Susan Kirks is the woman behind PLAN and the badger advocate at the festival. I read about her online years ago and tracked down her contact information because I thought we might possibly have something in common. She has been working much longer at her much bigger cause to create an open space wildlife corridor in Petaluma, but we still had lots to talk about. She blogs for Petaluma 360 and wrote a fantastic account of Saturday’s event. Today she gets to be a ‘guest blogger’ but since I didn’t exactly ask permission you have to click on the link above and visit her site as well. Okay?
A Great Day for Beavers
by Open.Spaces
Saturday, August 8th, was a great day for Beavers – and for people, too. The 3rd Annual Beaver Festival was celebrated in downtown Martinez, next to Alhambra Creek. A walk over the nearby pedestrian bridge that crosses the creek provided a superb view of the beaver dam. At one point, a green heron came to rest on the dam. Beavers are nocturnal, so there wasn’t an expectation of a sighting. What was stunning was the creek, the dam crossing it, the plant life on the creek’s banks, and the amazing quiet and feeling of peace when, just several feet away a lively celebration was in full swing. It was like stepping from one world into another and then stepping back. The support for beaver conservation was community wide and very alive.
The Paula Lane Action Network booth was open for Badger talk. Many people of all ages stopped by to ask, are there badgers here? – and to learn the story of the Paula Lane Badgers in Petaluma and South Sonoma County. Others shared their own badger experiences. A naturalist with the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation knew of a badger sighting on Mount Diablo several years ago. More recently, there’s been evidence of some burrowing near Brentwood. I remembered this kind man from last year. We’d discussed the benefit of building branch and brush piles among open grassland areas for wildlife cover and habitat. A woman who used to live in Indiana stopped by and shared she and her dog had come upon a baby badger, covered by leaves, when out on a walk in Indiana many years ago. “We got out of there very quickly,” she said, knowing the mother badger was probably nearby, possibly out hunting, and would not want to find a woman and her dog near the baby badger! A young boy stopped by and shared he’s writing a paper about badgers for his 5th grade science class. I told him I knew a web site that would love to post his paper if he wanted to send it to PLAN.
Next door to the PLAN booth was the Painting Extravaganza. Frogard Butler, a talented artist, created a backgound mural of the Alhambra Creek area and Beaver Habitat, with nearby local streets. Children were invited to imagine and creat with colored paints whatever they wanted to add to the mural. At the end of the day, I went to see the mural. “It’s very interesting,” the teacher/artist leading the painting process mused. “They didn’t paint any people.” Indeed, the mural was filled with all kinds of animals and wildlife, from a mother bird feeding her young in a nest to a nest full of eggs to all kinds of raccoons, skunks and beavers. A lone scarecrow in a grassy area was the sole human-like expression.
At Noon, children led a procession of a beautifully handpainted Beaver Banner through the festival paths. Throughout the afternoon, musicians entertained festival goers, culturally diverse and musically joyful.
Also close to the PLAN booth were the Mount Diablo Audubon Society, where adults and families with children shared shifts and talked about the amazing bird life in Contra Costa County; the National Park Service, with a friendly and kind Ranger who knew everything about the John Muir National Historic Monument; and the Burrowing Owl Conservation Network, a grassroots group that organized to protect Burrowing Owl habitat in Antioch, becoming a resource and advocacy group for the species.
Another activity I found charming was – the charm bracelet. Young people visited festival sites and learned about the beaver and its influence in our environment. They visited the Friends of Alhambra Creek booth for a dragonfly charm, the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network booth for a salmon charm, the Native Bird Connections booth for the bird charm, the Lindsay Wildlife Museum display for an otter charm, and Worth a Dam’s headquarters booth for the beaver charm – and questions and answers about what they learned – and then the bracelet to link all the charms together – demonstrating the links in the ecosystem.
Heidi Perryman, Cheryl Reynolds, and everyone with Worth a Dam (www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress) once again organized and provided, really, an incredible venue for wildlife appreciation and environmental education – with lots of fun – in support of the Martinez Beavers. The Channel 5 evening TV news on Saturday night broadcast the day’s events and, again, elevated appreciation and awareness for Nature and the human place in it.
Isn’t that great and generous writing? Have you clicked on the link yet? Go ahead, I’ll wait. And when you come back I’ll tell you a secret. I am certain Susan became undeservedly fond of me when I told her the story of my childhood neighbor (the first female sheriff in Contra Costa County) throwing a dead stuffed badger over the fence for me to see: 3 year-old Heidi very weirdly decided that this dead fierce creature would become the treasured stuffed animal that I carried around and slept with for years. It was about 4 feet long, had very coarse fur and razor sharp claws. Ahhh. My parents knew better than to let their daughter sleep with a dead animal, but I was inconsolable without it, and my odd attachment prevailed. I am certain that it had an effect on my developing personality because I am told I can be fairly stubborn. (I say tenacious!) Who ever performed the taxidermy did it very poorly because this particular badger was quite thin and long….I didn’t find out badgers were bunchy and short until I was 22.
Thanks Susan for the great article and the enormous advocacy you have done/are doing. I’m was so happy to see your smiling familiar face at the festival and can’t wait to see the remarkable finished project you will achieve.
