Often Worth A Dam works to persuade other cities to be ‘smarter than a beaver’ and to implement flow devices as a way to control flooding fears instead of trapping (or in the case of KB – shooting). Well now we’ve been invited to do some persuading in person. Lory will be driving to Tahoe tomorrow and attending the above meeting to answer questions about the feasibility of beaver management in a low-lying area. Folk concerned about the beavers are working with Tahoe Wildlife Care to convince the powers that be that other solutions are available.
It’s a great opportunity to help out some neighbors and a key relationship to pursue in the “are beavers native” argument. Also plenty of out-of-towners travel to tahoe and would benefit from learning about better solutions. Skip Lisle reports that he has done some work for the US department of Forestry up there in the past, and we know that Tahoe Wildlife Care just bought Mike’s DVD and showed it to public works, so we’re hopeful a solution is in the offing.
It coincides with something I’ve been thinking about since the festival and that is a scholarship/grant “matching funds” program where Worth A Dam could contribute up to 1000 a year towards helping communities save their beavers. With the festival and local support we can actually afford it, (even IF we get around to installing interpretive signs this year and go to the Oregon conference). Obviously hiring Skip Lisle to come out from Vermont cost a great deal more than than 1000 dollars, but I think its a good way to ‘kick start’ a community response and the loosen purse strings of financially cautious areas. Our city certainly didn’t have funding to spare but the powerful public response motivated a better investment. Our grant could help raise the level of awareness and support in other communities. The idea would be based on locally matched funds and could go towards installing culvert fences or flow devices that allow cities to keep beavers and wetlands humanely.
All in all, Kings Beach seems an ideal location to try out our new ‘beaver saving system’. So Lory will travel with that in mind and hopefully it can motivate positive action at the meeting.
Years ago, when I was just starting to film the beavers, I’d wander blearily down to the dam in the morning and stare into the water waiting for ripples. Everything was so different then, the beavers were living in the old lodge, and the location of the dam seemed so far away, almost like a vast green murky wilderness in the distance.
I guess it’s the wildness of a mystery before you know all about it, before their habitat was finite and shrinking, when it seemed like anything could happen. Sometimes when I’d walk back past the parallel parking spaces on Castro Street I’d see them filled with unmarked white vans. Obviously rentals, apparently gathered there overnight for no apparent reason. I realized later that they were the ‘ballot’ transport system. Those vans would pick up votes in San Ramon and Concord and Oakley and carry them back to the warehouse beside the beaver dam to be counted.
Have you ever driven by on election night? There are police closing one line and guarding the process, reporters gathered, officials and ballot-counters. One year (before the sheetpile) mom beaver climbed up almost to the pathway to get a sowthistle and everyone went WOW at the same time. One year Jon threw in a piece of apple and one of the security guards ran over to him worried that he was throwing ‘rocks at the beavers’. Our beavers couldn’t be any more closely tied to the election process in Contra Costa County. If you doubt me watch the November 7th video for a reminder.
So its fitting that Friday’s article in the Contra Costa times outlines the significant spending by downtown property owners on maintaining the current council and points specifically to perks and special favors like a certain sheetpile wall.
Residents who say property owners and developers wield too much influence over the City Council point to the stream of campaign cash that has flowed to the incumbents in recent elections. This year, members of the Bisio, Dunivan and Busby families, which own many downtown Martinez properties, donated a total of $3,564 to Schroder and $4,400 to Menesini, according to campaign statements. Menesini also received $1,000 from Concord-based Albert D. Seeno Construction. The Busby family gave DeLaney $1,750.
Several recent decisions have fueled criticism that the council is beholden to downtown interests.
Last year, the council agreed to pay $250,000 over five years to rent the Campbell Theatre, which the Bisios own, for the Willows Theatre Company. Even if the Willows folds, the city is on the hook for the five-year lease. Despite opposition from neighbors, the council last year approved an apartment project for low-income seniors to be built on property owned by the Dunivan family. And in 2008, the city paid about $355,000 to stabilize the Alhambra Creek bank near Escobar Street after the Dunivans, who own property nearby, threatened to sue.
Ahhh we waited a long time for this article, but I can’t imagine a better time for it to be written. Think of the beavers tomorrow and go vote!
