Tag: Lisa Owens-Viani

Blame the Rodent[icide]

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental May 13, 2012

Silent spring for Bay Area’s raptors?

Rodenticide-related wildlife mortality may seem an abstract issue until your child finds two dead hawks in the backyard wading pool. That happened to Berkeley resident Dan Rubino on the Fourth of July in 2007. Rubino sought out his neighbor Lisa Owens Viani, who has a background in wildlife rehabilitation. She identified the birds as juvenile Cooper’s hawks, the offspring of one of 13 local pairs.

Owens Viani suspected rodenticide poisoning: “When Dan told me they were going to the pool, I knew right away what it was. I knew they would be bleeding internally and looking for water.”

Joe Eaton & Ron Sullivan

Thus begins part one of the two part series describing the danger that second generation anti-coagulate rodenticides (SGAR) pose to birds of prey. See, folks use the poisons to kill rats, but the rats take a while to die. Raptors eat the toxic rats and get killed themselves. In 2003 the EPA responded to growing concern and litigation by requiring that SGARs would stop being sold to the public in 2011. They wanted them marketed only to wildlife control specialists, but that hasn’t exactly happened. In the mean time, children are finding cooper’s hawks in their wading pools.

So long-time beaver friend Lisa Owens Viani (formerly of SFEP and now of Golden Gate Audubon) has taken up the gauntlet and is marching city by city getting them to agree not to use or sell SGARs. She has started the aptly named organization Raptors Are The Solution (RATS) and is working hard to raise awareness. Go read the entire article and give RATS a thumbs up on facebook. This is just another example of narrow thinking having very broad consequences that cause unanticipated results. More vicious poisons to kill more rats leads to more raptors dying leading ironically to more rats because there are no more predators and the demand for even more vicious poisons to control a booming population. Repeat as necessary.

The article is written by Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan. Joe wrote my favorite article about mother beaver’s death and is a long time beaver supporter. In March, we attended a St. Patrick’s Day Dinner with them at Lisa and Riley’s home in Berkeley, it was a wonderful evening with stories about bird watching, wildlife rescue, and city council struggles of epic proportions. Riley (author of the most famous creek restoration book and working on her second) is top tier of the water boards where people send really thorny problems. She told very amusing stories of a certain Hollywood royalty mogul in the Bay Area once asking for permission to fill in the creek behind his house with cement so his children could cross it easily to get to school!

Bridges are SO passe.

The second installation of the article comes next week and will talk about what citizens groups can do and are doing. Don’t miss it. I keep telling Lisa that RATS needs a booth at the Beaver Festival to raise awareness and connect with folks out here, but does she listen?

Beaver Friend Updates

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers December 1, 2011

Happy December! There are several friendly new sprouts on the horizon that I thought I’d make you aware of. The first is an update from our artist friend Anita Utas who rallied to save the beavers in Stittsville Ottawa. Seems she has decided to celebrate their impermanent victory with a beaver blog to keep an eye on the situation.

Go check out the site and sign up for updates to support her efforts. ( Oh, and while you’re there check who’s on her blogroll!) As for Anita’s courageous endeavor I can only say two things. Congratulations! Good Luck!

And “Run Simba, run! Get out now while you still can!”

Next there’s the announcement about Jo Marshall’s recently published Twig tales where Goliath beavers help save the planet from climate change. It has made a fair splash in the eco-literary community and seems to be off to a great start. I especially enjoyed this part of the review.

Leaf & the Rushing Waters spouts a timely theme: beaver dams solve flood and drought made extreme by climate change. Goliath beavers must battle a glacial outburst. Not so fantastic—one beaver dam in Alberta is twice the length of Hoover Dam, and seen from space. The President of Martinez Beavers, Dr. Heidi Perryman, explains their endorsement, “With her Twig tales, Jo Marshall has done something amazing—tie a story of epic adventure to a naturally anchored account of environmental awareness – all tailored to the fresh, engaging mind of the youngster.”

I told her I hope Disney buys the story and in two years every child in America is going to sleep with a stuffed ‘Slapper’ under one arm. You can read the whole review here, check out the other books here, or buy a copy of your own.

Next come some old friends dressed in new clothes. Lisa Owens Vianni (Formerly of SFEP and now of Golden Gate Audubon) recently found this reference to an article she wrote a few years back for Terrain magazine. It is an interview with unique recycling artist Kathryn Spence who uses ripped portions of her clothing and various fabrics to create life sized wildlife.

