John Muir Association – Page 3

Beavers on the Oregon Trail

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 11, 2009

Just got word this morning from Leonard Houston from SURCP who is organizing the 2010 State of the Beaver Conference, that we are invited to come talk about the impact of beavers in neglected urban creek. I can’t wait to show off our photos and stories, and I’m hoping I can contaminate lots more cities to take our particular brand of action. Thanks Leonard for the chance to make friends and tell tales, while we’re learning so much from everyone else. Remember our heroic Skip Lisle, HSUS John Hadidian, and Michael Pollack of NOAA will be there as well so it will be a meeting of very like minds.

Speaking of Oregon, you just have to read this story. Seems there was a conference in Salem about the value of beavers to the watershed, and the suggestion of using reintroduction to increase salmon. A poster was there as a visual aid with two photos. One of an actual beaver from the Illinois Department of National Resources. And I bet you can JUST GUESS what the other one was.

Our old friend the imposter-nutria. Someone with eyes and a brain raised their hand and pointed this out, the presenter defended himself bravely.

“I’m not a wildlife biologist, so I’m not really qualified to make that distinction,” Gilbert said Friday. “I’m not an expert, by any means.” Gilbert said he snagged the photo off the Illinois Web site while searching the Internet for a beaver photo.

There you have it. He’s not a biologist so we can’t expect him to tell the difference between say, a dog and a cat, a bird and a bat, or a beaver and a nutria. The article emphasizes the whiskers of the nutria, which are indeed very different from the beaver, but to me the obvious clue is the nostrils which are nothing like our beaver’s noses. I cannot tell you how often this lazy mistake is made, even by news media which should at least be more cautious if they don’t know better, I realize the internet allows us to snag photos for free, but try and snag them from the right places, will you?

On a final note, think about joining JMA for the conservation awards this year held November 7th at the Willows Theater. Lee Stetson (the voice of Muir for the Ken Burns documentary) will be the host, and everyone whose anyone in conservation will be there. For a measly 20 dollars you can have appetizers, wine and some amazing conversations with folk who are making a difference all around the state. This event always sells out, so why not get your tickets now?

Worth A Dam at Native Here Nursery today in Tilden Park! Stop by and say Hi!

Reserve Tickets Now!

heidi08 Environmental September 6, 2009

The final plans for the Ken Burns Preview have been made and I’m told that a third of the available seating has been promised already. If you plan on attending, follow the directions in this flyer and call today and make arrangements to be there. Tickets are free but require an RSVP. This is a preview of the 6 part series “National Parks: America’s Best Idea” which will air on PBS next month. Martinez, the home of John Muir and some fairly famous beavers, is the best possible venue for this preview, and I would be there if I were you.

America’s Best Idea

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental August 14, 2009

Last night the John Muir Board was treated to a sneak preview of a single hour of Ken Burns upcoming documentary on the radical and quintessentially American concept of the National Parks. Awesome yet accessible, it tells individual stories of heroes, millionaires, presidents and visionaries that realized this great work was worth doing. I arrived late because of the day job and snuck in just at the moment that Roosevelt and Muir were camping out together under the giant sequoias. For my money, that was the one conversation in our nation’s history I would most like to have overheard.

You can enjoy a preview of your very own for free, September 19th when the NPS and JMA team up to offer an hour long preview at the High School Performing Arts Center. The event will include a reception and presentation with 299 of your closest most environmentally thoughtful neighbors. Mark your calendar’s now. Not sure you’re interested yet? Here’s a clip to whet your whistle:

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=mx8WbZIWCSM]

Anticipation is a glorious thing, a fact of which I keep reminding myself as I try to prepare for tomorrow’s interview on Dave Egbert’s living green radio show. I think they take listener questions so if you want to call in and ask me something really easy or mention that you agree with everything I’ve anxiously said, that would be nice. It airs at 7:05 tomorrow morning.

(Have to make sure the beavers are back by then so they don’t miss it!)

)

“Help us if you can”

heidi08 Environmental July 7, 2009

At last night’s JMA board meeting I saw this entreaty penned with earnest flourish in an original letter by John Muir to a book seller in Texas. He was writing to ask for support against the infamous Hetch Hetchy Dam, a battle that Muir ultimately lost. Apparently this closing remark, “Help us if you can”, was a common request in his persuasive letters to friends and potential friends, alike.

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

Source: John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: Century, 1912), 255–257, 260–262. Reprinted in Roderick Nash, The American Environment: Readings in The History of Conservation (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1968).

I was able to see this because last night curator Steve Pauly brought portions of the William and Mayme Kimes Collection, which the John Muir Association purchased ten years ago from these avid collectors and mountaineers. It contains (among other things) every edition of Muir’s books, signed and inscribed volumes, and much of Muir’s personal library. The idea is to eventually have this collection displayed at a visitor’s center at the Muir site, and to make it available for ongoing research into this important American voice.

