Category: Beavers or Social Ambasadors

Guide to creeks and kits

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 11, 2015

Looks like the students in Imlay Michigan are studying the creek and getting an indirect lesson in what happens when beaver dams are removed.

Go with the flow

They dip a plastic spoon into the tub and come up with yet another discovery.

“We’ve found a water mite, a leech, black fly larvae, and a crayfish with only one pincher,” Angelika says, while another classmate—Daniel Felix—picks up the squirming crayfish to take a closer look.

The young scientists are in the fifth year of a collaborative project with Seven Ponds Nature Center naturalists and Imlay City Middle School. They’ll spend two days studying the Belle River as it runs through Imlay City’s backyard, and their findings will become part of a statewide study of the watershed.

“This year some changes were made at the headwaters,” Kent says. “A beaver dam was removed sometime between this year and last year”. Young scientist Ivan Sanchez makes his decision early on. Ivan participates in soccer practices at Lions Park, so he’s noticed a big difference in what the river looks like since the beaver dam has been removed.

“It was so beautiful last season and now it looks a lot different, there’s a lot of sediment that wasn’t there before,” Ivan says.

That’s right children. Because beaver dams make creeks beautiful, alive and ecologically diverse. And removing them makes things ugly and dead and sterile. That should be the most important lesson you take from this experiment.

I had fun last night taking a ‘will you stop watering your lawn’ telephone poll, because after I waded through all the somewhats, mostlys and not verys I got to give a comment about what California should do to save water, and GUESS what I said??? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the kind of hint you should take with you to the store.

Yesterdays anomaly rain actually filled the dam to bursting but it was still holding when Jon checked last night. Rusty and Robin are having great fun documenting their beavers even if we aren’t lucky yet in Martinez. Tomorrow I will leave you in Rusty’s capable hands because I’ll be away. But stay tuned, because I know he will have your attention with photos like these:

kit with tripod — Kit in Tulocay Creek praying – Rusty Cohn

For her part, Robin made sure that the unverified kit who hightails it to the dam each night instead of posing with his siblings, was documented as an actual kit.

Isn’t this lovely? For those new to the kit vs adult ID game clues are

How he floats (entirely above the waterline while with adults usually swim with just their head is visible)
The relative head size to body (about a third, when adults is a fifth or more)
And of course the fact that it’s adorable. Which should be a dead giveaway.

His relative speed indicates he is a little frightened of this wide world, even though he’s heading off to play with the big beavers. Who knows, maybe he’s braver than the others? Or maybe he’s a big scaredy-pants who always wants to be with a grown-up? Perspective is everything.

Here’s looking for you, kit

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's saving beavers now? June 6, 2015

Capture — Beaver Grooming: Susan Tripp Pollard

Photos: Martinez beavers at home in Alhambra Creek

Springtime has brought out wildlife at Alhambra Creek in Martinez, Calif. Right at dusk, beavers were spotted swimming about and chomping on a fallen arroyo willow tree. Heidi Perryman and her husband Jon Ridler make a comfy spot with camping chairs as they wait to see the beavers. Perryman, president of Worth A Dam, and Ridler, treasurer, were perched quietly hoping to see a newborn kit. On its website, Worth A Dam describes itself as a citizens group that fought to protect the beavers and sponsors the annual Beaver Festival that will take place on Aug. 1, 2015.

This was a nice surprise after meeting photographer Susan Tripp Pollard at the dam on Wednesday night. Follow the link to see all the photos, because it won’t allow me to embed. Nice to see that she got the name WORTH A DAM and the date of the Beaver Festival correct! Of course it prompted other media outlets to contact me yesterday and say “oh the beavers are back”? I did an interview with Doug Padilla of KCBS at the dam trying to explain that the beavers never actually left, just the media did. Ahem.

Looks like the Oregon discovery was big enough to make the Smithsonian.

Mini Beavers Once Roamed Oregon

Fossils of a squirrel-sized from in eastern Oregon may be related to modern beavers; Oregon was once home to rodents of unusual size.

