Did someone say you were throwing a party for me?

heidi08 Beaver Art, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? August 11, 2017

You know how things sometimes happen when you least expect them? Well, yesterday we saw the city workers in Susanna street parking checking out something in the creek so we wondered what it was and went to have a look. We’d been noticing that the water seemed to be backing up a bit and meant to investigate but with the Festival and all we never got around to it. Guess what we saw yesterday? Go ahead, guess.

It is right in the bend in the creek and impossible to easily see either from the Susanna Street bridge or from the Henrietta Street end. But if you climb on something tall and crane your neck around the corner you will see an overgrown incised stream with a tiny little dam being started. And some of the wood appears to have beaver chews on it. The beaver itself is obviously a little loner or a poor planner because if he had any friends at all he would take out that leaning tree and let it fall on the dam to get things started in a big way!

sbdam — *Little dam behind Susanna street park: Susan Berg photo*

The funny thing is someone at the festival said they saw a beaver the morning of the festival near Starbucks, but we chalked it up to the crazy things you hear from people that you shouldn’t get excited about. Now we wonder if it might have been true. Jon looked several times last night and saw no beaver, and Susan and her grandkids came down to check it out with no luck either. But who knows? It certainly is a beaver dam, whether the builder is still around remains to be seen. Here’s a little map if you want to do your own snooping.

And in case you wondered, it’s about a block from my house, which is just neat.

Susan and her granddaughters originally came to get journal making supplies because they missed the festival because of a family reunion. I asked them to earn their journals by recording the audio for the film I might make about the project. If you want to hear bright cheerful girls talking about how beavers benefit the ecosystem, take a listen to these three minutes. They gave me lots to work with so hopefully I will be able to clip it together and make some great audio for the film.

Meanwhile, I was working on this yesterday form the idea Steve Murschel from West Linn Oregon gave me about playing ‘pin the beaver on the keystone‘ with children at our forest service event next month. I’m thinking it will be a nice way to teach kids about the idea of a keystone species and how beavers help the ecosystem. What do you think?

From Silicon Valley to the Saltscapes

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Art, Beaver News, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Festival, History, Who's saving beavers now? August 1, 2017

Apparently San Jose’s beavers get a mural too!

Family of beavers moves to Los Gatos Creek for first time in 170 years

Remember this is for the CREEK coalition, so the idea of a beaver is less important than the idea of water, which I think is accurately reflected in this toothy mural. But I love the size of this mural. Apparently they do nothing in half measures in San Jose.

Do you want to tell them the truth about beaver teeth, or shall I? Either way we’ll get a chance to talk it over with them at the festival, because they’ll be booth 37 and handing out beaver tattoos! Here are the flags for each participating booth I made yesterday.

In the mean time let’s appreciate the lovely photo by Cheryl Reynolds that was included with permission in this month’s issue of the Canadian magazine “Saltscapes“. It has a modestly nice article about beavers authored by Bob Bancroft. The current issue is only available to subscribers but they mailed us a copy as a courtesy. It’s mostly about the history and biology, but does a little work learning about the benefits they provide -(then goes on to promptly list all the mosquitoes they cause, so it’s not the best) – but it does have Cheryl’s name and OUR WEBSITE so truly curious minds can come learn the truth if they want. Here’s the photo and I scanned the article. Article_0049

Leggy Matters

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 29, 2017

A week to go! Can you believe it? Tomorrow Leslie comes over to tag and process every item for the silent auction, and our living room starts to look like a festival way-station as we bring everything down we need to remember. I found out yesterday that the electrical has been laid in the park but the wifi boost installation has been delayed until wednesday, which matters because people can’t use credit cards at the auction without it. Wednesday? Two days before the festival. Do you think they could be cutting this any closer?

Knowing our city maybe they mean the wednesday after the festival.

Be that as it may, we stumble onward. There’s nice letter published this morning in Scotland from a Mr. George Murdoch of Laurencekirk, whom I don’t believe we know.

Beavers help reduce downstream flooding

Sir, – What a shame Mr Milne’s attack (July 26) on Jim Crumley led him to ignore the positive influence beavers have on the surrounding environment and focus only on the inconvenience they may have helped cause through helping raise the water level by an inch or two.

In a long-term (2002 to 2016) study conducted by Stirling University it was found that the presence of beavers increased the number of species found by 28%, improved pollutant levels, increased the retention of organic matter by a factor of seven, and almost halved phosphorous and nitrate levels.

By strange coincidence they also reduce downstream flooding in addition to helping restore degraded streams.

These measures, in turn, aid our avian community no end and attract and sustain an increasing number of birds.

If I may remind Mr Milne, Kinnordy is primarily a bird reserve managed by the RSPB.

