Last night was a win for the beavers I think. It got off to a rocky start when our dog got skunked on her walk so the car smelled like skunk perfume and our house smells – well, don’t ask. Then we got lost and couldn’t find the place in the dark and breezed in with just enough time to spare. The good news is the growing panic made me not sleepy at all!
And then, well from then on it went perfectly.
The crowd was large and supportive and laughed and oohed in every single right place. Afterwards there were many compliments, some women who wanted to follow up with trapping that has occurred in Walnut Creek and a woman from Antioch that wants to work with Dow Wetlands on beaver issues. A man who works for Condor Consulting in Martinez and knew the story about Wendy Dexter’s daughter making a beaver tail at a festival and agreeing to help us because of that. And Brenda from Berkeley was there who had heard my interview on Terra Verde, bought the book and be came a true believer.
It actually turned out to be a great night, skunk not withstanding. I was so enthused by the end that I fondly remembered my favorite Paula Poundstone line where she observes forlornly ,
“I did an hour and a half that night I could have done more but the club had really bad security And a lot of the audience got away.”
Onward and upward I say. Now its time to concentrate on city grants and Jon’s swearing in ceremony next week. He thought he’d become an American during what’s obviously the final days of the republic, so that should be exciting. Meanwhile there’s a fine new film that just premiered from our friend Doug Knudson at Windswept films, this version is unlisted but it recently was shown at the film festival so I think he would be happy for us to share it now. It starts out with the story I shared before about his finding a trapped beaver and then talks more about what he’s learned since.
“Dorothy Richards, the Beaver Woman who founded Beaversprite Sanctuary, with Nicky, her last in-house beaver”
Beaversprite Nature Center is the magical educational retreat created by Dorothy Richards in a small town in Upstate New York. Dorothy is the heroine of the Beaversprite book that worked so tirelessly to better understand and explain our favorite animal, The dynamic learning space (complete with a ‘crawl-through’ beaver lodge) she left as her legacy suffered from mismanagement and needs your help getting back on its feet.
From Sharon Brown at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife.
More signatures on the Sanctuary Petitionare vital now as we’re seeking a PA pro bono enviro atty. to help our NY atty. with her appeal to a PA Right-to Know law denial — for the PA AG’s Sanctuary file — that documents the ErdmanTrustee’s plans to sell Beaversprite (Reineman) Sanctuary. This, despite wildlife having been protected at the Sanctuary and the public was educated there, according to the wills of the sanctuary’s donors, Dorothy & Florence Edman for over 70 years!!
Your support will help them keep this dream alive. The petition has a stirring collection of remarks from supporters like this one:
Mrs. Susan Pedrick – Second Grade Teacher, Oppenheim-Ephratah-St. Johnsville CSD says:I teach 2nd grade at Oppenheim Ephratah St. Johnsville school. I visited the Sanctuary for many years. I have lots of pictures of the group’s visits. It was a very educational and child friendly setting. Children loved the trip and learned a great deal. I probably went there 7 or 8 years as our field trip. I did not know it had closed. How sad. It had Saturday night shows all summer free to the public with wonderful live animal programs.
Did you sign it? I did. If you sign it I’ll give you reward. Go sign, share it with three friends, and then watch this and think of the woman who was smart enough to live with beavers. Because awwwww…
It’s Sunday! Time for two great photos and some very good news! The first is from Austria’s Leopold Kanzler who has taken amazing photographs of beavers for years and is credited with many of my favorites. He just announced he is winning second place in a wildlife photo contest for this:
I think the courage necessary to hold very still under that particular tree deserves first place, don’t you?
I’ll share the second photo later, but for now let’s appreciate this sunny article about the beaver dams at Amy’s park, shall we?
I’ve been oohing and aahing over beaver dams lately. There’s just something about them — maybe the feat of engineering achieved by a furry creature with a big tail and some really tough teeth, or the dams’ remarkable ability to reshape the landscape — that wows me every time!
We saw our most recent beaver dam at Amy’s Park in Bolton Landing.
The uneven little parking lot for the 500-acre preserve had just a single car in it when we pulled in around lunchtime one weekend. We set off along a woodsy trail under an overcast sky, stopping at a rocky outcrop to admire the view over a pond. We eventually hiked all the way around the preserve’s two ponds, finding a beaver lodge and numerous gnawed stumps.
The conservancy deserves a lot of credit for its work to protect the big lake. But I think we need to give the beavers a hand, too. Without them, there would be no ponds at Amy’s Park. The conservancy protects wetlands, but the busy beavers are the original architects of those environmental filtering systems.
Nicely put, Gillian Scott of the Time Union. We agree that beaver dams are a constant WOW. Thanks for the nicely written reminder. I assume you’re a friend of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife which isn’t far away. New Yorkers who care about beavers have to stick together. Speaking of which this ran recently in the New Yorker and of course has to be shared.
