All I know about these photos is that they were taken by David Dawson in Carmichael CA, posted to Louis Kemper’s blog on river otters, and sent to me by Megan Isadore of the River Otter Ecology Project. Carmichael is just outside Ranch Cordova so generally not a very safe place to be a beaver. But these are lovely photos and he certainly looks happy enough.
I was searching around for images of ponds. I came across this lovely one that seemed to be missing someone important. Ahem.
I posted it on FB and said as much. Which prompted our beaver friend Art Wolinsky of New Hamshire to fix it with photoshop. Much better. 
My enthusiasm must have egged him on because then he put this short film together.I liked it so much I talked him into adding the last bit. I think you’ll know why.
We are having quite an adventure in beaver-less Mendocino. (Some were introduced in little river in the 20’s but they have mostly died off or were killed. We did see one beaver once on Big River nearly 20 years ago when we were canoeing. And were rewarded with are very first tail slap.
Ahh memories.
No beavers now, but we did have a special visitor yesterday, which I was told by Megan Isadore of the River Otter Ecology Project is a Sheep Moth. Isn’t she beautiful?
So here’s the scoop on Ranger Rick. I heard yesterday from Brock Dolman of the OAEC and he said that they were contacted for a short piece about beavers and drought in California. I also heard from Suzi Eszterhas that our beaver article won’t be until next summer. So yes, beavers will be in RR next month, but only a little story and not our big 8-page story, which will still come next June or July.
Yesterday Rickipedia included me in an email discussion he is having with the authors of this book who are consulting him about how to research the historic prevalence of beaver in the Santa Cruz River.
UA-PressWebbBetancourtJohnsonTurner-1Seems there aren’t many remains there either. And we’re surprised that beaver bones didn’t survive in waterways 170 years after being burned and discarded? How many fish bones did the archeologists find? Or otter bones?
Speaking of otters, there’s a really wonderful piece in the October issue of Bay Nature that features our friends at the River Otter Ecology Project and their work to document population dynamics.
We’re peering down into a ravine carved out by Lagunitas Creek, looking for North American river otters. According to official California Department of Fish and Wildlife records, last updated in 1995, we are officially fools; there are no otters anywhere near here. They are “non-occurring,” wiped out from most of the Bay Area long ago by trapping, pollution, lack of prey, loss of habitat—any and all of the difficulties that wild animals contend with in urban areas.
But according to the data collected in the last four years by Megan Isadore and her corps of citizen otter spotters, these little fish-eating predators are all over the place, particularly here in Marin County. On the website of her small nonprofit River Otter Ecology Project, the reports of sightings pour in, from anglers and dog-walkers and nature lovers and amazed suburbanites: Hey, I just saw an otter! As of 2016, ROEP has catalogued more than 1,730 sightings and added to that tally close to 5,000 camera-trap videos and photos and roughly 1,300 samples of otter scat.
The fact that otters are back in the Bay Area of their own accord without any reintroduction program to help them looks like a reason to declare victory. It seems to be proof that cleaning up watersheds makes a difference, that restoration works, that species will bounce back if we only push hard enough. “Their recovery in the Bay Area is, I believe, the result of conservation and restoration activities: the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, all these things we 
ROEP now counts otters in two ways. Anyone can report an otter sighting online by providing enough details to rule out mistakes. But that only tells you where otters are. In order to get other dimensions of information—what they’re doing, what their niche might be—the group also trains and sends out volunteers who visit specific field sites weekly throughout the summer and early fall, when mothers have brought their new pups out from their dens and most other otters tend to stay put in their territories. Using an app designed to capture otter data, volunteers record the locations of signs (latrines, paw prints, tail drag marks, slides, dens), maintain motion-activated camera traps, and review the footage to document family life and behavior. (The cameras have caught other creatures too: bobcats, a badger, a merlin, baby foxes, and once a woman skinny-dipping.)
Isadore sees otters as a way in to understanding relationships between other things—how otter prey like the endangered coho rise and fall, whether local improvements in water quality outweigh the new pressures of climate change for otters. 
As an animal that relies on land and water, fish and fowl, it’s a species that can tie a lot together.
That’s how it works, Isadore says later: Efforts have ripples and consequences that you never anticipate. By showing a high-school student a video, you might awaken an interest in art and environment. By cleaning up a watershed, you just might find yourself surrounded by otters. “I want people to understand we have the ability to work for positive effects, as well as [have] the negative effects,” she says. “I want people to believe we have the ability to change things. That’s what I’m constantly trying to get across.”
Great work team Megan! We really didn’t realize otters were missing because we always saw them on our canoe trips (in Mendocino county) or at Jon’s work (On the Delta). This is really an outstanding and well-written article to promote your remarkable work and be inspirational to others who want to start citizen science of their own. We’re proud to say we knew you when. This is great promotion for ROEP and otters, and should help drive attention (and funding) your way. I personally am thrilled that otters can serve as the ambassadors to our creeks systems and get folks thinking of water health.
