Category: Beavers or Social Ambasadors

Rewilding with beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 6, 2013

Author J.B. MacKinnon argues for ‘rewilding:’ helping nature revive

J.B. MacKinnon’s new book, The Once And Future World, makes the case for rewilding – creating conditions that will support wildlife so animals and plants can thrive there again.

Now we talked about J.B. Mackinnon’s book back when I was just intrigued – but I had no idea it would be such a readable, riveting, treatise that was such an obvious secret gift to the beaver advocate. You should pick up your copy right away and get ready to look at every patch of land around you, and ever creature that lives there, or might live there, differently.

J.B. MacKinnon wants to get wild from The Tyee on Vimeo.

One of the passages I was most gripped by described our uniquely human response to extinction. We first insist that it will never happen, that it couldn’t happen, and that it hasn’t happened. (In fact up into the 1800’s it was a religious affront to even imagine that man could undo God’s handiwork.) Extinction wasn’t possible. And then once it was obvious we moved almost seamlessly into believing the animal in question NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Just like beavers in the Sierras, or in coastal rivers, or Martinez for example.

The psychology of our understanding of the natural world has never made as much sense to me as it does after reading his book. I am incapable at looking at the urgency of the November 7, 2007 meeting as anything other than a community’sdesperate need to Rewild itself. Martinez should be a beacon on a hill for other cities to emulate, and our living, changing beaver ponds are a testament to renewal.

What can individuals in cities do to contribute to rewilding?

Rewilding really can be as straightforward as putting up a birdhouse. There are in all cities, and especially a place like Vancouver, organizations dedicated to ecological restoration. Also take some time to learn the history of nature and the historical ecology of this area because, when people do that, they almost always seem to find it absolutely fascinating to learn, for example, that there may have been California Condors flying over Burrard Inlet 250 years ago when the nearest California Condors are a thousand kilometres away in California today. The other thing individuals can do is actively reconnect with nature.

Or save some local beavers, for instance.

Speaking of saving beavers, Worth A Dam made a good impression at the 22 anniversary of Wild Birds Unlimited in Pleasant Hill. The awesome and retired Gary Bogue was there with his increasingly awesome replacement Joan Morris. There were displays from Mt. Diablo Audubon and Mike Marchiano the naturalist as well as a bald eagle from Native birds and those crazy beaver supporters from Martinez. Highlights of the day were conversations with very smart children who taught me what they knew about beavers. One scholarly boy of about 7 earnestly explained that he has seen in a nature program that beaver only eat the cambium layer underneath the bark. I was so impressed we high-fived loudly.

Another wistful little girl named Anna said that she had read in a book that beavers slap their tails when something is dangerous so that people will “come and help“.

To which I could only reply, “That’s right Anna, and sometimes people do.”

Gimme the good news, first.

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 25, 2013

Paul Lurie, a resident of Woodland Pond in his late 90s, enjoys the breathtaking view of the **beaver pond** from the scenic viewing platform. / Courtesy photo

Woodland Pond adds viewing platform for senior community residents

NEW PALTZ — Residents at Woodland Pond, a senior living community, oversaw a project to create a scenic viewing platform by a small pond at the end of a nature trail behind the community. The committee that executed the project will host a dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. today as part of National Active Aging Week.

Now the article doesn’t mention the word beaver but look at the caption on the photo. That’s a beaver pond they’ll be enjoying and benches to stop along the way. That means the retirement community spent money to value beavers. And all these seniors will be enjoying turtles, frogs, herons, wood duck and the occasional otter or mink too. If I worked for this particular New York retirement community I’d definitely update the brochure. Of course I sent it to our friends at the 4 seasons beaver-killing central. Do you think they’ll be building an overlook to their destroyed beaver pond any time soon?

Now from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Beaver damage relief available to landowners

Ellis County landowners and land managers experiencing pond and pond dam damage resulting from beaver activities can sign up to receive trapping service from Wildlife Services, a part of the Texas A & M AgriLife Extension Service.

Nice. Texas A & M providing Wildlife Services to kill animals at your beck and call. I had to go look at the website to see the list of stewardship services they offer. This was a particularly vivid photo from pages.

