simon-garfunkel-cecilia

Wait, wait, don’t tell me…

heidi08 Educational, Environmental November 24, 2009

Beaver Version!

A hundred girls between the ages of 6 and 16 yesterday learned about beavers to earn charms for their keystone bracelet. Look at those faces concentrate. Look at the other girls watching and learning. Every single one of them now knows more about beavers than, say, the average city council member.

What do beavers eat? What would you say if someone told you they eat fish? Why do they build dams? Where do they live?
What’s a Keystone species? How are beavers a keystone species? Are there alot of keystone species in California or just a few?
How do beaver dams affect insect life? Why is this important? What kinds of insects are signs of a healthy Creek?
How do beaver dams affect birds? What are some reasons more birds come to the dam site? If beavers cut down trees, doesn’t that mean that birds don’t have any place to nest? What happens to the trees after beavers chew them?
How do beaver dams affect fish like salmon? Where are salmon born and where do they grow up? Where do they come back to lay their eggs? Don’t beaver dams get in the way of salmon trying to get upstream? How do dams help salmon? Does California have enough salmon? Does it have enough beavers?
How are predators like otter and mink affected by beaver dams? Do otters do the same thing every day at the same time like beavers? How do beavers and otters get along?

So the otters come to the dam to eat the _____ and the ____ are there to eat the _____ and the ____ are there because of the beaver dams and the dams are built by the beavers and THAT”S why the beaver is a keystone species! Congratulations! You earned your keystone charm bracelet!

Okay imagine that 100 times over only much much cuter. I expect grand things from each of these remarkable girls.

Update: From the event organizer:

Thanks SO much for your absolutely wonderful booth yesterday. It was the hit of the event! I was standing at the exit gate when a lot of girls passed by and we asked them what their favorites were. Your booth was always the first thing they said – and they still knew the answers to the questions they had been asked to receive their charms! Looking forward to working with you again – and I sure hope Martinex Beavers got some new supporters/volunteers as well.

Girl Scouts

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational October 17, 2009

UPDATE:

How tired are we? Beavers and their attendant keystone-charm bracelets were a box office hit this afternoon! Thank you SO much for all the blessed volunteers who dropped in to help link, organize and ask questions. Thanks to Worth A Dam stalwarts who made it possible, and thanks to the enormously wonderful girls who learned more about beavers today than they probably thought possible! You all did fantastic!

Worth A Dam is off today for the Girl Scouts “Amazing Day” Event in Walnut Creek. We will be helping girls earn charms for a bracelet by learning fun beaver facts. There are six beaver facts abd six charms to add to the bracelet. Thank you to our special project donor (you know who you are!) who bought the materials and let us do such a generous instructional craft. Wish us good eyesight, steady hands and cheerful patience! Here’s the finished bracelet we’ll be helping them make. I’m thinking someday everyone will want one — they’ll be way more popular than those “live strong” bracelets… Lets see if after a good spell of reading this website you can list how beavers relate to each of these charms:

Birds, Beavers and Girl Scouts

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental September 4, 2009

So a very nice woman approached us the day of the beaver festival and asked Worth A Dam to be part of this years Amazing Bay Day for the Girl Scouts. You can reserve your space now. This year’s event will be held at Sugarloaf Open Space in Walnut Creek, and sponsored by the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. Our job was to offer some kind of craft or activity that would appeal to 500 girl scouts and teach the values of stewardship and respect for our avian wildlife.

Could we do it?

Luckily for us, beavers have been shown to have a direct impact on bird density and variety. In fact, one research project showed that as the number of dams in an area goes up, the number of migratory songbirds also goes up. So any Amazing Day that teaches about birds, has to be a day that teaches about beavers, right?

What if there were a way to visually show the links that beavers have to wildlife? Something tangible that you can touch and carry away with you. Something that you might have earn, like scouts earn badges all the time. And something cute. For 500 girls from 6-18 it would have to be cute.

How’d we do?

So the idea is that girls will be encouraged to learn about the relationships between beavers and birds, fish, and wildlife. Worth A Dam will have teaching materials and volunteers to help them understand, and then with a short quiz they can “earn” a charm to be added to the bracelet. We’ll introduce a new charm every hour until they’re all gone, and it will be a permanent reminder of why beavers are important to the habitat. Worth A Dam found some persuadable donors to pick up the cost for the charms, so they’ll be free for the first 100 girls. The grown-ups we’ve shown them to so far have only three words to say in response.

“I want one!”