Three years before Martinez celebrated it’s first beaver festival, Durham Carolina marked it’s quietly quirky beaver-saving pride event.

The Queen Beaver Pageant has since been a joyous, campy, and watershed friendly event celebrated every year. During this time it has ranged from more or less dangerous to be a drag queen in North Carolina, and coincidentally more or less dangerous to be a beaver in North Carolina. But no matter, the contest has persevered.

A moment in Durham: ‘Free to Beave’

At the edge of Duke Park, families unfold their lawn chairs as a warm June sun steams off the morning rain. Local singer Juliana Finch strums tunes about online dating, protesting, and Pride, while nearby, the Poetry Fox taps away on a typewriter as kids dressed as beavers call out words. Paper fans flap. Loco Pops drip. This is the Beaver Queen Pageant, Durham’s long-running celebration of spoof, sass, and beaver-based activism.

Themed “Free to Beave,” this year’s event opens with a burst of camp chaos starting with the intros of contestants. Ina Gnawten wears a long tail on which sits a platter full of cocktails. Madam Raspbootyn pops out of a Russian nesting doll that matches her red and blue outfit. Lady Violet Beaverton is in a Bridgerton-like dress covered in white and red roses. Finally, Captain Ellerbe & Bucky walk out together as a dynamic duo, peeling off Hawaiian shirts to reveal superhero costumes. 

I’m so old that I can remember how shocked our fellow Worth-A-Dam champion Lory was to visit her grandaughter in Raleigh and find another beaver festival! She quickly realized this one was a little different than ours. But over the years they partnered with a watershed group and got a little more interested in actual beavers too.

Right before the talent act, rain clouds roll in, and a quick downpour halts the activities. Yet no one leaves. Attendees huddle under tents and trees, cheering every time the clouds pass. As the judges are introduced, the audience whoops as if rock stars entered the park. One girl wearing a beaver tail yells “We love you!” after each judge gets introduced.

The talent portion begins with a mock cooking demo of “Beef Bourgnawnion” by contestant Ina Gnawten, each ingredient met with dramatic “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd. Kids dash towards the stage, parents sometimes chasing them and sometimes not. One boy in beaver makeup and a small tail yells, “I’m gonna be a beaver when I grow up.”

How could you not love this festival and that little boy?

Beneath the camp lies a deeper current. The first Beaver Queen Pageant sprang up in April of 2005, a year after a group of neighbors protested the planned removal of a den of beavers from a nearby wetland. The community saved the beavers and in doing so, started a tradition. What began as something small became an annual celebration of nature, neighborhood spirit, and the right to be as ridiculous as possible. Today, the pageant partners with Keep Durham Beautiful, with part of the proceeds going toward local conservation. 

Now that I didn’t know. It started with actual beavers. What does that mean for Martinez?

If you ask Richard Mullinax, better known as Beverly Woody, the pageant’s first winner, none of this even felt possible back in 2005. He was roped into the very first pageant at the last minute, when only two other contestants signed up.“It was the high 90s. There were like 50 people, and crickets chirping as the sun went down,” he remembered. “I only agreed to do it if I didn’t win.”

However, he did win. Beverly Woody was crowned the first Beaver Queen following an amazing clog dancing routine. “You know,” Mullinax says with a shrug, “it’s classic Beaver Queen energy. It is normal to expect the unexpected.” 

He now returns year after year as a judge.

Despite another rain delay, the event powers through. “You can’t plan for anything at the pageant,” says Cary Winslow, grabbing her strawberries and cream LocoPop. “That’s kind of the point.”

The voting booth line starts to get busy with many attendees voting for their favorite contestant. Votes cost $5 each, and attendees who vote 20 times or more can take home a custom beaver tail. “All I want now is to leave with a homemade beaver tail, ” says Anne Prichard, visiting from California but proudly cheering on contestants as they make their way through the crowd.

The crowd cheers as the final tally is announced: $6,000 has been raised.

“Your 2025 Beaver Queen is Lady Violet Beaverton!” the emcee says. Her Regency-inspired dance, both refined and risqué, caught the eyes of the judges and the votes of the crowd. With her feathered fan waving and a smile spreading across her face, she is crowned and showered with compliments from the crowd.

Well, we take our beavers a bit more seriously here in Martinez. But as we all know by now, there’s no wrong way to Beeve.

Lovely to see stories like this from Colorado. They have truly signed on to the believer team.

Salomone: Benefits of beaver ponds

Beaver ponds are found throughout the Colorado High Country. Toss a lightweight fly rod in your vehicle and hit some High Country roads. Any short hike along a mountain stream will lead to a beaver pond at some point. Most roads inevitably parallel the course of a small watershed. Keep your eyes open. When you see the trickle of water pan out beyond the stream banks, you’ve found one.

