And a nice long and eerily accurate article from the Gazette. I say eerie because there are details in here I never told the reporter and didn’t think were on the website. Is there a beaver mole in my house, I wondered? But I figured it out eventually.

Beavers back in time for 2016 Festival

MARTINEZ, Calif. – After a year-old beaver kit died and the rest of the 2015 litter also were lost, their parents apparently left Alhambra Creek, ending a controversial and exciting time at Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez. But just in time for the ninth Beaver Festival this Saturday at Beaver Park, witnesses are saying they have seen beavers in Martinez again, said Heidi Perryman, president of Worth a Dam.

This year’s theme, “How the West Was Watered…And Can Be Again,” and the festival’s programming focus on the importance of beavers as nature’s environmental engineers, making changes that improve habitats for multiple species, Perryman said.

The National Park Service and the National Wildlife Federation will have booths, as will local or state chapters of such national groups as the John Muir Association, Audubon and the Sierra Wildlife Coalition. Visitors also will be able to speak with representatives of the California Native Plant Society, the Aquarium of the Bay, the Delta Science Center, Lindsay Wildlife Center and the Suisun Wildlife Rescue Center.

Artists and photographers will have displays alongside advocates for western pond turtles, an Oakland Zoo project, as well as raptor birds, coyotes, bluebirds, badgers, river otters and marine mammals. Several beaver organizations also will be present.

Worth a Dam, as the festival’s organizers, has chosen a specific child’s activity that illustrates this year’s theme, Perryman said. But children who want to participate must arrive early. The first 150 will get a chance to earn badges designed by Mark Poulin that will teach them how beaver activity affect so many other birds and animals, Perryman said. The children will assemble the badges into an ecosystem engineer bracelet, she said.

“Beavers are a keystone species. They are an ecosystem engineer,” she said. But that may not be the type of engineer children understand. So the badges, drawn by artist Mark Poulin, are designed to resemble a train, from locomotive to caboose and multiple cars in between. The beaver in the lead badge wears a railroad engineer’s outfit. That badge “pulls the train,” Perryman said, just as beavers “pull along” other species to an area. The final badge on the bracelet is a water drop on a caboose, she said.

Children making the bracelets will be sent on adventures to different places where they learn how beavers affect birds, fish and other creatures. Once they have learned their lesson, they get a badge for the bracelet.

I’m extremely happy that my sentence pointing out that beavers are ‘how the west was watered‘ appears in not one but TWO news papers now. I hope it actually makes people think about the idea. Here’s where I started to get confused about where the info came from:

Worth a Dam will have an auction if donated items, including tickets to the Napa River Cruise, area zoos fine jewelry and original art and prints, many of which have nature themes, Perryman said.

I didn’t even know the river cruise was donated until after I talked with her, and I thought it was never on the website until I remembered I had posted the list of auction items and there was a listing of the promise. So I guess I need to be careful what I say around here. I’m happy to see the cruise get plugged though, because it looks really cool.

So this morning is about getting the restrooms, getting the u-haul and loading the truck. I’m especially excited because I found out last night my newest grand-niece and arguably the most adorable and smartest baby on the planet will be coming with her parents. Don’t believe me? Just look at this. Clearly a future beaver-researcher in the making.

Website Wonders

heidi08 Beavers August 4, 2016

Someone on the block has a SHINY new website to test drive. Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions was once the only website with useful information available lo these many years ago. Now he’s improved the look, feel and accessibility with so many real changes. Go check it out!

It’s got a section about pond overflow, and his Snomish Pond Leveler for salmon. It’s even got a ‘blog’ section where he can write about latest exploits. And some nice beaver photos that I’m curious about. No credits that I can see but I wonder who took them? Mike works in beaver habitat A LOT but he usually doesn’t get to watch them.

Oh look, he has a new resource page that isn’t alphabetical anymore and we’re STILL FOURTH. After the link to Wikipedia that I got Rick to write with Mike and the link to its own website and the link to BWW again because why the hell not? (You know writing about every single goddamn day that happens in the beaver world every day and broadcasting it for every one to read for free isn’t NEARLY as important as offering a newsletter for money a couple times a year.)

Sheesh!

Vanity aside, the thing I have always liked least about Mike’s website has not changed and in fact has gotten worse. Besides being patently not true, if he had given this advice to our city in 2008 the beavers would have been killed. Thank goodness none of the city council did any research on their own and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them.Unless it’s Martinez, where Skip Lisle dropped the dam by 2-3 feet and our beavers decided to stay.

