Month: July 2018

NOT ALL THOSE WHO PUBLISH ARE WISE

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers July 31, 2018

Okay, phew there’s no beaver news except Ben’s book reading in New York and a nice email this morning from a woman in big sky country who wonders if there’s a Worth A Dam chapter in Montana? (Big smile) Finally I can write about something that’s been on my mind since the beaver festival!

It’s this book by Rachel Polquin. The book is a collection of quirky history and amazing images of the beaver. (Look over the woman’s shoulder to see the fish tailed beaver). Some of them even I hadn’t seen. Here’s the editorial blurb:

With unique fish-like tails, chainsaw teeth, a pungent musk, and astonishing building skills, beavers are unlike any other creature in the world. Not surprisingly, the extraordinary beaver has played a fascinating role in human history and has inspired a rich cultural tradition for millennia. In Beaver, Rachel Poliquin explores four exceptional beaver features: beaver musk, beaver fur, beaver architecture, and beaver ecology, tracing the long evolutionary history of the two living species and revealing them to be survivors capable of withstanding ice ages, major droughts, and all predators, except one: humans.

At the end of 2014 we were both part of an interview together for Connecticut public radio and she afterwards said she’d send me a copy of her book. Of course things happen, time slips away, and she forgot, but when it finally arrived I was stunned to see the cover. Let’s see if you are too.

Raise your hand when spot it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I very politely thanked Rachel for her book and mentioned that the cover photo was a nutria and she said ruefully that she knew and that was the only image in the book she didn’t get to select. So that means some fact-free editor out there chose that nutria image, cleverly colorized it, and sold the book. EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T A BEAVER!

Why is it always a nutria? I mean if you’re going to publish an image of the wrong species why not an elephant or a cayman? The author of said book either couldn’t or didn’t refuse to let it be published under these conditions. I suppose she might have airily accepted the check and assumed no one (but that girl on the west coast) would know the difference.

But now you know too. Let’s start a club.

All that we read is not clever

Some authors spread rumors and lies

Those books will change hearts and minds never

Not all those who publish are wise

In a swampland no fire shall be woken

And water from wetlands will spring

Renewed be the sleeping land woken

When the beaver again shall be king

A KIND WORD FROM MASSACHUSETTS

heidi08 Beaver Book July 30, 2018

Good lord. Windows 10 is a terror. I feel like a lost child flailing through empty corridors looking for something familiar. I’m sure it will get easier. At least the website looks vaguely familiar at the moment. And there’s a fun new review of Ben Goldfarb’s awesome book. (Mind you, Ben’s a nice chap and all, but I’m honestly mostly happy about what it means for BEAVERS – not book sales!) This review is from Judy Isacaoff – this time in Massachusetts.

NATURE’S TURN: A fresh look at neighboring beaver ponds

When long saplings were found heaped across a narrows close to the man-made cement dam and spillway at the far end of the original pond, our neighbor was alarmed. His solution to preventing the water level from rising and possibly overpowering the cement dam was to have the beavers trapped and removed. This is the usual practice. In the absence of an alternative plan, the beavers were killed. The exquisitely constructed dam at the upper, new pond was broken and dismantled. The vast expanse — about 15 acres of mostly open water — that we had come to appreciate as a vibrant part of the natural landscape became a mud flat. It seems an invitation to invasive species. Kingfisher and heron sightings have dwindled.

I tell this story now because it is a common one that, I have just learned, could have ended differently. That story is told in the publication this month of “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.” Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb relates: “In researching “Eager,” I traveled just about everywhere that beavers can be found, from the slickrock deserts of Utah to the hardwood forests of Vermont to a highwayside canal in Napa, California. I met beavers on farms and beavers in forests, beavers in raging rivers and beavers in irrigation ditches, beavers in wilderness areas and beavers in Walmart parking lots.” Mr. Goldfarb also travels through the history of the formative years of our country and introduces us to problem-solving farmers, scientists, naturalists and conservationists past and present. “Most of all,” he writes, “ ‘Eager’ is about the mightiest theme I know: how we can learn to coexist and thrive alongside our fellow travelers on this planet.”*

Nice work Judy. I’m so glad to be here and watch this all unfurl, and it’s nice to see something positive out beavers coming out of the bay state. What I’m waiting for now is a mention from some bay area treasure like the SF chronicle or bay nature.

Tick tock people. There are beavers to save!

