MARTINEZ BECOMES A BEAVER MURAL TOWN

heidi08 Beavers June 30, 2020

We all know that famous beaver painting downtown tagged by Tim Hon of Illuminaries a few years ago. Well when he was offered the job he was considering two possible spaces, the ac shop near green street and the wall on the edge of Cases on Bush street. He asked me to to look into the legality of both because he didn’t want to go through the trouble if it would just have to be painted over.

It turns out that the wall on Bush street is actually in unincorporated Martinez, just over the city limit line, so that meant it needed no city approval. BUT it needed county approval. And when I checked with the county we were told the area of proposed work would require a permit at the neat price of 25oo dollars. Apparently the area is zoned for color coordination and in order to not match the colors you have to pay a fine.

Given that Tim and the owner didn’t have an extra 2500 laying around he chose not to paint there. And we all know and love where he did paint anyway so that worked out fine. Apparently the owner still wanted a beaver mural and didn’t care too much about following rules. Because this suddenly showed up yesterday.

As you can see it is a beaver in a space helmet and signed by the unknown-to-me artist Sue Movs, It’s a fun image and make an unnoticed space very memorable. We never talked and I knew nothing about it. Of course if we had talked I would have given her many fine photos so that her finished painting looked a bit less like an OTTER, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers. And sure, otters in space, why not?

I have tried without success to find out more about the artist. I will let you know i I learn anything. One of thing I BEGGED Tim to do accurately was beaver teeth, and I promised he would be famous being the only muralists that gets them right. Bottoms show and top does not.

You can see that worked.

MARKING THE DAY GRANDLY IN SLO

Never fear that June 27 came and went without a beaver festival. Actions to educate people and save beavers are happening in little ways all across the state. And this still happened in San Luis Obispo.

Today is a great day! I’ve been (safely, distanced + mask + outdoors) meeting so many amazing people and getting to talk about my favorite thing: beavs!

If you want to chat with me about beavs in Central or Southern California, my contact info is on my website: emilyfairfaxscience.com

Planning to do more socially distanced, mask on pond visits in the future both here and down on the Santa Ynez. Keep your eyes out for more info!

That’s right. That was Emily Fairfax leading a beaver tour on the day. And she’s wearing the very same beaver mask that I have. Because honestly, what else would suffice?

Audrey of the San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade gathered folks together and was kind enough to remember what day it was.

It was a great day! Thank you Emily for sharing so much beaver knowledge to our county and getting folks excited about beavers here. I think we have a few more Beaver Believers after yesterday. Heidi Perryman, we honored your Beaver Festival date even with a cancelled festival!

Oh and something to keep your spirits up while taking a beaver hike in a mask. And here’s the soundtrack if you need a reminder. [wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://youtu.be/xDWAGyl3-8o” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=200 videoheight=100 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

BEAVERS RUIN THING FOR THE BETTER

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact June 28, 2020

Beavers make strange bedfellow. Sometimes the very farmers that once trapped are suddenly glad for all that water they save. Sometimes a nation that is braced for the worst finds themselves saying nice things about their ecosystem services.

Take Finland for instance.

Study: Beavers Transform Forests into Wetlands Over Many Decades

By cutting trees, digging canals, and building dams, beaver colonies shape their forest dwellings in ways that transform flooding patterns, the local food chain, and the structure and size of nearby waterways. But these effects, in the long run, often are beneficial for stormwater management and water quality. The flooding results in huge swaths of new wetland habitat over many years.

Did you catch that? Beaver do all this bad stuff like ruining trees and making floods but gosh darn, Sometimes, if you squint. and study it over a really really REALLY long time, it’s almost like they make things better.

Go figure.

A new study from University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu) and University of Helsinki (Finland) researchers, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, explores these long-term shifts over nearly 50 years.

“The spread of the beaver in our study area has created a diverse and constantly changing mosaic of beaver ponds and beaver meadows of different ages,” said lead study author Sonja Kivinen, a University of Eastern Finland environmental geographer, in a release. “Beavers can help to restore wetland ecosystems and entire boreal forests, and they also help in conserving the biodiversity of these environments.”

