Tag: Ian Timothy

Doubtful deliberate decisions

heidi08 Beavers June 26, 2013

Busy beavers called a threat to Yukon salmon

A first nation in Yukon is looking to help one species by undoing the work of another. The Ta’an Kwach’an Council hopes it can help boost numbers of Chinook salmon.

The Whitehorse area First Nation has received environmental approval for a month-long project to remove abandoned beaver dams on Fox Creek.

Thank goodness, because everyone knows those salmon need wide open expanses of un-dammed creek to grow up where they are exposed to exciting challenges of predation and drought. Keeps them agile! Certainly there are mountains of hard scientific studies proving that beaver dams help salmonids, but none of them look specifically at ABANDONED beaver dams. They’re obviously special.

Gosh, I wonder why those dams were abandoned? Did something maybe happen to those beavers?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that somewhere a low-level city biologist is feeding this tribe misinformation to trick them into thinking that if they just kill enough beavers their salmon population will recover. (Never mind the pollution and the concrete channels.) They are using the tribe as the ‘cow pusher’ on the front of the train to get the protesters off the tracks, because no one will express outrage by what a native tribe does! And after they talk the tribe into doing it first, and the policy gets noticed, the city can do it, and say “What? We learned this from the Whitehorse!”

This article has been up for a couple days now. The CBC article on the same topic had a dozen comments that were pro-beaver (including mine) which are all gone now. Hmm.

__________________________________________________________

Flooding has devastated much of southern Alberta, killing three people and prompting authorities to evacuate the western Canadian city of Calgary’s entire downtown — an estimated 75,000 people. But at least one resident of Calgary has stayed behind. Cameras caught a beaver swimming through strong flood waters up the Bow River.

Sorry for Alberta and the flooding but it’s nice to remember what strong swimmers beavers are. I know it has reassured me on more than one occasion!

_________________________________________________________

Great photos from Cheryl last night, you won’t want to miss. Great kingfisher too, who has been clatteringly noisily around the dams and making herself known!

long mud — Mudding the dam Cheryl Reynolds

____________________________________________________________

Yesterday I sent Ian’s raptor blues film to Tom Knudson of the Sacramento Bee and today he has tweeted it. I let Ian know and he sent me this amazing article. If you’ve been at all following this incredible young man you really should go read it for yourself.

ACHIEVER | St. X grad wins awards in animation competition

Since he was 11, Ian Timothy has enjoyed making stop-motion animation films. Now 18 and a recent St. Xavier High School graduate, he’s won two major awards for his approximately two-minute film “Day Shift.”

“Day Shift” won a Gold Medal in the student film category of the New York Festivals International TV and Film Awards Competition, one of only two student films to win the Gold Medal, the highest award.

For that film he also received a Silver Telly Award in Animation, the highest award given in that professional — not student — competition.

Ian will attend CalArts — the California Institute of The Arts in Valencia, Calif. — in the Experimental Animation program. The competitive program accepts 15 students per year and has trained “greats” such as Tim Burton and John Lasseter, Ian said.

Ian believes he was accepted because, “They want to see somebody has a voice as an artist. Not only that they are good, technically, but they know where they want to be and what they want to be.”

Okay THIS article is definitely going in the copy of the DVD he will be donating for the festival. You better save it because it will be a collector’s item one day. We disagree about one thing. Ian says his newest film is about the liberating effect of creativity. I say its about the creative influence of nature.

Maybe for Ian they are actually the same thing.

_______________________________________________

Oh and as you can definitely discern: I have a new keyboard and a functioning “d”! Delicious Delight and Darwinism! All I can say is thank goodness it wasn’t the “B”.

Three good things

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 25, 2013

More and more when I stumble towards the computer in the bleary hours and try an decide what to write about beavers, it is like being a raja sorting through a pile of rich jewels and deciding which to wear for the party. This morning I feel positively indulged with treasures. Let me assuage my Catholic guilt at having too much good fortune by sharing all of it with you! The first is from Melanie, who I met at the beaver dam Sunday night, and got her permission to post this morning. This is an example of how nurtured kits are by family members. We couldn’t even say if this is mom, because that’s a pretty big tail for our little mom. It might be dad or uncle for all I know, but I am certain beyond any doubt that beaver kits are loved.

