Beaver friend, Brock Dolman of the OAEC (and featured speaker at John Muir Birthday Earth day!) rushed back from Redding to breathlessly describe the electric salmonid restoration conference he helped host which featured some surprisingly familiar faces. A shining star of the event was our new pal Michael Pollock talking about–you guessed it–the relationship between beavers and salmon. I don’t exactly have Brock’s permission to share the email but he didn’t exactly say not to either and I can’t be expected to keep news like this to myself. It’s THAT good!!!
Just back from an amazingly successful Salmonid Restoration Conference, where I moderated a 1/2 day session titled “Instream Flows for Salmonids” which had Michael Pollock as the final speaker. Over 200+ people packed into the room and filled every available space to hear his talk. There had been a lot of buzz being generated leading up to the session about beavers, and so lots of folks came to see & hear!! We then had an impromptu casual lunch time discussion that was open to everyone and over 60+ folks came to that as well!! All across the board there is a feeling of a swelling moment to bring beavers to the forefront of restoration!!!
Wow, think about what that means. There are watershed organizations across California worried about the salmon population. If a third of those tireless advocates became beaver believers we would be sitting on a beaver-boom town! There really could be beavers in Sonoma and Marin and Los Angelos. We really could see a day when a city or property owner has to pay a “salmon tax” to get a permit to exterminate beavers! My fondest dream is that it becomes more cost effective to live with beavers than to kill them, and the funds for that “tax” go to a public account from which cities and property owners can take out loans to help pay for the installation of flow devices and culvert blockers. Ahhh a girl can dream. You can bet Worth A Dam will be happy to play a part in the process.