The mission of the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (WS) is to provide Federal leadership in managing conflicts with wildlife. WS recognizes that wildlife is an important public resource greatly valued by the American people. By its very nature, however, wildlife is a highly dynamic and mobile resource that can cause damage to agriculture and property, pose risks to human health and safety, and affect natural resources. WS conducts programs of research, technical assistance, and applied management to resolve problems that occur when human activity and wildlife conflict with one another.

Ugh. Traumatized yet? Two consolations. California Congressmen were spurred by Tom Knudson’s shocking articles into working to challenge the WS sadism club. And secondly, allow me to offer this antidote which is the very most comforting thing I have yet seen on the internet(s). The little girl woke up frightened from the fireworks. Dad is showing her how to offer herself musical distractions and reminding her that she is safe.

Autumn Approaches

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental September 16, 2013

If you were standing on the bridge last night you could feel that little nip in the air that told you autumn is approaching. You would have heard the shrill chirp of the circling osprey who is counting his days before migration. You would have seen a handful of yellow leaves fall into the water and thought briefly of the Hau flowers in Kauai, that begin their hyacinth morning dressed in yellow and then drop gracefully into the water where they ripen first into orange and then a deep scarlet by nightfall.

And you would be marking your calendars so you remember to join us for this: 1240459_10151846003023958_1177210572_n Cornerstone is a magically elegant place just about 40 minutes from Martinez at the easy edge of Sonoma. It’s artistic shops have amazing things that we probably can’t afford to buy but are very fun to look at, and its lush gardens might be the sight of a wedding for a politician’s daughter or some important corporate event. But on October 20th it will be the home of the SECOND ANNUAL NATURE & OPTICS FESTIVAL, planned by our good friends Tom Rusert and Darren Peterie of Sonoma Birding. Naturally minded folk will travel from the edges of the earth to see the 40 nature exhibits, 8 artist displays and 10 sponsoring Optic companies who will teach you personally what binoculars or equipment would best suit your needs. And in addition to sponsoring the event, the good people of Pentax, Zeiss or Swarski will pay the sales tax of any optics purchase you make that day. You can bet Worth A Dam will be there talking beavers to the wine tasting crowd and we couldn’t be happier to see yet another nature festival in the Bay Area. Last year they expected about 300 attendees and wound up with a thousand. This year who knows what could happen?

Oh, and when you see Tom and Darren be sure to tell them congratulations. The great state of California allowed them to get married this year, and I’m thinking that their continued happiness is a very good thing for beavers.

Yesterday was “beaver madness at the dam”, with a almost full cast of six characters on stage including the three new kits, our 2012 kit (who’s now a yearling), the ever-attentive new mom dad brought home in 2011 and an uncle (step-uncle?) who is one of the three 2010 kits our original mom had before she died. This uncle beaver is apparently less eager than most, and stayed behind after his siblings had dispersed. Here’s he is coming to see what’s going on. Only dad didn’t make an appearance last night, but he is a cautious beaver and we never known when he’ll show. If you can steal an evening some time in the next few weeks before it gets cooler, I wouldn’t miss the chance to see the family in person.

Slightly better at keeping secrets

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 27, 2013

Way back when Worth A Dam was just forming, (during the punic wars, as Edward Albee would say) I was looking for a licensed non-profit to be our receiving organization and was having conversations with an urban wildlife group based in LA. I was so excited they were interested in being involved I wrote it about it on the then nascent website and they were so annoyed I had blasted the secret liaison-in-process that they withdrew. Keeping secrets, I learned, is very important for beavers. Who knew? It was okay, very soon after their withdrawal I did a presentation for Pleasant Hill Creeks and met Bill Feil of Land for Urban Wildlife who became our official non-profit umbrella and that has worked very well for 5 years. I think it was all for the best, but I did learn something about keeping secrets.

What I learned is to not talk about the thing you’re not supposed to talk about, but to keep asking for permission over and over in alternately charming and irritating ways until your requests are so annoying you are given the all clear! So when Suzanne Fouty called to ask me if I’d talk to Sarah Koenigsberg of Whitman college in WA a few months ago, I said sure. Talk beavers to a complete stranger? Of course! Turns out Sarah is an instructor working on a film project about beavers and their advocates, focusing on climate change and water. She was going to interview Mary Obrien and Suzanne Fouty and Sherri Tippie for the film, but all three insisted they talk to me as well.

