Archipelago Films was founded by Academy Award nominated, Emmy award-winning directors Susan Todd and Andrew Young. Todd and Young have a well established track record of outstanding film, television and commercial projects. They are known for creating cutting edge, character-based films of the highest quality featuring some of the most dramatic stories of our time.
You will instantly recognize the footage of the beaver covering the camera from Jari’s documentary. PBS bought it for the American version, but it wasn’t in the Canadian. I would recommend spending some time going through all the episodes because this is a treasure trove of information. Thanks Sherry for sending it my way!
And speaking of footage, Cheryl and I just earned $ for Worth A Dam by selling our images to Odyssey Productions for the short films they’re doing for the Big Break visitor’s center. You will have to stop by next year and see which ones you recognize. Earning money is nice because everything is feeling very expensive at the moment and we still have to pay for printing and the charms! If you’ve been amiably waiting for the perfect moment to make a donation, maybe now’s the time.
Oh and I was looking for this the other day, because I thought it could make a cool sign for the festival with a little tweaking. What do you think?
Now here’s a place where you have enough public interest to drive a real solution. But instead of solving the problem they have elected to hire Jim-Bob to come in and kill it. Because it would be silly for North Carolina, a state who has reported drought consistently over the years, to learn to coexist with the “water-savers”. Bonus Irony Points: this year shows the exact area where beavers moved in to be “abnormally dry”.
Never mind about that. The news cameras obviously can’t tell a beaver from a muskrat. And the property managers can’t tell relocation apart from execution. Maybe they can’t spot the difference between having enough fresh water and being thirsty either.
What’s up with the mealy-mouthed people who defend their intolerance by saying they don’t want the beaver killed – just relocated! It happened in Martinez and it happens everywhere and I hate it almost more than the trappers. It’s just saying “Obviously my needs are more important but if I get exactly what I want I don’t need the animals to suffer.” Honestly, is it just me or is it really that far away from “They’ll be happier in their own neighborhood/school with the other black people. They don’t belong in mine”.
One final complaint because this story really, really irritates me. And that’s the use of the word “euthanize” . Webster’s dictionary defines Euthanasia as“The act or practice of killing someone who is very sick or injured in order to prevent any more suffering.“
Workers said they found someone who will allow the beavers to be moved to their property. But the statute says that’s okay for certain animals, it appears beavers must be euthanized.
To be clear: these beavers aren’t sick. They are fully functioning, healthy beavers doing what beavers do. They’re just in the way.
News flash: Putting an animal to sleep to end ITS misery is euthanasia.
Getting rid of an animal to end YOUR misery is just murder.
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We all need something wonderful to get that taste out of our mouths. Here’s a profile on Sherri Tippie from the ‘meet the cast’ trailers of the beaver believers documentary.
Today’s Beaver Benefits Report comes from Alabama (no, seriously). I could have predicted it’s cons list, but I was surprised by the pros. I don’t know why, Alabama is the state where fish and wildlife heavily fined the city for destroying a beaver dam and ruining the home of the rare watercress darter!
Beaver ponds range in size from less than 1 acre to more than 100 acres, depending on topography and the availability of food sources. Beavers will use and expand a pond area until the food supplies are exhausted. Once constructed, the benefits provided by the pond are numerous and include the following:
• Furnishing snags for cavity-nesting wildlife species.
• Supplying fallen logs, which provide cover for reptiles and amphibians.
• Providing essential edges and forest openings.
• Supplying diverse moist-soil habitats within bottomland forests.
• Benefiting productive bottomland forests.
• Improving downstream water quality.
• Providing watering holes for agricultural and wildlife needs.
• Supplying important breeding areas for amphibians and fish.
• Providing diverse wetland habitats.
• Furnishing feeding, brood-rearing and resting areas for waterfowl.
How awesome is that? Of course it goes on to describe why you might still need to kill them but remember it’s ALABAMA and we’re grading on a curve!
Also Friday was the first of summer Beaver Evenings in Martin Mere, which is a wetland trust with beavers in Lancashire England.
Later this month (20 June) is the first of the special beaver evenings at Martin Mere where you will get the chance to spot the beavers and find out more about Twiggy and Woody.
The event is £15 per person, including refreshments and starts at 7.30pm. As you have to remain quiet and still in the hide it is not suitable for young children.
If that doesn’t sound classy enough, check out the ‘blind’ from where you observe the wetlands without letting your presence be known:
Friends of WWT Martin Mere Harrier Hide This Hide provides a good view over the new Woodend Wetlands. These wetlands, formerly Woodend Farm, were used for intensive crop cultivation, this has been turned into a wetland area.
Is it just me? Or are you imagining a huge beaver structure replacing the footbridge for us to watch everything undetected?
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Last night there was a planning meeting for the festival. I can’t tell you how surprising it was to see so many new faces volunteer for so many varied jobs and create a community. Jeanette made the trek from Auburn because she wanted to help at the festival after seeing the beaver documentary! Our new manager of financial at ISI came down from Santa Rosa, and the folks watching the beavers in Napa came down as well to lend their considerable enthusiasm to the task. Bob Rust and his wife was there with creative good ideas of a giant ‘tail slapper’ that could splash in a pool and cool the children while educating about beavers. Deidre came from San Francisco and talked about putting together the guided train journey from Oakland. And Lory, Jon and Cheryl were there doing the valiant dependable work we could not survive without.
