Ms. Podorefsky’s recent article about beavers (Beavers damming in Hopkinton) missed one important point. Most conflicts between humans and beavers can be solved non-lethally; trapping is usually not necessary.
If they continue to pursue trapping, Hopkinton officials will eventually learn the hard way that it’s impossible to permanently solve problems with beavers by killing them in any manner; more beavers will return, plug culverts, and rebuild dams repeatedly if the habitat suits them- as it obviously does at a few locations in Hopkinton. Furthermore, under the law, the Board of Health trapping permits are only supposed to be granted in situations where public health and safety are at risk – not to prevent a future potential problem.
Linda HuebnerDeputy Director, Advocacy Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
If Linda sounds familiar, she should. I met her through Mike Callahan and she did a lovely job on his testimonials section of the DVD. Nice Op-ed Linda, and I’m so glad you wrote! Their pretend surprise irritated me so much I could only have written about what was missing between their EARS.
Did you get the new copy of Bay Nature this month? Well just in case you haven’t read it yet there is one article in particular that should interest you. And if you don’t get Bay Nature you should, or you might try the subscription donated to our silent auction for a year before you realize you can’t live with out it. Recognize this adorable photo? You’ll probably want to go read the entire article here. Hopefully we’ll get plenty of interest for this year’s beaver festival!
Now for a fun article from Seattle which clearly has the kindest comments you will ever read in the vast history of beaver reporting. Take a peak and see if I’m wrong.
‘You can’t imagine seeing somebody eat a tree in Seattle’
Cheryl caught a great moment with one of our kits the other night and we’ll be out tonight to make sure the foot traffic behaves itself by the beaver dams!
Kit by Cheryl Reynolds
And finally a taste of things to come from Amelia yesterday, there will be changes but this is looking sharp!
Holy guacamole bat man, it’s starting to look like we’re having a beaver festival! Enjoy the soothing layout and delineated lines because all to soon it will become a clutter of children, parents and teens visiting the booths and learning why beavers matter. I decided we needed street names because it is too confusing to tell people where to go, and I like the idea that they are named for our beaver works, not for our guests! We definitely have a full house this year and now I’m off to find whether they city will let us mark spaces with some kind of removable chalk!
The River Otter Ecology folks (Wildlife Row, west) launched this video last night which is a very clever use of their trail cams and is sure to get lots of hits. Go give them some beaver love and pass it on.
Way back when Worth A Dam was just forming, (during the punic wars, as Edward Albee would say) I was looking for a licensed non-profit to be our receiving organization and was having conversations with an urban wildlife group based in LA. I was so excited they were interested in being involved I wrote it about it on the then nascent website and they were so annoyed I had blasted the secret liaison-in-process that they withdrew. Keeping secrets, I learned, is very important for beavers. Who knew? It was okay, very soon after their withdrawal I did a presentation for Pleasant Hill Creeks and met Bill Feil of Land for Urban Wildlife who became our official non-profit umbrella and that has worked very well for 5 years. I think it was all for the best, but I did learn something about keeping secrets.
Sarah Koenisberg
What I learned is to not talk about the thing you’re not supposed to talk about, but to keep asking for permission over and over in alternately charming and irritating ways until your requests are so annoying you are given the all clear! So when Suzanne Fouty called to ask me if I’d talk to Sarah Koenigsberg of Whitman college in WA a few months ago, I said sure. Talk beavers to a complete stranger? Of course! Turns out Sarah is an instructor working on a film project about beavers and their advocates, focusing on climate change and water. She was going to interview Mary Obrien and Suzanne Fouty and Sherri Tippie for the film, but all three insisted they talk to me as well.
It was an incredibly exciting moment to think that the three believed I had something important to offer to the film, because I admire those three women slightly more than God. I could remember the amazing article that first introduced me to Mary way back when she was described in that excellent article from High Country News. It remains one of my favorite beaver reads, even though I now realize the photo at the beginning is a muskrat – not a beaver.
