APPROVED!

heidi08 Beavers May 18, 2016

Easy night at the PRMCC meeting getting approval for the ninth beaver festival which was a veritable piece of cake. Committee Dylan Radke even asked, ‘The other day I noticed what looked like a beaver dam down by the corp yard?” Good eyes! I made sure they had this before I left.

No luck seeing beavers this morning, lots of ripples but nobody surfaced. When they don’t feel like showing their faces they zip back and forth under the water between holes on each side of the bank. How quickly they have gone on about their busy lives and taken me for granted! No baby ducks either, but there was a mockingbird making his dawn chorus all by himself, and that was lovely.

Now onto a nice letter in the paper in Sakatchewan about the kill contest, featuring an extremely rare ugly photo of a beaver. The editor’s must have searched through samples for hours to find the ONE picture that was certain to engender the least sympathetic response. Hrmph!

‘Derby of death’

The beaver is the icon of Canada — historically, for its energy and labour; symbolically, for its ideal of hard-working people and, linguistically, as a byword for the wonderful land we have inherited.

The Saskatchewan government is encouraging the torture and killing of these beautiful animals in a competition for the deaths of these icons — a derby of death.

This is obscene. It is anti-environment and destroys our land and our culture. It teaches children — and adults — that life itself is to be destroyed for profit or reinvented amusement. It encourages the pervert, the psychopath and the inadequate man. It must stop.

Michael Watts, Goderich, Ont.

A cynic might say that beaver trapping is actually the icon of Canada. But it’s nice to see someone saying the obvious. I myself would rather see a letter about the resources they’re throwing away by ignoring beaver benefits to fish, birds wildlife. Certainly I agree the derby is barbaric, and those photos of a truck full of beaver tails knock out my breath, but you won’t catch me saying that in public. I just think it makes it too easy to dismiss the idea that opposition is just from some crazy bunny huggers and therefore doesn’t matter.

I commented this instead:

Even laying aside the massive environmental benefits of beaver dams to fish, waterfowl, game animals; even ignoring the way their dams remove toxins and nitrates, even ignoring the fact that kill contests don’t work and create species rebound the following years — Even ignoring all THAT Saskatchewan should realize that this action is giving them a huge black eye in the world and is showcasing their ignorance on an international level. Why are reasonable solutions successful in every other part of the northern hemisphere but untried there?

Mario is painting his way to success on the mural, with both sides nearly meeting in the middle and a beaver and a turtle added yesterday.

Here’s the quarter page ad that’s going in the July issue of Bay Nature:

Help from Beaver Friends

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water May 17, 2016

Yesterday was a volatile day, filled with unexpected reunions and thrilling returns. It was a day of very wonderful and very upsetting things. So of course I got our two grant applications back from the CCC Fish and Wildlife Commission. Sadly the mural application received a rejection letter, but the Wildlife train bracelet was funded in full.

Hurray! Beaver money from the feds! And what on earth is the All Aboard project you ask? A.L.L. A.B.O.A.R.D.

(A little learning about beaver operations and riparian dwellers)

As a foundation species and ecosystem engineer, beaver offer invaluable service in riparian zones. Teaching children about this function encourages them to think more dynamically about the way species systems are interconnected, and how our human behavior can disrupt or encourage the healthy function of streams. With their constant dam building, chewing, mudding and digging of channels, beavers create stream complexity, invertebrate abundance, and habitat enrichment. Beaver wetlands are among the most biodiverse areas on the planet, and are rapidly being recognized for their important role in providing salmon and steelhead habitat, protecting amphibian populations and removing phosphorous and nitrogen. It is important for children to understand that preserving these valuable Ecosystem Engineers can benefit many species, including ourselves.

Beavers are such obvious examples of Ecosystem Engineers that they are often used to explain the concept overall – but this language itself is not very child-friendly and can be hard for youngsters to grasp. With that in mind we’ve decided to employ the concept of a ‘train engineer’ with which children are much more familiar, to cheerfully introduce the idea. We emphasize the way the beaver ‘engineer’ drives the ecosystem with their works, pulling new species into the wetland much like a train ‘pulls along’ the other cars behind it. The concept of ‘linking’ separate cars together, works naturally with the idea of an ecosystem engineer bracelet activity, which children would put together by learning about how beavers help other species.

Yes the acronym monster strikes again, and she believes victory is sweet. Mike Warner of Wildbryde is already hard at work on the charms for 150 children while we speak, and this grant and the recent one from Kiwanis will go a long way to making that possible. (975+450=1425). Now I just need to start breaking it gently to Erika that she will need to put on links for 8 charms x 150 children that day. I’m thinking chocolate and gerber daisies, what do you think?