The fish I have found in beaver ponds are surprising. Brook trout are the most commonly associated with beaver ponds, but rainbow, cutthroat and brown trout can be found, too. I have only caught two tiger trout, a brook trout and brown trout hybrid, but one of them came from a high altitude beaver pond.

Shallow beaver ponds are found in meadows where small streams are dammed, creating a pocket of water. Depending on the dam, the water can get deep, but that’s not usually the case. Long beaver ponds occur in bigger streams where the main channel is obstructed. The stoppage creates a body of water that pushes back up the stream channel and broadens the watershed. Long beaver ponds are deep and provide critical winter holding water for fish and beavers. This type of beaver pond will have ledges where the original stream channel existed before the inundation from beaver activity.

Everyone knows by now I’m no big fan of beaver relocation. Mostly I think beavers should go about their business doing their thing and WE should change. But articles like this one take away most of the sting.

Beavers were brought to the desert to save a dying river. 6 years later, here are the results.

It’s not easy being a river in the desert under the best of circumstances. The ecosystem exists in a very delicate balance, allowing water sources to thrive in the harsh conditions. These water sources in otherwise extremely dry areas are vital to the survival of unique wildlife, agriculture, and even tourism as they provide fresh drinking water for the people who live nearby.

But man-made problems like climate change, over-farming, and pollution have made a tough job even tougher in some areas. Rivers in Utah and Colorado that are part of the Colorado River Basin have been barely surviving the extremely harsh drought season. When the riverbeds get too dry, fish and other aquatic creatures die off and the wildfire risk increases dramatically.

About six years ago, one team of researchers had a fascinating idea to restore the health of some of Utah’s most vulnerable rivers: Bring in the beavers.

You gotta love any article with lines like “Bring in the beavers”.

In 2019, master’s student Emma Doden and a team of researchers from Utah State University began a “translocation” project to bring displaced beavers to areas like Utah’s Price River, in the hopes of bringing it back to life.

Why beavers? It just makes dam sense! (Sorry.)

Beaver dams restrict the flow of water in some areas of a river, creating ponds and wetlands. In drought-stricken areas, fish and other wildlife can take refuge in the ponds while the rest of the river runs dry, thus riding out the danger until it rains again.

When beavers are present in a watershed, the benefits are unbelievable: Better water quality, healthier fish populations, better nutrient availability, and fewer or less severe wildfires.

It’s why beavers have earned the title of “keystone species,” or any animal that has a disproportionate impact on the ecosystem around them.

Doden and her team took beavers who were captured or removed from their original homes due to being a “nuisance,” interfering with infrastructure, or being in danger, and—after a short period of quarantine—were brought to the Price River.

Despite the research team’s best efforts, not all the translocated beavers have survived or stayed put over the years. Some have trouble adapting to their new home and die off or are killed by predators, while others leave of their own accord.

Ahh those unfortunate beavers that get relocated right into harms way. Well grad students can’t think of EVERYTHING. You know,

The water levels in the river are now the healthiest they’ve been in years. The fish are thriving. Residents of Utah are overjoyed at the results of the experiment.

A column in The Salt Lake Tribune from 2025 (six years after the beaver translocation began) writes that the revitalization of the Price River “helped save our Utah town.”

“A tributary of the Colorado River, the Price River runs through downtown Helper. On a warm day, you’re likely to find the river filled with tourists and locals kayaking, tubing and fishing along its shore. A decade ago, it was hard to imagine this scene—and the thriving recreation economy that comes with it—was possible.”

Of course, it wasn’t JUST the beavers. Other federal water cleanup investments helped remove debris, break down old and malfunctioning dams, and place tighter regulations on agriculture grazing in the area that depleted vital plant life.

But the experts know that the beavers, and their incredible engineering work, are the real MVPs.

Yes they are. No need being humble.

In other drying, struggling rivers in the area, researchers are bringing in beavers and even creating manmade beaver dams. They’re hoping that the critters will take over the job as the rivers get healthier.

Utah’s San Rafael river, which is in bleak condition, is a prime candidate. In on area of the river, a natural flood inspired a host of beavers to return to the area and “riparian habitat along that stretch had increased by 230%, and it had the most diverse flow patterns of anywhere on the river,” according to KUER.

It’s hard to believe that beavers nearly went extinct during the heyday of the fur trapping industry, and continued to struggle as they were considered nuisances and pests. Now, they’re getting the respect they deserve as engineer marvels, and their populations have rebounded due to better PR and conservation programs.

To that I say…it’s about dam time!

I’m so old that I remember when Utah was the beaver flagship for the entire country under Mary Obrien who laid the foundation that Ms Doden seems to have reinvented. Real change takes real time.

And real beavers.