SAVING BEAVERS TO SAVE WATER

heidi08 Beavers and groundwater, Beavers and water April 12, 2020

Goodness I must have sounded very plaintive yesterday because my post received a lot of sympathetic ‘buck up’ responses. Sheesh, don’t feel sorry for me. I do okay. I’m in a book for pete’s sake! How many people are in a book, I ask you?

…Heidi Perryman, a former child psychologist who, through willpower and single-mindedness, has become one of the planet’s foremost authorities on Castor canadensis….Ask a fellow Beaver Believer to characterize Heidi Perryman, and the primary descriptor you’ll hear is “force of nature.” Perryman’s primary endeavor is Worth A Dam, an online nonprofit that serves as a comprehensive clearinghouse for beaver science and coexistence techniques; a beaver news outlet, updated daily; and a sort of gossip blog for the castor cognoscenti.

Ben Goldfarb “Eager”

And the book won the Penn science writing award so we know it MUST be true! No more sitting around pining over some piddly donation. Do not despair. The sun also rises. And yesterday I finished something I’m very proud of an can’t wait to share with you.

In order to fully docuent my efforts allow me to explain that it meant stripping out the audio from another film from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission that I loved but thought wasn’t punchy enough, and using audacity to re-sequence the clip to my liking with background noises to emphasize the point. Then downloading it as a wav. file and it then uploading it to audioacrobat to turn it into an MP3 file. Then getting it to Powtoon with images so it could be worked into an instructive video.

Probably 5 days of work but my goodness I’m pleased with the finished product. Please share with all your friends before the copy right police come to take me away.

[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://vimeo.com/406824178″ lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

Oh and happy Easter!

ANOTHER BLOCKBUSTER FROM PSMFC

heidi08 Beavers and salmon June 21, 2018

This year’s festival was the first time I was ever contacted by Dan Logan, fisheries biologist of NOAA marine fisheries in Santa Rosa. (To be honest I actually didn’t even know there was a marine fisheries arm in Santa Rosa) . Dan made me very happy by asking for NOAA to have space at the beaver festival. Yesterday he passed along this wonderful new film from the good folk at PMSFC. Go get your coffee and your relatives and come back and watch. Then watch it again and send it to everyone you know. It’s that good.

Isn’t that wonderful? Give it up for the brilliant folks at PSMFC. It’s truly amazing what the right education, some good intentions and a handful of federal dollars can do. The videos can be shared or use in educational trainings everywhere. Their website politely calls the beaver myths “misunderstandings” which is more gracious than I have it in me to be. But I admire the way they say it anyway.

Beaver Benefits and Controlling Impacts

But there is a lot of misunderstanding of beavers. Beaver do not eat salmon or other fish (they are herbivores, eating plants) and dams generally do not impede salmon passage. Salmon and beavers evolved together and are mutually beneficial.

Despite their value, beaver activities can also create problems for landowners, leading to their killing or the destruction of their dams. But there are ways to live with beaver! Join us as we begin a series featuring the benefits of beavers and the ways that landowners and beavers can co-exist.

Honestly sometimes it just feels like promotion of beaver benefits has is reaching a tipping point this summer. Yesterday I also received my official copy of Ben’s book – Eager: The surprising Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter and of course like any truly self interested and shallow party, I first flipped to the back and checked the index.

Nice, Notice if you add all those pages up it makes eleven. That’s 1 page for every year I’ve been involved with beavers. Kinda makes sense really, don’t you think?

And it should be, it should be, it should be like that!

Because Horton was faithful! He sat and he sat!

He meant what he said

And he said what he meant…”

And they sent him home Happy,

One hundred per cent

Beaver Appreciation Day

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon February 24, 2017

Yesterday turned out to be a wonderful day, even at this distance from the conference. Alexandria Costello was generous enough to FBlive some of the wonderful talks, and I got lots of feedback about my presentation. Plus Sherry Guzzi of Sierra Wildlife Coalition was able to take and send amazing notes of the day, which made me feel like I was part of the action.

One of the exciting presentations Alex covered was by Fran Recht of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. They just released an amazing film by Freshwater Illustrations that you NEED to see and share with everyone you know. Check it out.

Isn’t that wonderful? I think will be a permanent margin feature for a while. Having ‘regular’ folk talk about the benefits of beavers is a powerful tool, and one that we should always rely on. I guess I’m kind of regular folk, or I was once. Sherry said that Gerhard Schwab’s talk about beavers in Germany emphasized having “local” experts that really make the difference. Apparently my talk had a warm reception and I got some positive feedback yesterday even from folks I’d never met. Our old friend Louise Ramsay said it was “Inspirational”, a stranger wrote and said it was so affecting he got ‘choked up’ about the kits dying, Suzanne Fouty actually quoted me in her talk later in the day, a grad student I didn’t know wrote that they came to the conference to meet me and were so sorry I wasn’t there but glad to hear me anyway, and the author Ken Goldfarb who I talked into attending wrote:

Heidi, that was really a fantastic video… I’m sure you’re very sad at not being able to attend the conference, but you should know that your virtual presentation elicited a lot of laughs, a lot of sympathetic nodding, and a very enthusiastic ovation. Incredible footage!

So I guess that sometimes it’s better to not be there and feel that you contribute than the opposite. Thes talk I’m most anxious about missing this morning is by Lorne Fitch of Cows and Fish in Alberta, I’m trying to see if I can get it streamed by some hardy soul willing to hold their phone up for an hour. I will let you know and share if I can.

Cheryl was no slacker either yesterday, and she went on the release of the beaver recently rescued in Pittsburg that they returned to Dow Wetlands. I know you’d want to see these photos. Click twice on a photo to see it larger.