Hi-chi-hi-nem

heidi08 History October 18, 2010

So beaver-friend Brock Dolman gathered with some Nevada-city beaver friends in preparation for this weekend’s indigenous people celebration “calling back the salmon‘ event. There he had the fortune of meeting Farrell Cunningham, one of the only living speakers of the Tsi-Akim Maidu language. Guess what they talked about?

“I asked him his Maidu opinion about pre-contact occurrence of beaver in their territory and he said that they have a word for beaver: Hi-chi-hi-nem and that it is a pre-contact original word vs. a post-contact newer word and thus he was confident that they were familiar with beaver in their territory, the majority of which is well above the 1000’ elevation on the West slope of the Sierras.”

Certainly good news for the continuing struggle to prove that beaver were native in california at higher elevations too. We will keep gathering stories.In the meantime you might enjoy this video of Farrell keeping the language alive through teaching.

A final note to regular readers of this blog is that our good friend Scott Artis of burrowing owl fame is going to be taking on the job of upgrading this site. What it means is that the look of the site will change while we get situated, especially the sidebars which will need to be disabled and updated. Don’t panic, www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress will be back and better than ever very soon. Fingers crossed and thank you, Scott!

River Architecht

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, pictures September 22, 2010

2010 Kit Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Guest Blogger and watershed wizard Brock Dolman writes:

Now as to the question: “Can one logically say that beavers are wetlands engineers?” Not sure logically what part of the phrase & semantics does not work for you? Is it that how the moniker “engineer” would appear to be anthropomorphizing or deterministic in a way held only for Hominids? Hmmm….???

Definitions of engineer as found on google:
-design as an engineer; “He engineered the water supply project”
-a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems
-mastermind: plan and direct (a complex undertaking); “he masterminded the robbery”

It has been said by a number of authors that after humans no other animal is known on the Planet to modify and manipulate more of its habitat to create conditions conducive to its survival, than beaver. Countless other lifeforms, will also gratefully acknowledge this behavior of the keystone beaver. If you have ever spent time surveying and assessing the strategic modifications that intact beaver colonies perform at scale to create their world – the best word I know of to describe their skills would be engineer – a wetland engineer, a flood control engineer, a groundwater recharge engineer, a erosion control engineer, a riparian habitat expansion engineer, a salmon habitat engineer, a biodiversity keystone engineer and climate change/watershed resiliency engineer, and an inspiring engineer at mitigating nature deficit disorder! (to name a few.) I was thinking that I want to imbue the beaver with a better CV title than simply wetland engineer – maybe Environmental Services Czar? River Architect?

Ahhh! Brock, everything you write about beavers makes me feel like I’m kicking off my shoes, curling up on the couch with a favorite book and sipping something that’s almost too good to share. Thanks a million!

Sonoma Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere September 9, 2010

VP Cheryl Reynolds took a beaver field trip and tracked down the beavers she had seen a few years back on Sonoma Creek. She found the beavers in full swing with at least three lovely dams on display. The creek is stony with very little loose soil so the dams reflect the materials available and have little mud to speak of.

This is the beaver habitat I found 2 yrs ago and haven’t been out there much. We walked the creek today and found 3 dams. I couldn’t get through to where I thought the lodge was before. this first dam is where someone was supposedly takng it apart last year. It’s the most beautiful beaver habitat I have seen. It’s really weird though, the river is all rock. the dams are a combination of rock and branches, no mud.T

Watershed friend Brock Dolman says that they wash out every winter and the beavers have to rebuild in the spring and fall. They look pretty qualified at their year round jobs.

My understanding from the Sonoma Valley folks, is that they continually have
the beavers there, but it is just that the creek is too rowdy in the winter
and always blows out their dams and they move into bank burrows for the
winter and then rebuild each spring to fall small ones like in the photo.
Some think that some may also go down to the lower marshes of Sonoma Creek
and hang out for the rough winter flows as well? Likely, all is happening?
Just got to stop the vineyard depredation permits!!

It’s fun to see stones in the dams. I just watched a National Geographic movie of beavers and saw images of them lifting and carrying stones to place in the dam. They definitely don’t get the opportunity in Alhambra Creek. Still they are spoiled for mud, and it looks like the Sonoma beavers would love some in their efforts. Its nice to see how adaptable their instincts are, proving that beaver building relies on both inherent biology and available materials and practice.

Photos By: Cheryl Reynolds

If you discover a beaver field trip of your very own, we would love to see photos! Its important to keep track of known colonies so that we can monitor a city’s response. Lets just say most cities first reaction to a beaver dam isn’t ‘wow an opportunity to restore our creek!’. They sometimes need a little civic nudge in the right direction.

(For four years.)

Our friends at Camp Meeker

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Video August 25, 2010

12 min version: Summer Dam Removed to Create Fish Refuge – Camp Meeker Dam Removal from Ben Zolno on Vimeo.

Beaver friend Brock Dolman of OAEC’s Water Institute sends this newly launched video telling the dynamic story of creek restoration and dam removal in Camp Meeker. You probably know where this is located. Have you ever driven to Occidental from Guerneville on the Bohemian Highway? As you wind through the twisted redwood drive you see parts of a lovely creek along your right. The creek used to dead end in a swimming hole that was the center to the early community of Camp Meeker, and salmon would have to go hiking back down the water and look for another route. This video is a smart, engaging look at how to pull the community together with environmental restoration. Here’s Brock’s invitation to see for yourself.

For those who have been following the Dutch Bill Creek Dam Removal and Restoration Project, our construction partner Prunuske Chatham, Inc. has just started the implementation of Phase II to complete this project. Today, Michael Fawcett, PhD and Sierra Cantor (GRRCD Ecologist) moved hundreds of fish (steelhead) upstream of the project to a safe refuge downstream, and construction should commence by next week.

As a kick off to this final phase of the project, I invite you to view the shortened version of the video and then come down and check out the site. When its done, come get your feet wet – and next year hopefully come see the salmon happily spawning.

Make sure you have the sound on – the input from the community and our restoration partners really make the video into a story worth listening to. Please feel free to distribute as you wish. The longer version (also on our website) is equally entertaining, if not more so – its just, well, longer….

Nice work all! And great soundtrack by the way. (Do I recognize the music from the Secret of Roan Inish? Gosh i loved that movie…)

Well, no cranes needed for Alhambra Creek at the moment. I’m off to meet with city staff about the mom-beaver & kits memorial by artist Paul Craig. Nearly two months have gone by since we lost our beloved matriarch. (Is that all? It seems like a million years ago). Hopefully we’ll have her image displayed before too long. Wish me luck!

Update:

Met with Bob Cellini and city staff who were enthusiastic about the beavers and willing to take on responsibolity for hanging them on the sheetpile themselves. We offered suggestions that were well received and left the adorable metal beavers in capable hands. Look for them soon coming to a sheetpile wall near you!

Relative…

heidi08 Environmental June 20, 2010

I received an email from watershed wizard Brock Dolman last night responding to the president’s oval office speech and a subsequent New York Times Article. Here’s a bit of what he said,

I must admit that when I heard Obama say the other night with his Oval Office speech – that the Gulf Gusher is “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” – like the NY Times article below – I immediately started laying out a long list of American Enviro disasters besides the Dust Bowl and near Bison extirpation mentioned below! Seems to me that we might as well invoke the clearcut conversion of the majority of all old growth vegetation communities of all types, the genocide of over 95%+ of all Native American Indians, the near extinction of most salmonids populations, the actual extirpation of passenger pigeons, the discovery of Gold in CA, the damning of most rivers in the west & east, filling of wetlands and cutting of riparian corridors, the Gulf dead zone, and on the fur trapping front I would also want to advocate that the destruction of beavers (and all other furbearers) on the continent and the subsequent impacts to watersheds, hydrology processes and biological carrying capacity diminishment – should be in on the competition for “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced”.

Wow. Certainly the decimation of beavers changed the face of the nation – changed the fertility and responsiveness of the land. Changed parts of the west coast from temperate to arid. Changed the species available for hunting. Changed our ability to grow crops in dry areas. Changed the salmon runs. Changed the flight paths. Changed our streams from lush meandering shallow water to deeply downcut channels vulnerable to drought and flash flooding. Hmm.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that nearly all disasters started out as enormously lucrative “bright ideas” too. Take as many trees, beavers, bison, inch of farmland as you can. You can bet there has never been an environmental disaster where someone (or a bunch of someones) didn’t get sickeningly rich somewhere along the process. The vast destruction that’s a recipe for an environmental disaster of such magnitute cannot take place without its essential ingredient:

Greed.

Maybe the apocalypse in the gulf isn’t the worst environmental disaster in history. Maybe its not even the fastest. But I’m of the opinion that it’s no use trying to compare it now to anything because it isn’t finished. We have no idea how much damage it will eventually do, how drastically it will impact our wildlife or our ocean. We have no idea how we’ll look back on this and compare it to other events. Looking back is a luxury that we cannot afford. Right now we can only look through, through the thick brown gift that keeps on giving and the cloudy plumes of oxygen-depleting dispersant stretched out like severed fingers for miles along the ocean floor. Will this be the worst environmental disaster ever faced?

I’ll get back to you.