BEAVER BENEFITS ON THE BIG STAGE

heidi08 Beaver Book, Who's saving beavers now? July 29, 2018

Let’s start with some local news. Readers of this website (both of you) will know instantly the name of the county in California that kills the most beavers. (Placer) And you’ll remember how doggedly I tried to persuade them differently, presenting to the board of supervisors and the fish and game commission, talking to the media. It was the 2013 depredation records that showed Placer County was killing beavers at a rate 7 times greater than the entire state – significant at the .02 level even when we controlled for things like population density and water acreage.

A dream of mine has always been to take some willing site with beaver issues in Placer county, install a flow device, and publicize the heck out of it. Worth A Dam would even help pay. Well now it looks like my dream might come true. On two sites, one in Lincoln and one in Auburn. Kevin Swift went out last week to assess them and there might even be funding for the projects through the fish and wildlife partners program. Fingers crossed! I’ll keep you posted as this moves forward. But this could be a big win for beavers!

Speaking of big wins for beavers, Ben’s book moved from the Science Blog to the Science Magazine now with another lovely review for all to see and an awesome photo. I thought I would share a little with you this morning.

Got an environmental problem? Beavers could be the solution

Most people probably don’t think of beavers until one has chewed through the trunk of a favorite tree or dammed up a nearby creek and flooded a yard or nearby road. Beavers are pests, in this view, on par with other members of the order Rodentia. But a growing number of scientists and citizens are recognizing the merits of these animals, science writer Ben Goldfarb explains in his new book Eager. Beavers are industrious architects, key engineers of healthy ecosystems and a potential solution to a host of environmental problems.

Beaver dams are more than just stoppages for waterways. “The structures come in an almost limitless range of shapes and sizes, from speed bumps the length of a human stride to a half-mile-long dike, visible from space,” Goldfarb writes. The lodges, dams, burrows and other structures offer the animals shelter from predators and weather, as well as storage for food. And the structures turn fast, narrow streams into swamps, wetlands and marshes that host a wide range of wildlife, from fish to insects to birds. These aren’t classically pretty ecosystems, but they are incredibly diverse and provide benefits such as water storage and pollution control.

Goldfarb’s writing shines with beautiful language and colorful stories — like that time dozens of beavers were air-dropped into Idaho in one of the most successful beaver restoration projects in history. That tale and others make Eager an especially pleasant read. The mountains of evidence of beavers’ ecological benefits provided within the book’s pages just might make a “Beaver Believer” out of you.

That’s a pretty fantastic review, aimed squarely at all our non-believing biologist friends. Yeah, I’m talking to you, CDFW officers who hand out depredation permits like they were candy. Lets hope some of these excellent reviews sink in among the powers that be.

On a related note, I noticed this week that a chapter of Ben’s book was posted in audio format at the publishers. It was the bracing, ‘buckle up’ introduction that describes where you’re going on this journey to better understand the beaver impact.. This morning it’s the Roosevelt chapter, which is also wonderful to behold so I thought I’d share it.

i found it a little disconcerting to have someone else reading his grand words, but Ben reassured a friend on facebook that his editor explained “He had a voice for writing books” – which is a pretty droll way to say he was not the man for the job. I don’t know about that.. I thought his reading at the festival was wonderful!

Anyway, enjoy.

BEAVERS MAY BE EAGER, BUT ARE NEVER MANIC

heidi08 Beaver Book July 28, 2018

Now that was a day,

Do you realize if this quote is referring to yearly take that works out to be something like 10,000 beavers from just Northern California alone? No wonder the furpocalypse worked so well. I had to study up for my interview with Ben for Terra Verde radio. (Reviewing the California papers because I have not thought like that since 2012). It all turned out to more hectic than I wished because I also had a huge professional task to do that day plus getting my computer ready for a trip to the junk heap. The new one arrives tomorrow and hopefully everything will transfer seamlessly and I’ll figure out how the hell windows 10 works.

Anyway all the craziness meant I wasn’t sleeping well so I think I may have been a little manic in the interview – I might have talked to much or too fast. But Ben was great in his calm inspiring way as usual. The show is supposed to air in two weeks and I’ll link to it so we can diagnose my performance, I’m always reminded of a Paula Poundstone comment when I get chatty in an interview. “I did an hour an a half last night and I could have done more, but the club had really bad security and a lot of the audience got away”.

Later that night I got an email from BYU radio in Utah asking if I’d do a radio interview about my recent article in the city creatures blog and then an email from Mt Diablo Audubon asking me if I would present. So yes, it was a crazy day. The real surprise Then I got a notice that Ben’s book was being reviewed on Psychology Today, and I realized what was going on.

He’s just trolling me now.

