Last night more than 40 children and their parents showed up for a chance at having their picture taken by Suzi Eszterhas for possible inclusion in Ranger Rick magazine. I was in charge of registration at the footbridge and got parents to sign the model release. Jon shepherded groups across the street, and Suzi was at the old dam arranging children, persuading them to be patient, and taking photos.
The night had a strangely important feel. Almost everyone had seen the beavers before, and many knew about the kits, most had attended a beaver festival. One eager attendee showed me her three layered keystone charm necklaces from the previous years, and one boy was even wearing a lovely homemade t-shirt that said “Save the Martinez Beavers”!
(Jon got so excited about him that he told Suzi to get a photo, and when she was trying to walk around the edge of the pond she slipped in! About three feet deep because of the swelling tide, but she instinctively held her camera over her head so everything important except her squishy boots was saved! Afterwards Jon was very sorry apologetic.)
The kids and parents were very excited about her work and wanted to know as much as possible. Of course they asked which issue of Ranger Rick it will be in, and of course we have no idea. Hopefully sometime next year. She was especially interested in the older kids because of the readership age of Ranger Rick, but she made everyone feel important and part of something very special. Parents were totally unphased by the release which they happily signed and gave contact information. Afterwards Jon and I looked at each other and commented that this had felt like an unexpectedly important night.
I’m hoping this translates into lots of new sign ups for NWF at the festival and some great bidding on Suzi’s donations. Now today it’s time to buckle down with Deidre and get the items for the silent auction tagged and organized. Next week is full of last minute details and the Contra Costa Times is supposed to release its article about the festival (and profile of ….cough…me.) I’m just hoping it doesn’t mortify me too much.
Remember the beaver in Brookside Elementary that had flooded a field and drove the administrators to seek a trapper? They had the sense to wait until the last day of school and warned kids to keep away from the traps. Then some moms and kids found out, got upset about the plan, drew some media attention and made a few administrators upset in the process. Eventually they were able to slow down the decision and shine some light on options. I talked to them about all the resources available and suggested they should really know better, since they were a whopping 7 miles from Michael Pollock’s office.
So far so good. Now the other news. The option the school picked was relocation rather than installing a flow device and letting the beaver stay to educate children about their important roll in restoring creeks. Okay, bring on the Hancock traps.
Remember the beaver that a month ago became a cause célèbre in Lake Forest Park?
It was caught Tuesday, its life spared, and moved to a temporary home at the Tulalip Fish Hatchery near Marysville.
Now the rodent, named “Beatrix” by neighbors, waits for the nonprofit Beavers Northwest that captured her to find her a mate. Then off the pair will go to some creek on Forest Service land along the Highway 2 corridor. Pairing up beavers makes it more likely they’ll stay at that spot.
We are trying to handle this with as much sensitivity as possible,” wrote Pete Rose, Lake Forest Park administrator, in an email.
The answer to the city’s problem came in the form of Ben Dittbrenner, a University of Washington Ph.D. candidate in aquatic ecology, who a couple of years ago co-founded the nonprofit Beavers Northwest.
Okay, right off the bat I need to say that Ben is a good guy. He really admires the work beavers do and understands the ecology. I met him a few years ago at the State of the Beaver Conference when he was working as a watershed steward. He helped Mike Callahan with his salmon adaptions to the flow devices. He has since left to pursue his Ph.D on using beavers to mitigate global warming. He’s a good guy, but he’s no Sherri Tippie. She uses branches as a lure so that the beavers are relaxed and chewing when she releases them. And usually doesn’t bring the media. I’m sure using scent sets them on edge. They are already expecting a fight.
He is very, very enthusiastic about the largest rodent in North America.
Dittbrenner begins the list of why the ponds are great: They remove pollutants from ground water, they are drought protection, they decrease the damage from floods, they produce food for fish and other animals.
Working with the Tulalip Tribes, over the last couple of years Dittbrenner’s small group has captured and relocated some 40 beavers.
