This morning’s Gazette had a fantastic article on Worth A Dam’s commitment to handling beaver-related costs, but the real delight of the day came from Beaver supporter Guy who sent this article about a russian beaver stealing some vodka and suggests that this might be the real reason downtown businesses don’t want beavers in the city: they don’t wanna share. Check out the footage here.
Our friends at the Sierra Club put a nice shout-out to the beavers in this month’s “Yodeler“, the newspaper of the SF chapter. The wildlife chair, Terry Preston, is as busy as the proverbial beaver, but has made a huge comittment to our beavers and is working hard to garner their attention and protection. Thanks Terry for inviting me to the board meeting back in February and for getting your members on the beaver-saving bandwagon. I have already received several emails from new supporters who read about the beavers in this recent issue. Hmmm, you’d almost think there was some innate relationship between Martinez and the Sierra Club….
I suppose that answer all depends on what outcome you’re looking for. If it’s grant monies from the Coastal Conservancy, it’s a creek. If it’s to marginalize the value of the habitat surrounding the beaver lodge and dam, it’s a drainage ditch.
I can’t seem to recall the last time a drainage ditch or run off supported the following: bats, beavers, crayfish, carp, tulles, turtles, mallards, muskrats, otters, egrets, herons, song birds, swallows and geese.
Yesterday I ran into a woman out on the lawn adjacent to the primary dam mulling over plans for the Alhambra Creek Restoration project. Perhaps I should have corrected her and told her that the creek was just a ditch.
Linda Meza
Here’s the segment in full. Talk about controlling the message, count the number of times channel/levy/culvert/drainage is used compared to the mention of the word “Creek“. Still the story raised our visibility enormously. The web page traffic took off during the program, and we’ve had lots of interest since.
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=GM8CT5t29Qw]
Fro Butler sent the May newsletter for the East Bay Artist Guild. She is the DVC instructor and animal portraitist who painted one of our Martinez Beavers. Her demonstration at John Muir’s Birthday/Earthday celebration was an inspiration to many young artists. Not content with her own efforts, it appears she wants her artistic interest in beavers to be contagious.
FRO Butler participated in the Earth Day/John Muir Birthday Celebration on April 19th, where she painted a picture of a famous Martinez Beaver. She’d like to organize an EBAG group field trip/plein air painting session down at the creek to support the Save the Beavers campaign and create a little PR for EBAG as well. FRO says, “Anyone up for a plein air field trip – please contact me and I will organize it and get the press involved to give us and the beavers some good news coverage. The event would occur sometime after June 5th. Contact me at my studio (925 934-5957) or email frogard2000@yahoo.com. We need some Beaver paintings hanging in our storefront gallery windows. This is perfect for Walter Crew!”
Thanks for the tip, Fro. We will watch for beret-wearing-easel-types and encourage the beavers to be good models. By the way, our beavers are also featured in this month’s issue of the Sierra Club Yodeler; we’ll post the link as soon as its out there.
