Mom, Dad and kit emerged from the bank hole at the lodge last night and heartily enjoyed some willow. Our visitors from Berkeley got the complete audience, thanked us with a donation and headed off to Lemon Grass Bistro for dinner. I was happy to see the beaver family together and to see the kit back in close quarters with his parents where he belonged.
Apparently, in Napa our beaver friends had a kind of reunion as well. Rusty, Robin and Hank all showed up at the dam at the same time to look for elusive beavers and were treated to a long and rare (in recent weeks) sighting, Apparently this yearling was hungry for willowbark and nothing – I mean NOTHING – else would do. About two thirds in he even climbs up into the tule bank to retrieve another one. I guess we have our answer to the question of beaver memory.
There was also a donation waiting for us when we got back from the beaver dam. This one from an attorney who tried the famous beaver case back in 2000. It was won at the appellate level where he showed that removing beaver from Lake Skinner caused such a dramatic impact that it required a CEQA exemption. The Department and Fish and Game and the Metropolitan Water District got to pay for that trial. Including his fees and the expense of bringing in Donald Hey from Chicago and Sherri Tippie from Colorado. (You can see why this case is popular with me.) I learned about it when he wrote our mayor way back during the initial bruhaha of 2007. Here’s some of my favorite parts but you should really plan on reading the whole thing.
He successfully argued (the court says “albeit over-dramatically”- Hrmph!) that getting rid of beavers at Lake Skinner was a DISCRETIONARY decision rather than a ministerial one. And therefore subject to CEQA. In addition, he argued that removing beavers from Lake Skinner might even eliminate them from Southern California entirely. Which, if you consider depredation permits as a good indicator of population, it did. See those big white counties at the bottom? Where there were no beaver to kill? Riverside is the long thin straight one that goes across the state.
Can Southern California really afford to eliminate its “water-savers”?
