And we have a brief agenda to go over. On work in progress. So we'll begin. And I have an additional item. Yeah. Bruce. Oh, okay. Given that we might have time, I think we should talk about the. Friends of Conti now called. Connecticut River partnership. Request for things to put in there. And I think that's what they call the lookbook form. And it's a thing they take to come. They go down to DC and lobby for money. For projects in the Connecticut River watershed. And we might want to contribute something. I forget the deadline, but it's sometime in early March, I think. Like pictures or like projects. I think I've never done it. I assume that it's little. It's a little bit different. But it's a little bit different. It's a little bit different. Paragraph snippets of ideas that. And how much plausibly it would cause to do them. And they take them from the entire watershed. So. You know, whether we would ever get it, but they said that this is the way they demonstrate. To the legislators that it's worth their while to put some money in for the Connecticut River watershed as a whole. And they really count on contributions from. To the commission. Maybe we could. I don't know. We can, I'll leave it there and to figure out what's the best pathway for getting some input to it. But I just wanted us to know what's there. As a thing to consider doing. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's more of a conservation commission. Item as opposed to the subcommittee, but. But yeah, I do think it's important. Is there a deadline for the. Submission. Again, I didn't write it down. I think it's early March, but we can, we will definitely look at it. I'll look it up and send it to you. Okay. Beautiful. Thank you. How did you happen to come across them? I have gone to several of the Connecticut River partnership meetings. In which they're attempting to craft something that is analogous to the don't tell aware river partnership. And the. You know, the huge. Bay next to in Maryland. Which was the first one, but something like that. That would have this federal. Both designation and also an obvious target for federal money. And so as I've gone to the meetings, they send me things. Okay. Good. Okay. If I get it in. Are we going to talk about the rules and regulations? That's, I think on the list. Yeah. Could I indulge? Could I indulge you to bring up. What I just sent out so that we can. Go through it. Including the comments that I just provided. You guys see the screen. Yep. Yeah. Can you make it slightly larger? Maybe a couple of ticks larger. There we go. Thank you. I think you can, you can use your. The roller on your mouse to make it larger to suit yourself also. Nope. Aaron's in charge of it. So my comment was about hunting and fishing and dogs is that once when I looked at it again this morning. And it said, well, we talked about it in November. That I, it really felt like those were the two big. Topics that not only are they on the high priority Dave list, but also they're the more vexing of the issues that are left for this particular section. So I thought, well, if it's on the agenda, I'll send it out again as a reminder. And then push sounds like Alex got a chance to look at it a little bit more. So that's where we are. So I just commented, I'm happy to go down through from top to bottom, but in the interest of time, because we've seen this before, I'd prefer to go back to my comments first. Because they have been comments that have been on my mind for a while, but I didn't say it. That's fine for me. Okay. So under, under, right at the bottom, that's the easy one. The last paintball. I suggested, let's see, I can, I can. Yeah, paintball. Can you roll it down to the bottom, Aaron? Okay. Yeah. So I suggested a category of games. Not to just isolate paintball. Okay. Would very just an organizational thing because. Can you go to the bottom? Yeah, there we go. I suggested a category of games. And the other game I thought just happened to flap, flip into my mind was, and I don't know the right name of it, but that Frisbee disc throwing game where you takes up a lot of. Ultimate. No, I think Frisbee golf. Oh, Frisbee golf. That generally has like gold, gold like built. Yeah, it's got a track that's associated with it. Well, I just thought there might be other games besides paintball that we're not interested in having going on in conservation land. That's essentially an extension of recreation land. Right. So it's just. I'm happy to put that in. Okay. And if you can go up to. Amethyst Brook and. Mill River where, where dogs are allowed off the leash at certain hours. So what I did is dogs off leash. I said, except at Mill River and Amethyst Brook during designated hours, because. In fact, they are allowed off leash at those places during designated hours. And this seemed to be contradictory. To, to that. And then above. If you want to talk about that, I'll pause. I'm fine with it. So I do have a, I do have a comment on that just to point something out, which is there, there are state laws and town. And then there's, you know, bylaws, I believe, which state that dogs have to be. On leash or under control at all times. So while. There is this allowance for off leash dogs, it's. You know, you can't have an off leash dog that's like jumping all over people or biting people or chasing children or, you know, chasing wildlife, like the dog has to be under control. So if we're