It’s beginning to look a lot like beaver festival!

heidi08 Beavers August 3, 2016

Yesterday there were a handful of swift volleyed crises that I swat back over the net with pretty admirable precision. It’s a lot of work planning an event like this but it’s SO much easier when I’m not also working full time. I can’t imagine how this ever all happened before. Can you?

Yesterday was media day, which started out with a charming little Gazette article about encouraging kids to take a bicycle tour of the murals. We were numbers six and seven!

Murals of Martinez

The kids are out of school, acting bored, looking for something to do. The following articles outline tours of Martinez designed for the entire family and meet my “4 F’s” criteria: Fun, Frugal, Family and Fascinating. They are reminiscent of when my six children were young, money was scarce and minds were curious. The first tour, and possibly the longest, I call:

Murals of Martinez!

Continue east on Escobar and immediately at the little bridge look on the left for the ceramic tiles, this is next to the Creek Monkey Tap House. This is the site the famous Martinez Beavers and is our sixth mural. The tiles were drawn by local school children. Their imaginations show the wonderful life of our beavers. This is a good place to park, sit for a while and take a look at Alhambra creek and beaver dams, maybe even see a beaver or two. A great family educational opportunity. Our Beaver Festival is held annually on the first Saturday in August.

Continue on Escobar about two blocks and turn left onto Ferry Street, go one block, turn left onto Marina Vista. Travel about two blocks on Marina Vista (stay to the right) and just past the entrance/exit to the Amtrak Station is our newest mural: “Martinez Beavers”. It was commissioned by our local beaver advocacy group Worth-A-Dam as a memorial project to honor the memory of the Martinez beavers after the local beavers had all but disappeared from our local waters. But on May 2, 2016 a sighting occurred and it was soon confirmed that the beavers were back! Now the mural is being hailed as the :Un-Memorial” mural. This beautiful work of art was completed by artist Mario Alfaro (of the plaza history mural fame).

How much do I love seeing my word “UNmemorial” in the Gazette? Very, very much I can tell you. And I’m even happier that it’s meaning still holds. Generating interest in the beavers through artwork has always been a cornerstone of our work. And this year is a blazing example, earning a fantastical festival promotion also from Jennifer Shaw for the Mercury News.

Martinez: Beavers of Alhambra Creek celebrated at annual festival

The family of beavers in downtown Martinez continues to inspire people’s curiosity and compassion for their well-being.

“Beavers are not only a keystone species, they’re also a charismatic species, so people want to learn about them, photograph them, draw and paint them, celebrate them, and watch them. That is essentially what saved our beavers is people could actually see them,” says Heidi Perryman, founder and director of the nonprofit Worth A Dam.

She noted that prior to their efforts to educate about beavers’ essential role in saving and creating habitat, there had been a push to eradicate them — citing flood concerns — and instead the group managed to turn the perceptual tide to invigorate their population.

Visitors at Saturday’s ninth annual Beaver Festival — with this year’s theme “Ecosystem Engineers” — can see that a two-dimensional beaver has a new home, appearing on a mural depicting the Martinez marshlands, joined by frog, egret, turtle, and children painted leaning over a fence watching the beaver build his dam.

Shhh. This is my favorite part!

In 2011, after passers-by had inquired about the missing beaver, artist Mario Alfaro had painted him as part of a Main Street mural about Martinez life, but had been told by city personnel to remove it.

Initially, Alfaro’s mural, located on a bridge to the right of the Amtrak station entrance, was envisioned as a memorial to the kits that died last April, and as a tribute to their parents, who deemed the place unsafe and left, notes Perryman.

Fortuitously, a pair of beavers has since settled here, with their babies due anytime.

Perryman and Alfaro continue their advocacy and artistry, showing that humans and beavers can “peacefully, happily coexist,” Alfaro says.

Perryman’s grass roots activism recently caught the attention of Oregon’s Wetlands Conservancy which asked her to speak about how her outreach, and specifically the festival, has turned things around.

“She turned a problem into something valued in the community,” says Sara Vickerman, a member of the conservancy’s Beaver Lodge advisory group that has organized a traveling exhibit featuring 70 artists’ work with beavers as the common thread.

Calling the festival “attitude changing,” Vickerman adds, “it’s such a different way to reach people than just writing letters to your congressmen.”

Thank you Sara! Your praise means a lot. We’ve learned that people get engaged in multiple ways but the secret to saving beavers is the same as teaching your kindergartner to sort the laundry or set the table – letting people feel INVOLVED even if they do it wrong. And honestly, why write a letter to your congressman when he’s coming in PERSON to give the beaver festival an AWARD. And something else I’m very excited about and can’t yet mention. Let this demonstrate my eagerness.