In an interview with Lisa Owens Viani the artist explained her love and reason for choosing owls as her subject in her work: “There’s something about owls that just fascinates me. In a way I made them because it was a way for me to have more access to them. Since they are wild birds, I wanted to leave them alone, just look at them from far away and be aware of them, but not destroy habitat or bother them. Making them is my way of reaching them—and for other people to have access to them. It’s not about having an owl; that would be awful. But it was interesting to me to think about bringing these wild things inside—through my pieces—so that people could be with them.” Kathryn pays special attention to positioning of these creatures so they appear close to “the way you see them in the wild.”

Okay, I see owls, pigeons and coyotes. Hmmm what”s missing from her creations? The artist seems delighted to reuse old things in new ways. And the cyclical nature of art, our possessions and wildlife seems very important to her. How’s this for full circle?

What if you bought a bunch of old felt hats at thrift stores, shredded them into pieces and reshaped them back into a beaver! I’m sure we could help you find inspiration if you need it.

Our Actions/Our Estuary

heidi08 Uncategorized September 9, 2009

Guest Blogger: Lisa Owens Viani of the San Francisco Estuary Partnership.

As sea level rises, and the climate changes, how will the San Francisco Bay Estuary and its wetlands, watersheds, and wildlife—including the ever-so-clever, charismatic Martinez beavers—respond? Sea—and Bay and Delta—levels—are predicted to rise as much as four and a half feet by the year 2100. One way of responding to this threat is to make our watersheds more resilient, or better able to withstand change. To do that, we need less hardscape—concrete and pavement—and more green, as in trees, shrubs, reeds, and rushes.

We need to slow, spread, and sink our stormwater runoff (to quote my friend Brock Dolman, of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center) instead of shooting it straight into the Estuary; by slowing, spreading, and sinking all of that water, we replenish groundwater, reduce flashy runoff and erosion, filter pollutants, and create more resilient, more flexible watersheds. We can daylight creeks (dig up and bring those in pipes back above ground), revegetate the ones in concrete channels, open up and restore creek mouths where they enter the Bay in pipes, restore more wetlands—nature’s “sponges” and buffers against sea level rise—and create many more “green stormwater” projects. Beavers, too, could play a big part in a more resilient landscape, helping to recharge groundwater, slow flashy flood flows and stream bank erosion, and restore habitat for our threatened salmonids.

On September 29-October 1, 2009, the Estuary Partnership will examine some of these questions—and many more issues affecting the Estuary—during its 9^th biennial State of the Estuary conference, entitled “Our Actions/Our Estuary.” In addition to keynote speakers from Stanford University, NOAA, and the Pacific Institute who will address climate change, other sessions at the conference will focus specifically on the status of the fish, birds, and other wildlife that use the Estuary, and the status of their habitat. On the second day, watershed restoration activities being promoted by cities surrounding the Bay will be highlighted. Featured cities include San Mateo, Emeryville, Hercules, and San Francisco. Guest speaker Tom Liptan, from Portland, will describe his city’s groundbreaking green stormwater projects, and the Ella Baker Center’s Jakada Imani will talk about how we can put people back to work again around the Bay through green jobs. Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald gives the keynote address that day, sharing lessons learned in the Everglades.

On the third day, scientists and others will address new contaminants of concern in the Bay, how to retrofit our older urban and suburban landscapes in order to tackle water and air quality concerns, and how to deal with the trash epidemic in the Estuary and Pacific Ocean. We’ll learn about the latest efforts to restore subtidal (beneath the water) habitat in the Bay, and from a variety of environmental groups about how they are engaging local communities and students in their watersheds. Click here for the entire program or to register.

Restore it and They Will Come

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, Why We Care August 28, 2008

And Build: Signs of a Healthy Estuary

Today’s guest blogger is Lisa Owens-Viani from the San Francisco Estuary Project. I met Lisa when she contacted me for photos of our beaver family to include in the 2008 State of the Estuary Report. Since then I have been bothering her with questions, which she very kindly answers when she can, or sends them along to others who might know. Read her post in its entirety; she’s a science writer who really understands the relationships between healthy waterways and healthy habitats.

When the beavers first appeared on Alhambra Creek in late 2006, I thought it was a quirky anomaly, probably not a long-lived phenomenon, but hopeful and interesting. Yet almost two years later, they are still here, managing to survive amid humans, flood control, and politics—and even reproducing. I can’t help but wonder if the restoration projects the city, creek advocates, and flood control folks have engaged in over the past decade at the mouth of the creek as well as upstream weren’t part of the enticement for the beavers, particularly the delicious willows planted as part of biotechnical bank stabilization efforts. Now that the paddling, diving, yellow-toothed critters are here—and seem to be content and thriving—we face a challenge: to see whether, even in an urbanized landscape, we can restore these ecosystems for the creatures that once lived in them, and co-exist despite challenges. The high level of public interest in the beavers is certainly a vote for peaceful coexistence, and regulatory and flood control agencies are trying as well, with Martinez City staff helping beaver expert Skip Lisle install a pipe to lower the dam height in a way the beavers wouldn’t object to.

