Month: October 2009

Regular readers of this blog will remember our beaver friend in Massachusetts, Mike Callahan.

Back in the murky grip of winter, when Californians were waiting for the temperature to drop and East Coasters were trying to remember what the earth looked like under its white blanket, beaver friend Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts was hatching a plan. He wondered about making a series of DVD’s to train willing people to do sensible beaver management. His idea was to create something accessible and hands-on enough to be used by public works crews and maintenance workers across the nation.

Mike talked with the Humane Society and Audubon who were very excited about the project and directed him to apply for the AWI Christine Stevens Grant. Which he did, arguing convincingly that teaching cities to take care of beavers would take care of waterfowl, take care of amphibians, take care of muskrats and minks and otters and improve water quality.

He applied and found out this summer that he was awarded a $10,000 grant for the production. He hired Pinehurst Pictures and Sound to  handle the project. A videographer and good friend is shooting the footage. They’ve been filming installs with the fall colors as a backdrop. As the water gets colder and more uninviting, he’s starting to think about next steps.

Target audience, segment length, teaching emphasis, marketing, outreach, spreading the word. These are things that Worth A Dam has done fairly well, so he asked for our input on the process. Beaver people (and I assume wildlife workers in general) can sometimes be so focused on the important work they do that it’s hard to think about media or outreach. Having stalked the wisest of beaver minds persistently for the past two years, I can honestly say that these wizards are not even great about talking to each other, let alone the rest of the non-believing world. Partly its because they are modest, generally private people, who don’t spend hours bragging about what they do. (You’ll note, for instance, that there are no beaver-management bloggers.) But what good is a brilliant  instructional DVD if no one sees it? If a tree falls in the forest and no one chews it, does it still taste delicious? A project that could save thousands of beavers is worth selling with some great publicity, I’m thinking.

Since Mike’s a huge Patriots fan, I’ll use football lingo. Go Long!

I’m still thinking and mulling, but I gave him two basic ideas. The first is to watch for the next local public beaver issue that hits the media. These things happen all the time, especially in “help-we-can’t-use-cruel-inhumane-traps-and-we’re-surrounded-by-beavers” Massachusetts. (Not that they actually have more beavers, mind you, but they want people to THINK they do. With all that professional hand-wringing Fish and Wildlife have made some good friends in the media, but I digress). So thank the beaver-harrassers for working so hard to create sustaining contacts with the media and then use that visibility to walk heroically on the scene, volunteer to train public works or the highway workers or whoever and do 10 hours for free provided you can film it. Then you have the media relationship already started and you can use that momentum to highlight the DVD series which will be available soon and can teach any city/utilities to handle this problem!

The second thing I’d do is make a “postcard” announcing the DVD. I’d probably do this twice, once for the “this is coming” and the second for “its here”. Send the postcard to the directors of every department of public works, parks and recreation, state park, regional park, highway management, railroad division etc in your state. Seem daunting? It’s not impossible. There are 377 municipalities in Massachusetts. 5 minutes on the web can look up contact information for any one of those cities. 10 people working on this for three hours each will generate all the addresses you need (5 x 377= 31hours). Most directors will have email addresses listed so you can do the whole postcard “virtually”, generate a spreadsheet of the contacts, mail off your postcard with a single click,  and it will cost you nothing but time. Honestly I’d like it sent to every director of public works in each city in the country, but we’re going to need massive worth a dam volunteers to help look up all those addresses.

I had other suggestions…like extra footage about a variety of installs, a 15 minute segment on “why bother” discussing the benefits to the habitat, a short intro or trailer produced and released on youtube to send out with his mailing, a bullet point review at the end of each section, and of course, an outtakes reel for my personal enjoyment.

I’m thinking that my suggestions were a little overwhelming, but I’m pretty sure they’d help, and I’m even more certain its worth investing time and money in. I’m betting there’s a data base somewhere of directors of public works for the state of california…or the nation. Maybe it will just arrive mysteriously in my email one day. You never know, stranger things could happen.

Oh, one final thing Mike asked if I could help with? “Do I have any footage of beavers or creek animals that he could use for the natural history section?”

hahahahahahahaha.

Me? Beaver footage? If I can find anything else on my computer its a holy miracle.