Tag: Greg Kerekes

SACRAMENTO AUDUBON LEARNS ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational December 5, 2019

Well, well, well The coolest thing about sitting in this prominently placed “Spiders Web” designed for catching beaver news is that the most amazing things come your way. First this announcement from Sacramento Audubon about their upcoming beaver presentation. You’ll never guess who’s sharing the gospel.

Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020
Effie Yeaw Nature Center
Assembly Room, 7PM
Come early to wander the grounds and bird or visit.

Topic: The Return of California’s Golden Beaver

Speakers: Greg and Alex Kerekez

Sacramento natives, Greg and Alexandria Kerekez spent the past 10 years in Silicon Valley helping to conserve threatened habitat and wildlife populations with documentary photography, education, and citizen science techniques. Their work aims to connect people to their environment and conserve California’s amazing ecologic diversity.

This January, they’ll present their experiences documenting The Return of California’s Golden Beaver. Historically, Beavers were almost extinct in California by the Gold Rush era. Today, they are returning to their ancient habitats, but not without controversy. Explore how these water saving critters benefit the environment and what we can do to support their restoration of California’s Ecosystems, and find a common ground.

In 2017, Greg and Alex returned to their hometown, Rancho Cordova, to start Rancho Roots Permaculture Farm. With their farming practices, they hope to provide examples of how to grow food sustainably. Creating bridges amongst neighbors using a combination of trade and market gardening is at the heart of their small business.

Now I know you might be saying to your self huh, who the heck are Greg and Alex Kerekes? Greg worked for years and years with Bill Leikam on the urban wildlife project following the foxes in San Jose. And Alex, well ,maybe this will jot your memory.

Fantastic news. Greg and Alex have started a progressive permacultue farm in the Rancho Cordova, I’m so glad to know they’ll be smart beaver friends in the area. Good luck Greg and Alex! Convincing Sacramento on beavers is a hard sell, but if anyone can do it, you can.

Okay, the other amazing thing, and truly the most amazing thing that I have waited my entire beaver life to see, comes from a new fan of Ben’s book, Kathy Rothman of northern florida. She sought me out on facebook to say she had beavers on her land and when I heard where she lived I just HAD to ask.

Any alligators there?

One of the great mysteries of beaver life is how beavers and alligators cohabit the same ponds and swamps. Think about it. Beavers are no match for the reptile which can swim faster, walk faster and hold their breath longer. I have friends who’s family members were EATEN by an alligator.

All I can think is that if you are an alligator in Florida there are LOTS of things to choose from. And sometimes you just don’t feel like beaver. Maybe its like traffic accidents. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

Or lucky as the case may be.

All the pretty little foxes

heidi08 Beavers January 6, 2017

Yesterday while I was busy writing about how we were lucky that rare individuals took on certain species and protected them, this was published about our good friends Bill Leikam and Greg Kerekes in Palo Alto. It’s not about beavers, but you will recognize immediately why it merits discussion here.

Palo Alto: Gray foxes decimated by disease in December

PALO ALTO — For seven years, Bill “The Fox Guy” Leikam has kept close tabs on the gray foxes that lurk largely unseen amid scrub and marshland near the edge of San Francisco Bay. So he was quick to notice that they’re in trouble.

The 17 foxes belonging to four skulks, or groups, that Leikam has studied as a retirement hobby and given names like Dark, Sideburns and One-Eye, have gone missing or turned up dead in the last month, victims, he believes, of a fast-spreading disease.

“It was like a black wind swept through the area and infected all of them,” said Leikam. “They’re all gone now.”

Twelve dead gray foxes have been found, with two sent to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife for analysis. Five more are missing and believed dead. Wildlife officials say they are victims of canine distemper syndrome — a common virus that afflicts carnivores, including man’s best friend. But while the family dog is usually inoculated against the disease, wild relatives including foxes, coyotes and wolves as well as raccoons and skunks, are very vulnerable.

Other possible culprits wildlife officials considered before tests confirmed distemper included speculation that the animals could either have been poisoned deliberately by people who consider them pests, or accidentally by eating poisoned rodents or even toxic mushrooms.

Dr. Deana Clifford, a lead veterinarian with Fish and Game and researcher at UC Davis, said that such numbers are “unfortunately very typical of a localized outbreak” and that the virus can “dramatically reduce the number of animals in an area and even make it seem like they’ve disappeared altogether for a while.”

Leikam been called the “Jane Goodall of gray foxes,” and said he was the first person to do a comprehensive assessment of gray fox behavior in the country since he first happened upon a specimen while on a bird-watching hike in 2010. Unlike the invasive red foxes that are also found in the area, the gray fox is native and has the unusual ability of being a canine that can climb trees.

