Friends

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental August 27, 2009

Bagpiper Jeff Campbell, who lead our Scottish Procession at the beaver festival, sends this picture of the soon to be commonplace combination of kilt and beaver shirt. Don’t they look great together? (Ya hear that Scotland? Take good care of your beavers and you can have your own soon!) Jeff did us a huge favor without a whit of compensation, but we couldn’t send him away empty handed!

Speaking of t-shirt payment, we got notice from our beaver buddy in Frankfurt that Europe will host it’s 2009 5th Annual Beaver Symposium September in Lithuania. Guess who’ll speaking about beaver management? Skip Lisle.

Solutions to beaver-human conflicts that are long-lasting, reliable, and
preserve precious wetlands: an update of successful flow device
techniques in North America and Europe
Lisle S., Czech A.

The conference is a research-heavy beaver exploration with words like “phylogeny” on the agenda, but the part I would love to be there for is the update on the Scottish Beaver Trial, which includes a discussion of how they’re doing so far. That’s the group that Skip’s involved in.

Our Frankfurt friend will be in attendance, and kindly volunteered to offer daily updates for posting. I snatched up his offer greedily and dubbed him our “foreign correspondent”.

I would like to sent daily e-mail summaries to you as your correspondent:
There are several topics that are of interest to US-Americans, please make your choice.

As payment for his foreign service, we sent him our 2008 and 2009 Worth A Dam t-shirts. I hope he’s sitting in the front row when Skip looks out and sees our t-shirt staring back at him. It will blow his mind!

True confessions of a blogger, I connected with Alex because of the last conference in Europe. Backstage at the website you can see all kinds of things about visitors, (it’s good for snooping on the city when the city is snooping on us) and I noticed that someone had sent my columns to Hope Ryden of Lily Pond Fame. I looked up his email address and found the list of attendees at the last international beaver conference. Eager to track down knowledge, I wrote him and we began a dialogue. He’s spent time with Hope Ryden and worked with Sherri Tippie, and is a generally good fellow. It’s fun to have a beaver friend in Germany, and I honestly can’t wait until he is reporting for Worth A Dam from Lituania.

Flatline Learning Curve

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere August 26, 2009

Oh, look what’s in the paper at Bakersfield.com! More stories about the River walk beavers terrorizing trees and earning extermination.

The trees or the beaver? The beaver or the trees? It’s a question to bedevil even the most ardent of nature lovers and one being debated yet again after a weekend bender by the infamous bike path beaver made toothpicks of a pair of good-size cottonwoods at the Park at River Walk.

What a confounding riddle for environmentalists everywhere! Clearly there is no possible way to take care of both the beavers AND the trees. The article goes on to describe the never-before-faced insurmountable conflict where the city is forced to spend hard earned dollars removing tree stumps after the ruthless rodent attacks. It poignantly illustrates city staff’s good hearted plight in their noble effort to wrap trees with this telling photograph.

The mind reels. The jaw drops…The fingers type:

Monogamous Herbivore threatens to Improve Habitat!

If Bakersfield doesn’t act now, its quiet River walk runs the risk of having recklessly improved water quality[1], increased wildlife[2], greater bird density[3], and returning salmon[4]. Important drought conditions may be mitigated[5]. Obviously something has to be done to prevent this neglected little stretch of scrubby trees from becoming an actual habitat.

Fortunately the department of public works knows just how to uselessly apply non-solutions that assure the appearance of unstoppable damage and will ultimately mean the beavers merit a final solution. Bravely ignoring countless prescriptions to wire wrap trees for protection or paint the trunks with a sandy coating, dedicated staff were clever enough not only to use orange construction plastic, but to garner media attention for doing so! “We tried saving the beavers humanely by wrapping the trees in cellophane and hello kitty dolls, but it just didn’t work!”

Diane Hoover, the director of public works, notes that it can cost up to 500 dollars to remove the stump and replace the trees. Clearly she is well aware that if these stumps of Populus fremontii were left in the ground they would continue to prevent erosion and coppice to sprout future growth. This new growth would run the risk of producing dense bushy cover that would be a haven for ghettos of nesting migratory birds. Much better to chop out every remaining stick!

Thank goodness there are heroes like Eric Covington of the USDA to come to the rescue and protect Bakersfield from these furry eco-terrorists. This large governmental body is every bit as committed to the environment as Chevron or Walmart, and more importantly understands the important role that beavers play in employing trappers.

Yes, Bakersfield seems to have all the tools necessary for not at all solving this problem. If, however, there is a single person in the entire city that would like to consider actual humane alternatives that work, they can contact Worth A Dam at www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress, and we can easily show them how its done.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

[1] Brenneman, K. (2007) The effect of beaver dam removal on total phosphorous concentration of Taylor Creek and wetland South Lake Tahoe.

[2] Dietland, M. (2005) Beavers: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer.

[3] Wildlife Conservation Society (2008) Beavers: Dam good for Songbirds

[4] Pollack, M. (2009) NOAA Relation between Beavers and Salmon

[5] University of Alberta (2008) Busy Beavers can Ease drought.

1932-2009

heidi08 Uncategorized August 26, 2009

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

e.e.cummings

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=-HCBy77nDdk]

Beaver Conference!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere September 7, 2009

Have you ever opened your email and something wonderful popped out? Well this weekend I found out about the State of the Beaver 2010 conference in Oregon put together by the Beaver Advocacy Committee of SURCP.

We need water! We want our native salmon runs back! And we want them for less cost, no additional taxes and less paper work! Welcome to the State of the Beaver 2010 Conference where we will learn to work with beavers to gain their benefits and minimize the problems they can cause.

The three day venue February 3, 4 and 5 will feature our good friends Skip Lisle, Sherrie Tippie and John Hadidian, as we as the exciting new addition of Dr. Michael Pollack of the NOAA. He’s the chief researcher of the beavers and salmon study group paper we wrote about earlier. Go read the agenda because there’s three days worth of goodies no self-respecting beaver fan would want to miss, including a great discussion on the importance of beavers to the native americans and the new research on reintroduction in Europe.

BAC Co-chairs, Leonard and Lois Houston, wrote me in 2008 after hearing about our struggle to save the Martinez Beavers. They tell me they are currently hard at work with a five year radio tracking research project to locate the movements of nuisance beavers. Oregon has been a pioneer in beaver reintroduction as a tool for increasing salmon. A mere 6 and a half hours from Martinez, the conference is chock full of remarkable things and you can bet Worth A Dam will be there.

Turtle Rescue

heidi08 City Reports, Educational, Environmental August 24, 2009

Sent to the Gazette for publication:

Lucky for this little fellow, Worth A Dam member Cheryl Reynolds was standing by when a young man fishing near the beaver dam accidentally caught this Western Pond Turtle. Reynolds is a volunteer at the International Bird Rescue and Research Center, and once managed the Lindsay Wildlife Hospital, After the turtle was safely released back into the water, she was able to explain that pond turtles are considered a “species of special concern” and their numbers are carefully watched around the state.

The young man hadn’t intended to catch anything but carp, but Reynolds explained there are unintended and dangerous consequences to fishing in such a sensitive habitat area. “We find fishing tackle and tangled line all over the banks and dams, and this creates a significant risk for birds and other wildlife.” Although the mayor has been approached regarding an ordinance prohibiting fishing in the area, no action has yet been taken. “In the mean time its up to us to explain the risks and encourage youngsters to take their fishing somewhere else.” Reynolds observed, “It’s a big creek and if the beavers are left undisturbed to do their restorative work, they’ll be lots to fish for in the future.”