Stop sucking our water, unless you’re making money off it!

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions June 20, 2015

So you probably heard something about this in the news recently.

State regulators approve water restrictions to aid Sonoma County salmon streams

SACRAMENTO — With fish perishing in drought-diminished Sonoma County streams, state regulators said Wednesday they felt pressed to approve sweeping new limits on water use affecting thousands of rural landowners.

The emergency regulation will apply, starting July 3, to about 10,000 landowners on 130 square miles across four watersheds: Dutch Bill and Green Valley creeks in the west county, Mark West Creek north of Santa Rosa and Mill Creek west of Healdsburg. About 13,000 properties will be covered by the rules.

Residents and businesses, including wineries, will be prohibited from using water drawn from creeks or wells for sprinkling lawns or washing cars, while irrigation of other landscaping, such as trees and plants, will be limited as it is in many cities.

Irrigation for commercial agriculture is exempt from the water conservation rules, an issue that prompted harsh criticism from several county residents attending the meeting and was acknowledged by Felicia Marcus, the water board’s chairwoman.

So the new regulations mean you can’t draw water from wells along Dutch Bill Creek, Green Valley Creek, Mill Creek and Mark West Creek. Let’s reduce this to it’s simplest terms shall we?

Step 1) The water board admits our salmon are in grave danger
Step 2) The water board admits that drawing groundwater depletes the streams and elevates that danger.
Step 3) The water board finds that drip systems suck a lot of that water and says they have to stop.
Step 4) Commercial growers are exempt.

So we admit that our fish are hurt by the wells we allowed property owners to dig. That’s a start. Okay, now think of our state’s water table like a big class of soda at one of those 50’s drugstore counters with everyone crowded together drinking from it with their individual straws. And the board tells everyone to stop sucking from their straw – except for the big guys who are making a profit from it. They should keep right on sucking. Maybe they can even suck more because they’ll be more left in the glass. And oh, we’d like everyone else to keep track of how much soda they drank, but we know the money makers are so busy counting they’re profits they don’t have time to do it, so don’t worry about that now.

Farming interests strongly protested the mandatory reporting of water use, a step that state officials have acknowledged could serve as the foundation for tighter restrictions. The water board, sensitive to those complaints, agreed to postpone that part of the order until a series of public meetings is completed in Sonoma County in early July.

Ann Maurice, a west county water activist, asserted that the dramatic decline in Russian River coho salmon that began in the 1990s coincided with the advent of drip irrigation in Sonoma County vineyards.

The irrigation exemption for agriculture drew some of the sharpest public comments on the day.

Woicicki accused the state of turning a “blind eye” as “grape growers have been sucking water out of our aquifer.” The apple grower said his well water level has dropped 20 feet in the last seven years as grapes were planted near his property.

Things have surely gotten to a tipping place in California when the grape and apple grower are at each other’s throats. But I’m thinking we should all sit down with cool glass of California Chardonnay and talk about this magical cure I know about that saves water, recharges aquifers, and has been shown in research time and time again to help salmon and steelhead.

Can you guess how many times the water board or article mentioned this undervalued cure?

Did you know there’s a Martinez in Georgia?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 19, 2015

It’s true. My niece actually lived there for a while. I think they pronounce it differently.

Worth A Dam’s retired librarian friend BK from the University of Georgia has contributed to this website in countless ways over the years. He’s sent me scientific articles that show beaver value to wetlands, pointed out the ones that omit the necessary beaver but should include it, and he’s helped me correct many a typo over the years. I introduced BK to our friends from the Heron Preserve in Atlanta and I believe they actually watched local beavers together.

Yesterday I heard from his wife, who said two awesome things. They had been asked by their church to give a children’s program on beaver as a Keystone Species. Did I have ideas for activities they might include. (Do I? What a great question!) AND they were planning a 5 day trip so they could attend the beaver festival this year! That’s right, 2618 miles across country specifically for our festival!

How exciting! I think I might implore them to send the mayor a note. 🙂 We would love to have BK and Mrs. K in person! I can’t wait for the future day that we see announcements for the beaver festival they’re holding one day in Georgia!

To celebrate, here’s some cheer from the Australian News program “the Project”. Back story: the city of Beaver Dam WI just made a law that kangaroos can’t be comfort animals.

Carrie Bickmore’s embarrassing ‘beaver’ slip-up on The Project

Beaver wanderer

heidi08 City Reports, Dispersal, Festival, Who's saving beavers now? June 18, 2015

Dispersal is so harrowing. Maybe that’s why our 2014 kits decided to stick around.

Beaver blocks entrance to Chick-fil-A, gets courtesy ride from police

Beavers may be great architects, but perhaps they aren’t the best with directions. Bellevue police helped one such beaver Monday evening after it found its way into the Chick-fil-A parking lot, and had difficulty making its way back home.

“The beaver somehow got himself on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to Chick-fil-A and there was lot of traffic there,” said Amanda Jensen with the Bellevue Police Department.

