We are FINALLY paintbrush-ready on the mural project. Mario will come today to start priming, but tomorrow there are supposed to be thunderstorms so more delays are imminent. I’m just happy the city was able to finish all the contracts, waivers and ryders necessary to undertake the dangerous painting of a two foot wall of concrete. Hurray for beavers not giving up!
The timing works out well enough because on Wednesday I’m back to the SF Waterboard to talk more about urban beavers! New folks heard my talk was so good they wanted it too so I’ll be with strangers on a different floor than last time. I think I’m ready, but it’s a little harrowing going to that tall building and through security on yet another rainy day!
And it never rains but it pours, because I just got the event flyer for Portland, which looks amazing. The final PDF will have working links and go out soon. But I thought you deserved a preview. In between events I’ll be talking to Kiwanis and watching our Mural unfold. And then it’s time to start getting ready for the festival! Isn’t that exciting?
David Scholz of the Martinez Tribune gave Worth A Dam and beavers a very nice article yesterday. The John Muir Earth day celebration is quickly approaching, and we will be there with volunteer help making the RIGHT kind of beaver hats with the kids.
MARTINEZ, Calif. – More than eight years after one woman spearheaded an effort to address the plight of one fury creature from demise in Alhambra Creek, that effort subsequently generated national interest and has given more attention to the health and welfare of beavers everywhere.
Worth A Dam founder Heidi Perryman. (HEIDI TAING / Courtesy)
This Earth Day, April 23, at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, Heidi Perryman and the organization Worth A Dam will be honored with the Environmental Education Award from the John Muir Association.
TRIBUNE: When was your organization founded and how many members are currently part of it?
PERRYMAN: Worth A Dam was founded in March of 2008. And our core membership is eight. But we have several folks that play an important role and are helpful to our projects.
TRIBUNE: What was your reaction to receiving the honor?
PERRYMAN: Delighted that Worth A Dam could be recognized for showing how and why cities can learn to live with beavers. California needs more “water savers,” not less!
TRIBUNE: How has the perception of beavers changed through the years as a result of the attention your group has given to their plight?
PERRYMAN: The national publicity of the Martinez Beavers showed countless other cities about beaver benefits and how conflicts could be managed. Back when Martinez was first facing this issue there were three websites on the entire Internet about humane solutions. That was part of the motivation for our website, which had very broad readership. With our help it is much easier to find information about why to live with beavers and how you can.
TRIBUNE: How might the health of beavers be a barometer for the health of the Martinez area creek system?
PERRYMAN: Beavers are one of the hardiest species in the creek. They can manage in places where plenty of other species can’t. The amazing thing is they improve those places to make it more habitable for others.
Founded in 2008 by Perryman, Worth A Dam is a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to the value, importance and contributions of beavers in the ecosystem. Perryman, through Worth A Dam, focuses her educational approach on the fact that co-existing with beavers ensures the strength of the overall ecosystems of creeks and surrounding areas. Worth A Dam’s co-existence model has been adopted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and, most recently, Napa has adopted the model. Perryman has co-authored numerous published articles regarding beavers. Worth A Dam founded the Martinez Beaver Festival, now in its eighth year, with a wide breadth of wildlife and conservation groups, which helps raise awareness of protecting wildlife and preserving healthy environments and ecosystems.
Well, to be honest when I heard we won my first thought was ‘Sheesh! About dam time’. And if we’re being honest, Fish and Wildlife has never done anything I wanted except grudgingly send a stack of depredation permits to a FOIA request, not to mention that two articles hardly count as ‘numerous’ but the festival is in its NINTH year so some things he exaggerated and undersold some others, right?
Honestly, this article makes Worth A Dam sound so influential and the recognition of beaver importance so universal that I’m proud to be a part of it all! It makes us seem way more successful than we actually have been. Of course people are still killing beavers ignorantly and lying about their being no other way all the time. But I take comfort from the thought that – if we haven’t been able to make things as easy for the ‘good guys’ as we’d like – we’ve at least made things a little harder for the ‘bad guys’.
And that’s something!
New multi necklace, and this one with a secret message just for California that makes me very happy.
Alexandria Costello is a masters student st Portland University studying the geomorphic influences of beavers in urban streams. She just came to the geology conference in San Francisco to present a poster session. Then went to Napa to meet Robin and Rusty and walk the beaver habitat. She posted this on Facebook and I asked for a closer look to share. Can I just say how much I love the idea that folks are talking about “urban beavers” at a conference?