The Alyth Flood Report, compiled by The Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, concluded that beaver activity made little or no significant contribution to the flood there, contrary to the subtle claim made in his letter.

If he wishes to look for a constructive response to his criticism, he could do worse than offer to lend a hand with any measures the RSPB might deem necessary to help him keep his feet dry.

George Murdoch.
Auchcairnie Cottages,
Laurencekirk.

Nice job, George! Excellently written. Of course it takes a hundred smart citizens to force a city to make 1 modestly less ignorant decision about beavers, and that’s in America. Probably more in a land where they’ve been extinct for 5 centuries it will take a thousand. But it’s good to know that folks are getting the message.

Even MassWildlife seems to understand about beaver-biodiversity. I just couldn’t help but notice where they chose to install their tail cam to get this fine footage. It makes sense.

Watch: Bull moose, then swimming bear on Westhampton trail cam

WESTHAMPTON — Nearly a week after we picked up trail cam footage of a cow moose and her calf, a good-sized bull came wandering by.

Footage of a bear, which came by that same trail cam two days later, is included at the end of the video. That bear, as a friend pointed out after watching the clip, was clearly on a mission. That mission apparently included a quick dip in a small beaver pond a short distance away. Footage of that swim, taken by our second trail cam, follows the first video.

I bet our city is grateful they never had these visitors to their beaver pond!

Too much cute

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Who's saving beavers now? July 23, 2017

Cuteness overload! Call the police! Our wildlife tattoos from Coyote Brush Studios arrived yesterday and I am in shock about how beautiful they are. Jon and I immediately had to try some out on a few journals just to know how they worked. The big one is my journal made from imperfect seconds. It’s missing the water drop and the turtle because there were none that weren’t perfect and I selflessly (but just barely) didn’t want to ruin any of the 150 children’s sets. The little mini-journals have beaver tattoos we bought separately to sell at the festival. Go ahead, tell me you or your child can resist having their very own. I’ll try and believe you.

If you’re lucky you have a grandchild or neighbor kid that you can hustle down to the festival so they can earn one of these for free. Then you can steal it back after the work is done and they fall asleep dreaming of beavers after their exhausting and joyful festival. (And yes mom, I know what happened to that Halloween candy every year!) If you can’t cajole a child into coming, you will just have to make a donation and snap up your own.

Meanwhile, we met up with stalwart volunteer and good friend Erika this week and she presented us with a bundle of gifts including a 50 dollar dinner certificate from Metro in Lafayette, and a 100 one from Esin in Danville! Plus she had made some truly adorable additions for the silent auction at her clay class in Walnut Creek. These all hold tea lights, but would work just as well for candy or incense too! They are even cuter in person. Thank you Erika, and you can thank her yourself when you see her working like a dog helping kids with tattoos at the festival!

That’s a great deal of cuteness already, I’m sure we’re all weak in the knees at the moment. But it gets better. Because Rusty was back at the pond last night with some photos we all want to see. Enjoy the new Napatopia kits!

two cuties 2017 — Seating for two: Rusty Cohn

So quiet you could hear a piano drop…

heidi08 Beaver Art, Educational, Festival July 21, 2017

I’m not going to lie to you, yesterday was exhausting. Some days are. I’ve learned to expect a certain amount of wear and tear pre-beaver festival. But this? Well, no one is ready for the sky to fall, no matter how braced they appear to be.

It started when the solar company I had been uselessly disappointed in for raising the price 150% from what we had been paying for 5 years, suddenly sent me a friendly email that the price would be LOWERED meaning we would save nearly 300 dollars. And it just got weirder from there.

Next, the email acquaintance from Oregon who had been writing me to ask for advice about public education about beavers because he had been hired by the Parks and Rec department of West Linn to do just that, suddenly announced that he was coming to the festival to learn from the best. He showed some adorable photos from the activities he had tried last week including our paper bag puppets. And shared a brilliant game he had invented called “Pin the beaver on the Keystone!” And then said and that he was developing a new website called “BEAVER AMBASSADORS” to boot. Here’s what the main page says about us.

You should go check out the site and explore its growing delights. I honestly don’t know what is more surprising. That someone gets paid by his city to basically do what we do every day for free, OR that someone thinks our site is a valuable resource!

Shortly thereafter, a buddy of Bruce Thompson from Wyoming, who is the program coordinator for “Wyoming Untrapped” asked if we had any educational posters we might be willing to share so they could do more beaver education on their site. I sent her our recent poster and she was stunned by how helpful and beautiful it was. She’s going to use it with credit from us and the artist.

Then the brochures were ready to be picked up, then I met with a good friend who was donating beautiful things for the festival auction, then I was called by the Times who wants to do a big spread on the festival the week before, and then I went to bed and slept like I had outrun a giant snowball for days.

I get soo uneasy when wonderful things happen.