Today’s the big day for Lega and “Beaver Daze” in Maine. She wrote this week that the name felt apt because she was certainly in a daze herself since the preparations were underway. Sharon and Owen came yesterday and will present today on living with beavers. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall! GOOD LUCK! Win new beaver friends and change hearts and minds!
Gosh, can you remember our first beaver festival? We had maybe 7 booths and fewer than 300 people. Children made beaver tails out of paper and FRO, who was just getting to know us, brought clay for an activity. The documentarian Don Bernier was there filming the “Happy Ending” and the rest of us knew better than to think anything was over. In between snapping photos, Cheryl endeavored to work the video camera for our “Video letter to the Mayor.” The first festival was only three hours long. Now here’s a walk down memory lane!
Lega Medcalf is a retired science educator from Bridgeton Maine. She called me at the office one day in March to say that some beavers had moved into her local city park and she was interested in helping them. She had been checking out the website to figure out where to start. At the time I posted the letter she wrote to her local paper. Here are some images she recently sent of the local beaver-rama.
So far the city hasn’t reacted to the beavers, but that will change soon. This week she gave presentations to the Bridgeford Selectman Committee on Tuesday and the Rotary Club on Thursday. You can guess which one went better. She sent me her beautiful powerpoint presention and I was thrilled to see that she had even used quotes from the VERY recent Altantic Monthly article as well as lots of hard science from various sources.
Her presentation was sharp, persuasive and engaging. But this was this slide that took my breath away.
Lega Medcalf: Presentation to the Rotary Club
BRIDGETON BEAVER FESTIVAL JUNE 16, 2012 !!!
When she had talked on the phone about starting a beaver festival I assumed she meant a hypothetical festival in the distant FUTURE sometime. I had no idea that she was going to march against the wind, head down, fists clenched and staunchly get this done in a matter of months! Amy Macdonald invited to sign the most famous beaver book ever. Done. Presentation to the selectmen. Done. Presentation to Rotary. Done. Poster and DVD of Stephen Low’s the Beaver Movie. Done. And featured at the festival? A Presentation by Sharon and Owen Brown of Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife.
I have Owen and Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife coming to make a presentation at the Beaver Daze mini-festival on June 16. The only time the local movie theater was available to show the movie Beavers was June 16 and 17 ( all booked up otherwise through the fall) so I am in rush mode to be ready and will have to scale back the activities. The library is the setting for the Brown presentation and the movie theater is just one block away with Shorey park another short walk away.
Lega! This is astounding. Just astounding. I don’t know where to begin! This is your idea of a mini festival? Beaver Daze sounds like its off to an AMAZING start and I can’t believe you’re having it in June. (I’m panicking over details for ours and its two months away!) To say that I am very, very impressed would be a massive understatement.
The truth is, if I were anywhere near Maine, besides making you president of Worth A Dam, I would be working enormously hard to keep all the vulture nonprofits from snatching you up to write their newsletters or organize their events, getting you to save owls or foxes or whatever. You are a rare find, Lega. You are a water cannon of energy and everyone will want you. But, as I would remind you over coffee many, many cheerful mornings because we’d be the best of friends;
Beavers need you more.
Thank you for your enormous hard work. We will talk about the uncooperative selectmen and brainstorm about ways to open closed minds. In the mean time, I dedicate this memorial Saturday to YOU and your amazing hard work. Now all you budding beaver advocates might enjoy taking this beaver quiz from Amy Neff Roth of the Observer-Dispatch in Hamilton NY. My answers are listed here but the paper says Spring Hill Farm Cares (also friends of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife) will post theirs on Sunday.
1) Although mostly herbivores, beavers sometimes eat small fish.
2) Beavers mate for life.
3) Beavers warn each other about danger by slapping the water with their tails.
4) Beavers can swim underwater for up to one hour.
5) Once beavers colonize a stream or river, the colony will remain forever unless the beavers are forcibly removed.
6) Water is cleaner downstream from a beaver pond than it is upstream.
7) Beavers are closely related to weasels, minks and fishers.
8) Beavers can walk upright on their hind legs.
9) Beavers hibernate for the winter.
10) Beavers may spend years working on dams and lodges, which keep getting bigger.
Wildlife specialist and University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension associate professor Matt Tarr surveys the flooded land near a stream by the Cooperative Middle School during a walking tour with members of the Stratham Conservation Commission.
STRATHAM — An overachieving band of beavers have dammed a babbling brook outside the Cooperative Middle School, turning it into a proliferating pond that threatens to encroach upon the school’s ropes course.
“These guys have been doing what they’ve done for years, it’s part of their cycle,” Tarr said. “But they are chewing all the way around the trees which can kill it. Some of the bigger ones can handle it… but some can’t survive with their roots inundated with water too long.”
