SIERRA BEAVERS MAKE IT BIG

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, In the News August 5, 2020

Wow, it’s beaver season out there with a huge dump of news this morning which includes the New York Times. But lets start locally as we always have and talk about the new issue of Open Road with Doug McConnell that dropped this weekend. It’s about the importance of meadows and somehow they crossed path with Brock Dolman who got them thinking about our favorite subject and introduced them to a friend of ours.

The beaver profile starts around 10:30, but it’s all good. Let’s play a little game and see if you recognize any photos, okay?

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That’s right! Beavers are awesome. And their photographers rock. That was the handywork of our own Rusty Cohn who earned himself a neat little byline.

Of course it’s a half hour program so there wasn’t time to talk about how the forest service wanted to use beavers in the sierra and were told they couldn’t because they weren’t native, which prompted archeologist Chuck James research which prompted our papers which lead to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife saying, umm okay…you win….they’re native.

Ahhh memories!

SAVING WILDLIFE BY SAVING BEAVERS

You’ll be happy to know that all the volunteers at the Lindsey museum are now fully educated about our work in Martinez and why beavers matter. Fun group with a good focus on animals of course, I nominated beaver as the most important member of the wildlife club to save. Now my work is officially done and I just need to finish the Enos Mills film.

If I’m not too busy playing this, that is.

New smartphone game lets you solve real-world ecological puzzles

EcoBuilder, which is downloadable now on smartphones and tablets, teaches players how ecosystems work and aims to crowdsource solutions to unsolved ecological puzzles.

Ecosystem research looks at how animals and plants interact with each other and their environment. Climate change and other human interventions pose ongoing threats to how ecosystems function, resulting in changes to carbon flows and even extinctions of certain species.

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Gosh that looks like fun. I know just what I’ll be building. It starts like this: *click on any picture to review it),

A HELLUVA DAY FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact August 3, 2020

A while back, maybe even before Covid became our new best friend, I was contacted by Catherine Arnold, a writer working on a beaver story for the National Wildlife Federation. She wanted to talk about the good things beavers do and the good things that happened in Martinez lo these many years ago. Of course I talked sweetly about both. The way publication dates work this article has been waiting in the wings for a while. Which makes its August first publication all the sweeter.

Click on the image to go to that page in the issue where you can read it full screen.

Here’s the blurb in case you can’t see it:

Residents of Martinez, Califor-nia, saw this firsthand after a beaver pair settled in local Alhambra Creek in 2007. A few years earlier, those waters had been a mere “trickle,” says Heidi Perryman, founder of Worth a Dam, a Martinez group that sup-ports beaver restoration. After the beavers’ arrival, the wetlands they created attracted at least 20 wildlife species that were new or uncommon mals like moose, otters and muskrats. They truly are a keystone species.”Residents of Martinez, Califor-nia, saw this firsthand after a beaver pair settled in local Alhambra Creek in 2007. A few years earlier, those waters had been a mere “trickle,” says Heidi Perryman, founder of Worth a Dam, a Martinez group that sup-ports beaver restoration. After the beavers’ arrival, the wetlands they created attracted at least 20 wildlife species that were new or uncommon in the area, including steelhead trout, mink and river otters.

Give me just a moment to say a few things. First, that is Suzi’s photo of OUR BEAVERS at the start of the article. And I had nearly forgotten about that that huge wood burl that floated down stream in August of 2015. It kept crashing into things and getting stuck but eventually found its way over the secondary dam. It’s so nice to see it again and be reminded.

Second, this I realize that in the vast scheme of things the Martinez beavers are just a blip of a paragraph of a story. But now we are a paragraph in the NATIONAL magazine of NWF which means the Martinez beaver story is a NATIONAL story. As in something that all 50 states will find interesting.

And third something happened yesterday that is EVEN BETTER THAN THIS and I can’t tell you yet, but I will soon. I promise.

Oh and I found this awesome photo at a sight Rusty of Napa pointed me towards. All in all, it was a helluva day for beavers.

It’s a great day to give a talk to the Lindsay Museum about beavers. Now if I can just wipe that smug smile off my face.

THE ZEN OF BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact August 2, 2020

I could not resist the groovy narration of the trail podcast. I feared that no one else was crazy enough to sift through it looking for the beaver parts but it needed to be heard. I decided to use my spare time and meager skills to make a little film. I just love listening to their enthusiasm, even though I a good editor might have been a better friend!

From the Groundshot podcast: Episode #42 features a conversation between Kelly Moody (podcast host) and Gabe Crawford, previous podcast guest.

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HALCYON BEAVER DAYS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers August 1, 2020

Aaaaaaand it’s August.

Just like that. We have moved far beyond the missed beaver festival and suddenly the city grant is due for the NEXT beaver festival. Isn’t that special. I have exactly two days to finalize my presentation for the Lindsay museum and then on Monday I get to convince them that beavers are awesome!

Well okay, then. Things are basically falling in place. Jon’s birthday next week, and I’ll work on the grant after that. Some day I’ll get time to finish the Enos Mills film. At least I had time to work on Frances Backhouse reading this week, so I won’t complain much. Bring on the Halcyon days of August!

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