The world is getting more dangerous. There are traps around every corner that we need avoid.
Once again beavers are leading the way.
Category: Beavers
Maybe it’s just me. But do you sometimes get the feeling that the entire state of Colorado is just trolling us? Showing off with their big mountains and lovely vistas and crystal waters?
I am definitely having that feeling now based on the chat I had this week with Nicole Fox of “Give A Dam” who is putting together the first ever Beaver festival for this summer in Rotary Park.
Give A Dam is thrilled to announce Durango’s first-ever Beaver Festival, June 14th, 2025, at Rotary park in Durango, Co centered around the theme “When We Partner With Nature, Everyone Wins.” This exciting event will bring
together many diverse organizations to highlight the numerous benefits of beavers and showcase the innovative 
work being done locally to maintain and restore our watersheds. By partnering with nature’s most skilled water engineers—beavers—we can enhance water quality, recharge our water table, reduce flood risks, create fire resiliency, and support biodiversity.
The festival will serve as an educational platform to raise awareness of how beavers contribute to healthier ecosystems and sustainable water management. Local conservation efforts, beaver habitat restoration projects, and successful partnerships between communities and beavers will be featured throughout the day. Families, children, and other attendees will have the opportunity to engage with experts to learn about the science behind beaver ecology, and explore how supporting these remarkable creatures can create long-term environmental benefits.
By joining together to celebrate the incredible role of beavers in our watersheds, the Beaver Festival will demonstrate that when we partner with nature, everyone—from wildlife to local communities—wins!
Mind you Rotary park is right along the beautiful Animas river where actual beavers live because (Not to sound bitter mind you) of COURSE it is. With parking and restrooms and paved pathways. Plus a big beautiful Gazebo for the band that is so pretty people get married there, because of course they do. And cherry on top chef’s kiss this is a park where founding parents Sherrie Tippie and Skip Lisle actually intalled a flow device many years ago.
Because of COURSE it is.
I tried to be helpful and offer suggestions about using portable audio for tours and how to make picket signs and using the word “neighborhoods” instead of “Communities” for childears. But honestly all I can think of when I look at this is that for ten years our trashy beaver park used to get called “BUM PARK” by the nice ladies in recreation and my one presentation to Rotary left me permanently scared with Janet yelled at me for not being nicer to the city and the lesbian pastor advised later I should to be “More Forgiving”. Overall the city treated us with such affection that one year they actually ripped out the paved trails and streets around the park the DAY BEFORE THE FESTIVAL without telling us.
Ahh those were the days!
But hey. That’s blood under the bridge. And so what if Worth A Dam cut its teeth on serrated steel. Give a Dam is headed for beautiful times. And that is great news. Another beaver festival in the world. Have a wonderful festival Durango! Send us lots of photos!
Very sad to learn that some of the NPS empoyees let go were at JMA because of course they were. I’m sure Port Chicago and Rosie the Riveter took hits as well. What will this mean for the giant Earth day Birthday celebration? Or for any exhibits at the beaver festival from JMA or USFS?
What will mean for our national parks and historic sites?
Better late than never. The famed story about the Czech beaver dam in the right place at the right time was told and retold in every single news outlet over the literal world for the last fortnight and the Grey Lady FINALLY had to climb aboard.
What makes this time special is that
1) it included my favorite quote yet from Emily Fairfax;
2) It featured a photo of Nutria that was actually CORRECTED and pulled,
Czech Dam Project Was Stalled by Bureaucracy. Beavers Built Their Own.
The dam project, drafted in 2018 and based on a former military training site south of Prague, had been delayed by land negotiations. Local beavers built several dams, saving the government more than one million euros.
Despite their remarkable ability to construct dams, beavers often draw the ire of landowners and farmers for destroying trees, eating crops and flooding roads and fields. But in thinning a tree canopy, the rodents can often help to diversify an ecosystem by allowing sunlight in so that other plant species can thrive, said Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota.
“They’re fundamentally changing the way water and life moves through that landscape,” she said.
The Czech dam is not the first time the rodents have assisted in building a wetland. Beavers in California have helped to restore a floodplain about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento. In that case, the beavers’ work also helped local officials save money. “All they had to do was let the beavers be there,” Dr. Fairfax said. In other cases, beavers often did work that went unacknowledged. “We sort of have a blindness for beavers,” she said, noting that they were often considered a nuisance because of their alarming size and capacity to rapidly change the landscape.
Now that is nice. Highlight Lincoln which by the way is killing their beavers right now as we speak. And then give this
“Oftentimes we don’t want to allow the beavers to make the choices, because it’s hard to plan around that uncertainty; it’s hard to turn over control to a giant water rodent,” she said. “But that’s when beavers are at their best.”
And SCENE! As an avid reader of every possible quote said about beavers, I can honestly say that’s one of my favorites. Good job.
And really really like this too:
BEAVER FESTIVAL XVI
DONATE
Beaver Alphabet Book
TREE PROTECTION
BAY AREA PODCAST
Beaver Interactive: Click to view
LASSIE INVENTS BDA
URBAN BEAVERS
LASSIE AND BEAVERS
Ten Years
The Beaver Cheat Sheet
Restoration
RANGER RICK
Educate & Engage
