Guess what tomorrow is? I mean besides another grueling october day before the election. It’s opening day of the SOLD OUT beaver conference in Colorado.
The weekend was full of fieldtrips and getting acquainted. But tomorrow morning is the start of the lectures. I’m thrilled that Ellen is finally on the lineup. Way back when I persuaded her to be part of the beaver restoration guidebook update Michael Pollock beamed and told me kindly that that is what they call in academic circles as a “Get”.
Everyone has seen and celebrated Emily Fairfax’s stop motion film showing how beavers slow the spread of forest fires. Well it inspired another lesson on how beavers affect flooding as well.
This was made by Virginia advocate of the beaver coexistence fund Alison Zak. Enjoy and share if you can.
I really enjoyed Emily’s beaver presentation for the very high-powered nonprofitPOSTlast night. (Peninsula Open Space Land Trust) (Think Stanford) It covered all the basics and the not so basics. In her background section she made sure to specifically say that they don’t live in the dam (( (So if anyone was listening from the New York r=or LA Times they can get that right in the future.) She even outlined findings from our historic papers showing they belonged in California. And best of all stressed that what beavers needed from us is to let them do their thing. I have to say even very picky people like me were happy.
I thought you would appreciate it too. So here it is without the warm-up game show beaver quiz.
Wouldn’t it be nice if some really clever author wrote about beavers in a national magazine and featured Cheryl’s lovely photo and my frequently imitated graphic. Maybe a magazine not specific to wildlife, like AARP or Garden Clubs of America.
The only thing I understand less than people’s fascination with orphaned beaver kits in rehab is their fascination for stories about beavers being hurled from moving vehicles at great heights. But I am an outlier and hardly a representative sample.
So if you’re a beaver rehab junkie here’s your fix.
Two orphaned baby beavers are growing up on-screen for all to see, thanks to a 24/7 livestream webcam at the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society in Summerland.
The baby beavers, which are called kits, are named Tiny Tom and Baby Nelson.
Both Tom and Nelson were found without a family and were brought to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. While the kits are unrelated, they have become bonded while living together at the centre.
The kits will live at the rehab society in Summerland until they are two years old, when they will be released into the wild.
“To monitor how our patients are doing without disturbing them, we have installed web-cameras in some of our enclosures at Interior Wildlife’s Summerland rehabilitation facility,” said Eva Hartmann, founder of the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society.
Since the facility is not open to the public, the new “Beaver Cam” allows people to stay up to date on how Tiny Tom and Baby Nelson are doing.
There is grooming and scratching at the moment and I suspect sleeping soon. I would much rather see a beaver in the wild than two orphans whose parents were killed by trappers but hey, that’s just me.
Guess what tomorrow is? I mean besides another grueling october day before the election. It’s opening day of the SOLD OUT beaver conference in Colorado.
