Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Month: August 2009


To treat “Nature Deficit” in children…and adults…and uh, city council members?

The New York Times had a nice op-ed this weekend from Nikolas Kristof talking about the lack of experience most children have with the outside world these days. They are so plugged in and scheduled morning to evening that there is no more time for catching newts in the creek for digging for worms.

All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.

Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”

Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.

A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.

Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)

If watching fish swimming in a tank in your  lowers blood pressure, what do you think watching beavers swimming in a creek in your urban stream does for it? What happens to the nature IQ of all those children whose illustrations graced our tiles at the festival, or who felt the feather display at Native Birds Connections?  Or were reminded what poison oak looks like by the Native Plant display? Or darted ahead to search the creek for the mink on the beaver tour? Martinez must have a lower incidence of NDD because of the remarkable habitat and involvement we created.

One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.

I don’t know about that. I hear a lot about involving the younger generation. I’ll be giving a presentation on beavers tomorrow at the John Muir Mountain Camp, but what about the Audubon group that teachers teachers how to educate children about birds? (ANTS) What about the the Creek Seekers Poetry Contest and the ten children reading their nature poetry? What about Rona Zollinger’s ESA class and the great work it does?  What about the donation from Safari West specifically for educating children in the community? What about REI grants for nature education?

Don’t blame it on the environmental movement. If the beavers are any indication, I’m going to guess that they’re working hard as they can to spread the gospel to the younger generation but their attention sometimes gets demanded elsewhere when, say, large corporations threaten massive forests or large property owners demand that sheetpile gets installed through  lodges. We’re dancing as fast as we can!

You know one of the delightful things about my senatorial meeting with Susan Junfish (Parents for a Safer Environment) was when we were talking about not using pesticides near the schools, and the senator’s aid said casually “oh but there are advocacy groups that can watch that” and Susan championed, “We shouldn’t HAVE to do that! There are people who are paid to do this, and they should read the research, pay attention and do their jobs. We should get to drive our kids to soccer and be home with our families!”

Go Susan!

As a child psychologist with a windowed wall of bird feeders I can say with certainty that children are not born with NDD. It is an acquired condition. When I take kids out with me to fill the  feeders, or see a deer on the hill, or count the turkeys on the roof, not one of their wide eyes are busy looking for an outlet.

Yesterday I was contacted by Dave Egbert of Living Green Radio. He wants to do an interview about the beavers and their role in the creek and our role in caring for them. It’s aired nationally and accessible on line so if you’re around at 7 am on August 15 you should definitely tune in.  I know you all know the story by heart, but sometimes its fun to hear stories you have lived through retold by someone else!

Oh and Sunday was the 600th post on this website. Happy Postiversary!


Worth a Dam-mers worked hard on saturday to pull the festival together. Setting up, taking down, carrying heavy things, tying down lighter things, it was three full time jobs falling hard upon the heels of months of planning. Time and effort well spent, and we were rewarded with new energy and enthusiasm from our many visitors. On Sunday we scrambled to take back the awnings, upload the photos and count the earnings, and noticed how much slower our brains were working from all the effort. I was delighted to get GTK’s videos saturday night, but when I stared at them sunday morning I couldn’t remember how to extract audio or make a clip. Our mighty treasurer Jon counted and recounted the earnings 17 times and got a diferent number every time. I heard similar complaints from Lory, Linda(s) and Cheryl. We were all a little dazed and confused yesterday. We knew we had done something very, very good, but we just couldn’t remember what to do next!

Which is unfortunate because we’re still baking tiles at my house and I am presenting for the John Muir Mountain Day Camp on wednesday. Here’s hoping there is a little cerebral recovery between now and then. How long does it take for the grass to spring back up after deer were laying on it? You know you can see the depression they made for 6 hours after, maybe 12. Then the grass bounces back to its standing height and there’s no record at all of the lovely organic pressure that once weighed there. I need that to happen to my gyri and sulci.


[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=vGAArAIKb0Q]

The Beaver festival yesterday was a rousing success on so many levels I am still listing them in my head. We made great connections with the community, woed many friends, found some unexpected helpers, and had were once again far too busy working on our individaul “trees” to catch a glimpse of the festival forest! Carolyn Jones’ fantastic article in the chronicle brought interested visitors from San Mateo, Santa Rosa and even Davis, There was channel 5 coverage and a nice photographer from the Record, and best of all there was a SECOND MINK SIGHTING!!!! During one of Jon’s much praised beaver tours he (and a 100 of his closest friends) actually saw the mother mink.

The silent auction was an excellent fundraiser and gave everyone a great opportunity to snap up some really excellent gifts and certificates. We even had a bidding war on a few items, including the Safari West Tour. Lory and Linda helped cooler heads prevail.  Our membership table was even a bigger hit than last year and everybody who was anybody wanted a beaver tshirt of their very own. Thank goodness Kathi volunteered to help Linda at the membership table. Author Penny Weigand did some book signings and our child authors came by after swim practice to help out! So many kids painted tiles we had a hard time figuring out how to get them home. Thank you Fro and Erika for helping our budding artists. My beaver information booth was constantly full of questions, (thanks jean for the relief) and the new beaver skulls were a huge hit. Thank you to all our remarkable vendors and displays, and our truly outstanding group of musicians.

Did all this help beavers? You bet it did. Not just our wonderful beavers, but beavers in general. Every single person there, who looked at those mink photos and toured the creek, now knows first hand the definition of a Keystone Species. We love what we understand, and Worth A Dam did an excellent job making visitors understand the pivitol role of beavers in the habitat.

Two favorite tiles out of many loved ones:


Thank you to our amazing helpers for cleaning the place up! Dept. of public works did an outstanding job working all day Thursday, and REI volunteers came to help with finishing touches Friday. Even our Country Recorder got into the action and tidied his own landscaping! Your help started us off on the right foot. Come see what a lovely job they did. See you there!

BEAVER FESTIVAL XVI

DONATE

Beaver Alphabet Book

TREE PROTECTION

BAY AREA PODCAST

Our story told around the county

Beaver Interactive: Click to view

LASSIE INVENTS BDA

URBAN BEAVERS

LASSIE AND BEAVERS

Ten Years

The Beaver Cheat Sheet

Restoration

RANGER RICK

Ranger rick

The meeting that started it all

Past Reports

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