I may have ulterior motives.
(Mind you…the Martinez Beavers only merited a single page BN article after being missing from the entire bay area for 150 years and never got mentioned again even though we did publish ground-breaking research on historic prevalence and start a festival that has 2000 attendees, and win the John Muir Conservation education award (a year after you), complete a mural and get added to the congressional record, but never mind.)
I’m not jealous. Why do you ask?
When does a beaver change from our national animal to a damnable building machine? When they hear running water, according to Tom Purdy, a local expert on the chew-happy critter.
“Scientists have actually got beavers to try and start building dams by playing the sound of running water in an empty room,” Purdy told London Community News Monday (Dec. 31).
Purdy will be making the inaugural presentation of the 2013 Nature in the City lecture series, Urban Beavers, on January 15. Scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Wolf Performance Hall at the Central branch of the London Public Library (LPL) on Dundas Street, Purdy said his 45-minute talk will explore the “natural and unnatural history” of the beloved rodent.
Urban beavers? That’s MY riff! Talking for 45 minutes about beavers in cities at a nature center? And you’re not me? This is one of those moments where I’m both affronted and oddly delighted to be replaced! I can share. It’s a big world. It’s going to take all kinds of voices to deliver the message.
Assuming we’re delivering the same message?
Purdy taught environmental science at the high school level for 17 years, and spent over a decade as a resource manager at Pinery Provincial Park, where there is a large beaver population.
“My main emphasis will be on what beavers are really like: how much they actually eat, how much and where they actually dam and whether or not we can control any of that,” he said. “And to explore the biological/ecological benefit to having them around.”
Beavers have been an issue in the north end of the city, where they have destroyed swathes of trees, chewed through golf course irrigation pipes and their dams have caused unwanted flooding on commercial and industrial properties.
Purdy said he wants to give some solid facts for everyone to chew over – whether they think the beavers should be left alone, or wiped off the face of the earth, and everyone in between.
Hmm…I still can’t tell if we’re playing on the same team. Sometimes in order to sound open minded you argue from both sides before stating your actual point, I get that. But I get worried when I hear the words FACTS and BEAVERS in the same sentence. They are so rarely accurately paired. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve heard folks pretend to be even-handed right before they explain that beavers ruin habitat for fish and spoil riparian borders. I’ve also heard very beaver-friendly folk go a long ways out of their way not to sound like a ‘hugger’ so that people will take them seriously. What’s the Purdy’s deal?
Purdy said he would focus on the beaver in three ways: first, on its history in North America dating back to pre-European/First Nations contact, our human relationship with the beaver and what features make the critter, which has a natural habitat that stretches from Texas to the Arctic Circle – so unique.
Uh-oh. what about the important 4th way? You know, the way where they are crucial wetlands creators and responsible for enormous biodiversity affecting fish, bird and wildlife populations, filtering pollutions and raising the water table? That way. Aren’t you going to talk about that?
The beaver topic came about as a result of listener reviews from last year’s lecture series. Tripp said when the organizing team was going over feedback cards, the beaver popped up a number of times as a desirable future subject.
“So this is the first time we’ve had to beat the ground so to speak and find someone who can speak about the beaver!
London is just a 2 hour drive from Toronto, where they have had Sherri Tippie speak twice at the fur-bearer defender’s conference and Mike Callahan came last year. I’m having a hard time believing that they couldn’t find anyone who knew about beavers before. Still, I’m glad it’s on the venue. I wrote Mr. Purdy about the benefits of our urban beavers, but haven’t heard back yet. It is almost always better to talk about things than not to talk about things, so I’m very hopeful.
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Oh and our good friends at the River Otter Ecology Project are in the chronicle. (again) You should stop by and read about sutro sam and their enthusiastic efforts.
The otter, dubbed Sutro Sam, has been hanging out in a large spring-fed pool along the rocky coast, munching on the many overgrown goldfish dumped into the pond by residents over the years.
“This otter is the first otter recorded in decades and decades in San Francisco, and as far as I know he is the only otter in San Francisco,” said Megan Isadore, the co-founder and director of outreach and education for the River Otter Ecology Project, which is tracking otter sightings around the Bay Area. “He’s a beautiful animal, well fed. He appears to be perfectly happy and not afraid of people”
How about an article next about Berrellessa Beaver?
One thing I was particularly grateful for this year I thought I’d share with you today. It has to do with our good friends at the River Otter Ecology Project. The brilliant and compelling Megan Isadore was able to give a very successful address recently at the Randall Museum for the San Francisco Naturalist Society. It’s the natural history museum in the city and very education focused and beloved.
Because they were interested in doing the same thing for the Rossmoor Nature Association we were able to swap contacts in a way that got Worth A Dam an invitation to present there next summer! Right before the festival our beavers will be featured in all their glory! I thought I’d better start studying up and put together this new species list.
(For those of you following along at home, that’s 15 new species (at least) since the beavers arrival in 2006.)
Which reminds me of this prescient child’s contribution:
