Beavers build a foothold in Napa waters

A few hundred yards off the road, the creek’s waters slowed to a stop amid a grass-shrouded mound of branches and mud, forming an unexpectedly placid pool amid the strip malls and car lots. Two hundred feet upstream sat a mound of earth and twigs, and the willow trees from which the branches had grown — the telltale sign of a pair of beavers who have made this obscure stretch of water a home, for themselves and other wildlife.

 “Further up the creek it’s dry and overgrown with trees,” Rusty Cohn, a Napa resident and frequent beaver watcher, said during a morning stroll along the bank. “Here you might see a large bass, or five or six turtles sunning themselves on a tree. It’s like an oasis here.”

 Beavers have formed at least 20 dams on the Napa River and its tributaries, according to Shaun Horne, watershed and flood control resource specialist for the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

A very positive beaver-article from Napa this morning, offered with great enthusiasm by reporter Howard Yune. In addition to getting the details and facts right, he doesn’t make a single beaver pun, which is well worth a wine tasting trip in gratitude! It’s hard to believe how different Napa is behaving in response to its beavers than Martinez once did. Do you think we paved the way in some small measure?

The return of beavers to the Bay Area reached its peak of attention starting in 2007, when a mating pair dammed Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, formed a den and toppled trees the city had planted during a $9.7 million flood control campaign.

 A proposal by engineering consultants to euthanize or relocate the beavers sparked an outcry from naturalists and residents, who formed the nonprofit group Worth a Dam to spare the water dwellers and call attention to their benefits. Eventually, the city spared the beaver family, which has produced at least 19 offspring since, according to Heidi Perryman, founder and president of Worth a Dam.

 “We’ve seen improvements in our creek,” she said Friday. “We see otter, steelhead, wood ducks, turtles, even mink, all because of habitat the beavers make”

 No such human-vs.-beaver conflict appears imminent around Napa, Horne said while viewing the Tulocay Creek dam, where the water level of the resulting pond is about 6 feet below an adjoining hotel’s parking lot.

 Despite the animals’ reputation for choking waterways, Horne said the county flood district generally restricts its intervention to annually surveying streams and removing thicker fallen trees, or surrounding others with wire to shield them from gnawing. Cattails and other vegetation are considered a higher risk for increasing silting, and the district trims back cattails and prunes some willows every two years.

 “Generally we leave them alone,” he said. “Usually, beaver dams will break up when you have high enough flows, and then the beavers come back and rework the sites again.”

I don’t know about you, but after an article like that I’m so well satisfied I feel I might need a cigarette. (And I don’t even smoke.)

Last night in Martinez amazing photographer Steve Zamek of Featherlight photography made a trek to donate to our silent auction and do a little beaver watching in the city. Before he came he pragmatically asked how close the beavers would be and if he should bring his long lens, which kept us chuckling for a long, long time. We started off watching by the primary dam and were rewarded by this early arrival. It must be three years since we saw muskrats at the primary. I was so happy to see this HUGE specimen gracing our waterways again! The lightening shutter you hear clicking to my left is Steve. Apparently this muskrat was so efficient at his job that he convinced several families that they were seeing a baby beaver. We were told over and over again that they had watched a kit “with his tail going back and forth”. Ahh, brings back memories!

Steve generously donated four amazing prints to the silent auction and wrote about us on his Flickr account today, so I added the copyright mark to protect his good work as much as possible. If you want to see it in its gloriously unmarked state, go here. And if you haven’t gasped in awe yet this morning, go look at Steve’s website here.

Last night at the beaver dam the air was humming with excited comments about the beaver documentary on Nature. Two little girls told me cheerfully that beavers were “attracted to the sound of running water” could “hold their breath for 15 minutes and “Timber just chewed leaves, he didn’t know how to chew sticks!” I was so impressed with how much they remembered I asked them if they wanted to record a video letter to the producer.

She very kindly wrote back to all of us this morning.

Oh, Heidi–that’s why I do it! That they saw, watched, cared and remembered details! Thank you so much for capturing that and sending it my way! It made me smile. I watched it many times. Thank you so much, April, Alana (sp?) and Heidi!!! Girls, I am so delighted to know you watched, enjoyed and cared about what you saw on Leave It To Beavers. It means so much to me to hear from you! ~Jari

You are more than welcome. And now that the beaver-muskrat refresher course is once again needed, I will end by posting this reminder.