Tag: Ben Goldfarb

BEAVERS ON STAGE AND IN PRINT

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact June 29, 2018

Ahh last night was the lovely premiere of Sarah Koenigsberg documentary “Beaver Believers” and many of our Worth A Dam friends were there to see and support. Here is a snap shot Rusty sent of the Q&A session on stage after the film. I recognize Suzanne Fouty, Ben Goldfarb Kevin Swift and Brock Dolman sitting with Sarah on stage. The man asking questions on the right is Steve Dunsky of the Forest Service.

We were home finally finishing packing the truck and crashing on the couch. Yesterday Jon met with the parks director, picked up the Uhaul and borrowed canopies from the John Muir Association and a friend in town. Today we will meet Amy at 7:30 in the park who will try to get as much drawing in as she can before it gets unbearably hot! Come by if you’re curious to see it unfold!

You are in luck today though because an expert from Ben’s book was published yesterday in Resilience and it made me so happy to read I got that tingly feeling you get when your about to weep tears of joy. I can’t think of anything better to read the day before the beaver festival so I’m posting it here.

Oh and check out the photo btw. 🙂

Close your eyes. Picture, if you will, a healthy stream.

What comes to mind? Perhaps you’ve conjured a crystalline, fast-moving creek, bounding merrily over rocks, its course narrow and shallow enough that you could leap or wade across the channel. If, like me, you are a fly fisherman, you might add a cheerful, knee-deep angler, casting for trout in a limpid riffle.

It’s a lovely picture, fit for an Orvis catalog. It’s also wrong.

Let’s try again. This time, I want you to perform a more difficult imaginative feat. Instead of envisioning a present-day stream, I want you to reach into the past—before the mountain men, before the Pilgrims, before Hudson and Champlain and the other horsemen of the furpocalypse, all the way back to the 1500s. I want you to imagine the streams that existed before global capitalism purged a continent of its dam-building, water-storing, wetland-creating engineers. I want you to imagine a landscape with its full complement of beavers.

What do you see this time? No longer is our stream a pellucid, narrow, racing trickle. Instead it’s a sluggish, murky swamp, backed up several acres by a messy concatenation of woody dams. Gnawed stumps ring the marsh like punji sticks; dead and dying trees stand aslant in the chest-deep pond. When you step into the water, you feel not rocks underfoot but sludge. The musty stink of decomposition wafts into your nostrils. If there’s a fisherman here, he’s thrashing angrily in the willows, his fly caught in a tree.

Although this beavery tableau isn’t going to appear in any Field & Stream spreads, it’s in many cases a more historically accurate picture—and, in crucial ways, a much healthier one. In the intermountain West, wetlands, though they make up just 2 percent of total land area, support 80 percent of biodiversity; you may not hear the tinkle of running water in our swamp, but listen closely for the songs of warblers and flycatchers perched in creek-side willows. Wood frogs croak along the pond’s marshy aprons; otters chase trout through the submerged branches of downed trees, a forest inverted. The deep water and the close vegetation make the fishing tough, sure, but abundant trout shelter in the meandering side channels and cold depths. In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean captured the trials and ecstasies of angling in beaver country when he wrote of one character, “So off he went happily to wade in ooze and to get throttled by brush and to fall through loose piles of sticks called beaver dams and to end up with a wreath of seaweed round his neck and a basket full of fish.”

And it’s not just fishermen and wildlife who benefit. The weight of the pond presses water deep into the ground, recharging aquifers for use by downstream farms and ranches. Sediment and pollutants filter out in the slackwaters, cleansing flows. Floods dissipate in the ponds; wildfires hiss out in wet meadows. Wetlands capture and store spring rain and snowmelt, releasing water in delayed pulses that sustain crops through the dry summer. A report released by a consulting firm in 2011 estimated that restoring beavers to a single river basin, Utah’s Escalante, would provide tens of millions of dollars in benefits each year. Although you can argue with the wisdom of slapping a dollar value on nature, there’s no denying that these are some seriously important critters.

Isn’t that an enormously translucent opening? Ben does such a heart-racing job of telling the story and bringing the reader personally alongside it’s unfolding. I first read this opening last year when he asked for my thoughts on the manuscript. I read the entire thing in 2 days like without stopping -like I was attending Woodstock or a revival. I knew it would change the conversation forever. and now you should understand why.

Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.

If that all sounds hyperbolic to you, well, I’m going to spend this book trying to change your mind.

Go read the entire except, and be ready for your mind to be blown. What a great day for beavers and the people who throw their festivals! See you tomorrow!

So it begins!

EAGER BEAVERS ALL

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact June 27, 2018

We’re just about the part where I start coasting. All year I’ve been peddling frantically, applying for grants, making plans, coaxing auction items, encouraging musicians and securing volunteers. It is not a lie to say that planning a beaver festival literally takes nine months. It was harder this year because of the earlier time and less resting in between. Well, I’m nearly full term now. There’s a certain point where all my work is done, and it’s up to everyone else, I get a strange, glassy look in my eyes and start to shrug a lot.

There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come.
If it be not to come, it will be now
If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.

Hamlet V:ii

And now that the coasting begins, let’s truly enjoy the ride. This is an extraordinary year for beavers. I found out yesterday that Ben Goldfarb will get to author a column soon in the Washington Post. And this morning there’s this from author Kate Wheeling.

How Beavers Can Save Us From Ourselves

Since I first picked up Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, I haven’t been able to stop talking about these semi-aquatic rodents.

Illustration of a beaver, c. 1800. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Beavers are not content simply to survive in the environment that nature provides them. Instead, the animals engineer it to ensure access to things like food and shelter, reshaping entire landscapes in the process. Sound familiar? Humans, for better or for worse, may be the most planet-altering species—but beavers did it first. To quote Goldfarb, “We are living in the world that beavers created.”

Before their numbers were devastated by the fur trade, North America looked much different. For one thing, it was a much soggier landscape. Beavers don’t just build lodges and dams, but entire wetlands. Thanks to the beavers’ efforts, streams back up behind their dams, forming ponds, marshes, and swamps, filled with stumps and dead or dying trees and bustling with frogs, fish, and otters, to name just a few of the countless creatures that rely on beavers to make their habitat possible. Beaver ponds help store water, recharge aquifers, filter out pollutants, mitigate floods, and stop wildfires in their tracks.

I guess some very spiritual people feel this way when they read the bible: Every time you hear the familiar story it’s precious and you learn or feel something new. Well, that’s how I feel about beavers. I LOVE that we’re going to be hearing this story over and over for the foreseeable future.

You make the point that beavers are not endangered, they don’t need us, but that we need them. What can beavers do for us?

One great example is water quality. There’s a huge problem in this country with agricultural pollution with nitrogen and phosphorus from chemical fertilizers ending up in rivers and estuaries and oceans and leading to dead zones. It’s critical that we keep that pollution from reaching the ocean, and beaver ponds are incredibly effective at settling out those pollutants.

But the biggest example is climate change: As the climate warms, more precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. Instead of remaining in snowpack and gradually melting throughout the course of the spring and summer and fall and keeping rivers and streams wet well into the dry season, now all that precipitation is falling as rain. Any entity that can store water on the landscape, that can keep water high in some of these mountain headwaters in places like the Cascades or the Sierra, becomes incredibly valuable. What stores water better than a beaver? Basically nothing.

Ahh do you know that feeling you get when you just slip into a hot tub on a deck at the ocean on a starlit night and your head is cool and your body is gloriously relaxed and warm? I’m having that feeling right now. Thanks SO much Ben for your excellent work on this book!

What do you hope readers will take away from Eager?

First and foremost I just want people to appreciate the incredible role that these animals played in the development of our landscapes and our history as a people and a culture. I think that lots of the ecological and hydrological problems that we’re confronted with now can be, to some extent, addressed with more beavers. I don’t want to portray beavers as some kind of silver bullet because, for example, climate change is obviously a problem that’s so vastly beyond the scale of beavers to address that sometimes I feel a little bit silly suggesting it. But they can absolutely put a dent in some of these issues, like water storage. So they’re not a panacea but they are certainly a help to us, and they’re an incredibly cost-effective help. If you think about how much money we spend, for example, retrofitting irrigation infrastructure or installing new gray-water systems or no-flush toilets, this water-saving stuff can be pretty cost-ineffective sometimes. Getting more beavers on the landscape is something we can basically do for free.

It literally makes me light-headed to think about the number of readers who are getting the message around the country. I can’t imagine anything better, honestly.

How about seeing our name mentioned?

I imagine you had some fun picking out the title for this book. Can you share some of the other titles you considered? Obviously beavers lend themselves to puns. There’s a million different dam puns: Give a Dam and Worth a Dam.

I will tell you a secret because we know each other so well. Shh come closer. Ben told me privately after lunch on the back porch of our home that our name was the very best beaver pun of all, and the one he wished he had thought of. Shhhh. Yes you can feel proud of that. I certainly do.

We humans tend to regard ourselves as kind of unique in the ways that we modify our own surroundings to maximize our own food and shelter. But beavers do that too. They build dams, they create ponds and wetlands that they use to protect themselves from predators, to irrigate their own food supply. They almost act as rotational farmers; they’ll raise the water table to increase the growth of willow and other water-loving plants. That’s one of the things that always drew me to them: They just remind me of people in a very real way.

Ahh Ben, we are SO lucky to have you in the world and writing this book and coming to our festival. I am so excited about the ripples this this change is going to cause. What excellent timing for it all to happen now. Especially since I just got some very exciting news about our own meager beavers that I’m going to tell you all as soon as its confirmed.

One last thing. Yesterday I finished the post test for the kids doing our sticker activity. I wanted something more visual for the younger kids. How do you like it?

WONDERS UNFOLD

heidi08 kits June 22, 2018

Maybe you are like me and didn’t really notice when the Contra Costa Times went broke and was sold. Maybe you hardly noticed when it became the ‘East Bay Times” its slew of seasoned reporters who lived in the communities they wrote about were let go, and the youngest and cheapest were left to man the boat. After ten years of struggling to hang on for dear life I had finally begun to develop a comfortable working relationship with my favorite reporters – all of whom are lost fired. One of them I talked to was working as a substitute teacher. One was getting ready to start a blog. You can imagine.

If you wonder why the mayor of our town can say anything he wants about any policy and no one challenges him about the pesky truth its because our local paper has become a ghost town with one overwhelmed reporter and one overwhelmed editor handling the bulk of the work.

So were pretty dam lucky to get this.

‘The beavers are still around’: Martinez Beaver Festival 2018 will be full of surprises

MARTINEZ — The festival that sprung from a successful 2007 grassroots effort to save a family of beavers is coming to town this year with promises of a live painting, readings from a new beaver book, and new locations where organizers say the semiaquatic critters have moved.

The festival’s June 30 date just so happens to coincide with the West Coast premier of the film “The Beaver Believers,” which covers the struggles of the American beaver in the wake of climate change. The film will premier June 28 at the Empress Theater in Vallejo.

The festival, now in its 11th year, blossomed from a 2007 controversy over what to do with a group of beavers that had built a dam blocking Alhambra Creek. The first thought was to kill them, but community outraged ensued. Eventually, a flow device was used to move the dam.

Well, ahem. no actually. Not MOVE the dam, just move the water past the dam. But hey, Nate did a pretty nice job. Once in charge of just the court story’s in Martinez, now he has to cover everything. He started out in our conversation thinking the beavers lived IN the dam – so baby steps, right?

