Month: February 2019

FLOODED WITH FEELING

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers February 28, 2019

The Russian River has been flooded for several days now, and it just keeps raining on our friends in the North. The Napa beaver pond is flooded under several feet of water and their lodge isn’t visible anymore if it’s standing at all. One of Worth A Dam’s most gracious and courageous members evacuated from the house her grandparents built on the river whose lower story is now underwater. The level was supposed to crest at their doorstep last night. My own sister in Forestville is sequestered on an island, cut off from the road and all civilization until dryer days. Last night I thought of the old saying

Nothing is a soft as water,

But who can withstand the raging flood?

Fingers crossed the waters recede today and everyone survives to pick through the mud and start over again. Of course beavers will be fine in their watery world, but we as usual will have a much harder time.

They say there is no great loss without some small gain, and it’s not small at all that Ben Goldfarb’s book “Eager” won the Pen award for outstanding science writing last night.

Since 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature across diverse genres, including fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, and drama. With the help of our partners, PEN America confers over 20 distinct awards, fellowships, grants and prizes each year, awarding nearly $370,000 to writers and translators.

Aside from being good news to beavers, it is great news for Ben, who will take home a tidy prize of sum as a result.

A $10,000 science writing prize was given to Ben Goldfarb’s “Eager.”

Congratulations Ben! We beaver lovers knew from the very start that you’d make the right kind of waves. Here’s hoping that this award makes MORE people read your book and MORE people understand beavers. Here he is accepting the award in New, York New York.

ALL ABOUT BEAVERS IN SANTA ROSA

heidi08 Beavers February 27, 2019

Santa Rosa Library Supports Beavers! I was contacted on facebook by someone who read about us in “Eager” and would like us to promote Saturday’s Brock and Kate presentation. So anyone local should plan on stopping by if they’re not entirely flooded out by now.

Saturday 2-3

Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist will talk about their Bring Back the Beaver Campaign: advocacy and education about California beavers, a keystone species which plays an important role in watershed restoration and healthy ecosystems. Plus, these fascinating creatures are really cute!

This program is part of Planet People Project, a proactive series about building resilient communities and ecosystems. For more information: https://tinyurl.com/y9yprdpt

Northwest Regional Library

150 Coddingtown Ctr, Santa Rosa, California 95401

Readers and water drinkers everywhere should be there! Also people who would like very much to still have salmon and not burn down.

HOW YOU KNOW YOU’VE ARRIVED

heidi08 Beavers, Who's blaming beavers now? February 26, 2019

So yesterday we received a donation from Mary O’brien, which happened when she asked about our Ecosystem poster and I said we’d send some right away. There are VERY few things more affirming than receiving a donation from the woman that pretty much single-handedly inspired me to do this work in the first place. It was 2009 that I read what I still consider the most important beaver article ever written in High Country News and it was SO long ago that it wasn’t even by Ben Goldfarb. (Sorry Ben.)

Voyage of the Dammed

Even with a tall wooden cross mounted on the wall behind her, Mary O’Brien doesn’t look like a typical preacher. In her blue cardigan and jeans, a single heavy braid falling like a gray rope down her back, she paces slowly from side to side, telling her listeners that we are worshipping a false landscape.

I was so star struck by the article that when I went to my first beaver conference I remember busily SCANNING the crowd for that thick grey braid to see which one was her. It turned out there were far too many grey braids to count – (some of them on the men). Plus it turned out she had cut hers off by then. But she was genuinely happy to strike up a conversation anyway, and that’s how we first met. Here she is at one of our early festivals photographing the children’s tiles on the bridge.

Mary’s an amazing and powerful woman, who is very patient with the many competing and stubborn voices in Utah. She’s also not afraid to tell people what to do or ask for help when its useful. I agree with her that this is a really cool poster. My favorite part is that it makes people smarter when all they do have to look at it. Coyote studios did a wonderful job with my idea and the quote from Alex Riley. It was a joint effort.

Well there many be more sources of beaver wisdom that there used to, but there’s still plenty of beaver stupid to go around. Here’s a little slice from North Carolina.

Mayor says beavers may be to blame for damage to Cary road

Cary, N.C. — Beavers may be behind a dip that has recently developed on Green Level Church Road in Cary, according to Mayor Harold Weinbrecht.

IWeinbrecht said it appears as though a group of beavers has built a dam inside two 72-inch storm pipes that run beneath the road, which likely led to issues with the pavement.

Beavers are SO useful to mayors! Think about it. Whether you’re blamed for a pothole or a power outage or a warehouse fire beavers offer the handy excuse and get-out-of-jail-free that card city officials need most. Surely it wasn’t due to Cary’s shoddy workmanship or anything like that.

Just like it wasn’t Martinez fault when the creek bank started eroding because all they did was put in topsoil near a flood plain.

Blaming the beavers is a civic treasure, Politicians should love beavers. There should probably be a national holiday.

CELEBRATING BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers February 25, 2019

Cheryl sent out notices for our beaver festival yesterday. Which means it’s definitely happening and I’m fully entitled to panic now. Feel free to join in or plan now to be implored for assistance. I was relieved yesterday to see that we’re not the only ones celebrating beavers.

Great Swamp Conservancy celebrates beavers

Canastota, N.Y. — Each year, the Great Swamp Conservancy honors a native animal, and 2019 is the Year of the Beaver (Castor canadensis) because these residents of the GSC are essential to the wetland complex.