I would like this story SO much better if they had installed a flow device. Just as I would like Ben’s website SO much better if the links for nonlethal solutions were not all dead or 404’s and he didn’t have the story about throwing beavers from the airplane on the front page. He’s doing good work for the right reasons I keep telling myself. But this kind of thing just upsets me.
Have you seen those inhumane concrete container crates they use at Guantanamo? They are NICER than what this beaver gets. And speaking of torture, how do you think a beaver feels in a tiny box listening to the roar of rushing water that she can never, ever repair? I can’t help myself. What on earth is the fascination with housing beavers at fish hatcheries? Are they just big concrete spaces with water?
This is where beavers SHOULD be living. Rusty of Napatopia sent me this photo yesterday after the beavers did some repairs. He smartly asked if I was suffering from “Lodge Envy”, which I’m sure you can guess the answer to. Big beaver showoffs!
We have accomplishments of our own to boast of. Jon finished the stage platform refinement yesterday for the beaver festival. How lucky are OUR musicians going to be? There are three platforms which we formally inherited from the John Muir Historic site. We decided they needed sprucing up a bit. Here’s the center one.
Footage of a second beaver kit in the Knapdale Forest in Argyll has been released by the Scottish Beaver Trial. It comes a week after a first young beaver was spotted at the trial site. Scottish Beaver Trial (SBT) said it suspected further breeding had occurred, but had now managed to capture evidence on camera.
The trial is the first licensed reintroduction of a mammal to the UK and has brought the beaver back to Scotland after a 400-year absence.
Roisin Campbell Palmer, field operations manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, said: “We had suspected further breeding had occurred at the site but had not managed to capture it on camera.
“We can now confirm two kits present at this lodge.
“These kits are around three months old. Having spent the first couple of months within the lodge, they are now starting to leaving the lodge and explore their surroundings.”
Further breeding?
I would blame the crazy framing on the reporter but this quote came from field manager Roisin Palmer in the flesh. ‘More kits obviously means further breeding’, right? No, honestly. This kit is from the same lodge and the same parents. It was the same breeding that did the trick. It took place about 107 days before the kits were born and won’t take place again until next year. See beavers are like dogs and cats and have what’s known as a “litter”. It just takes a while to see them all because they don’t all mature at the same rate. Keep watching. There might be three in the camera next time!
Still Same Breeding. (Wow, you really haven’t had beavers for 400 years have you?)
I’m totally loving that little hippity hop hop at the end. It starts at 35 seconds. You can tell it looks unusual because mom reacts with surprise. What is that child of mine doing NOW? It immediately reminded me of rabbits, which oddly made me think of a Pablo Neruda poem.
EL pie del niño aún no sabe que es pie,y quiere ser mariposa o manzana.
Which basically translates to “The foot of a child, doesn’t yet know it’s a foot, and wants to be a butterfly or an apple.” Which is perdy. Now because it’s Neruda it goes on to talk about the worker’s boot that a capitalist society will force that little foot into eventually, but the first two lines are the most famous.
After seeing that video, I’m sure the castor version goes something like “the foot of the beaver doesn’t yet know it’s kit, and wants to be a rabbit or a bird.”
I had fun with the new toy yesterday. Apparently 62 percent of voters never miss a beaver festival! There is NO beaver news in the world today, and I am too cluttered with details to have anything interesting to say. A couple readers wrote brilliant letters about the Alyth stupidity, and that of course makes me very happy.
Let’s try this again shall we?
http://www.wedgies.com/question/55b0f3ebf63f453300001200
Here’s a history lesson with music. I made and uploaded this video May 2007, more than eight years ago. Before the flow device, before Worth A Dam, before the festival. Before Jon even started watching. You can tell it is such a long time ago I made it even BEFORE I was friends with Cheryl. (Because I use no beautiful photographs of hers.)
