The ultimate one has finally arrived.
Tag: Beaver Believers
This is Keenan, one of the students of the Semester in the West group who are working on the “Beaver Believer” documentary. He is editing some of the miles of footage they shot this year with beaver professionals around the country (including here in Martinez). Oh, look what they posted on Facebook he’s editing now. He even dressed for the occasion. Gosh, I hope he doesn’t take out all the swear words. It won’t be the same story without it.
Let’s be candid, and you may not be at all surprised. I am not the kind of person who does well with being edited. (Think of me like that plant that doesn’t blossom when pruned, but does best when completely ignored and left alone to grow in the sidewalk.) Because I forced myself to travel through the howling caves of graduate school I have learned to appear to cooperate with the process, but all I ever really manage is to “endure” it. I hate it when someone snips out one word or inserts another. Hate it when that red pencil slashes its way through my carefully planted word garden.
Learning that they were editing my footage yesterday was much, much more disturbing. Like being a recently sketched comic book character chased by a giant eraser. Keenan was very gallant, and said that I was so eloquent theren’t were very many “ums” or swear words to edit. But I can do the math. This is supposed to be a 30 minute documentary. And they filmed heavy weights like Mary O’brien, Suzanne Fouty, and Sherri Tippie. That leaves about 1.5 minutes for Heidi, half of which will be the beaver festival and 45 seconds will be of me talking.
And what pithy one liner did I manage in an hour interview that was worth including? I can’t imagine. You see my dilemma.
Well, I did ask for the cutting-room floor leftovers and Sarah the producer said no problem, so maybe I’ll find use for the bulk of the interview yet. In the meantime another very fun thing happened to take my mind off the digital amputation. A student from UCB contacted me when I was on vacation because she needed to do a paper for a class called “Environmental Problem Solving” and thought of the Martinez Beavers as her topic. Brita came yesterday for an interview with me and to meet some Worth A Dam folks while watching beavers on the footbridge.
Earlier she had been invited to the Alhambra Watershed Meeting and met Mitch Avalon and Igor Skaredoff from the beaver subcommittee. Now I love Igor and Mitch but the beavers made sure we were wayyy more interesting. She got to see all three kits, Junior and Mom before the uncle paid a visit. You could see that this particular term paper research was the most fun research she had ever done, and we filled her with beaver good news before she left. She is a senior finishing up a double major in the field and hoping to head to graduate School in the fall.
The future for beavers just got a little brighter.
ESPM 100 Environmental Problem Solving
Analysis of contrasting approaches to understanding and solving environmental and resource management problems. Case studies and hands-on problem solving that integrate concepts, principles, and practices from physical, biological, social, and economic disciplines. Their use in environmental policies and resource and management plans.
Don’t you just love that this class exists in the world? Let’s read the syllabus. There should be a whole section on beavers.
Why Toronto residents must embrace city wildlife
Gladstone thinks it’s only fair she puts out a welcome mat for urban wildlife. “We are taking over their habitats,” she says. “They will stay and we have to learn to live with them.”
Her view is embraced by naturalists and conservationists. Animal populations have rebounded in North American cities and everyone — two legged and four — must adapt. But this accommodation will take effort: “We’ve largely taken ourselves out of the working landscape and mostly forsaken both the destructive ways and the stewardship skills of our ancestors,” says Jim Sterba in his engaging 2012 book, Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds. “But the comeback of wildlife and forests all but demands that we reconnect to the natural world around us, relearn old stewardship skills and develop new ways of practising those skills better.”
It’s not the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe. They (and countless others) reviewed Sterba’s handy published excuses for killing wildlife without so much as a single inconvenint fact check. We had to wait for the Toronto Star to put this brilliant piece together. Go read the whole thing all the way through, and email it to five of your friends. Then send a note of thanks to the author Liz Scrivener, who deserves a TON of credit.
Take the worrisome example of beavers.
“Beaver numbers are definitely high,” confirms manager Toninger. “We have beavers swimming around million-dollar yachts on the harbourfront.”
Most complaints are about beavers damming and causing flooding in recreation areas but on occasion the problem involves backyards. In the winter, problems associated with North America’s largest rodent concern damage to trees. “They can level a whole forest and over the course of a winter can take down hundreds of trees.”
Residents usually want beavers trapped and relocated. But that’s not the way nature works, Toninger explains.
“Our understanding of wildlife is scripted,” he says, referencing Walt Disney. “That you can trap him and somehow he’d be happy and frolic somewhere else. You’d be trapping beaver for the rest of your existence. Move him somewhere else and the beaver dies a lonely existence in an area it doesn’t know. It can’t set up a territory and can’t feed. They are not like deer. They need a home base, they need a lodge. It’s no different than a stranger picking up your teenage son and taking him to a country he doesn’t know.”
The conservation authority recommends installing a system of pipes called “beaver deceivers” or “beaver bafflers” so beavers can learn to live with lower water levels. Trees can be protected by wrapping them with wire.
Hurray for the conservation authority! Hurray for Liz and the Toronto Star! Honestly when I read this article I get the strangest feeling all over that there are a few reasonable humans in the world. It’s very, very strange, and wonderful!
I hope Mr. Sterba suffers from terrible indigestion today.
Our friends working on the beaver believers project have surface again after some much-needed rest. They posted this picture with USFS geomorphologist Suzanne Fouty.
Well this will certainly be a memorable summer for each one of them. I can’t imagine how Sarah is going to go through all that footage and end up with a 20 minute documentary, but I’m very intrigued to find out!
They also posted some stills of their interviews so far. You might recognize these folk.
The charms for the Keystone Species Activity arrived yesterday, and they’re another amazing job from Mike Warner at Wildbryde. Beautiful and generous as there are extras of everything. Children can earn charms for free with the help of Safari West Junior Keepers, and our stalwart volunteer Erika will help put everything together and make it into a necklace at the linking station. Check out our new beaver and water drop design! This year we are taking pity on forlorn adults and letting them participate for a pittance of 10 dollars. I can’t wait to see visitors getting quizzed on why beaver matter. If you want to study ahead you can look here.
And as if that isn’t exciting enough, there are new splendors from our friends from Whitman college, this time with Sherri Tippie. They are heading for Martinez next and their podcast might be describing the festival and you!
So the Beaver Believers film crew went out live trapping with Sherri Tippie two nights ago and were rewarded with a mom, dad, and two kits for their efforts. Not to mention some excellent footage and very fine conversation, I bet.
- “Waist deep in a stinky, skanky pond in urban Aurora, Colorado, filming a live trapping effort to relocate a beaver family to a happier home in Glacier National Park.”
What an exciting couple of days will be! – culminating in a release! If Sherri doesn’t inspire every one of you, you’d better visit the cardiologist very soon and check if your hearts aren’t made of stone. When I heard her speak I sat in the audience the whole time weeping, I was so happy. Not that I got to see her, not that I was invited to the same conference as her – but just that she existed. I can’t help thinking that coming to Martinez after all that excitement might be a bit of a let-down….but come anyway.
Which reminds me…with apologies to Mother Theresa…
If you are kind to beavers, people in your city might get mad at you; Be kind anyway. If you are successful at saving beavers, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest about beavers and frank about solving problems, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What beavers spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Let them build anyway. If you are happy with your website and celebrate in festival, people may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good for beavers you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have for beavers, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you beavers; It was never between you and them anyway.
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