Since 2011, Martinez resident and graphic designer Amelia Hunter has been creating the promotional brochures for the beaver festival, with the vision for this year’s festival, inspired by Perryman: “how the West was watered and how it can be done again.”

“Doing these brochures, I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for beavers,” says Hunter, also a watercolorist and member of the Martinez Arts Association. “It’s made me much more aware of how I impact my surroundings.”

Thanks Amelia! I’m so grateful for your talent that has helped us so many years. We are getting quite a collection of fantastic beaver images in retrospect. And thank you Mario and Jennifer! That was a perfect promotional article encouraging folks to come be curious about the beavers and see how they have been represented in the mural. Completely by Chance the project Sara Vickerman has been working on was in the news too. Seeing beavers in a new way is part of the challenge and I’m sure our influence was not unimportant in this project.

Sponsors of 2017 art exhibit and sale recognizing Oregon’s official animal, the beaver, seek artwork

NEHALEM, Ore. – The Lower Nehalem Watershed Council is partnering with The Wetlands Conservancy to host a Beaver Art Exhibit and Sale, to be held in August of 2017 at the North County Recreation District, as part of a statewide recognition of Oregon’s official animal.

Project sponsors are seeking artwork of all kinds featuring the beaver and wetland habitat, including photographs, paintings, prints, cards, quilts, etc. Pieces can be in any style – realistic, abstract, whimsical, collage, etc. Three-dimensional pieces could be ceramic, wood, fiber art or other media. Artists can choose to sell or display their work. Interested artists should contact Sara Vickerman by email at svickerman@comcast.net or by phone at 503-936-4284 for more information or to register.

The Wetlands Conservancy’s Beaver Lodge advisory group has planned several art exhibits throughout the state featuring Northwest artists, roughly in conjunction with International Beaver Day, April 7, 2017. The planning is well underway, and will include exhibits at several locations large and small around the state in 2017, kicking off in February with a reception, exhibit and sale at Oregon State University’s LaSells-Stewart Center. Other exhibits and events will be held in Lake Oswego, Seaside and at the Oregon Zoo.

The beaver is woefully misunderstood and blamed for dam-building, flooding and munching on plants. In fact, Oregon beaver, nearly eradicated by trappers by 1900, create wetlands, spawning and rearing habitat for salmon and steelhead as well as for insects, birds and amphibians and create pools that keep water clean and moderate fluctuations in water flow. They are nature’s hydrologists.

We’re happy to help! We have some amazing beaver artists right here in Martinez that could lend a hand?

The evil that men do to Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, What's killing beavers now? August 2, 2016

A truly horrible story from Scotland broke yesterday. Apparently Scottish farmers are worried that a decision to protect the beavers will come any minute and have decided to respond by killing as many as they can in the meantime.

Farmers “rush to shoot beavers” before they are granted protected status

FARMERS are rushing to shoot as many beavers as possible before a new protection order comes into place, it has been claimed. The Scottish government has been considering granting protected status to beavers since 2015 – but there are currently still no laws governing when or where they can be shot.

On February 12 this year, an email to government officials stated that farmers in the Strathmore and Forfar areas of Angus were killing beavers ahead of the proposed new protective legislation

The email read: “It was clear from discussions that farmers and gamekeepers are shooting as many beavers as possible just now before they become protected. I suspect they will be just shooting them in the water, which might result in injuries rather than death much of the time.

“Like seals that are shot in the water no doubt they will just float off downstream or die in their lodge.”

Scotland has let itself get in a pickle with these beavers. They must have just woken up and found them because 150+ beavers do not suddenly appear overnight. Our good friend Paul Ramsay is still working hard to for their safety and is pushing the government to make the right decision. Or at least ANY decision, because the ambiguity is starting to mount up.

Paul Ramsay from the The Scottish Wild Beaver Group said: “This callous approach has already hardened the differences of attitude between conservationists and these farmers in ways that will be hard to undo. An urgent response is needed by the Scottish government to protect these much-loved and beneficial animals and to provide farmers with an incentive to look for a better response to the situation.”

I made that sentence bold because it struck me as particularly artful in a way that I have come to expect from the Ramsays on this campaign. I’m sure he means it will be every bit as hard to soften the conservationists heart as it will be to reform the farmers. Which is probably true and worth mentioning. I found this final sentence particularly stunning.

Possessing and moving a dead beaver is illegal without a licence in the UK, however, a licence is not required to shoot them.