sweetie

Beaver loyalist Lory Bruno has been in Tahoe this week, where our good friends from the Sierra Wildlife Coalition have spotted both a new beaver dam AND a new beaver kit! They toured the area on a sunny afternoon and I thought I’d share this. (Shhh, don’t tell our beavers they’d be SO JEALOUS!!!!!!!!)

Sierra Wildlife Coalition Visit new Tahoe Beaver Dam

In the mean time, while her sisters go to the ball, Cinderella has been slaving away sewing the new beaver flag that children will be asked to illustrate at Sunday’s Peace Day event at the Oakland Zoo. That’s right, our own FRogard Butler has volunteered to be the Besty Ross of Beavers and has created this eye catching emblem. Imagine it covered with creatures after the children get to populate it!

flag1 — New Worth A Dam starter-flag by FRo

She made sure to add this mascot to give the piece heart. I can’t wait to see what it becomes.

And after I sent Sherri’s epic article around yesterday Stan Pietrowski (the method behind the state of the beaver Madness-meaning a technical and announcing wonder) offered to help her put up a website and they’re talking domain names as we speak. Soon we may get to visit Sherri’s beaver relocating website, which will be cool. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with EVERYTHING printed in the Westwood article and I can understand why. I’m trying to decide whether its indiscretions were the fault of dazzled adoration or grimly unconscious sexism but it is still MOSTLY good for Sherri and good for beavers so I won’t complain.

Just show me the article that talks about Skip Lisle’s sex life and we’ll call it even.

Often Worth A Dam works to persuade other cities to be ‘smarter than a beaver’ and to implement flow devices as a way to control flooding fears instead of trapping (or in the case of KB – shooting). Well now we’ve been invited to do some persuading in person. Lory will be driving to Tahoe tomorrow and attending the above meeting to answer questions about the feasibility of beaver management in a low-lying area. Folk concerned about the beavers are working with Tahoe Wildlife Care to convince the powers that be that other solutions are available.

It’s a great opportunity to help out some neighbors and a key relationship to pursue in the “are beavers native” argument. Also plenty of out-of-towners travel to tahoe and would benefit from learning about better solutions. Skip Lisle reports that he has done some work for the US department of Forestry up there in the past, and we know that Tahoe Wildlife Care just bought Mike’s DVD and showed it to public works, so we’re hopeful a solution is in the offing.

It coincides with something I’ve been thinking about since the festival and that is a scholarship/grant “matching funds” program where Worth A Dam could contribute up to 1000 a year towards helping communities save their beavers. With the festival and local support we can actually afford it, (even IF we get around to installing interpretive signs this year and go to the Oregon conference). Obviously hiring Skip Lisle to come out from Vermont cost a great deal more than than 1000 dollars, but I think its a good way to ‘kick start’ a community response and the loosen purse strings of financially cautious areas. Our city certainly didn’t have funding to spare but the powerful public response motivated a better investment. Our grant could help raise the level of awareness and support in other communities. The idea would be based on locally matched funds and could go towards installing culvert fences or flow devices that allow cities to keep beavers and wetlands humanely.

All in all, Kings Beach seems an ideal location to try out our new ‘beaver saving system’. So Lory will travel with that in mind and hopefully it can motivate positive action at the meeting.