Category: Beaver Art

Beavers swim, who knew?

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal, stupid solutions, Who's blaming beavers now? July 13, 2017

All of the UK is scratching their heads this morning and tsking at the news that a mother and kits has been suddenly ‘discovered’ in Beauly Scotland. This is miles away from the Tay or Knapdale, nearest the town of Inverness. At the moment they are exclaiming the beavers were “illegally released” because obviously there’s a beaver bandit of sorts who is running around the countryside stashing beavers were they aren’t wanted.

I mean the dumb animals couldn’t it be doing it themselves, right?

Row over illegal beaver family found near Beauly

Trees for Life said a mother and at least two kits have been observed on a river near Beauly. It has asked that the mammals be allowed to remain where they are or be relocated.

The government has instructed that the beavers be trapped and then kept in captivity. Trees for Life believes the animals have been in the area for at least five years. The presence of beavers has been found previously in the Highlands.

In 2008, one was found dead on a beach at Eathie on the Black Isle after suffering what police described as a “cruel” death after ingesting a large quantity of sea water.

Police suspected the animal was linked to illegal releases of beavers in other parts of Scotland.

It’s horrifying to imagine that they would try and trap a mother and kits so early in the summer when they’re obviously young. And more horrifying to think they could capture part of the family and leave a kit or two behind. This story is literally an hour old as I type this and I can imagine there’s going to be a major ‘call to arms’ on both sides soon. The town of Beauly is over 100 miles away from the River Tay and it’s not like beavers could have travelled up the Tay to the Tummel to the Garry up, walked over land a few miles and swam up Beauly Firth, because beavers NEVER do that right?

This seems like a good time to remind our readers that Dietland Mueler-Swarze observed in his book on behavior of the animals that beavers can disperse long distance over land and water. In fact he specifically reported on Castor Fiber:

That pesky beaver bandit has so much to answer for.

Meanwhile, here in sunny California the county recorders office contacted me yesterday because they wanted to make a children’s activity book to make sure their services are more visible and of COURSE wanted to pick the best possible mascot for their story. I’m sure you can guess already what animal they picked.

Remember, that the original beaver habitat was right next to then new county recorders building, and its previous head (Steve Weir) was a huge beaver protector. Workers would visit the beavers every morning before they came to the office, or tell us if there were new things in the creek, and they were the one to photograph that turtle laying eggs on the bank. Its second story windows was famously crowded with eager secretaries watching the shirtless Skip Lisle installing the flow device back in 2008.Long, long ago, when Gavin Newsome originally made gay marriage legal for a split second in California, Steve and his partner were famously married IN beaver park. I wrote about the huge historic event in one of my favorite posts back in 2008.

Let’s just say beavers and the county recorders office go WAY back.

So it seemed wholly appropriate for them to want to ‘launch’ their activity book at the beaver festival, and we found them just the right spot. I was given a preview of the book yesterday and because I’m very bad at keeping secrets I’m going to share my two favorite pages with you. Shhh

In addition to being darn adorable, I’m pretty sure this is exhibit ‘A’ about the beavers’ civic importance when we have to go to court to protect the NEXT beavers that settle in Alhambra Creek. 🙂

Artfully done.

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Chewing, Who's saving beavers now? July 12, 2017

Ohh my goodness, things are getting exciting around here. Last night the silent auction received a breathtaking donation from photographer Suzi Eszterhas, (which I’ll say more about on Sunday!), we found out we received a 1000 dollar grant from the city (hurray!!!) and our own amazingly talented Amelia Hunter sent me the first official draft of the brochure. The event looks sooo irresistible and fun! But I’m especially fond of our new back page:

This has been such a major commitment of focus and resources, it makes me awed at the beaver-worthy campaign that has been the better part of a year in the showing, and longer still in the formation. Our little festival looks feather lightweight by comparison to the momentous achievement that spanned at least four cities and several public showings of this uniquely valuable exhibit. It must have required the coordination of volunteers and experts from one end of Oregon to the other, and it was an undertaking that had (understandably) never been attempted before. I’m talking of course, about the art exhibit “Beaver Tales” which is in its final legs in the month of August with several dynamic tours and lectures.