I read the article this morning with trepidation, expecting at any moment to hear that the beavers were not long for this world. Conservation Commissions (despite the ironic naming!) aren’t always champions of beavers and wetlands. Would the school realize that beavers on their borders were an asset? Would the community take time to see the forest for the trees? Taking my cue from lady Macbeth I ‘screwed my courage to the sticking place’ and bravely read onwards…
Tarr explained that the beavers will expand their dammed area so that they can swim closer to their source of food, which in this area seems to be white oak, greenbriar and hazelnut. “That’s why trapping them out of here won’t work,” Tarr said. “This is a relatively new dam and if the habitat is right, they will move back.
Trapping won’t work? What’s that you say? Matt! Sit down and let’s talk about it. Here, have the comfy chair. Go on…tell me everything.
Tarr explained that to draw down the water, they can install “flow devices,” which are commonly three-sided boxes, or perforated pipes that will drain through the dammed area. Beavers are stimulated to build their dams by the sound or feel of running water, and many of these pipes prevent the beavers from hearing the water drain out and creating a permanent drain in the dam.
Wow, Matt! Great idea! Are you sure you’re not from Martinez? You could be our brother from another mother! You might need some new info on flow devices because perforated pipes are so last decade, but your heart is entirely in the right place! And look at this
“From a habitat standpoint this is phenomenal,” Tarr said. “The wildlife education aspect is great.”
From New Hampshire we disperse a little farther East to Maine where this was the letter to the editor this morning in the Bridgeton News.
Beavers
I guess word is out that the Town of Bridgton is looking at sprucing up Shorey Park with native species because, to the joy of some and consternation of others, Castor Canadensis (the North American Beaver) has moved in. Apart from their charismatic personalities, beavers are a keystone species that improve water quality and play a crucial role in promoting a biodiversity that includes fish, amphibians and birds.
As someone who is enamored with the idea of having wildlife living in close proximity to humans but also aware that it is just a matter of time before the Bridgton’s Downtown Beavers cross paths with humans, I think it is advisable for the town to be proactive in seeking solutions to this potential conflict of interest.
Perhaps we should consider what the city of Martinez, California (population 40,000) did when beavers took up residence there. In October 2007, the beaver dam was posing a flooding hazard and the beavers were given a death sentence. However, a huge public response pressured the City Council to form a “beaver committee” to look into the possibility of coexistence. County flood control engineers, property owners and environmental groups along with local beaver advocates teamed together to create a win-win solution for both humans and beavers. Beaver Deceiver International from Vermont installed a flow device that manages dam height and maintains safe water levels. In a nut-shell, the “Castor Master” is a flexible tube that moves water from upstream to downstream and tricks beavers into believing that their dam is operating to their industrious busy beaver specifications.
The Martinez beavers have their own website and YouTube videos. A children’s book, titled “The Comeback Kids, The Martinez Beavers”, raises money to pay for re-vegetation and an on-site interpretive program.
The Bridgton Economic Development Committee will be happy to know that Bridgton’s beaver colony will be very good for business since the positive publicity generated will bring in more visitors to the downtown area. Martinez is now planning for the Fifth Annual Beaver Festival, “a Dam Good Time” which is a family event that celebrates the relationship between beavers, the community and the watershed.
Obviously, there are many other considerations that have not been included here and that will need to be discussed, but given Bridgton’s multi-talented population that includes town personnel, environmentalists, educators, business leaders, artists and volunteers of every persuasion, we can come together to welcome and celebrate our town’s biological heritage and diversity.
Check out www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress. It is a very informative and entertaining site with pod casts, videos and resources that will be useful so that we don’t have to “reinvent the wheel”.
Lega Sammut Medcalf
Bridgton
Lega! You are honory Martinez material! Our sister from another mister! Anyone else up for a fieldtrip? The good news is that if Bridgton opens their purse strings far enough to install a flow device you are 3.5 hours away from Skip Lisle and 4.5 hours away from Mike Callahan. She has already arranged a book signing for the best children’s book ever written on beavers who’s author lives in Maine and once crisply explained to me that she only helps non-profits in her state. Oh. Let’s hope she is very busy very soon! And thanks for the great letter!
Today’s the big day for Lega and “Beaver Daze” in Maine. She wrote this week that the name felt apt because she was certainly in a daze herself since the preparations were underway. Sharon and Owen came yesterday and will present today on living with beavers. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall! GOOD LUCK! Win new beaver friends and change hearts and minds!
Gosh, can you remember our first beaver festival? We had maybe 7 booths and fewer than 300 people. Children made beaver tails out of paper and FRO, who was just getting to know us, brought clay for an activity. The documentarian Don Bernier was there filming the “Happy Ending” and the rest of us knew better than to think anything was over. In between snapping photos, Cheryl endeavored to work the video camera for our “Video letter to the Mayor.” The first festival was only three hours long. Now here’s a walk down memory lane!
