Tag: Brock Dolman

TO BEAVER IS A VERB WITH ITS SLEEVES ROLLED UP

heidi08 Beavers July 10, 2023

Last month Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Project spoke to the the California Fish and Game Commission and offered public comment on the new depredation policy for beavers in the state. Both he and the advocate Jennifer Fearing described how enormously hopeful and positive they felt about the changes and one commissioner even praised Brock for his leadership on the matter.

“Brock, I want to thank you for your leadership on this. I remember our first conversation about eight years ago when I first got on the commission. It’s folks like you who have passion and are tireless and resilient on these issues that make things like this happen. So thank you for your efforts.”

—Eric Sklar, President of the California Fish & Game commission

It’s a high water mark for beavers, to be sure, but I still can’t help being impatient and doubtful that it will change much down until we see it unfold and get the numbers on paper. Jennifer Fearing said she was giddy about the change. Why aren’t I giddy? When I considered my grumpy hesitancy I thought again of this passage I wrote years ago.

One of my favorite scenes in Ken Burns National Parks Series “America’s Best Idea” comes around the fourth episode when John Muir finally got president Roosevelt to Yosemite. The president and his people went out to see the park for himself. It was a huge Huge victory for Muir, The culmination of many years work. And that night John and Theodore slipped away by themselves to camp under the redwoods.

Think about that. Getting the most powerful man in the world to sneak away with you for a night in the redwoods where you can show him the most beautiful thing you care so passionately about with zero distractions. Yosemite will be protected. You are getting everything you want.

And that night as they lay in their bed rolls, just the two of them, under the trees with the tiniest of stars peeping between the branches, John Muir said to the president of the united states:

“Are you still hunting? You should stop that. There isn’t enough big game anymore and it just destroys the population.”

Because that’s what advocates do. We push and push and push and never get everything we said we wanted and we keep pushing for more. And that’s what it takes.

Endless Pressure. Endlessly Applied.

Once upon when Martinez agreed to do the right thing I was capable of thinking we “Turned a corner” and “Won the battle”. What I learned was that there were an unlimited number of more corners to navigate and that the battles were endless. Beavers have merely earned the right to step into the arena. A space at the table if you will. Okay that’s a big deal. There’s still a lot more to do.

I liked Brock choice of quote here, David Orr:

“Hope is a verb with it’s sleeves rolled up”

Let’s get to work California. Beavers have been waiting for you to join them. Sign up for the webinar on Beaver Policy this wednesday at noon.

Catch WATER Institute’s Kate Lundquist at the next Secretary Speaker Series webinar, hosted by California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, on Wednesday, July 12th from 12 noon – 1 pm.

The topic, “Are You a Beaver Believer? The Evolving Story of California’s Beaver Management” will feature a candid discussion of where things stand with beavers in California and an inspiring glimpse of what’s possible when we reconnect beavers to our landscapes.

Zoom registration: https://ca-water-gov.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KYAnlLA9Rg-GevAHBD4n1w
The event is public, live-streamed on YouTube, and recorded for later viewing.

THIS IS GOING TO BE A LOT EASIER FROM NOW ON

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact August 18, 2022

Did you ever play “Kerplunk” as a child? You and your friends pull out stick after stick hoping no marble will fall or maybe just one or two. But at certain point there are so few stickings holding the marbles in place that any one you choose is going to have significant results.
This is the sound of many marbles dropping at once.

‘Letting beavers be beavers’ | Here is how beavers are helping in California’s firefight

CALIFORNIA, USA — California’s drought is a multi-billion dollar issue that we’ve dumped a lot of resources into, but climate scientists are finding that working with what nature provides could be more effective than our synthetic solutions.

They say sometimes, you just gotta leave it to the beavers.

This is a passion project for Emily inspired by events like the 2000 Manter Fire in the Southern Sierra.

“That fire was really intense, and it caused a lot of damage around the Pacific Crest Trail, and the bunch of beavers up there were absolutely completely fine,” Fairfax said.

Photos from that fire show green patches directly near the beaver dam surrounded by charred out land.

Something tells me it’s all going to be down hill from here. Set your motors to ‘coast’ and enjoy the ride.

“When beavers move into a landscape especially dry places like the American West by building dams and slowing water down they end up creating patches that are very resistant to both droughts and wildfires,” She added.

Their dams do this by holding water on the land longer, recharging the groundwater, and improving plant health.

These green stretches of land then act like speed bumps to fire spread. And after a fire, the runoff of hazardous debris slows at the beaver dam. Then settles to the ground, making the water healthier downstream for fish and other aquatic species.

“Beaver provide all these services these environmental benefits for we the people that we’re currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to address they provide all those benefits for free and they do it better and cheaper,” said Brock Dolman, co-director of Water Institute Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

Dolman is part of the “Bring Back the Beaver” campaign. Along with other advocates, they are working to reverse the state’s position that beavers are a nuisance.

I believe were in the front of the bobsled now ladies and gentlemen. Tuck your feet in and try to hang on. Let gravity do the work.

Another big part of this plan, education

“Understanding the beneficial effects that beavers have, understanding how you can live with beavers,” said Gardner.

Adding another important tool in the tool chest addressing drought and wildfire impacts.