Whitman College Semester in the West is an interdisciplinary field program focusing on public lands conservation and rural life in the interior American West. Our objective is to know the West in its many dimensions, including its diverse ecosystems, its social and political communities, and the many ways these ecosystems and communities find expression in regional environmental writing and public policy.
We agreed that they would come help with Festival VI, get some film of it and we’d do an interview as well. Wow! Can I tell everyone right now? I was dimly able to ask. No, Sarah said, let me get it confirmed and formalized and then it can happen. I promised to hold my tongue. Which I did. Can I talk about it now? How ’bout now?
Cat out of the bag! All I can say is Sarah should be thankful there were distracting new kits to keep me occupied! Yesterday I finally got the ALL CLEAR so now it’s official and I can formally say that Sarah of Tensegrity productions will be coming to do an interview and film the festival.
The project at hand is a documentary film with the working title, The Beaver Believers. It tells the story of several strong women and their allies, and their common cause of seeking to restore Castor Canadensis, the North American beaver, to much of its former native habitat to provide more water and habitat in the ever-warming West. We propose to tell their stories of creativity, grit, and whimsy with the same spirited spontaneity and serendipity as their activism and ecological citizenship itself. The film will be 35- to 45-minutes in length, appropriate for the “documentary short” category in film festivals.
A collaborative effort between filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg (director of photography) and Whitman College Professor of Politics Phil Brick (director), The Beaver Believers is already well on its way into pre-production, and we have a rigorous production schedule planned for the summer of 2013. Filming will take place from May to August with shoots scheduled in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. {eds note: AND MARTINEZ!}
Now you must hear a taste of their reporting on the subject, listen to this podcasts started at the Utah festival last year. Click on the photo to listen and imagine how the first festival in Utah might compare to the 6th in Martinez. Don’t you live their voices? Mary’s metaphor of the wildlife riding on the beaver tail is an art project waiting to happen! And Sherry’s voice always makes me want to sit in the front for and listen! Suzanne is outstanding! Oh and while you’re listening remember that painting beaver tails and pinning the tail on the beaver are all things the learned about from us.
Click to Play
They’re stuck with us now. We’re on the calendar and they are sending a team to help lift, carry and film. I’m sure they’ll want to do a beaver viewing too! I’ll do an official announcement this weekend and let Martinez know they’re going to be on camera for beavers. Again! I heard from Sarah that they just got back from Idaho yesterday, visiting some places with beautiful beaver dams and some places that should have them but don’t because they’re always trapped and killed.They also met with Carol Evans of the BLM in Nevada and checked out their amazing habitat in Elko.
I confess to you that I am deeply excited and appropriately terrified about their coming, but every contact I’ve had with Sarah has been reassuring. When I listen to the clip yesterday I realize that this is going to be a inescapably big deal and I can only comfort myself in the usual manner by thinking critically. The very young voice behind that podcast (one of the students) gets to describe Dr. Obrien’s face as being “lined with the desert”? (!) And Dr. Fouty wears “hippie clothes?” (!!) Goodness, what does Mr. ‘Sage’ look like? No comment? Why are the women itemized in narration and not the men? We would have words. That ought to keep me focused. I can do this. I’ve been interviewed in my living room before. Don Bernier filmed me and the first ever meeting of Worth A Dam and Richard Parks used an interview for his final project at UCB school of journalism. I’ll carry on as best I can. Think of the beavers.
And speaking of distracting new kits, our bravest 2013 model was out at 7:30 on Thursday night, allowing me to catch this glimpse as he made his way up from the secondary, through the primary and back home.
Congratulations to our hardworking friends in Kamoka where they are organizing their first-ever Great Canadian Eco-fest. Getting folks to pay attention, try something new, and put it in the paper is hard to do, so I couldn’t be happier for them.