So Jon was down at the beaver dam last night checking on our heroes who made a little berm in front of the gap to stop the flow over the dam. Three tough young men were gathered there, a little bit appreciative and a little bit menacing. While he watched the three kits chewed on leaves and swam about. Then GQ came over the gap and the smallest kit swam quickly to him and onto his back and they swam together into the lodge. And everyone there said pretty much the same thing,
“AWWWWWW”
These are the essential traits that protect our beavers: understandable family attachments, understandable work ethic, understandable tragedies. Populist beavers. To the extent that people care about our beavers it is mostly do to the ways in which their behavior doesn’t take a park ranger to explain. The beavers, quite without our help, showed their value to the public and allowed their activities to be observable. Since most colonies keep their private lives private I’m not sure why ours decided to lift the curtain – maybe they had no choice because of their locale, or maybe they knew something we didn’t – but they did – and more so than any organization or media or advocate it’s what kept them safe.
I’m thinking especially about this because we are getting closer to the Santa Clara Creeks conference date where I’m going to talk about their role, and I’m supposed to have a chat with the Washington DC HSUS urban wildlife today to see if our beavers would fit with a ‘success guide’ for helping people help animals nationwide. I’m thinking over what worked and what didn’t. There are lots of things we did that helped save the beavers, chase media, write articles, put out video, work every farmers market for a year, talk to children, talk to Rotary and Kiwanis and Elks, talk to experts, and get children’s artwork and display in every single place we could imagine. But all these things wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if our beavers weren’t relatively easy to see and understand.
There are, of course, people who care about the beavers and have never seen them. Still one of the reasons beavers are a ‘charismatic species’ is that its easy to see sign of them. These people have mostly seen the dams, or the old lodge, or a beaver chew or even just footage on the news. It’s important to remember that Worth A Dam didn’t come to be until March of 2008 and didn’t generate a press release until June of that year. Most of the early coverage was pretty organic and based on luck. It was public support that got our beavers in the news, including this inexplicable report which gave us our furthest (national) reach.
I took the liberty at the time of editing the version I put on youtube to reflect the city’s obvious campaign not to call it a CREEK. But its interestesting to me now that this was reported in April of 2008 and there is no mention of the flow device or footage of it.We had already solved the problem but no one knew it. The city never really believed it was going to work three years ago, and didn’t even bring the issue up.
It’s a rainy sunday so lets go to Amesbury, Massachusetts where a fine developer known as the “True Homestead Partnership” wants to build a Hampton Inn near a shopping mall. Sounds delightful. Problem is there are some beavers living in a drainage ditch near the mall and the owners of the complex have not thought them to be a problem. They’re making one of those dastardly ponds and the water is interfearing with their building plans.
Their trouble is not from the Planning Board or Conservation Commission, which are currently reviewing the plan. It’s not from angry neighbors — at least not the kind that walk on two legs. It’s coming from a family of beavers living next door. The beavers live on land owned by Carriagetown Marketplace LLC, 15 acres that encompasses Stop and Shop and a number of retailers. It’s the plan of developers True Homestead Partners to use the parcel of land east of the marketplace for the hotel, a 10,000-square-foot retail complex and parking. But working within the confines of their 2.5 acre site, the beaver-made swamp may make it difficult to accomplish that. Mayor Thatcher Kezer said the town’s hands are tied when it comes to the nesting family. “Unless we determine it’s a public health hazard, it has to be the landowners who bring it forward,” Kezer said.
Well now that’s the start of exciting and unfolding drama. Lets get the popcorn. You’ll want to replay this every Christmas. Remember that Massachusetts is a state where body crushing traps are outlawed unless certain conditions are met. The trappers association is constantly whining about how hard it is to kill beavers now and twisting arms in the statehouse to get the law overturned. The argument in this article seems to be that the city can’t do anything unless public safety is at risk. That isn’t true. They could hire a trapper to use the woefully inconvenient and body-pampering traps if they wanted to. The beavers would be just as dead at the end of it. So what gives?
Does Kezer want to foce a big favor from Homestead before he’s willing to kill some beavers? Did someone from Carriagetown have a bad breakup with someone from Homestead? Does everybody in Amesbury love beavers? Or is there nobody willing to go in the water this time of year? I wrote the Mayor, the spokeswoman from Audubon and the paper that Beaver Solutions are waiting just two hours away. I guess I’m not complaining that everyones throwing up their hands and saying we can’t trap. It’s just confusing. Trust me it gets worse
It is illegal to tear open or disturb an active beaver dam unless one obtains a permit, which isn’t easy to obtain. But while the beaver’s mass of bundled sticks and mud can’t be destroyed, the law allows landowners some options. Unfortunately for the animals, those options for the most part involve killing them. There’s only one method that provides a win-win for the beaver and developer. Water-level control devices, for instance, make the beaver habitat less desirable, as long as one has a permit. The theory behind the measures is to alter the dam in a way that can’t be fixed by the animals, and hence ultimately persuades the critters to move on. But this option can be tricky since beavers are attuned to the sounds of water escaping their dam and by instinct will move quickly to shore up any weaknesses in their home. Other than that, the law does not provide any other means of relocating the animals.