The Wetlands Conservancy, LNWC council and NCRD present Beaver Tales Traveling Art Exhibit

The exhibit opens on July 31^st at the North County Recreation District (NCRD) in Nehalem, 36155 9^th Street. On August 4^th, local naturalist and photographer Neal Maine will give a special presentation on Beaver Ecology at 6:30 pm, followed by a reception and viewing of the works in the NCRD Art Gallery. The exhibit will be on display through August 30^th.

The exhibit will feature juried art for purchase, a portion of the sales will benefit The Wetlands Conservancy and Lower Nehalem Watershed Council. The traveling exhibit includes artwork of all kinds, from paintings to fiber, wood, stone, glass and ceramics. With regional and local artists displaying their work, this stop in Nehalem will bring together a multitude of styles and creativity.

Along with the month long display, there will be tours and other activities around Nehalem and Manzanita. Following the opening, join The Wetlands Conservancy for an Open House on August 5^th from 1- 3 pm at the Doris Davis Wetland Preserve in Manzanita, located off Nehalem Rd at Beach St. The beautiful preserve is right in the heart of Manzanita. TWC’s land steward will be on site to lead a tour of this great North coast wetland.

The goal of the Beaver Tales Art Exhibition and events is to recognize the aesthetic and ecological significance our state animal plays in the creation and maintenance of wetland habitats. Beavers, though woefully misunderstood, actually create and sustain wetlands that aid in resuscitating wetland and riparian stream habitats. They play a central role in shaping our future as we prepare for transformations that a warming and changing climate may bring. The sponsoring organizations are working together to learn more about how we can work with beaver to conserve and restore natural systems.

What an amazing thing you’ve done touching so many lives and getting so many eyes to view beavers in a new way. I am completely in awe of you; Sara Vickerman Gage and Ester Lev. The idea of adding even a second half a day to the beaver festival fills me with soul-collapsing horror, I cannot imagine even for a moment how you had the energy and commitment to pull this off. It’s true that you work for large successful nonprofits that do big things and have huge talented staffs that actually get paid salaries, and admittedly you live in a state that has 50 more beaver IQ points than California, and 100 more than Martinez, but I am fully humbled by this undertaking, ladies. Hats off to you. You are truly my heroes.

In the meantime this plucky little beaver festival is chugging right along like the little engine that could. We’ll do what we can with what we have.

Halls of Wild Wonder

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? July 10, 2017

Wonderful news from Napatopia where I had a major case of beaver-envy yesterday that I am still smarting over. This time it was twofold, and while the second will require no explanation whatsoever for readers of this website, the first needs some introduction. Fortunately it came provided in the form of an article from the Napa Register.

Chalk artist inspires novices to create ‘wild’ paintings in Napa Valley

YOUNTVILLE — If you’re planning to visit the Napa Valley Museum this week, look down – you might just find a work of art at your feet.

Local artist Amy Gallaher Hall was joined by children and their families to create street art on the museum patio during the museum’s Free Family Fun Day on Saturday. The Yountville event was from 2 to 4 p.m., but Hall started creating her masterpiece, “Napa’s Wild Neighbors,” at about 6:30 a.m. It took the whole day for her to create the 50-square-foot photo-realistic sidewalk painting, which depicted a bobcat, quail, red-tailed hawk, beaver, and a king salmon.

596185bcb2ca1.image — Beaver and Bobcat: Amy Gallagher Hall

The art was used as inspiration for the families coming to create their own art.

The museum supplied the chalk pastels – which Hall says show up better than normal sidewalk chalk – but visitors were allowed to create whatever art they wanted.

Jaidyn Fay, 9, decided to paint the faces of a fox and a deer.

“I love art,” Jaidyn said. He said he loves drawing animals, but that he was inspired to draw a fox by his friend who draws them really well.

If you’ll notice that beaver drawing actually has the correct teeth on the bottom which I have never EVER seen an artist do. Obviously Amy has spent some time at the beaver pond too. Of course I wrote her about our plucky little story and what a huge admirer I was of her prodigious talent. I praised the family activity and invited her with the most glowing terms possible to stop by our beaver festival where her engaging work would be a true show-stopper.

But apparently I’m imminently resistible at the moment, and I’ve heard no response (yet).

Amy Gallager Hall is also a graphic and website designer with a stunning website who is obviously used to working for top dollar. Here she is doing an Italian street painting festival in San Rafael. Looking at those spendid, wild themes and colors it’s hard to imagine that she never was tempted by the once famous Martinez beaver story that is not all that far away.

