Category: Beaver Art

THE ART OF SAVING BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Art May 18, 2019

Yesterday an ancient oak split off a third of itself downtown and fell on two telephone polls (and several cars) severing power for all of Martinez for a very long while. This meant no internet, no lights and playing scrabble by the fire which Jon won by a cool 16 points. Power was restored by bedtime, which works out because I had become obsessed by trying to find information about this artist.

Not only is this piece gorgeous – it is accurate! Look at the inset text in the corner.

Apparently it’s by Fiona Bearclaw, an artist who attended the state of the beaver conference and lives in Oregon. This is a linocut that she recently made and hasn’t even made many prints yet. Isn’t it amazing? The beavers are beautiful and the intricate work amazing I was not surprised to learn she was at the beaver festival. Apparently Fiona has an Etsy shop offering a few other amazing pieces and is also a talented embroiderer and artist.

Her partner is also an artist (Lance E. Pants) because he’s the one who posted the image on facebook and when I asked specifically about the text told me they had been to the beaver conference and were both inspired by what they heard.. I was significantly fan-girled and asked him a million questions about the her. Knowing that the conference was hosted by the Cow Creek tribe and having attended several opening ceremonies and morning blessings given by tribal members I asked about her name. Fiona Bearclaw. Was she herself a member of the tribe?

His answer makes me laugh even now if i think about it, and I dare say will probably never stop being funny. I can’t help hearing it delivered in a very matter-of-fact way in my head by the character Ed Chigliak from Northern Exposure.

“No,” he said. “She’s just very fond of the pastry.”

Now as if this story wasn’t good enough, here’s the very best part. Lance said that she would be selling at an art show this weekend in Weeds, and I when i said how very much her work would be appreciated in Martinez he said they had actually thought about coming to the beaver festival!

Thinking about that I realized I wasn’t at this conference plugging the festival like I usually do, but Ben Goldfarb and his book were and Sarah Koenisberg’s film on climate change included an interview about Martinez and the festival in it, so I guess that might have peaked their curiosity.

Fingers crossed this can come to pass. Now just in case you don’t know what a huge ordeal it is to do a linocut, watch this short video and gain some respect for the 19th century technique based on the 13th century woodcutting developed in china.

WATER AND SOIL ILLUSTRATION DISTRICT

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver ecological impact May 5, 2019

The other day I was looking for illustrations of beaver ponds and found this in a tweet from east Multnomah water and soil conservation district.

Beaver ponds help water and wildlife in a variety of ways! The ponds help clean, cool and slow water, and create habitat & food for insects, amphibians, birds and more! See more details in the replies to this thread! Illustration by our own Jon Wagner. #beavers #wildlife

I like these images very much so of course i looked him up. It turns out that when they say ‘one of our own’ they aren’t kidding. Jon Wagner is a freelance illustrator that also happens to work for the water and soil district – because, Portland. There’s a lot going on in this image. Lets take a closer look, shall we?

Hmmm I wonder if Mr. Wagner has ever done any urban beaver drawings, you know like the community gathering around to watch and the wildlife showing up near a concrete channel like we saw here in Martinez?

Excuse me, I have an email to send.

SCARED STRAIGHT: (BEAVER VERSION)

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Art April 16, 2019

When I lay dying, probably sooner than I’d like, surrounded by strangers and IV drips, I’m likely going to remember four important things: That I helped a few special children make a path through horrific pain, that I picked the right husband and was lucky he picked me, that I helped convince our city to let 27 kits be born in Alhambra Creek and that in my own tiny way I encouraged men and women across the continent to try this also.

Like Steve Straight in Connecticut who closed his comments to the South Windsor city council last night with these incredible remarks:

Instead of wasting more money and time killing beavers nearly every year going forward, I would like to suggest that we follow the expert’s recommendations. I call on the Town Council to stop any trapping of beavers now, and to work instead toward coexistence with the next beavers, and to let the citizens of South Windsor enjoy these fascinating creatures as they go about their work creating a tremendous ecosystem that harms no one.

Let’s be clear: The beavers are not going away. And by the way, neither am I.

Powerful, awesome last line, Steve. You are, without a doubt, the single best thing that will ever happen to beavers in South Windsor. You can’t imagine how much this matters, to the community, to the council, to the next hopeful person who will try to follow in your footsteps. I’m so grateful our paths crossed and that you were ready to take up the beaver gauntlet.

Great victory after great pain.

Meanwhile there are plenty other things to be proud of in our beaver hall of fame. Like the beaver ambassadors stellar work in their promotional video for friday night’s premier of Sarah Koenisberg’s film on beavers and climate change.

The teen group is organized and inspired by Esteban Murschel who has been hard at work for two years trying to build a community interest around beavers in West Linn Oregon. He drove down for our festival in 2015 and would have come last year but for the very timely birth of his first son!

Something tells me that this friday the performance auditorium is going to be packed.

Fantastic performance! It is so fun to see you celebrate beavers and use all these talents on their behalf. I especially love your matching ‘portland weather uniforms’ (rain jacket and jeans). You couldn’t have picked a better song.

Although I’m not sure I could have avoided tinkering with the lyrics a little.