It was an incredibly exciting moment to think that the three believed I had something important to offer to the film, because I admire those three women slightly more than God. I could remember the amazing article that first introduced me to Mary way back when she was described in that excellent article from High Country News. It remains one of my favorite beaver reads, even though I now realize the photo at the beginning is a muskrat – not a beaver.

The Semester in the West – or here let them describe it

Whitman College Semester in the West is an interdisciplinary field program focusing on public lands conservation and rural life in the interior American West. Our objective is to know the West in its many dimensions, including its diverse ecosystems, its social and political communities, and the many ways these ecosystems and communities find expression in regional environmental writing and public policy.

We agreed that they would come help with Festival VI, get some film of it and we’d do an interview as well. Wow! Can I tell everyone right now? I was dimly able to ask. No, Sarah said, let me get it confirmed and formalized and then it can happen. I promised to hold my tongue. Which I did. Can I talk about it now? How ’bout now?

Cat out of the bag! All I can say is Sarah should be thankful there were distracting new kits to keep me occupied! Yesterday I finally got the ALL CLEAR so now it’s official and I can formally say that Sarah of Tensegrity productions will be coming to do an interview and film the festival.

The project at hand is a documentary film with the working title, The Beaver Believers. It tells the story of several strong women and their allies, and their common cause of seeking to restore Castor Canadensis, the North American beaver, to much of its former native habitat to provide more water and habitat in the ever-warming West. We propose to tell their stories of creativity, grit, and whimsy with the same spirited spontaneity and serendipity as their activism and ecological citizenship itself. The film will be 35- to 45-minutes in length, appropriate for the “documentary short” category in film festivals.

A collaborative effort between filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg (director of photography) and Whitman College Professor of Politics Phil Brick (director), The Beaver Believers is already well on its way into pre-production, and we have a rigorous production schedule planned for the summer of 2013. Filming will take place from May to August with shoots scheduled in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. {eds note: AND MARTINEZ!}

Now you must hear a taste of their reporting on the subject, listen to this podcasts started at the Utah festival last year. Click on the photo to listen and imagine how the first festival in Utah might compare to the 6th in Martinez. Don’t you live their voices? Mary’s metaphor of the wildlife riding on the beaver tail is an art project waiting to happen! And Sherry’s voice always makes me want to sit in the front for and listen! Suzanne is outstanding! Oh and while you’re listening remember that painting beaver tails and pinning the tail on the beaver are all things the learned about from us.

: Click to Play

They’re stuck with us now. We’re on the calendar and they are sending a team to help lift, carry and film. I’m sure they’ll want to do a beaver viewing too! I’ll do an official announcement this weekend and let Martinez know they’re going to be on camera for beavers. Again! I heard from Sarah that they just got back from Idaho yesterday, visiting some places with beautiful beaver dams and some places that should have them but don’t because they’re always trapped and killed.They also met with Carol Evans of the BLM in Nevada and checked out their amazing habitat in Elko.

I confess to you that I am deeply excited and appropriately terrified about their coming, but every contact I’ve had with Sarah has been reassuring. When I listen to the clip yesterday I realize that this is going to be a inescapably big deal and I can only comfort myself in the usual manner by thinking critically. The very young voice behind that podcast (one of the students) gets to describe Dr. Obrien’s face as being “lined with the desert”? (!) And Dr. Fouty wears “hippie clothes?” (!!) Goodness, what does Mr. ‘Sage’ look like? No comment? Why are the women itemized in narration and not the men? We would have words. That ought to keep me focused. I can do this. I’ve been interviewed in my living room before. Don Bernier filmed me and the first ever meeting of Worth A Dam and Richard Parks used an interview for his final project at UCB school of journalism. I’ll carry on as best I can. Think of the beavers.

And speaking of distracting new kits, our bravest 2013 model was out at 7:30 on Thursday night, allowing me to catch this glimpse as he made his way up from the secondary, through the primary and back home.

His uncle provided a more relaxed photo shoot.

Grafton Redefines “Sanctuary”.

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 3, 2013

David Bryson stands at the dam where he discovered the traps and a dead beaver.

