Castor Gratia Artis

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors August 17, 2008

A delightful day at Art in the Park with much beaver support and many new members. Thank you to everyone who helped and everyone who participated. We had many beaver conversions and several stalwart fans reminding us of their support. We also won the blue ribbon for “best display” which I’m told is a new catagory invented possibly for us. Our booth was draped in beaver chews so its very likely everyone will be wanting one for next year. Maybe that’s what we should be giving as thank you gifts! Pictures will follow.

My favorite conversation of the day (and there were many) came from the supporter who I’d never met that explained he’d attended both meetings. He hadn’t spoken at either because he thought “we were all eloquent enough”. This thrilled me a great deal because it means that we vocal beaver-defenders are just the tip of the iceberg. For everyone who speaks up and raises a fuss there are many, many more who think like we do and stand behind us.

Thank you all for reminding me that Worth A Dam is just this:

Video Letter To The Mayor

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers or Social Ambasadors August 15, 2008

Cast this into the mail this evening for all the council and the Gazette.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=5q4oro4HK-E]

Hope I got everyone’s good side!

Footprint

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational August 15, 2008

If there were any question before, it is becoming more and more clear that the Martinez Beavers are leaving their footprint on the community, and far beyond it. If yesterday’s EPA post needs to be corrected that its CalEPA and not the Feds (and the environmental curriculm for K-12, not a free calendar) then look beyond our borders at the city of Surrey British Columbia. Remember them? They got a whole lot of attention for their beaver killing spree, and our friend from New Zealand stopped by for a chat with the council. Now the city has decided to hire an “expert” about behavior management. Some areas will be altered with flow devices and some beavers will be relocated to carefully selected sites.

Its almost a victory, although Carrie Baron drainage manager is still no friend of the beavers. One report said that they were paying the consultant 15,000 dollars and she hoped “some of the beavers could be saved“. Some? They also said that they’re going to keep these desireable locations a secret from other communities so they don’t try to dump off their beavers first. The mind reels. How about using the 15,000 dollars to do an EIR and learn which areas would benefit from habitat repair and water management, ranking the need for beaver introduction? How about using the beavers to increase the salmon runs and wildlife homes and working with neighboring cities to introduce the position of Watershed Steward that can manage these issues over time?

Surrey, it’s possible that your first plan for the secret killing of beavers, and now your second plan for the secret saving of beavers, lacks some of the transparency that your ecologically minded residents require.

So what does Surrey have to do with Martinez? Well lots of us wrote Ms. Baron, and we get a steady stream of traffic on the site looking up information for them. Like Kern county, it’s another example of beaver visibility forcing better beaver decisions, and we are a large part of that. If you need to be reminded, check out Mike Callahan’s letter on why we fight. It seems like it was written a hundred years ago, but its worth reading over now.

More evidence of our beaver footprint comes from the Chowhound of all places. If you’ve never heard of it you should know it’s a National website reviewing local eateries and foodstuffs. A couple of weeks ago their SF blogger stopped by the Farmer’s market and really appreciated what s/he saw. Apparently we chatted about beavers, although there is no way to know which conversation sparked this. (I’m reminded of the old myths of Zeus visiting villagers in the disguise of a tattered old man, so that he could test the hospitality of his followers.) Anybody can be a visiting blogger with a national following: it’s a good idea to answer all their questions and be polite!

I agree the beavers are every bit the tourist attraction that the sea lions are at Pier 39. It made me stop. At the farmers market there is a stand with beaver info and pictures of where to look and what to look for … main dam, secondary dam, beaver lodge and beaver deceiver (to keep the stream from flooding). It was very interesting. Martinez is much more beaver educated than it once was. There is much more info and cute beaver pictures in the next link. An amusing page is Beaver Myths: More dam rumors.” rworange Chowhouds

Once you start following the footprint left by the Martinez Beavers, you see that the ripple effect is all around us. Even Vacaville, with their prehistoric beaver-beliefs, is feeling the effects of our effort and enthusiasm. We should comfort ourselves with the fact that for every colony we preserve, we are also helping countless, fish, heron, otter and muskrats who benefit from the habitat the beavers create.

