Burocrat Beaver Believers

Yesterday’s important feel started with the airport security we had to go through to reach our towering destination. Riley lead us to the 15th floor conference room, where I set up the presentation, some books and our brochures and water-saver stickers. Members trickled in from three doors at corners of the room, starting with two young environmental scientists who had come just for the talk, a woman from the SF EPA who wanted to catch it, the woman who reviewed all the huge water grants for the northern rivers, the woman next to me who handled all the mercury work for the streams,  a man who worked with Napa flood control and new all about their beavers, and a woman who was especially interested in species predation at the pond and wondered whether all the wildlife we drew meant the fish were unprotected because of the beaver dams. There were about 20 in all and they took up the entire table and were a rapt audience, bursting at the seams with questions that I could barely contain to get through my material.

I knew things were going our way though, when the fellow involved with Napa Flood Control interrupted after the part about Skip installing a flow device that has controlled pond height since 2008 and said “how much did it cost?” I answered at that time there were no experts trained in this on the west coast, no  DVD’s or books to teach us how to do it, so we had to pay to bring in an expert from Vermont which was costly. But that materials cost us around 500 dollars. He loudly scoffed, that’s NOTHING! and clearly meant, why doesn’t every city do this? Which I took as a very good sign so early in the presentation.

There was laughter in the right places and awwws where we’ve come to expect them. And more questions when the whole thing was over. One question in particular about my child psychology background and did that play out in our work at the festival. Whose clever idea was the Keystone Charm Bracelet for instance? (beam)  The mood was very appreciative and the talk well-received. They spoke among themselves that they needed to add beaver policy to their new stream plan for the area, so that when beavers arrived they would already have policy in place. There was special interest in the depredation map and what it could tell us about population in general. Someone suggested if growth rate could be analyzed so that the time of their expansion into San Francisco could be predicted. Afterwards Riley said privately it was the best presentation they had had all year, but more importantly she could see the folks she knew to be skeptics at the beginning were smiling beaver believers at the end. She said it was exactly what she hoped for.

It was a very successful day. Jon stalwartly carried materials and shuttled the car back and forth in downtown Oakland. He defended us in the downpour, and gallantly gave me champagne at the end of the day. He said it felt like the most important talk I had given yet.

News in the broader beaver world seems impervious to our success: a mountain of articles saying beavers (and ground squirrels, seriously?) cause global warming, another tail bounty offered in North Carolina, and a New Jersey man on the water who wants the city to pay to wrap his trees because all that nature is ruining his view. But lets not get bogged down in these relatively unimportant stories. And less focus instead on success at spreading the beaver gospel to particularly powerful ears.

Great footage this morning from beaver friends in Holland. If you don’t think beaver lives are dangerous just watch this narrow escape.