Do you remember the character of ‘Slapper’ the giant beaver from the exciting young adult tale of climate change from Leaf and the Rushing Waters? The author Jo Marshall is publishing the next volume which will reportedly have my endoresement on the back cover, and she just wrote me with the exciting newsflash that the character of ‘Slapper’ was so popular it has been picked up by a comic book company in Chicago and they want her to write the first episodes. We wish her and slapper all success!
And of course our other rising star, the now-18-year old Ian Timothy, is getting ready to transcend our trajectory entirely. He recently asked me for a letter of recommendation for college, so I know well the heights he is marching towards. This week he is in Miami at the YoungArts Week immersed in more creative youth than you can imagine. That’s him holding the camera, and watch the short film for an introduction to what’s going on.
Ian you are definitely not in KansasKentucky any more. Gosh, we are so proud of you. Have a wonderful time, make remarkable inspiring friends, and broaden and deepen every one of your dreams.
Other successes? Well, in the past three days I’ve got Michael Pollock interested in a beavers-and-salmon article for Bay Nature, which has done a great job about reporting on salmon, but not yet picked up the beaver gauntlet. I may have been able to lure science writer Joe Eaton into pursuing it and the difference it will make for salmon (and Beavers) all over the state. Joe is a free lance writer/naturalist and the editor of SFEP newsletter who has written my favorite articles about mom beaver, ever. He would be the very best man for the job, if we can just get him intrigued enough! On a related note research Rick says we’re two weeks away from the rough draft of the historic prevalence of beavers in the coastal rivers article, so things are moving in a very good direction!
Guess who has won best animated short film in Burbank this weekend? Kentucky’s own Ian Timothy for Beaver Creek Episode 7, that’s who. Here’s what he had to say about the evening on his facebook page where I found out about it:
Beaver Creek was screened in the Burbank International Film Festival and won Best Animated Short Film. The festival was great, Jeff Rector was an incredible host, I got to know animation judge and Disney art director Ed Ghertner. At the Awards Dinner I meet Matthew Senreich(Co-Creator) and Trisha Gum (Director) of Robot Chicken. I also met The Simpsons director Matt Kirkland, 7 time Academy Award winning special effects makeup artist Rick Baker, actor and musician Tim Russ, actor James Hong, NBC weatherman Fritz Coleman and so many more! Thanks to everyone at the festival for all of the encouragement.
Here he is with his beaming parents on the red carpet all dressed up in their sunday best:
And in case you want to be reminded of the winning episode that now has advanced beavers in the home of the most famous rodent in history, here it is:
No shabby accomplishment for a young man who’s still in highschool. Congratulations Ian! This has been an amazing year for you, and the 17 ones that proceeded it weren’t bad either!
When I first connected with Ian he was 13. I wrote him excitedly after seeing the first “Beaver Creek episode’. Back then we were still deeply embedded in the battle to save our beavers and I was toying with the idea of animating the struggle or dubbing the city council voices into an episode. Do you remember that first one? It seems like such a long time ago, now. It was retro-copyrighted in 2010 but I’m sure it was earlier when I first saw it because it was before his science film entry which was 2008.
I enjoyed so many things about this effort, the humor, the water, the gentle pacing. I couldn’t even imagine the hours and days and months it took him to put together. Obviously he was a talent to keep an eye on, but I supposed beavers were just an accident, a cartoon vehicle that might as easily have been meerkats or groundhogs.
It was watching this next entry though that I realized Ian had been following our website and really taking an interest in beavers as other than clay action heroes. I was very happy to learn that it won first prize in the Virtual Challenge of the Science Museum.
There were lots of wonderful episodes that followed about 6 painstaking months apart, but the episode that really touched me and stands out in my mind was episode 6, in which Twig’s dad breaks his tail and he is called to go home to help out for a while. Our own dam and lodge had just washed out, and our mom beaver had died a few months earlier, leaving our orphans with a lot of work to do. I was wishing our beavers could send a note to twigs (or GQ) to ask for help and easily buy supplies at ‘home treepo’. I loved seeing the kits in this episode (complete with waterwings) and the yearling, but when they were relaxing over a family dinner I saw something amazing (@ 6:27).
