Tag: Beth Pratt

CHRISTMAS 22: A SAD END AND A NEW BEGINNING

Yesterday the world erupted with mourning the death of P-22 the moutain lion trapped in Hollywood without a mate that had been championed by our good friend Beth Pratt for all these years. A heroic effort was underway to build a wildlife overpass crossing the 405 so that he and other wildlide could safely cross the 8 lanes of traffic, Beth tirelessly implored officials, stars, politicians and anyone who would listen for the better part of a decade to step up and contribute. In doing so she and the lion raised awareness of the plight of urban wildlife and Pumas in general. P-22 achieved the impossible with her help. But he will not be alive to enjoy it.

P-22, L.A. celebrity mountain lion, euthanized due to severe injuries

The mountain lion P-22, who lived in the heart of Los Angeles for more than a decade and became the face of an international campaign to save Southern California’s threatened pumas, was euthanized Saturday because of several long-term health concerns and injuries that likely stemmed from being hit by a car, officials said.

In a tearful news conference, wildlife biologists described multiple chronic illnesses that may have contributed to the mountain lion’s recent uncharacteristic behavior. The big cat of Griffith Park was “compassionately euthanized” at about 9 a.m., officials said.

“This really hurts, and I know that,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s been an incredibly difficult several days. And for myself, I’ve felt the entire weight of the city of Los Angeles.”

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that P-22 with Beth’s help did what could not be done. He crossed 8 lanes of traffic twice eeking out a long life in the middle of a terrifying city AND more impossible still he made Chuck Bonham cry, which I would never have thought likely. Beth posted a beautiful Eulogy yesterday on facebook about being allowed to sit with him before it happened and what it was like to love and lose him. The reaction to his loss not only makes me like Los Angelos more – it makes softens my heart to CDFW in general, and that’s saying a lot.

Before I said goodbye, I sat in a conference room with team members from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the team of doctors at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. …As the agency folks and veterinarians relayed these sobering facts to me, tissue boxes were passed around the table and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. This team cares just as much for this cat as we all do. They did everything they could for P-22 and deserve our gratitude.

Yesterday I could not help think about momma beaver and how I felt personally standing by her orphans the night of her death. It is a staggering and lonesome grief to lose the thing that you have given your life too. And it touched me, more than words can even say, to see the amazing outpouring of feeling people had for this wild cat that had come to represent our own quest for wildness in urban spaces. Beth you were the best possible champion for this hero. We are grateful for you and P-22,

I’m sure after that tearful news we all need some Christmas cheer. And I have JUST THE TREAT. This from a Vancouver dance studio that is reinterpreting the timeless Nutcracker with some very special editions.

‘Nutcracker’ performance in Vancouver challenges original’s cultural stereotypes

Becky Moore, the director of the dance school Columbia Dance in Vancouver, Washington, loves Tchaikovsky’s classic holiday ballet “The Nutcracker” but she worries it hasn’t aged gracefully.

She researched Fort Vancouver’s role as a major trading post during the height of the fur trade and quickly fell in love with this history.

“You had folks coming over the Oregon Trail. You had the Indigenous populations here. You had people coming down from French Canada to trap beavers, people coming from the Hawaiian Islands to trap beavers,” she says. “The main character dreams of getting outside of her normal world and exploring something she’s never been to before. So why not have her explore this world of 1840s Fort Vancouver?”

Moore changed the main character from a European daughter of aristocrats to an American daughter of James Douglas, the real life chief trader at Fort Vancouver.

She turned the iconic nutcracker into a fur trapper and the mice into beavers.

“I fell in love with the beavers,” she says. “I’ve never been a fan of mice and they’re in every Nutcracker. I thought let’s choose a new rodent and this one is so Pacific Northwest centric.”

OF COURSE the mice should be beavers and of COURSE the soldiers should be trappers. That makes perfect sense to me now, but Clara should maybe change who she wants to win, okay?

I LOVE the look of these costumes. I think you will too.

Gee those costumes look really detailed. They must have taken a lot of work. I wonder what the company might possibly do with those beaver costumes after the performance is over? I mean I’m sure the ballet company doesn’t need a bunch just lying around to perform “Beaver Lake” next. Maybe they would donate one to a festival of some kind? I mean if someone else who loved beavers asked them really, really nice?

