BE THE BEAVER CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? April 21, 2018

Yesterday was a buzzing day at Beaver Central. Five separate individuals wrote me from North Carolina asking me how to save the beavers in Briar Chapel HOA. I gave them the best advice I could and contacted the HOA and the media but I got the distinct impression that they had the idea we would come in and save the beavers FOR them. One woman even told me in our conversation “I’ve written the Martinez Beavers and am waiting to hear from them”.

I AM the Martinez beavers!!! I exclaimed. Saving beavers is like saving a marriage – you can’t send the work out to be done for you. Believe me when I tell you that we’ve learned that only ONE thing saves beavers from being trapped. It’s not science and it’s not compassion and it’s not the rules – It’s regular people on the ground who care making a fuss about it. No outside agency is going to sweep in and change this.

If you want it changed YOU have to be the one to change it!

Which, as it happens, is a great way to face Earth Day. Be the change you want to see. The county isn’t going to protect your beavers, Scott Pruitt isn’t going to protect your drinking water and your president isn’t going to protect anything. It’s up to you. So get to work.

Stop by, say hi, and draw some wildlife on our banners, The Earth and its beavers need you.

MARTINEZ BEAVERS IN RANGER RICK MAGAZINE

heidi08 In the News, Who's saving beavers now? December 22, 2023

It finally happened. After 11 years and ten festivals the Martinez beavers just went national.

Guess what was delivered to children all across the United States and beyond yesterday? The May issue of Ranger Rick in which our beavers are a major story. The entire issue is online as well here.

Leave it to Beavers

Believe it or not, many people think beavers, especially the ones that live in cities or towns, are pests.

That’s because beavers can make big changes to the places they live. For one thing, they cut down trees. They eat the leaves and tender twigs. And they use the trunks and branches to build dams that block the flow of water in rivers and streams. Those dams form ponds where beaver families can live safely in their lodges—partly underwater dens built of rocks, sticks, and mud.

Unfortunately, a beaver dam may cause the water to rise so high that it floods nearby streets. So for many years, people tried to keep beavers out of their towns and away from their homes.

But now, some people are working to make sure beavers can live happily in their communities. Turn the page to learn more about North America’s largest rodent— including why it makes a great neighbor!

That would be us.

Robin was quick to spot the little curly tailed kits of Tulocay creek.

Good Neighbors
Eventually, scientists started to realize that beavers and their dams actually keep waterways healthy. Dams help prevent the soil around creeks from eroding, or crumbling. The pools created by dams make great homes for fish, birds, and other wildlife. And the dams help filter pollution out of the water.

So some people decided to figure out ways to live side by side with beavers. They discovered they could protect certain trees by wrapping them with wire or painting them with a rough, sandy mixture. (Beavers don’t like the feeling of sand on their teeth, so they move on to other trees.) And they invented a device sometimes called a “Beaver Deceiver.” When the water level in a beaver pond gets too high, this special pipe lets some water flow back out into the creek. That way, the beavers get a lodge that is safely surrounded by water— and the nearby streets and buildings stay nice and dry.

A few towns have installed Beaver Deceivers or similar systems. But the people of Martinez, California, go even further to welcome beavers to their town. They plant beavers’ favorite food trees along the banks of the local creek! For 10 years, a beaver family has made its home in the creek.

“We found that when we helped the beavers, they helped us,” says Heidi Perryman, who started the Martinez group. “They attracted new kinds of wildlife and turned our little creek into a nature preserve.”

Each year, Perryman’s group throws a party for their busy friends: the Beaver Festival! People there—especially local kids—make beaver art, learn about beavers, and may even spot the local beaver family in the nearby creek.

Ahh this feels so right! Thank you Ranger Rick for making our town sound like they welcomed beavers with open arms instead of with clenched teeth. It’s a great article too, author Hanna Schardt let me check the copy back in winter and I was impressed with her cheerful child-proof accuracy. I won’t even sigh wistfully about what the fact that Worth A Dam doesn’t get mentioned (because its a bad word) and we lost our 8-page cover story status when our beaver kits all died that year. Now the cover belongs to some lucky zebras and we don’t even get a link to the website. (Sigh)

But still, many many families will learn that this can be done differently, and we get to keep Suzi’s awesome photos forever. So I think we’re pretty ‘dam’ lucky.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

heidi08 Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? March 22, 2018

Biohabitats is a American conservation planning and ecological business with about 75 employees operating out of Maryland. They have regional teams all across the US and release a quarterly newsletter called “Leaf litter“. Yesterday the newest issue was send to me by Michael Pollock which is entirely focused on beavers. I’m reprinting their first page here in full so you can see how much information this covers.

Read through the stories and click on the links to follow through to their feature. It’s a meaty issue and there is lots to keep you busy and informed. There is a brief link to this website in the resource section, but I still personally can’t decide whether it’s wonderful not to be mentioned at all or slightly annoying. I’m going to pick wonderful because it means the beaver message has so saturated the nation that they don’t require our voices anymore.

(Although they sure could have used our photos, rather then these tired old tropes which we’ve seen a million times!)

In This Issue

In building dams, beaver naturally achieve many of the goals we strive to accomplish in our conservation and ecological restoration work. Could this animal be one of our most powerful partners? [Read more]

Expert Q&A: Dr. Michael Pollock

When it comes to beaver as a tool for restoration, this guy wrote the book on it. Literally. Meet one of the principal authors of the Beaver Restoration Guidebook. [Read more]

Expert Q&A: Caroline Nash

This Ph.D. student is part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers that is providing important information and a bit of a reality check for those interested in beaver-related restoration. [Read more]

Perspectives

A restoration practitioner, a grape grower, a non-profit director, a rancher, an academic, and a regional government scientist share the rewards and challenges of working and coexisting with beaver. [Read more]

Beaver Basics

For those unfamiliar with this furry, ecological engineer, we provide some simple facts about its appearance, distribution, and ecological impact. [Read more]

Non-Profit Spotlight: Devon Wildlife Trust

Jessica Hardesty Norris shines our Non-Profit Spotlight on the Devon Wildlife Trust, the organization behind England’s first wild beaver re-introduction project. [Read more]

Book Review: Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver by Frances Backhouse

Joe Berg reviews author Frances Backhouse’s fascinating exploration of humanity’s evolving relationship with the beaver. [Read more]

SAND-PAINTING FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? February 11, 2018

There are beaver heroes in every corner of the state, and our friends at the Sierra Wildlife Coalition are a shining example. I remember the very first beaver festival they joined way back I was so impressed that they decorated their booth with chews and a sand paint demonstration. Since damage to trees is the NUMBER ONE REASON folks for trapping, teaching people about this tree-saving tool is essential.

“We just sand-painted about 50 cottonwoods today in Washoe Lake State Park in Nevada (between Reno and Carson City). Toogee was alerted about beavers chewing there, talked to State Parks (who were going to use chicken wire… I know) and they were all into it, bought paint and sand and buckets and rounded up 8 volunteers to help! It will be on the late news 9after Olympics) but already on the KRNV website ?

Volunteers Use “Sand Paint” to Stop Beavers from Gnawing on Trees at Washoe Lake

Wonderful work by some wonderful beaver friends! If you had been doing this as long as I have you would remember that this whole advocacy group began in response to beavers killed in Kings Beach, right next to an daycare that had been following the family. Sherri, Ted and friends met with countless officials and neighbors trying to push this issue to a better direction for next time. They even asked our own Lory Bruno to come to a meeting and talk about what Martinez did once upon a time.

(It is so heartening to see their work and Sherry marching on after Ted’s death last year. It is always the wrong people that die from cancer. But you knew that.)

We checked on our own little beaver dam yesterday which is looking quite healthy. A phoebe was sitting on it to capture flies and a squirrel used it as a bridge just before Jon snapped this photo – the framing of which I particularly like.

