Category: Attitudes towards beavers

Back when the beavers first came to Martinez I imagined all kinds of happy endings with cheerful cookouts where former adversaries drank a beer with me and smile about a job well done. I dreamed that some day this would all be over and I could stop fighting for beavers because everyone would  be on the same side. We’d laugh over how crazy things had gotten, braid each other’s hair and talk like old friends. I even listened to this song over and over again:

But then the city wouldn’t vote to keep the beavers even though Skip’s device was obviously working, and then there was the sheetpile and the court case and the mother beaver became ill and staff pulled up all the trees we had permission to plant and then there was never a time for a victory party. Because there was never a “Victory” per se.

And I realized the beaver battle wasn’t something you won, it was just something you prevented losing if you were very lucky by using Endless Pressure Endlessly applied. Forever. Rinse and repeat.

So yesterday when I attended the zoom lecture of Ben’s new book with secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot I wondered if there’d be any mention of the battle or even a slight allusion to his first book. Did they even read it at CDFW? I used to fantasize about emailing every member a copy.

I mean we all know you can lead a horse to water. But you can’t make it think differently about beavers.

Or can you?

I literally started crying when I realized that the minds at CDFW had actually read and responded to Ben’s masterful book which meant that they were intimately acquainted with the story of the Martinez Beavers which meant that OUR beavers and the wonderful family they raised and the heroic original matriarch we lost were an essential ingredient in the very special recipe that changed California’s mind on beavers.

There is another such exchange about the book DIRECTLY WITH CHUCK BONHAM at the end. More crying. by me. It’s great interview and lots of information about connectivity which is important. You should watch. But I was watching because privately I wondered if they had been affected by Ben’s other book and I was not disappointed.

And at the days end I got a copy of this in the mail which is this issue of Outdoor the official CDFW magazine with a six page article about beavers and how good they are and I realized we had finally hit critical mass in California. There were so many people who knew the right things about beavers it was a different world forever.

Okay. Maybe we’re not in Kansas anymore. But I’m keeping the pressure on just in case.

Hey guess what Columbia has to say about beavers?

Discover Beaver Power: Restoring Watersheds with Nature’s Engineers

From Sense of Place:

By Sarah Fox

Hood River, Ore. November 6, 2023 — Sense of Place, will feature Beaver Power: Teaming Up with Nature’s Engineers to Restore Our Watersheds on November, 15th, 2023. This event will be offered in person at the Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River, Oregon, and via livestream.

The Pacific Northwest has long been a region where the coexistence of humans and beavers has shaped both the landscape and humans’ understanding of ecological systems, but the history is complicated. In Oregon, the Beaver State, beavers are considered a predatory species, and wide-scale trapping in the Pacific Northwest nearly extirpated them in the mid-1800s. In modern times, beavers can quickly wreak havoc by downing trees and flooding roads and property. However fresh research is revealing the ways that beavers can offer innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges. From mitigating wildfires and addressing the impacts of climate change, to actively participating in landscape restoration and promoting biodiversity. Margaret Neuman and Jeanette Burkhardt will dig into this history and explore how these industrious creatures are emerging as unexpected partners in a more sustainable future.

So I guess Canyonville isn’t the only part of Oregon that will be buzzing with beaver benefits over the next week or so. Good, It is called the beaver state after all.

As the Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Fisheries, Margaret Neuman has been a key part of growing the organization from a small start-up to an important regional partner in salmon recovery in Central Washington. Under Margaret’s leadership, Mid-Columbia Fisheries has implemented more than 90 salmon habitat restoration projects since 2005. The group also reaches more than 2,000 school students annually with field-based conservation education programs. Margaret has more than 30 years of experience in watershed restoration, including organizational, grant, and program management. Margaret helped found the Wishpush Working Group in 2018 and is excited about the benefits beavers provide in improving watershed conditions for fish, wildlife, and people. Margaret loves being in nature and is grateful to call the Columbia River Gorge home.

Jeanette Burkhardt has been working in Fisheries and Natural Resources in the Columbia Gorge for 20 years, the last 18 as a watershed planner for the Yakama Nation at the intersection of policy, planning, restoration, and education. Since 2018, she has been involved in the Wishpush Working Group, working towards more beaver-ful and resilient watersheds in the Tribe’s Southern Territories. As a self-professed plant nerd and admirer of the natural world, she has a personal and professional passion for letting nature do the work—supporting natural processes as they help us recover our impaired ecosystems and the species that depend on them.

Beaverful. Now that’s a word I like. America the Beaverful.