Surprising things

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? November 4, 2014

Yesterday I received a very interesting email from Pam our fiscal manager at ISI who said that she and Loren had attended the fundraising breakfast for Daily Acts where they had been surprised to see our friend Brock Dolman on stage dressed in a beaver costume and talking about the good beavers do. She snapped this shot with her phone and you can see the beaver’d Brock wayyyyy at the back. She also said there was video of the event and we should get it soon.

You might remember Pam helped at the festival and trekked to our planning meeting beforehand. She had been such a help in our transition aboard that when she admired my wildbryde keystone species charm necklace I had given it to her. She wore it to this event and guess what happened?

And your name is quite well known. I wore my beautiful charm necklace, of course, and a little girl there told me she made her own at the Beaver Festival! Several other adults had also attended. …I am happy to be associated with your fine organization 🙂

How cool is that? Someone wearing our charms was spotted by a child who had made them herself! And former attendees of the festival were at the breakfast promoting our good work! Now that’s an awesome coincidence. And it’s what I call being surrounded by beavers!

More good news came from Sherry Guzzi in Tahoe. You’ll remember that she and Ted had installed flow devices at Taylor Creek where they had been battling beavers for decades and ripping out dams to protect nonnative kokonee salmon. They had waged an epic [and I do mean epic] campaign to win hearts and minds and were finally begrudgingly given the go ahead “try one” in a back channel. Of course this worked like a charm so they were granted permission to try one on the main channel. Guess what happened?

I want to personally thank you so very much for all your hard work, coordination, communication, perseverance and good humor. It has been a pleasure working with you to create more harmony between the visiting public and beaver at the Visitors Center!

I am excited about the other opportunities to collaborate that we’ve been exploring. Your assistance in addressing beaver concerns at other locations in the Basin will be warmly welcomed. 

Is it possible that in a million years I never expected this response and I simultaneously have imagined no other? Fantastic work Ted and Sherry! And everyone else who helped nudge, wheedle, persuade, cajole and shame this into happening. Finally the Taylor Creek beavers can live in peace!

_________________________________________________

And a final note of warm remembrance for car guru and radio humorist Tom Margliozzi, who died yesterday from complications due to Alzheimer’s. Everyone remembers his infectious laugh and his playful advice but I don’t think that was his real talent. Tom and his brother were both MIT graduates. They were realists who loved science and solving problems. Tom was educated without being elitist. Regional without being exclusionary. Populist without be simplistic. Traditional without being dated and funny without being mean. In three minutes Tom could connect with a Lexus driver in NYC, a Ford pickup driver in Alabama, or an Honda driver in Chicago. There are a handful of people alive in our partisan world that still have that skill. He perfected it.

He is remembered on this website with his badge of honor. The brass rat.

quid rides? mutato nomine de te fabula narratur

(Why do you laugh? Change the name and the story is told of you)

A Day of Too Much Beaver News

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 9, 2014

Yesterday was crazy with beaver activity in the news, but the awesome part that tipped my scales on the wow-meter was that one of the folks of the friends of the free beavers on the River Tay in Scotland got a Freedom of Information Act request from DEFRA with all the correspondence on beavers in the British waterways.

That means all the emails where they talked about lying, got ready to lie, lied and bragged to each other about lying are there for the world to see. The request had been public around 6 hours when this story was published in the Guardian.

Health watchdog contradicts claims Devon beavers pose human health risk

Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have repeatedly said that the beavers, thought to be the first in the wild in England for centuries, could threaten human health because they may be carrying a disease that the UK is currently free of.

But Defra documents and emails, released under Freedom of Information rules, reveal that while Public Health England (PHE) is concerned about the disease, it does not believe the beavers would increase the risk to human health from the tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis (EM).

“PHE accept that the main risk of an incursion is likely to be through international movements of pets, both legal and illegal… Therefore they are not convinced that the three Devon beavers necessarily represent a significant increase in overall risk,” a Defra official emailed colleagues after meeting with Public Health England.

But that’s the special lie we picked! Are you saying it doesn’t sound true enough to the experts? We’re DEFRA. We’ll make it true! So they went on their merry way saying there was a chance of disease even though the experts told them there wasn’t. And that’s why THIS was the email heard around the world.

The whole cache is a treasure trove, especially the indignant letters from citizens outraged at the decision and their pained justifying responses.See if you can find mine! It’s nice to know that those things are kept somewhere, although it did give me a mad longing to see the FOIA on correspondence regarding the Martinez Beavers in 2007.

(Mostly I just want to see letters between the mayor and Mary Tappel. But that’s just me.)

If you’re too mature to have fun playing in DEFRA’s dirty underthings, there was also an EXCELLENT beaver report on NPR KNAU in Arizona yesterday. Click to listen to a short but sweet reminder of why beavers matter.