A watershed, a watershed
A watershed, a watershed
A watershed, a watershed
A watershed, a watershed

In the river
the peaceful river
the beaver swims tonight

With the fishes
And frogs and heron
the beaver swims tonight

We-e-e-e we’re the engineers
We-e-e-e we’re the engineers

IMMERSED IN BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? April 13, 2019

I just realized that one of the things I love about this photo is that the way it’s taken makes Amy look like she’s IN the beaver pond, part of the scenery. Maybe like she’s just about to help that beaver build a dam when she’s done drawing. Amy-and-her-purple-crayon kinda thing.

Isn’t that just beautiful? The photo was taken lovingly by her husband who knows full well how to capture her beautiful creations. I am eager to see what she designs this year. Stay tuned because the premiere is due to come out very soon!

In other news about being up close at a beaver pond, we have a snippet about Skip Lisle leading an earth day beaver walk from the Bennington Banner.

Outdoors News in Brief

WILTON, N.Y.

Earth Day Beaver Education Program

To celebrate the 49th Earth Day on Monday, April 22, Wilton Wildlife Preserve & Park and Saratoga PLAN are teaming up to offer a nature walk that is all about the largest rodent in North America, New York State’s official animal; the Beaver!

Environmental Educators from the Preserve & Park will be joining with nationally renowned beaver expert, Skip Lisle to lead this family-oriented walk. The walk will leave from the Meadowbrook Parking area of the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail and explore the wetland habitats that are created and maintained by this fascinating animal.

Participants will learn about the importance of the beaver to the exploration and settlement of our region, about its natural history, about how it is one of the few animals to be able to manipulate the environment to create its own habitat, and about the efforts that Saratoga PLAN has gone through to help keep the beavers as residents of the Bog Meadow wetlands. Space is limited and registration is required by April 18.

I want to go! That sounds amazing! Touring beaver habitat with Skip Lisle sounds like the perfect thing to do on Earth Day. Oddly that was something I never go to do in Martinez. He was a little intimidated by the attentive beaver public. And we didn’t know him well enough back then talk him into going down to watch the beavers – although we did have him over for a spaghetti dinner because I was hoping to keep him from lowering the dam too much.

Something tells me he would have been delighted to see a community watching beavers together.

Not sure yet of the best beaver-y way to celebrate your earth day this year? There’s an upcoming beaver management online course featuring Jakob Shockey of Beaver State Wildlife Solutions. I know it’s not the same as being at a beaver pond with Skip, but Jakob was trained by Mike Callahan who was trained by Skip, so its almost the same thing. The class is free but you need to sign up in advance for this webinar:

Ecosystem Restoration Deep Dive with Jakob Shockey: Collaborating with Beaver for Ecosystem Restoration

Jakob Shockey is an expert in riparian ecosystem restoration and beaver ecology, restoration, and conflict mitigation. He is the Restoration Program Manager for the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council in Oregon, and the owner of the wildlife conflict mitigation company, Beaver State Wildlife Solutions.

In this deep dive, we will hear of the keystone role that beaver play in ecosystem function in the northern hemisphere. We’ll also hear how their eradication has disrupted ecology and hydrology, and how their reintroduction has led to restoration of these ecosystem functions.

While the beaver’s collaboration is invaluable as we seek to restore ecosystem function, often their hydrological designs conflict with our land use and infrastructure. Jakob will also discuss various conflicts that commonly arise, often leading to dead beavers, and how he and others mitigate these conflicts with innovative methods, enabling the beaver to stay in place and repopulate without flooded basements and blocked culverts.

When: Apr 23, 2019 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

BEAVER FESTIVITIES

heidi08 Beaver Art March 17, 2019

Let’s have another good news Sunday, shall we? Starting with the upcoming beaver festival which is shaping up in ever direction. Event Insurance, check. Folkmanis donation, check. Bay Nature ad, check. And this week I put together the children’s map that will help them find the “Key to the waters” for our treasure hunt, just in time for a special flash sale from Vista Print who made the cards for 50 percent less. The idea is that pieces of the map will be given at each participating exhibit, and when the kids get all 8 they can assemble them at the “map-making” booth and read the secret message on the back which will tell them where to find the key.

The participating exhibits will be marked with these signs:

We were happy to see our leftover tattoos worked excellently on those wood signs, one of the perks of doing this gig over and over for the past 12 years is that you have lots of supplies! I won’t show you the clue the kids decode just yet because there has to be a little surprise left over for the wedding night, right?

Anyway, we’ve been marching on with donations. And recently picked up a doozy. This comes all the way from Lutsk in the Ukraine. Ann Billit makes these striking decals with all kinds of images of wildlife, in fact we’ve seen some others driving around they’re so popular. So imagine how surprised I was to find this one:

Which of course was a shock not only because it was a beaver, but because it was OUR beaver, from Cheryl’s wonderful photo of or 2009 yearling.

Which when I cheerfully mentioned to Ann she generously donated a large number of decals in several sizes to the silent auction where you can pick up yours this June. If you can’t wait that long, or you want to check out her other wildlife options for your trunk, visit the Wawoo shop on Esty and see the other wonders she has to offer.

Thank you Ann!

I was also delighted to see recently on facebook a sketch that our good friend, scientist, farmer and beaver defender Derek Gow from Devon England had done for an upcoming activity. Apparently the plan was to let various child artists help him color it in. I had no idea he was such a talented artist, so I immediately asked him to think about donating something to the silent auction. To which he said it was the least he could do and he would be happy to. He’s working on it now, but here’s the sketch that caught my eye: