Tag: Gary Bogue

A MISSED VOICE FOR WILDLIFE

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers September 29, 2019

This one matters.

Wildlife Columnist Gary Bogue has died. “Bogue, whose legacy includes founding the country’s first wildlife rehabilitation hospital and inspiring the creation of Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation, died Thursday in his Benicia home. He was 81.”

Gary was the original curator at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum and started up the operation lo, these many years ago, with one valiant rescue worker at his side. This happens to be our own beloved VP, Cheryl Reynolds, who regarded him as a dear friend and was heartbroken by his death. In fact it’s hard to imagine a world where Cheryl ever got interested in our beavers without that first life-shaping chapter.

Gary was the first respected voice of support for the Martinez Beavers, writing often about them in his column and nudgingpublic opinion in their favor. Beyond this he was the respected member who persuaded the East Bay Sierra Club to get involved in the first place. When I was called unexpectedly to appear before a council meeting one night in downtown berkeley and they voted to draft a position letter on the beavers one of the groups leaders told me privately they never would have gotten involved if it weren’t for Gary. Their unusual letter (At that time the Sierra Club rarely got involved with wildlife issues) was a big factor in the outcome of the beavers fate.

But the Martinez beavers are just one of the many, countless wildlife stories Gary’s compassion touched and saved. (In my narrow mind of course the most important one, but he affected the lives and hopes of many many wild things and people.) Think of all the children that grew with Lindsey Wildlife and went on to become docents and are now working in related fields as adults.

“He taught certainly a whole community, if not a whole world, how to respect and live with the natural world around them,” said Bogue’s wife, Lois Kazakoff, who retired from The Chronicle in May after 26 years at the newspaper.

Their are lives that make a difference, and lives that make a sea change. Gary was the latter. He forged a path to the wild world that countless numbers of adults and children are still following. He touched our hearts and made us remember that we ourselves were wild once and needed a kind of rescue.

However you spend your windy Sunday afternoon, take a moment to watch a seed-gathering bird, a scurrying squirrel, a lean coyote slipping over the horizon and think of Gary Bogue, who made the wide wild world familiar to us all.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

BEAVERS JOIN THE SIERRA CLUB

heidi08 Beavers and water March 15, 2018

Back when Martinez was in the throws of whether to save our beavers or not, one of our biggest winning arguments came in the form of the Sierra Club: the head of the Wildlife Committee of the Sierra Club to be precise. As I was to learn it was highly unusual for the powerful advocacy group to take a stand on behalf of wildlife at the time. The major push for this came from two sources. Columnist Gary Bogue, who was a highly respected member, and Terri Preston, who was the head of the Wildlife Committee and wanted to push wildlife more into their view. As I understood it the Sierra Club preferred to focus their resources on saving lands and resisting degradation rather than specifically defending species that depended on those lands.

It was December 2007 when I received a very unexpected call at the office. Terry had negotiated time for the beaver issue to be discussed at the local chapter meeting, and if I could be there that evening it would help. I remember shuffling some patients around so I could have the night free and driving to Berkeley in a bit of a panic having never done anything like that before.

The meeting was in an older shabby office space on San Pablo Avenue and I had hunt hard for parking among the homeless. I remember Gary was there, although I didn’t know him then and only recognized hm from his photo in the paper. Terry was very reassuring and said quietly what she hoped I could focus on. And then the, to my surprise, the board asked my thoughts and talked about the Martinez Beavers, whether they were good for the environment, and whether they should risk annoying anyone to get involved.

It was so early in the process that I didn’t know much about the research or the stakes. I had barely started my time on the beaver subcommittee and I hadn’t been the one to reach out to them in the first place. I just knew the beavers mattered to me and to the community, had read a few articles about their value, so I gave it my best shot. The positive response I received turned soon into a letter of support.

It was a big deal when they released this.

Sierra Club Beaver Resolut.. - Copy - Copy

All this comes to mind this morning when I read over one of the articles Fran Recht sent me discussed in the hydrology film released yesterday. Apparently the Sierra Club in Colorado has some ideas about beavers too.

Water storage and the American Beaver, Castor Canadensis – A solution to Colorado’s aquatic resources challenges

The American beaver, a nuisance to some and an afterthought to others, may in fact be Colorado’s most effective tool to improve watershed health and regulate the state’s water supply.

According to The Lands Council (Spokane, WA; 2010), in their study conducted in Eastern Washington State on water storage by the beaver, they estimate that 10 acre-feet (ca. 3.26 million gallons) of water storage can be attributed to a single beaver due to its dam-building prowess. According to the authors, this is a conservative estimate of the amount of surface water and groundwater water held back by the average beaver included in their study. If this is an accurate figure, then it would take about 40-million beavers to store the equivalent amount of water that the entire United States used for all sectors – public and domestic supply, irrigation, livestock, aquiculture, self-supplied industrial, mining, and thermoelectric power – in the year 2010 (129.6 trillion gallons; USGS.)

The beaver is largely absent from Colorado’s discussion on water issues. These statistics alone show that beavers should be central to the state’s plans going forward.

According to The Lands Council (Spokane, WA; 2010), in their study conducted in Eastern Washington State on water storage by the beaver, they estimate that 10 acre-feet (ca. 3.26 million gallons) of water storage can be attributed to a single beaver due to its dam-building prowess. which include beaver dam analogs that mimic natural beaver dams, should not be overlooked (Pollock, 2015.) Potentially, the easiest, cheapest way to accomplish this end is to allow nature to regenerate where practicable to its previous state with the mighty ecosystem engineer, the American beaver, breaking the trail. In fact, restoring and protecting the beaver population is consistent with the intent of the Colorado Water Plan – store water, conserve aquatic resources, and close the approaching water supply gap – and goes further to deliberately enhance ecosystem productivity and resilience.

Now those are very nice sentences to read from the Sierra Club. I can’t believe every single chapter hasn’t adopted their position, because an abundance of clean fresh water is important everywhere. (A person struggling to find meaning might point out that the Sierra Club was, you know, originally founded by John Muir, who happened to live in this town, the town of the MOST FAMOUS BEAVERS EVER and which btw also happens to be the site of the grave of on the most famous beaver trappers ever.)

I’m sure it’s all a coincidence. But sometimes it kinda seems like destiny.

The End of an Era

heidi08 featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 27, 2012

Gary Bogue is retiring

Can you believe it? Today appeared his very last column. All the years of good advice and hard work will end with some much-deserved rest. Gary’s done a lot for pet owners and wildlife over the years, but I cannot exaggerate in the slightest sense how important he was to saving the Martinez Beavers. It was Gary who pushed for a common-sense humane solution and Gary who was the voice of reason from the Times when everyone was ready to believe all the city’s lies about the trouble they were causing.

In fact, so long ago that I can barely remember, the wildlife biologist from the SF Chapter of the Sierra Club invited me to their board meeting because she wanted to push them to adopt a position paper on the Martinez Beavers. As you may know the Sierra Club has never made a habit of worrying about wildlife, or beavers, they are more concerned with wild spaces. I drove at night to a dingy office building on San Pablo Ave where an unbelievably large number of strangers sat in a room making very dry, foreign-sounding decisions. I showed some beaver photos and said a few words, a few folks hemmed and hawed and then they voted. Afterwards the president took me aside and said very quietly that I should thank Gary Bogue. Because he was their respected friend of many years and had pushed for this action to happen behind the scenes. They wouldn’t have gotten involved without him, and the city would probably not have halted the train without them.

I thought such an important occasion needed an important goodbye, so I sent him this last week. Enjoy it and stop by his column to comment a few words of your own. So long Gary, and thanks for all the fish!

There are ‘possums in my pantry

There are raccoons on my roof

When I come back from vacation my new kitten acts aloof.

There are ducklings in the drainpipe

There are snakes beneath the stair

We need volunteers at Lindsay to assist with wildlife there.

Never fear, the answer’s local

And the naturalist is vocal

If it’s feathered, scaled or hairy

We would send a note to Gary

There are gophers in my garden

There are foxes on the fence

‘Pug’, the guinea pig went missing and we haven’t seen him since.

There are bats inside the basement

There are spiders on the sills

My dog just chased a porcupine now his nose is full of quills.

Never fear, the answer’s local

And the naturalist is vocal

If it’s feathered, scaled or hairy

We can send a note to Gary

There are beavers in Martinez

There wolves in Walnut Creek

And my poodle was abducted by an eagle in its beak.

My neighbor wants to shoot them

But my kids enjoy the sight

So which of us belongs here? Which one of us is right?

Never fear, the answer’s local

And the naturalist is vocal

If it’s feathered, scaled or hairy

We could send a note to Gary

But the naturalist is tired now

And he’s earned a bit of rest

Of all the columns in the Times we loved his words the best.

There is so much that he has given us

Gentle wisdom to recall

We will keep his teaching with us as our urban borders sprawl.

Never fear, the answer’s local

And the naturalist was vocal

If it’s feathered, scaled or hairy

It will thank our good friend Gary!

With Love from Worth A Dam

The Epic Tail Continues

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers August 8, 2011

Saturday’s festival was certainly the biggest and best we have ever had. By one o clock we had already distributed 100 bracelets, and tails were a huge hit all day. We started with 500 and there are 98 left so that should give you some idea of how popular the activity was. Gary Bogue has a nice homage today. How many people were there? It’s hard to know, but the first half of the day was unbelievably crowded. We distributed 750 brochures at the event, and the guideline was generally one to a group. It probably isn’t exaggerating to guess we had nearly 1500 people. We had visitors from Concord,Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Oakland, Vallejo, Sonoma, San Jose, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Placer and Jackson. Amtrak brought alot of attendees this year, from all along the San Joaquin line. For the first I’m aware of we took in more money than we spent for the event and two people this morning said that they thought our little nameless park had more people than the entire peddler’s fair.

Several folks have noted that our attendees this year we’re on the whole more knowledgeable about wildlife in general and supportive of efforts to care for it. There were fewer of the battle-curious and more of the beaver-curious. It was a palpable shift from a crowd eager to beat city hall to a crowd dedicated to living with wildlife, and the change was the perfect compliment to the day that included snakes, screech owls, turtles, tarantulas and bats. Corky Quirk’s amazing bat display was one of the best things about the event. I hope she comes back, but if you missed it or didn’t realize what a gift she was, this will fill you in.

I loved lots of things about the magical, exhausting day, (including the many wondrous volunteers that made our biggest event the easiest to pull off ), but one thing that I’ll remember above all else is greeting Mary O’Brien the Utah Forests Project Manager for the Grand Canyon Land Trust who came all the way to California to get ideas for a future beaver festival of her own. Mary was amazed at the crowd, touched by the children, indignant at the sheetpile, awed by the displays, enamored of wildbryde’s charms, and fascinated by every part of the story. After touring the event she walked to the Muir house and jogged back for dinner. We laughed. schemed and gossiped over margaritas and then went to see some beavers before she took the train back to Berkeley where she was staying. I dare say she’ll have plenty to say about her visit.

I was relieved to see that all this fame hasn’t gone to the beavers heads this morning. Apparently it was a working day just like any other. Those are unusual construction materials. Drinking on the job?

Hardly, after he left I got a closer look.

Three

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 6, 2011

Gary Bogue: Wild birds help us connect with nature

If you like wild birds, you will love Native Bird Connections.

This wonderful nonprofit organization has a beautiful and beloved collection of live, tame, nonreleasable eagles, falcons, hawks and owls that it uses to educate groups of all ages. They work with these magnificent birds to bring the wonders of nature up close and personal to thousands of our children every year by visiting classrooms all over the East Bay.

Last year Native Bird Connections presented 584 programs that touched the lives of 17,792 people of all ages — including schools, scouts, senior living programs, after school enrichment, state and national park programs. As Native Bird Connections supports our children in their search for knowledge of the natural world around us, this organization also needs our financial support to help them survive these tough times.

To help us support this vital organization, Wild Birds Unlimited of Pleasant Hill, 692 Contra Costa Blvd. (across from Sun Valley Shopping Center) is holding “A Day for Mom & A Day for Mother Nature,” 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.

Wild birds AND Gary Bogue AND the Martinez Beavers. What could possibly be better than that? We’ll be there answering questions and talking castor, so maybe you should stop by to hear the latest! Guess how many beavers we saw this morning? I’ll give you a hint. It rhymes with their favorite word.