Paleontologists have unearthed fossilized remains from 21 ancient rodent species in eastern Oregon, including the skull and teeth of a previously unknown miniature beaver called Microtheriomys brevirhinus. At about the size of a squirrel, this particular beaver would have been ten times smaller than modern relatives, as Tara Kulash reports for The Oregonian. The finds appeared in the May issue of Annals of Carnegie Museum.

In 2012, the beaver fossils were unearthed less than a mile from the visitor’s center for the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, reports Jeff Barnard for the Associated Press. Nine other new species of rodents have been found in the area — some in the same fossil beds, most on nearby government lands. Some of the fossils are more than 20 million yeas old. The sediment surrounding the beaver fossils contains layers of volcanic ash, and by dating radioactive elements within the ash suggests the fossils are from the Oligocene period between 28 and 30 million years ago.

While the burrowing beaver’s line went extinct, it’s also possible that this ancient aquatic mini beaver has modern relatives.

You mean there might have once been many mini beavers? Hey I know what news from John Day about beavers belong in the Smithsonian and National Geographic and Time and every other magazine you can think of. It’s the news that the normal-sized beavers we have right now could save our salmon and restore our incised creeks if we could stop killing them for a while.

How about leading with that story for a change?

Fun footage from Rusty in Napa last night. That’s a yearling and adult in back and a night heron in front. Because beavers, as you know, build the neighborhood for everyone to move in.

Off to San Pedro Valley Park in Pacifica tonight to talk about the ecology of urban water-savers. Wish beavers luck!

What is in a name anyway?

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? June 12, 2015

Beavers take over SPVP

Dr. Heidi Perryman will be at San Pedro Valley County Park Visitor Center on Saturday, June 6, at 6 p.m., for a talk she likes to call “Ecosystem Engineers in Martinez: understanding how and why to coexist with urban beavers.”

Beavers descended on Martinez in 2007, and by October of that year they had built a dam that the City Council determined could be a flooding hazard; the little dam builders were slated for extermination. Did the people of Martinez sit on their hands on this one? Come to the Visitor Center and find out about the story of the beavers in this Bay Area town.

Wow great start! So far I’m really impressed with this article that calls me Dr. and puts the story in context, making sure to give credit to the hundreds of concerned residents who made the difference! I’m sure it continues on in this wonderful vein, right?

Perryman is the president of “Give a Dam“, the citizens group that fought for the beavers. She is a child psychologist who’s probably naturally attracted to the problems of little creatures and says that she is used to speaking to a mixed age group; so bring your older children with you–probably age 10 and above. Dr. Perryman is part of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, where she helps investigate and implement social action for ecological health. She was also on the committee that first responded for action for the beavers after meeting with the city council back in 2007, and which eventually gave rise to the Martinez beavers’ website.

ARRRRRRRRRG! What a paragraph. Easily and verifiably wrong in so may ways. Why does the world seems so quick to change our name? When I contacted them about the press release the author explained she saw on the OAEC website this sentence:

“In 2012, Perryman, Lanman and Brock Dolman from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute wrote their first paper reviewing the evidence for beavers in the Sierra Nevadas.“

To wish I can only say, sheesh. Don’t colonize me with those your dangling participles! Rick and I were not from the OAEC (and by the way there was another author listed too). And as for the name of our ACTUAL organization – we aren’t stupid in Martinez. We know our city will NEVER give a dam. I have Ann Cameron Siegal to thank for this apt musical response.

On the “Worth a Dam” internet location you can investigate more about this industrious engineer: just how it contributes to the health of any area in surprising ways, why beavers are valuable to all of us, and where their original distribution was in California before these large rodents were devastated by the fur trade and habitat loss.

It’s a nice article and should bring a good turnout, which is good because Pacifica will have beavers of its own soon enough. And I can take a few moments to correct the misunderstandings. Of course I sent copies to the mayor last night, so he can see their publicity in action. Wish me luck. I HAVE to practice today. I’ve spent too much time lately mooning of the images of the Napa kits and wondering when ours will show. And yesterday I had an useful burst of beaver begging for the silent auction, where I found THIS wine label that made me laugh as hard as I can remember doing in a long while. I sure hope they donate.

Beaver magnets

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's saving beavers now? May 21, 2015

This is filmmaker Marcy Cravat, who’s working currently on a new documentary about soil. She is particularly interested in the way beaver ponds capture carbon and how important they are to dealing with climate change.