And while we’re on the topic of ‘breaking it gently, I must assume that somebody told the mayor we were seeing beavers in the creek again, because I joyfully posted the news on Martinez Rants and Raves and this morning that post has received over 400 likes. This comforts me since this forum is limited to folks in Martinez just in case we need to rally the troops again on short notice.

Finally there’s a very fun headline from Devon which has adopted a ‘beaver mascot’ and is looking for the public to help them provide a name.

A DEVON-BASED conservation charity is looking for help from the public to suggest names for its new beaver mascot

The beaver in question is a human-sized beaver costume made to promote the work of Devon Wildlife Trust with England’s only known wild beaver population on the River Otter in East Devon. The costume, which has striking teeth and tail has been produced with support from South Devon-based Cofton Country Holidays.

Steve Hussey , from the Devon Wildlife Trust, said: “We wanted a beaver mascot to help us raise the profile of the River Otter Beaver Trial and its vital work. When Cofton Country Holidays generously stepped in to help us we were delighted.

Gotta name suggestion? I have several. “Resilience, Recovery, Engineer, Keystone, and Evolution” spring to mind first. But “Fish friend” is up there too. Let’s just face the inevitable reality of “justin” and get it over with. You know people will think it’s insanely clever.

At least have the heart to give him a last an herbal middle name to make the point.

And finally here’s a special present from Moses Silva on Sunday that I know you’ve all been waiting for. Thanks Moses!

Beaver Easter came late this year…

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? May 16, 2016

For some reason the Handel version of this verse was playing in my head all morning. From the black pre-dawn sky where we stumbled down the dark alley to the dam, to the first initial trills of bird song as the steely darkness was haloed in a sherbet dawn, through explosion of bird chorus that followed, muffling the train whistles, all the way until I saw this:

A Beaver! What is that sudden lightness I feel between my shoulders? Am I falling upwards? Could it be the final easing of that dread harness of grim resolution in the face of overwhelming loss? Was the sunrise always this splintered by all this moisture? Is it possible that it really was darkest just before the dawn?

Maybe you’ve never sat up through a candlelit vigil waiting for Easter to dawn, but my teenage days remember these things. You know how it is, that person you like talks you into going even though you’re not sure you really believe this stuff. I vividly remembered that spooky darkness replaced by irrational sunrise and this merry welcome of the day with lots of hugging. (Oh! the hugging!) I was raised catholic but there was a bible-study period in my teens where I briefly mistook a crush for faith.

But of course you know my true religion now.

There s/he was building a dam in front of me. As if to prove that I wasn’t the only one happy for the dam’s return, a mother mallard with 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 babies suddenly appeared, the ducklings zipping so quickly that hardly my eyes or the camera lens could keep up. Like fleas or rolling peppercorns, their rapidly expanding circles were pierced by a swimming turtle before they banded together like a seed pod explosion in rewind and followed mom back down stream.

The tide will be excellent for another day or two, you should go. I’m hoping Jon can be persuaded to make the journey again. Tomorrow we present at the Parks, Recreation, Marina and Cultural Commission to get permission for festival IX. Then it’s last minute details to take care of before Portland.

It all seems like perfect timing. Like destiny. If you believe in that sort of thing.

Boomerang Beavers

heidi08 Beavers May 15, 2016

The tide was perfect this morning, so we high tailed it down to the beaver dam and were there before sunrise. Pretty huh?

There was a cacophony of bird song and a lovely curving dam that became more visible as the day dawned.

We saw mega underwater ripples as the beavers seemed to be going back and forth across the creek without surfacing. There appears to be a hole on the far bank that they are using in addition to the mystery under the fallen tree. Finally I got some footage of the elusive fellow, and was surprised to see when I got home that another beaver emerges from the hole on the left. Of course I didn’t know he was there so I stopped filming at just the wrong time.
I think this is the very WORST video I ever took. Isn’t it wonderful?

Now here’s some fantastic NapaVision news by Rusty Cohn to hold your attention. Look at the reeds growing on that dam. It really IS Napatopia!

Of course we stopped by the mural on the way home. It is nearly across the bridge, as Mario is focusing on the layout first, so the lovely bird has flown away for a while. He’ll be back soon, don’t worry.

Everything comes back in Martinez. Didn’t you know?

Things that go FLAP in the night

heidi08 Beavers May 14, 2016

Beaver night heron drama, courtesy of Rusty Cohn in Napa. The whole thing just screamed .GIF to me so I thought I’d try one. It needs another photo at the end, but I like it. Check out the gallery for more detailed photos.

I guess there are more night heron and beaver encounters beause they are both out after sundown, looking for dinner. I had forgotten this photo from Cheryl years ago, staring the kit we never expected in 2012.

Here’s hoping we get another unexpected treasure soon.