going to. Noted here somehow. Well, you've got a provision where they can be off leash. The two designated areas. Right, but they still have to be under owner control. Yeah, I got that. I looked up the dog laws. What, so what's the change being made? I'm sorry. To where it says off leash dog training. Is not permitted on conservation land. And what I wanted to do is put in, except at lower mill river. That would be lower mill river park. And they are with this Brooke. I used to in fact train my retrievers at mill river. And it was, it was, I used. I used the ball field in awful in off season use. To make sure that I could train my dog to come back on command. So that you wouldn't wander around. But I, I trained both my retrievers there. And it was. It was useful. And, and I, I see no reason why. We can't provide some place for people to train retrievers or other, other. I don't think I want to be training dogs for coon hunting by dragging coon sense through the, the woods as I did as a kid with my dad. But certainly for teaching a dog off leash commands. It doesn't necessarily have to be for, for hunting. But for, for training a dog, there needs to be places where people can do that. And just walking down the sidewalk. Or in their backyard is really not a suitable training area. What's handy for training dogs is to go to a place where training occurs. And early on, so when the dog goes there, they know, okay, I'm going to be training. Rather than trying to do it going down the sidewalk with people walking by. So I was trying to set up a place where people could train their dogs. And I'd love to see dog licenses require that people hand in a certificate that they've in fact gone to dog training. But I don't think we could do that. I get very annoyed at people's lack of dog training. Question. This was in there. Right, Aaron. So I'm wondering if Dave has like some kind of historical background regarding it. It seems fairly specific, like something maybe it instigated it. So, I just be curious to know the background of it. Yeah, there is a ton of background. I do know that. And I know that one of the things Dave wanted us to talk about was this off leash situation and whether the commission was, or whether this subcommittees was still in favor of it, or whether it was something that should be reconsidered. So I think all things were up for discussion in terms of revision. I've been down to him with this book and I have stopped people walking while they're walking, asking them if they're be used the area when dogs are can be off leash. Some people say no, it's too early. Other people said it hasn't bothered them. And my experience with dogs going off leash and that kind of an area is a more interested in running around with jumping on people. Alex, I don't go there so you're sort of selecting for people that are okay with the dogs being there because people with small children that are getting their kids jumped on by dogs or older people that can be knocked down or people that are afraid of dogs, which includes all kinds of people, especially like different cultures that aren't used to having pets and dogs. I just don't go to Amethyst Brook because they don't feel that it's accessible to them. So I just want to point out that the people that are there are already comfortable with the situation so I'm not sure that that's necessarily like an accurate survey. It doesn't bother me that people might be so selective. There's lots of trails. If you go further on Amethyst Brook, there's some pretty steep climbing. Yeah, sure. I totally agree. I'm just saying that I don't think that's really the right cross cut for making a determination about how affected people are by it. Well, in that area, I haven't asked people at Mill River, but I purposely went and asked people and I think it was an appropriate sample because if people choose not to go to Amethyst Brook for those reasons, okay, we have lots of other places for them to walk. And I favor being, I'd like to see multiple uses, and we tend to say no to lots of things and encouraging people to, giving people a place to train their dogs gives us an opportunity to say train your dogs. They can't do it at the play station that's provided opposite the landfill. It's not a good training place. I hear you on the sample. I'm fine with it. If people are self-selecting, great. I guess I'm a bit in the middle here, or not in the middle. I'm the third part of a triangle or something. Because I agree that there are lots of different places. On the other hand, for people who live near one of those places, and that's the place they would like to go because it's close, then it could be that the self-selecting is problematic for some sunset. And the way you know that is to really go do a much more serious survey, and I'm not sure we have the time or resources to do that. If people don't want to be there when there are dogs go after 10 o'clock. I will comment that there's too much poop on the side of the road that's not been picked up. That's a problem. So I was just going to say that the town right now is embarking on the open space and recreation plan survey and some of the questions are geared toward collecting information on this from a community-wide standpoint. So one of the things that might help guide this commission would be, you know, potentially getting results back from that survey to see where sort of general folks fall on the spectrum