Did our story never made it as far as Napa?

I have a little fantasy that someone who knows Amy will be a follower of this website and just nudge us into her view. Or that maybe if I just type her name over and over again with plenty of links to her website she will stumble upon us in a google search.

But if that all fails, and she has the superhuman power to resist my not inconsiderable beaver charms in every other way, I’m not worried. Sure Martinez isn’t wealthy like Napa or cultured like San Rafael, and sure, we have a refinery in the middle of our town and no beavers at the moment – BUT there is one secret weapon I have and it’s the cause of the second beaver-envy I mentioned earlier.

I know where she could find at least two of these, and if she says she’ll come to the beaver festival I’ll even introduce her to the man who sees them every day.

OWWWWWWWW — Napa kit in the morning: Rusty Cohn

It’s up to us now, let’s create a new Hope for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History June 28, 2017

One of the things I’ve learned over the years about trying to change folk’s minds about beavers is that people don’t change their minds about beavers. All the science data from Michael Pollock or all the facts from Dietland Muller-Swarze doesn’t actually translate into policy changes regarding beavers unless another important organ is altered as well.

Hearts.

That’s why the intelligent, heartfelt, observant, tear-inducing writing of Hope Ryden’s Lily Pond was so powerful. She told a story as a compelling, factual and feeling woman who read her history and was gradually was touched by beavers. And I defy anyone who read through her book to ever disdainfully call them ‘rodents’ again.

Hope Ryden, Wildlife Protector and Photographer, Dies at 87

Hope Ryden, whose lifelike photographs of North American beavers, coyotes, mustangs and other wildlife helped elevate them into poster animals for conservation campaigns, died on June 18 in Hyannis, Mass. She was 87.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, her brother, Ernest E. Ryden, said.

An English major who later developed a passion for photography during breaks abroad as a Pan Am flight attendant, Ms. Ryden, in 1961, joined Robert Drew & Associates, a noted documentary production company, where she and her colleagues were in the vanguard of cinéma vérité filmmaking.

By the early 1970s, she had become a full-time naturalist and animal-rights advocate, publishing books for adults and children lushly illustrated with her own photographs.

Her advocacy was credited with encouraging Congress to pass legislation in 1971 protecting the populations of wild horses and burros in the West; their numbers had dwindled to an estimated 17,000 in 1970 from a peak of two million. She also helped persuade New York’s Legislature to name the beaver the official state mammal in 1975.

Ms. Ryden wrote two dozen books on wildlife, including “America’s Last Wild Horses” (1970), “God’s Dog: A Celebration of the North American Coyote” (1975), “Bobcat Year” (1981) and “Wild Animals of America ABC” (1988).

In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.

Hope changed minds. True to her name. She gave beavers the best chance they ever had to survive in an indifferent and inconvenient world. Grey Owl may have softened things a little, Enos Mills got folks to listen, but Hope made people love them. And that was a game changer.

She was a naturalist of the highest order and wrote many wonderful books on many wonderful topics, but to my mind this was her crowing achievement. The introduction was written by Dr. Jane Goodall. For years Hope was an email buddy and would donate signed copies to the Silent Auction. She always said that the Martinez beaver story made her happy and made her feel as if new options were possible. She was friends with Sherri Tippie and knew the good folks at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife. She never stopped caring about beavers even after her amazing 4 years.

I put off reading Lily Pond because I didn’t want to save the Martinez beavers with sympathy in the beginning. I had the crazy idea that just explaining the science would make everyone understand. Silly me! I read it in the winter the year after mom’s illness, and the passage when her matriarch died literally made me erupt in tears. We were driving back from the mountains and I could literally only read a 10 words at a time before I had to put the book down and weep. Her beautiful words were carved across my aching heart; “Oh, Lily! Is this how you leave us?” And I will thank her forever for saying how it felt to watch the beaver heroine you have sat with in the dark for years, suddenly leave the world where she brought so much life.

Hope told stories. And taught me that stories Save Beavers.