Get the hell out. Are you sitting there with your laser pointer telling me that beavers actually IMPROVE the environment? That’s just crazy. Next you’ll be saving the do some kind of SERVICE for the entire ecosystem. Just how gullible do you think I am?

In 1970, just over a decade after the beavers’ reintroduction to Evo, the region contained only six sites that became prone to flooding as a result of beaver activity. By 2018, that number had jumped to 69 sites, with an average of 13 new flood sites per decade, the researchers estimate. As the beaver population dispersed throughout the forest, many of these sites became interconnected, effectively creating new wetland habitats.

The research team, comprising ecologists from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Helsinki, combined historical data about flooding and beaver distribution with spatial analysis techniques and aerial imagery to study the effects of beavers on flooding over nearly 50 years.

BEAVER HEROES AND BEAVER DETECTIVES

heidi08 Beavers June 27, 2020

Saturday morning, up at dawn. This should be beaver festival day. I should be hardly able to sleep. Not having coffee because there isn’t time. Getting the parking signs into the car to drop off. Instead I am listening to the crazy robin in my backyard who has routinely wakened me since April.

There will be no beaver festival this yearf Vide

Needing distraction I tried out a new toy, the free trial of VideoScribe, a whiteboard animation program from the UK. I think it will not be my new best friend, but it was fun to play with for a day. See for yourself.

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Meanwhile there was excellent news from the National Wildlife Federation Blog. And one of my favorite finds, a beaver imposter in the video. See if you can spot him!

Make Way for Beavers

Project lead Elissa Chott (Clark Fork Coalition) discusses installation with Park Manager Mike Kustudia. Photo by Sarah Bates

Enthusiasm for beavers and their role as ecopartners is growing! Why? They are nature’s original engineers, deftly creating new riparian habitat and healthy streams. But sometimes beavers need a little redirection, especially when their dams create flooding where we don’t want water, such as low-lying roadways or bridges.

To capitalize on beavers’ intuitive talents and to guide their good work in Council Grove State Park near Missoula, Montana, we recently collaborated with state wildlife managers and conservation partners to install a customized wire-frame structure to prevent beavers from damming a culvert under an access road. This allowed park managers and neighboring landowners to continue to reap the benefits of beavers who are busy in the area, and at the same time prevent beavers from flooding the park’s main access road.

Watch how we did it:

Excellent work, team beaver! I am SO happy when NWF invests time and energy and column space in beavers. But I’m not above giving them a hard time. Okay beaver detectives! Find that imposter!

[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://youtu.be/9zhKr-6bHJI” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

Got it? The first tiny nosed animal swimming back with some hard earned grasses in tow is a muskrat. Those would have to be grass blades from the pleisticine era. And that body is just wayyyyyyyyyyyyy to wiggly, even underwater, for a beaver.

Still credit where credit is due. We are always happy when people go out of their way to save beaver habitat. And lord knows the muskrats and the frogs and the herons are happy too. Great work team Clark Fork!

Park managers pound the corner posts to secure the culvert fence. Photo by Sarah Bates

Thanks to a collaborative partnership between the Clark Fork Coalition, National Wildlife Federation, and Defenders of Wildlife, expert assistance is now available to public and private landowners seeking non-lethal approaches to manage beaver activity.

Together we can build greater tolerance for beavers on our landscape by reducing beaver conflicts and increasing awareness of the many benefits of beaver activity.

Thanks to Britt Faulkner (Defenders of Wildlife) for creating this video for our project team!

Yes thanks Britt for giving us a pleasant diversion on a wistful morning. Let’s try this whole thing again next year. And see if beavers are not pushed off the stage by viruses yet again.

Fingers crossed.

12th Martinez Beaver Festival 2019. Photo by Cheryl Reynolds 6/29/19.

THE DAY BEFORE CANCELLED

heidi08 Beavers June 26, 2020

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It’s Friday before the festival that will never be. I got a call yesterday from the portapottie that I UNHIRED three months ago. I keep thinking I’ve forgotten things that need undoing. But there’s no hope for it now. We cancelled the vendors, the tables, the exhibitors, the musicians. If someone shows up tomorrow anyway they will get the idea eventually.

I’m just sad that I don’t get to spend the entire day with Amy watching her do this.

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