Oh my goodness. I’m intrigued already. Aren’t you? It’s a funny thing to think about the educated, generous, ecologically-minded city of Portland learning anything at all from a stubborn ol’ refinery town like Martinez, isn’t it?
Recognize those puppets? I am so proud of us sometimes. I especially like the part where she says cities in Oregon should invest in similar programs around the state to help people learn about the benefits of beaver. You know like the city of Martinez invested in us with all the funding and sponsoring they did of our message and effort. Haaaaaaaaaa Ha Ha Ha.
Sorry, I just suddenly thought of this comic for some reason and needed to post. I’ll allow Alex to continue.
I’m so impressed with this presentation, and with Alex for putting it together. Everyone had a grand time in Napa, and I am so pleased they connected. Apparently even WS is the best behaved it will EVER be in Oregon, under the steadying hand of Jimmy Taylor. I’m so grateful to have contributed to the story with our playful puppets.
While we’re on the topic of the successes of friends, I heard the other day that Wyoming beaver believer Amy Cummings, and Washington advocate Joe Cannon of the Lands Council are headed for an Idaho event sponsored by our beaver friends at Watershed Guardians. The event is cleverly called A Reverse Rendezvous, and is held on the day the trapping season ends. (History lesson: The original rendezvous were gatherings of trappers where massive furs and goods changed hands, and where you could connect with a new company or glean some insights of areas that were trapped out. There was lots of bragging, drinking and whoring too, I’ll wager. Probably more than a few fights or fatalities, as minimally socialized loners found themselves in a sudden crowd where impulse control was required.)
Anyway, this reverse one is going to be way better.
In the summer of 1826, the American Fur Company set up a small camp in the Powder River basin in western Wyoming to buy furs from various trapping companies and free trappers. There were gifts, story telling, contests and music. All to celebrate beaver that had been killed. We’re going to do something similar but opposite at the Reverse Rendezvous. On April 15th, 2016, we’ll be doing something similar, but with a twist. We’ll be celebrating the beaver that WEREN’T killed. Come join us!
Our story tellers are Amy Chadwick and Joe Cannon. Amy is an environmental consultant specializing in rehabilitating damaged ecosystems. Joe Cannon is part of the most successful beaver re-introduction program in history. We are excited and pleased to have them both.
I’m so jealous I won’t be on hand to hear all the stories. Maybe someone will be taping? Worth A Dam wishes you the hardiest of successes.
Meanwhile, I’m hard at work with an idea for this years festival. Over the years I’ve probably gathered every wonderful graphic, historical image or photo of beavers, now I just need to find some old scrabble games!
The dipper bobbing along the top of the dam looks oddly smart in this drunken landscape, his clean white bib reflected in the water below. All around is chaos. The beavers have felled most of the bankside birch, sycamore and other trees they like to eat and use for their dams.
Beavers work at night. During the day it is only humans tap-tapping away with their hammers, building a hide above the Cateran trail to allow walkers to catch a glimpse of the creature that engineered this bog.
Pink-footed geese fly overhead on their way back to Greenland, rooks caw in the beech trees, a charm of chaffinches sing from the dead branches of an alder, and black-headed gulls follow a tractor ploughing in the distance.
Spraint smeared on a rock announces that otters are here too. They have a rather one-sided relationship with beavers. The otters benefit from the increase in fish and invertebrates around the dams. Come spring they will also hunt the vulnerable beaver kits, obliging the mother beaver, twice the size of the predatory mustelid, to patrol the lodge.
The dams, constructed of twigs and branches laid on top of one another, are constantly being repaired and rebuilt to create a series of pools and canals where the beavers can move safely undetected and build entrances to their lodges and subsidiary burrows underwater.
The Burnieshed has been re-braided: forced into narrow rivulets it rushes and tumbles, waiting in pools it fizzes and foams. On Baikie Burn, another tributary of the Isla, the beaver dam has been cleared away, but not before a field nearby was flooded.
A swath of winter wheat is dead, drowned and scorched by the sun. The only sign of life is the tracks of a roe deer pricked into the earth. The burn flows quietly now, past a mink trap and beneath the road.
