View from Beaver Mountain

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? August 16, 2014

552882_1 — Sentinel photo by BRADLEY KREITZER
The Beavertown Beaver rides a motorcycle in the Beavertown Centennial Parade during Hillbilly Fever Days Thursday evening in Beavertown. Beavertown Borough is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Mind you, this Pennsylvania Beavertown mascot looks nothing like a beaver, but I suppose it looks exactly like the kind of beaver who would ride a motorcycle. And besides, I’m in the mood for a parade. A lot of very good things about beavers have been happening, and last night it was making me feel a little dizzy. So let’s celebrate!

Tale 1:

Let’s start close to home. We found out about the beavers in Rodeo from the environmental scientist of Phillips 66, who’s property they’re on. She wanted to talk to us about flow devices so they could keep the beavers there. No, I’m not kidding. Jon went out and saw the site and gave her Mike’s DVD. And she went to work persuading her employers to go for it. This was a while ago.

Recently, her efforts were successful and she got the go ahead to install. I introduced her to Kevin Swift from OAEC who trained with Mike Callahan. Things were all in place but the county commissioners of Rodeo got cold feet and told her that Phillips 66 needed to add a rider covering the city in case something went wrong. I asked around and everyone said that was unheard of, and that liability insurance for the installer was all that was needed. Things looked kind of stuck, then I met Fran.

She approached me at the beaver festival and said she wanted to help the beavers in Rodeo where she lived and had been watching them. What could she do? I told her what I knew and introduced her to the woman I’d been working with. She said she knew the commissioners well, and would get on the job of persuading them otherwise. She was a big fan of the community-based pressure Martinez used and she had many tricks up her sleeve.

With two strong allies for these beavers (who could be Martinez progeny!) I am very, very hopeful for Rodeo.

Tale 2:

Our VP who works in Cordelia at International Bird Rescue has been keeping her eye on a beaver who has been flooding a road near Suisun. She has heard that a Cal Trans biologist has been unplugging his dam so that he won’t need to be trapped, and she’s wanted to connect with him. Recently a very happy accident fixed that problem. I’ll let her tell you about it.

Timing is everything, especially when there is an unexpected schedule change that led me to finding this injured Golden Eagle. it also gave me the chance to meet the Cal Trans biologist I’ve been trying to find for months because of a local beaver issue in the same area. He was also the one to help free the bird from the barbed wire fence.

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So Cheryl can help the nice biologist find out what he needs to know to keep that beaver from flooding the road. Which means one less dead beaver, and since Caltrans is a big organization and can’t have too many biologists, this might mean less dead beavers all over California.

Tale 3:

You met Rusty and Hank at the beaver festival. They are among the heroes looking out for the beavers in Napa. Well the other day at the dam, Rusty met a gentleman he thought he recognized, so when he got home he googled him. He was pretty certain he was the former mayor of Napa coming to watch the beavers.

(And let me interject and ask you to guess how many times the current mayor of Martnez has come to watch the beavers? I’ll give you a hint, it’s a round number. Just sayin’.)

The next night he met him again and was told he was right. Not only was he the prior mayor he is a sitting county commissioner. He thought the beavers were incredible to watch, noticed the amazing wildlife, asked for more information about beavers, said he had planned to come to our festival, and knew the developer of the land next to the creek and would ask that access stay open to the public when the hotel was built. Rusty gave him info about beavers, told him about our website, and then gave him the records of the three depredation permits pulled in Napa county. Which the commissioner said he’d look into.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know how it is. You plug along from day to day trying to make a tiny difference in the lives of beavers, and wondering if what you do matters at all. And then one day you wake up and look around and you are surrounded by an army of foot soldiers doing the same thing. You aren’t the only one anymore, there is a steadily advancing troop of beaver advocates spreading out from Martinez like an water seeping through a towel.

And suddenly everything looks a lot easier.

Napa Beaver Drama Unfolds

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental June 21, 2014

night heron with fish — Black-crowned Night Heron catching large-mouthed bass in the Napa Beaver Pond – Photo: Hank Miller

A lot is happening with our new friends at the Napa beavers. They are getting mink visits, amazing night heron and great blue heron photos, and one of their two kits is sick. We noticed him very listless in a video Rusty sent on Wednesday and he was out during the day on Friday. A rescue worker tried to pick him/her up but he rallied long enough to give her the slip. Rusty saw him last night, going into and out of the lodge, and looking slightly more lively. We spoke with the excellent beaver rehabber Cher Button-Dobmeier from the Abbe-Freeland center in NY, Mean while Sonoma wildlife is on alert, and there has been a lot of discussion back and forth over whether/when to intervene, and when to let nature take its course. At the moment the decision seems to be if he’s out during the day pick him up.

It made me remember that our first year we had a kit die (the one they found out was blind) and the next year lost two to what we later learned was round worm parasite. I was prepared for it to be the same every year, but it hasn’t happened since. It made me wonder if kits born to newish parents are more vulnerable to infection/parasite? Even when our mom was dying her final kits grew up healthy. But our new beaver mom seems young, and her kits are healthy, so that wouldn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a habitat thing – more recently colonized habitat caries greater risk of transmission? And the risk decreases over time? Or maybe it’s just a fluke? sick kit rescue The flurry of activity – trauma and discovery- reminds me of our early days, and how amazing it was to watch the blooming Alhambra Creek come to life lo those many years ago. Remember how surprised we were when Moses first saw the mink?

All of which helps make the case that beaver ponds create thriving ecosystems with massive biodiversity. Here’s a nice article this morning from Massachusetts of all places that proves it!

Penthouses built high over the water

This week Stream Team photographer Judy Schneider has taken the lead with a domestic scene of beauty. The feathered family photographed is on and around a rough nest of sticks high in a beaver-drowned White Pine. Most area heron rookeries are above beaver impoundments.

Why don’t we ever get Great Blue Herons in Martinez? Oh that’s right, we do.

Immature Great Blue Heron at the footbridge: Photo – Mary Long

Hank just sent footage of his adventure. Unbelievable. I count 3 rare species, but maybe I missed one?

History repeats itself…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere June 16, 2014

Why does everyone in the world get cute evening beaver footage before me? Jon saw is seeing our little peanut at 5:00 am before he goes to work, but that hardly counts. This is from Rusty Cohn in Napa. Not only does he get two little kits to film in the leisurely evening hours, his footage has no background train sounds, no garbage trucks, and no homeless drunks arguing. It’s not remotely fair – but it’s still adorable.

You can tell him so yourself in person when he comes to table at our beaver festival this year! He and Hank Miller (the photographer) will be representing the Napa beavers together. They need a name. Maybe you can help them think of one? Wine country beavers. Vintage beavers. Vines and Beavers. Fine Whines from beavers. Hey I like that last one. It’s fun, you should play.

I can remember the first time Jon and I tabled at the John Muir Earth Day event in 2008. They gave us the table and we brought Moses’ chew, some photos, books, a scrapbook with three pages filled, and the handbook I had put together for the subcommittee. On the way there it occurred to me to stop and buy some cheap pens and paper from the drug store so that we could have kids draw beavers. What a good idea that turned out to be.

Later in the day we got lucky and FRO came to paint the watercolor she was finishing for me. It still hangs in our living room. (Along with that tablecloth btw.)

I hope she in joyed her time sitting in the sun, because we were never to give her that particular afternoon off at again!

Well Rusty and Hank have their work cut out for them, but we’ll make sure they have everything they need, and lots of friends on hand to help out. In the meantime Cheryl can keep us happy with lovely beaver photos like this, taken the other night when we were waiting for the ROYAL KIT to grant us an audience.