Not Fascinated Yet

heidi08 Educational July 15, 2015

I had a 6 year old patient once who was with me when a bird (despite the ribbons and warnings) hit the window of my office. We watched to see if it recovered from the accident, and I assured her that if it didn’t look okay I would bring it to Lindsay. “I just went there!” she exclaimed having taken a field trip with her class the week before. She paused for a second and her face looked serious.

“Is that where they get those bones?”

You see this little girl, and countless others we never hear about, hadn’t really SEEN the blind eagle or the three footed foxes that were living there, or understood that the hospital helps injured animals. Her horrified attention had been completely consumed by the skeletons on display in the front room. Apparently, she was now wondering if they harvested those bones from people like me bringing sick birds to the hospital.

How surprised would Lindsay be to hear that! Now I’m sure the intention was to educate and show how a raccoon was different than an hawk etc, and to teach kids about the nature that goes through their own backyards when they’re asleep every night, but this little girl so gripped by the bones and taxidermy that’s all she saw.

I often think it’s strange how we use caution about showing human skeletons to children (have you ever seen one in a pediatricians office or a library?) but never hesitate to show them an animal one. As adults I think we see them as such different categories we would never make that mistake (significant vs insignificant). Most children haven’t learned to think like that yet. They can stare with morbid fascination at a squished bee, or have a solemn ceremony for a dead bird. For them seeing a dead animal is one way of seeing death, which we generally protect them from seeing. And which they’re already beginning to suspect might apply to themselves and their loved ones some day. It is mortifying to me how MANY naturalists use taxidermy or animal skins and think children are learning about the animal. And I don’t say that because I’m a vegan bunny-lover who thinks animals should never be killed. I say that because I don’t happen to think children learn about nature by seeing its remains.

Which brings us to this article, and its priceless picture.

Nature is hot and cool at day camp

5596e8159a51e.image — Garrett Brenden teaches kids about the different parts of a beaver during Nature Camp at the Arboretum in Yakima, Wash. on July 2, 2015. (KAITLYN BERNAUER/Yakima Herald-Republic)

Four years ago, Jheri Ketcham and Colleen Adams-Schuppe, arboretum co-executive directors, created the day camp to offer children an understanding of local ecology by blending art, science and recreation. The idea was “to get kids outside,” Ketcham says. “We felt a real need to get kids exploring outdoors and learning things about nature.”

Reiter’s goal is to make the outdoors, well, second nature. “We want kids to think it’s fun to be outside and that nature isn’t scary,” she says. She also emphasizes respect for the natural world. “You can’t protect something unless you’ve learned to care for it,” she points out.

Ahh, this is exactly what I mean. He’s showing them a taxidermied beaver, and there is a skull on the ground to explain. Now, obviously children (and parents) need day camp. And we like to hear that they’re spending some time outdoors and away from their x-box. I’m sure at first glance this looks like a sweet photo. Children gathered around learning about nature. Well, until you look closely at their faces. Then I think you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

I would say those faces range from mildly disgusted.to deeply disturbed. I love the girl on the left especially. Why are you showing us this?

To be fair, there is one child who is clearly fascinated. The young man who has stooped closer for a better look. I’m sure he would love to be closer still. I suppose this child might someday be a future wildlife rescue worker, but I’m thinking that this budding little ‘Dexter’ has a slightly more macabre interest. I think he’s trying to figure out exactly how to do his own at home with the family cat.

For comparison, this is what a child’s face looks like at a beaver festival.

Help Wanted: Only Beavers Need Apply

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 14, 2015

Yellowstone is in trouble unless we can bring back the beavers

People say that wolf reintroduction saved Yellowstone.

When biologists reintroduced wolves to the park in 1995, the initial effect was promising. Although elk populations did not decline as much as expected, the plants they ate started to regrow. Ecologists theorized that elk altered their behavior when wolves were around and consequently spent less time grazing.

The wolves quickly became the poster child for trophic cascades, how bringing back top predators can restore out-of-whack ecosystems. In recent years, however, ecologists have realized that bringing back wolves hasn’t been enough to restore plant communities in Yellowstone.

“Predators can be important,” Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, told Nature, “but they aren’t a panacea.”

Ohhh sure, wolves are all sexy and wild with their howling in the night and dramatic silhouettes. People like George Monblott make viral videos proclaiming their splendor. But guess what has a lumpy silhouette and doesn’t get big fancy supporters? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘B’.

Thus ecologists have started looking closer at the role beavers play in the ecosystem.

