A field trip tomorrow will trek all the way from Palo Alto in a bus full of 5 grades of students from Helios. They’ve been studying beavers and ecology, (and in particular the beaver drama in Martinez) for 3 months now and are coming to see for themselves. The instructor of the entire unit talked to me months ago, and one of the teachers attended the beaver festival in preparation, but tomorrow’s the big day. They asked for someone from city staff to meet with them to answer questions about what the city’s worries were about the beavers, but I’ve yet to hear whether there were any offers. The children will be conducting a survey at Starbucks and learning about the creek and the beavers during their visit. If anyone asks you a question, make sure to say “HI!”
Instructor John McCleoud (who created this project) sent the summary he is using to teach the kids and the parents what to expect. You’ll enjoy this. If the story sounds familiar – it should!
Dam It: The Martinez Beavers
by john mcleod
The year was 2006 when Ma and Pa beaver made their way down Alhambra creek into downtown Martinez. They were looking for a new home to raise a family and Martinez looked like a pretty good place. They saw plenty of willow and other tasty plants along the banks of the river. The more they explored their new surroundings, the better it looked. Although it was a little noisy for their liking, the urge to build became overwhelming. And so night after night, Ma and Pa beavers went to work constructing their new dam. It was a beautiful dam made from freshly chopped trees, branches, mud and stone. They were remarkable engineers, for as everyone knows, damming a river is one of the most difficult feats. Four months later, Ma gave birth to three baby kits.
Harold was the County Flood Control engineer and he was not happy. Almost 7 years ago Harold and his engineer teams had worked hard to protect the city of Martine from flooding. They had planted trees, willows and other bank holding plants to hold the river back from ripping away the dirt and heading into town. Some say it had cost the city ten million dollars for all the construction and planting. You should know that Martinez is a small city, with about 33,000 people living there, and ten million dollars was a lot of money. Harold the Engineer got really excited and agitated when the dam was 30 feet wide and six feet tall and the beaver family had chewed through almost half of the town’s newly planted trees.
Kill the beaver! Exterminate them! Get rid of those pests once and for all! The cries for solving the problem rose from many corners of the city. Frederico, who owned the Eat and Bleat Mutton Shop in downtown Martinez, got a few other business men and women to send angry letters and make many phone calls to the mayor’s office demanding that the beavers go. A flood from their dam into downtown could ruin their business. Hector had been the lead gardener and had personally overseen the planting of all those beautiful trees and shrubs and was heartbroken to see them cut down. Melissa’s home was not far downstream from the beaver dam and she started having nightmares of the dam breaking and flooding her house so she got a bunch of her neighbors riled up and they stomped right in to the Mayor’s office to demand to know what he was going to do to get rid of them stinkin’ beavers.
Well, the Mayor had to figure out something real quick. There had not been such a fuss in his town since as long as he could remember. It was the fall of 2007 and the Mayor made sure that the city council would talk about this and figure out what to do at their next meeting. The Beaver Problem was put on the agenda for the City Council meeting.
The beavers were not seen as a problem by everyone in Martinez. In fact quite a few people loved that they had chosen to move in. Many knew of the beaver as a ‘keystone species’ because their hard work slwed and expanded the water and created habitat for a host of other animals, plants, insects and water creatures.
As time went on, more and more people started to gather at the bridge above the dam at sunset to watch that hard-working family. Erica was one of the watchers and she thought that the ghost of John Muir had perhaps sent the beaver to remind everyone in Martinez about ‘wild things’. John Muir had lived the last 25 years of his life in the town and died back in 1904. He was one of the most famous early nature writers and wilderness activists this country had ever seen. Because of his writings, our country protected millions of acres of wilderness so that we would not lose such precious habitats. Some even said they thought they had seen his form walking across the dam late at night.
When Erica and the others heard that City Councilwre going to talk about the ‘beaver problem’ she started making phone calls to others she had seen at the bridg. She urged them to show up at the meeting. And show up they did.
The council meeting hall was packed. There was Melissa and her neighbors who were scared of flooding. Frederico had brought along a lot of business owners and they were going to make sure something was done to protect their livelihoods. There were all sorts of people who had shown up at the meeting and they were all waiting for the Beaver Problem to be talked about.
To make a long meeting short, people got pretty excited and agitated. Some were even yelling at each other to try to make their point. The Mayor quieted everyone down and suggested that perhaps the beaver could be caught and sent to another river, away from downtown, to make their home. That plan was called Relocation. That got Erica to jump up and down and she even yelled, “What would Muir do?”
The meeting got late and finally one of the councilwomen suggested that a Beaver Subcommittee be created to study the problem. The committee would have two council people on it, the County Flood Control engineer (who actually was pretty impressed with the engineering of those darn beavers), a property owner who was also a lawyer, a Creek expert and two of the ‘don’t you dare move the beavers’ people.
The Beaver Subcommittee brought in a man all the way from Vermont who was a beaver specialist. He told them about an innovative way to engineer the beaver dam to keep the level from getting too high. You see, when beavers hear any unusual leaks they work nonstop to keep the water from escaping their pond. So to keep the water level low and to sneak it without the beaver hearing it leaving, the Vermonter suggested putting in a long flexible wide pipe into the dam pond, snaking it over the dam wall and releasing it in the stream below the dam. This device was called a Castor Mastor. Everyone in the committee liked that and so they managed to install the device during the day when the beaver were sleeping.
The Castor Master seemed like a good compromise for the short term. The dam would not get too high, the beaver could still stay in downtown Martinez, and the beaver watchers could still watch their piece of ‘wild’. There were still problems though and the committee studied all sorts of scientific areas. They studied the way water works, which is hydrology. They made an environmental impact study to understand how the dam might affect the surrounding area. They conducted a beaver behavior study so they could know what to expect as time went on. They studied soil saturation to know what happens when land gets really wet. They studied riparian sciences that are the study of the life along the banks of rivers. When they finished with their study, the report was 108 pages long!
The beavers were unaware of all the fuss. As far as they knew, they had found a pretty good home to raise their kits (not kids). Ma beaver had birthed more young ones. They needed more food for the growing family and Pa set about making a smaller dam downstream to store food for his growing family.
In April of 2008, the Report was brought to the council meeting. It was one of the biggest reports the members had ever seen. It was impressive and 6 out of the 7 council members recommended that the city choose to support the beavers staying in Martinez. Before they voted, the Mayor stepped in and asked if they could first hear from an Expert who did not like the Castor Mastor. Some thought that she didn’t even like beavers. She said that every Castor Master she had ever seen used had failed. It was under her ‘expertise’ in nearby Elk Grove that had led to the extermination of 51 beavers. She said that because the beavers were making a secondary dam it proved that their device was not working. The Vermonter Expert contradicted her statements. He had seen many castor mastors work and argued that the beavers were just expanding their pantry by creating more pond area. It caused many a tongue to wiggle and waggle about which expert to listen to.
Many of the beaver lovers had decided to get stronger by making an organization called Worth a Dam. They were going to do whatever they could to see that the beavers had a chance to live in Martinez. They created a web site called martinezbeavers.org/wordpress and put on it all kinds of interesting stories and facts about beavers. Newspaper people and television people started to take an interest in the story. Lots of people joined Worth a Dam and by 2008 they had enough organizers to create the first annual Beaver Festival . The first festival was not huge by beaver standards, but certainly caught the eyes of some of the downtown merchants. Perhaps John Muir’s ghost was not only interested in having some of his beloved ‘wild’ return to Martinez, but to help the economy of a town that he had loved so dearly.
It was not always easy for Ma and Pa Beavers and their kits. Sometimes food was hard to come by. One night a nasty storm came with so much water rushing down the Alhambra Creek that two of their dams and the Castor Mastor were partially damaged. It took a great amount of work to make the repairs, but the beaver engineers were able to get their dam back in order.
In late spring of 2010, a sad event occurred for the Martinez Beaver family. It turns out that Ma Beaver had come across a most difficult root that she was trying to bite through. There might have been a metal piece attached to the root, for when she bit down, she broke off a tip of one of her incisors. Beaver’s teeth are designed to continue to grow and grow and grow, which is one reason they have such an instinct to chew, and chew and chew. But the broken tooth did something it was not supposed to do. It cut into the roof of her mouth. The cut got infected. Ma Beaver was having trouble fighting the infection. Pa and two of her kits could only look on as Ma got sicker and sicker. Ma died in June of 2010. Over the four years that Ma had been in Martinez she had given birth to 15 live kits.
Over time, the beavers became famous. Their pictures were being seen around the world. T-shirts were being made and sold with the new celebrities photos on them. Tourists started to show up into a town that was not known for tourism. Coffee drinkers at the local pay -lots-of –money-for-coffee-café sipped their beverages and watched the early morning (or late night) beavers as they continued to work on their dam. Even the County Flood Control engineer was seen wearing a beaver pin.
For the most part, the beavers seem to be staying in the heart and landscape of Martinez community. Still the beavers still challenge the idea fof waht a river should act like. They challenge the idea that wild should not be in a city. A local artist included an image of a beaver on a mural for the town but was forced to exclude beaver from the picture. There are still grumblings about extermination and removal, but because of the growing appreciation of the beavers, the education that has gone on in the community, and the developing tourism around the beaver, the Martinez beaver are more welcome than ever before.
It is now 2012. Many were unsure of what would happen to the family after ma Beaver’s death. In spite of all the challenges and obstacles, Pa Beaver has somehow found a new Ma beaver. And as recently as July 1st, a baby kit was seen swimming with his parents in July in downtown Martinez.
This is not the end of the story, but perhaps the beginning.
Get ready for inquisitive visitors! and wish us luck!
