Don’t look now, but Andy Wallace and Jane Friedhoff are finishing off an Arcade game where two beavers carefully roll a salmon between them in such a way as to protect it from very hungry bears. No really. They call themselves “the upstream team”.
First off, I’d like to introduce you to Salmon Roll: The Upstream Team! Jane and I designed the game, with me taking on most of the programming and Jane handling the production. The amazing Diego E. Garcia is doing all of the art.
In Salmon Roll, two players take control of a beaver on either side of a wooden beam and must work together to guide the rolling salmon resting on the beam to its nest upstream all while avoiding the hungry bears along the way. The game is a collaborative, two-player, super-sized take on the early 80s arcade classic Ice Cold Beer(which itself was inspiration for the recent TumbleSeed). Its levels are designed specifically to utilize the architecture of the space, and players interact with it by using a 5-foot-long, wooden, custom two-player controller.
Here’s a peak at how it works. Oops! Watch out for that bear!
The controller for Salmon Roll is a 5 foot long wooden box held by players at either end and with joysticks sticking out of the sides. The joysticks move up and down, allowing the players to control their beavers, but the construction of the box requires players to hold it up together with their free hand. This ensures that it is impossible for any one person to control both joysticks at the same time: the size of the controller itself makes sure that this is a two-player game. The image of the two beavers holding a plank projected on the wall is mirrored by our players holding the controller in the real world!
Play NYC happens this weekend in NY and is being touted as the city’s first gamers convention where are the exhibits are 100% playable. Large companies and new startups will show off their newest creations. 25 dollars will get you through the door and access to three floors of adventure. But none, I’m sure, as fine as the salmon roll. Which cleverly demonstrates the very important fact that beaver help salmon.
And salmon need all the help they can get.
Now small world update, I just found out that one of the volunteers taking care of those two lucky beavers at AIWC was formerly one of our own Cheryl Reynold’s volunteers at IBRC! She just reminded us that there is a go fund me campaign for the two furry friends, and I thought you might want to help. Even if you don’t have funds to spare, watch the video just to appreciate how differently colored those two beavers are. Colors living in harmony.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are co-sponsoring a beaver event as part of the FWS monthly guided nature walk series on Wednesday, Aug. 16, from 10 a.m.–noon, at Upper Greenhorn Park.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are co-sponsoring a beaver event as part of the FWS monthly guided nature walk series on Wednesday, Aug. 16, from 10 a.m.–noon, at Upper Greenhorn Park.
Donald Flickinger from NOAA will talk about local beaver activity, how beavers benefit riparian habitat, methods to protect streamside trees from damage, and beaver dam analogues to restore wetlands when beavers aren’t present. Come learn about the challenges and opportunities of co-existing with this North American native – right here in Siskiyou County!
Hurray! It is wonderful that NOAA is talking about the benefits of beavers and how to wrap trees. Even MORE wonderful is that this is taking place in YREKA California. Sure it’s just over the border from Oregon where they’re LOTS smarter but it’s a start. A start. A start. I don’t know Donald Flickinger, but I plan to look him up right away. Honestly, do you think this is the kind of thing that would ever have happened if the whole involving the public with beavers in Martinez didn’t make show off how wonderfully the two things work together? I really doubt it. Even in Siskiyou county. And yes, I am indeed full of myself.
That’s all for now, as the day is full of important beaver business. Don’t believe me?
You know how things sometimes happen when you least expect them? Well, yesterday we saw the city workers in Susanna street parking checking out something in the creek so we wondered what it was and went to have a look. We’d been noticing that the water seemed to be backing up a bit and meant to investigate but with the Festival and all we never got around to it. Guess what we saw yesterday? Go ahead, guess.
It is right in the bend in the creek and impossible to easily see either from the Susanna Street bridge or from the Henrietta Street end. But if you climb on something tall and crane your neck around the corner you will see an overgrown incised stream with a tiny little dam being started. And some of the wood appears to have beaver chews on it. The beaver itself is obviously a little loner or a poor planner because if he had any friends at all he would take out that leaning tree and let it fall on the dam to get things started in a big way!
Little dam behind Susanna street park: Susan Berg photo
The funny thing is someone at the festival said they saw a beaver the morning of the festival near Starbucks, but we chalked it up to the crazy things you hear from people that you shouldn’t get excited about. Now we wonder if it might have been true. Jon looked several times last night and saw no beaver, and Susan and her grandkids came down to check it out with no luck either. But who knows? It certainly is a beaver dam, whether the builder is still around remains to be seen. Here’s a little map if you want to do your own snooping.
And in case you wondered, it’s about a block from my house, which is just neat.