Kit-adult nuzzle — Photo by Melanie 6-23-13

Many of you may be following the rodenticide-raptor problem which is killing and sickening hundreds and thousands of birds around the world and even prompted the EPA to rear its head in response. Our friend Lisa Owens Viani started the organization RATS {Raptors Are The Solution} to help educate and get cities to ban the poisons that are killing hawks an owls at an alarming rate. She has been hard at work to get the word out an asked me a while back if I thought Ian Timothy might be interested in helping and would I introduce them? So it turns out that Ian’s first natural passion was raptors and he was VERY interested. In the midst of going to Carnegie Hall and graduating from high school he agreed to work on this which was just released. Remember that telling the story is the most important thing we do, and Ian just made Lisa’s job a lot easier!

Isn’t that amazing? One of the things I love about his work, besides his delightful humor and artwork, is his compassion. He has the judgement not to show the dying hawk on camera just like he had the wisdom to show the teddy bear [and not its owner] get stuck in the trap. He gets the point across without shocking the viewer, which is very, very rare. I can’t wait to see what he does to improve Pixar!

A final jewel in today’s crown of beaver activity is this. The Beaver Whisperers aired in Canada in March this year, but the International Version is still being finalized. It will include a great segment on Sherri Tippie and have less of a Canadian focus. The producer has promised to generously donate a copy for the silent auction, but she let me watch the entire thing yesterday, which is where I saw this. I can’t tell you how irrationally happy this makes me.

The hour but not the man has come!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History May 20, 2013

Yesterday I noticed with alarm that this video is now six years old. It was the third video I ever attempted to make and you can see now that I was already deeply down the rabbit hole in wonders – both beaver and research oriented. I’ve always been fascinated by mythology, so it was an easy weekend to spend gathering stories of beavers in native lore, although a much, much harder task forcing the information into a film with my very new skills. At that time, we had only two beavers, so they were fairly easy to keep track of. No one knew about mom’s tail marking, and no kits had ever been born. I didn’t know about grey Owl when I made this, just found the photo on the web and thought it should be included. You’ll note that the video doesn’t say Worth A Dam at the end, because at the time I made this there WAS NO SUCH thing. In fact, the city hadn’t even committed itself to killing them yet, although it had tossed around the idea. Ahh memories.

Feeling nostalgic I posted this on our Scottish friend’s facebook page, asking about beavers in celtic mythology and Paul Scott (who is one of the Tay beaver champions), replied that he personally had always thought about the Kelpie or water-horse as a likely celtic or pictish representation of a beaver. This is the most depicted animal on scottish stones and no one knows what they might have referred to. Of course there are no more Kelpie’s in Scotland but until recently there were no more beavers either – coincidence? This was was so intriguing I had to start researching and reading all over again.

Stone carvings of this mysterious ‘pictish beast’ are seen all over Scotland. It has been described as like a seahorse, or a dinosaur. In most tales the Kelpie is noted to be very black, very at home in the water, but breathing air. Usually only its eyes are seen above the surface of the water, it’s very strong and its mane is constantly dripping. It’s fur is smooth like a seals but it is deathly cold to the touch. The mythical beast has both sinister and magical properties, In tales it lures children into the water to offer it rides on its back, sometimes even changing its length to hold as many as 20. Then it dives, drowning and devouring them. In many tales the Kelpie acts like fresh water mermaid to take the shape of beautiful woman to lure the men to their deaths beneath the water.

Here’s a famous tale of a Kelpie victim from an 1889 retelling. It’s beautifully archaic language, but give it a try.

A party o’ Highlanders were busily engaged, ae day in harvest, in cutting down the corn o’ that field; an’ just aboot noon, when the sun shone brightest an’ they were busiest in the work, they heard a voice frae the river exclaim, “The hour but not the man has come.”

Sure enough, on looking round, there was the kelpie stan’in’ in what they ca’ a fause ford, just foment the auld kirk (old church). There is a deep black pool baith aboon an’ below, but i’ the ford there ‘s a bonny ripple, that shows, as ane might think, but little depth o’ water; an’ just i’ the middle o’ that, in a place where a horse might swim, stood the kelpie. An’ it again repeated its words, “The hour but not the man has come,” an’ then flashing through the water like a drake, it disappeared in the lower pool.

Spooky huh? A man on horseback then comes crashing down the hill to try and get to the Kelpie, but his friends stop him and lock him up to protect him, whereupon he promptly drowns himself in a water trough, because some fates you can’t be protected from, I guess. Ain’t that the truth.