One part I especially like is the very blurry photo of an otter actually sitting on top of the old beaver lodge. I snapped that soooooo long ago. It was so early and I was just barely awake. I wasn’t even sure what it was! I remember a youngish beaver came and tail slap alarmed him away. I counted and he slapped 19 times. Of which I managed to film the very last one.
Honestly, I was such a newbie I included a stolen nutria photo by mistake, can you spot it? I was just starting to get intrigued by this new species in my midst. And having fun using iMovie. If I had taken the poll back then I would have answered number two.
A row has broken out over whether beavers are partly to blame for exacerbating Friday’s devastating flood in Alyth.
The Scottish Association for Country Sports (SACS) said several members have contacted them claiming debris washed through the town showed clear signs of having been chewed by the aquatic rodents.
Others have claimed that felled trees left lying in a bid to encourage biodiversity also aggravated the raging torrent.
However, beaver supporters have leapt to the animals’ defence, refuting claims that material from dams upstream of the town were brought down by the floodwater.
Louise and Paul were worried about this being used unfairly, and they were right. Is there a better example of the misunderstanding of cause and effect? We saw some beaver chewed sticks floating in the flood so that means it was caused by beavers? We saw some felled trees taken in the flooding so it was caused by beavers? That’s like saying we noticed jewels missing after the robbery so we think the jewels did it! Or a whole grove of trees were burned in the fire so they must have started it!
Paul Ramsay, who owns the Bamff estate where some beavers live, said it was a “ridiculous exaggeration” to blame the animals. He said: “There could conceivably have been a twig or two that had come from beavers, I wouldn’t deny that was a possibility, but the catchment area of the Alyth Burn covers about 36 sq km.
“The contribution from Bamff to that is tiny.
“As for the debris, as the water flowed down through the Den of Alyth it picked up an enormous amount of wood. It is exaggerated out of all proportion.”
Honestly, burning witches at the stake is starting to make more sense.
OF COURSE beaver chewed sticks were washed out during the flooding. So did dog-chewed sticks. Gardening sticks and walking sticks. So were tires and benches and rolls of toilet paper rolls. That doesn’t men they CAUSED the flooding you silly scottish beaver-phobes. This is bad even by their standards.
Honestly people never miss the opportunity to blame a problem on their favorite enemy do they? It’s like Pat Robertson saying hurricane Katrina was caused by the gays.
Here in beaver festival preparation land things are humming along. We received the lovely brochures from the printers yesterday which look amazing. Did two interviews yesterday morning and finished the signs for display. Also an accidental delivery from Weavers coffee lead to a big donation, and great conversation about the evils of Peet’s and bird-killing rat poison, meaning that wildlife lovers need to find new sources and the auction was a great way to do that.
More importantly we made a beaver discovery that I’m very happy about.
It all starts with a fairytale of sorts and a literary reference. In Hope Ryden’s beautiful beaver book “Lily pond” she often notes that when beavers disperse or get sick they go away to the “Upper ponds”. I was obviously worrying about not seeing mom and dad beaver the last time we went to watch, so I dreamed reassuringly of them being in the “upper ponds”. It was only when I woke up that I realized Martinez doesn’t have any upper ponds. Darn.
But then I thought, we may not have an upper pond, but we DO have Ward street? So last night at 8 pm Jon went creeping to ward street bridge where he blissfully saw Mom, Dad and a two year old browsing about on the brambles and happy as you please. When you think about it, since ward street has no dam to tend or mud to move, it must like their vacation home.We had seen Jr and the other two year old at the footbridge the night before.
So that means our family of 5 is all happy and accounted for. Hurray!
The kids and parents were very excited about her work and wanted to know as much as possible. Of course they asked which issue of Ranger Rick it will be in, and of course we have no idea. Hopefully sometime next year. She was especially interested in the older kids because of the readership age of Ranger Rick, but she made everyone feel important and part of something very special. Parents were totally unphased by the release which they happily signed and gave contact information. Afterwards Jon and I looked at each other and commented that this had felt like an unexpectedly important night.
![image[1]](https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/image1.jpg)
