12 min version: Summer Dam Removed to Create Fish Refuge – Camp Meeker Dam Removal from Ben Zolno on Vimeo.

Beaver friend Brock Dolman of OAEC’s Water Institute sends this newly launched video telling the dynamic story of creek restoration and dam removal in Camp Meeker. You probably know where this is located. Have you ever driven to Occidental from Guerneville on the Bohemian Highway? As you wind through the twisted redwood drive you see parts of a lovely creek along your right. The creek used to dead end in a swimming hole that was the center to the early community of Camp Meeker, and salmon would have to go hiking back down the water and look for another route. This video is a smart, engaging look at how to pull the community together with environmental restoration. Here’s Brock’s invitation to see for yourself.

For those who have been following the Dutch Bill Creek Dam Removal and Restoration Project, our construction partner Prunuske Chatham, Inc. has just started the implementation of Phase II to complete this project. Today, Michael Fawcett, PhD and Sierra Cantor (GRRCD Ecologist) moved hundreds of fish (steelhead) upstream of the project to a safe refuge downstream, and construction should commence by next week.

As a kick off to this final phase of the project, I invite you to view the shortened version of the video and then come down and check out the site. When its done, come get your feet wet – and next year hopefully come see the salmon happily spawning.

Make sure you have the sound on – the input from the community and our restoration partners really make the video into a story worth listening to. Please feel free to distribute as you wish. The longer version (also on our website) is equally entertaining, if not more so – its just, well, longer….

Nice work all! And great soundtrack by the way. (Do I recognize the music from the Secret of Roan Inish? Gosh i loved that movie…)

Well, no cranes needed for Alhambra Creek at the moment. I’m off to meet with city staff about the mom-beaver & kits memorial by artist Paul Craig. Nearly two months have gone by since we lost our beloved matriarch. (Is that all? It seems like a million years ago). Hopefully we’ll have her image displayed before too long. Wish me luck!

Update:

Met with Bob Cellini and city staff who were enthusiastic about the beavers and willing to take on responsibolity for hanging them on the sheetpile themselves. We offered suggestions that were well received and left the adorable metal beavers in capable hands. Look for them soon coming to a sheetpile wall near you!

The mistress of this website had a computer hazard this week which meant there could be no grand discussions of beavers or the fur trade, only panicked snatches from the laptop. A very nice man, recommended by beaver friend LB, came to perform herculean repairs and shook his finger gravely at the piles and piles of dusty beaver information in the hard drive. It’s time for a new system he said.

Preaching to the choir, I said! Bring on the new wide open spaces to fill with beavers! So our first computer, in 1987, had a whopping 20 MB hard drive and cost us equivalent of half a new car. This new machine will be equipped with a Terabyte, which is equal to 1,048,576 (1,024²) megabytes and cost us less than a new set of tires. That must be progress! I guess that should be enough room for all kinds of beaver footage!

And speaking of extra bytes, we were noticing this week that mom beaver always goes home in the morning with a little something to nibble on. She carries a branch for mid-day snacking, and brings it usually from great distances. It’s a unique behavior, nobody else does it with such regularity. We aren’t sure if she just gets hungry in the interim, or maybe is conditioned from a lifetime of kit rearing to bring something for a snack, but it helps identify her. If you stop by the dam one morning and see a beaver coming back with something in its mouth, check its tail for a notch, because its probably mom!