Martinez – Worth A Dam

Never send a city worker to do a beaver expert’s job…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? August 8, 2015

Northampton will install rocks to baffle beavers at Fitzgerald Lake

Hark back to 2013, when beavers dammed the area around the outlet pipe that sends water from the lake under the dam and into the Broad Brook. The lake rose about two feet that year, forcing the city to install a wire-mesh fence around the pipe, temporarily holding the beavers at bay.

Ever industrious, the beavers eventually burrowed under the fence, clogging the system again and raising the level of the lake. Some of the trails along the shore were even submerged this year.

Wow, Northampton MA is 20 minutes away from Mike Callahan. I can’t believe he installed a fence beavers burrowed under in 2 years, can you? Let’s use the search function on the website to see if it gives any clues. Here’s one from 2013:

“Once the new fence is in by the city’s contractor I’ll be installing a Flexible Pond Leveler through their fence.”

Ahhhh so it was a “I’ll-save-some-$$-by-doing-this-myself, how-hard-can-it-be” job. Gosh and now you have to spend a grand lowering rocks into the lake to hold down the silly fence that you installed, because otherwise Mike’s excellent flow device will get plugged. Have you learned anything by this? Are you going to stick to the experts next time?

Mike said at the time that this lake was the site of the FIRST flex pipe he ever installed – in 1998. How’s that for a history lesson!

Our dinner guests last night were Bob & Jane Kobres from Georgia. Here they are at the table with our awesome chef and FRO’s beautiful beaver watercolor in the background. He’s the retired librarian from UGA that always sends us beaver research and discretely points out egregious typos so that your reading experience will be slightly less marred. He and his wife made their first trip to California (first time ever) for the beaver festival. (No, really)

Every business they visited in Martinez they made a point of telling was stunned. And they just did a beaver presentation at the children’s program in their church. How awesome is that? At dinner we realized they are truly unique folks: Jane is the daughter of a white baptist deacon from Tennessee that voted for Obama twice.

(How small is that demographic?)

They had a great time watching Bob Rust put together the wattle beaver, and Bob filmed most of it so I hope we can get it on the website soon. They shared a similar knowledgeable quirkiness that I am starting to recognize in beaver lovers. (Myself included). It’s amazing that we have had three separate visits from Georgia in the past few years, and the Blue Heron Preserve in Atlanta is now talking about possibly doing a beaver festival. (Be still my heart!) They went to Muir Beach on their visit and boldly put their bare feet in the Pacific, as well strolling around Muir Woods and the John Muir house here in Martinez.

We’re just about finished with the final exchanges for the silent auction, meeting a lot of folk wednesday at the bridge, and everything is finally put away or tallied. I sent the followup receipts and paperwork for the grants yesterday, and am finally starting to feel done with everything. I got this fun photo from our bag piper yesterday, Dave Kwinter, who said he had a great time at the festival.

Of course I warned him to use caution when saying he enjoyed it, or else we will certainly ask him again!

Butorides Virescens

heidi08 New Species, Recent Sightings August 23, 2010

Did you watch that video of the green heron below? There are several remarkable things about it. Green Herons are shy, secretive birds that are often hard to get a good view of. First look at him rapidly approaching and stretching that huge neck. You almost never see green herons looking ‘long necked’, they usually look like hunched craggy bird-grandmas. Then see how he’s stalking towards the beaver kit, and trying to get as big as possible to scare him away.

Last nights visit from the weirdly territorial green heron got me reading about these remarkable birds. I sadly couldn’t find any articles about crazy green heron chasing beaver but that didn’t stop me from looking. The coolest thing I found out about them is that they are considered one of the few “tool using birds”. Green Herons use bait to catch their fish. Check it out.

Apparently they’ll drop bread, earthworms, or insect parts into the water and wait until a fish comes to nibble it. They crouch in a low ball so the fish doesn’t see them, and so their neck looks short and curved and not at all threatening. When the fish comes they flash their beak and snap it up it. Unlike human fishermen, they are smart enough to use the same bait over and over again.

Not every green heron uses this technique every time it fishes apparently but its widespread enough to make the books. After watching last nights display I am no longer surprised by anything these feathered carnivores do. Or the sight of these strangers stopping by city hall this morning. Far be it from me to comment on the fact that the Martinez City Council doesn’t usually meet in August. Another Special Meeting?

Don’t worry, Jon made sure they all got home safe. Oh and thanks, Gary, for this. If you haven’t sent in your vote for the park name, make sure you do so today!

Come Join Us!!!

heidi08 Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers August 7, 2010

Truth is the first casualty

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

Rumor is that the losing council members of Oshawa’s “don’t-kill-the-beavers” vote are directing staff to prepare a cost statement that will prove that saving those dam beavers is too expensive. There has been a request for us to tell them what it really costs and prepare a materials list. I offered my best initial advice, suggested that they add up all the money spent on trapping for contrast, but then thought better of my own efforts.

Bemoaning Beaver Expenses is never about what’s true.

I can remember the wasted effort to control the city’s record of the expenses for our beavers: OT staff hours for uselessly taking down the dam, 5000 for 11 police officers at the November meeting to control a potentially rowdy public, money spent for them to “research” non-solutions and don’t forget the vast sums spent on consultants who said the beavers were a liability; a grand total of 75,000 dollars delivered by staff to the subcommittee. Not to mention the half a million spent on pointless sheet pile a year later. The city was hoping that the massive dollar sign would convince martinez that the beavers weren’t worth it. It worked for a few citizens, but mostly didn’t matter.

(People are used to cities wasting money.)

In the end, (and I can feel my IQ dropping as I saw this…) it is less about what’s true and more about what’s popular. This is the great life lesson I learned from beavers. I told our Oshawa friends to do some basic work preparing a materials list but to stay focused on motivating public opinion. Making the beavers more friends was going to do more to save them than struggling to prove they will be cheap.

“Yes, Yes! My City Said Yes, Yes!”

heidi08 Festival, Uncategorized December 31, 2010

(With apologies to Eddie Cantor.) I just can’t think of any better musical number to announce the results of the Parks, Marina, Recreation & Library Commission meeting last night. They were reviewing the final request for the Third Annual Beaver Festival this August 7th to be held in the still nameless (but destined-to-be-called Beaver Park) in downtown Martinez. The commission took a brief look at the application, spoke in glowing terms about the tile wall and the events popularity, and gave a unanimous thumbs up! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

Later that night I got an email from Shell that the festival will receive a sponsorship of 500 dollars from the oil company. All in all it was a wildly positive beaver day, and it needed a big, big hollywood theme song.