Did you get that? This article begins with a flourish worthy of the 1812 overature. There’s only one method that provides a win-win for the beaver and the developer. WATER CONTROL DEvICES!!!!!!!!!Wow I got all excited and for a minute there thought I was in love. The next sentence changed everthing, as we dropped from 1812 overture to ‘theme from Hee-Haw“. Flow devices”Make the beaver habitat less desirable. and ultimately persuade the critters to move on”. Is there a mark on my forehead? I keep slapping it when I read STUPID articles. Ahhh Lynne, you were this close.
I’m not sure where you got that misinformation from. Did Mr. Kezer tell you that water control devices make beavers go away? Did Ms. Rines from Audubon? Did you read it on a cereal box? Just so you know. If flow devices made beavers move on, they would be a complete waste of time and a wasted investment. Because new beavers would just move in. Just like when you trap. The point of flow devices is to preserve the conditions that the humans need (lower dam, unblocked culvert) in such a way that the beavers can tolerate it. Then they stay in the area and mark the territory and keep any other beavers from moving in.
Oh and Lynne? beavers do walk on their hind legs.
That’s mom carrying mud and sticks onto the old lodge, BTW. This footage was shot by Moses Silva about two years ago Ahh mom, we miss you. Nice to see you again.
Some of our lucky viewers might notice a new image in your menu bar and bookmark. I figured out yesterday how to do the favicon we used to have on the old site, but I thought the logo was a little mishapen so I tried this instead. It may take a while to show on your site, but it should eventually. This is a silhouette designed by Libby Corliss based on a photo taken by Cheryl Reynold. Thanks ladies!
Remember the city in Maine with the ‘pretend beaver deceiver’? Well a beaver friend writes this morning that he called to talk about a more realistic installation and was told by the deputy director of public works that the beavers were already dead. Turns out there’s a trapper on staff so killing them was a ‘free solution‘. No fancy humane interventions needed, we have everything under control.
How sad and stupid and utterly disappointing. Lets hope they got all of them, and that there aren’t some kits shivering in the lodge and slowly starving to death.
Moving right along through the Kubler-Ross stages of beaver grief lets get to anger. Free solution? Maybe. But if it was such a great free idea why didn’t you employ it earlier? The T junction of pipe was useless but not free. Moving it to the other side of the culvert was useless, but not free. Ramming the culvert with a telephone poll was useless but not free. Bringing out the back hoes time after time was useless and not free. All those hours of public works time, when they weren’t filling pot holes or cleaning drains, were paid for with taxpayer dollars and were useless but not free.
If you had a free solution all along, lurking in your back pocket, why didn’t you use it earlier? Say the moment you started to realize there was a problem?
Oh wait, I know why.
You needed cover for your enormously unpopular decision to kill the beavers. Social cover. Ass cover. The ‘we’ve tried everything’ cover. The paper gave you help in this and dutifully printed your painstaking solutions without ever reporting how patently inane they were. You were given a public opportunity to show your citizens you tried and tried and couldn’t solve these problems humanely. You made a public argument that you had no choice, and no one contested it. You had to kill them.
It’s this deception, this dedicated deceit of public opinion, that angers me even more than the actual trapping. You extirpated the public trust and made a mockery of civic involvement. You snared the good will of Lewiston and crushed it in your conibear traps. You used your residents against each other to push public opinion get exactly where you wanted it all along and your local paper faithfully carried water for you. Sure, some beavers died in the process, valuable wetlands were destroyed and countless species will suffer as a result, but that is hardly the real story. Lewiston used kabuki theatre and taxpayer dollars to pretend to solve a problem humanely they had no intention of solving at all.
Take this as a lesson, Lewiston homeowners and taxpayers. The next time your city tells you they are trying to ‘solve’ a problem – traffic congestion, sewers, crossing guards, school funding. Remember that in the back of their minds they may hide the real solution, and all their flailing efforts in the meantime are just trying to drive public opinion in its direction. The city of Martinez has learned with painful clarity that lying about beavers is just the beginning.
Maybe some letters from the public will remind them that ‘free solutions‘ aren’t always free.