It was the best of beaver times, and it was the worst of beaver times

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, In the News, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 27, 2017

Traveling to Placer county and preaching the beaver gospel used to be like going to the lions to recommend vegetarianism. But yesterday was more like preaching to the choir. It was a positive, beaver affirmed or beaver-curious group, and our good friends Janet, Jeanette and Damion Ciotti of FWS showed up. They each had wonderful comments and questions, and I made sure Damion connected with the tribal liaison who might just need to be reintroducing some beavers soon and get the federal government to foot the bill for the flow device. I was also excited that Jeanette was interested in an Auburn test site and especially interested when I told her that PGE (where she works) in Auburn had received on of the depredation permits in 2013. Wouldn’t it be good for beavers, and correspondingly good for PGE to be all environmental and generate some press for installing a flow device instead and saving wildlife?

I felt great when we left but I came home to news that our opening band for the festival had dropped out, so I scrambled at a great rate to recover territory I had secured in March. Then before I went to sleep I had the great news that soon-to-be-beaver author Ben Goldfarb will be coming to the festival after all. Which is a relief because I would have been so sad if he missed it. He’s also coming next week to get the story and lay of the land. It should all work out well, fingers crossed.

I see that our good friend Rusty Cohn has his photos proudly displayed in the Napa register today. It’s a great photo essay that you will enjoy on every level – meaning the level where it’s just cool to see beavers and the wildlife they encourage, AND the other more important level where our lovely Napatopia is inches away from screwing with the habitat but good and needs to be reminded that save beaver streams matter.

Photos: Life at Napa’s Beaver Lodge at Tulocay Creek

The Tulocay Creek beaver pond is located next to the Hawthorne Suites Hotel, 314 Soscol Ave., Napa. At the creek, you’ll find river otters, mink, muskrats and herons as well as beavers. Here are some photos of the critters taken by local photographer Rusty Cohn.

I can’t figure out how to embed the entire album here, but you’re just going to have to go see it yourself. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.

Now, in the middle of all this there’s a wonderful article about urban wildlife published in the SF Gate and all over this morning. The original was published on The Conversation and it is written by Christopher Swan who’s a Professor of Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland. I’m sure ever single reader of this website will have some flat-tailed suggestions for Chris.

Urban nature: What kinds of plants and wildlife flourish in cities?

Biodiversity refers to the variety of all living things on Earth, but people often have very specific ideas of what it means. If you run an online search for images of biodiversity, you are likely to find lots of photos of tropical rainforests and coral reefs.

Those ecosystems are invaluable, but biodiversity also exists in many other places. More than half of the people on Earth live in cities, and that number is growing, so it is especially important to understand how biodiversity patterns occur in our man-made environments.

As an ecologist specializing in urban systems, I spend a lot of time investigating biodiversity in parks, residential areas and abandoned zones in and around the city of Baltimore. My main interests are seeing how urban dwellers invest in biodiversity, which species persist in cities and what kinds of biodiversity can thrive in green spaces.

In spite of the substantial environmental changes that humans have caused in cities, research shows that they still contain many forms of life. And we can develop and maintain habitat to support them.

It is common to assume that few other species remain in disturbed urban environments. But in fact, there are many pockets of biodiversity in and around cities, such as frogs living in stormwater detention ponds and trees in restored streamside forests. Landscapes that people create in and around their homes support many ornamental herbaceous and woody plant species.

Our research group works to understand the relationship between people and urban biodiversity patterns. The most prominent feature of the urban environment is that it is fragmented into many small zones. Human activity creates more patches of smaller size and greater edge lengths between types of habitats than we would expect to see in undisturbed areas.

This benefits species that thrive at edges, like white-tailed deer and nuisance vines, but harms others that require larger interior habitats, such as certain birds. As human activities create a more fragmented environment, it becomes increasingly important to create linkages between natural areas, such as preserved forests, to maintain populations and their biodiversity.

Dr. Swanson! Have I got a story for you! You can bet I’ll be writing the good man just as soon as I finish finding a band to open the Urban wildlife festival that is observing its TENTH year. I love this article and love even more that folks are paying close attention to this topic, because it can only be good news for beavers and humans.

Now yesterday I got some designs from artist Deborah Hocking about our awesome bookmark she is designing very generously for the festival. Look how frickin’ cute this is going to be:

Deborah! That is sooo adorable and perfect for the occasion. I love where your design is going and can’t wait to see the finished project. I know this has been a crazy post of uneven tone. I can’t even see the line from the beginning of my day to the end, it was so full of ups and downs. On the whole I guess there are more ups.

But I still think it’s time to start calming my frazzled nerves by watching this over and over again: