The Beaver Queen Pageant brings puns, fur and fun to an ecological cause

Scarlett O’Beavah takes her reign at the 2010 pageant.

The Beaver Queen Pageant is not a beauty pageant with a twist. Rather, it’s a beauty pageant with a lot of twists. More twists and turns than its longtime beneficiary, Durham’s Ellerbe Creek Watershed.

For starters, its contestants dress up as beavers. In drag.

Still with us? Good. Now note that points are taken off if contestants’ tails aren’t at least partially, um, functional. Engineering is essential.

Contestants assume various alter egos. This year’s winner was a comer named Scarlett O’Beavah. Ostensibly, the lovelies are judged on the quality of their tail, evening wear, stage presence, something called wetland-ready wear and talent—which almost invariably involves pop songs rewritten for the occasion. (One year featured a mysterious contestant known only as Belvis.)

But at this pageant, the judges are gleefully on the take, available to the highest bidder—once, that is, they’ve bought their way into their seats. The more budget-conscious vote-riggers can help fudge the selection process by stuffing the ballot box with the perfectly good votes they’ve paid for. With their own (or other people’s) money.

In the tradition of the other kind of voter-financed elections that have marred North Carolina politics for too long, this exercise in civic representation isn’t merely pay-to-play: It’s strictly cash-and-carry.

Over the past six years, the pageant has substantially raised the visibility of its namesake—the beavers that have now made an unlikely lodge in a wetland behind a Roxboro Road strip mall. “The attention they’ve drawn has cleaned up that natural resource,” notes Duke Park resident Bill Anderson. “I can remember the Cub Scouts coming down to that marsh and pulling out five tons of trash in the early days.

“You go there now, it’s just amazingly clean, when in the old days it was a dump zone.”

But the Beaver Queen Pageant has done more than exhort neighbors to clean up an environmental eyesore. The $15,000 they’ve raised over the past half decade has helped the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association buy the wetlands the beavers call home this past year, as a part of their land trust efforts in acquiring and protecting ecologically significant areas in Durham’s urban environment. Their philanthropy has been “an enormous help in mobilizing the community to steward and maximize the benefits of the Beaver Marsh and our other preserves,” says Diana Tetens, the association’s executive director.

Still, this family-friendly neighborhood party and environmental, philanthropic endeavor started out as something significantly different. Picture an underground, after-hours drag pageant in 2005 led by activist Katherine O’Brien.

HA! This definitely has a more ‘diversity’ than ‘biodiversity’ flavor to it, but I’m thrilled that anyone in North Carolina is saving wetlands or valuing beavers! We loved their last slogan of ‘Peace. Love. and Beavers’. So we can only assume this year’s will be awesome too. Lory is bringing a flyer of our festival with her to cross pollinate!

Go see the mural today. Snap a photo of yourself with your favorite part and I’ll be happy to share it on the website!

A couple of folks have drawn my attention to the upcoming 10th annual beaver pageant in Durham North Carolina this weekend. It’s organized by the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association with tongue firmly in cheek.

The purpose of the spectacle is to raise awareness of our community’s waterways and pockets of nature, and to raise money to help protect and restore these precious resources for all to enjoy. The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA) is grateful for the support it has received from the Pageant over the years.

The Beaver Queen Pageant is one of Durham’s marquee events and is rich in the history and culture of the community. Started in 2005 by members of the Duke Park neighborhood in order to protect beavers from a potentially harmful road construction project; it has grown into a large scale event that attracts hundreds of people from all over the Triangle who are interested in protecting wetlands and want to give a helping hand to beavers. It is a free, family-friendly beaver ‘beauty pageant’ that is a creative outlet for both the contestants and the audience.

I just adore their slogan. “Peace. Love. Beaver.”

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A newly released paper published in the journal Ecology of fresh water Fish has been causing a bit of a stir because it says beaver dams promote non-native species of fish, especially in dry areas.