Beavers, too, suffered from the initial decline of wolves and rise of elk, as elk out-competed beavers for food — particularly willow and aspen trees — leading to the near-elimination of beavers and their dams from the park.

As beaver dams disappeared, so did the wetlands and streams they supported — and these are the areas that suffer most today.

“It’s problematic because the willows and beavers have a mutualistic relationship: Beavers eat and cut them down to build their dams, and the dams raise the water tables and bring water up so it’s more available for plants,”

“Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments,” Emma Marris, author of the book “Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World,” told Popular Science, “the willows can’t recover.”

Not only will the willows not recover, but the marshy habitats around them won’t recover either. That includes not only the trees and plants but also the birds, amphibians, and any other creature that needs wetland to survive.

Now it occurs to you that beavers might matter? After we’ve been talking about it for a decade? Well, isn’t that mighty white of you, as they say. I’m sure Dr.’s Hood, Muller-Swarze, Westbrook, Haley and Fouty will be very pleased. More importantly, I’m hoping you take from this that one single answer won’t create a solution. It’s a complicated interweaving of systems, and when you remove one they all suffer. It’s all connected, you know.

(But beavers are STILL more connected than most.)

For Immediate Release

heidi08 Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 13, 2015

Beaver Festival VIII features free wildlife pins by Oakland artist

Worth A Dam is pleased to announce that the first 150 children attending the Beaver Festival on August 1st, 2015 will be able to collect 19 wildlife pins designed by Oakland artist Mark Poulin and purchased with a grant from the CCC Wildlife Commission. The activity will highlight the new wildlife seen in Alhambra Creek since the beavers arrived, and emphasize their role as a Keystone Species. The artist was pleased with the project, saying

“I was so excited to find out that we had beavers in the Bay Area, and a group protecting them, celebrating them,and doing education outreach about them.”

The beloved annual festival will feature live music, beaver tours, children’s activities, and more than 40 ecological booths. Initially a response to the controversy regarding the beavers, the festival has become one of the largest and best attended wildlife events in the state.

This year in particular there’s a lot for beaver-fans to celebrate, as acclaimed wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas has been photographing the Martinez beavers for the past two months in preparation for a feature in NWF’s Ranger Rick. This award-winning children’s magazine promises to be perfect place to show case the famous Martinez Beavers.

Although she has worked with Cheetahs in the Savanna, and Penguins in the Antarctic, Ms. Eszterhas had never seen anything quite like Martinez where she was forced to contend with trains, traffic, homeless, and, she says “one unexpected proposal of marriage.” Despite the urban hazards she was thrilled with her assignment and adds,

“Working with the Martinez beavers has given me a special, up-close view of a mysterious animal that is often shy and elusive. It has been privilege to watch the family live out their fascinating lives right in downtown Martinez! I applaud Worth A Dam and the city of Martinez for their work in being a model for coexistence.”

You can hear all about the visits, bid on her books and more at the silent auction, learn about wildlife or just find about more about the beavers by joining this year’s Annual Festival. Come learn how one city improved its creek by solving a problem humanely. It promises to be a ‘dam’ good time!

Details:

Beaver Festival VIII – Sponsored by Worth A Dam August 1st, 2015. 11-4

“Beaver Park” in down town Martinez.

Tours, wildlife, exhibits, and live music. Contact 925 283-4499

FESTIVAL PROMO:

Website: www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress

I released this yesterday to the media winds. So far only patch has picked it up. Fingers crossed it makes its way around the bay. The festival’s a lot of work whether people attend or not, so it’s more worth it when we’re PACKED.

Lets all be more like beavers…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? July 12, 2015

No new deaths, and Jr. was seen last night. How quickly the standard for good news changes when you are living in a war zone. The dam was worked on too, meaning the beavers themselves are feeling back to normal. I guess we should try and do the same.

These are nice articles to bring us gently back to the land of the living.

North woods entrepreneur: New beaver pond shows the power of the beaver’s creative destruction

To a beaver, the slightest trickle of water is the sound of opportunity. It’s said you can give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. But, I say, give a beaver the barest of brooks and he’ll create a new world.

It’s a process of creative destruction that kills a forest and replaces it with a rich wetland environment that, in its first summer, is already home to at least three broods of mallards and probably more.

It’s a perfect environment for raising young ducks. The pond, which is isolated from any open water source, obviously harbors no giant muskies waiting to inhale a downy little duckling. And the canopy of now-dead alder and aspen offers the young ducks substantial protection from hawks or falcons.