AMBASSADOR TO BEAVER LAND

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? February 9, 2018

One of the things we have struggled to do here in Martinez is make our beavers more accessible, less misunderstood, and part of the community. The lion’s share of that work was done by the beavers themselves, who chose downtown for their home and lived fairly public lives showing off their habits and preferences. They were the original “Beaver ambassadors” and we just took our cue from them. We explained to people what they did and what they were seeing and doing our best to make the city not kill them.

Steven Murschel of West Linn Oregon takes it one step farther. I can’t believe this article slipped past me nearly 3 weeks ago, but I’m so glad it was brought to my attention now.

WL ‘Beaver Ambassadors’ group sheds light on misunderstood animal

It was at that point that the West Linn Beaver Ambassadors group was born. For almost a year now, Murschel and others have led activities with schools, organizations and groups of volunteers in an effort to “increase awareness for the community about the beavers that live in West Linn and why this species is so important to the natural ecosystem.” Most recently, on Jan. 11, Murschel led educational workshops with two classrooms at Willamette Primary.

“I work with schools a lot,” Murschel said. “And I’m doing a lot of community events so that the community is more aware of the beaver population and the incredible benefits beavers can provide”

West Linn’s beavers — which have made homes at Mary S. Young Park as well as the Willamette, Robinwood and Fields Bridge parks — are behaviorally nocturnal and thus rarely seen out in the open. But their handiwork is abundant, and it takes just a short walk along the paths at Mary S. Young Park to see several beaver-made ponds sheltered by dams and surrounded by trees that have been caged to prevent further gnawing.

Steven takes his work serious and is making a serious difference. I can’t even imagine what it would be like for EBRP, for example, to have a beaver educator on board to educate folks in every park about the animal. Steven came to the festival last year and will be an exhibitor at the event this year. (If you needed further proof about the role the story of Martinez played in his work check out the photo in the presentation he is giving to that classroom. It might look familiar.)

“When they build the dam, the creek flowing through gets stocked up,” Murschel said. “Instead of a creek, you have a pond, and a pond is an excellent drinking source, so it will bring larger mammals for drinking. It’s a home for reptiles and amphibians and also for insects and smaller bugs — macroinvertebrates.

“When the smaller things start to come as a result of the slow of flow, then everything that eats those things comes, and everything that eats those things comes.”

In rainy Oregon, beavers also do their part to prevent flooding, according to Murschel. He compared beaver dams to the man-made bioswales and rain gardens that have become popular solutions for water runoff.

“People tend to think beavers cause a lot of flooding,” he said. “Flooding problems definitely happen, but in a bigger sense they’re holding back more water; they’re containing more water.”

Steven gets pretty excited about his work with kids, teaching them why beavers matter. He’s happy to share his ideas and is ready to learn from everyone. This is what it says about us on his website. Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be liked if he worked for Martinez and was hired to manage their beaver ambassador program. Then I break out into a hysteric fit of giggles and have to lie down.

“What we’re really trying to do is bring a lot of awareness to the fact that beavers are back, and we have these rare opportunities in some of our parks to showcase what they do,” Worcester said. “People — especially kids — are really interested … and we’re doing more outreach and some nighttime programs to kind of see beavers in different parks.”

I”I want to build in some mechanisms to have it continue in perpetuity,” he said. “And how you do this is certainly a challenge. But the website and all of the social media will certainly be there, so maybe they can continue to have interns work on it at a lower capacity.

“What they’ll definitely get out of it are management plans for this site and a couple of other sites in the city where beavers have impacted massively — that will be incredibly helpful to the city.”

Yes it will. And it’s incredibly helpful to every city to see what you’re doing and remember what’s possible. Steven is making such a difference in the lives of so many people and beavers I’m so glad that he was received the credit he deserves with this excellent article.

Martinez is looking forward to learning from you in June!