Climate conversations

Yesterday, Joe Wheaton’s webinar offered an intelligent and dynamic look at the issue of beaver and climate change. I was particular struck by this slide about the projections for snow pack water storage in the western states. Look at California. We’ve been relying on the sierra snow pack for so long we can hardly imagine living without it. This slide predicts climate change will lower that by a a third in 2050. Hmm you’d think that would make folks interested in the best water saving engineer the world has ever known, wouldn’t you?

It was fun to know a lot of the people attending the webinar. I would have loved to see the ones I didn’t know so I could track them down! I was glad to see that this website was prominently featured under additional resources.

Big smile too when he talked about the awesome research on beaver prevalence from those great researchers in California! (blush). He walked us through the BRAT tool application which he has completed for all of Utah, and talked about some applications in the Appalachians he’s doing now. Afterward there was time for questions and answers and someone asked about how to get change to happen in his community. Joe had an interesting answer about communicating to interested parties by using voices from their own experience. He thought that it was important to be pragmatic and know the science, and he thought things like “beaver festivals” were of limited value at changing minds.

This of course sparked a response from me (no, really?) and an interesting conversation ensued by email. I asked Joe, Mike and Mary for permission to share their responses and thought you would be interested in what they had to say. The conversation isn’t over by any means, and if you want to add your thoughts you can always send them to me.

   Thanks for the great seminar Joe, I really enjoyed it, but was left with lots to think about with the question at the end about attitude change and beavers.

 This is an issue near and dear to my heart especially since I’ve kind of been involved in all aspects of this over the last 8 years, with the festival, our historic prevalence papers, and the website. I think what has been very clear to me is that beaver attitude change operates on three vastly different fronts – really a trident of change – and those three prongs tend to have very different foot-soldiers. In my observation they are in danger of thinking they’re the most important. But ultimately they are all essential, probably each necessary but not sufficient.

 In Martinez public opinion was the engine that started everything, Nothing else could have done that. There would never have been a subcommittee to persuade without that. That meant kids and parents and people getting personally involved and all the layman mistakes that entails. It meant beaver tails and cameras and a festival. Public involvement drives media. And media gets people’s attention and attention interests politicians.

 Popular opinion and media moved the politicians in our city to try something new. I won’t hesitate to say ‘shamed’. No amount of science or data could have done that. Even advice from other cities who had been through the same situation wouldn’t have done that. Even financial “proof” wouldn’t have done that. Only the bright light of public attention forced them to study the issue at all, which made it possible for me to take the time to learn everything I could and use the science to move the scientists on the committee. They were persuaded by the science and that made a difference.

 But it was public opinion that made it possible to get the city to hire Skip to actually do the work. And it was his expertise that allowed that work to prove itself. which persuaded city government to allow it. If his flow device hadn’t worked none of the above would have mattered, because flooding would have trumped. And if the people hadn’t rallied no amount of persuasion would have forced the city to hire Skip.

 Public outcry moves politicians, sometimes. Science convinces scientists, sometimes. And pragmatic success makes it all work, sometimes. None of these work in a vacuum. That’s what I’ve learned in Martinez. I just wanted to say my idea about that.

 Thanks for a great conference Joe and Mary!

 heidi

Thanks for you kind words and thoughtful analysis of my off-the-cuff responses to some of those questions.

 I like how you’ve identified three very different foot soldiers. I hope I did not come off as too dismissive of any of those groups. To be clear, I certainly don’t think science is the most important group ;). I also agree, they all have an important role to play and you’re absolutely right that the public awareness and support is critical and the result of the outreach.

Thinking about my response in retrospect, I probably should have qualified that. I feel like today, mainly thanks to the outreach efforts of folks like you, the Lands Council, Mary, Wildearth Guardians, Mike, etc., the public support and awareness part has largely been won. That’s not to say that we should stop doing any of those outreach efforts, and keeping up those efforts is important. However, from my narrow perspective as a scientist, and from my own experiences in working on restoration projects, I feel like the most pressing urgency for outreach needs to be targeted at a much narrower audience. Targeted interactions with the folks who can either make this stuff happen (i.e. decision makers, managers, and to a lesser extent practitioners), and the folks who can keep it from happening (i.e. certain interest groups, specific land owners, specific decision makers and managers) are critically important now. The public pressure exists now on both those groups because of the outreach efforts. In my limited experience, these groups are actually surprisingly receptive too. I guess I feel like I can be most effective by engaging with those groups, recognizing their concerns, and attempting to propose solutions that pay due considerations to their concerns and consider this broader agenda.