To kick off this year, on March 9 at 2 p.m., an educational nonprofit called Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife (BWW) will trek from Dodgeville over to the Great Swamp to teach about a species that builds the land’s best life support system.

This keystone species doesn’t adapt to its surroundings like most; rather, it alters and creates a habitat that aids in their survival and the survival of other species in the area. BWW believes beavers are an important ally in solving the earth’s major environmental problems.

Guests are invited to come to the swamp to receive expert advice on how to coexist with nature’s most intuitive engineers. Tickets may be purchased at the door for $4 for nonmembers and $3 for members.

Excellent! I’d be thrilled to come listen to Sharon and Owen talk about beavers! I would be delighted if 2019 was the year of the beaver in every state and Canada. Wistful sigh. We’ll get there eventually I think. I mean after we celebrate the year of the pig and the rat you’d think we’d even get to beaver.

I was very pleased to read this article from Oklahoma of a landowner who was actually happy to have beaver settle into his land. Yes happy!

The World Around You: Young beaver finds a new home at a small pond

It’s about time David John had some water in his pond up by Skiatook. It was dry most of the summer, and in a way that makes the latest development at the pond that much more interesting.

It’s an expert developer. A young beaver.

Nobody knows how to collect and save water like a beaver, although even they can be chased out by drought.

February and March are dispersal months for beavers in Oklahoma. A number of things might cause a beaver to leave its colony, but youngsters often are pushed out to make room for the next litter.

My goodness. I didn’t see that coming. Joy at a beaver arrival in the Sooner state, Well, well, well. Of course the columnist has to repeat the story about beavers being pushed out which we know they are not, but still. That’s pretty nice to read from that part of the world.

Remarkable engineers, they are famous — or infamous, depending on your situation — for using sticks and mud to build dams or stop the flow of any trickle of water escaping the stretch of water where they want to live. Anyone who has waded through a marsh or other wetland has stumbled across — or into — the systems of canals the beavers clear and travel to connect deeper pools and expand their range.

It’s always interesting when a beaver arrives because something is bound to be developed.

I was entirely hopeful when I read this article until I looked at the photo. That sure looks like a kit to me. I wrote the reporter in alarm saying I didn’t think that was a disperser who moved in but an orphan who’s parents had been lost or killed. She thanked me for my concerns and assured me that the beaver was older than it appeared in this photo and was building a lodge. Hmm. Maybe I’m crazy.

Lord knows beavers aren’t generally safe anywhere in the state so this one has a better chance than most, right?

This was a nice little film from Scotland – all of 5 minutes with a fine shout out to beaver. If you need something peaceful on your monday morning I’d start with this.

BEAVERS : THE NEXT GENERATION

heidi08 Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? February 24, 2019

In keeping with our only good news Sunday theme, I thought I’d share this very convincing essay Molly Foley penned after attending her first ever State of the Beaver Conference. Molly is the next generation of beaver supporters and will be here to do this work long after we’re gone.

Here’s what I have to tell you people about beavers. Beavers shaped this country, and the wildlife that co-evolved with them for milions of years. Want to know why our birds, fish amphibians, and insect populations are plummeting? Loss of habitat. About half of endangered species rely on wetlands. When we decimated beavers during the fur trade, then drained the land for agriculture and development, we sentenced our ecosystem to death.

Beavers, humble creatures they are, can re-create that habitat. Its not just the Coho salmon and the red legged frog that need beavers either. From a self interested human point of view, WE NEED BEAVERS TOO. In the west, beaver ponds are helping to store water on the landscapecharge ground water, provide fire breaks and habitat

refuge. In the east beaver ponds provide flood protection and improve water quality.

So if you are lucky enough to be graced with beaver in your neck of the woods, I beg you, let them be! We have a blooming field of professionals prepared to non-lethally handle any beaver problem you might have, whether its to keep the flow going, or prevent loss of trees. There are solutions. Killing them isnt a long term solution because there will be new ones to take their place. Be smart monkeys and learn to co-exist.

Well said Molly! I’m so glad you’ve been thoroughly bitten by the beaver bug. We first met when she was taking the California Naturalist Course in Santa Rosa and presenting on the Martinez Beavers. She swung by the festival last year and then made her way to the conference this year. Beaver acolyte! Hmm, just asking but do you want to inherit a festival and website when I die?

As if that wasn’t wonderful enough, Ben was back on the radio yesterday talking about saltwater beavers in “Living on Earth” where he did another amazing job. It’s a very fine listen but for my money the best part is at the beginning where host Bobby Bascomb’s four year old is delightfully searching for “Beavehr twees”.

I’ve always been a sucker for four.

Saltwater Beavers Bring Life Back to Estuaries

Until recently, biologists assumed that beavers occupied freshwater ecosystems only. But scientists are now studying beavers living in brackish water and how they help restore degraded estuaries and provide crucial habitat for salmon, waterfowl, and many other species. Journalist Ben Goldfarb speaks with Host Bobby Bascomb.

What will I ever do when these Ben-terviews about beavers stop rolling delightfully onto my doorstep? I can’t even imagine that dark hour but I know it’s coming. He is already working on his next book, which is not about beavers, or not solely about beavers. Shudder. Let me not think on’t!

Today let’s end with two wonderful donations from Sparrow Avenue in Toronto. Barbara crafts original textiles and silkscreens and was my first generous YES in this year’s asking for beaver donation. Her enthusiasm gave me the courage to keep asking other poor souls. She donated an adorable little coin purse AND a pillow from her incredible store. Thank you Barbara!