“We wanted a large community event in Komoka, and tossed around a few ideas, but it was my wife who came up with the idea if an EcoFest,” said Steve Galinas. “She has been involved with animal rehabilitation groups and thought about organizing an event for those groups, but that is a very small niche so it evolved into eco-friendly”
The great Komoka eco-fest will be held at the community center (soccer fields) on sunday June 23 from 10-5. “We definitely hope this will be an annual event” Galinas said.
I tracked down Margaret last year when I first got wind of this. She told me that the inspiration came to her when she was listening to Adrian Nelson at Fur-Bearer Defenders talk about our Beaver Festival! We’ve been swapping ideas about whom to invite and how to make it kid friendly. Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary will be there to educate folks about living with beavers and why they’re good for the ecosystem. (You may remember that sanctuary was started by Audrey Tournay who was the first woman who showed that rehabbed beavers could be released in the wild. This video just brought tears to my eyes so I’m guessing you’ll enjoy it)
Say it with me now: small, small beaver world! Good luck Steve and Margaret! I wish we could be there, but you can bet we will in spirit! Send us photos.
And because I never get tired of arguing about Jim Sterba’s ‘kill ’em all’ manifesto…
In his book Nature Wars (reviewed by Jason Mark in your Spring 2013 issue), Jim Sterba fails to recognize that, often, nonlethal solutions to wild animal encroachments are both less expensive and more permanent than trapping. He never acknowledges that beaver flooding can be effectively controlled with flow devices, allowing the beavers to remain. Or that new colonies can be naturally discouraged using the beavers’ own territorial behaviors. He never admits that beaver-created wetlands promote fish, birds, and wildlife while raising the water table. I am saddened to see Earth Island Journal promote his book.
Heidi Perryman, Martinez, CA
P.S. I sent this as a special gift to Margaret’s frazzled email earlier this week, hoping it would buoy her spirit as it always does mine.
Do you remember being a kid and running home so excited to tell a story that you could barely find the breath to carry your announcement? Maybe you wanted to get home before your brother so that you could tell it FIRST! This is how I feel this morning, but I will exercise a modicum of self control and tell you the most exciting news LAST because that’s the kind of girl I am.
Yesterday I received my April-June copy of Bay Nature and guess what I found on page 11? Very nice colors and eye-catching location. The undeniably first of its kind advertisement for a beaver festival they have ever had. Indeed, probably the first ad for a wildlife festival of any kind. Nice.
I know what you’re thinking. How can you possibly top that? Well, how about a positive beaver article from Texas? Yes, Texas.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, beavers were hunted extensively for the value of their pelts. By 1910, their populations became dramatically low in many parts of the United States. So low that strict regulation of their harvest was implemented. Their value as soil and water conservationists is well known by many educated land owners and sportsmen.
Mind you, its no High Country News or Canadian National Geographic, but its definitely note worthy from a state that is generally known for beaver badness. All good things have to start somewhere, and I hope we see more and more beaver ecology coming from the Lone Star State.
Which leads me to our third good news of the day, and the most exciting piece yet. First some context. Back in 2010 I was invited to speak about our beavers at the Santa Clara Creeks Coalition Conference, which was a delightful day that introduced me to some fantastic advocates. One of the folks who attended my talk and got excited about beavers was the executive director of the Guadalupe River Conservancy in San Jose. She introduced me to some folks who introduced me to some folks who got me invited to the California State Parks conference that year. She donated handsomely to us in 2011 and also really, really wanted to build a network of support for beavers in the Guadalupe, just in case she could get permission to introduce some down the road.
Um.
Guess what was just spotted beside the river near a certain aquatic-predator named team’s silicon valley stadium?
Oh and it looks like the world might be changing today.
Linda Huebner
Deputy Director, Advocacy
Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Recognize this adorable photo? 
You’ll probably want to go read the entire article here. Hopefully we’ll get plenty of interest for this year’s beaver festival!