Beaver dams shift desert fish assemblages toward dominance by non-native species (Verde River, Arizona, USA)

Overall, this study provides the first evidence that, relative to unimpounded lotic habitat, beaver ponds in arid and semi-arid rivers support abundant non-native fishes; these ponds could thus serve as important non-native source areas and negatively impact co-occurring native fish populations

I was very alarmed by this report and sent out a ‘bat-signal’ alert to beaver experts around the globe who might be able to argue with it. I got these comments back from Michael Pollock, who gave me permission to re-post them here.

This sounds like a certain person’s master’s thesis. This poor graduate student was sent out to sample beaver dams in remote regions of Arizona and didn’t really have time to come up with a good study design. There were all kinds of sampling, methodological and logistical problems with their approach and they really didn’t end up with much in the way of data that was very analyzable.

There are a lot of exotics throughout the system and little to suggest that beaver dams are responsible for that problem. Beaver have been part of natural stream and riparian ecosystem in that region for a long time and the native species have adapted, and potentially benefited from their presence. To conclude that beaver dams “could” negatively impact native fish populations is misleading. It would be just as reasonable to conclude that beaver dams “could” positively impact native fish populations, since that is what we see everywhere else, but that the timing and very low frequency of data sampling didn’t occur during the times of year that native fish might use beaver ponds.

The reality is that this was a poorly designed study that produced little in the way of meaningful results, but perhaps will guide future research efforts. Pretty typical for many Master’s thesis in natural resource fields-a good learning experience, but not a lot of useful information applicable to management.

Michael M. Pollock, Ph.D.

Ecosystems Analyst

NOAA-Northwest Fisheries Science Center

FE Division, Watershed Program

I believe the words “So” and “There” are in order.

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A stunning report out from Medicine Hat Alberta this morning which you will have to read to believe. I couldn’t possibly find the words to describe it.

Beaver activity has resident calling for action

Beavers are active in Riverside taking down mature trees that beautify the landscape and at a least one resident feels the City should be taking some action.

Guess what action? If you (like me) assumed that the proposed action involved trapping or shot guns, you’d be wrong. If you assumed it involved bringing in hand-wringing experts who looked at the situation and studied the issue, and THEN advised you to kill them you’d be wrong. If you thought maybe it meant moving the beavers to another location you’d STILL BE WRONG. Read the remarkable action for yourself.

“Wrapping the base of most of the trees in a wire mesh would at least help to mitigate the damage,” said Lorine Marshall. “I would like to see some wildlife management.”

Wrapping trees with wire mesh and cleaning up flood debris has already taken place in Kiwanis Park.

While most would rather the beavers leave established trees alone there are ways to re-direct their interest and/or encourage them to choose willows growing closer to the water which are quickly replaced with new growth, said Corlaine Gardner chief park interpreter for Police Point Park Interpretive Centre.

She says there has been a recommendation that painting the base of trees with a paint and sand mixture is a deterrent because beavers dislike the grit in their teeth.

Gardner says beavers can also be a great protection in managing the flow of water naturally.

Medicine Hat is in Alberta, Canada: about 5 hours away from Glynnis Hood and 13 hours away from Fur-Bearer Defenders. I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine how they got this smart about beavers, but I have a vague recollection of reading that city’s name before. However it happened, we’re impressed. As in free tee-shirt, name a kit after you impressed. Worth A Dam honors the remarkable beaver management skills of Medicine Hat.

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Finally, here’s a fun new problem to have. We just bought a new couch and had a consult to make sure it would fit through the old victorian doorway. The designer peered through with her tape measure and then asked quizically, “I just have to ask. What’s with all the beaver photos?” Which we dutifully explained. After the deal was made she went joyfully back to the showroom and everyone was thrilled to be selling a couch to the ‘beaver people from the news’.

So I thought, maybe I should ask if they would be willing to give retired fabric samples to us for tails?

Ethan Allen thought that was a lovely idea and gave us big beautiful squares of several different kinds of amazing leather. Now I’m wondering if these aren’t too nice for tails. Maybe they need to be stuffed beavers, or beaver bracelets, or beaver pins. Maybe you have some ideas? And just maybe you or your relative is a retired seamstress or craftsman and would love to donate some help to Worth A Dam?

Let’s talk. Oh and there’s a new “”Like” button on the website. Feel free to use it. A lot.