Category: Educational

RIPPLES IN THE WATER

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers August 22, 2018

Sometimes its hard to know if what we do here makes a difference. And sometimes we’re reminded in wonderful ways that it all matters very much. This has been a week for remembering that our actions cast ripples in the water that ring outwards for miles without us knowing.

Take Kris Shoemake for example.

Kris is a kindergarten teacher at the Clairborn school in Pasadena who recently recently reached out to Martinez’ own Cassy Campbell the director of the Martinez Early Childhood Center (where I worked for a decade while I was in school). Cassy has great ideas for getting kids personally involved – like letting them “SLAP” their tails by painting with flyswatters, or letting them makes bread sticks so they could “Chew sticks” like a beaver. Cassy is also the fearless spirit who coordinates our children’s parade at the festival each year.

Seems Kris is working on STEM project about beavers and dam building and reached out to Cassy for ideas. Cassy sent told her about the flyswatters and sent her to me. So this weekend I wrote Kris about the paper bag puppets and other things we do. Here is her email back.

Oh Thank you so much for emailing me back! I love the puppets and telling about beavers build a neighborhood and I had no idea there were beavers in Temecula! HOW AWESOME!!! I am excited to get this together and hopefully do it in a way that will really enrich our learning! Your ideas are great and I will get back to you if I have any questions! Thank You SO MUCH!!!

Kris

Which is wonderful in a warming kind of way, but it ain’t over yet.

Remember Carmen of Texas who was trying to save the beavers on the lake where she lives in Tyler? Seems she was on vacation last week in New Mexico and got talking beavers to the rangers at the US COE (thats the army core of engineers) up that way, and they loved beaverstoo and were excited about their coming back. Carmen wrote me about it last night.

“There is an effort on the part of COE and local Cochiti tribespeople to plant Cottonwood trees around the lands since most have disappeared for a variety of reasons including erosion and fire. The beavers are continually chewing down the small trees and the tribespeople are starting to shoot the beavers. The COE have talked to them about ways to protect the trees and will continue efforts to get them “to see the bigger picture.” One of the COEs asked me to look a website that has a lot of information on the positive impact of beavers across arid lands…it was the Worth a Dam website! I was happy to say I know you.”

Imagine that! A COE from NEW MEXICO praising our website to a visitor from TEXAS. I think I need to sit down. This is the kind of impact I always dreamed of making. Lead from the bench indeed…

Then I got an email from Carol Evans in Nevada, seems she and Jon Griggs have been working with a director on program about using beavers in arid regions to restore water. The producer is in Las Angeles but I think the director is in Japan. Anyway, they asked Carol for footage of beavers building dams which she doesn’t have. But she had just finished Ben’s book and read that I had “Two terbytes of beaver footage” and sent them my way. (HA!)

I showed them some youtube clips and they asked me what I would charge per second of footage. (!) So who the hell knows. The Martinez beavers might be in a film about Nevada shown in Japan and the funds will go to Worth A Dam.

Not bad for a days work.

Oh, and here is one of the clips I showed them. I’m sure they’ll edit out the train noises.

BEAVERS IN THE CLASSROOM

heidi08 Earth Day, Educational April 18, 2018

So the beaver festival is officially approved in Susana Park and our use fees have been waved, We were hailed as doing a wonderful educational thing, and we’re officially off to the beaver races. Hopefully city staff will unlock the bathrooms and hang the banners for us in the park and not turn the sprinklers on the day Amy starts chalking!. Our blue shirts arrived yesterday and they are lovely so we also have that going for us.

Next hurdle: Earth Day! I just found out that we are down by one volunteer so I’m seeing about recruiting another. It’s usually a very busy all-hands-on-deck kind of day, so it would be great if I could give Jon and Leslie a little back up.

I just heard this from Sarah about last night’s premier:

Squeeeee!

The premiere was sold out! With people packing the lobby wishing they could get in! And people loved it! The reaction to your scene especially was SO GOOD! I’m ready to start coordinating the screening in Martinez. I’ll keep you posted! Thanks!
Sarah

Wow wow wow! This is a pretty auspicious news and a great way to debut a beaver film. If it works out I think the screening will be at the Empress theater in Vallejo on the Thursday before the festival. Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted as I know more. In the mean time congratulations Sarah!

