Girl Scouts

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational October 17, 2009

UPDATE:

How tired are we? Beavers and their attendant keystone-charm bracelets were a box office hit this afternoon! Thank you SO much for all the blessed volunteers who dropped in to help link, organize and ask questions. Thanks to Worth A Dam stalwarts who made it possible, and thanks to the enormously wonderful girls who learned more about beavers today than they probably thought possible! You all did fantastic!

Worth A Dam is off today for the Girl Scouts “Amazing Day” Event in Walnut Creek. We will be helping girls earn charms for a bracelet by learning fun beaver facts. There are six beaver facts abd six charms to add to the bracelet. Thank you to our special project donor (you know who you are!) who bought the materials and let us do such a generous instructional craft. Wish us good eyesight, steady hands and cheerful patience! Here’s the finished bracelet we’ll be helping them make. I’m thinking someday everyone will want one — they’ll be way more popular than those “live strong” bracelets… Lets see if after a good spell of reading this website you can list how beavers relate to each of these charms:

Messages that Matter

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 16, 2009

I was driving to work yesterday, listening to “Talk of the Nation” on NPR and intrigued to hear scientist Randy Olson talk about his new book “Don’t be such a scientist.” He’s a marine biologist who turned Hollywood consultant so he learned something about the translation necessary to move from the conference room to the board room and the living room. The book outlines the way that sometimes science is presented so dryly and flatly that people are turned off or alienated. He thinks that scientists need to spend as much time learning about how to communicate their research as they spend learning how to do it.

It was an interesting hour, especially as I thought specifically about my role with the beavers. In every way it has been important to make beaver facts accessible and digestible, whether I’m talking to children, adults or researchers. Cheryl’s inviting photos have helped make them easy to understand, and sometimes I’m able to make a lingual shortcut that resonates and can be remembered (Any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver). Using human language to describe complex beaver behavior (Beavers using the old lodge as a “picnic table”; Yearlings sleeping in a “Frat house”; The unknown location of last year’s beavers “They don’t write, they don’t call!”) makes it less foreign and easier to understand. It also startles people with the similarities between beavers and humans, which reminds them that we’re all in this together.

I will say that I’ve learned more about reading my audience from beaver advocacy than I ever learned in grad school. Use language that includes rather than excludes. Sometimes you can tell you’re making the talk “too accessible” and people are getting the feeling they’re at a Disney event…then its time to sprinkle terms like “varietal feeding” and “Co-evolved”, but that is rare. Sometimes you can tell that you are miles away from making your point, and its time to start paddling harder. What does the listener care about? Water quality? Cute fuzzy things? Salmon and steelhead? Annoying the city? Find what motivates them and use it as a funnel to pour information through.

Having given “The beaver talk” to literally thousands of people at the dam and at the Farmer’s market, and the more formal version at multiple sights to both adults and kids, (and nearly 700 times on this very website)I think I have learned something about blending science and accessibility. There were things about Randy’s radio talk that rankled and that I would have argued with, but I completely agree that a huge part of making science useful is making sense of it to the people who will use it, pay for it, or benefit from it. (Remember that if you discover whats making trees fall in the forest but no one hears it, it doesn’t make a “sound”.)

Scientists need to get better at talking to us. Don’t get me started on how scientists talk and listen to each other. That’s another book entirely.

And the third shall be first…

heidi08 Beaver News October 15, 2009

And the street light’s white glare

The pipes bursting in air

Gave proof, through the night

That our dam was still there!

Last night a host of beaver friends showed up at the dam. All were interested to see how they had fared in the storm, and wanted to check out the dam-age for themselves. We were pleasantly surprised that much of the structure of the primary dam had survived. The “gap” was leaking and a lot of the wood from the top had been whooshed downstream, but there was definitely still a “dam”.