Geographically, the beavers have lodged themselves not only near the mouth of Alhambra Creek, but also mid-Estuary, in the Carquinez Strait “chute” that connects the Bay to the Delta. This area, where the fresher waters of the Delta meet the saltier, ocean-influenced waters from the Bay—the San Francisco Estuary—is the end point of a vast watershed: the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, which flow into the Delta, drain approximately 40 percent of the state. The San Francisco Estuary Project, where I work, is one of 28 estuary projects throughout the United States that are part of the National Estuary Program. Mandated by Congress in 1987 to improve the quality of estuaries of national importance, these programs each establish a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan to meet the goals of Clean Water Act Section 320.

In 1993, the San Francisco Estuary Project completed its Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP). When the CCMP was signed in 1992, 44 signatories representing hundreds of stakeholders pledged to “achieve and maintain an ecologically diverse and productive natural estuarine system.” Like the 27 other national estuary projects, the San Francisco Estuary Project is a forum where region-wide issues are aired, a source of support for policy development and project work on a watershed/ecosystem basis, and a provider of up-to-date information on the San Francisco Bay Delta watershed and the many sub-watersheds that comprise it. Every other year the Estuary Project convenes a “State of the Estuary” conference at which scientists and policy makers present the latest information on the Estuary’s condition. The latest State of the Estuary report—“A Greener Shade of Blue”—can be downloaded at www.sfestuary.org under “Documents.”

The Estuary Project partners with environmental organizations and non-profits, local, state, and federal agencies, and businesses and industry from the 12 counties surrounding the Bay-Delta, and the public to implement the CCMP. Over the Estuary Project’s 20-year history, the Project and its partners have implemented many of the actions in the CCMP and fostered an environment out of which an array of new programs and partnerships have hatched and flourished. The Estuary Project provides funding and technical assistance to agencies, municipalities, and organizations to implement the recommended actions contained in the Management Plan. Each year Estuary Project staff, in partnership with the Implementation Committee, made up of representatives of the Project’s many partners, develop a work plan directing activities for that year. The Friends of the Estuary is the Project’s non-profit partner; Contra Costa Public Works Department’s Mitch Avalon and Friends of Alhambra Creek’s Igor Skaredoff are both active members of its board. The Friends are charged with helping develop public involvement, education, communication, and advocacy programs for the Estuary and serving as a watchdog for CCMP implementation.

Other Estuary Project partners include the state Coastal Conservancy and the Bay Area Open Space Council. In July, after conducting a public survey, the agencies chose the slogan “Nature Within Reach” for a new Bay Area license plate. The money from license plate purchases will go towards more open space preservation, trails, and wetland restoration. More wetland restoration in turn will hopefully mean more protection against climate change and sea level rise, and more habitat for more wildlife. “Nature Within Reach” won the survey, I think, because so many of us in urban areas value living near the Estuary and its wildness—with opportunities to see wildlife like the beavers close to home.

Alhambra Creek’s beavers may be a sign that the Alhambra Creek watershed is healthy enough to support creatures like this, at least in part due to the restoration work done by the city, Public Works Department, and Friends of Alhambra Creek. The Urban Creeks Council and others have spotted steelhead in the creek as well, another sign of health. The beavers and the steelhead show that restoration efforts can pay off: that one watershed can make a difference, and that we can restore the Estuary by restoring its watersheds, large or small. As Mitch Avalon puts it, “The local watersheds feed the Bay. It’s like a human body—if you’re eating poisoned food, your system isn’t going to be healthy. These watersheds provide rearing habitat for species that go down and live in the Bay—you’ve got to look at it as a whole system.” For more on the restoration work that has taken place on Alhambra Creek see http://sfep.abag.ca.gov/pdfs/newsletters/insert_june06.pdf.

Watch for an in-depth story on the beavers by well-known local natural history writer Joe Eaton in the October ESTUARY newsletter (download past issues at www.sfestuary.org). Every other month, ESTUARY presents the latest news on Bay-Delta water issues, restoration efforts, and the many programs, actions, voices, and viewpoints that contribute to implementing the CCMP. To receive the October issue as part of a free, three-month trial subscription of ESTUARY, contact Paula Trigueros at the Estuary Project ptrigueros@waterboards.ca.gov.