Recently, Leikam and Kerekez have been talking with other conservationists about the need for better wildlife corridors. David Johns of the Wildlands Project said that when Leikam told him about the die-off, he thought it was a clear example of the need for animals to have more room to roam.

“You have this small population, they’re often very genetically similar, and very easy to wipe out if they are susceptible,” Johns said. “That’s why connectivity is so important — it’s a reach for these foxes to find other populations that are bigger and wilder and that might bring in some new genes.”

All the foxes in an entire city wiped out by distemper, and two guardians left with nothing to guard. This article gave me a total flashback of our lost kits, and Junior. I think I even called the high tide a ‘wave of death’ that took them away at the time. Deanna Clifford was the same veterinarian who was investigating our kit mortality. And many locals logically assumed poison. Or rat poison. It was hard not to.

But for us there were no causes to pinpoint: no culprits to blame and identify. Beavers can’t get distemper and what they could get and they knew to look for was never found. We couldn’t even say a wildlife corridor would protect them, because our beavers had all Carquinez Strait as their corridor and we think that’s where death came from. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s what our beavers think too and that’s why they moved so far up stream?)

He has single-handedly changed the way we see foxes, and those lost 11 souls helped him. Bill is attentive to the issue, be he says not heartbroken. Maybe it’s a boy thing, or maybe it has to do with watching them on camera instead of in person, or maybe I’m just a big baby. He and Greg will be at our next festival so you can ask him then. In the mean time we can just be sorry and watch Moses wonderful video again of the young foxes down near where the beaver dam was,

Beaver Class Reunion

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, History, Who's saving beavers now? September 17, 2015

First things first. Mike is sending this letter in response to the editorial I posted yesterday.

To the Editor,

The 9-15-15 Gazette editorial regarding the Lake Fitzgerald beaver issue failed the public miserably. In addition to incorrect information about the chain-link fence, the editor chose to mock the efforts of a committed group of Broad Brook Coalition and UMass volunteers, city officials and myself, with comments such as “Callahan cooked up the idea “, “beavers pretty much made sawdust of Plans A through C” and “start working on Plan E”.

In 18 years of solving over 1,200 human-beaver conflicts with water control devices I have never seen more ingenious beavers than those at Lake Fitzgerald, nor such an amazing coalition of dedicated volunteers and city officials. It is sad that the editor did not celebrate the efforts of these local citizens, but rather chose to mock them.

Also, it’s been over a month since the rocks were installed and our creative solution is working fine. The lake level remains normal and the beavers have been unable to block the drain. So editor, please avoid negative, uninformed, mocking opinions. The public gets enough of that from Donald Trump.

Michael Callahan, Owner

Beaver Solutions LLC

Take that snappy beaver critique editor! I hope it gets printed because it deserves to be read. People shouldn’t go around insulting valiant effort. Especially when it keeps getting better and better and folks are just trying to do the right thing.

Personally, I kind of love when the big players get called into the game. Like remember that time that paper dissed our historic research as a misinterpretation of the evidence in a footnote and I got happy that he was getting Rick’s dander up.

Speaking of Rick and our historial research this was released yesterday, and is the hard work of Greg Kerekes for the Guadelupe RCD. There’s someone in it you’ll recognize but I had just gotten back from another speaking job and think I sound like a lunatic with a cold. If you don’t have time to watch it now watch it later, it’s really informative and well done.

How much do you love that footage? And those under/over shots. Rick is such a great teacher, I want to read our paper again right now! Greg is doing an awesome job in the South Bay spreading the beaver gospel through his non profit (Urban Wildlife Research Project). If you don’t remember him from the festival you probably remember his wife dancing in the beaver costume a couple years ago. She was awesome.

Goodness we’ve been in this business a long time. In fact we’re about two weeks away from our 3000th post. Which is a lot of things for one woman to say about beavers. Our website has been around so long and has SO much info it’s starting to stretch at the seams so I was thrilled to hear from our webpage designer Scott Artis yesterday that he will help us get back to sailing velocity. He has his hands full with a paid environmental job now but I think he noticed the long nonprofit list for Sunday’s event and saw that his group (Audubon Canyon) was the Alpha and WE (Worth A Dam) were the Omega, and was prompted suddenly to write back. So HOORAY for updating websites!

Yesterday I immersed myself in this project, which I should share at a later date because we already have one film on this post, but I have no delayed gratification. Or very little. And I’m feeling proud.

What do other people do on the weekend?

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? May 11, 2015

How was your Mother’s day? Thanks Rusty for the nice recap of your year of beaver watching in Napa. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife aptly posted this on their Facebook page and I feel it’s something we should all see. If you’ve ever had your mother hold your chin while scrubbing something off your face that shouldn’t be there, you know EXACTLY how this feels.