Did you see that that? Mom’s tail at the dinner table has the same marking as OUR mom beaver. I honestly had been working so hard to get through the festival after her death and talk to the media and explain to everyone what was going on, that I just burst into tears when I saw that. Ian hadn’t even said anything, just added it in very quietly and watched if I’d notice. After I was done being sad I was very, very grateful.
Last year he was entered in several film festivals and came to california for the Wild and Scenic event in 2011. Of course he had to stop by Martinez with his lovely parents on his way to Nevada City just to see where our beavers live and meet the Worth A Dam family. I wrote at the time how very strange it seemed to meet strangers from 3000 miles away and have it feel like reconnecting with old friends.
Recently Ian went on to save the beavers in draught park and waged a very cordial battle that got international attention. Oregon beaver friend Leonard Houston connected him with Virginia beaver friend Stephanie Boyles from the Humane Society and got her involved on the issue and she came out to convince the city of solutions. That story now has an outcome that everyone is happy with and Ian just reported on seeing the summers new kits for the first time.
So now he’s 18, and no longer the wonderboy child-wiz who dazzled us all with his prowess and patience, but a talented young man facing a world of possibilities. He’s in his senior year and turning down offers right and left while maintaining a steady course for great things. We could not be prouder and we feel blessed that our paths crossed in a beaver pond. Ian you truly have shown us that there really is always an adventure up on beaver creek!
Oh and there’s one more place Ian had to visit in California. Can you guess what that was?
Does good news come in threes? It does this morning! We’ll start with the successful unanimous passage of “THE BEAVER BILL” in Washington State. Thanks to the excellent work by our friends at the Lands Council beaver management is now part of state law and everyone will be reminded that their efforts mean water and it is smarter to move them than to kill them.
The Washington legislature has unanimously passed HB 2349, a bill concerning the sustainable management of beavers. The new law will help to improve the state’s water management infrastructure by relocating and maintaining healthy beaver populations. This proposed law is not only sensible, but also cost-effective. Instead of spending billions to construct concrete dams, this bill supports utilizing natural mechanisms to improve and restore Washington’s riparian ecosystems with families of beavers.
Congratulation Amanda & Joe! California is Green with envy – (green meaning the jealous shade, not the environmental friendly shade, because we’re idiots still when it comes to beavers!) I knew when I saw your ‘beaver solutions’ cartoon so many years ago that you were headed in the right direction. Lets hope some of your wisdom seeps down as far as Eureka or dare I Say San Bernadino!
More good news from our Kentucky Beaver friend Ian Timothy, who had worked all year to advocate for the beavers in Draught Park. He writes “The same city that once sternly said ‘This is not a beaver park!’ is now rolling out the welcome mat for the beavers. There is an article in theSt. Mathews newsletter about the beavers being able to stay in the park, as long as they are being monitored by the local beaver enthusiast (me). The people in St. Mathews really seem to be embracing the beavers and they have gained a small fan club of people watching them most evenings.”
Before laying out the welcome mat, The City of St. Matthews Park Committee met June 4 with a wildlife scientist from the Humane Society of the United States and the City engineer. The group consensus was to monitor the beavers’ activity for six months to see how it might affect the park and Beargrass Creek. Ian Timothy, a local beaver enthusiast,will help document the family’s industry to track the beaver dam height.
Excellent work Ian! Very well done! We couldn’t be prouder of you and can’t wait for this success to inspire your next ‘Beaver Creek’ Episode!
Finally some SHOCKING good news out of Scotland, a country that had the foresight to assume that just because the ‘gravity thing’ works in every other country it doesn’t mean it works in argyle and spent hard-earned money putting there scientists to work analyzing and testing to make sure. Their shattering findings are reported today in the Scotsman.
The research by scientists at the University of Southampton suggests that the overall impact on fish of reintroducing European beavers is more positive than negative. While the creatures’ dams do block fish from reaching local spawning grounds in the short term, experts say the same dams also increase habitat diversity, creating new areas that attract other wildlife which many fish feed on and providing refuge for them during periods when river levels fluctuate.
Are you telling me that the last decade of research out of NOAA and the Pacific North West was actually true? I mean NOAA is such a fly-by-night organization, no one EVER listen to their rambling assertions! Gosh, now that Scotland has shown that the theory of gravity holds true for the land of the thistle, what’s next? The sun rises over Ayr and sets over Edinburgh?
The City of St. Matthews is struggling with how to deal with beavers that have made their home in a local park.