“If you think about all the rivers and streams that we have and should have in this state, a lot of them aren’t super healthy right now. If we can get just a fraction back in resilient and functioning state then every single one of them is like a speed bump to fire or drought effects,” said Fairfax.

I am not clever enough yet to frame this video the right way, But click on the link to go see it properly. This is going to get a lot easier from here,

FIRST, DO NO HARM

If I were queen of the beaver world, (and don’t tell me it can’t happen), I would make dam sure that any article that was supposed to be teaching about how important they are for water storage and biodiversity wouldn’t have stay mistakes or non-facts. Like saying that they eat fish

Or that they live in the dam.

Beavers use their dams as their homes. However, the dam also creates deeper water, making it easier for them to use their strength as swimmers to evade predators.

AS THEIR HOMES is the problem, Cole Hersey. If he had only said “For” their homes I would have even given him a pass. No, Cole they don’t use them AS their homes. They use them to raise the water so they can make build their homes in a completely different structure. Of course if you and I were trying to build a beaver dam in the middle of the creek we would find out pretty darn quickly that it doesn’t work really well if it’s hollow with a center space to live in. But you knew that, right? (more…)

OLEMA WATERSHED GETS ITS SUMMIT FIRST

heidi08 Beavers March 12, 2021

One of the very first canoe trips we took back in the 90’s was along Tomales creek outside Pt Reyes National Park. It was so early in the story and we were so ignorant of everything that we were not surprised to learn from one of the old timers we met along the way that a beaver dam that would have blocked our progress was just ripped out the day before by a neighbor.

This stands out in my mind because we haven’t since run into beavers in the area and Marin has been hungrily exploring beaver benefits. There was a talk last night in Olema by our friends Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist. Jerry Meral was governor Brown’s water tzar and he’s eager for beavers to come back to Marin.

Beaver Restoration Feasibility: A Webinar for Olema

The following video is a recording of the informational webinar Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist (Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute Directors) gave on March 4, 2021 to those living and/or working in the Olema Creek watershed near Point Reyes National Seashore in California.

Co-hosted by the Environmental Action Committee and the Olema Association, webinar topics include the fascinating history, ecology and benefits of beaver in California and the initial results from the West Marin Beaver Restoration Feasibility Assessment Brock and Kate have been carrying out with the help of their Marin County based steering committee. The 45-minute presentation is followed by a question and answer session.

Please note, the recording begins a couple of minutes after the start of the webinar. Apologies to our co-host and esteemed Steering Committee member Jerry Meral for not capturing his warm welcome and introduction.

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BEAVER HABITAT CREATES FUEL BREAKS

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention, Beavers and water August 26, 2020

The first time the “Bioneers” conference appeared on this website was 2010. In 2009 Brock Dolman had presented and mentioned the importance of beavers. It was surprising news at the time. But it is mainstream today. Because that’s the way change happens, slowly at first, and then all at once.

Fire and Water: Land and Watershed Management in the Age of Climate Change

California is a biodiversity hotspot, but its complex ecosystems are some of the first to model the consequences of a warming atmosphere. Wildfires are currently raging throughout California, burning through hundreds of thousands of acres and spreading rapidly. Climate change is fueling these wildfires — a problem that will only continue to escalate as the environment becomes drier and hotter.

Fire ecology experts are leading the search for solutions, as they seek to restore the healthy and natural role of fire in ecosystems, while combating the poor land and watershed management practices that have led us to this crisis. In this panel discussion from the 2016 Bioneers Conference, four leading fire ecologists discuss one burning question: How can modern society renew our relationship with the land to stop the wildfire crisis?

Ooh ooh I know, call on me! Or, hey maybe Brock can take this one.

And then there is one very special critter in the riparian part of our watersheds, and that’s our beaver. Right now many of our watersheds have been damaged in all sorts of ways, including by being overharvested and eroded by roads and off-road vehicles. We’ve reduced the complexity of those systems and their capacity to support diverse life, especially aquatic life, but really all life that depends on water. But beavers are forest farmers. They slow, spread and sink water, and they increase the wetted width of their habitats to grow the food that they eat because they’re herbivores. They eat bark and cambium and cattail roots and grasses. They need to slow water down to grow riparian forests and wetlands, which happen to be then sequestering carbon and creating other habitat. They are great hydrological engineers, and we should hire as many of them as possible.

Right now in California we have a decreasing snow pack in many of our high elevation systems, but runoff volumes are increasing in mountain meadows and systems lower down. Our natural water storage capacity and distribution system is out of balance. If we can we work with beavers as a keystone species, they can interface with these processes and play an important role in re-establishing a healthy hydrologic cycle. And there’s some good science on beaver habitat mitigating the intensity of fire by creating fuel breaks in the bottom ends of these systems. Beavers rehydrate the valley bottoms and increase the wetted width of these linear corridors that then act as natural firebreak systems. So bring back the beaver in California!

Excellent work! Especially the last part about beavers mitigating fire by providing fuel breaks. That’s pretty much what we need in the west. Damper soil that’s less flammable. Go Beavers. I’ve been thinking that our ecosystem poster might work in an hourglass shape, with the creatures underwater at the bottom and the ones above at the top. Of course the beaver dam would be the middle, giving both sides what they need. I played around with the notion yesterday. What do you think?