 There is not a right or wrong… like you say, we all have a role to play. You’re spot on with the observation that the facts and science don’t necessarily matter. Scientists love to believe that their data and analyses make the difference. Fortunately, there are still some decision makers who like to leverage such data and information to inform their decisions that allow us to keep that delusion alive. However, perception is ultimately far more important in influencing the decision. Where the rubber meets the road is when decisions are made and actions taken; the effectiveness of those actions and their impact depends both on how accurate those perceptions were and how well the data and analyses describe or forecast reality.

 Anyhow, thanks for sharing the ideas and perspective, and keep up the great work. I am so slammed these days that when I eventually look at my own web pages I’m always embarrassed how out of date they are. I love that you keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and spread that word. We’ll keep chipping away at the science where we can. BTW- nice articles on the expanded range work in CA… very cool.

 Best Wishes

Joe

 Joe thank you for your thoughtful remarks which I will read over again many times. But I just want to say quickly that I wasn’t trying to say science was useless. I was just saying that it doesn’t convince everyone. Climate change is a case in point. And I don’t think the battle of public opinion is as far along as you might. I think we underestimate the value of storytelling. Heidi

 Hi All,

Joe, thank you for an interesting and informative webinar yesterday. I appreciate you doing it, and I rest assured I did not feel that your “off-the-cuff” answers in any way diminished the importance that the non-scientific community has in promoting coexistence with beavers.

Whether it is raising a child or creating the right conditions for attitude changes towards beavers, it takes a village. I like Heidi’s term of a “triad” as a good way to visualize the public outreach, hands-on implementation, and scientific research working together to support coexistence with beavers.

In my experience what happened first was that there were individuals who did not want the beavers killed that were causing problems. Their passion is what created the need and desire for an alternative approach. Even when all the wildlife professionals were saying the flow devices did not work, isolated committed individuals were willing to take a chance on any alternative that would spare the beavers. Without those idealist people, my work never would have gotten off the ground. When these people were able to band together as they did in Martinez, then public officials were sometimes willing to listen and try these alternatives. It is my experience that cultural attitude change on a societal scale is an absolute necessity for longstanding changes for beaver management. Society’s attitudes and values determines where its energy and money are spent. So public outreach and education is not only necessary to get things started, but are also necessary for long-term success.

The second fork of the triad is the physical work that must be done to provide real solutions to real problems. Without successful solutions, then even the most committed individuals and groups will soon be tuned out by society. In my experience, talking usually did very little to change people’s opinions. Everyone has an opinion and are usually reluctant to change it. However, when talking was combined with real life examples of problems being solved, that is what changed most people’s minds and opened them up to the possibility of coexistence. And when those solutions were able to not only solve the problem but do it in a way that was better than the old solution, then wow, interest in these solutions began to expand rapidly. As more and more flow devices got installed, more and more people witnessed them and real momentum was achieved. I am amazed that here in MA flow devices went from being universally dismissed less than 20 years ago to now being widely recognized as the preferred management technique.

Now that flow devices are well established in my small area of the country we have only just begun the task of their widespread adoption. Solid scientific research is crucial to make this next step. Government agencies, and other groups as well as interested individuals want unbiased evidence of a solution’s effectiveness before adopting it. As we heard in the webinar yesterday, people want to know if are there any scientific studies looking at these solutions. These studies are the tools for widespread adoption of coexistence. Being able to cite scientific literature referencing what has worked elsewhere is immensely powerful when these solutions are being considered in other parts of the country where they do not have a large number of flow devices to see for themselves. Whether it is basic research on the geomorphological or hydrologic changes beavers create or hard numbers of flow device successes, it all matters and adds to the momentum of change.

I am grateful for the work each of you are doing. It is a great team to be on! 

All the best, Mike Callahan

 Lovely description of the triad, Mike.

 And a value of all of us being in communication is that in different communities, different social/political regions of the U.S. (and world), and different geographical interactions with human infrastructure, one leg of the triad may be worked out differently than in another.

 Socially, geographically, and politically, for instance, Martinez, CA is quite different than Garfield County in so. Utah. So it not only takes a village, as Mike says, it takes a really adaptable, flexible village, with the team learning from each other as well as helping each other. Which we do.

 Mary Obrien

 FWIW, I don’t know how ‘flexible’ Martinez is. Because if another family of beavers were causing a problem today they’d still trap. Just as quickly and silently as possible.

One huge part I forgot to mention on the trident was the beavers themselves. Who happened to move into the downtown creek where everyone could see them. If they had picked someplace more private, the public would have never cared.  Heidi

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As you can no doubt see, this is a complicated conversation that could take place over several decades and hopefully a couple tall beers. I’m extremely grateful that they were all so approachable on the topic and allowed me to share their comments with you. It is  a privilege to be part of this discussion. You can watch the entire seminar online here and it is definitely worth your time.