COASTAL COMMISSION FUNDS BEAVERS!

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers February 18, 2023

There’s grand news this morning about the grant awards from the Coastal Commission Whale Tale license plate sales. Guess who earned a slice of the pie? I’ll give you a hint. They make the water that enters the sea cleaner and they make more salmon so all those hungry orcas have something tasty to eat.

Coastal Commission Awards $2 Million in Whale Tail Grants

SAN FRANCISCO, February 17, 2023. On Wednesday, February 8, the California Coastal Commission approved 56 Whale Tail Grant applications totaling more than $2 million to non-profit organizations, community groups, and schools for projects and programs that provide educational experiences focused on coastal protection, public access, and environmental justice.

SLO Beaver Brigade/Ecologistics, $41,480

Project Title: Beaver Education in SLO County Engaging Communities in: San Luis Obispo County Project Timeline: March 2023 – March 2025

Twice-monthly experiential tours to beaver wetlands, including Spanish language and wheelchair accessible tours; monthly river and creek cleanups; new educational interpretive panels and a mural; and Spanish-translated educational materials will engage and educate the local community about the environmental and climate benefits of beavers and the connection of local waterways to the ocean

WHOO HOOO! Isn’t that wonderful? I honestly never thought about the costal commission as a possible grant source, but it’s all watershed eventually! Congratulations to our friends in San Luis Obispo who have made all this possible, and are as we speak working on a first beaver festival of their very own!

BEAVERS IN THE LANDSCAPE NEED YOU!

Raining cats and dogs? Raining goats and elephants more likely. Yesterday was a deluge in every way possible with exciting thunder to boot. Martinez has been relatively lucky compared to some. And all that water overfilling our reservoirs and rushing down rivers to the ocean makes drills in the point again and again: We need more beavers!

Yesterday’s heart breaking story of the little boy washed away in San Miguel creek in San Luis Obispo county made me remember the sad heroism of our own beaver dams, who stopped the floating body of an old man who had died and slipped into the creek, washing down stream lost to his home and family. I wish there were more beaver dams to help that poor little one who was on his way to school in Paso Robles or at least to bring comfort to his family by letting know where he ended up.

Maybe Martinez and San Luis Obispo have more in common than we think. Because this great upcoming event of the Santa Barbara Perma Culture Network bore an unexpected drop of our name. I only hope things settle enough for it to happen, because yesterday lots of the city was told to shelter in place or prepare to evacuate due to truly unbelievable 6 inches of rainfall on top of already wet soil.

Beavers On the Landscape

Saturday, January 21, 2023 – 18:30 to 20:30

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network

Dr. Emily Fairfax & Cooper Lienhart
Saturday, January 21, 2023
6:30 – 8:30pm FREE

Santa Barbara Community Arts Center
631 Garden St, Santa Barbara CA 93101

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low-tech, low-cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. Emily Fairfax

Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network for an evening with Dr. Emily Fairfax, PhD and Cooper Lienhart as they share their work & passion for beaver, a keystone species that until very recently was vastly underrated as the ecosystem restoration hero it is.

With extended droughts and catastrophic fires plaguing California and the West, in recent years Dr. Fairfax began focusing her research on the impact of beaver on wildfires. Where beaver and their dams and pond complexes are allowed to flourish, water tables naturally rise, and keep the surrounding vegetation and soils hydrated. Dr. Fairfax’s observations on the positive aspects beavers have in controlling wildfires with the wetlands they create, prompted her to coin the phrase “Smokey the Beaver.

Well this seems like a good time to focus on their benefits to FLOODING because it’s going to be foremost on everyone’s mind for a while.

As a part of the evening, Cooper Lienheart, a recent environmental engineering grad of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, will share how as a student he became interested in beaver. Like many young people Lienhart became increasingly concerned about climate change, and learned about wetlands and their ability to act as carbon sinks sequestering carbon, and the role of beaver in creating these wetlands.

Of course beavers and human settlements are often at odds. But in communities like Martinez, CA, where a popular Beaver Festival takes place every year, they have demonstrated these conflicts can be managed with clever strategies, good for the beaver and the community. And with these kind of beaver management strategies come new jobs, especially good for the next generation, many who yearn for positive livelihoods.

Let that be our legacy. We were a testcase for beaver management in the west. And we excelled at our job thanks to Skip Lisle and every one in town who made it a MAJOR news story. To tell a really new story to an unbelieving audience you need to be wildly compelling and shout it from the roof tops over and over.

Dr. Emily Fairfax is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Resource Management at California State University Channel Islands. Dr. Fairfax double majored in Chemistry and Physics as an undergraduate at Carleton College, later earning a PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder. She uses a combination of remote sensing and field work to research how beaver activity can create drought and fire resistant patches in the landscape under a changing climate.

Go tell it on the mountain! We will all be there in spirit!