“He seemed disoriented,” she said. “They were just concerned about him getting hit.” The other concern was the line of cars waiting to enter the fast food restaurant. Bellevue’s new Chick-fil-A location has become renowned for causing heavy traffic as patrons drive through.

Being a good neighbor, a Bellevue police officer gave the little guy a ride home, or at least to the front door of the nearby pond where he has taken up residence.

“The officers used a dog catching pole and wrangled him into the car,” Jensen said. “And they brought him to a pond area where it is known that beavers are.”

After hopping in, a short ride, and hopping back out, it was dam-sweet-dam for the clever rodent.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than being brought home in a police car after your first night out. But it could have been much worse. He could have hit by a car, mauled by a dog or remained at Chic-fil-A.

Martinez Beaver Festival promo 2015 from Tensegrity Productions on Vimeo.

/a>New promo thanks to Sarah Koenisberg who was kind enough to update her last one. Hopefully it will run on the Martinez channel soon. Feel free to pass it on!

Good to go!

heidi08 Beavers June 17, 2015

So last night was the annual presentation for the Parks Recreation Marina and Cultural Commission for the Beaver Festival. We requested a fee waiver and the park occupancy waiver and were summarily granted both. Honestly they were happy to see us and beamed that the event gets better every year. And when I explained the button activity they all wanted to buy them right on the spot!

So I guess we’re having a beaver festival!

Confirmations from exhibits are starting to pour in. Regular favorites will include the River Otter Ecology Project, Native Birds, Oakland Zoo Pond turtles, and Marine Mammals. New this year will be the National Wildlife Federation, Salmon Protection and Watershed Network and Flood Control Napa, which is pretty dam exciting. Jon is finished painting the stage and cutting 150 burlap tails for lucky kids to display earned buttons on. I took care of insurance, solar, music, garbage and tables are lined up. All we need now is MANY HELPERS to get it all working smoothly. Wanna earn a beaver badge? Send an email and we’ll find a job for you.

Yesterday I ordered this as a banner from Vista Prints. I hope it’s not too anthropomophic, but I really like it.

Beavers: the Unowners manual

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 16, 2015

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

John Muir

Go see the beavers.

Heidi Perryman

On the Trails: Outdoor therapy

One day recently, I was feeling quite grumpy, disgusted, annoyed, and getting down-hearted, so I decided to cheer myself up by thinking about ‘a few of my favorite things’ that happened in the past couple of weeks.

The beavers seem to have returned to Steep Creek, after an absence of several years. We had seen beavers visiting the lower ponds, but this time it looks more serious. The broken dams have been rebuilt and a friend watched a beaver collect a huge mouthful of grass and carry it toward the old lodge. This made me wonder if the grass might be bedding for a young family. There is hope, then, that the beavers may restore the upper dams as well, creating ponds that trap sediment, provide fine rearing habitat for juvenile coho and dolly varden, and good foraging habitat for birds. In the past, the sockeye and coho salmon that spawn in this stream proved themselves quite able to surmount the previous dams, and there were good populations of both species in the creek.

There, that’s a list of good things observed. Thinking about all that, I found that I was still grumpy, disgusted, and annoyed — oh yes — but it no longer got me down-hearted. Good stuff! — simple things for a simple mind, maybe, but equanimity was restored!

• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology

Ahh Mary. How many bleary mornings or crabby evenings have been brightened for me by beavers! I couldn’t agree more. Mary is the author of the book on the left margin, and one of the beaver protectors of the Mendenhall Glacier.

Of course getting away in the middle of town is harder than it used to be. Alhambra Creek is no Walden pond. Apparently the front page Napa story drew lots of people to Tulocay creek last night. Rusty chatted with an observer from Novato who says he reads this website every day! (Hi beaver reader!) It made me remember the old days in Martinez when the beavers were first making a commotion. I remember being so divided, first joyful that other people were enjoying what I had cherished alone for so long, and then annoyed, encroached and irritated that people were crowding out “my” beavers.

Eventually I noticed three very important things that changed my perspective forever.

1) I was alone in the morning, and encroached in the evening. I adjusted my filming and sleep habits accordingly. I was never bothered by onlookers in the wee hours. (At this time of year I still wake up at 5 whether I go see beavers or not. Maybe I always will.)

2) Every single person gathered there in the evenings, excitedly explaining them to their mother or brother-in-law, wondering all the wrong things, if they ate fish or patted mud with their tails, all felt as if they were “their” beavers.

3) This misplaced sense of ownership we all shared is the only reason why the beavers survived at all when the city decided to kill them.

Of course they aren’t my beavers, or your beavers. They are their own beavers. Living their own lives independent of us. And maybe the beavers themselves are like a mirror, reflecting back the beholder for the moment but happy enough to reflect the next person that comes along. That would explain why the good people liked them and wanted to save them. And why our most hard-hearted citizens disliked them and thought they were a disaster. They saw twisted reflections of their nasty little selves.

A furry Rorschach, if you will.