05/24/2004 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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• I spent my young years with relatives along the shores of Peltier Lake. There were endless opportunities for adventures and exploration. We had an inventory of leaky duck boats left behind by fall hunters who used my grandfather's pasture, near the lake, for access to the birds migrating over the Rice Creek Water Chain. During my wildlife biology days, I would row out to the bogs and collect cattail roots, to make tasty bread from the cattail root flour, and arrowhead tubers, to make salad very much like potato salad. In the spring we would row around Peltier Island and sit quietly listening to the loud chattering of the herons and egrets nesting on the north end of the lake. These large birds would fly over us, casting shadows that we pretended were from prehistoric birds. The birds would come and go as we coasted through the open water that cut through the bog behind the island. We often saw a stately heron standing intently, spearing up a fish and managing it down, only to carry it back to the nest and regurgitate it to feed their new hatchlings. These shy, large birds were the natural residents of spring and summer along the lake. In the hot, humid evenings, when we ourselves would fish and swat mosquitoes, we commonly saw a heron standing near the cold springs capturing frogs and bullheads. Quiet allowed us to share location, quiet allowed us to hear, see, and appreciate the wonder of these large majestic birds. My nearest human neighbors lived a half -mile away. In the winter we ice - skated on the lake, sometimes all day, and I don't recall being cold, though this was before gortex and thinsulate. We would explore on Peltier Island and stare up at the empty heron nests, hundreds of them, high in the trees with stark blue sky peaking through the twig weavings. We knew that with the ice break up, the birds would return and undertake home repairing and another nesting season would begin. And so it has been until the early 2000's when pressures of area development, road reconstruction noise, and human invasion near and on Peltier Island, created a combination of stresses that challenged the normal cycle of the rookery birds. Perhaps the most significant change was when some residents established a water skiing slalom course across the shallow north end of the lake. The birds began abandoning their nests, leaving their chicks to die around Memorial Day and into June. Local residents are now engaged with the Cities of Lino Lakes and Centerville to establish a permanent no wake zone that would protect the island from high speed motor boat noise, which disturbs the herons, and would prevent turbulence that disrupts natural flora and plants that serve as a filter for the lake.