of feelings about it. Just an idea. I do know that one of the reasons why Dave wanted us to revisit this in, you know, considering it was because of the dog park. And, you know, a lot of these rules were established because there was no dog park in Amherst. There was no place for people to take dogs to allow them to run. And since we have the dog park, I think the thought was maybe we might want to reconsider these. But again, it's completely at your discretion. Alex, as someone who has trained dogs, are there ways to distinguish between just dogs off leash and running around versus being trained? Oh, sure. Okay. Thanks. All right, I'm just trying to understand what we can do here. Dogs today live the life of a human. And I am sorry about that. Why? You don't like it? Well, they're... I think I know what you mean. I mean, I live in Bay Area and people don't have kids. They have dogs and the dogs are afforded all of the privileges of a child. Yeah. So for the chair, excuse me, just for the chair, there is a one member of the public here, Scott. Just for reference. I can't see if he would like to say something. Please go ahead. I think that you had been here. I'm going to pull him in as a panelist. I'm just listening in. I do have experience with the impacts of dogs on wildlife. But I don't think you need my input on that. So I'm just listening. Thank you. So Scott, were you the person who called in about hunting on conservation land the other night? I am. And actually they're out there right now. So I went and took some pictures and sent some information to Aaron and David. So what season is open now? I'm not sure. It looks like they're hunting ducks or geese because there's dogs jumping into the wetland after something. I'll have to look up what the migratory bird season is. It's my... I'm not going to comment on that. Usually it's fall during migration period. Yeah. I mean, it could be something else. So they definitely have dogs with them going after something in the water. Okay. So do me a favor and nicely saunder out, talk to them, find out what they're doing in a nice way, not alarming. And maybe give us some clarification. Maybe they're training their dogs. Yeah, could be. I mean, there's definitely gunshots going on. So... Scott, can I just ask you a question? Sure. The map that you sent of the area is off of Hotbrook, which is a private way, and there is brickyard around the parcel. And there's also some... It looks like private subdivision land. But the parcel that they're on, is that a privately owned piece? Because it's not shown as being conservation land. I'm looking in right now to see if I can find it, but I didn't know. Yeah. It's actually outside of brickyard. And according to the Towns GIS system, it's owned by the Towns Water Department. Okay. So this, I think is a... And so that where they're shooting is on water department land, in other words? No, they're just driving onto the water department land, parking, and then from there, blocking into brickyard to hunt. Got it. So the... We don't know if... We don't... Excuse me. Go ahead, Michelle. I was just... The shooting is happening on the brickyard, as far as you know. Yeah. I mean, I can see it out my window. Okay. Yep. Okay. Michelle, did you have something? I was just looking at hunting season. I don't know what zone we're in, but it looks like it could be maybe goose. There's like 10 different zones and seasons. I don't know. That's rabbit. Yeah, there's not many how right now. But it sounds like ducks, but I don't... Yeah, which doesn't make sense based on the timeline I'm looking at. So possibly goose. But in any case, it's an interesting observation of hunting with dogs. I don't think that our hunting section covers that. So... Well, particularly because that area... I don't know what the distance is from roads. They might be... I think it's... I want to say they have to be at least 400 feet from the road. It might be more than that. But, you know, they're close to the Norwatak Rail Trail, depending on where they are on that property, which I would assume would be sort of taken into consideration as a public way. So that's really interesting. It might be something we want to get the sort of the Game Warden slash Environmental Police involved on just to make sure sort of where they are and that they understand the parameters of, you know, what they're doing. So we don't know if they're in fact on townland or not. Scott, I'm going to ask if you could carry on this conversation with Erin perhaps after our meeting and try and move forward on it. Appreciate your letting us know. Yeah, sure. I mean, the hunting is one issue. The other issue is just the soil disturbance. You know, it is on town property and it's causing some rutting. We've got beautiful trails in this town and having them all rutted up with tire tracks and, you know, the subsequent erosion that will happen, you know, is another issue that, you know, the town might want to address. Yeah, I'm going to reach out to the DPW and let them know what's going on here. I'll forward them your email and we can check them offline. Okay, great. Thanks. Did you have any comments on the subject matter we were talking about? No, I'm just listening in. Okay, thank you. So, yes, Michelle. Well, we are talking about dogs and it was going to be my, my assignment to do a presentation to, to this group. And I wanted to wait until Dave was here to do