______________________________________

Speaking of the hour coming…guess who graduated from high school this weekend? Our good friend Ian Timothy who will be off to CalArts in the fall for their experimental animation program. Here he is posing with his rightfully beaming parents. The ceremonial cords represent National Art Honor Society.

Can I say how much like yesterday it seems when I first saw Ian’s Beaver Creek animation? He was 13 when he made it. Ian has been part of the Martinez Beaver story since there was a story. He and his parents visited last year, and the entire beaver world wrote letters on his behalf when the beavers in draught park were threatened. Still not convinced his graduation is relevant news for a beaver website? He asked me to submit letters of recommendation to colleges (which I did) and when he was being wooed by two amazing art and design schools and not sure which to pick I asked the producer of the Beaver Whisperer’s documentary and she asked her animator who pitched in with excellent advice on where he should go! Small, small beaver world.

Ian has already gathered such an amazing wealth of awards and experiences he won’t need beaver contacts or praise from me anymore, but I’m so proud and grateful our paths crossed that I had to send him this photo I found on the web. Yes that’s a cake showing a beaver graduating. I don’t know why either.

Kentucky Gold

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, Video March 19, 2013

Ian update:

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards 2013 national winners were announced today. This year I won a Gold Medal for my film Day Shift, a Silver Medal for All My Dreams music video, and a Silver Medal for my whole portfolio. Day shift also won an American Visions Award, and a Best In Grade award. The national ceremony is in May at Carnegie Hall in New York City and for the first time will be streamed live online. Scholastic has been a huge part of my life in the last four years, and I thank everyone at the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers for their support and encouragement.

Congratulations Ian. And have a blast at Carnegie Hall. (Again.) Worth A Dam is so enormously proud of you. With about two months left to go on your senior year, the world is definitely your oyster. Whether you end up at Cal Arts or SCAD in the fall your professors will soon be scrambling to take credit for what is certain to be an awesome career of varied and inspiring achievements. I’m so grateful our paths crossed.

It seems like only yesterday that I was thrilled to discover this for the first time.

Beaver Believers in Kentucky

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental February 28, 2013

Wilson Creek from the air, shortly after construction crews had dug a new meandering channel down the middle of the hollow. A century ago, the creek had been moved to the right edge of the hollow. Credit: Courier-Journal files/Pam Spaulding.

Beavers bring their engineering skills to Bernheim creek restoration

Two years ago, beavers moved in and are now putting their own engineering skills to work on the creek. And Bernheim officials couldn’t be happier.

“There are not a lot of beavers living in places that let beavers do what beavers do,” said Andrew Berry, the forest manager at Bernheim.

The creek now has “incredible biodiversity,” aided in part by the addition of new beaver dams that have created a couple of beaver ponds. The ponds are great for birds, amphibians and reptiles, he said. The area has attracted raccoon, river otters and birds of prey.

Before you go assuming that this ecologically minded beaver-savvy article is from Washington State or even Dr. Hood in Alberta, allow me to inform you that this is from Kentucky, the home of our dear friend and wunderkind Ian Timothy. The young creator of the Beaver Creek series and champion of the Draught Park beavers says that Berheim Forest is a great place to be, one of the places where he started his love of nature and he is not at all surprised that they recognize beaver gifts when they see them.

The altered Wilson Creek had functioned more like a swift-moving drainage channel atop bedrock, leaving it less friendly to aquatic life. It also hasn’t been restoring nutrients to the hollow’s soils.

Even Bernheim Forest had prevented trees from returning to the valley for decades by planting corn and other food crops for deer, before deciding a more natural approach would be better. Now that natural approach is in full bloom, so to speak.

The creek has room to spread out, and when it does, it deposits nutrients across the flood plain. Trees have grown tremendously during the last decade, some reaching more than 20 feet into the air.

One of the most striking features is the clarity of the water. I have seen a lot of creeks and rivers in Kentucky, and they often are choked with sediment. This water was clear enough to see the bottom a few feet down to the bottom of the beaver ponds.

Ahhh crystal clear waters and living creeks! You mean like this?

cheryl beaver kit 2013 — Beaver Kit 2013: Cheryl Reynolds

Congratulations Kentucky, you have decided to listen to your beavers and that makes you almost as smart as the 15 year old boy who made this years ago….and is now heading off to college. Sniff.