Afterwards there was dinner and jubilant conversation and a trip down to see the beavers in person. Where they were treated to 3 yearlings and mom but no baby sighting. It was an unexpectedly cohesive night, that felt like the perfect launch to our 7th ever beaver festival. I couldn’t help but think of a scene like this, except with people jumping up from the crowd saying “I’ll make the costumes” and “I’ll make the popcorn” and “I’ll ask my father if we can use his old barn!”
(Note: With this clip you have to substitute the word ‘folks’ for the word ‘beavers’, and the word ‘welfare’ for ‘fish and game’ and your almost there!)
Yesterday was solstice and I couldn’t imagine spending it without the beavers. I remembered how every solstice for the past 8 years we have watched our kits swim into the world, usually unsupervised. I couldn’t bear the thought that things were different this year, so off we went.
On Friday I had been contacted by Sheri Harstein, a wildlife photographer and friend of Sherry Guzzi’s and the beavers in Taylor Creek. She and Ted showed me her video project of beavers through the seasons when we were in Santa Barbara for the salmon conference. Some of our visitor’s lovely photographs can be seen here. She was a regular reader of the blog and said she wanted to meet me and bring a donation to the silent auction: Two BEAVER cutting boards with her beautiful photographs embedded in them! (Honestly, you need to bid on these.)
We sat at the primary dam and talked about how she knew of the beavers. She had first connected with our story when Thomas Knudson interviewed me for our historic paper in the Sacramento Bee, and since then had becoming an avid reader. She said ridiculously gratifying things like what a lovely writer I was and how remarkable it was the the website was always updated by 10:00 am every single day! We told her urban beaver tales of city battles, false legs in the dam, homeless holding lights for Mooses and the dead body floating in the creek in 2011. At one point she went off in pursuit of a Great Egret and Jon trotted off to the secondary to check what was going on. And I was left alone in amiable silence with this:
Did I just see what I thought I did?
When they came back they were disbelieving. It couldn’t be the new kit. He was too big. He dove too well. It had to be the small yearling. But we had watched all the yearlings and Dad go over the primary dam earlier. I reminded that maybe this kit was big for a first sighting, but he was exactly the right size for late June.
There was a little more disbelief until he swam close enough for everyone to see his tail, which was the final convincing factor necessary to confirm his kit status. Finally we get to see the sneak! That and the fact that he was a little more playful than the other beavers. Just look at how he handles the water stream through the gap from the rising tide.
Yup, that’s a baby. The 7th year of beavers born in Martinez (no kits in 2011 after mom died).
Were there more to be seen? Will we get footage of mom and the kit playing? Will the yearlings befriend him? Will we get to hear him whine? A million adventures waited. What a great way to start the summer! I promise we didn’t drive home singing this song – but we might as well have been.
Black-crowned Night Heron catching large-mouthed bass in the Napa Beaver Pond – Photo: Hank Miller
A lot is happening with our new friends at the Napa beavers. They are getting mink visits, amazing night heron and great blue heron photos, and one of their two kits is sick. We noticed him very listless in a video Rusty sent on Wednesday and he was out during the day on Friday. A rescue worker tried to pick him/her up but he rallied long enough to give her the slip. Rusty saw him last night, going into and out of the lodge, and looking slightly more lively. We spoke with the excellent beaver rehabber Cher Button-Dobmeier from the Abbe-Freeland center in NY, Mean while Sonoma wildlife is on alert, and there has been a lot of discussion back and forth over whether/when to intervene, and when to let nature take its course. At the moment the decision seems to be if he’s out during the day pick him up.
It made me remember that our first year we had a kit die (the one they found out was blind) and the next year lost two to what we later learned was round worm parasite. I was prepared for it to be the same every year, but it hasn’t happened since. It made me wonder if kits born to newish parents are more vulnerable to infection/parasite? Even when our mom was dying her final kits grew up healthy. But our new beaver mom seems young, and her kits are healthy, so that wouldn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a habitat thing – more recently colonized habitat caries greater risk of transmission? And the risk decreases over time? Or maybe it’s just a fluke?The flurry of activity – trauma and discovery- reminds me of our early days, and how amazing it was to watch the blooming Alhambra Creek come to life lo those many years ago. Remember how surprised we were when Moses first saw the mink?
All of which helps make the case that beaver ponds create thriving ecosystems with massive biodiversity. Here’s a nice article this morning from Massachusetts of all places that proves it!
This week Stream Team photographer Judy Schneider has taken the lead with a domestic scene of beauty. The feathered family photographed is on and around a rough nest of sticks high in a beaver-drowned White Pine. Most area heron rookeries are above beaver impoundments.
Why don’t we ever get Great Blue Herons in Martinez? Oh that’s right, we do.
Immature Great Blue Heron at the footbridge: Photo – Mary Long
Hank just sent footage of his adventure. Unbelievable. I count 3 rare species, but maybe I missed one?
The flurry of activity – trauma and discovery- reminds me of our early days, and how amazing it was to watch the blooming Alhambra Creek come to life lo those many years ago. Remember how surprised we were when Moses first saw the mink?