To get us all in the mood for Saturday here’s a nice letter about the benefits to children of a green education.

Letter: Huge educational opportunities at new elementary school

Before people dismiss Doyon as a location for one new school, I wish to present some facts that everyone should carefully consider. First, it’s the open space. For a town that values open space, what is better than having over 17 acres for the children of Ipswich?

Nature is the best way to nurture pupils with special educational needs:

“The results showed that students with higher exposure to greenness show better academic performance in both English and Math. More research along these lines is needed in additional locations and with more extensive academic performance data among various grades to determine the effects of greenness under different education systems.”

Walking the halls of Doyon means seeing joyously happy rows of puddle boots outside of classrooms, and it means that the students get to come home throughout the year with the stories of venturing outside to study ferns and frogs, learning about the critical importance of vernal pools, and the native flora and fauna of our town.

Frog eggs are carefully collected from vernal pools, which are then sent to every student in every second grade class in the district, so that the children can see the eggs hatch into tadpoles, and transform into frogs, before releasing all of them into the same pond in which they were spawned.

They get to see beaver impounded wetland, and they gain an understanding of stewardship.

Doyton has dedicated teachers who go beyond the classroom, using their location to offer unique and priceless hands-on learning to their students.

Heck I’m sold. We have certainly seen first hand that beaver/nature education is a powerful way to open up a child’s mind and get them to learn from the world around them. Go read the whole letter, it’s really well written and could be the subject of the next five posts. Thanks Erika Turner for reminding us why green education matters.

RING THE BELLS OF BEAVER FREEDOM

heidi08 Beaver Art, Educational February 1, 2018

Nobody told me there would be days like this! With a fantastic news story from our friends in Port Moody AND a wonderful article about a Brooklyn teacher leading her class in beaver education from the National Wildlife Foundation. For the first time I can remember I’m spoiled for choice. I can’t decide which to share with you first. But I will go here because it’s just so DAM cute!

Brooklyn Students Build Beaver Dams

Emily A. Fano

In December 2017, Diane Corrigan – a wildlife enthusiast and early childhood science teacher at PS 179 in Brooklyn – came upon an article about how a family of beavers were “wreaking havoc” in the Staten Island neighborhood of Richmond. Department of Environmental Protection officials came out during the day and cleared a two-foot hole in the dam. The beavers – known for being skilled engineers – repaired the hole overnight. At the time of this writing, the fate of the Staten Island beavers is unknown.

This human-wildlife conflict with New York State’s official animal piqued Corrigan’s interest. She decided to use it as a teachable moment with her first graders, not only to help students learn about beavers and the many wild animals we share our city with, but to explore an important question: Can wildlife and humans co-exist in densely populated urban areas like NYC?

Beaver pond levelers were successfully used in two beaver ponds in Utah to prevent flooding of a Walmart parking lot without disturbing the beavers – a win for wildlife and humans. Could this be tried in Staten Island?

In December 2017, Corrigan gave her students an assignment: If you were a beaver and had to build your home, what would your lodge and dam look like?

Although many people consider them a nuisance, they’re actually a keystone species that provides many ecological benefits. Beaver ponds, for example, improve water quality, create habitat for many other species, reduce erosion, and recharge groundwater reserves.

Aaaandddd scene! What a wonderful teaching moment, about beavers, empathy, problem-solving and ecology! The fate of those Richmond beavers just got instantly less gloomy. Come share your work at the beaver festival and you will meet SO many like minds. Diane Corrigan, there are precious few things I’m sure of in this crazy world, but this is definitely one:

And on to Port Moody where the valiant struggle and sadness has turned into a victory lap. The heroes Judy and Jim have already told me will be making the pilgrimage to our festival, and I can’t wait to meet them in person!

Port Moody to develop beaver management plan

The city of Port Moody will develop a beaver management plan after the death last December of a beaver kit during efforts to relocate its family from a storm sewer pipe in Pigeon Creek.

Coun. Meghan Lahti said such a plan will help the city rebuild trust with residents, particularly in the Klahanie neighbourhood through which the creek runs and who had become fond of the creatures.

