Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Beavers or Social Ambasadors


To treat “Nature Deficit” in children…and adults…and uh, city council members?

The New York Times had a nice op-ed this weekend from Nikolas Kristof talking about the lack of experience most children have with the outside world these days. They are so plugged in and scheduled morning to evening that there is no more time for catching newts in the creek for digging for worms.

All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.

Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”

Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.

A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.

Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)

If watching fish swimming in a tank in your  lowers blood pressure, what do you think watching beavers swimming in a creek in your urban stream does for it? What happens to the nature IQ of all those children whose illustrations graced our tiles at the festival, or who felt the feather display at Native Birds Connections?  Or were reminded what poison oak looks like by the Native Plant display? Or darted ahead to search the creek for the mink on the beaver tour? Martinez must have a lower incidence of NDD because of the remarkable habitat and involvement we created.

One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.

I don’t know about that. I hear a lot about involving the younger generation. I’ll be giving a presentation on beavers tomorrow at the John Muir Mountain Camp, but what about the Audubon group that teachers teachers how to educate children about birds? (ANTS) What about the the Creek Seekers Poetry Contest and the ten children reading their nature poetry? What about Rona Zollinger’s ESA class and the great work it does?  What about the donation from Safari West specifically for educating children in the community? What about REI grants for nature education?

Don’t blame it on the environmental movement. If the beavers are any indication, I’m going to guess that they’re working hard as they can to spread the gospel to the younger generation but their attention sometimes gets demanded elsewhere when, say, large corporations threaten massive forests or large property owners demand that sheetpile gets installed through  lodges. We’re dancing as fast as we can!

You know one of the delightful things about my senatorial meeting with Susan Junfish (Parents for a Safer Environment) was when we were talking about not using pesticides near the schools, and the senator’s aid said casually “oh but there are advocacy groups that can watch that” and Susan championed, “We shouldn’t HAVE to do that! There are people who are paid to do this, and they should read the research, pay attention and do their jobs. We should get to drive our kids to soccer and be home with our families!”

Go Susan!

As a child psychologist with a windowed wall of bird feeders I can say with certainty that children are not born with NDD. It is an acquired condition. When I take kids out with me to fill the  feeders, or see a deer on the hill, or count the turkeys on the roof, not one of their wide eyes are busy looking for an outlet.

Yesterday I was contacted by Dave Egbert of Living Green Radio. He wants to do an interview about the beavers and their role in the creek and our role in caring for them. It’s aired nationally and accessible on line so if you’re around at 7 am on August 15 you should definitely tune in.  I know you all know the story by heart, but sometimes its fun to hear stories you have lived through retold by someone else!

Oh and Sunday was the 600th post on this website. Happy Postiversary!


Happy Independence Day! If you head down to see the fireworks tonight, cast an eye to the creek and help key watch on our beavers. So far they have survived three fourth of July’s in safety, but last year new comers really appreciated having sights explained to them as they crossed the footbridge in eager droves for the park. Remind curious lookers to stay out of the creek and look but don’t touch, and do your best to discourage the tossing of beer cans so our beavers can continue to celebrate the fourth with us for another year!


You may have heard something about the successful re-release of beavers in Scotland this week. The home of Robert Burns hasn’t seen a beaver in close to 400 years, and their reintroduction is part of a study to see how the environment responds. (i can hazard a guess.) This has been a huge undertaking that has faught and cajoled and nudged and poked the salmon industry every step of the way. You see, the salmon-ites are concerned that beavers will block fish passage, and went to great lengths to research the issue at the very crowded “Library-of-articles-that-agree-with-my-position”. (LATAMP) For the record, this is a much more crowded research facility than its sister institution “Library-that-presents-all-the-facts-whether-they-agree-with-me-or-not”. (LTPATFWTAWMON) (In fact, it is often so crowded at LATAMP with goverment officials trying to justify invasions, city attorneys attempting to violate CEQA and bitter university professors marking down their student papers, that you can’t find a table!)

Of course if our Scottish Salmon-Sheiders had visited LTPATFWTAWMON they would have learned that beaver dams make important winter habitat for juvenile salmonids, and that these two species co-evolved and benefit eachother.  Our New Zealand Friend William Hughes Gaines has been working hard to persuade some of the more vocal and unpersuadeable elements. This week the kilted land just got a little bit closer.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=38_Vm6KEm0g]

In honor of the auspicious event we are looking for a bagpiper to play at the beaver festival! Know any?

Nae man can tether Time nor Tide,
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;

Robert Burns Tam O’ Shanter



(With apologies to Charles Dickens, I just couldn’t resist the picture or the title.) This photo from Cheryl Reynolds is a lovely prelude of things to come. We are still squinting into the watery horizon to find sign that our new kit delivery has arrived. What will the 2009 models be like? While you’re imagining their tiny tails and mewing little voices, I’ll introduce a recent visitor.

Laura is a knitting wizard with a website called Fiber Dreams including a design/pattern page and a cheerful crafting blog that is as likely to display her amazing shawl designs as it is to talk about a strange bird in her garden. She lives in southern California but was recently up here for a visit with her mother and stopped by to see the beaver dams. Her site linked to our site and that’s how I found her. She thought she caught a glimpse of an otter in the creek and posted the picture. I explained that it was actually a very lovely picture of one of our muskrats, and invited her to come to the beaver festival and get the full tour. She was very enthusiastic, and commented on the recent sightings page as well. Go check out her gallery for mouth watering designs that your fingers will just itch to stroke, and maybe leave a polite comment about how talented she is and wouldn’t it be lovely if she would consider possibly donating the smallest doily for the raffles at the beaver festival?


When’s the last time you thanked the volunteers at the hundreds of wildlife rescue sites around the world who are crazy busy this time of year feeding baby everythings? My parents used to to to church with a woman who did the vetrinary care for Tri County wildlife, and she would often come to mass with a baby raccoon or jackrabbit that needed to be fed so often it couldn’t be left alone. Our own Cheryl Reynolds is now a volunteer at the International Bird Rescue and Research Center, and just put pictures of some baby owls she rescued on her web page.

And then there’s this:

Everyone is wild for the two newest additions: 2 baby beavers. The one in the movie above is getting fed on his back wrapped in a towel, by bottle just like our own kids. Below is the sibling of the one getting fed, hanging out in a tank with a stuffed Beaver Mommy. See his little flat tail?…Just yesterday I was at the Wildlife Rehab Center and had a first with The Beavers. I’ve never even seen one until 2 weeks ago, and in that time I filmed THIS little movie of them drinking from a bottle (You MUST click that link to watch, if you haven’t seen it!). To my great delight, a few days later I myself was feeding them. And yesterday I got to “swim” them…. meaning we fill up the large utility sink off the kitchen and put them in so they can get used to swimming. Had I been thinking, I would have gotten THAT on video.

Adventures in Nature

Her parting words in the entry? “Who knew Beavers were this cute and… human?

Ahhhh, we did of course.

On a different note, our beaver friend Ian Timothy needs your finger clicking help, and would very much appreciate it if you could visit his claymation entry into the “Morph” contest, and vote for him by rating his video. He’s currently in second place, and the winner gets a treat from the original artist who created Morph. We want to encourage this 14 year old wonder to go on and do amazing films that help beavers everywhere, so give him two minutes and go here.

And finally, guess who’s “going to Medford” tomorrow to fix that pesky beaver problem?

BEAVER FESTIVAL XVI

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