CREATING BEAVER DAM ANALOGS.

There is a CNPS El Dorado Chapter work event Dec 12 in memory of Pat Barron! He had a special love for Wakamatsu and its birds, and that is where we will be improving habitat. We will help ARC (American River Conservancy) in their efforts to restore riparian areas where lost to historic grazing.

We will meet at 10AM at Wakamatsu. Parking is on the east: As you drive Cold Springs Rd from Placerville, parking is on right, just after all the white farm buildings, and before Gold Trail School, We will help weave willow between posts that ARC installs the day before, creating Beaver Dam Analogs (manmade imitation “beaver dams” that help riparian vegetation establish/thrive, just like a real beaver dam would). We will also help with planting native riparian trees.

Elena suggests bringing these if you can: bypass pruners, buckets, and gloves. Please also bring lunch and a water bottle, and to wear appropriate clothes (boots, pants, etc.).

Unfortunately, ARC can not accommodate a rain date. The work needs to be done, and they are busy the rest of the week. So this will be rain or shine! How long the project takes will depend on how many of us are able to come. You are perfectly welcome to stay as long as you can, and leave when you need to (based on either commitments or energy level!). We will try and match duties to all ability levels.

Hope to see you there.

Our beaver friend Janet is on her way to help. Great to know this is happening.

What Hopkinton Wants: Hopkinton Gets

If beavers read the paper they could have seen 7 articles in three months about the woeful folk in Hopkinton tearing their expensively-treated hair out because beavers were ruining their beautiful riverside home and realize their own fate was looking grim. They would be able to sling their belongings over their shoulder, bid goodbye to the old haunts, and travel in a mass exodus to friendlier climes. Enos Mills (In Beaver World) wrote about once seeing a long line of beavers make a migration in hopes of finding a better home. Several colonies together moving en mass – I wouldn’t swear it was true but I wouldn’t dare say it was fiction either.

But the Hopkinton beavers had no such warning. And the landowners and property developer finally got what they wanted all along. Remember, on your next trip to Massachusetts, to never, ever spend a single dime in Hopkinton and shake the dust from your sandals when you leave.

Beavers removed near Hopkinton development

A trapper hired to stem flooding at Legacy Farms caught 42 beavers last month, he said Tuesday.

Malcolm Speicher, who this winter also trapped for homeowners off North and South Mill streets, said he spent 15 days on the south side of 730-acre East Main Street housing development.

Beavers can endanger homes, buildings and septic systems if their dams cause flooding.

“We just kept going and going and going, and we just kept finding and finding and finding,” Speicher said.

I could pointedly ask why reporters generously use the words “caught” and “removed” instead of the words “KILLED” and “SLAUGHTERED”, but big kill stories upset me. I have little sarcasm left. They remind me of the horror I felt, way back in the beginning of all this, to read that Elk Grove in CA (which to this day has anti-beaver propaganda on their public works site) trapped 53 beavers after their big beaver bruhaha. I’m shocked as much by the futility as by the cruelty of it. Never mind that one of their city council wrote me about flow devices and had a great conversation with Mike on the phone. Never mind that they are 30 minutes away from the answer. They wanted dead beavers and they got them. Of course, since trapping is a short-term solution, Hopkinton is going to be whining about beaver problems again before you know it. In the mean time, let’s all hate them very, very much, okay?

I suddenly have a very strong need to hear Carl Sandburg’s voice reading this…

Beavers Make Friends…

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions March 2, 2012

This has been a good week to be a beaver advocate, and Friday is no exception. We are, apparently, still in the “good beaver news’ eddy. This first example is from this month’s issue of the Estuary Newsletter. I asked our friend Lisa Owens Viani who USED to be the editor how it got in there. Apparently Riley (That’s Ann Riley of the most famous creek restoration book ever written) nudged it into the attention of the new editor.Ahh thanks for the nice mention. I can’t wait for there to be a regular beaver column describing where colonies are on the move!

Then this morning I read a reminder on facebook that Beaver Creek will be featured at Kentucky’s Wild and Scenic festival. Amazingly, Ian had this to say about his work. I’m still blown away by the quote.

“Beaver Creek” episodes tell gentle stories about Twigs the beaver and his friends. Timothy’s inspiration for the series came from his interest in beavers and their beneficial effects on Kentucky waterways.

“I’m showing what happens in nature and being an advocate for the beavers, which some people don’t seem to like even though they’re such good animals,” Timothy said. “They do a lot for our watersheds, creeks and wetlands.”

Oh Ian, you are such a fantastic white knight for beavers! I am so happy that our paths crossed and grateful to know you. The entire three page article is an excellent look at the festival which will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Great work as always Ian!

This next story means as much to me as any I think I’ve ever written about. I would have embedded the video for you to watch but KCRA apparently doesn’t want me to. Click on the picture to go to a video of the meeting and the story of how residents of the four seasons are in conflict about the beaver(s). (I don’t think there’s any way we’re just talking about one beaver!) See if you can identify the very moment where I burst into happy tears.

Isn’t that amazing? Must see TV! And the reporters jibe at the end means that he has learned a lesson or two from Martinez. Did you find my moment? It’s from Jerry and it refers to the useless massacre at Elk Grove just 5 years ago. That was happening at the same time our own beaver story was getting complicated, and I was literally heartbroken when a story in the Sacramento Bee linked to a website that showed tens of trapped dead beavers. Would that happen in Martinez? El Grove was where I first read the name of Mary Tappel, who after advising them that sterilizing beavers stresses them out so it was much better to kill them, eventually came all the way to Martinez to tell our mayor and public works director that flow devices never work, that beavers breed for 50 years and that the father beaver should be killed so that the mother would have to mate with her sons and slow the population growth that way.

Elk Grove was the beginning of everything for me, and having this nearby beaver story unfold, with so many good people involved is full circle in a way I can barely describe. Honestly, nothing would make me happier than to award Worth A Dam’s second beaver management scholarship to someone that learned from Elk Grove that killing beavers doesn’t make them go away.