It’s official! Yesterday I turned in the application for this year’s Beaver Festival which will be August 7th from 11-4. We are hoping for an “estuary awareness” car to bring passengers on Amtrak from the Jack London Square with the watershed appreciation of Lisa Owens-Viani. We are hoping for five hours of remarkable music, face painting, beaver tours and naturalist walks with Doc Hale. We are hoping for the children’s cloth drawings to be converted to a flag that we unveil at the festival. We are hoping for an excellent silent auction with donations from Safari West, Wild Birds, Six Flags, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Marine Mammal Center! We are hoping for the best attendance ever and the entire event to be sponsored by Castoro Cellars.
We dream big.
We are also hoping for YOU! So if you plan to be in town that day, would like to help out in anyway including transport, setup, take down, organization, musical delights, children’s activities, manning the book table, helping with sales, recruiting attendance, hanging up signs, taking down signs, having your daughter’s swim team sell water bottles, or offering a service so valueable I haven’t yet thought of it, drop me a note! It takes a VILLAGE to make a beaver festival.
Yesterday I had a very exciting chat with Julia Reischel of the Watershed Post. I had contacted her after reading her review of Mike Callahan’s presentation at the state house. Apparently I came close to giving her a “Road to Damascus moment” and she is now very interested in the role beavers might play in watershed restoration. She was delightful on the phone, and wanted to know who the “big names were” in beaver research so she could follow up. Why hadn’t she heard about the effect beavers have on birds? the effect beavers have on salmon? the use of beavers to combat climate change?
Sigh.
I honestly have no idea. Talk about hiding beavers’ light under a bushel. With the exception of Michael Pollock there really are no “big names” associated with this important research, and his name isn’t NEARLY big enough to make a dent in all the ridiculous lies that are being told about beavers by the salmon industry in Scotland. Research gets done, but its done by doctoral candidates because no one else wants to step into that mire.I sent her in the direction of Dietland Muller-Swarze who teaches right down the street.
Still, start with the dissertations. Its a great beginning. The rest will follow.
