World’s largest Beaver Dam

heidi08 Uncategorized May 8, 2010

So Tuesday saw a report of the largest beaver dam in Canada that was sooooo long it was visible from space. I have been receiving a steady stream of emails asking me if I’m familiar with the story, which I got first from Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife and promptly forwarded to our wikipedia friend to put on the ‘north american beavers wiki’ page. I thought I’d better post my gratitude and lay any questions about my being informed to rest.

Thanks to:

Sharon Brown, Gary Bogue, Pat Von Behren, John Curtis, Leanne Peterson, Lori Angrboda, Pat Corr, Scott Artis, Mike Callahan, Diane Burgess, Jean O’Neil, Alex Hiller and Rachel Maddow.

If I forgot your name, I’m still gratful. It’s a fun report from Rachel. Please watch it. She definately gets a letter.

Other Watersheds…

heidi08 Uncategorized May 6, 2010

‘There is another shore, you know

upon the other side’

Tonight Worth A Dam will present at the Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed meeting in Oakley. FOMCW is a well-respected environmental group that does remarkable things for the area. We crossed paths with them at the Flyway Fiesta and some other functions we’ve been at over the year. Turns out they are lead by a woman I went to high school with. So, go Alhambra with the conservationists! It is a great opportunity to spread the beaver gospel, because you know they will have beavers soon if they don’t already.

Along those lines, in January the local blogger “Mayor of Claycord” posted these photos of a beaver sighting in Marsh Creek. I of course sent them to Diane to inquire. She assures me that no one in their organization has seen beaver there. Was I certain it wasn’t an otter? Ohhh looking at that picture I’m ‘dam’ certain. Looks like its a great time to have an opportunity to talk about the good beavers can do in the watershed and remind them of the resources available for solving any difficulties they might cause.

Wish me luck with the epic highway 4 commute! I’ll let you now how it goes.

“Yes, Yes! My City Said Yes, Yes!”

heidi08 Festival, Uncategorized December 31, 2010

(With apologies to Eddie Cantor.) I just can’t think of any better musical number to announce the results of the Parks, Marina, Recreation & Library Commission meeting last night. They were reviewing the final request for the Third Annual Beaver Festival this August 7th to be held in the still nameless (but destined-to-be-called Beaver Park) in downtown Martinez. The commission took a brief look at the application, spoke in glowing terms about the tile wall and the events popularity, and gave a unanimous thumbs up! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

Later that night I got an email from Shell that the festival will receive a sponsorship of 500 dollars from the oil company. All in all it was a wildly positive beaver day, and it needed a big, big hollywood theme song.

Full Circle

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions May 4, 2010

You all remember how way back when Skip Lisle came to Martinez and basically saved our beavers? Well lets just say we returned the favor this weekend! I caught a report from the town of Thetford, Vermont – about 60 miles from Skip’s front door. It said that those pesky beavers were damming under a culvert and threatening a road. Recently there had been a decision to stop cleaning the culvert and kill the beavers.

THETFORD, Vt. —

Some residents of a Vermont town are upset with a decision by local officials to try to kill beavers who keep rebuilding a dam that threatens a local road.Every day, workers in Thetford remove the dam that is rebuilt every night near a culvert on the Godfrey Road.The select board voted 4-1 this week to trap and kill the beavers, since town officials says they can’t legally move live beavers and release them elsewhere.

Actually the news story did mention a ‘beaver deceiver’ saying that the city knew about the solution and had sagely decided to kill the beavers first and install the culvert protection later in July. (A decision surely destined for our WTF beaver files). Of course that kind of forward thinking deserved a letter. Or twenty. I wrote the station, the chair of the conservancy, and the select board for Thetford, which is like the city council in an East coasty ‘autonomous collective’ kinda way.

Beaver Deceiver inventor lives 62 miles from town of Thetford

Listening to Jackie Bender’s report of the troubled culvert in thetford is like hearing someone in silicon valley complain that they couldn’t turn on their computer. Skip Lisle is the inventor of the Beaver Deceiver and lives an hour away. There is absolutely no reason to kill beavers now and then make improvements later. The female beaver is likely pregnant, and I can’t imagine a less humane decision. Culverts can be soundly and cheaply protected, and beavers make incredible improvements to wildlife, habitat and water quality.

Mr Lisle can be reached here (I gave his contact info). There is no reason for a major news outlet to not report on responsible solutions and irresponsible failure.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D. President & Founder: “Worth A Dam”

You never know what kind of ripples a letter might stir in the right hands. I got a series of very interesting responses. The most exciting from the news station, which, from the general manager, to the station manager, to the programming manager, down to the reporter, was interested in this story. They were smart enough to see how this was going to play in the cheap seats and kitchen tables and knew that it wasn’t going to go away. Unlike the select board, which was probably hoping for eactly that. I was notified that they were contacting Skip for an interview yesterday. Here’s the more cheerful report.

Thetford, VA

One option proposed by locals is a Beaver Deceiver.

A Beaver Deceiver is a special fence built outward from a culvert. The fencing prevents the beavers from getting to the culvert, but still allows fish to move through it, city officials said.The idea is that the fence forces the beaver far enough away from the culvert that the animal apparently decides the effort to dam the stream is no longer worth it.A special meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. for town officials to talk to the community about the beavers.

Aww shucks. Consider it Martinez’s way of paying a debt that we remember every November and every rainy season. Hope you get some good press outta this Skip, and I hope a hundred directors of public works watch the news and learn that beaver problems are manageable.

Sharon Brown: Beaver Advocate

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 3, 2010

I saw this photo and Sharon’s facebook page and knew you’d want to see it too. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife was enormously helpful back in the early days of struggling to slow down the city’s beaver-extermination-runaway-train. To give a little context to this enviable photo, she put together a bio for some nice monday morning reading. Enjoy!

Sharon Brown is a biologist and co-founder of the educational nonprofit Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW, BeaversWW.org). Her work involves consulting, writing and giving programs nationwide to help people understand the benefits of beaver wetlands and peacefully resolve conflicts with keystone species.

Brown volunteered as a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for 15 years, and the photo shows her swimming with an orphaned beaver kit. She explains, “This is Bounce, a kit I rehabbed with her three siblings, after their mother was run over. The kits were a bit nervous about the big pond after paddling in a bathtub—and I later found a large snapping turtle there that I relocated—so I swam with them a few times.”

She documented highlights in the lives of the four kits in the video “Hi, I’m a Beaver” that has been shown at museums (soon it will be available as a DVD). Brown and her husband Owen are featured in a “Coexisting with Beavers” DVD that includes half an hour of beaver natural history plus a 12-minute segment on installing a Flexible Leveler to manage water levels at road culverts or beaver dams.

Brown is the editor of Beaversprite, the quarterly of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW), and wrote the script for the nonprofit’s website. She has had articles and photos published in a variety of national magazines and taught college level biology courses prior to concentrating on beavers.

She became interested in beavers after meeting Dorothy Richards, who studied that species for 50 years at Beaversprite Sanctuary in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. After Mrs. Richards’ death in 1985, Brown and her husband Owen created the nonprofit to honor the “Beaver Woman’s” legacy by focusing on the ecological significance of beavers. She says, “Beavers can help combat climate change because the wetlands they maintain absorb carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, and beaver dams slow the flow of streams which lessens the damage done by major floods and droughts.”

The Browns share their 300-acre Wildsprite Sanctuary in the Adirondack foothills with a variety of wildlife, including two beaver families.