Ha! Now for the REALLY good news. We have been noticing that the water in the creek at Susana street is ponded up again, and that little visible dam has been nicely rebuilt. Yesterday we heard from two sources that they saw beavers in the area. One is our friend whose back deck opens up to the creek, and she took this with her phone on Friday. Hopefully she’ll get us more soon.
Things are moving in a good direction in the wine country. Yesterday at the Napa community meeting they stopped talking about the crisis and started talking about recovery. (Which will also be a crisis, but of a different, long-term, unfolding kind.) I hear from the artist who wants to help us this year and she and her husband are safely back at their home home, which survived on the very edge of the burning on the Silverado trail. I can’t imagine what it’s like to return to a home that’s now in a charred ghost town, but I’m so happy they are among the lucky ones. The fire never reached downtown Napa, so I assume Rusty, Robin and our beavers are doing okay. The whole region will need lots of support and rebuilding for a long time to come.
Meanwhile the beaver campaign in Wales is going strong and they have successfully proposed a five year license that will give the animals a toe-hold in the country. They must be doing well because the big liars have turned out in full force, and are tweeking their arguments to sound convincing without appearing negative.
Members of the public will be asked to have their say on plans to reintroduce beavers into the Welsh countryside. Depending on the level of response and issues raised, a final decision could come before the end of the year. Supporters of the plan believe they will bring environmental and economic benefits, but others remain unconvinced.
Beavers were once native to Britain but were hunted to extinction for their fur in the Middle Ages. The animal has been reintroduced into Scotland and England in recent years and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) is currently considering an application for a licence to release ten pairs of beavers into the River Cowyn in Carmarthenshire.
The application has been submitted by Wildlife Trusts Wales and the Carmarthenshire-based Bevis Trust, which has three families of beavers penned on its land ready to be released. Bevis Trust founder Nick Fox believes the experience of beaver reintroduction elsewhere proves that the animals will bring big benefits to the Welsh countryside.
He told BBC Radio Wales’ Eye on Wales programme: “Beavers have a key role to play in the ecosystem. They build dams in the slower-flowing small rivers – not in big rivers – and those dams act as natural filters for pollutants and sediment.”
Alicia Leow-Dyke, who oversees the Welsh Beaver Project for Wildlife Trusts Wales, argued beavers would help improve biodiversity.
“Many studies have shown that where you have beavers you have a much richer biodiversity, you have a mosaic of different habitats – and that’s possibly something we have lost in the United Kingdom,” she added.
That sounds pretty persuasive. Better bring in the big guns to refute it and smoke up their objections a bit so no one realizes their just stubborn babies who are upset when they don’t get their own way. Go!
But Mark Lloyd, the chief executive of the Angling Trust, is not convinced that now is the right time to be considering such a project.
“There are lots of other really pressing priorities for the water environment that NRW should be focussing on rather than pet projects that are really “nice to have” but it’s not clear what the benefits are,” he said.
That is a concern for botanist Ray Woods, who has visited the River Otter in Devon where beavers are now in residence under licence.
“I asked the question, “What are they eating” and they just said, “Sorry Ray, we don’t know”. What’s been the impact on all these masses of mosses and liverworts and lichens that are absolutely bang full of useful pharmaceuticals?“
My jaw is hanging open as I type this. You’re worried that the beavers will eat up the lichens and then you can’t use them for pharmaceuticals? You do know that lichens grow in trees right? And beavers don’t climb trees. Do you think there is ANY possibility on God’s green earth that Ray was honestly ever told “I’m sorry we don’t know” when he asked what are they eating? Literally everyone is eager to answer the questions and start a conversation about beavers. Either that is a baldfaced lie or the only person he actually asked was a janitor on the train en route. And I can guess which one. Grr.
NRW has completed its initial assessment of the licence application and asked for some further information for the Bevis Trust and Wildlife Trusts Wales. Once that has been received there will be a short consultation. Depending on the level of response and issues raised, a final decision could come before the end of the year.
I’m going to guess that they’re leaning in the “Yes” direction and everyone knows it, because those two special lies aren’t the kind you make from a position of strength. They are what you say when you know you’re losing and you want to frame the argument in a new way out of desperation. Keep pushing Wales, you’re on the HOME STRETCH.
Yesterday I started making a list of the items I plan to ask for at the silent auction this year. In doing so I came across a lovely image designed by Sarah MacDonald of Into the Wilds. Her original water color was so lovely I couldn’t resist ’embellishing’ it.
Yesterday and last night were not as bad as they feared. There was even a FB update from Safari West at 8:30 pm saying they spent the day feeding the animals and shoring up defenses. I can’t imagine how they’re survived because on the Cal-fire map there is just a huge red cloud from Healsburg to Santa Rosa. But somehow they persisted. The parts of Napa that were expecting to be told to evacuate didn’t have to because the fire turned a little. Which means our Tulocay beavers are okay. I read a story this morning about a 70 year old couple from Santa Rosa that survived by submerging for 6 hours in their neighbor’s pool while everything burned around them – hiding like beavers below the water until they needed to breathe. They made it through the night and are miraculously not among the 31 dead.