Marcy and her husband paid a visit last night to the worlds easiest to see beavers. And the beavers did not disappoint. We saw four, with only one coming from above the primary dam. The others all in the bank hole near the footbridge. During the day Jon very heroically kayaked the pond and cleaned every bit of trash out of that creek, although he was most annoyed when high tide brought a floating soda can downstream right back to center of the dam.

Marcy was treated to several lovely beaver moments, and only 1 tail slap. Including the smallest family member working on the dam with excellent developing skills. I think she left with enough beaver sightings to have her interests thoroughly peaked.

No kits yet in Napa either, although there have been nice photos from the folk who are waiting for them. Rusty Cohn sent this turtle train a couple days ago,

turtle RC — Turtles in Tulocay beaver pond: Rusty Cohn

And Robin watched this beaver last night and wanted to know if we were dealing with an elder?

FSCN6576 — White-whiskered beaver in Tulocay pond, Napa: Robin Ellison

We are still trying to track down that lovely plant the beaver is enjoying sticking out of the water. The closest we’ve come is Ludwigia, which is a very common invasive aquatic plant in the napa river watershed. I’m not so sure. Because our beavers almost never eat anything people wish they would. So I’m still holding out for more information. Robin’s white whiskered beaver reminded me of this film though, from so long ago, which was fun to revisit.

What do other people do on the weekend?

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? May 11, 2015

How was your Mother’s day? Thanks Rusty for the nice recap of your year of beaver watching in Napa. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife aptly posted this on their Facebook page and I feel it’s something we should all see. If you’ve ever had your mother hold your chin while scrubbing something off your face that shouldn’t be there, you know EXACTLY how this feels.

Saturday night at Safari West saw a bouncing crowd gathered for the beaver talk, many families with young children including a few of the attentive serious kind, and a few of the boisterous crying kind. It pretty different than the last few talks I gave and I did my best to adapt. We had dinner in the lodge with Marie Martinez (in charge of carnivores) and Danny Cusimano director of education and research. He was a paleontologist finishing his thesis and talked about their work (currently doing a study on hand-rearing vs parental rearing) and looking at population successes. He also seemed very interested in hearing about our work and the primary challenges facing beaver in urban settings. A few others dashed in and out during our dinner, updating them both or asking questions. It was definitely a dynamic place to be.

After dinner we came back to our luxurious tent, sat on the beautiful deck and drank a glass of wine while the light dimmed and the animal sounds took over. All night we heard the whooping lemurs, grunting flamingos and lowing whatevers in the distance. It was wonderfully cold at night in those beautiful hills, and the beds were unbelievably comfortable and warm. We both slept like children.

In addition to the excellent overnight and jeep tour Safari West generously made a donation to Worth A Dam and presented a certificate for our silent auction. I made sure to bring a list of wildlife friends I thought would be great speakers for the future and we swapped stories and ideas for how to engage people about nature.

Then it was home to meet Greg Kerekes for an interview. He was hired by the Guadalupe RCD to produce five videos on urban wildlife. The first was on Grey Foxes which you can see here.

The next is supposed to be on beavers. I expected a ten minute interview but our conversation lasted nearly two hours. He hadn’t really known the Martinez story before and he found it very interesting. His wife had an injury that meant she couldn’t climb the stairs so she was waiting in the car outside the whole time! ( You might remember her as the dancing beaver from our festival two year’s ago.)

Greg said he was surprised that I never seemed to say “um” or seemed at a loss for word like the others he interviewed. (Ha – plenty of practice!) We talked about beaver challenges, beaver benefits, beaver nativity, beaver depredation and the history of Worth A Dam. They were excellent questions and he was a great listener but I was exhausted by the end. Not sure how much of our conversation will find it’s way into his short film, but he said he was interested in doing a bigger project too and it would help down the road.

Fortunately for me (and the people I work with in my day job!) I’m off today, so I can rest and enjoy NOT talking about beavers. Then I can start focusing on the festival. (Eek!) The application that Lory was kind enough to fill out (all 19 pages of it) goes to the city just as soon as I can get the event insurance taken care of.