Saturday night at Safari West saw a bouncing crowd gathered for the beaver talk, many families with young children including a few of the attentive serious kind, and a few of the boisterous crying kind. It pretty different than the last few talks I gave and I did my best to adapt. We had dinner in the lodge with Marie Martinez (in charge of carnivores) and Danny Cusimano director of education and research. He was a paleontologist finishing his thesis and talked about their work (currently doing a study on hand-rearing vs parental rearing) and looking at population successes. He also seemed very interested in hearing about our work and the primary challenges facing beaver in urban settings. A few others dashed in and out during our dinner, updating them both or asking questions. It was definitely a dynamic place to be.

After dinner we came back to our luxurious tent, sat on the beautiful deck and drank a glass of wine while the light dimmed and the animal sounds took over. All night we heard the whooping lemurs, grunting flamingos and lowing whatevers in the distance. It was wonderfully cold at night in those beautiful hills, and the beds were unbelievably comfortable and warm. We both slept like children.

In addition to the excellent overnight and jeep tour Safari West generously made a donation to Worth A Dam and presented a certificate for our silent auction. I made sure to bring a list of wildlife friends I thought would be great speakers for the future and we swapped stories and ideas for how to engage people about nature.

Then it was home to meet Greg Kerekes for an interview. He was hired by the Guadalupe RCD to produce five videos on urban wildlife. The first was on Grey Foxes which you can see here.

The next is supposed to be on beavers. I expected a ten minute interview but our conversation lasted nearly two hours. He hadn’t really known the Martinez story before and he found it very interesting. His wife had an injury that meant she couldn’t climb the stairs so she was waiting in the car outside the whole time! ( You might remember her as the dancing beaver from our festival two year’s ago.)

Greg said he was surprised that I never seemed to say “um” or seemed at a loss for word like the others he interviewed. (Ha – plenty of practice!) We talked about beaver challenges, beaver benefits, beaver nativity, beaver depredation and the history of Worth A Dam. They were excellent questions and he was a great listener but I was exhausted by the end. Not sure how much of our conversation will find it’s way into his short film, but he said he was interested in doing a bigger project too and it would help down the road.

Fortunately for me (and the people I work with in my day job!) I’m off today, so I can rest and enjoy NOT talking about beavers. Then I can start focusing on the festival. (Eek!) The application that Lory was kind enough to fill out (all 19 pages of it) goes to the city just as soon as I can get the event insurance taken care of.

Getting ready for Beaver Mother’s Day

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? May 4, 2015

What a headline!

5 pesky animals you might see this spring around Calgary

Spring is here, and BBQs and flowering gardens await. But just as we are waking up from our — albeit mild — winter slump, so is nature. So be prepared to see some furry, not-so-welcome visitors.

While it’s unlikely for someone to have a problem beaver in their backyard, the critters still can cause problems with their tendency to flood an area. To create their homes, beavers will build dams that block water flow, sometimes flooding pathways and other public infrastructure. There is also the issue of tree management, since their food of choice is bark and leaves. Calgary Parks management deals with this by wrapping wire around trees, to stop them from chomping on them. Also, since the flood in 2013, the beaver’s environment has changed, and can now be seen in places they weren’t before.

When near a beaver dam, be sure to keep your distance if you see a beaver. These are territorial animals, and though they will leave you be if you extend the same courtesy, they have been known to attack dogs and humans and to hold up traffic.

Seriously? Keep your distance because beavers might bite or hold up traffic? You know I’m a busy woman, it’s Monday and I have to get ready for another presentation. But this is too good to resist. I literally can’t help myself.

There are more things to mock in the article, but this is most glaring. Now we have other things to talk about. Greg Kerekes from the Urban Wildlife Research project in San Jose is coming to interviewme for a short film about urban wildlife this weekend. I mention it because he went to Lexington Reservoir this weekend and took this amazing photo of a beaver moving a kit:

moving jr — Beaver moving kit – photo Greg Kerekes

Look at that adorable face! When I first saw it it almost looked like a koala bear! Greg a great job of sitting patiently and even waited behind a blind to get this shot. In Martinez, our new mother has moved the kits every year but we’ve never gotten lucky enough to film it.

Yet?

Saturday we’re off to Safari West where I’ll be presenting after dinner to the families staying there. Then we get to stay overnight in the luxury tents and tour in the morning. Since Sunday’s mother’s day I’m going to talk about beaver mothers and the way that beavers act as “Fairy Godmothers” to the creeks. I had a lot of fun making this, and any excuse to download new fonts makes me happy!