Lega Medcalf – Worth A Dam

Beavers go ‘postal’ in Maine

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, New Species July 18, 2012

This update from our friend Lega Medcalf popped up yesterday. What an amazing example of beaver advocacy!

NW-29-beaver-saga-2-300x168[1] — A CAGEY WAY — to prevent the beavers from plugging up the upstream end of the culvert was to erect this wire dome over it, held in place by rebar sunk deep into the stream bed.

Bridgton beavers’ saga continues

By Gail Geraghty

A CAGEY WAY — to prevent the beavers from plugging up the upstream end of the culvert was to erect this wire dome over it, held in place by rebar sunk deep into the stream bed.

A grand experiment in coexistence with beavers began last weekend when a few passionate folks waded knee-deep in muck to modify the dam the beavers created behind the Bridgton Post Office on Elm Street.

The dam was causing flooding in the post office’s parking lot, and raised water levels well above what’s typical for a large expanse of downtown wetland bounded by Elm, Park and Nulty Streets and the town’s Wayside Avenue leach field.

Regional Wildlife Biologist Scott Lindsay of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife believes it’s one or two young beavers at work, possibly the same ones that built the lodge and dam just a short distance away at Shorey Park, where Highland Lake meets Stevens Brook. Resident Lega Medcalf, who’s been championing the beavers’ cause, called Lindsay for advice about the problem, and he put her in contact with Richard Hesslein of Brownfield, who has worked on beaver modification efforts for years. Together, they walked the perimeter of the wetland around Corn Shop Brook late last week.

Go read the entire fantastic article and remember what a powerful difference a passionate individual can make! Last night we had a very brief viewing of HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS the new kit at our own beaver dam. He dives faster than a camera can focus…sheesh! We did meet a fantastic family from Ireland (now Hercules) who stopped to become deeply entranced by the beavers and their story. I made sure to plug the festival lots of times.

Finally there’s a nice article about muskrats this morning from the St. Albert Gazette in Canada you might want to check out. Since we always enjoy their visits while we’re waiting for beavers, its good to get a little background.

Muskrats are the most commonly seen mammal on waterways in St. Albert, according to local naturalist Dan Stoker. You can find them anywhere along the Sturgeon River at this time of year, as well as at Grandin Pond.

“For every one observation that might be made of a beaver,” he says, “you are likely to make 10 to 20 or more sightings of muskrats locally.”

You’re telling us! The fun article made me think of these, which happen to span about 5 years as nearly the most complicated movie I ever made and the very third movie I ever made! How’ that for a learning curve?

Beaver Daze

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental June 16, 2012

Today’s the big day for Lega and “Beaver Daze” in Maine. She wrote this week that the name felt apt because she was certainly in a daze herself since the preparations were underway. Sharon and Owen came yesterday and will present today on living with beavers. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall! GOOD LUCK! Win new beaver friends and change hearts and minds!

Gosh, can you remember our first beaver festival? We had maybe 7 booths and fewer than 300 people. Children made beaver tails out of paper and FRO, who was just getting to know us, brought clay for an activity. The documentarian Don Bernier was there filming the “Happy Ending” and the rest of us knew better than to think anything was over. In between snapping photos, Cheryl endeavored to work the video camera for our “Video letter to the Mayor.” The first festival was only three hours long. Now here’s a walk down memory lane!

Minding other people’s beavers…

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 4, 2012

Yesterday was literally absorbed with details about other people’s beavers. I spent the first half working on my response to the ominous Wildlife Services plan to kill 500 beavers a year in Massachusetts, and then looking up all the sympathetic players I should send it to as well. Here are my comments if you’re the kind of person who’s interested.

Then I got an email from Mary O’brien of the Grand Canyon Trust who will be holding their first-ever beaver festival in Escalante this September. Could I help with a conference call for her and her interns sometime that afternoon so they could ask me questions? There were lots of details for the festival that they needed help with. Of course, after I got over my crippling intern-envy (thinking what it would be like to have hard working brilliant grad students to help with all this) I said absolutely!

What kind of fabric did we use for the tails? Can I send her the designs for them? What kind of paint did we use? How much did we buy? Were there more children or adults at the festival? How did we teach about the Keystone Species idea? Could I send her the sheet we used for the charm bracelet? Could I give her contact info for Mike? How many shirts did we make? How did we divide the sizes? What kind of promotions did we use? How did we advertise the festival? How did you keep one child from painting over everything? Did children ever ruin community artwork?

Well, I loaded her up with information, but I actually never realized how much we did on our own until I heard Mary’s team taking notes on what I worried and puzzled out all by myself during sleepless hours between December and July every year. I had a moment of being very proud of myself, and then a moment of being very jealous when I heard they were having Sherri Tippie come out and do a lecture the night before. (Sigh) One cool idea that they came up with all on their own was to give monetary prizes for an art contest to children, teens and adults. Winning entries will be added to a calendar for a sale next year! The entries from older contestants all need to be done on site in Utah, but little ones from all over are welcome to enter the children’s contest. Here are the rules if you have any budding artists in mind.

