The first job, at the very start of all the other jobs, is to get folks interested and curious about beavers. If you can start them asking questions they will unquestionably start finding out the information, especially now when news of beaver benefits are so glutted in the papers and press they are even arguing about it on reddit and the comment sections of local rags.
That’s what happened in Martinez. First people got interested. First I got interested. Curious. Eager to see more. Film more. Learn more. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Yesterday someone I didn’t know, Sarah Foster of Pittsburg, sent me a google drive of images she had taken the night before of a beaver in the Marina there. Seems the area had been closed due to storms and the beaver was making a meal of the washed up bitshof water hyacinth, eichhornia crassipes.
It’s a non native floating weed that may or may not be toxic, depending on who you speak to. But once upon a time CDFW said that beavers in California were non native so who knows? I know they spend a ton of money getting rid of it in the delta and by coincidence they also spend a ton of money getting rid of beavers in the delta too.
Huh, that’s quite a coincidence.