The Secret Lives of Beavers and Why These Architects Matter: An interview with Ben Goldfarb about his new book called “Eager”.

Beavers are amazing and under appreciated animals. I’ve seen them on a number of occasions and enjoy watching them go about their daily activities. Regardless of their incredible importance to the health of various ecosystems, beavers have been decimated by humans using horrific methods. In his new book called Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, award-winning environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb carefully shows why killing beavers is so often ecologically unsound. The description for this important book begins, “In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat…Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet

As I read Eager, I realized that beavers have, indeed, been under appreciated, and I was thrilled that Mr. Goldfarb could take the time to answer some questions about these amazing and ingenious architects who have played a major role in shaping our world. Our interview went as follows.

It’s a fun, mildly touchy-feely interview, so go read it all for some surprises, including his thoughts about what subjects he wants to tackle next. For obvious reasons this was my favorite passage.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers?

It’s easy to get wrapped up in what beavers can do for us: the water they can store, the pollution they can filter, and the wildfires they can mitigate — the whole suite of ecosystem services. I certainly treat beavers as a restoration tool throughout the book. But it’s also vital to value them for their own sake. They’re such unique creatures, capable of surpassingly innovative work; they’re also highly social, inspiringly cooperative, and impressively strategic. Their all-too-human penchant for meddling with their surroundings makes them easy to empathize with. Beavers are a reminder of how much we don’t know about animal minds, how complex wild behaviors can be, how much agency our fellow creatures still possess. They are buck-toothed, paddle-tailed checks on our smug sense of human supremacy.

Yes, indeed they are Ben. Thanks for that.

BEAVERS POST HASTE

heidi08 Beaver Book July 27, 2018

You know I don’t bring out the big Star Wars award ceremony clip for just anyone, When beaver benefits earned an article in the New York times a few years back I thought it deserved some pomp and circumstance. But this in the Washington Post might get a double dose. It even mentions the Martinez Beaver Festival!

How beavers can save the world from environmental ruin

Beavers, those paddle-tailed, buck-toothed dam-builders we know from local ponds and streams, create chaos. They pull down trees, cause creeks to flood and generally confound the human need for order and control. But in his new book, “Eager,” environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb makes a convincing case that we should change our view of this tumultuous behavior and recognize it for exactly what it is: animal engineering capable of restoring our ailing environment.

Subtitled “The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter,” the book shows the many contributions of this oily-coated rodent. Beavers create wetlands and make conditions favorable for many animals to thrive. Beaver ponds and meadows store carbon, which keeps it out of the atmosphere and thus helps counteract the rising temperatures associated with global warming. We must, Goldfarb contends, overcome our penchant for seeing beavers as pests — and too often killing them as a result — and instead recognize them as “the ultimate keystone species,” indeed as “the animal that doubles as an ecosystem.”

Ahhh let that sink in. Is this what basking feels like? I’ve done it so rarely. Remember it’s in the Washington Post so it must be true! I hope every snorting city manager reads this, and every disbelieving trapper and everyone at Fish and Game. Shhh here we come:

To document these transformations, Goldfarb treks all over the United States, from Western wilderness areas to Walmart parking lots. In Washington state, under the direction of a biologist, he hikes up a creek to help release a pair called Sandy and Chomper to their new home. He attends the 10th Annual Martinez Beaver festival in California, where he interviews numerous “Beaver Believer” ecologists and activists, including inventors of flow-device tools that partially drain ponds or prevent beavers from damming up culverts and washing out roads, and thus save beavers’ lives. The result is a book that’s a most unexpected gift: a marvelously humor-laced page-turner about the science of semi-aquatic rodents.

We’re in the post! Our silly little beaver festival made the Washington Post!!! I need to sit down. Wait, I am sitting down. I might need to stand up! Ohhh the city is never ever going to live down the Martinez beavers. Not Ever! Isn’t that wonderful?

But here’s the take-home message: Goldfarb has built a masterpiece of a treatise on the natural world, how that world stands now and how it could be in the future if we protect beaver populations. He gives us abundant reasons to respect environment-restoring beavers and their behaviors, for their own good and for ours.

Ahh Ben, you have ringed the world with a glowing fire of beaver praise, I have dreamed of this day since forever it feels like. I can’t believe it’s happening. I don’t think I will ever stop thanking you. If you, gentle reader, have resisted this far, resist no longer Buy the book! It is good. It is well written. It is true, It is important. And it is FUNNY! If you don’t want to keep it forever and ever march down to the city hall or public library and donate your copy when its done.

Everyone should know these things.