It’s down to spaghetti and sangria with the in-laws in the final hours before the wedding. There are the usual misunderstandings, arguments, lost keys and overly-affectionate drunks. The groom can’t be found and the bride has put on two pounds and can’t fit into her dress. Now the park is entirely surrounded by a mote (I’m not kidding) and I’m off to find a way to get 30 tents and 1000 people safely over the threshold. Can you say ‘drawbridge’?
Nice article in the PH Record yesterday. I was relieved to learn that I was the “co-founder” of Worth A Dam because its great to know that there will be someone else to help deal with all this late stage madness. I was starting to get worried.
Thanks for the generous eulogy-worthy comments yesterday. 7 truly kind things and only 5 offers to purchase cialis which I promptly deleted. It’s unexpectedly touching to feel like what I write gets read and appreciated. When I find the other co-founder I think I will send her/him down to meet with public works so we can do something about that mote – you know the city is just dying to put in alligators!
{column1}So last night I was alone at the dam when several lovely families brought their children down to meet the beavers. They were respectful and hushed as their eyes sparkled with the wonder of seeing a beaver kit up close. Watchers from Bertolas on the opposite bank came as well, one a young father with a pouty 2 year old diner who was taking a break from the table to walk outside. The frustrated father picked the brightly frocked little girl and held her to see the beavers. She kept insisting ‘down down’ in the compelling way that two year-olds advocate their case. So he lifted her over the yellow wall and dropped her onto the concrete surface of the sheet pile. “Now you’re down”. He observed, “happy?”. Of course she wasn’t happy, she was scared, which was his point. She was TWO though so she wasn’t ready to give up her point. She started backing away towards the water, unsure whether she should come back or stay and defend her hard-won freedom.
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So I have a day job that’s focused on the complicated work of helping parents and children and mostly I make a conscious choice to stay out of things when I’m not in the office, but flashing in my minds’ eye was the possibility of the toddler falling into the creek, dad jumping in to rescue her, a kit swimming over to investigate and someone getting hurt. The city would go ballistic and the beavers would get blamed and I’ve have a zero sheet-pile tolerance policy. So I braced myself and said he needed to pick her up, and that she wasn’t allowed on the wall. He of course replied that he knew how to parent his kid, and I should mind my own beeswax but picked her begrudgingly up, which was my only goal. Tragedy averted. Beavers and toddlers safe. Stressful but safe.
As I was leaving that night I saw another rough-looking young man with a befrocked two year old daughter on the opposite bank. He had brought her down to see the beavers but it was so dark he thought it better wait until another night. I was still cautious from my last parenting interaction, so I was slinking towards the car but he asked brightly when was the best time to see them, and how mother had died. I answered some irresistable questions. He was happy to know that the three kits were safe and that he could see them if he came earlier while it was light. He also worried sweetly about the pipe, saying, “I heard they put that in to catch the beavers” which made me smile. “No, no. Its a good pipe. It helps the beavers stay here” and he was so pleased and said he’d come back another night.
(Someone tell Skip, if the pipe was put in to “catch” the beavers, it’s not working very well!)
So the night of risky parenting was rounded perfectly by a glimpse of delightful parenting, and the beavers continue to make more friends than even I can manage to make enemies. Three were seen last night, ooohs and ahhhs were spoken, and the tale of the “Good pipe” lives on to be told another day.
{column2} He’s the man who removed traps from the dam in Oshawa during the recent efforts to prevent the killing of beavers in Goodman Creek. He used the trap to demonstrate the way the springing jaws could have injured a pet or a child and make the point that these devices were inhumane. The local representative from the Ministry of Natural Resources recently called him to get them back and Jack suggested he drop by. He handed over the two traps and the man handed him a citation. He can pay a fine of 420.00 dollars or appear in court to challenge the citation.{/column2} Guess which one he’s going to pick?
Mind you, this is the same case where the trapper got the memo that there was a temporary hold on the killing but wasn’t able to disable the traps because he was too busy. So one beaver died “by accident”. There are regulations about the frequency of checking traps but of course these are KILL TRAPS not snares so they only need to be checked like every two weeks. This horrible photo from the site shows the complex and advanced technology of 600 years of beaver killing: Rip out the dam and kill the beaver when he comes to fix it.
Good luck Jack! This is a media opportunity! March in with your supporters and a few dozen children and say that you were protecting the council from the massive bad press they were going to get if someone got hurt. How far away from the homes were these traps? It might be worth checking out the regulation. If all else fails hold an auction or a fundraiser so that the community can “purchase” your citation. Frame it and donate it to the local library along with a couple articles from the Toronto Sun.
From September to November in 2007 I was so alarmed that the beavers were going to be killed I don’t think I did anything but worry and canvas. I remember Jon and I would hang out by the dam on the weekend talking to media and anyone that seemed inclined to listen. When the dynamic unexpected council meeting happened my fears were paused, but not eliminated. I knew that meeting had slowed the tanker, (which was a HUGE achievement) but not yet turned it around. I very much hoped I would get to be on the subcommittee but I thought it was a long shot. I remember realizing that I should ASK to be appointed, which was not a thing I was used to doing. When my request was answered I launched into serious research mode and prepared a reader of articles addressing what I guessed would be the primary concerns for letting the beavers stay: Flooding, Burrowing, Water quality, Fish Passage, Reproduction and Mosquitoes. I made nine copies of the reader with tabs and photos and a spiral binding and distributed it to every subcommittee member that first tuesday night. I still have mine, and I’m very proud of it.