“I don’t think it’s an accident that Martinez is the hometown of John Muir and all these people grew up taking field trips to his house and being informed about nature,” Perryman said. “I think that really helped.”

This year’s Beaver Festival will feature a live chalk painting by artist Amy G. Hall, and a live reading by author Ben Goldfarb of his new book, “Eager: The surprising, secret lives of beavers and why they matter.”

Beaver Festival 2018 will start at 11 a.m. on June 30 and go through 4 p.m. It is at Susana Park, near the intersection of Susana and Estudillo streets.

Ahh, he liked that quote. I could feel it register in our conversation. There are a lot of parts I wished could have made it into the article. Like the fact that the Martinez beavers and the festival were actually IN the film. Or that we were also IN the book too. Or the fact that Amy will be working on her giant painting for two days. But hey we’re lucky to get that, The fun part about the article is that it has multiple mis-atributed photos – stolen equally from Cheryl, myself, and even Rusty I think! It is true that some indeed are by Susan Pollard their photographer as stated but they have no idea which, and now they never will.

They first shocked me by stealing that tail up photo in 2007 and now it’s in their vault and isn’t coming out. Never mind. We know the truth, right?

Speaking of the truth about beavers, 100 copies of Ben’s book were delivered to the house yesterday for all the events when he’s here. I told him I would be happy to baby sit. Now I’m surrounded by beaver boxes just waiting for the big day.

And speaking of really being surrounded by amazing things, our good friend Rusty Cohn sent these from yesterday morning when he had a most wonder-filled visit to the Tulocay creek beavers. Rusty bemoaned his limited lcamera and talked about the bitter choice between a new lens and a new car.

I scoffed and said which one I obviously thought was more important.

ANOTHER BLOCKBUSTER FROM PSMFC

heidi08 Beavers and salmon June 21, 2018

This year’s festival was the first time I was ever contacted by Dan Logan, fisheries biologist of NOAA marine fisheries in Santa Rosa. (To be honest I actually didn’t even know there was a marine fisheries arm in Santa Rosa) . Dan made me very happy by asking for NOAA to have space at the beaver festival. Yesterday he passed along this wonderful new film from the good folk at PMSFC. Go get your coffee and your relatives and come back and watch. Then watch it again and send it to everyone you know. It’s that good.

Isn’t that wonderful? Give it up for the brilliant folks at PSMFC. It’s truly amazing what the right education, some good intentions and a handful of federal dollars can do. The videos can be shared or use in educational trainings everywhere. Their website politely calls the beaver myths “misunderstandings” which is more gracious than I have it in me to be. But I admire the way they say it anyway.

Beaver Benefits and Controlling Impacts

But there is a lot of misunderstanding of beavers. Beaver do not eat salmon or other fish (they are herbivores, eating plants) and dams generally do not impede salmon passage. Salmon and beavers evolved together and are mutually beneficial.

Despite their value, beaver activities can also create problems for landowners, leading to their killing or the destruction of their dams. But there are ways to live with beaver! Join us as we begin a series featuring the benefits of beavers and the ways that landowners and beavers can co-exist.

Honestly sometimes it just feels like promotion of beaver benefits has is reaching a tipping point this summer. Yesterday I also received my official copy of Ben’s book – Eager: The surprising Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter and of course like any truly self interested and shallow party, I first flipped to the back and checked the index.

Nice, Notice if you add all those pages up it makes eleven. That’s 1 page for every year I’ve been involved with beavers. Kinda makes sense really, don’t you think?

And it should be, it should be, it should be like that!

Because Horton was faithful! He sat and he sat!

He meant what he said

And he said what he meant…”

And they sent him home Happy,

One hundred per cent

FEELING FESTIVE?

heidi08 Festival June 19, 2018

Let the media promotion begin! The hard-working salmon spends an awful long time banging into the rock before it finally succeeds. And that is exactly how I have felt about getting attention for our whopping festival this year. Well, let this be the first sign that the tides are changing.