One of those residents, Judy Taylor-Atkinson, said a proper management plan “will open the channel to good science” and make it possible for the beavers to thrive.

She said the ponds of quiet water created when beavers build dams improve the survival rate of juvenile salmon, attract bugs and the birds and bats that feed on them, as well as salamanders.

“Beavers can’t make rain but they keep water on the land,” Taylor-Atkinson said.

“It is important to understand the nature of beavers in order to determine the best management of them,” Lahti said in a report presented to council Tuesday.She said the animals are a “keystone” species that play a crucial role in the local ecosystem.

She said implementing a beaver management plan should “use innovative techniques for dam management where applicable” while avoiding extermination or relocation whenever possible.

Music to our ears! Mark this day on your calendar because it isn’t ever morning that I get to write about two such pride-inducing stories. Judy and Jim who worked SO hard and ended their vacation leaving Arizona early to face a slew of bad faith just wrestled this heifer of a story until they got everything on it’s feet again. I am so impressed with your hard work and the help of your neighbors. I try not to say the obvious things, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Stop saying “OR”, already!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? November 16, 2017

I’m sure you’ve noticed, like I have, that people are compulsively titling their beaver talks or columns with catchy philosophical labels like “Beaver: Eco-savior OR rodent pest” “Beaver: Boon or Bastard?” “Beaver: Helps or Harasses?” I’m putting the world on notice to say RIGHT now that it needs to STOP. Every single one of those titles and the millions more out there are misleading and false. They all contain a single word that is as untrue as anything you can read. And for this reason they should be stopped.

You know what wickedly misleading word, right I’m talking about, right?

Obviously a beaver is a nuisance AND a friend, a boon AND a bastard, a worry AND a wonder. They can be both, (and really can’t we all?) Even though our impulse is to reduce things to simple single quality and ignore all the other information, the only way we can TRULY understand beavers is to see that they are honestly both. They make the habitat enormously better and screw up your culvert or your farm at the same time. Just as the mature man recognizes their is good and evil within every person, we have to deal head-on with the beaver’s duality and start from there. The difference of course is that, unlike man, with beavers it’s the very same action they take that is both burdensome and beneficial. I was reminded of this by this article yesterday from the Elk River Alliance in British Columbia.

Beavers: friend or foe?

Beavers are more than Canada’s national symbol and our first national currency trading their pelts. They are also wetland engineers. Just look upstream of the north-Fernie bridge, along the Elk River and you will see an incredible dam built this summer. Although cute industrious critters, are beavers actually friend or foe to Canadians?

While these busy rodents amaze many people, others are less impressed and more annoyed by their activity. Beavers fell trees and their dams can, in some instances, flood property that people might prefer to keep dry. So what good are they to us anyway?

The beaver is a semi-aquatic herbivore that cuts down trees to eat the branches and chew off the bark. They also use this material to build dams and lodges, modifying their environment like us, making them a very unique species. Beavers build dams in order to back up water creating a deep pool of water surrounding their home, especially the entrance. This is important, even during times of low water, as exposure poses a security threat to their den. If water levels are low and the entrance exposed, there is a greater risk of predation to the beaver family.

Rising water levels behind dams may be a nuisance to us but have you considered that this water also creates rich and vibrant wetlands, home to an array of different species, increasing the biodiversity and productivity of our watershed. For free, wetland plants filter out toxins and unwanted chemicals, as well as sediment before water flows back into the Elk River, improving water quality.

Beaver dams also increase water storage capacity in our watershed, both above and below ground. They store increased surface water and are capable of raising the ground water table, important in mitigating the effects of drought. Furthermore, beaver dams help reduce the speed and power of moving water, limiting its erosive capacity and allowing more storage, thus buffering flood damage.

These key functions benefit both the watershed and Canada’s largest rodent. This is why community members, local government, small businesses, and Elk River Alliance joined forces to mitigate the potential damaging affects of beavers in Fernie. Together they installed two large, pond-leveling devices to reduce negative effects of increased surface water: one in the West Fernie wetland and the second one at the McDougal Wetland north of Maiden Lake.

