Tag: Brock Dolman

SIERRA BEAVERS MAKE IT BIG

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, In the News August 5, 2020

Wow, it’s beaver season out there with a huge dump of news this morning which includes the New York Times. But lets start locally as we always have and talk about the new issue of Open Road with Doug McConnell that dropped this weekend. It’s about the importance of meadows and somehow they crossed path with Brock Dolman who got them thinking about our favorite subject and introduced them to a friend of ours.

The beaver profile starts around 10:30, but it’s all good. Let’s play a little game and see if you recognize any photos, okay?

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That’s right! Beavers are awesome. And their photographers rock. That was the handywork of our own Rusty Cohn who earned himself a neat little byline.

Of course it’s a half hour program so there wasn’t time to talk about how the forest service wanted to use beavers in the sierra and were told they couldn’t because they weren’t native, which prompted archeologist Chuck James research which prompted our papers which lead to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife saying, umm okay…you win….they’re native.

Ahhh memories!

BEAVER CHAMPIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention, Beavers and salmon, Flow Device Installed April 29, 2020

I’m not sure this has ever happened before. There are THREE very important beaver stories this morning meaning very good things about beavers and I cannot pick between the three. I’m going to have to profile each thing and you have to promise to come back and read the whole thing. I’m sorry to assign homework, but it’s necessary. They’re that good.

The first and most startling news is a profile piece about Emily Fairfax in the UC agriculture and natural resources blog.

From being an engineer to researching nature’s engineers

“When I came face to face with beaver dams for the first time, I had what can only be described as a transformative experience,” says Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at California State University, Channel Islands. While leading a canoe trip through the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, she encountered what she describes as “just these enormous, impressive features” – created by beavers. “You truly realize how sturdy beaver dams are while dragging your canoe over them,” she adds, laughing. “They are incredible from an engineering perspective.”

Despite being taken by the handiwork of beavers in that initial encounter, Fairfax says “I just put that experience in my back pocket for a long time.” After majoring in chemistry and physics in college, she went on to work as an engineer. “But, I kept going fishing, visiting wetlands and creeks, and realized I wanted to be out in these places in my day to day life.”

“Then, I watched the documentary Leave it to Beavers. It was about how beavers fundamentally alter landscapes. I was reminded of the beavers I’d seen in Minnesota and was like, I want to study this. On a bit of a whim, I applied to graduate school, and haven’t looked back. Now it’s all beavers, all day, and they make me so happy. It turns out rather than being an engineer, I was called to study nature’s engineers.”

I had NO idea that Emily was inspired by Jari’s documentary! WOW! The world might have been stuck with another engineer if it weren’t for that! I’m so touched and my mind is a little bit blown. I had just assumed she got involved because her thesis chair was interested or something. The article goes on to talk about her viral video and ends in her interest in California.

Working in California, Fairfax’s biggest task now is locating beavers. She notes that before beaver trapping there were likely upwards of 400 million beavers in North America, meaning they were everywhere. “Trapping took them down to 100,000, and now estimates put them back up to 10 or 20 million. They are prevalent in certain areas like the Colorado Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, but we still don’t see them often in many downstream areas that provide great habitat.”

For now, she says, “I’ve got students hiking streams just looking for signs of them, and when I give public talks, people will sometimes tell me about how they used to see them on a creek in the 70’s. That might not seem relevant, but that kind of information is so valuable. So now I’m basically saying to people, if you see a beaver dam anywhere in California, please tell me about it!”

I’ll make sure we all tell you when we see them! Ohh you are the hope of a new beaver generation Dr. Emily Fairfax. Make sure you read the Work to protect Sonoma beaver lodge begins

To prevent flooding and manage water levels in a Sonoma creek, a pond leveler will be installed where a family of beavers is living, Sonoma County Water Agency officials said.

The pond leveler will help water transfer through the beaver dam so that the pond doesn’t cause flooding. It will also assist with maintaining the habitat for the beavers, said David Cook, senior environmental specialist at Sonoma County Water Agency.

There was even an insert about my timing concerns, because the reporter was included in the email thread where I learned of it.

Heidi Perryman, of urban-beaver protection group Martinez Beavers, asked the agency to wait until kit — or, baby beaver — season is over, which is mid-to-late May. But Brock Dolman, program director of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, which is partnering with the water agency and Swift Water Designs in the project, said they also would prefer to do the work outside of kit season and were prepared to do the install in March, but then COVID-19 got in the way.

Isn’t that just like Heidi, always poking her nose in and mucking around. Well I also heard from a neighbor that the beavers were busy that night trying to plug the outflow of the pipe so you may not have heard the last of this story. It’s good that a flow device was used. Hopefully the beavers can make it work. Fingers crossed.

The last piece of really OUTSTANDING news comes from Port Moody, B.C. See a lot of the challenges to the beavers have come from the fish hatchery folk which are saying that beaver dams stop chum. Jim and Judy have been doing their home work AND the city’s homework and heard from famous Fisheries Biologist Dr. Marvin Rosenau. that their stream supported coho salmon. The real kind not the hatchery frankensteins. And there’s all this data saying beavers are good for coho and no data at all saying they’re good for chum. Which stinks.

But they got a go pro camera and have been using it to shoot underwater and GUESS WHAT THEY FILMED and Dr. Marvin Rosenau. identified right away in the beaver pond???

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It’s hard to see but unmistakable. Around the 55 second mark you can see it best on the upper left hand corner. Look for the while glint of its eye and then the wiggle of its tail as it moves forward. That would be coho fry. As in the real deal. As in proof of a beaver pond doing what it should. As in pass the coho birthday cake and lets have a party!

BEAVERS AND DIRT

heidi08 Beavers, Environmental October 9, 2018

Dirt Rich – Trailer from Passelande Pictures on Vimeo.

Back in the spring of 2015 I was contacted by filmmaker Marcelina Cravat who was working on a documentary about climate change and creative solutions. She was interested in talking about the wetland work that beavers do and wondered if Martinez would be a good place to film some sequences. She and her husband came over to survey the setting and meet the fam.

At the time we were excitedly expecting what turned out to be our last group of kits and had already arranged with Suzi Eszterhas to photograph them for Ranger Rick magazine. That had been set up at the last beaver festival so I thought I better ask her how she felt about another camera on site before I answered Marci. To my surprise Suzi said ‘no’. Because in her experience it was hard to work around two visions at once. So I introduced Marci to the good folks in’ Napa, and off she went in their direction.

Dirt Rich explores strategies that re-stabilize atmospheric carbon levels and revitalize the soil in an effort to reverse the effects of runaway global warming.

Fast forward three years later, and her film premiered this year at the SF Green Film Festival this summer, got awards at Sundance and is available to watch online for a short period. Robin Ellison of Napa has a lovely snippet of footage inside and let me know about the opportunity to watch our beaver buddies online. The 6 minute beaver segment starts around 24 minutes in and stars Brock Dolman, Kate Lundquist, Eli Asarian, Sherry Tippie and some even more beautiful furry faces. I can’t embed it, but here’s the link. Dirt Rich. Lucky for you, you have three more free days to watch the whole thing.

And here’s proof of many selfless hours spent at the beaver dam. Congratulations Robin!

NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN

heidi08 kits June 28, 2018

It is far, far too early for me to coast. What was I thinking yesterday? My living room is insane as all the items which have to go to the festival line up to wait there turn to be loaded into the truck. I slept a sliver last night. There are lists to be made and details to be attended too. Oh and there’s this. On Tuesday I implored Moses to see if he could get that huge wheel out of the creek for unsightly reasons. And while he was there he thought he’d have a little look around. Guess what he saw? Go ahead guess! Turn your sound WAY WAY up and I bet you’ll know the answer in the first couple of seconds.

LOOK at how TINY s/he is! Yesterday I spent the first 4 hours just saying OMG OMG over and over. Moses has captured some incredible moments with the beavers over the years, but this might be my very favorite. That kit is so little it can’t even dive to follow mom. It just pops back up like a cork.

He filmed this tuesday at 10:30 at night, and it took some doing to get it uploaded. We would love to be able to play it at the festival for folks, so that meant spending time figuring how to get it on our portable screen. Assuming we have a place to plug it in it should work out nicely.

And meanwhile Martinez has another kit! Stop worrying so much. Everything will work out fine. That makes him number twenty-seven!

It’s surprising how lovely the habitat is down there. It almost looks like a tropical forest. I can definitely see why folks brave the flooding and buy homes on the creek. Check out the morning footage from earlier in the week. Martinez is quite the urban utopia. There’s a car horn at the beginning and a pair of warblers trilling in the middle. Quite the place to raise a family.

Say it with me now: Baby baby baby! Martinez has a baby! There is precious little that matters more than that.

There was also a fine article about our friends in the North and the quest to bring beaver back to California. Oh and it mentions the festival too! Rusty was kind enough to supply the photographs.

Leave It to . . .

The first step is getting past California’s “beaver blind spot,” as the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s Brock Dolman puts it. Dolman is co-director, with Kate Lundquist, of OAEC’s WATER Institute (Watershed Advocacy, Training, Education and Research), established in 2004 to study and promote watershed issues. The award-winning duo’s “Bring Back the Beaver” campaign, started in 2009, went back on the road in the North Bay last month with a talk in connection with a screening of the environmental documentary Dirt Rich in Novato; appearances continue through June in Napa, Sonoma and Marin counties.

“A lot of people just don’t know that we have beaver in California,” says Lundquist, who says that their current presentation is an update on a 2015 talk they gave in Sonoma to help answer the question: “That’s an East Coast thing, right?”

Although a historical account from General Mariano Vallejo found the Laguna de Santa Rosa “teeming with beaver” in 1833, by 1911 California had about 1,000 beavers left before legislators passed a law briefly protecting the aquatic rodents. Following a quarter-century-long campaign to reintroduce beaver to erosion-threatened habitat (the highlight of the “Bring Back the Beaver” show is the parachuting “beaver bomb” developed during the time), they were determined non-native and invasive for decades thereafter.

Bring Back the beavers campaign! Hurray for Brock and Kate! It’s great to see the regional history of beavers in California outlined in this article. The author even takes time to focus on the depredation permits issued in the state. But you know by now I am very self-centered – so of course this was my very favorite part.

This business as usual for beavers started to change after a pair of them wandered into Alhambra Creek in the middle of the city of Martinez in 2006. They built a dam and had yearlings, called kits, but the city’s application for a permit to make them go away did not sit well with locals who could see the kits playing as they drank their coffee. Resident Heidi Perryman formed the beaver advocacy group Worth a Dam, which holds its 11th annual Beaver Festival on June 30 in downtown Martinez.

Okay, yearlings are not called kits, any more than teenagers are called children. The mention is short and sweet. But still,,,always leave them wanting more. It’s followed by a lovely intro to the beaver situation in Napatopia. And then does a nice job of promoting Kevin Swift, who worked with Mike Callahan a while back to learn the trade.

“They’re ignored, underappreciated, reviled and mismanaged in equal measure,” says Swift, who emphasizes that beavers, for all their engineering abilities, are not intellectual powerhouses. “It’s got a brain the size of an acorn. If you can’t work it out with them, could be you’re the problem.”

“It seems to me that all the laws are backwards,” he says. “You don’t need a permit to destroy a beaver dam that makes critical habitat for rare, threatened and endangered species—but you might need a permit to put in a float-control device that’s hydrologically invisible and maintains the habitat for rare, threatened and endangered species. How does that work?”

Hmm indeed! Good point Kevin.

And if the beaver believers are right, as the numerous scientific studies they point to suggest, there is no better way to be fish-friendly than to be beaver-friendly. The beavers are not going away. There are some intractable parties, such as the absentee landowner on Sonoma’s Leveroni Road who, according to state records, refuses to consider alternative options to repeated depredation permit requests. But ultimately this approach is doomed to fail, says Swift.

“A story you often hear in California,” says Swift, “is, ‘I’ve been going down to that place for an hour every day for X number of years, and I’ve shot and trapped Y number of beavers, and they’re still there!’ Yeah, you’re in beaver habitat! Geology drives beaver habitat. Unless you can literally move mountains, you’re not changing anything about beavers’ attraction to your site.”

Lundquist says killing beavers is neither a viable nor economical strategy. “For one, people hold candlelight vigils, like they did in Tahoe. And it can be really bad press if you’re trying to do the right thing—or be seen as doing the right thing, anyway.

Um, not to be a stickler for detail or anything, but actually they didn’t have a candle light vigil in Tahoe for beavers. That was in that OTHER city. What’s its name again? sheesh Go read the whole article, it’s worth your time and author James Knight did a lovely job pulling it all together. Learn all about the ‘Bring back the Beaver campaign’ Then come to the festival in two days and meet Brock and Kate in person!

Then watch this video again because it’s awwwwwww…

JUNE IS BEAVER MONTH

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact June 12, 2018

June is beaver month, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s when we would start seeing kits for the first time, it’s when the mornings and evenings provide great dawn and dusk beaver watching, and this year it will be month for the largest beaver festival ever. EVER! Not the largest in the the county, or the state, or country, or the hemisphere. But EVER.

Jon picked up a proof copy of the brochure yesterday and it was stunning, I actually love the new shape, it looks more like a program and less like a children’s keepsake. Supposedly today is the day the banners go up in the park. Fingers crossed I will post pictures of their debut tomorrow.

June is also the month that Brock and Kate from OAEC will be presenting on beavers for RCD at the Napa library. Let’s hope they mention a certain FESTIVE celebration! Of course RCD decided to advertise the event with a photo from our own Cheryl Reynolds, because let’s face it. Martinez beavers are Worth A Dam.

WILD Napa ~ Beavers ~ June 13 ~ Bonus Tour @ 6pm!

June 13 – Beavers, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center

6 pm – Special Tour – Meet behind old Napa Firefighters’ Museum

7 pm – Lecture – Napa Library

Yearling grooming 2010: Photo by Cheryl Reynolds Worth A Dam

Come learn about the fascinating history and ecology of beavers, and how they are helping both urban and rural communities across California restore watersheds, recover endangered species, and Increase climate change
resiliency. Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist, Co-Directors of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute, will share research done on the historic range of beaver in California and how you can contribute to the
Bring Back the Beaver campaign.

When: 2nd Wednesdays, 7 pm; NOTE: On June 13, special beaver tour will be held starting at 6 pm behind Napa Firefighters’ Museum

I’m sure they would welcome some out-of-towners if you want to go hear. Of course they should do the tour after the lecture so folks might get to see some actual beavers! As if this wasn’t exciting enough Rusty’s photos ran a spring series in the Napa register this morning.

Photos: Life at Napa’s Beaver Lodge at Tulocay Creek

Updated featuring photos from Spring 2018!

The Tulocay Creek beaver pond is located next to the Hawthorne Suites Hotel, 314 Soscol Ave., Napa. At the creek, you’ll find river otters, mink, muskrats and herons as well as beavers. Here are some photos of the critters taken by local photographer Rusty Cohn.

“Since Beavers are nocturnal, the heat doesn’t seem to bother them,” Cohn said. “They come out a little before sunset and are mainly in the water. During the day they are sleeping either in a bank den in the side of the creek bank under a fair amount of dirt, or inside a lodge which is made of mud and sticks mainly.”