After seeing Saturday’s idea of how to visually explain the importance of a keystone species,

Mary found an artist who is going to work on a large scale display. We both liked the idea of having an archway people had to walk ‘through’ to get to the festival! Of course she’s still using her fantastic sound booth concept for having people tell their stories of individual beaver sightings. Honestly, the two-day affair sound like a BLAST!!!

This morning I heard from Lega working on Maine ‘Beaver Daze’. While Mary is committed to not reinventing the wheel, Lega is a veritable wheel-inventing machine!. Here is her graphic for Sharon and Owen’s upcoming talk;

Don’t you want to be there AND Utah AND Colorado? Not to mention her design for a coupon called a ‘beaver buck’ which folks can spend for a 15% discount at participating stores that day! Smart!

Honestly, why is this darn country so big anyway? If these women were my next-door neighbors imagine what we could accomplish together! We would have the biggest, grandest most persuasive beaver festival yet! Even with all the extracurricular activity, our own festival is still coming along. This weekend I had the donated artwork framed, the t-shirts contracted, and the initial map layout completed.

Also I heard from the very generous Chris K. that he had finished our ‘plywood beaver’ silhouette for children to paint on! Imagine this with 500 birds, turtles, and otters painted in! This is about 8 feet wide and should look familiar. Recognize her?

Beaver Festival-MAINE!!!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 28, 2012

Lega Medcalf is a retired science educator from Bridgeton Maine. She called me at the office one day in March to say that some beavers had moved into her local city park and she was interested in helping them. She had been checking out the website to figure out where to start. At the time I posted the letter she wrote to her local paper. Here are some images she recently sent of the local beaver-rama.

So far the city hasn’t reacted to the beavers, but that will change soon. This week she gave presentations to the Bridgeford Selectman Committee on Tuesday and the Rotary Club on Thursday. You can guess which one went better. She sent me her beautiful powerpoint presention and I was thrilled to see that she had even used quotes from the VERY recent Altantic Monthly article as well as lots of hard science from various sources.

Her presentation was sharp, persuasive and engaging. But this was this slide that took my breath away.

Lega Medcalf: Presentation to the Rotary Club

BRIDGETON BEAVER FESTIVAL JUNE 16, 2012 !!!

When she had talked on the phone about starting a beaver festival I assumed she meant a hypothetical festival in the distant FUTURE sometime. I had no idea that she was going to march against the wind, head down, fists clenched and staunchly get this done in a matter of months! Amy Macdonald invited to sign the most famous beaver book ever. Done. Presentation to the selectmen. Done. Presentation to Rotary. Done. Poster and DVD of Stephen Low’s the Beaver Movie. Done. And featured at the festival? A Presentation by Sharon and Owen Brown of Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife.

I have Owen and Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife coming to make a presentation at the Beaver Daze mini-festival on June 16. The only time the local movie theater was available to show the movie Beavers was June 16 and 17 ( all booked up otherwise through the fall) so I am in rush mode to be ready and will have to scale back the activities. The library is the setting for the Brown presentation and the movie theater is just one block away with Shorey park another short walk away.

Lega! This is astounding. Just astounding. I don’t know where to begin! This is your idea of a mini festival? Beaver Daze sounds like its off to an AMAZING start and I can’t believe you’re having it in June. (I’m panicking over details for ours and its two months away!) To say that I am very, very impressed would be a massive understatement.

The truth is, if I were anywhere near Maine, besides making you president of Worth A Dam, I would be working enormously hard to keep all the vulture nonprofits from snatching you up to write their newsletters or organize their events, getting you to save owls or foxes or whatever. You are a rare find, Lega. You are a water cannon of energy and everyone will want you. But, as I would remind you over coffee many, many cheerful mornings because we’d be the best of friends;

Beavers need you more.

Thank you for your enormous hard work. We will talk about the uncooperative selectmen and brainstorm about ways to open closed minds. In the mean time, I dedicate this memorial Saturday to YOU and your amazing hard work. Now all you budding beaver advocates might enjoy taking this beaver quiz from Amy Neff Roth of the Observer-Dispatch in Hamilton NY. My answers are listed here but the paper says Spring Hill Farm Cares (also friends of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife) will post theirs on Sunday.

1) Although mostly herbivores, beavers sometimes eat small fish.

2) Beavers mate for life.

3) Beavers warn each other about danger by slapping the water with their tails.

4) Beavers can swim underwater for up to one hour.

5) Once beavers colonize a stream or river, the colony will remain forever unless the beavers are forcibly removed.

6) Water is cleaner downstream from a beaver pond than it is upstream.

7) Beavers are closely related to weasels, minks and fishers.

8) Beavers can walk upright on their hind legs.

9) Beavers hibernate for the winter.

10) Beavers may spend years working on dams and lodges, which keep getting bigger.