And just in case you thought the beaver news cycle passed Martinez by, they rolled out the swanky new website for our sponsor Inquiring Systems Inc yesterday. Check us out under ““projects“. I think we’re placed according to how many hits we get, because we keep moving around. So CLICK on this, please and remind the world that beavers matter.

I’m very happy they highlighted this quote:

AS CALIFORNIA FACES MORE DROUGHT YEARS, IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO COEXIST WITH THESE IMPORTANT ‘WATER SAVERS’.

Good Day, Sunshine

heidi08 Beavers August 4, 2014

Something was different about this year’s festival. I’m still trying to put my finger on it. It wasn’t more crowded, I think we had about the same attendance, (but folks from “wildlife row” who were moved to the outer lanes thought there were fewer, and folks from the outside moved in to the main drag swore there were more.) It wasn’t just better publicity, although this was the luckiest we have ever been with the press, including print, TV and radio. It wasn’t just the exhibits, although we had more than ever before including a tail slapping beaver and a boat! It wasn’t just the solar-powered amplification although it knit the park together and made it seem like a real event. And it wasn’t just the awesome sewn and painted tails or charms.

Jon’s tours were more packed with knowledgeable wildlife fans, volunteers at every booth got more thank yous and donations in their ‘tip jar’, people all seemed to have a brochure and were actually using it, and there were fewer moments of abject confusion and last minute mayhem than there usually are.

Oh and a few awesome things happened to me personally. The day started with a visit from forest service filmmaker, Steve Dunsky who I was introduced to by Tom Russert when I asked for beavers to be included in the 50th year anniversary. Steve is working on the Vallejo – based festival for the celebration of 50 year anniversary of the wilderness act, a three day extravaganza of which the Martinez Beavers will be a small part with a tour on September 6th. If you’ve not heard about it you really should go read up and find out how you can be involved.

Poster design by artist Monte Dolack to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act.

The “Visions of the Wild” Festival celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Join us for all the festival has to offer: films, speakers, art, music, and field trips.

The “Visions of the Wild” Festival celebrates California’s public wilderness lands and invites you to find wild things wherever you live.

The Visions of the Wild Festival happens September 4th, 5th and 6th in Vallejo.

I was happy to see it offered with this poster, by a painter you should recognize, Monte Dolack. You might remember the artist best for his donation of this to the beaver festival in 2012. His leave it to beavers graces my office and makes me smile every day I see it.

After I met Steve, an older gentleman introduced himself as a member of the Alameda Fish and Game Advisory Commission and asked who we were funded by. He said we were an ideal candidate for a grant and should apply to the Contra Costa FGAC because it was such a positive wildlife event. He’d be happy to help. (!) Then the head of our new non-profit fiscal agent, Dr. Loren Cole, walked up and shook my hand, saying what a great event it was and how happy he was to sponsor Worth A Dam!

Could the day get better you ask? How about the visit from Jack Sanchez of SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead) who I met in Santa Barbara at my talk. He had trouble with beaver dams in the ravine and needed someone to help with a flow device. I introduced him to Ted and Sherry Guzzi of the Sierra Wildlife Coalition and they set up a day to come see what he needed. Then a woman director from the EPA came to talk about a mine they just got responsibility for in the Sierras, which had beaver dams, and wanted to talk about beavers improving invertebrates and affecting the unstable PH levels. It seemed like beaver dams were making things better downstream but she wondered what could they do to keep them there?

Then I got a visit from Suzi Eszterhas, a free lance international wildlife photograher that has been published in National Geographic. She is working with Bird Rescue to do a Ranger Rick feature, and she wanted to talk about doing a piece on the Martinez Beavers. She was especially interested in showing their family life and the community involvement that sustained them. She said she usually photographed animals on site for several months, maybe as long as a year before doing the story. Did I think that would be a problem?

Considering she had photographed lions and cheetahs in the Serengeti, I didn’t think our beavers would mind her sitting quietly on the bank and seeing their private lives. We’re going to talk soon and I can’t say how excited I am about the possibility. I hope I said the right things to make her very, very interested.

Now you’re thinking “that’s it! There can’t be one more remarkable thing that happened to you that day. You are just exaggerating”. But you’d be wrong;

But that is not all.

Oh, no.

That is not all….”

Dr. Seuss (The Cat in the Hat)

Because just at that very moment a group of women were stopping in the path to photograph my “HOW” and “WHY” to leave with beaver posters and I said, if you want just shoot me an email and I can send you the JPEGs for those. And the woman thanked me very much and introduced herself as a regional manager for the Department of Agriculture, and they were always dealing with beaver issues so she wanted to send them to everyone in her offices.

Just in case the acronym escaped you, that’s the USDA – of which APHIS is part. As in killing birds at airports and woodpeckers in Rossmoor and beavers EVERYWHERE. And the USDA will have MY posters telling it how and why to live with beavers.

So yeah, it was a pretty good day.