Do you think?

Ná leathnaigh do bhrat muna féidir leat á chosaint.

heidi08 Beavers July 19, 2017

Which is an old Gaelic proverb that means something like “don’t unfurl your flag if you aren’t able to defend it” OR don’t pretend that you are good for the environment and wetlands if you can’t back it up with the research. Fortunately for us, the beavers of Scotland are all they claimed to be, and the headlines are sweeping the nation. Literally.

Eager beavers experts at recreating wildlife-rich wetlands, study reveals

The extraordinary ability of eager beavers to engineer degraded land into wildlife-rich wetlands has been revealed by a new study in Scotland.

Scientists studied the work of a group of four re-introduced beavers over a decade and found their water engineering prowess created almost 200m of dams, 500m of canals and an acre of ponds. The result was a landscape “almost unrecognisable” from the original pasture that was drained over 200 years ago, with the number of plant species up by nearly 50% and richly varied habitats established across the 30 acre site.

The researchers say their new work provides solid evidence that beavers can be a low-cost option in restoring wetlands, an important and biodiverse habitat that has lost two-thirds of its worldwide extent since 1900.

“Wetlands also serve to store water and improve its quality – they are the ‘kidneys of the landscape’,” said Professor Nigel Willby, at Stirling University and one of the study team. Earlier research by the team showed how beaver dams can slow water flows, reducing downstream flood risk and water pollution.

Beavers build their elaborate waterworks to create pools in which they can shelter from their traditional predators, bears, wolves and wolverines. The new research, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, regularly surveyed the site near Blairgowrie in Tayside where two beavers were released in 2002 and began to breed in 2006. Beavers live 10-15 years in the wild and the average number of beavers present during the study was four.

“After 12 years of habitat engineering by beaver, the study site was almost unrecognisable from its initial state,” the scientists concluded: “The reintroduction of such species may yet prove to be the missing ingredient in successful and sustainable long-term restoration of wetland landscapes.”

Alan Law, another member of the team from Stirling University, said: “We know lots about the benefits of beavers in natural settings, but until now we did not know the full extent of what they can achieve in present-day landscapes where restoration is most needed.”

He said wetland restoration usually involves ditch blocking and mowing or grazing to maintain diversity: “Beavers offer an innovative, more hands-off, solution to the problem of wetland loss. Seeing what beavers can do for our wetlands and countryside highlights the diverse landscape we have been missing for the last 400 years.”

“I think as long as beavers have plenty of space to form a decent number of territories, there are enormous potential benefits,” said Wliby. “Sometimes the negative views of farmers can dominate.”

Lovely to see so many good things about beavers in an area that is doing it’s very best to bring them back. Alan must be the most fully discussed researcher in Scotland, although I’m guessing he gets a few mean looks at the Annual Angler’s dinner. I love how we get to learn this all again, because they’re learning it for the first time. When you teach, you learn twice they say. (Although it does make me chuckle a little to open 100 headlines in one morning saying basically “this just in! Beavers make dams which improve biodiversity!” No kidding? Next you’ll be telling me that water is wet!)

Still it’s great news, and it might help the Beauly beavers a little too.

Take a moment to send your most positive thoughts to our good friend Beth Pratt-Bergstrom had to be evacuated from her hillside Mariposa home because it is in the fire path at the moment. Her husband and pets are hanging out at the shelter. We at Worth A Dam and the entire wildlife community wish you cooling rains, no wind, and very hardworking firefighters.

Thickly Settled

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now? April 21, 2015

This famous mountain lion who made a show Saturday of nibbling the Martinez beavers, has gone on to even greater things. Now he is in the New Yorker with Michelle Nijhuis new article on the stranded big cats of LA. Someone else we know is in the article too.

This particular mountain lion is no stranger to Angelenos. Three years ago, in early 2012, he left his home in the Santa Monica Mountains, crossed two eight-lane freeways, and, after travelling at least twenty miles, dead-ended in Griffith Park, a former ostrich farm that is now one of the country’s largest municipal green spaces. Biologists tranquilized the lion and fitted him with a radio collar; he became popularly known by his tag number, P-22.

The most promising location for the first mountain-lion crossing in the Los Angeles Basin would span ten busy lanes of traffic, and it is by no means guaranteed to deliver the genetic variation that the lions need. Yet the project has momentum. Beth Pratt, an energetic campaigner for the National Wildlife Federation, has won support from congressional representatives and local governments for a crossing in the Santa Monicas, and earlier this year the California State Coastal Conservancy awarded a million-dollar grant to the department of transportation for the design and permitting of the crossing, with the goal of beginning construction by 2018.

Beth has been a tireless voice for wildlife crossings for big cats in particular. She will be making her way to Martinez this summer for our own beaver festival. I’m thrilled this story made the New Yorker but it has prompted me to reconsider for myself how many articles about beaver have made the magazine in the last 25 years. Hmm, let me count.

Oh, that’s right. NONE. (Except cartoons. Beavers are funny.)

No single mention of beaver benefits or struggles in the New Yorker Magazine about salmon or water or even Scotland. Not even when the famous Jose was discovered in the Bronx river. Nothing since a 1991 article on Hope Buyukmihci and the formation of Beaver Defenders. I realize of course, mountain lions are sleek, sexy and powerful. But the beaver is the state animal of New York fer cryingoutloud. Let’s get interested in them!

The New Yorker is so far behind the times about beavers that they don’t even realize this cartoon isn’t comic at all. It’s just boring old prosaic truth. Like a telephone book. Beavers make the ecosystem work for them. And us.

Period.

Oh and the big beaver news of the day is that a beaver is being blamed for taking out power to thousands in Maine. I got ten alerts for it this morning, and now it’s made the Discovery News.

Beaver Knocks Down Tree, Thousands Lose Power

A beaver in Maine’s northern Aroostook County was doing what beavers do on Monday night — and chewed down a tree to help build its dam.

The problem is the tree happened to fall on a power transmission line and soon nearly 3,000 residents

“(The downed tree) is in a very remote, wooded area which has been challenging to reach, but workers will remain working to restore power by mid-morning,” Bob Potts, spokesperson for Emera, told the Bangor Daily Ne

No word yet on how, if they were able to get someone on site to identify the beaver-chewed culprit that caused the outage, they couldn’t get a crew there as well. Or how they know for certain it wasn’t the wind taking out a tree they should have trimmed years ago. But oh well. It’s a good beaver-blame anyway. In fact, this finger is pointed with such dexterity that the power company is even getting a news cycle boost out of it. Nicely done boys and girls.

I was a little confused about this though:

As often-cited W.T. Cox wrote in a 1940 article in American Forest, “Beavers do not belong in thickly-settled communities, since their flooding operations may become troublesome…

Would you call Martinez “thickly settled”?

Three for the road

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 27, 2013

Voices of what appears to be reason other than mine are always a delight on this website. Enjoy this excellent piece from Dick Sherman writing on the Danvers situation. Remember this is an area in Massachusetts very near Salem which had some beavers in its pond that were flooding their backyards, so they hired a trapper. And he killed several and then they complained the water was too stagnant. Oh and the trapper said he was prohibited from removing a dead beaver by regulations so they buried it but the turtles dug it up. Sound familiar? Maybe this will ring a bell.

Well,apparently if you have a lot of sense in Danvers, you move to New Hampshire.

Let the natural process continue

My name is Dick Sherman, I grew up in Danvers as did my wife, (now in our 70s and live in N.H.). For 15 years, we lived directly on College Pond in the St. John’s Prep area on Spring Street. I can tell you about the beavers, Beaver Brook and College Pond.

In my opinion, the town is making a mistake by killing beavers and trying to control that watershed area as suggested by the residents. The area in question by Glendale Road and behind Glen Magna is a natural (God put it there a long time ago) watershed area. It feeds to Beaver Brook, which on the surface goes under Maple Street and then into College Pond.

The water table (aquifer) itself is under Maple Street. College Pond was and is a magnificent treasure, which as you know, is recognized now by the town as a conservation overlook area.

I sense from your article that the nearby residents, which once again pollute the Beaver Brook and College Pond as opposed to letting nature help out. Now you have now beavers, algae, and high water in the area. Did you not know that when you purchased, that you were in a “flood zone” and watershed area? Certainly, you did not know how beneficial it is to the ecology and to Danvers residents now and then.