Thank goodness the article is better than the title, because it goes on to describe how the Elk River Alliance learned how to install two flow devices and taught these skills to some other players in Canada. Because the smart answer is that beavers are BOTH a friend and a foe,. Our job, if we want to get the ‘friend’ benefits, is to solve the ‘foe’ challenges correctly!

I received lots of notices about this article yesterday so I know it’s getting it’s attention. I also got a response from Nathaniel at Parks Canada who thanked me for the information I sent on a real beaver deceiver and said they were considering their options. Maybe this article even crossed his desk too? Let’s hope beavers keep moving in the right direction with fewer false dichotomies!

Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always ‘or’?
Is it never ‘and’?

Stephen Sondheim

Residents protest beaver killing: Canadian version

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? November 12, 2017

Greenburn lake is in the Gulf Islands off the west coast of British Columbia. It’s actually located in that little missing chip in the utmost left hand corner of Washington State. It’s not all that far from Port Moody as the beaver swims, so I’m hoping many heroes help them with this particular problem.

KO_22282-633x420 — Aerial view of Greenburn Lake, South Pender Island, with North Pender Island and Vancouver Island in the background, South Pender Island

Gulf Islanders outraged over plan to euthanize beavers

A death sentence has been passed on the beavers living in a small lake in the Gulf Islands, but concerned citizens are hoping they can force a last minute pardon. The rodents have been busy building dams in South Pender Island’s Greenburn Lake.

Parks Canada, which administers the area as part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, says the beavers’ work is threatening an earthen dam. Officials say they’ve exhausted all other options and have no choice but to humanely trap and euthanize the animals. But local residents are planning a blockade in an attempt to get the execution called off.

“We’re actually horrified by the fact that they would dream of killing wild animals when their mandate is to protect the wilderness and wild animals,” Leslie McBain told CBC News.

“It is ironic that their symbol, the National Parks symbol, is a beaver.”

‘A very difficult decision’

Nathan Cardinal, acting superintendent for the park, said he’s sympathetic to concerns from the public. “Having to take these steps is a very difficult decision for the agency and everyone involved,” he said.”We respect the right for people to protest, for sure, and we acknowledge that many people on the island care about the beavers. For us, euthanizing a problem animal is always the last resort.”

Between one and eight beavers have made their homes in the lake and, as they construct their own dams, more and more water is building up behind the man-made dam, threatening its structural integrity. Cardinal said that if the beavers are allowed to continue living in the lake, the dam will fail, causing water to spill onto people’s properties and into their homes.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

“At Parks Canada, it’s our mandate to ensure ecological integrity, but we always have to ensure that public safety comes first,” he said. Parks officials have been looking at potential solutions for about a year.

They’ve tried installing something called a “beaver deceiver” — a rectangular fence protecting a culvert that allows water to flow through — but the rodents responded by building dams in new places, causing more backup.

In what pretend universe is a beaver deceiver rectangular? How on earth would that possibly work? So let me understand this right, because you failed to use a tool correctly the beavers must die?

Parks officials have also looked into relocating the animals. But Cardinal said beavers are both territorial and increasingly abundant across B.C., so staff couldn’t find a suitable new home.

Now that it’s November, Parks Canada feels compelled to act. “We need to address it now before we get into the very wet season of the winter,” Cardinal said.

But McBain has a hard time believing there are no other options and would like to see the community consulted about what happens to the beavers.

“Humans are impacting the environment, it’s not beavers that are impacting the environment. We destroyed their habitat first, now we’re just going to destroy them,” she said.

First of all, NICE work Leslie. You already have that reporter eating out of your hand because look at the tone of the article! I’d say if you bring some children dressed in beaver tails and show them a photo of the ACTUAL trapezoidal beaver deceived you’re home free. Or at least on broadcast news. Then 200 more people will care about this issue and THEN you’ll be home free.

I have no idea what kind of rectangular fence they used to protect the culvert, but it sound like the beavers scoffed at their feeble attempts and kept right on making a safe pond for their family. Those stubborn beavers, willfully insisting on protecting their children and eating ALL winter long.

I will try and track down Leslie and Nathan today, and talk to them about real options.

On a related note, this was a nice discussion of urban wildlife recently on KQED. I’m sure it was just an oversight on Colleen’s part that she forgot to mention beavers.