Susan and her granddaughters originally came to get journal making supplies because they missed the festival because of a family reunion. I asked them to earn their journals by recording the audio for the film I might make about the project. If you want to hear bright cheerful girls talking about how beavers benefit the ecosystem, take a listen to these three minutes. They gave me lots to work with so hopefully I will be able to clip it together and make some great audio for the film.
Meanwhile, I was working on this yesterday form the idea Steve Murschel from West Linn Oregon gave me about playing ‘pin the beaver on the keystone‘ with children at our forest service event next month. I’m thinking it will be a nice way to teach kids about the idea of a keystone species and how beavers help the ecosystem. What do you think?
Yesterday was an unbelievably delightful and challenging journey through the year’s accumulation of goodies getting everything ready for today’s meeting with Leslie and Deidre for the important ‘bagging and tagging’ of items for the silent auction. We were reminded how many, many unbelievable treasures we received courtesy of enormously generous souls from as far away as Rhode Island, Kent, Calgary and Melbourne. Here is our small and precious collection of beaver jewelry which we were eager to display. This year we were given less jewelry and more art. Far more. There are 38 stunningly creative images this year in the auction, with everything from beaver ballerinas to otter notepads and avocets in flight.
The hardest job of pulling and sequencing is done. Believe me when I say some colorful language was spoken yesterday. Today will be reviewing, oohing and ahhing, and sticking numbers on items. 89 in total. Not bad for a beaver charity!
In the meantime there is PLENTY of good news this sunday, starting with a fairytail report from Calgary where folks are protesting the removal of a beaver dam and subsequent loss of habitat because of a proposed road building. I like every single thing about this story, but especially the name of the town, which sounded almost like candid camera was trying to see how I’d react.
Protestors concerned about wildlife habitat loss due to construction of the southwest ring road led a walk to a popular beaver pond in the Weaselhead area Saturday.
The biggest issue is the realignment of the Elbow River and construction of a bridge overtop, which could mean the loss of a popular beaver pond, said Diane Stinson, a bird watcher who regularly frequents the area in the southwest corner of Calgary.
“They’ve proposed to fill in 24 wetlands between Highway 8 and Highway 22X,” she said.
“Four of those wetlands directly impact the beaver pond and the beaver pond is a local treasure. People go there all the time to see the wildlife and if the wetlands are filled in as the contractor has applied, the beaver pond will cease to exist.”
Ahh the chills up my spine when I read a sentence like that! You can’t imagine. Or when I see a photo like this:
“People are obviously concerned,” he said during Saturday’s protest organized by the group, YYC Cares. “Any damage that might happen to any wildlands, we compensate it three-to-one. We work with Ducks Unlimited and other organizations.
“In the original plan, our project would have come much closer to the beaver pond, but we’ve actually moved the road and changed the plan, so we’re going to have a pretty wide buffer between the two.” Johnson said trees and other vegetation will also be planted to strengthen the buffer between the road and beaver pond.
That’s right. We work with Duck Hunters to trade the destruction of habitat by our bulldozers for some more wetlands for duck hunters. That seems fair, right?
The $1.42 billion southwest ring road project will link Highway 8 with Highway 22X and is slated to be completed in the fall of 2018. The resident group has also filed letters with the province’s Environmental Appeals Board about the design, without success.
“We’ve had two different levels of appeal and our first appeal was dismissed,” Stinson said. “We just heard [Friday] that our second appeal was rejected. They’re saying we’re not directly affected by this.” The style of bridge being used to cross the Elbow River is also a problem for some members of YYC Cares.
“We were never aware until just recently that instead of an open-span bridge like Stoney Trail in the northwest, this is a cut-and-fill earth and berm dam,” Stinson said.
Something tells me there’s a reason you weren’t informed about this, Stinson.
Founded in 1965 by Grant MacEwan, the Weaselhead is one of three protected parks in Calgary — the other two being the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Griffith Woods Park. The Weaselhead is a source of Calgary’s drinking water and is “incredibly biodiverse,” said Paul Finkleman, president of the Weaselhead Preservation Society.
“We at the Weaselhead Society call it Calgary’s largest outdoor classroom,” he said.
“We have thousands and thousands of kids every year learning about water ecology, forest ecology, water biology and environmental stewardship. It’s just such a wonderful place, not just for families to enjoy, but for children to learn… right within city limits.”
Thousands of children, and some very wealthy-looking protestors. My odds are on the beaver dam. Great work friends of the beaver pond! You have all our support and spirit! Send your happy thoughts to the plucky folks of WEASELHEAD which, in addition to being the kind of name a newspaper loves to write over and over, is also about 3 hours over the border from Montana.
A protester, left, speaks to Ian McColl with KGL, the company building the southwest ring road, during an event Saturday organized by YYC Cares. The group says construction of the southwest ring road will negatively affect wildlife in the Weaselhead area. (Julien Lecacheur/CBC)
There are two more prizes this sunday, the first will be adored by all, and the second might mean nothing to anyone but me. Here’s the first, which was posted on my FB page by beaver buddy Lee Lawrence of Oregon. No back story provided, but honestly, none needed.