it. So what would I have done extensive research on the impacts of dogs and other land use activities and conservation areas. So I have some things to present for consideration just so we can make informed decisions about things like that. I'm not taking a position or anything at this time, but I, I, how much do we want to get into that right now versus wait until Dave's here or like, can we talk about the goals for this conversation right now versus what we want to address. Maybe at the next meeting. Well, I'd like to go back to the comments, you know, on the regulations section. And I, I heard your, I know. You know, people are supposed to pick up dog VZs. Some do some don't people are getting better at it's kind of like seatbelts. It's a long time to get people to wear seatbelts. It's getting better and it's improving and it could use more improvement. As far as urine goes, every animal in the woods has VCs and every animal in the woods has urine. And dogs are a incredibly, as far as urine goes are incredibly small percentage of the amount of urine that is deposited on the ground. So, and it does rain. And so, I'd like to go back to the comments if I could, and just finish them up. Ready. Sorry, I was typing an email to the TPW this but I'll come back to you on a dog, Michelle. Not at this time, Alex. So there was a place in here where I wanted to move. I think it's under, it's where we were before talking about off leash. And I did read the laws in Massachusetts where it says all dogs are required to be on leash at all times. What I don't know is if it's legal for the town to allow dogs to be off leash. I don't know what the attorneys would say about that. So that was a question I had. I just don't know if it's legal for Amherst to have the provision for dogs to be off leash. And if the answers no, then this whole conversation is moot. Yeah, it, I know several towns have bylaws that that they basically state that the dog has to be under control. So if it's off leash, it has to be under voice control at all times and also you know, the dog can't be sort of outside the control of its owner. So for example, like the dog has to be with the owner and not like I understand all that. Yeah. I understand all it and I, um, not everybody's going to have a dog which is being trained as a service dog. And there are very few people in reality who are going to have their dogs under voice control at all times that's rare. I mean, I just know it's rare. My dogs could be off leash and go to an elevator and go up in a building and walk around with you with on total and both voice control there was, but I'm rare. And I know that's not going to happen with other people, but I still like the idea that give dogs a place to run around during designated areas. That's their nature. And these, I have dog. I mean, I look out my window at the sidewalk. I live right in the center of town. I have dogs going by on 25, but leashes all the time that jump on people. Um, I wanted to put right under dogs where it says at those locations during designated times, my edit didn't get completed. I was going to move off leash dogs. Dogs must be off leash at all times. That except lower mill river and amethyst brook, where they are permitted to be off leash. So, Alex, I propose that you finish the incentive to us for another session so that we don't lose the opportunity to talk about the evers. Yeah, okay. I just move off leash dogs up into the previous. I just, it didn't, I actually did it, but it didn't seem to follow when I mailed it off. Okay, I see what you mean. Yep. I'm getting rid of a bullet. Okay, I see what you mean. Yep, I got it. Okay. Well, I'll, I'll take what we have. If Aaron send me this version of it so I can use what Alex has done and then I'll produce a new one. And then we can have Michelle's presentation, I assume, and keep working on that topic. Yeah. Did I make any other comments above that? I don't can't remember. Yeah, there's. They weren't there before. Yeah, okay. I think I just picked up on off leash kind of stuff. And I appreciate Michelle that you've done a lot of work on that area. I, I'm going to, I'm going to, I used to have my dogs on what I call dog beach at Pover's pond, let them refresh themselves. That water goes through it does change. And there, there are beavers in that pond. I, I, I don't favor them being on the swim beach. But I, I would like for there to be areas where there can be multiple use rather than single use. And unless you can demonstrate a health issue. And in fact, not in theory. I mean, that's quite an onus on the town to demonstrate, but I think from what Dave has said, the reason that dogs are no longer allowed at North Beach is due to health concerns. Yeah, I know. I called a dog beach and a conversation with them and he cringed. And he says I've been trying to eliminate that for years. But that phrase. I don't know if Dave made that change or whether the commission made that change. Beavers you want to move to beavers. Yeah, I'd like to make sure we get that and then also talk about the next, the meeting dates because I, I'm now confused. Well, what are we going to meet? Why don't we, you know, Aaron, can we cover meetings now? It is, I can't see at the time. Where's my watch? I'll stop sharing. I've got 20 of them. We will make sure we do it. Yeah. I very much liked our field trip. I'm sorry that it ran over Michelle. But I, I benefited a lot from