Little Beaver Creek office helps protect environment

By D.a. Wilkinson

LISBON — A small office here is the base for people who are preserving and protecting the area’s natural beauties.

Lisa Butch is the watershed coordinator for the Little Beaver Creek Land Foundation that was founded in 1993 as a nonprofit corporation.

Carol Bretz, president of the foundation, said the organization has worked with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

The foundation covers the Little Beaver Creek Watershed, which includes Goshen Township in Mahoning County and part of Carroll County on the west and Lawrence and Beaver counties in western Pennsylvania.

The watershed encompasses 496 square miles, most of which is in Columbiana County. Only 1 percent of the watershed is considered urban.

Through the foundation, some 4,343 acres in the watershed have been protected through outright purchase, donation or conservation easements. Most of the acreage that is protected is where land and water meet.

Bretz said the protected areas include two waterfalls.

In 2007, a portion of the watershed along Little Beaver Creek was named an Audubon Ohio Important Bird Area. That means the area is important for birds that are nesting or migrating during the winter.

Butch works in the county’s economic-development office. Her salary is covered by grants.

This year, she is being helped by Greg Aaron of Franklin, Pa., and Debby Ludwig of Wellsville. They are Office of Surface Mining/Vista volunteers who get living expenses for one year to help the environment. They started in September.

Butch said they cannot go on a landowner’s property without permission. But they can offer suggestions, such as asking people with livestock to put fences along some streams to prevent animals from damaging the environment.

The programs also may help a historic and potential tourist draw in Leetonia.

Village Manager Gary Phillips said council has given its blessing to a group to revive the Bee Hive Coke Ovens that once provided coke for the steel industry.

Aaron said there is acid drainage from the old mines. “It’s very acidic and harmful for aquatic life,” he said.

Butch added, “It’s orange in color, and it’s not good for anything.”

She added, “We’re testing right now, trying to find where the biggest problems are.”

One option may be to let it settle to the bottom of a steam.

“It won’t go anywhere, but it won’t go downstream,” she said.

The watershed has 63 species of fish, 49 species of mammals and 140 species of birds. It also has the largest Ohio population of the endangered Hellbender salamander that resides in Little Beaver Creek. They can grow to be 3 feet long.

But fertilizer gets into water and creates algae “that kinds of sucks the oxygen,” Butch said.

The foundation has brochures that list the wildflowers, birds and trees in the watershed. For more information, visit: www.littlebeavercreek.com.

wilkinson@vindy.com