Ahh thanks for writing this, Dick, but let me be honest. You must have driven your neighbors insane back on Maple Street. These people want lawns and potted plants, not actual nature. Come to think of it, you might still be driving them insane now. Maybe that’s why they ran your response in its entirety. It’s too long for a letter to the editor and too short for an op-ed. But they put in every gloriously impractical word. Maybe they wanted to watch the “fireworks”.

I especially liked this part of your letter.

This area incidentally (Spring and Summer streets) was the same and exact area that the “witches” were found as the result of eating bad rye and perhaps drinking from College Pond.

Could it be genetic?

Anyway, the residents of Danvers, in my opinion, do not “value” and protect their resources. I am not just talking about the beavers here. You should be fishing in College Pond now, or enjoying it’s former beauty, but it has been hidden away for many hundreds of years. So you develop the lands and give away this asset as opposed to protecting it for subsequent generations.

Well now isn’t that refreshing! Thanks for an excellent letter Mr. Sherman and I hope it makes a few people think differently about their watershed. And thanks for the excuse to rerun my graphic. Which has made me very happy.

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Some additional news this morning. I’m late in sharing this with you which is definitely worth the listen. It’s a lovely interview with Jenny Papka of Native Bird Connections about avian vocalizations. You will remember that Native Birds joined us for the last 6 beaver festivals even our very first when we barely had 5 exhibits to rub together. It is no secret to say we are very, very fond of them. Here’s just one reason why:

6 amazing minutes of radio. Great job Jenny. We are so proud of you. And why isn’t Big Picture Science looking into beaver vocalizations? That would be REALLY interesting!

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Final grim read from our friend Beth of the National Wildlife Federation. She lives very near the Yosemite Fire and has some amazing observations about the massive blaze engulfing it. Read this and you might want to share.

How Much of Yosemite Will Burn in a Fire Fueled By Climate Change?

Known as the Rim Fire, to date it has burned almost 160,000 acres (roughly the size of Chicago) with about 22,000 of those acres in Yosemite. Not surprisingly, given its immense size and threats to a cherished national park, the fire has prompted a media blitz, headlining everywhere from CNN to the BBC to Al Jazeera.

Yet almost universally missing from the media coverage, as usual? That climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more intense. As they have in past years, reporters won’t connect the dots in their main stories, treating the science that’s staring us in the face as a side story.

NPS fire crew enters the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoias to establish defensible space protecting the big trees if the Rim fire advances. (Photo USFS)

I found this picture very affecting. Go read the whole thoughtfully horrifying thing. It’s your park.

(And your climate.)

Looks like we made the big leagues!

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental, featured, Festival August 7, 2013

Celebrating one of Nature’s Greatest Engineers: The Martinez Beaver Festival

As someone who works to get kids connected to nature and the outdoors, it was heartening to watch this group rush from one side of the bridge to the other to follow the swimming beaver, and shout in an enthusiastic voice usually reserved for a Justin Bieber sighting, “There he is!” And we adults were shouting right along with them.

Most of the “eager beaver” (sorry-I could not resist) watchers had attended the sixth annual Beaver Festival that afternoon in the area next to the creek affectionately known to locals as “Beaver Park.” Worth A Dam, the non-profit that hosts the event, assembled over forty area wildlife groups to help celebrate one of nature’s best engineers. A documentary film company, Tensegrity Productions, even filmed the festival for inclusion in their series, “The Beaver Believers.”

“We were amazed by the turnout, and heartened to see so many people interested in our resident beavers. Lots of people learned yesterday how beavers are good for creeks and wildlife,” said Heidi Perryman, President & Founder of Worth A Dam.

That’s right. The Martinez Beavers are National Wildlife Federation material now. Beth Pratt the author of one of the Wildlife Promise blogs came to the festival and stayed for the evening beaver viewing, where she was delighted by the behavior of both the beavers and the humans. You really should go read the whole thing. That’s the National Wildlife Federation. Wow! Wait until we make the calendar! I can’t think of a bigger compliment for all our hard work, but give me time. I’m sure I can up with something. She even made a movie of what she saw that night.

If you want another view of the day, check out the excellent photos from Ron Bruno who was helping his wife Lory with the silent auction. Enjoy!