that. I think very valuable. So next we're going to. Amethyst, which I think, right, we're supposed to be talking about agriculture there, but maybe we can make some other observations about. Yeah, absolutely. So what is the schedule? Is it every two weeks or is it the only twice a month? The week before in between the regular meetings. So it's the, there's only two meetings a month and it's the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month. Okay. So here we are on the 1st, and then the 20th. Correct. And the 5th and then the 19th. Correct. Okay. 1st and 3rd. That's all I needed. Thank you. Okay. Great. So we are going to just take Amethyst and. Fort River Farm. And move it up to the next site visits. I personally, I don't know what the issues are there and I don't really want to get into a discussion about community gardens until we're tackling that. And we don't have the comments back on community gardens. From other people, other employees of the town of Amherst, I did write to Dave about that over the weekend. So I'm expecting comments back. They've had them two months. And I have not checked to see if the Amherst website has posted the rules for the community gardens, which I think would be too bad. Since we haven't finished our process. But I know they wanted, they have to put out, I mean, the time for people to start signing up for community gardens is approaching. And I know the town wanted to put the rules up around the time that people were signing up for community gardens. By bottom line, I'm more interested in going to ag sites, capital A, that have bona fide issues that we need to deal with in the ag policy, such as irrigation, such as whatever. And not get off on a tangent on community gardens and then tackle community gardens as an issue. For river has ag, like current and perspective, in addition to the community garden. I walked around down there for river. Yeah. Yeah, I walked around down there and I didn't see any agriculture in process. It's the one that grows. So I walked in the walnut grove. And I'm a forester by training. I can comment on the forest on that grove later. I walked in that over the weekend. I did it on Sunday. So I just want to clarify something because Alex, I've heard you reference, you know, like wanting to see sites that have agricultural issues. We don't have any current licenses. We don't have any other than community gardens. There's currently no agricultural uses on conservation land with the exception of one lease. I believe that's like a long term lease and that's on the horse farm on station roads. So it's going to be difficult to show you issues where they're sort of existing bonafide agricultural issues because we don't. Nothing is currently leased. We're sort of starting with a clean slate here because all of our licenses have expired and we're kind of starting from scratch. That's my misunderstanding. I thought in talking with Dave or listening to Dave, that irrigation for one was a huge issue. Well, historically speaking. Yeah, okay, so maybe I misunderstood. I probably did misunderstand that, that he had ongoing irrigation issues. And I, I was looking forward to going and actually seeing them. Because that's a, that is an issue. I also think that the two we went to, there were some issues and we discussed them and it was really helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful. And I, I'm still learning, you know, where things are. I'm guilty of knowing my way around, but not knowing the names of the roads I'm traveling on, in many cases. So I'm learning the names of different conservation. This is a woodland. So we have in town. And I don't think I'm much different than a lot of other people. Maybe I am singular in that flaw. I don't know. I don't know. I just put the thing in the GPS and I go where it tells me to go. I don't look at the names either. Yeah. My daughter, my daughter. I did send that comprehensive list of conservation lands with, you know, the. Thank you. Yeah. I don't know, maybe you could have a bucket list for 2024 Alex and take them all off. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very long list. Yeah. So I'll rearrange. If we could see the potential ag lands. That would be helpful. I'm a, I'm a visual person. I don't know how many we have. I didn't, I haven't scrutinized what Michelle sent out. Yeah, so that both there were ag licenses both at, well, there was, there was agricultural licenses previously at Amethyst Brook, as well as community gardens. At the Fort River farm, the intention of acquisition was agriculture. So even though we have the walnut grove and we have the community gardens, there was an expectation because prior to our acquisition that that pretty much the entire lot was was farmed. So I think that it's just an inquiry as to whether we want to open it up for agricultural use on some of the unused portions of the property. Okay. So in terms of the walnut grove, it's not being managed actively. And it might be helpful to take a visit to the guy out by the Soviet Conti refuge in along the Fort River in Hadley who is growing walnuts he has a huge walnut grove, and he does manage them. And it would be interesting to look at what he's got, compared to what we've got. Yeah, I think they're the same guy. He planted those before he sold it to the town. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's the same exact landowner who has those little tree farms. So some of the questions I'll have for Dave on, or you, on that walnut grove is what's our objective. Are you looking for highest value which is veneer quality logs. Are you looking for saw timber or firewood. That's a great question. I don't think we have any objective with it. Yeah, because it's getting to the point where you need to do something to improve the quality of those trees from a timber standpoint, or you're going to have very low grade quality wall. I'll talk about that later. Let's not talk about it now. Do you want to move on to beavers? I thought I said I'd pick up the ball on that. I've already sent out something Aaron responded. And frankly, I've been over the top on another project and not not prepared to carry on that conversation. What I was going to do was boil down the statutes, which isn't done on on either the health department's website or on a conservation commission, the conservation department's website. But it's, I did, I made a presentation to Amherst neighbors and about wildlife in our backyards and beavers was one of them. So I did all that homework and happy to bring it forward. Just generally speaking, do the beavers who live in Amherst have predators on them? Yeah, Bobcats are predators on beavers. Mountain lions if they can get them if there are mountain lions in the area. We don't have that. We do. In Amherst there's a mountain lion. Okay. And the last one was killed in Connecticut that was bonafide wild came from South Dakota. So I have, I have witnessed beaver kills by Bobcats and Bobcats and in Coven. I have no and we have Bobcats and Amherst so I'm, I think they are a predator. I know they are a predator and beavers are susceptible to predation when they're out of the water. Okay. I oats will take a cached beaver kill. They'll also take a beaver if they can get it on it's up on land. But that's about it. Cars. Yes, cars. Can I ask a question about the beavers? I just put up my memory of what you said, Alex, it looked like a lot of this boils down to like department of public health and not even conservation jurisdiction at some point. This might be a question for Erin. Is that accurate and then I guess my follow up to that is we're on the site visit Dave mentioned trapping beavers for the that we're causing flooding to the adjacent farm land on conservation land. And my question is, so we just trap beavers that they're being a nuisance. In addition to the public health requirements. I guess I guess I'm unsure what our role is really in the end. I mean, sure. Trapping beavers. Does that mean relocation or the euthanized. I know Aaron will have something to say but let me quickly roll through it. First, it's illegal to relocate a beaver. It's illegal to trap a beaver outside of the trapping season. Unless you have a permit to do so. And for that, it has to have been declared that there is a risk in that words important to public health or safety. And the, it does not have to be an emergency, but it is an emergency permit. It's required. And the emergency is defined as not needing an ambulance type emergency. But they're so a person with a trapping license whose traps are identified as required by Massachusetts fishing game fishing wildlife can trap a beaver during the beaver trapping season. And so solve a beaver problem that way. In trapping the beaver, it is killed outside of the trapping season. The by law, it is the Department of Health's responsibility to determine if there is a risk to public health and the law provides, I'm going to say 10 or 12 examples of the kinds of risks that are unacceptable. I'm not going to go through them now, but they give it's not an inclusive list. But it certainly provides examples of what the state's talking about. And it's not simply because they're inconvenient. Can I respond to hold on. The law is specific that that decision to trap beavers belongs to the health department. The conservation department becomes involved if the wetlands acts act is is involved and that's primarily removing dams. The thing about dams is, if you remove a dam close to winter, you've now provided no place for them to survive the winter. And also juvenile beavers build practice dams, which is maybe what we're seeing along trails where we see these little teeny dams being built, which appear to be like out of place. So in practice, in Amherst and Aaron says in other towns, which I haven't called, but in practice, a lot leans on the conservation department and Dave has been making the decisions about whether or not it's a risk. So we're actually not following the law. We are doing what probably many towns do when the health department, particularly small towns like leverage and whatnot may not have the breadth of expertise that Amherst does. You want to add to that Aaron. Well, yeah, I mean, just a couple of things. So the first is, I don't, I don't think that the intention of this board relative to beavers is to clarify existing state statutes. How we do it is how we do it. And that's a cross town on private property, right? I think that the whole point of this committee is to talk about how beavers are handled on conservation lands. So, for example, like, if there's a threat to public health or safety, that's usually where there's a matter where a beaver would be trapped on conservation land and I can give you some examples. If a beaver is built a dam in a location next to a culvert and it's flooding