That’s a return on investment everyone of us can get behind.

Wednesday Wonders

heidi08 Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers August 14, 2008

Yesterday was a little burst of beaver energy. First there was the trip to our good friends at Folkmanis who donated a bag of truly delightful puppets for sunday’s Art in the Park Raffle. If you aren’t familiar with their merchandise pick up any wildlife puppet at a bird store or museum and you will see their handiwork. I have been enamored of their creations since my first alligator puppet purchased way back in graduate school. Now my office looks like a showroom and I am thrilled they count themselves among our supporters.

A second burst of excitement came in the form of a request from the EPA to use my photos in a free educational calendar. Not sure how the EPA (and this particular division in Southern CA) came to see our beaver web page, but its good news all the same. The visibility of these beavers have been their surest protection. A few hundred more pairs of eyes are always welcome.

Less positive (but still enormously helpful) news came from the Lindsay Museum whom I had approached about the possibility of treating wild raccoons for roundworm parasites. Turns out even if they could be dosed the treatment would need to be repeated every two weeks forever. Outside a host body roundworm can survive for many years and any partial treatment of a raccoon might make the infestation more resistant to medication. Nearly all raccoons carry their parasite and there is no way we are going to prevent them from transmitting it to our beavers. Fortunately, most animals can and do recover, but we are going to have some casualties. The well-meaning people who feed the cats along the lost path inadvertently contribute: the raccoons consistently stop to eat the cat food, spreading their parasites to cats and beavers alike.

Speaking of cats in the “lost” trail, there’s a new stripped resident that definitely isn’t feral and has been purring about and allowing himself to be stroked by visitors to the fallen tree. This was most likely an abandoned house pet, and he’s on the lookout for a new home. If you are considering adding a kitty to your life, why not let destiny give you the kitty that comes from the beavers? I’m sure he’d make someone a lovely pet.

Predictable

heidi08 Uncategorized August 13, 2008

Have you read anything of the recent flurry of beaver drama from our nearby Vacaville neighbors? Apparently their city staff routinely recommends extermination as fix for beaver-human conflicts. We even heard a rumor that Martinez staff consulted with Vacaville way back when and was advised to “just kill them.” Is this the story that Carolyn Jones of the Chronicle will be following? Rather than assuming beavers are “increasing”, it may be useful to determine how routinely they’ve been killed for the past 50 years. Is there even a form that had to be filled out to document the extermination? Was their any record of the execution at all?

Humans routinely attempt to exterminate animals they consider to be pests. In most cases, animals can adapt some sort of survival techniques. Smart mice walk around the traps and smart coyotes never approach them. Beavers are different. They are entirely predictable. They do roughly the same thing in about the same place at nearly the same time every day of their furry lives. They display their home and office clearly. There is no part of their existence which does not make a perfect target.

It’s difficult, then, to understand the sense of gleeful accomplishment that some claim for trapping beavers. It is nothing like hunting. It’s never the result of a skillful undercover stakeout: You don’t have to wait for hours in the cold behind a duck blind. It’s as simple as the horrific advice I read on a sport site recommending that you “blow up the dam” and then wait with your shotgun for the beavers to come and fix it.

Beaver behavior is entirely predictable.

It would be safer for them if they were more erratic — if they were more like us. If they started to try things and then gave up on them, forgot what they were working on, let commitments slide, or suddenly abandon their children and partners to seek greener pastures somewhere else. They would be safer if they cared less about their families and their homes. Their loyalty makes them easy marks.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the sense of gleeful accomplishment that comes with killing beavers: a feeling of having escaped the hearth and plow, of successfully keeping a bit on the side, of dodging the chains of family life. Maybe when men kill beavers (and it’s usually men) they are claiming victory over the pressures that seek to make them domesticated and predictable. Maybe it’s the last gasp of a weakened independence, struggling to reassert itself like a flailing turtle on its back.

Maybe we should assume the decision to exterminate beavers is a sign that whoever is making that decision is deeply uncertain of his position and power in the world and needs the imagined victory to be reminded of it.

Maybe real men don’t kill beavers.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=wKdJ7cvCEGU]