The second dam had taken more of a hit, and was spilling water all along the surface. The fourth dam was half washed out and nearly collapsed, but the third dam! Voila! It looked like an issue of “Beavers Better Homes and Gardens”. Mind you, the first two dams are in a very straight channel, almost a flume. While the third dam lies after the creek has been allowed to bend a little, so doesn’t get the same flow force. Remember that streams like to naturally meander, and that our creeks used to be more curvy and less downcut because there were beavers and dams all over them. Those lucky beavers had dams that survived the downpours because they didn’t have to endure such direct hits. Like number three.

After we checked out the dam-age and the massive tree trunk that had flowed down, we settled in to watch the star performers. Two yearlings made an early appearance (7:30) and started right away on repairs to the “gap”. There was mud carrying, stick laying, and some shifting of resources. A favorite moment was when a yearling brought a nice long branch to snap into place, but paused to take a nibble from his building materials, and then decided this particular specimen was too tasty to use in construction. He pulled it back off the dam and swam back towards the lodge to eat it! Returning later with something less inviting.

We watched for a better part of an hour, and in that time the gap was almost entirely repaired – first things first. I’m sure they headed down next to the second dam, where their labor was definitely needed. It was lovely to see them “being beavers” and to watch so many people caring how they fared. Jon’s photo of the main dam made the front page of the Gazette today, and I’m sure there’s plenty of repairing left to do if you have time to stop by tonight.

Update From Jon This Morning:

Construction Zone! No other way to put it! Heavy work going on at primary and secondary dams, saw at least 4 beavers, could not get an ID on mom but think I saw her up on the secondary dam with a yearling following her around. When I left they had moved back to the primary dam, the gap area has this huge pile of mud and sticks on it. They basically rebuilt both dams overnight! Did not have time to go down to the other dams, but I will tonight. Shortly after I got there, in the pitch dark the green heron flew in to the primary dam, squawking away, guess he was still hungry! Saw lots of raccoon activity at the edges of the dam where they were working, maybe they are dredging up food items with all the mud.

Oh THAT kinda typhoon….

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver Rehabilitation, New Species October 14, 2009

Wow what a rainy rainy rainy day yesterday was. The dams were relieved of their wood by 10:00 am and by evening downtown Martinez had received 2.88 inches. The paper talked about what a relief it was that this didn’t happen when we were already saturated. They bemoaned traffic, hillsides, and school children but didn’t once stop to mention beavers!

The flow device is still there, although that was some massive water pressure. Honestly all of Martinez will be lost or destroyed one day and that pipe and cage will still be standing. We checked this morning and the structure of the main dam and neighbor dam was still defined, but most of the wood on top had been washed clean. No beavers in sight, but we don’t always see them right away after a storm. They wait a while to make sure its worth fixing.

If it stays dry today you might try popping by tonight. Sometimes the big rains bring out the grown ups, and it would be nice to see mom and dad at work again.

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On a entirely different note, you might check out the website of our new friend “the skunk whisperer” who has been chatting with Cheryl on twitter. Ned Bruha’s “Total Wildlife Control” relies on humane management in Oklahoma and has been doing some amazing work in that part of the woods. His recent rescue of a skunk with his head in a peanut butter jar made lots of local newscasts this week.

I think his pragmatic “hands-on” advocacy is invaluable in our new political climate where caring about the environment has become a code word for “Bolshevik” (See Green is the new Red!) I thought the Humane Society might enjoy connecting with him and broadening their “crazy-librul-bunny-lover image” by adding a voice from this middle america sportsman to the mix. I wrote John Hadidian (the director of urban wildlife for HSUS) and he said they were aware of him and had connected in the past. I realized how little I understood about Oklahoma’s wildlife attitudes when I read about him and saw A) the woman who stood there protecting the trapped skunk and B) the news media who ran the story and C) all the locals who watched this story. Sometimes people surprise you, (and not in a beaver-killing way).

It’s good to know that there are friends of wildlife in Oaklahoma. Worth A Dam will make sure to refer questions his way, and if he wants help hooking up with the top flow-device minds in the country, we’ll be happy to assisst!

Dam Update

heidi08 Uncategorized October 13, 2009

Check out these photos of the primary dam and secondary dam which jon took an hour ago. Flow device is holding strong, and keeping the middle of the dam together!