a road, for example, or threatening a road, then that would be considered a public health or safety issue because it's involving the potential of a road washing out. In which case, in that case, the dam can be dismantled or, you know, some flow control put in and or if there's a need to trap them, basically to prevent them from building up near a road where it could potentially cause an issue, then in that case, that's when it would, you know, we would trap the beaver or try to do something about the dam. Other instances are where a beaver builds a dam and it's flooding the conservation land so dramatically that it's impacting a budding properties, particularly their septic systems. We've had situations where a beaver built a dam and then the water was about to flood out a neighbor's septic system and in that case, we would move forward with an emergency certification to dismantle the dam for the purpose of resolving that. But I think just for our discussions here, like the town has our sort of standard procedures that we work with the Board of Health on. We're not really looking to clarify that per se. We run a pretty well communicated machine when beaver issues come up and they come to the commission as necessary, but relative to conservation lands, what is, you know, I'm going to call on Bruce. Well, I was, it sounds, we have an example where a beaver did something and it caused a trail over by Kestrel Land Trust headquarters to completely flood out and we ended up agreeing to have a new bridge of an elevated walkway built to enable the beavers to still be there. So that's an example where it kind of goes the other way. And maybe those are case by case decisions. Yeah, they're the law and I didn't review the law. So it's not fresh in my head I did spend a lot of time on it during the fall, when I gave the presentation. But the law specifies the Department of Health and the Conservation Commission. It doesn't say within conservation land. It says it's up to the Conservation Commission and the Board of Health, those two things. And the law is specific on what each is to determine. Yeah, I'm not I'm not arguing with that at all. And so Aaron and Dave play, I mean, I talked to the Director of Health in in Amherst when before she left about bats and beavers, and was pretty helpful to her and explaining bats and beavers. And I'll get back to bats on the bats website later. In practice, nothing ever comes before the Commission with regard to beavers. And yet Aaron is issuing permits all the time and it's never on the agenda for the Conservation Commission. That's not true. That is not true. That is not true. We get emergency if there's an emergency certification for a beaver dam to be removed that comes to the Conservation Commission for approval. Okay, and I don't issue them all the time. I don't think I've, I don't think I've Like I said, I'm not, I wasn't prepared for the discussion. I'm sorry. But off the top of my head, I couldn't remember it coming before us. Maybe it has since I've been on and I forgot, but it's not a nor it's not a it's also not frequent. Yeah, so there's a couple things about this. So if it's a The Department of Public Works is allowed to maintain roads and culverts drainage structures. So in the course of their ordinarily ordinary maintenance procedures, if they're removing debris that's blocking up a culvert they're allowed to do that without contacting us. If there's an actual dam that's being removed or we're doing a controlled drawdown there would absolutely be an emergency certification that would come to the Conservation Commission for approval. It's been a long time since I've had a permit like that come we did in the last I want to say calendar year there was a beaver removal approval which was issued by the Board of Health. But that was a trapping issue outside of the season because somebody septic system or well was flooding or something like that but there hasn't been any emergency certifications recently that I can recall. But that's, you know, an emergency cert would be issued the Commission would approve that that's sort of like our general procedure, but it's not within the this for this committee I think the discussion of beavers is not relative to the town's general processes with processing, you know, issues related to beavers as they happen on private property or across town it's more so. Are we going to allow hunting of beavers on conservation land, are we going to think I got that. I don't even think beavers as a subject is in the policy document is it. I don't. There might be some small sections on beavers. Just generally speaking trapping perhaps. There's no section that I can recall on how we what's our policy on beavers on conservation land. And as far as discussing what happens in Amherst generally. I don't mind having this committee, the verdicts attention to what happens in Amherst under the law. Michelle. I just need to go. So I wanted to do and just check in for our next meeting. Have my dog. Go ahead. My intention is to have the feedback from the farmers by then. And something for us to review. Okay. So, in closing on beavers, I did send out that. Graphic. And that came from mass wildlife, I believe. So, on procedure for, for beavers. And I'll be prepared to talk about it next time when we meet. I apologize for not being prepared. I've been focused on something else. That's all you've done. Thanks. Bye. Bye bye.