Give A Dam – Worth A Dam

Maybe it’s just me. But do you sometimes get the feeling that the entire state of Colorado is just trolling us? Showing off with their big mountains and lovely vistas and crystal waters?

I am definitely having that feeling now based on the chat I had this week with Nicole Fox of “Give A Dam” who is putting together the first ever Beaver festival for this summer in Rotary Park.

Give A Dam is thrilled to announce Durango’s first-ever Beaver Festival, June 14th, 2025, at Rotary park in Durango, Co centered around the theme “When We Partner With Nature, Everyone Wins.” This exciting event will bring

together many diverse organizations to highlight the numerous benefits of beavers and showcase the innovative work being done locally to maintain and restore our watersheds. By partnering with nature’s most skilled water engineers—beavers—we can enhance water quality, recharge our water table, reduce flood risks, create fire resiliency, and support biodiversity.

The festival will serve as an educational platform to raise awareness of how beavers contribute to healthier ecosystems and sustainable water management. Local conservation efforts, beaver habitat restoration projects, and successful partnerships between communities and beavers will be featured throughout the day. Families, children, and other attendees will have the opportunity to engage with experts to learn about the science behind beaver ecology, and explore how supporting these remarkable creatures can create long-term environmental benefits.

By joining together to celebrate the incredible role of beavers in our watersheds, the Beaver Festival will demonstrate that when we partner with nature, everyone—from wildlife to local communities—wins!

Mind you Rotary park is right along the beautiful Animas river where actual beavers live because (Not to sound bitter mind you) of COURSE it is. With parking and restrooms and paved pathways. Plus a big beautiful Gazebo for the band that is so pretty people get married there, because of course they do. And cherry on top chef’s kiss this is a park where founding parents Sherrie Tippie and Skip Lisle actually intalled a flow device many years ago.

Because of COURSE it is.

I tried to be helpful and offer suggestions about using portable audio for tours and how to make picket signs and using the word “neighborhoods” instead of “Communities” for childears. But honestly all I can think of when I look at this is that for ten years our trashy beaver park used to get called “BUM PARK” by the nice ladies in recreation and my one presentation to Rotary left me permanently scared with Janet yelled at me for not being nicer to the city and the lesbian pastor advised later I should to be “More Forgiving”. Overall the city treated us with such affection that one year they actually ripped out the paved trails and streets around the park the DAY BEFORE THE FESTIVAL without telling us.

Ahh those were the days!

But hey. That’s blood under the bridge. And so what if Worth A Dam cut its teeth on serrated steel. Give a Dam is headed for beautiful times. And that is great news. Another beaver festival in the world. Have a wonderful festival Durango! Send us lots of photos!

Look at the new project of the Grand Canyon Trust! It allows donors to sponsor dams for a mere 50 dollars! And look at its clever name! Give a Dam!

Recognizing the extraordinary feats and benefits of beaver, the State of Utah has a great plan to help people accommodate beaver where possible and to live-trap and translocate beaver to good sites when they’re setting up in irrigation ditches or other places that are difficult for us and them. You can help Grand Canyon Trust implement this plan and welcome beaver back to Utah.

A dog is often called “man’s best friend.” But beaver just may be Utahns’ best wild friend. Beaver create wetlands for ducks, frogs, fish, and small mammals. They also expand streamside willows and cottonwood for birds, deer, and a host of other animals. They reconnect stream beds with their floodplain, slow the force of floods, extend late-season stream flow, and subirrigate the valleys below their dams.

For $50, the Grand Canyon Trust will help you adopt an active beaver dam! We’ll provide you with information on beaver — and directions to a dam near you. You can help beaver thrive in Utah by going to that dam a time or two each year. Let us know how the beaver are doing, perhaps take photos of their ponds and dams, and telling us about fish, birds, or any other wildlife you see.

You’ll be a member of the Grand Canyon Trust’s network of Dam Watchers. Beaver would thank you if they could.

Well, people always get our name wrong anyway, it drives me CRAZY. So now when they look up the wrong name expecting to find us they’ll find something good instead! (And imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery.) Maybe some day they’ll be hundreds of organizations like “Not A Dam” and “Deserve A Dam” and “Cost a Dam”. That would be cool.

And the fact that they made 1945 dollars already, well, 50 dollars a pop is proportionally way cheaper to contribute to take care of a dam than working every single day for six unforgiving years of your life – so maybe they’re onto something.

Bruce Thompson was the one who tipped me off about this program. He’s the conservation education specialist from Wyoming that created the crossword puzzle we were struggling over last week. Mine wasn’t RIGHT but it was FIRST and that apparently counts for something in this life. This is what arrived yesterday in the mail.

First a charming note card telling me what I’d won. Just in case you’re wondering, that’s a beaver dropping specifically chosen. I imagine there are other kinds. I want a set of these more than I have ever wanted a set of note cards in my life. In fact, I have a biologist niece getting married this summer and I bet she would love these as thank you cards for the wedding gifts!

But wait there’s more. Two adorable bandanas, one with to-scale animal tracks and one with illustrations of actual to scale animal droppings. So you can be hiking, and pull off your scarf to check what you find. How cool is that?

scat-scarf_400x464_gray[1] — Pangraphics Scat Scarf and Track Scarf

Here’s a close up of my favorite part: Don’t worry, I know I have to donate it to the silent auction. (Sigh) In the mean time, thank you Bruce!

Bruce sent this info when I said folks might be interested in some droppings of their own.

“Oh, good, I can do some shameless marketing…The “Dropping You A Note” cards are from the “Literary Movement” Collection of greeting cards that I am about to begin field testing. (I also have a “Just Keeping Track” version in the collection, featuring footprints instead of scat.) A boxed set of 12 cards (6 species, including beaver) will eventually retail for $15, but I can let a limited number of interested BMF fans try ’em for half price, plus shipping, if they’re willing to give me feedback. Best to contact me via mailforbruce (@aol.com) for details.