Ian Timothy is seventeen years old. He’s been coming to Draut Park—a small park behind Mall St. Matthews—for four years, watching the family of beavers. They’ve built a dam and lodge near a culvert. He points to the lodge. “It kind of just looks like a pile of sticks, but they’re living in the lodge.”
But Draut Park isn’t technically a park…it was meant to hold water and prevent flooding in nearby Beargrass Creek. And besides gnawing on ornamental trees, the beavers built a dam that kept the water level higher than usual. This drew the attention of City Council members; the damage was unsightly and they worried the park couldn’t effectively prevent flooding if the beavers stayed.
So, in March, the City of St. Matthews removed the dam and lodge. After several weeks, both were rebuilt, and Timothy started a campaign to get the city to leave the beavers alone.
Go Ian! Beaver champion extraordinaire! When last we heard about the Draut park situatation Leonard Houston of Oregon nudged Stephanie Boyles of HSUS in Virgina to see if they could get involved. And guess what?
In a committee meeting, council members heard from the city engineer, who told them the beavers likely wouldn’t exacerbate flooding or cause further damage, if the dam is left alone. They also heard from Stephanie Boyles, who’s a wildlife scientist with the Humane Society. She deals with communities across the country, working to help them find ways beavers can coexist with flooding infrastructure, and recommended several devices the city can use to do this.
“Basically sneaking water through the dam, so the dam sort of acts as a diversion dam, keeps the beavers busy, but does not allow the water level to continue to rise, so the pipes continue to perform their function, which is moving water from their retention basin out into the creek,” Boyles says.
Hurray for Stephanie too! Wow, the big guns are out in force in Kentucky, which is still reeling from getting emails based everywhere from Utah to New Zealand. I got a fantastic update from Ian this morning saying that the council was very impressed with Stephanie and has definitely moved from ‘its not a beaver park’ to ‘beavers are excellent lets keep them!’ There is a decision to tolerate dam height, notch it if it gets to high or install a flow device if needed, but never bother the beavers again. Here, he just wrote that I can print it and I’d rather let him explain,
I was going to email you, but I guess you already saw the article, but I can fill you in on some details.
I guess you know Stephanie Boyles Griffin from HSUS? She flew into Louisville and I showed her all around the park and then the next day she came to the St. Mathews parks committee meeting. They really listened to her and it was fun to see the comimitee almost embrace having the beavers at the park. It was about 6 of the council members and the city engineer. This meeting was a total flip from the last meeting, it went from “It’s not a beaver park” to “we love the beavers in the park”
We talked about the different solutions and they were actually very open. Stephanie said that if they wanted to a small pond leveler would be good, and after some discussion she asked the city engineer if the beavers could actually cause flooding. The city engineer said that where the beavers are right now they are causing no flooding threat. So the decision was made that the dam is never going to be ripped out again. We are going to be watching it the next couple months and they are going to establish a height that they like it. If it gets too high they will take some off the top of the dam or if they decide we will put a small pond leveler in place. The one thing for sure is that the beavers will not be ripped out again.
We also decided to protect the trees, it is my job to go out and count the trees that we think should be protected We also talked about putting some signs around the park saying what beavers do, and what a wetland is and all of that stuff, and they really liked that idea. I will keep you in touch, but the beavers are pretty much saved at this point. And they have been very active lately, they seem very happy and are coming out more.
The person in charge of the park committee was named Stuart Monohan and he was really great! they definitely were listening and really wanted to do the right thing, and once they knew that there wasn’t a risk for flooding, all of them really seemed to think that having the beavers is great. I also think this meeting was the first time they really understood that the beavers are one of the reasons the park has so much wildlife, and once they understood that they really wanted to keep the beavers.
Now that was a VERY NICE JOB team beaver, remarkable coordination and effort and you all know who you are! I am so delighted to have watched this come full circle and couldn’t be prouder of our stop-motion beaver friend!
Speaking of our very own beavers, Cheryl and I were treated to a tail slap this a.m. from a beaver who had sauntered near the secondary dam to enjoy a secret snack. I absolutely love this photo as it captures the grand beaver nose perfectly and shows how very, very grown up our offspring are.
Just in case case you have trouble remembering how small they used to be, here’s a helpful nose comparison…lets say from the size of a dime to the size of a silver dollar?
