Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

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BEAVER CHRISTMAS CHEER ALL OVER AGAIN

Beavers December 25, 2018

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have a splendid day of celebration with friends and loved ones. I wish you cheer that’s not full of glitter and sparkle, but brimming with hygge so that your spirits are warmed, replenished and ready to meet the new year. It will be a bright year for beavers, I am sure, but one in which much will be asked of the brave souls who defend them!

I wrote this more than a decade ago and I still it still makes me smile. Click the video if you want to sing round the terminal with your family.


On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Two adult beavers and A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Three watching women<
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eleven cameras snapping
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve hatching turtles
Eleven cameras snapping
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

Ahh those were the days, so early on and so much to learn! There’s even a nutria photo in this video made a few months later – that’s young we all were once upon a time…

This is my new favorite beaver christmas card for obvious reasons.

BEAVER CHRISTMAS CHEER

Beavers December 25, 2017

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have a splendid day of celebration with friends and loved ones. I wish you cheer that’s not full of glitter and sparkle, but brimming with hygge so that your spirits are warmed, replenished and ready to meet the new year. It will be a bright year for beavers, I am sure, but one in which much will be asked of the brave souls who defend them!

I wrote this more than a decade ago and I still it still makes me smile. Click the video if you want to sing round the terminal with your family.


On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Two adult beavers and A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Three watching women<
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eleven cameras snapping
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve hatching turtles
Eleven cameras snapping
Ten news reporters
Nine children laughing
Eight eager muskrats
Seven on committee
Six baby ducklings
Five City Council!
Four furry kits
Three watching women
Two adult beavers and
A Dam in Alham-b-ra Creek

Ahh those were the days, so early on and so much to learn! There’s even a nutria photo in this video made a few months later – that’s young we all were once upon a time…

Well, maybe beaver Christmases don’t inspire you. Maybe this is more the carol you are looking for this holiday season. Have a glass of eggnog and sing this with your friends! 🙂

It’s been ten years since that DAM meeting!

Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, In the News, Who's saving beavers now? November 7, 2017

beaversaryTen years ago today there was no Worth A Dam, no website, and no beaver community. There were only a bunch of citizens who thought it was a bad idea for their city to kill their beavers and showed up at a meeting to tell them so. This short clip of the UK documentary Beavers Las Vegas, produced by the independent film company Middle Child Productions, shows only the barest HINT of how many passionate and persuasive comments occurred. The clip I put together isn’t very long, but you should definitely watch all the way to the end to understand why it was so successful in changing the city council’s plan.

That Dam Meeting! from Heidi Perryman on Vimeo.

A handful of very passionate folks gathered at my home right before the meeting to discuss strategy. Former city council member Bill Wainwright brought port from the local city vineyard to share for courage, and gave us lots of advice about how to pitch our message persuasively. I spent the week handing out these stamped opinion cards and I’m sure hope the city got several.

card

That night, having never spoken at a public meeting before, and after barely being brave enough to call Sherri Tippie and ask for advice about relocation, I delivered the following comments:

I’m a lifelong resident of Martinez and a downtown homeowner.  While I would much rather have the beavers relocated than killed, I feel the city has failed to capitalize on a remarkable opportunity and let us all down.  In this case the DFG made some unique concessions and creative solutions, the Lindsay museum agreed to go above and beyond its calling, but the city of Martinez did neither. 

Although it has been widely reported that the city “Tried to think of another way to manage flood risk” the evidence for this is not strong.  The city Manager’s report does not even mention water-flow or leveling devices.  In fact these techniques have been used successfully for years and are well researched and understood.  Reports show a 93-100% satisfaction with them.  There is other evidence of neglect: the hydrology report does not mention tides and describes the dam as a “concrete weir” which of course it is not.  Finally, no report has looked at the likely environmental impact of removing the dam and the possible effect on new and returning species that depend on its waters: such as the famous baby otter, or the less famous but still endangered California pond turtle which has been in evidence.

If the city is determined to remove the beavers, they should be aware that successful relocation is not uncomplicated or well understood.  Since the state of California does not routinely allow relocation, there are few trappers trained in its use.  Hancock traps must be employed, and when misused can still result in harm or death.  Snare traps can cause invisible internal injuries.  Beavers have no internal temperature regulation and are there for highly vulnerable to hypothermia.  Families must be caught and released together.  I have spoken extensively with the nationally renowned expert in this area, Sherri Tippie, and have outlined her suggestions as well.  I submit them along with reports on flow control for their review.