TAKE A “WATERY WALK” ON THE WILD SIDE

heidi08 Beavers June 1, 2022

The San Luis Obispo beaver brigade continues to impress. Now the are asking for volunteers to conduct “Beaver Surveys” on the surrounding creeks.

Column: SLO Beaver Brigade seeks public help with survey

Photo of a beaver grooming by local Los Osos photographer Donald Quintana. Photos contributed by SLO Beaver Brigade.

– Did you know there is local group dedicated to the largest rodent in North America? Well, welcome to the SLO Beaver Brigade, a local organization committed to stewarding wetland health brought about by beavers. They do this by educating the public on the benefits beavers bring to our watersheds. Formed in 2020 by Audrey Taub, the SLO Beaver Brigade is busy leading educational walks to beaver ponds (Watery Walks), supporting research on beavers, organizing creek clean-ups, and implementing beaver restoration techniques.

They could use your help too. Beginning Saturday, June 18, and continuing on July 23 and August 13 they are conducting the SLO County Citizen Science Beaver Survey. You can join the fun and contribute to beaver science by walking the rivers and creeks with them to gather beaver data.

Using iNaturalist which can be downloaded on your smart device you will be able to enter all the pertinent information. SLO Beaver Brigade will offer a short educational introduction before everyone heads out to the waterways. There will be different meet-up locations for each date and you can sign up and get all the needed information on the home page of their website at www.slobeaverbrigade.com. Survey walks will take place at Arroyo Grande Creek and the Salinas River.

A group dedicated to beavers? Well of course we answer. To which I would reply Just ONE? Well yes but it’s a good one. And they will be hard at work in June mapping out where beavers live in the area.

Why beavers? You may be asking. Well, this interesting flat-tailed rodent is instrumental in controlling a number of environmental conditions that currently are plaguing us. Beavers have the ability to change the landscape second only to us humans. By damming rivers and streams, they raise the water level to surround their lodge with a protective moat.

We live in times of historic drought and the threat of wildfires. Storing this water on the landscape provides much-needed fire breaks. They also help replenish the water table, reduce streamside erosion, improve water quality, and increase plant and animal diversity.

Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed a beaver restoration program to be run by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “To be successful in our efforts to protect biodiversity,” Newsom said, “the Department must take a proactive leap towards bringing beavers back onto the landscape. Beavers are an untapped, creative climate solving hero that helps prevent the loss of biodiversity facing California.” The Governor has proposed expenditures to the legislature and both houses must vote to formally adopt the final budget by midnight on June 15.

Someone has sure spent a lot of time learning about this! Good job beaver brigade for bringing the media along with you! You might want to do a little more tutoring on the salmon/steelhead issue though.

Another beneficial effect of the work of beavers is how their dams help salmon and local steelhead make their way upstream to spawn. There are some scientific experiments that appear to say that salmon may have learned how to jump up natural dams by doing so on beaver dams. Scientists are now building artificial dams sized and shaped like beaver dams in streams and creeks to benefit steelhead.

Um. The point isn’t that beaver dams are miniature fish ladders that give salmon experience before they get to the hard concrete. We build BDAs to give salmon and steelhead sheltered pools, not a warmup routine. Salmon and steelhead already know how to jump. It’s in their DNA.

They don’t need practice.

The public can learn a whole lot more about beavers by going on a SLO Beaver Brigade monthly “Watery Walk.” You will see a beaver dam and learn all about their lodges, why they build them and how they help remove carbon from the atmosphere, provide resiliency through droughts, and aid during wildfires. You will get to see the lush habitat created by beavers right here in our North County. Beavers are active on Atascadero Creek and the Salinas River. To sign up go to www.slobeaverbrigade.com.

Residents who may be having issues with beaver activities on or around their properties can contact the SLO Beaver Brigade to obtain resources for assistance.

Three cheers for the Beaver Brigade! Who has been plugging away at this with monthly ‘watery walks’ and lots of cheerful education. We should all be so lucky as to have a “Beaver Brigade” on our side!

[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://youtu.be/oG6fayQBm9w” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

BEAVER MURAL FOR SLO

heidi08 BDA's, Beaver Art, Who's saving beavers now? July 19, 2021

There’s a new beaver mural in San Luis Obisbo thanks to the hardworking beaver brigade and inspiring artist Victoria Carranza. Victoria uses community engagement to bring murals to life. She is especially interested in highlighting local nature, so you know this beaver wetland was a natural choice. Members of the brigade and their children and families came and did the painting, prepping the surface priming and working at night when it got too hot.

I’m not sure the beaver is CENTRAL enough for my tastes but it’s a beautiful tribute nonetheless. Audrey Taub has done a fantastic job of engaging her community and really getting beavers the attention they deserve. Cooper Lienhart explains things very welll in this is a nice film made by an appreciative pilgrim to the site. He does a good job profiling the word the Beaver Brigade is d[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://vimeo.com/575017115″ lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]oing and why it matters.