I had a strange beaver day yesterday. In the morning the ‘fact-checker’ from Bay Nature called to verify some quotes about the Oakley beaver dam. Apparently a big article is coming in the magazine about the improvements to Marsh Creek. The beaver dam is a little side note of the restoration work they are doing. But it’s important to me that Oakley doesn’t get credit for those beavers, because they killed them, you know. So I verified and apparently will be quoted. Good.
Anyway while I was chatting with the fact checker I mentioned that the habitat wing of CDFW advised that the beavers NOT be removed, but the depredation permit was granted anyway because those two sides never NEVER communicate. The fact-checker laughed and said she knew all about that from a native plant perspective. She talked about the beautiful Douglas Iris of Pt Reyes and how they are actually classified as ‘invasive’ because cows don’t eat them. Ranchers can object to them because they keep grasses from growing that cows would prefer.
Imagine!!! Who goes to Pt Reyes to take a photo of themselves with cows? I ask you?
Anyway when I exclaimed at this she said, “I’ve been so impressed with your work over the years and just wanted to let you know. I was actually at the festival tabling with Barbara at the Gardening for butterflies booth.”
Which was a little…small worldy…nice…disconcerting…weird…Bay Nature of course is the naturalist bible for the Bay Area and I treasure the little snippet they did on our beavers so much its in the scrapbook. And if you’re thinking, hey, I remember the otter issue, and the salmon issue, and the poppy issue but I don’t remember any issue of bay nature with beavers on the cover – (not just the Martinez beavers, mind you) – but ANY BEAVERS. You’d be right about the little thorn in my side all these years. I guess they think all that great habitat for the bays nature comes from the Army Corps of Engineers. But still, it was nice to think my beaver efforts have still been noticed by anyone. Even nicer to think Bay Nature will some day call me if they ever side to rectify that historic mistake.
The rest of the day was kind of like that. The reporter from the New Mexico forest article wrote to thank me for my nice review and confer about beavers and forests and fires. She’s planning another article on beavers through her work at Wild Earth Guardians. The I chatted more with the woman in Solano county who wants to save her beavers. Cheryl’s coming out after work to check it out and photograph. Next I got a request from author Frances Backhouse to sign a release to allow my image of dad carrying the kit to be included in her new children’s book. Then I noticed that Mike Callahan dropped this video of his presentation in Connecticut and we conferred about the thumbnail.
That’s a pretty wide net of beaver contact for a day. Just saying. Oh the places you’ll go!
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