When I opened this article it was like turning on the evening news and seeing your best friend in 1st grade had just founded a hospice or had a school named after them. This is a remarkable read in more ways than one. Check this out:
Beavers play important role in region’s watershed
By Sherry and Ted Guzzi and Mary Long
We offer you an army of volunteers, born and raised in Lake Tahoe, who if given the chance, will filter and purify our lake’s water as it flows in from its tributaries. Without the use of fossil fuel, they work for free, expecting nothing in return for their tireless efforts and structurally sound engineering. They are the North American beavers.
Whoohooohooo! The Sierra Wildlife Coalition to the rescue! Mary and Sherry and Ted have been stalwart champions of beavers since they came on the stage in 2009 when they pushed the issue of trapping beavers at Kings Beach right into the front pages. They gathered a meeting of interested folks and asked Worth A Dam to be there and showed Mike’s DVD. Our own Lory and Ron drove to Tahoe to attend the meeting and offer their support and solutions. We even offered them a scholarship to aid with the installation of the flow device.
Well it turned out those first beavers had been shot by USDA workers wearing night goggles the night before the children were protesting on camera, but that only sealed their resolve to make a difference. They sand painted trees. They went to meetings. They worked at events and spread the word. They drove to Oregon to attend the conference, sonoma to join the beaver meeting, and Martinez to be part of the beaver festival. Twice. Soon they were installing flow devices and being agents of change in their own front yard. Always they were challenged with the old wives tale that ‘beavers weren’t native to the sierras’.Well that’s going to change.
Before we go any further, let’s get the “they are native” “they aren’t native” argument settled. This debate that has plagued the very existence of these animals in our area will be resolved in an upcoming edition of California Fish and Game Scientific Journal. Two articles present both physical and historical evidence showing that beavers were native to the Sierra Nevada.
Samples taken from a buried beaver dam at 4,000 feet above sea level on an upper Feather River tributary were carbon dated at 544 AD. The Washoe Tribe and other mountain tribes had a word for beavers, but none for any other non-native species. The earliest Europeans to arrive in North America reported beaver living in every suitable waterway from the Arctic tundra to northern Mexico. After all, what insurmountable obstacle would have prevented beavers from living in the high Sierra? And, they have been here for a very good reason.
Now that was a surprise! How much of a surprise? Well, remember how Galileo caused that big uproar by suggesting that everything didn’t actually revolve around the earth? And the earth moved (and was moving) all the time? Everyone (but some unnoticed pagans) had believed the earth was the center for ages and it fit nicely with the theology of the time. So arguing that the sun actually stayed still and the planets moved around (and earth was just one of those planets and not the center of the universe) was UNTHINKABLE. Galileo was tried for heresy, placed on house arrest, and ordered to recant. The Catholic church didn’t actually change their mind and apologize to him for 400 years.
Well call me crazy, but this might just be close.
The bomb-dropping article isn’t even published yet and Rick has warned me not to blow the advancing horn too soon, but I suppose that cat’s out of the bag now (and spawning beaver kittens all over the place)! Galileo was right. The church was wrong. We are right. And science has been wrong a long, long time. What better place for the sierra-beavers debut than in the actual sierras? Who better to slice the first cut off the cake than our own Sierra Beaver champions from the front lines. I’m very proud of them all and the article is sure to raise all kinds of ire and consternation and debate. Good. It takes time to change minds. Let’s start now.
Oh and happy labor day. I interview Bob Arnebeck of New York today for Agents of Change. Wish me luck!