 Many cities face these crises with technology, creativity and compassion. I wish Martinez was among them.

In the end it didn’t matter what I said. What mattered is what 50 people got up and said, and what 200 people applauded and cheered. The council sat frozen like four [Janet was in China, thank goodness] deer in headlights and we could tell we had all their attention. We knew the meeting was special while it was happening, getting more remarkable with every comment and cheer of solidarity. No one left early. And no one got tired. Nearly four hours sped by. To me it felt like a huge electrical charging station that filled me with unexpected energy for the road ahead. Remember, there was an offer on the table to ‘relocate’ the beavers, and I truly thought I might be the ONLY person to show up and disagree with that.

People sometimes assume that I somehow organized or ‘made’ that meeting. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

That meeting made me.

news

Martinez Remembers

Beaver Art, Beavers, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, In the News, Who's saving beavers now? October 1, 2017
original dam 2007
Original Martinez Beaver Dam 2007

Am I supposed to believe it’s October? The weather certainly does because we had soup last night and were actually cold on the back deck. But I seem to remember the beaver festival happened what seems like a minute ago. Good lord. With moving the next one to the end of June that leaves only 9 months until it all happens again. Whose crazy idea was that?

Meanwhile, I’m working hard on my upcoming webinar for Fur Bearer Defenders. The technology requires that I must use a simple PPT with no video so that means I have to put everything together from scratch.  In doing so I came across a few wonderful photos I thought I’d share. They were stored in an archaic segment of the website I didn’t even know existed, so it’s wonderful to see them again. Above is our original dam, shot looking upstream from the Marina Vista Bridge in January 2007 – before the flow device, before the controversy and before kits were ever born.

city installing
City helping Skip Lisle Install the flow device – 1-2008

I also found this nice one from when public works decided to be helpful and assist in the beaver pipe installation. I had to work that day so I have no idea who this photo belongs to. And all these were stored for safe keeping on a computer that as it happened became very unsafe so they were lost to the ages. Apparently the website used to load things to something called Apache?

skip installing lg
Skip Lisle removes dam to install flow device

I’m sure the fluttering pulses of Martinez secretaries are very happy that I found this one. It shows Skip hard at work. I believe the appreciative fans at the Gazette took a million photos of these warmer shirtless moments, such that I was privately told later that the gay editor suggested that Skip should do a calendar. But those photos  too were all lost on the photographers hard drive explosion so they are gone forever. Thanks to “Apache” and the printed version, a sample remains.

Skip gazette-001
Front Page News

Quite a walk through memory lane isn’t it? Usually when I present video I have some nice shots of beavers doing their thing around admiring humans, so I was looking for something like that among my stills. I found this wonderful photo from Suzi Eszterhas which for some reason I hadn’t seen before.  I know the faces are cute, but look to the left and see what they’re watching below the dam.  Can you believe how lucky Martinez used to be?

boys watching
Children watch beaver below dam: Suzi Eszternhas

Willow Pass Beavers

Beavers September 27, 2017

Recently Updated14Good news from the destroyed Martinez dams. Last night Moses went out to check on their stewards and saw the little beaver calmly swimming about. I also heard back from our local CDFG warden that no depredation permit had been requested in the area, which is  very good news. He speculated it might be the last effort by the city to clean up the creek before the rains came and their not allowed in. Of course there were still felled trees, shopping carts and bags of trash in the area, but at least they got rid of that pesky pair of beaver dams!

We’re just glad the little fellow is fine. I’m going to assume the parents are too. Thanks, Moses.

I personally found the news of a new beaver dam in Concord too irresistible and made Jon drive us out there to explore. Turns out the VERY best place to see this new creation is on the Willow Pass Rd bridge which stretches across the actual walnut creek.   There aren’t many  trees (willow or otherwise) in the area so these beavers must be living on reeds and grasses. The dam on the left is more established, but the one on the right is just starting out and letting a lot of water through. Very cool to see in the middle of shops and freeways though.

DSC_7743Whenever I see a dam like this, obviously done in two stages, I wonder if two different beavers were working at the same time? Or if a parent was working and the youngster just wanted to copy? I especially wonder about them not meeting up in the middle.  Is it wisdom or haphazard that makes the dams constructed on a jagged line instead of a straight one? I have to assume it’s better in some way for them, easier or more durable, since they are not known for wasting energy! Here’s a closer look at both halves, but I can’t imagine you not going to look for yourself, because it’s very close to REI and World Market anyway.

east west small

Of course it made me think of this song, written and performed by Lynn Quinones with some of our favorite festival friends.

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