It’s safe to say that I hoped for success, but I always expected to fail.
Things didn’t look any more comforting from my view on the subcommittee. As I moved closer to the inner workings of the council and staff I never felt more reassured. Quite the opposite, I realized more keenly what we were up against. Prejudice and fear were deep, powerful, leviathan beings that lurked at the end of every sentence. The more I advocated the more dangerous I understood the beavers world had become. Those 90 days were as unreal as any I have known; I listened every tuesday to horrific lies and distortions, smiled politely and tried to speak up, doing my best to challenge them with a respectful, cheerful bunch of facts and running in a panic to my ‘beaver experts’ whenever I got in over my head.
During this grueling work, I was invited by Igor Skaredoff of Friends of Alhambra Creek to speak to their group. Mitch Avalon who was also on the subcommittee was running the meeting. Both of these men eventually became great beaver friends, but they didn’t start out that way, and I was anxious about presenting to them. They met in the public works office, which was a grisly omen as far as I was concerned. The room must have had thirty people arranged in a triangle. They were smart biologists and park rangers, some bemused at my beaver-hobby, some supportive and some openly hostile. In those early days I hadn’t yet understood that the very first place to look for beaver friends is the watershed council. (If they aren’t there naturally the smallest nudge of data will usually do the trick.).
The night was actually excellent, I had no slides or video or talk prepared back then. I just spoke about the role of beavers and my work to save them. I remember at the end a lovely woman said such a surprising thing – about my doing so much for them, giving so much time and energy, did I have a thought about why?
I was taken aback. I hadn’t realized I was giving alot, I had just been aware of not doing enough. It moved me greatly and I answered with a swell of feeling. “The beavers gave me a gift. They let me wake up early and find a wilderness 8 blocks from my house. They let me film them and watch their secrets. They gave me something wonderful. I can give them back a year.”
(Yes in those days, I thought I’d be done in a year. ha)
That night I got back into my car in the public works parking lot on Glacier drive and before I put my key in the ignition, paused to reflect on the night. It it hit me. For the first time. We were going to win. It had never really seemed possible before. But that February night I knew that the beavers were going to stay in Martinez and the council would have to accommodate them. I know that Igor and Mitch would eventually be on the side of beavers, and that there would be only one anti-beaver voice left on the subcommittee. The beavers would win. We would win. I would win. And he would lose.
That brief epiphany of success was shocking in a way that I hadn’t expected. I was used to anticipating things going wrong, and the knowledge that they were going to go right was startling but wholesome. It was less like “I always knew it would happen” and more like “Jesus Christ, we’re actually going to win this thing!” It was completely surprising, that little moment under the streetlight in the parking lot.
Not withstanding a council that wouldn’t vote in April, and the cardboard-carrying beaver “expert” invited to refute our findings, or the sheetpile wall or the massive lying that continued, I turned out to be right. We DID win. And to all extents and purposes, it was that night, the night that friends of alhambra creek became friends of beavers, that did it.
I mention this because yesterday I had a similar ‘success’ moment. This time about the festival. I’ve been worried with details and printers and schedules and rentals and contracts. The t-shirts came back from the with no letter and one of our bands looked like they might pull out and the boyscouts might not sell water. But suddenly yesterday, in a brief moment of clarity, I knew that this festival was going to be wonderful. Organized and delightful and bursting with educational fun that would change the way 1000 people saw beavers forever.
It was a nice feeling. You had better come for yourself to see if I was right.
Rumor is that the losing council members of Oshawa’s “don’t-kill-the-beavers” vote are directing staff to prepare a cost statement that will prove that saving those dam beavers is too expensive. There has been a request for us to tell them what it really costs and prepare a materials list. I offered my best initial advice, suggested that they add up all the money spent on trapping for contrast, but then thought better of my own efforts.
Bemoaning Beaver Expenses is never about what’s true.
I can remember the wasted effort to control the city’s record of the expenses for our beavers: OT staff hours for uselessly taking down the dam, 5000 for 11 police officers at the November meeting to control a potentially rowdy public, money spent for them to “research” non-solutions and don’t forget the vast sums spent on consultants who said the beavers were a liability; a grand total of 75,000 dollars delivered by staff to the subcommittee. Not to mention the half a million spent on pointless sheet pile a year later. The city was hoping that the massive dollar sign would convince martinez that the beavers weren’t worth it. It worked for a few citizens, but mostly didn’t matter.
(People are used to cities wasting money.)
In the end, (and I can feel my IQ dropping as I saw this…) it is less about what’s true and more about what’s popular. This is the great life lesson I learned from beavers. I told our Oshawa friends to do some basic work preparing a materials list but to stay focused on motivating public opinion. Making the beavers more friends was going to do more to save them than struggling to prove they will be cheap.
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