Grand Canyon Land Trust

Check out the new poster for Utah’s Beaver Festival! Mary O’brien came this last year to observe ours first hand and has been hard at work implementing her own. Okay, its slightly bigger than ours. Two days instead of one. A life sized lodge and bigger donors. In a State Park and not a featureless city square that Martinez won’t even honor with a name. BUT it’s our idea that set it off and it will teach folks across Utah about beavers and I couldn’t be happier.

IMG_8887[1] — Mary O'brien photographs bridge tiles

Here’s a nice photo of the close attention Mary paid to our efforts last year. She flew out to visit her son in Berkeley and then took the train to the festival. After seeing everything we put together she trotted off to the John Muir House before jogging back and joining us for dinner. If it hasn’t occurred to you already, Mary is no slacker.

Okay team, beaver festivals in California and Utah! Only 48 more states to go!

Other good news of the day includes this compromise from Estes Park in Colorado where Sherri Tippie worked hard to slow down the whirring wheels of back room deals and save some beavers.

Colorado Division of Wildlife officer Rick Spowart explains the compromise that kept the beaver dam and lodge intact. The roadside trail will be narrower, but the beavers won’t be pushed out.

And this article from Maryland where some beavers have made their presence known in a city park but they aren’t on the hit list yet. Yesterday I wrote the major players and heard back that they will be looking into sand-painting trees as a less obtrusive way to handle the problem.

Beavers are chopping down trees along the shoreline in Salisbury City Park near Picnic Island. / TODD DUDEK/THE DAILY TIMES

SALISBURY — A beaver that has taken up residence in the City Park is there to stay, according to officials.

Public Works Director Teresa Gardner said the city is not considering removing the beaver, as the state Department of Natural Resources has recommended the animal remain in place for now.

Which, from my point of view, is a pretty good news for beavers in three states. Not too shabby!

Oh and we’ve had confirmation from all the biggest fish names in the state that the little morsel being nibbled in Cheryl’s excellent photo is a Sacramento Splittail which happens to be a species of special concern. Another reason to have beaver dams in your creeks I guess!

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?