I was alerted this morning by our friend and “Raging Granny” Gail about her fellow RG’s post on the Daily Kos yesterday. The title alone inspires confidence, but the tale needed sharing at once! Here’s the reader’s digest version, but go read the whole thing! And for an extra treat read the comments to see how beavers are discussed all across the country.
Posted by Badger Sept 21
I have a sometime neighbor I’ll call Jack. It’s not his real name, but short for Jackass, which is an accurate description of him. He lives in Seattle, but has a cabin along the creek in our canyon in Eastern Washington State. He spends maybe 10 days a year here, and in that short amount of time manages to piss off the rest of the neighbors.
One of the ways he does that involves the beavers. On his property, on the other side of the creek from his cabin, on the hill above the creek, about 50 yards off the road, some beavers passing through found a spring and decided it could be developed into a beaver homestead.
They built one small dam and created a small, shallow pond t hat no one noticed, but these were not beavers with low standards or ready to give up easily. So a little farther along the hillside, still well above the creek, they built another dam.
Jack worried that the beaver pond would flood his driveway, so he hired people to live trap and remove the beavers. Which they thought they did.
The next spring, the dam was in tact, so Jack hired other people to breach the dam and drain the pond. But the dam proved difficult to breach, and the next day, the breach was repaired by some of the original beavers, or perhaps new beavers who liked the site and decided to reclaim it.
Of course by now we’ve all learned to expect the worst from beaver tales. so he tried to move the beavers and rip out the dam and that didn’t work. Uh-oh. What did he do next? Dynamite the dam? Sell hunting rights? If you’re like me you’re braced for anything at this point. Let’s be brave on read on.
On Saturday night, September 8th a thunderstorm passed across Eastern Washington State. It dumped little rain – we only registered 0.06 inches – but spawned prodigious amounts of lightning. The lightning started hundreds of fires. We were between two fires, both part of what’s now called the Wenatchee Fire Complex – the Byrd Canyon fire to the south, and the First Creek fire just a mile and a thousand feet above us.
Byrd Canyon grew quickly and moved into the coulee south of us, but not far enough to be a danger there. What was more dangerous was that it moved up US97A along the Columbia River. The coulee is one exit from our canyon, the other is US97A, and with a fire behind us and 30 MPH winds, we might need an exit in a hurry. They stopped the Byrd Canyon fire far enough south of us that it never presented a problem, but that fire put us at Level 1 evacuation status.
The First Creek fire was only about 30 acres by Tuesday, so it was growing slowly, but it was surrounded by a lot of fuel, in very steep, rugged terrain, and potentially threatened a lot of homes, including ours. With all of the fires burning in Eastern Washington, we were very lucky to be given a high priority and a lot of resources. Every day we had 2 helicopters on our fire, which is exceptional for a fire as small as ours in a big fire season.
The distance from the front edge of the fire to the lake is about 3 miles one way, so each round trip for the helicopters was over 6 miles. It was likely the pilot, or an alert firefighter, that spotted the beaver pond, which is about a mile or less from the front edge of the fire. And the front edge of the fire was starting to threaten homes in our canyon – in the end, it reached within a few hundred feet of the house farthest up canyon, and was just behind the top of the ridge behind our house. The picture above is the helicopter dipping its bucket in the beaver pond below.
The fire had grown progressively worse. The author and her husband had packed their belongings, computer and family photos in prepraration to evacuate. Remember how stressful this time is, because we learned in the Oakland Hills fires that the families who suffered the most trauma were those who went through the terror only to find that their homes were inexplicably spared. I’m sure this was a terrifying wait.
But every day at the house, the little green helicopter was dipping at the beaver pond and returning to dump water on the fire. To go the half-mile from my house, turn around, fill his bucket in the small pond, and return to my house on the way back to the fire took the pilot less than a minute. The pilot was staying with a friend in town, and he said the pond was important to saving the valley we live in. He thought it tripled the amount of water he could deliver, not having to travel the additional distance to the lake, watch out for boats on the water, and contend with the other helicopters on ours and other fires. He could also deliver more water without flying back to the airport to refuel as often. Possibly because of the extra water, the fire remained a surface fire and was stopped in our area by direct attack – fire line right in front of the advancing fire – rather than a massive burn out operation that had been planned for right behind our houses.
During and after every fire, signs spring up thanking the firefighters, and deservedly so. The crews who fought the fire, the crews who did structure protection around our house, and the volunteer firefighters from towns hundreds of miles away who visited us multiple times daily to see if more work was needed or just to make sure there were no spot fires, were all top notch, professional, and friendly people. The two guys supervising all of the efforts on our fire even took 15 minutes to explain progress and strategy to us and other neighbors. But we thought the beavers needed some thanks too, so a neighbor made up this sign and nailed it to the fence in front of Jack’s driveway:
Badger-Granny what a wonderful story! Thank you so much for sharing and reminding everyone who it matters that beavers save water! I of course will up the anti and say that in addition to the water stored in that pond beavers are raising the water table through hyporheic exchange, and all that seeping into the banks means that your wells don’t go dry and your pumps operate when you need them. I have read many a story where the only available water to fight the fire came from the beaver pond, and I am thrilled you reminded us!
And good luck to our friends in Utah on their very big day! I know you’ll all be Dam nervous and excited this morning and DAM tired tonight but I wish you all a DAM good time!
One thing I was particularly grateful for this year I thought I’d share with you today. It has to do with our good friends at the River Otter Ecology Project. The brilliant and compelling Megan Isadore was able to give a very successful address recently at the Randall Museum for the San Francisco Naturalist Society. It’s the natural history museum in the city and very education focused and beloved.
Because they were interested in doing the same thing for the Rossmoor Nature Association we were able to swap contacts in a way that got Worth A Dam an invitation to present there next summer! Right before the festival our beavers will be featured in all their glory! I thought I’d better start studying up and put together this new species list.
Which reminds me of this prescient child’s contribution:
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D., is a child psychologist with a private practice in Lafayette. She is also a board member of the John Muir Association at the National Historic Site in Martinez and became an accidental beaver advocate when she started filming the Martinez beavers in 2006. She started the organization “Worth A Dam” to manage their continued care and educate others about their value in the watershed. She has been particularly interested in the way that the beavers’ struggle has connected residents more closely to their environment, to their city government and to each other.
