Crossing the Tamar

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere January 12, 2009

A nice [half] Cornish girl with a name like Perryman better pay attention to the news report of an adult beaver in the Tamar. The land of my ancestors is apparently deeply worried about their fruit trees. The reporter seemed surprised that the beaver doesn’t appear to be damming the Tamar, just living in the bank and eating dinner.

Ahh those quaint beaver-mistrustful folk. For all your smugglers, pasties and tin mines, you never learned to wrap a tree? You don’t even need to use wire. Why not build the fitted stone wall your people are famous for? It will keep out the beaver and give you a saturday’s effort to show off your skill.

For the record my grandfather was the son of a Miner in St. Austel who came over to California after the tin business dried up. He spent his youth in Sierra City working in the goldmines and if he saw a beaver or trapped one, I never heard tell of it. For what its worth, I sent this to the reporter:

Kay Sexton’s January 9th report on the meddlesome “Igor” documents the concern that residents have about beavers taking trees. She fails, however, to mention the benefits of beavers to the habitat. Beavers are a keystone species and have been shown to increase songbirds, salmon and other mammals. They are also instrumental in regulating waterflow which is essential for flood and drought management, and will become even more valuable as we face greater climate change. Their tree attacks, while frustrating, are easily controlled through wire wrapping. My grandfather was a tin-miner who migrated from Cornwall as a boy. Nothing would give me greater joy than to help his neighbors understand more about the benefits of beavers in the habitat.

In a related story, an Oakley neighbor made it out to big break for the beaver walk. He mused that Oakley beavers are luckier than Martinez beavers. Hmm, maybe.

Four Kits Seen

heidi08 Recent Sightings January 11, 2009

Good news from VP Wildlife Cheryl Reynolds:

Carl and I went out to the dam tonight and were visited by all 4 beaver kits. One industrious little beaver was diving for mud and packing it on the dam near the spillway. It’s the first time we’ve seen all 4 together for awhile.

So this means in the past few days we have seen both yearlings and all the kits. Congratulations Martinez! You have beavers!

Read the Signs

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports January 9, 2009

Political Columnist Lisa Vorderbrueggan of the Contra Costa Times has been a tough sell on the Martinez beavers. She had a sporting good time making fun of our silly Martinez struggles over a bunch of rodents — saying we scared our city manager away, and spent far too much money in the process. In fact she had such delight working on one-liners about our exorbitant beaver bank account, that she never bothered to check whether the money figures were actually accurate. (Well, in this way she had plenty of company.) During the sheet-pile-palooza she was apparently terrified that Worth A Dam was purchasing thermonuclear devices and for some reason my explanation of the simple household non-contact thermometer never appeared in her column.

However, I think maybe her horse-race following, backroom deal-sniffing, seen-it-all steely heart was softened by the presidential beaver video which she truly enjoyed. Our beavers approaching their “candidates” affected her hardened spirit almost like the ghost of Christmas past visiting Scrooge. She came back from the election a changed woman. Here is what she has to say about the beavers for 2009.

Warning! Step away from the beavers!

Fearing a collapse, Martinez spent $360,000 in 2008 to install metal sheet pilings between a retaining wall and an adjacent beaver dam in Alhambra Creek.

It was the latest chapter in an angst-filled saga over what to do with beavers who set up housekeeping in the same creek where the city spent $20 million on flood control prevention.

But nervous downtown businessowners and beaver fans have declared an uneasy truce after several years of rodent occupation and no major flooding has occurred as a result of their presence.

Still, expect the big-toothed, procreating, national media hounds will remain the city’s third rail of politics in 2009.

Downtown property owners and beaver activists remain watchful.

Meanwhile, the original beaver pair has been as busy as, well, beavers.

Their family has expanded from two to eight critters and they have as built as many as four dams.

With a cessation of hostilities, the city plans this year to put up interpretive signs and direct visitors to the beaver pond.

A big sign that reads “Beavers This Way” sounds so much nicer than “Welcome to Martinez: Former Home of John Muir and That Cute but Evicted Beaver Family.”

Lisa! Welcome aboard! We missed you! What size t-shirt do you wear and we’ll send one right over?

This is as good a time as any to let everyone know that Worth A Dam recently worked with Epona environmental consulting to apply for a wildlife education grant that will pay for three interpretive signs at the dam and lodge sites. We have a designer at the ready, the lovely photos by Cheryl Reynolds, and my endless copy.

I expect great things.

Close Encounters of the Beaver Kind

heidi08 Uncategorized January 8, 2009

Last night’s uninterrupted viewing saw three kits and two yearlings. The beavers looked to be going about their business, mutually grooming, mewling. Apparently (for the kits at least) their business involves chewing a little on one of our saplings at the dam. This lead to a rather unexpected close encounter, captured in this photograph. The hay is from the abandon bail that lay in the water for weeks and was recently pulled out and sprinkled about by Moses.

(I think he might have been asking about the webpage.)

If fate should ever give you a beaver close encounter, don’t pet or panic. Remember that beavers have poor eye sight and depending on the wind may not even know you’re there. Just give a little clap of your hands and they’ll hear the sound and move along.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=zeodh6zypcA]

Shortened presentation video from the First Night minus narration for anyone that missed it. Check out the Moses’ footage of mom putting mud on the lodge. To hear the rundown in person, come to our next in showing, which I think will be at the Delta chapter of the Sierra Club in March. I’ll let you know details when it approaches.

Mesh-up

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere January 7, 2009

Remember our old Bakersfield friends? They had a beaver killing bruhaha just about three months after ours last year. Beavers were ruthlessly attacking trees on their city bike path and they got a warrant for their destruction. Residents complained and they said they would relocate. I wrote the editor of the paper and talked about the value of keeping beavers, and also gave scary hints of the Kern County lawsuit. The editor thought this was worth responding to in a column, and eventually the beaver issue appeared to settle down.

Officials and local media have been spotting one local beaver at the Park at Riverwalk in recent months. That beaver was blamed by city officials for damaging park trees. The trees were since wrapped with orange mesh to deter the beaver from wanting to munch on costly park trees.

Did you catch that? The City of Bakersfield with a population of 300,000 and a median income of 40,000 decided to protect its valuable trees with orange mesh. Are you familiar with this product? You buy it in the hardware store in the caution tape aisle. It’s right below the “stay back crime scene” party streamers. I have to wonder, were they thinking that beavers would be repelled by the plastic? Or by the “give ’em a break” orange?

Anyway the local news is reporting that the beavers left their home. Remember when the thoughtful Contra Costa Times quoted Mary Tappel as saying the “beavers were moving on”? Nine months ago? Beaver watchers everywhere, take heart, because sometimes (I know this will come as a shock) the media is mistaken. Apparently beaver behavior can be very ellusive to reporters, who fail to actually look in the right places and the right times to view it.

Our friend Nick is still keeping an eye on the scene. While the media says there’s one adult in the area, that seems pretty unlikely. Beavers are social animals. If you see an adult he almost always has family, and if he doesn’t have family he’s probably not an adult. Check out the video by Melody Saberon of two kits trying to catch a ride on a larger back. Turn the audio up, because that’s some lovely frog chorus.[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Hdt6b3XyMk&eurl]

I think identifying those frogs might be the secret way to save those beavers.