This article by Louise Gray is a vibrant look at the beaver pond and the many creatures who benefit from it. Environmental writer to the Telegraph and freelance author, Louise has really captured the pond here. I couldn’t be more impressed. She must have spent many hours at the Ramsey’s beaver pond or read this website over many consecutive days! Honestly, she hits every beaver improvement made, right down to the invertebrates and re-braiding rivers. This article is so well written and beautifully phased it reminds me of this:
Onto a slightly less informed but no less passionate article from the editor of the New Carlisle News in Ohio where a Wetlands is being monitored and attended to just outside the town of New Carlisle.
So there’s a wetlands site in New Carlisle, and it’s kind of a big deal. Laden with unique and threatened plant species, the Brubaker Wetlands is hidden away just a stone’s throw from downtown, and I feel very comfortable calling it the city’s best-kept secret.
Tucked away just off the bike trail that runs through Smith Park, the wetlands truly are a separate microcosm within the city’s hustle and bustle, as the setting is somewhat surreal—full of strange, sometimes stinky plants popping up from the sodden ground—giving the visitor the impression that they’ve stepped far back in time.
One New Carlisle family is devoted to studying the wetlands and sparking an interest in the unique site among fellow residents. Having plans to schedule monthly cleanups along the trail and at the edge of the wetlands, as well as an upcoming snake survey, Nathan Ehlinger has lead the charge of bringing awareness to the unique site rich in biological diversity.
Ehlinger is a biologist who grew up in New Carlisle within sight of the wetlands. Now raising his own three children, he realized how significant the site is for its diversity and positive impact on the city’s drinking water, so he decided to promote it, hoping to instill appreciation for the wetlands in the younger generation.
Hurray! Appreciation for wetlands! In Ohio! A biologist who’s looking out for them! Monthly trail cleanups and classroom education! He invites the editor down to have a look at the outdoors he’s trying to defend. I’m almost entirely thrilled.
Almost.
He noted that the city even has its resident beaver, which has constructed at least five dams in one section of the wetlands. He pointed out that the beaver hasn’t caused any problems, but instead, works to control water levels and create open areas that are ideal for other animal species.
“The engineering of his den provides a habitat for migrating birds, and fish,” Ehlinger said of the beaver’s natural instincts to build.
Raise you’re hand when you see the worrisome part. I’ll wait. Read it again if you need to. “The engineering of his DEN provides habitat for migrating birds and fish.” That’s right. I just connected with Mr. Ehlinger and he assures me he was misquoted. He understands beavers don’t live in the dam and he’s very interested in what we’ve done in Martinez. It never ceases to amaze me, though how many people confuse the concept of lodge/den and dam. I would think some part of them would harken back to their days playing in the mud or building sandcastles as a child. How much water can you possibly hold back with a hollow wall? Beaver dams are solid. Nothing lives inside them, except some very happy invertebrates I guess.
Did I once know this and just forgot? Did you know? I was stunned to read this paragraph in Donald Tappe’s report. Maybe I was so mortified before by all the inaccuracies it just didn’t register.
I bet you wonder where those beavers went in good ole CCC, don’t you? Well, if you were me, your computer would be cluttered with every paper written by fish and game about beavers in the first fifty years of the 20th century. Leftover from our research days. You could fairly quickly locate this:
Which would let you flip to this.
If this is too small to read, click on it twice to expand. It says that in September and December of 1940, 5 male and 2 female beavers were released in wildcat creek, which flows through tilden and fills lake Anza and Jewel lake. They were released at at an elevation of 50 feet which suggest to me that Mr. Stewart lived somewhere in the area and brought some beavers home to try them out, then tried again at Christmas break. Wildcat creek flows from Alameda County to the mouth of San Pablo bay in Contra Costa. It exits North of Richmond about 35 miles as the beaver swims from Martinez.
In all, 290 beaver were live trapped and released all over California, from Ventura to San Francisco and Plumas counties. Because at that time, the California Department of Fish and Game believed beaver were valuable.
The timing works out well enough because on Wednesday I’m back to the SF Waterboard to talk more about urban beavers! New folks heard my talk was so good they wanted it too so I’ll be with strangers on a different floor than last time. I think I’m ready, but it’s a little harrowing going to that tall building and through security on yet another rainy day!
And it never rains but it pours, because I just got the event flyer for Portland, which looks amazing. The final PDF will have working links and go out soon. But I thought you deserved a preview. In between events I’ll be talking to Kiwanis and watching our Mural unfold. And then it’s time to start getting ready for the festival! Isn’t that exciting?
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