Speaking of beavers and resilience I wanted to share the wonderful letter I received Monday from Judy in Port Moody BC. .
Hello from Canada
I am writing from Port Moody, British Columbia, and I have been following your website for years. I am a member, and former board member, of The Fur Bearer Defenders. Last year two beavers moved into a creek just a few minutes from our home and I have been dedicated to making sure this family survives.
Pigeon Creek is a small stream located in the middle of the Klahanie development on Murray Street, Port Moody. The creek is part of a green easement that runs between two low rise condominiums. The population of Klahanie is about 2000.
The creek was originally landscaped by Polygon development but has slowly been overgrown by several invasive species including Japanese knotweed, Himalayan blackberry and some smaller plants such as bittersweet nightshade. However there is still a preponderance of Dogwood, Willow, Aspen and a large stand of mature Cottonwood trees.
In November, 2016, my husband, Jim, and I discovered the start of a small beaver dam. We are familiar with the activities of beavers because Jim has volunteered to help Adrian Nelson, the wildlife conflict specialist with The Fur Bearers, install beaver flow devices throughout the lower mainland and up along the Sunshine Coast to help mitigate the effects of flooding from beaver activities.
You can imagine how hooked and fascinated I was at this point. A knowledgeable beaver advocate in the making! With a husband who helped Adrian install flow devices! And who had followed our website for years! Be still my heart.
We soon spotted what appeared to be two juvenile beavers working to dam a portion of the creek. The work continued throughout the winter and the two beavers seemed to become more comfortable in their new environment and were seen by the residents on a more regular basis.
By April we were only seeing one beaver and assumed, rightly as it turned out, that the female may have been pregnant. During gestation the male built a separate bank den.
During this time I was approached by the new General Manager for the Environment with the city of Port Moody, who told me she wanted to relocate the beavers. I knew that the province of British Columbia was not issuing relocation permits and that her intention was to trap and kill the beavers. Adrian Nelson, Jim and I met with her and convinced her to take a different approach and manage the beavers “in place”.
Although we have an understanding with this General Manager, I am cautious and am taking every step to ensure that these beavers remain undisturbed. It has been very stressful for me because she has given me misinformation about the beavers that has led me to believe she is not knowledgeable about them.
Oh, yes the old “We want to relocate these beavers” trick. If we’ve heard it once we’ve heard it a thousand times. ‘You’re puppy went to live on the farm’. It’s a fairly common ploy (or maybe not a ploy). Maybe folks really think it’s possible until they start making the phone calls and then they just let the story cover their tracks.
We finally got the first glimpse of the two new kits, late in the summer, when they were about 8 weeks old, now weaned and starting to eat leaves.
What I find so remarkable about this entire storyline is how the residents of Klahanie have responded to this new family in their midst. We have a community face book page here, for residents only, and people are constantly posting pictures, videos, drawings and even hosting contests to name the beavers. The male is named “Brewster” and the two kits are called “Woody” and “Chip”.
Jim and I have been wrapping trees to protect them from beaver damage, tracking what they are eating and I am providing educational posts on the face book page. I have invited a local biologist to give an evening Wildlife Talk and we had a good turn out for that event.
I would never have guessed, when we first spotted the beaver dam, that this pair of beavers would turn out to be such an attraction in our community. Every day there are people who come to watch for the beavers and the easy viewing location and accessibility provides everyone with a window into the lives of these animals. Beavers are not common in Port Moody and this is the first one in the city for almost a decade. Our viewing area is similar to yours, a pedestrian walkway on the bridge over the creek.
My very favorite parts are in bold because I just LOVE the idea of beavers enlivening and educating the community and attracting attention. Just like they did in Martinez. Urban wildlife helps neighbors talk to each other. Especially beavers. It’s as simple as that.
I am including a link to a new you tube video that a resident of Port Moody just made about our beavers.
Turn your sound up for this, the train reminds me so much of Martinez!
Judy! We are so impressed by your letter and heartfelt interest in these beavers. We love the video. We think those beavers are enormously lucky to have you and your husband in their corner. Communities that watch beavers are the best kind of protection against over-eager general managers. I wrote her yesterday with lots of ideas and this website has a host of resources for folks wanting to keep beavers safe and energize the public. I also suggested she might want to sign up for the webinar I’ll be giving this month about how Martinez saved our beavers, and I’ll say more about that later.
Thanks Judy for writing and telling us this fantastic story.
From Sharon Brown at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife.
meeting they stopped talking about the crisis and started talking about recovery. (Which will also be a crisis, but of a different, long-term, unfolding kind.) I hear from the artist who wants to help us this year and she and her husband are safely back at their home home, which survived on the very edge of the burning on the Silverado trail. I can’t imagine what it’s like to return to a home that’s now in a charred ghost town, but I’m so happy they are among the lucky ones. The fire never reached downtown Napa, so I assume Rusty, Robin and our beavers are doing okay. The whole region will need lots of support and rebuilding for a long time to come.