Beaver Festival gets new home at Susana Park

MARTINEZ, Calif. – After 10 years of annual appearances at a downtown area that became known as Beaver Park, the Martinez Beaver Festival is moving to Susana Park, organizer Heidi Perryman said.

It’s date has been shifted to the end of June, as well.

And in a fortuitous coincidence, a family of beavers have moved into the creek that runs near the park, she said.

“The 11th Beaver Festival will be full of surprises,” Perryman said.

“The improved venue has boosted interested in the festival, too,” Perryman said. This year’s edition will have more than 50 nature exhibits, making it the largest event since it was begun as a way to celebrate,. rather than condemn, the beavers that had been building a dam in Alhambra Creek in the city’s downtown shopping district.

Why is the festival so much bigger really? Is it just the nicer park? Is it the cumulative effect of being around for a decade finally making people feel like you’re for real? Is it because it’s earlier in the year and fewer people are on vacation? I just had to notify chairs for affairs yesterday that we’ll be needing twice as many tables as usual!

But the beaver dam and the nature exhibits aren’t the only things eventgoers will see.

Amy

Amy G. Hall, a noted chalk artist, will be creating a beaver-themed illustration on the concrete in the park.

Hall is a lifelong fan of beavers, and her home town, Napa, has some, too. Her chalk painting will be of a beaver pond, and it illustrates how beavers benefit other wildlife.

Children attending the festival will be invited to pick up some colored chalk and create their own artwork in spaces near where Hall is working.

HURRAY! Great job plugging Amy. Honestly in September I was worried that she and I might be the only one in the park that day. Now I’m starting to think that might not be so bad.

Ben Goldfarb, an award-winning environmental writer who covers wildlife conservation, marine science and public lands management, will be launching his book, “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

He will read excerpts on the festival stage, and Chapter 6 focuses on California, beginning and ending with the story of the Martinez beavers.

The book is published by Chelsea Green, and will be released at the end of the month.

No more pre-orders. It’s out. I just got a notice from Amazon that its on its way. Hurray!

The festival also has inspired the west coast premiere of Sara Koenigsberg’s documentary, “Beaver Believers,” which looks at the animals in light of climate change.

The premiere will take place before the festival, Thursday, Jan. 28, at the Empress Theatre in Vallejo.

Koenigsberg and her students from Whitman College came to Martinez in 2013 to interview Perryman before filming the festival that year. The documentary also looks at how beaver damming could help prevent water loss in the west in addition to telling Martinez’s beaver story.

TAfter the article there is a nice section of how to buy tickets for the premiere!

While many new things are happening this year, those who have visited the festival in the past will see many familiar and popular things, from a day-long musical lineup that includes bluegrass and Dixieland bands, a nature-themed silent auction, the return of beaver tours and special activities for children.

This year, the first 100 youngsters to arrive at the festival will get to build a “beaver pond” of their own, by collecting wildlife stickers from exhibitors and learning how beavers help other animals, Perryman said.

This sticker adventure will mirror Hall’s beaver pond mural design, she said.

While Perryman praised the previous venue as a park that “served us well for a decade alongside our original beaver habitat, she said, “This new home is ideal for the everything we’ve become./” And since the new venue comes with its own dam a short walk away, she added, “it’s like the beavers showed us the way!

The Martinez Beaver Festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 30 at Susana Park, at the intersection of Estudillo and Susana streets. Admission is free. Those interested may visit the website www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress.

Whooohoo! It used to weirdly bug me when reporters used my wording from a press release with their name as if THEY had written it. Now I love it. That’s growth, right? There are good things in the works and hopefully the East Bay Times article will follow soon.

Oh and just to keep me feeling relevant, I got a distressed email yesterday from a woman looking for help defend beavers to her HOA in a very large, notoriously unfriendly beaver state. Because of this website my beaver rolodex is large and growing every day, so I was able to introduce her to a local ally who agreed to help her going forward.

Put THAT in a mission statement.