But there was much more at the new pond early one morning this week. Frogs were poking noses from the water, a garter snake was coiled on a sun-splashed rock on the shore, while legions of dragonflies darted around in search of breakfast or a sunny perch of their own.

In the long view, beaver ponds are temporary components on the landscape, even though they can last, at times, for decades. Over time, they change, of course. Our new pond is full of woody cover, but soon enough those dead trees and shrubs will disintegrate and fall below the surface of the dark waters, opening up the pond. The brush will be replaced with true wetland vegetation, like cattails, rushes, or sedges. If they haven’t already, turtles will eventually find their way to this oasis in the forest. I’m curious to watch the transition over the years to come— assuming that the beavers and their progeny continue to maintain the dam.

I love a beaver article that takes the long view on beaver impact. But Marshall Helmberger stopped short of mentioning the egrets and herons that come to the pond to eat those frogs, and the fish that feast on the dragonfly larvae. Not to mention the mink and otter that come feast on the fish. How about the nutrients that will accumulate in that damp soil and the many plants that will eventually settle in that meadow? I’ll let Dr. Wohl explain:

I never get tired of hearing that clip. That is the best lightening overview on beaver impact I have ever heard. Even better than Enos Mills, and that’s saying something. Ellen donated another book for the auction, this one looks like an excellent summer read.

A combination of travel writing, nature writing, and science writing, Transient Landscapes is a beautiful and thoughtful journey through the natural world.

Now on to my favorite beaver article this season, I have tried to track down the author but had no luck yet. This appeared yesterday in the News Tribune in Washington state. (Of course)

Eager beavers seeking summer fun can rely on these tips from the animal world

Here are five ways your kids can be more like a beaver this summer.

Tip 1: Create your own shelter

Have you ever pitched a tent outdoors, or gathered all the pillows and blankets in your house for an epic pillow fort? It’s amazingly satisfying to put a roof over your own head, even if it’s just for fun. Beavers are known for creating their own homes, called lodges.

Tip 2: Hang out with your family

If you spent the summer by yourself, you’d probably get bored. A beaver would feel the same way. They love to play and socialize with their family members every day. Beavers live in family groups called colonies.

Tip 3: Eat a healthy snack

Nothing tastes better than fresh veggies found at the local farmers market. North American beavers have diets based on the plants found in their natural range, which includes Canada, the United States and northern Mexico. They love to eat bark, twigs, aquatic plants, and the leaves and roots of deciduous trees.

Tip 4: Go for a swim

What’s the best way to cool off in summer (aside from eating Popsicles all day)? Taking a dip in the pool, of course. Swimming is a refreshing activity for lots of animals and a major part of the beaver lifestyle.

Tip 5: Help habitats

All living things are connected, and every animal needs a home. Protecting and creating homes for other animals is a great habit to practice every summer (and the rest of the year, too). You can try it yourself by planting trees, building bird houses or bat shelters, or volunteering for habitat restoration projects.

Beavers modify their surroundings quite a bit. In the process of creating lodges, dams and canals, they create rich habitats for other animals. Cutting down trees allows shrubby plants to grow, which are great food for deer and elk in winter. Beaver ponds also attract frogs that are hunted by weasels, raccoons, herons and others. Ducks and geese may build nests on top of beavers’ lodges.

A beaver colony is a good thing for a healthy forest.

I love. Love. LOVE. This article! How it of course PRESUMES that children might want to be like beavers. How it finds ways to educate children about beaver adaptions by pairing them with things they already know. And of course how the last paragraphs emphasize that beavers are GREAT for other animals in the forest.

Love.

I don’t know about you but I can see the beginnings of a beaver badge tied in with the festival, in which children show us they have taken beaver action during the season and earn something to acknowledge their role in the colony! Maybe they even get the list of how to be like a beaver at earth day, check the items off and turn it into us at the festival?

Hmm we’d have to add one of course. Teaching others what you know. Beavers do that all the time.

Some good beaver news for a change

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 11, 2015

Finally. A night and morning with no dead beavers. Mom, Dad, 2 year olds seen last night. And the dam’s been worked on. Thank heavens for a day of relative peace. In the meantime, there has been a lot of beaver news in the world that we’ve been neglecting in our grief. Let’s try and get caught up at least with the good stories!

Beaver problem solved with simple, innovative device

A family of beavers dammed up part of the retention basin in the Mount Healthy’s Heritage Park, property owned by Ohio Department of Transportion, causing the pond not to drain properly. So residents and ODOT teamed up to find a beaver expert with an innovative way to solve the problem.