One set of items in current discussion was Muir’s complete Shakespeare collection. Barbara Mossberg is a founding dean in in the college of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Cal State Monterey Bay. She is interested in how other writers, such as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Thoreau shaped Muir’s thinking and writing at the time. She wants access to the collection to analyze and understand Muir’s pertinent, delicate notes which he penciled into volumes along with underlines and favorite quotations. She believes this could help us understand how seminal writers influenced his work. The question before the board is how to safely allow that access so that Muir’s work can be better understood, and still preserved.

The Shakespeare collection was one of those J.M. Dent-looking pocket libraries with the complete volumes enclosed in two boxes. He pulled Henry V from its place and read Muir’s notes from the back, a reference to the speech “Once more into the breech dear friends” and my fingers literally itched to see what else Muir might have jotted down, oh say in the Hamlet volume. It was wonderful to be so close to the thinking of a man whose vision continues to give us so much.

As the collection was carefully packed away and Mr. Pauly concluded his presentation, I considered Muir’s epic advocacy. One thing I am learning in my time on the board, is that my romantic notion of him as this beloved farther of our National Parks is missing a hugely salient point. He was the original “endless pressure, endlessly applied”. Muir was an advocate, a burr, a voice raised and written in fire, a prod, a nudge, a handshake and a branding iron for all those developers who wanted to carve up the land for profit, and all those bad scientists who wanted to keep saying things that weren’t true just because they had been taught them in school.

(In short, Muir was much, much, much more trouble than a woman trying to save beavers.)

The recognition pleases me enormously. I was afraid I was too outspoken to be accepted among the well respected John Muir Association, but it turns out I only barely qualify.

W.W.J.M.D.?

heidi08 City Reports, Environmental March 5, 2011

Ahh spring, the chirping, sprouting time of year when tomato plants are wistfully laid in the ground and Worth A Dam annoys the city about planting trees. This year we wrapped our tree planting plans in a boyscout package to make it more attractive to a city that cannot possibly do something that might benefit beavers. Our “Trojan Eagle” has been fairly effective at getting cooperation, the city is allowing planting along the “beaver festival” park and the corp yard creek side. The planting will occur on the weekend of June 6th and 7th, and staff will help out and even extend a drip system to water some of the trees.

Except for the “bad trees”.

Worth A Dam has insisted at every possible juncture that three trees were needed at the lodge site, to protect the lodge from sun and intruders. Their own biologist, (that Janet Kennedy kindly reminded me the city spent painful dollars to obtain three times), Skip Lisle, recommended increased cover for the lodge. Rona Zollinger’s students pledged to plant the trees and carefully wire wrap them. Dates were laid, plans were made, and the entire project was detailed for the mayor at the May 6th presentation to the council.

Alas, it was not to be. Those, dear readers, are “bad trees”.

We were told those three trees were not “authorized”, were not approved by tree experts, were not part of the “buy-in” from the business community, were too much for an Eagle scout project, and were too controversial for Boy Scouts to be involved. These of course were offered in serial succession as each defense was challenged with pesky fact checking. They were “authorized” by their own biologist, and by the creek plan originally outlaid by the army corp of engineer, and by the city’s own watershed planting grant, and by the biologist they forced us to secure for the project. There are no property owners on that side of the creek but the city, and certainly no businesses. The Environmental Studies Academy students, who have already undertaken copious planting and stewardship for the city, could take on the responsibility and not over extend the scouts. And finally, three trees is as close to a “teapot” as the beaver “tempest” will ever be.

Sadly the city’s powerful logic-deflector shields were already raised. and our arguments were meaningless.The bad trees could not possibly be allowed under any conceivable circumstances. We were asked deftly “How would John Muir feel about planting trees for beavers?”

W.W.J.M.D.?

If I were to write one more time that I was dismayed or disappointed by this response, I would run the risk of being compared to Charlie Brown and Lucy holding the football. So I won’t be surprised. I just want to ask if this clever WWJMD test could be freely applied in other circumstances as well? What would John Muir think, for example, about removing trees to install sheetpile along a living creek? What would he think about removing trees to build parking lots and covering the earth with asphalt? What would John Muir think about controlling plant growth by spraying along the creek with pesticides? What would John Muir think about forming a redevelopment agency, for that matter?

This is fun. Can anyone play?

Far be it from me, now a member of the John Muir Association board of directors, of which two are descendents of Muir himself, and which are owners of the most extensive collection of Muir information and original documents in the world, far be it from me to attempt to answer that question. I will do what I always do, and pass it along. There’s a board meeting tonight in fact, and I will make sure that I ask how Muir felt about replacing stolen habitat to benefit wild things.

I can’t wait.