Beaver trapped, killed in natural sanctuary

GRAFTON – Despite efforts to save a family of beavers at a local wildlife sanctuary, the last of the four beavers was found dead on Thursday evening.

David Bryson, a member of the Nawautin Sanctuary Association (NSA), and Debbie Kilmer wrote a letter to the group’s executive on May 20 pleading with them to look for other alternatives to removing four beavers from the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary south of Grafton along Lake Ontario.

The fear was the beavers would be killed. “Is this not a nature sanctuary in which the beaver, as an indigenous species deserve the right to co-exist?,” stated the e-mail.

Just to be clear, the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary is a lovely jewel of a place in rolling Northumberland between mutiple wetlands and on the shores of Lake Ontario. Its 13 acres sit just across the pond from New York State. Residents serve on an advisory board to protect and promote the preserve, where motor vehicles are not allowed and folks are just encouraged to observe nature. Bird watchers, dog walkers and photographers enjoy walking its trails every day.

Because there was water, willow, gravity and oxygen, the area attracted beavers. (Funny how that works and will continue to work.) And folks enjoyed watching the many birds who came to their ponds, and the turtles on the banks. On the other side of the pond a property owner got anxious that the water level had risen and picked up the phone to call the city administrator, Terry Korotki, to complain. He did this in much the same way as you might tell your wife to get the fly swatter, and with sadly similar results.

Mr. Korotki ran it by the mayor who told him to call the trapper they always used in these situations. Meanwhile two advisory members wrote letters and begged the city not to trap. They contacted Fur-bearer Defenders who told them about solutions and they were actually hoping someone might listen because they were, after all, on the board. Lesley Fox of FBD wrote a letter to the mayor explaining about better solutions. No matter. By Thursday night four beavers were dead from a leghold trap.

In an emergency meeting at the Grafton Library on Friday night, frustrations boiled over as a number of people were upset by the NSA executive’s decision to kill the beavers. “There is nothing that says that we need to hold a meeting first,” executive chair Ray Bowart said during the meeting. The executive said its reasons for trapping and killing the beavers included the strong possibility of flooding on private property.

At one point during the meeting Bowart made the comment, “the reaction to this (e-mail Bryson and Kilmer sent) caused the beavers to be taken out.” Shortly after tempers flared, which resulted in Bowart resigning from the Executive and leaving the meeting.

Did you catch that? When Bowart was challenged about his decision to kill the beavers he blamed those who objected saying “The fact that you made a fuss about these animals was the reason they had to be killed”. Really? So I guess Grafton better be careful about protecting senior centers or day cares from now on. Consider yourself warned.

This was particularly rich.

Secretary / treasurer Meredith Coristine said he regretted the comment was made about the reason the beavers were killed. “If we made an error, we apologize.”

Well, okay then.

Why on earth do people think that’s an apology? And why didn’t I think of it when I was five?

“If I broke that lamp when I was swinging my baton, I apologize.”

” If some of those cookies were eaten by me, I am sorry”

“If Timmy was accidentally scratched while I hugged him, I regret it”.

No wonder administrator’s are so fond of the passive tense.

Thank god for this:

Bryson put forth a motion that was accepted unanimously that any matter regarding wildlife existence in the sanctuary will require a meeting by the membership to discuss options.

I must be tired today because I find this article deeply upsetting. Of course cities kill beavers all the time and people are often upset by it, so that’s not really new. It’s that they were so close to winning on this. Two very strongly placed and vocal advocates on the front lines and an agency at the ready to help. And we still get four dead beavers and god knows how many orphaned kits. I think its the nature (pun intended) of this particular setting and its designation as a SANCTUARY that really upsets me. I know that if I lived there this might be the new sign.

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Maybe you’re depressed too after that article and need good news. VERY GOOD NEWS. Absolutely fantastic news!

Jon went down to take the dog for a walk before day shift this morning at 5 and saw at least TWO KITS. They were swimming about by the Escobar bridge and an adult beaver was in protective attendance. One scrambled onto the bank by the old lodge. It was still dark so there are no photos. Jon flew home and woke me up but by the time I got there at 5:30 they had gone in. Still, we will start seeing them now, and we will have at least two so that means we will start HEARING them soon as they talk to each other.

I hope no one needs me to spell or do math any time soon because I’m going to be sleepy every day for a month now.