There are cute babies an there are oh-my-god-I-wanna-die cute babies. And I believe you know how I would classify this one.
Now onto the Heidi amusement, which comes because I stumbled across this nursery rhyme in the context of our current presidential administration. Everyone knows the first line but few remember the poem it comes from.
Birds of a feather, Flock Together And so do pigs and swine Rats and mice shall have their choice And so will I have mine.
There were two things that struck me about this jingle. The first was that it should obviously be about beavers, which I’ll get to later. The second was that its rhyme is SO off. Obviously there’s an internal rhyme scheme in the first line with feather and together, but what happens to that in line three? In what crazy world do ‘mice’ and ‘choice’ rhyme?
Jon and I brainstormed a bit about this mystery and he thought there was a chancethey rhymed in the Cornish dialect. So of course I marched straight to beaver expert Derek Gow and asked him. Guess what he said?
“Here in Devon and Cornwall there is a tendency to pronounce things like mice as moice. Same applies to the other words so maybe the connection is there.”
Ah HA! Mystery solved! Rats and Moise will have their Choice! Heh heh heh…Thank you, Derek! Now for the other problem.
Birds of a feather, flock together Both closely and beyond Bugs, frogs and fish, are all they wish Beside a beaver pond.
On the last day of the 2015 State of the beaver conference, USFS Hydrologist Suzanne Fouty came over for dinner and spent the night in our home by the river. There was a lot of eco-conversation, nice wine and good food, and she was much beloved by our labrador and her hosts. One fact she stressed over and over and made a HUGE impression on me, so that whenever I read something like it I think of her.
Wolves are the key that let beavers do their magic.
See beavers can work magic, but they need materials to do it. They need willow on the riparian to eat and build dams which make their dramatic difference possible. When the waters edge is trampled by cows or elk, the important willow doesn’t grow back or gets eaten up and beavers can’t do their job. Suzanne is a firm believer that elk need wolves to be lurking so they are motivated to stay away from open streams and don’t eat the new shoots trying to grow. She said fencing can do some of it, but was expensive and easily damaged. She wanted to stress it at the conference but there were too many negative feelings about wolves to broach the subject.
This letter reminds me of our conversation for two reasons. One because of the content, which is excellent, and two because of the source. Wallowa- Whitman is the national forest where Suzanne works.
Well, Dallas McCrae got one thing right in his recent letter to the editor: He’d be laughed at. It’s disturbing that the go-to solution to the problem of overpopulated elk is to build a wall or a giant game fence, as the case may be. Is he serious? Sadly, I think he is.
A game fence, at least eight feet high, along the Hwy. 82 corridor and lower Wallowa Valley? Kinda sounds like Trump’s border wall, which, no doubt, is the inspiration for this idea. The game fence is part and parcel of a problematic habit of thinking … namely that we can solve an issue by isolating it without any ill effects.
Worst, many unintended consequences are entirely foreseeable. Who couldn’t see that putting dams up and down the former Colubmia River, now Columbia Reservoir System, would all but wipe out salmon runs?
The answers are right there staring us in the face. The simple alternative solutions don’t require massive expenditures of resources, only a change in perception and attitude. Thus, I offer another even easier fix than a fence. Listen to the land, to each other. Listen to the keystone species of wolves, salmon and beaver. Listen to the elk themselves.
Wolves, it turns out, are quite good at driving elk –– entire herds of elk –– off land. It is what they excel at and have excelled at for gosh hundreds of years. They know much more than we do about the oxymoronic pretense of “managing” wildlife.
Gosh, that’s a great letter. An epic letter. I could read much more from Mr. Asplund and be very very interested in what he has to say about beavers. I couldn’t find much about him online, except he’s a farmer and ran for city council last year. He got 17% of the vote sadly and didn’t win, but writing letters like that makes him much too smart for city council anyway.
Of course I sent this to Suzanne to find out if they were already friends, or just kindred spirits. I’m sure they would have lots to talk about over a beer or two. I know they would have a lot in common.
Don’t look now, but Andy Wallace and Jane Friedhoff are finishing off an Arcade game where two beavers carefully roll a salmon between them in such a way as to protect it from very hungry bears. No really. They call themselves “the upstream team”.
Now small world update, I just found out that one of the volunteers taking care of those two lucky beavers at AIWC was formerly one of our own Cheryl Reynold’s volunteers at IBRC! She just reminded us that there is a go fund me campaign for the two furry friends, and I thought you might want to help. Even if you don’t have funds to spare, watch the video just to appreciate how differently colored those two beavers are. Colors living in harmony.
sten to the elk themselves.