Mount Healthy resident Karen Arnett says the beavers built the dam, but that dam also changed the ecosystem around the pond. Walkers in the park began seeing egrets and other new wildlife.

When the beavers were removed, some residents wanted to find a way to allow them to coexist.

So Arnett poked around and found Mike Callahan, a Massachusetts man who builds flow devices to manage beaver problems through his business, Beaver Solutions.

Callahan said while beavers are considered to be pests by some, scientists actually have proven that beavers are a “Keystone” species in North America. This means that beavers play a crucial role in biodiversity. Innumerable species rely either partly or entirely on beaver ponds, many of them threatened or endangered. “Therefore, whenever we can coexist with beavers, we are providing the habitat necessary for supporting many other species, and protecting the web of life upon which we depend,” he said.

ODOT brought Callahan in to show staff how flow devices could help them manage beaver problems. He was impressed by the invitation and eager to show them how it could be done.

“Is anyone aware of another state highway department that has committed to building and installing flow devices themselves?” Callahan asked. “Ohio wants to start doing flow devices themselves which I think is pretty cool.”

Callahan said the training session included a PowerPoint presentation tailored to ODOT needs, and a hands-on flow device installation where many ODOT staff participated.

Hurray for Mike and Karen! And hurray for ODOT. Ohio is the FIRST state in the country to be trained in flow devices. I never thought I’d see the day, but what do I know? Karen obviously pushed and tugged and wheedled in a powerful way that got the right results. That’s never easy to do. And Mike made sure the price was right for them to have a personal lesson. Thank you BOTH.

This is another story that brightened my eye during the dark days. I saved it for you.

An unlikely pairing

Back in the fall of 2014, when beavers first showed up in a ravine next to homes in the Bolton area, the question on everyone’s mind was how to deal with the creatures: Should they be driven away to avoid potential property damage, or accepted as a new and potentially beneficial addition to the neighborhood?

The answer was obvious to residents in the immediate vicinity of the beavers, and they eventually formed the group B.E.A.V., which stands for “Beaver Environmental Advocacy Volunteers.” In the months since the group was formed, B.E.A.V. members have helped educate residents on what it means to have beavers in a neighborhood — beyond the obvious tree-chomping problems — and hosted informational sessions with experts like Susan Barnes from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

This summer, their focus turned from education to concrete action. As it became clear that invasive plant species were creating problems for the beavers, the group decided that human intervention wouldn’t do the trick.

They needed goats.

“We assessed the health of the habitat in the ravine,” B.E.A.V. founder Peggy Watters said. “There’s a lot of invasive species down there, so our chance of being able to plant things for the beaver to keep him in the ravine was going to be difficult.

“Goats were a good alternative.”

And so it was that 34 goats arrived at the ravine between Holly and Sinclair Street June 29 for a week-long feast. The goats were rented from Yoder Goats, which in the past has provided similar services for West Linn’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“(The goats) take it all down, eat it and fertilize it while they eat it,” Watters said. “What efficient little munchers they are.”

Beyond providing a crucial service to the beaver habitat, the goats also proved to be a popular attraction around the neighborhood. B.E.A.V. hosted a special ceremony June 29 to mark the goats’ arrival, and volunteers helped create a path for the goats to follow from their trailer down into the ravine. Over the course of the next week, adults and children alike stopped by to visit with the goats and watch them “work.”

“It’s been fun to open all of our backyards and invite people back to hang out with the goats,” Watters said. “That whole community connection experience, it’s one of those experiences I think we’ve lost over the years. (The project) has been nice in many more ways than just clearing the ravine.”

Now that the goats have done their work, Watters said it will be up to B.E.A.V. members to take the next step.

“Our work isn’t done yet,” Watters said. “At our next meeting on July 13, we’ll be assessing how the goats did, and what do we do now?

Later this month, on July 18, B.E.A.V. is set to host a potluck gathering for neighbors who are interested in learning more about the beavers and their habitat.

How much do you love this story? And B.E.A.V.? I feel a great burst of affection for them and their ability to use wildlife to engage the community. And now they are holding a potluck? Apparently they can win the hearts of the politicians, the neighbors and the press! I can tell you right now why they were successful. Just let me know when they’re planning a beaver festival?

Speaking of the beaver festival, I just found out that we received a grant from the city for this summer’s event. Which means we have 3 civic financial sponsors this year. Take a moment to consider that, will you? Only 8 years after forcing them to do the right thing, Worth A Dam gets supported! This means our fullest ever support page.