Rossmoor Nature Association

Martinez meets Rossmoor

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers November 15, 2012

What a great crowd! What a beautiful theater! What a delightful setting! About 100 Rossmoorians came yesterday to hear the exciting tale of the Martinez beavers and to learn about the effect they are having on Alhambra Creek. I can’t tell you how nice it was to just show up and have a tech plug in the sound system and everything for me. Or how charming the organizer (and my host) Robert Carlton was – standing in the huge parking lot with a “Nature Association” sign so we’d know where to go in the massive grounds – and saving me his article from the newsletter below.

We brought the scrapbook, the banners and the chew along with brochures and festival pamphlets. There was a huge movie screen, and the comfortable seats were mostly filled by people who really wanted to learn about beavers. Raging Grannie and beaver friend Gail drove all the way from Palo Alto to attend! And our own Cheryl Reynolds mom was happily in the audience. Great questions included the gestation period of beavers and why a city would install sheetpile in a creek.

Of course my very favorite was the retired biologist who wanted to know what kind of grants we were receiving from fish and wildlife?

Getting ready for winter

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 11, 2012

Several aspen trees were felled by beaver along the Blue River in Warriors Mark recently. Special to the Daily

Am I the only one that gets a kind of tingly feeling when a paper runs a photo like this? Colorado Summit Daily has a fairly nice glimpse this morning of beavers-getting-ready-for-winter.

Beavers are active this time of the year!

My friend Terese Keil, property manager for Trappers Villas, called me the other day to tell me a bunch of landscaping aspen had been chewed down literally overnight by beavers.

A call to Fish and Wildlife confirmed several reports of beaver activity in Summit County and loss of trees on properties. Apparently, they are busy building dams and lodges in preparation for winter. The advice was to protect the trees with wire mesh along the bottom of the trunks.

Beavers are prolific engineers and builders, and prefer to work mostly at night; their specially adapted incisor teeth and powerful lower jaw muscles allow them to chew down trees. Their teeth never stop growing, and their four front teeth are self-sharpening. They have been seen to work as a team to carry a large piece of timber.

The author Joanne Stolen is a retired microbiology professor from Rutgers – now turned artist and living in Breckenridge, CO. This is a mere 2.5 hour drive from Sherri Tippie so I’m going to imagine that if they aren’t friends already they soon will be. In the mean time I have been perusing the linocuts on her art website and noticing there wasn’t a beaver yet. I’m guessing she’ll be inspired to fix that oversight very soon!

There are typically two dens or rooms within a beaver lodge, one for drying off after exiting the water, and the second, a drier, inner chamber is where the beaver family actually lives. Special to the Daily

And remember this Wednesday I will be talking at the Rossmoor Nature Association about our beavers and their effect on our creek. You know you have friends there, so see if you can get an invitation. I’d love to see some familiar faces.

Oh and if you need provoking after a weekend that was just too relaxing go read this morning’s whimper from Mississippi where they are bemoaning the fact that the federal governement (which they mostly don’t believe in) is now only going to pay for half the cost of killing beavers with the USDA and isn’t that a shame? I mean its not like the state needs the water or the wooducks or the trout or the filtration. Obviously those beavers have to be killed because flow devices never work and Uncle Sam needs to do it!

Remind me why I pay taxes again.

Crossing the Moors

heidi08 Beavers, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Festival October 25, 2012

grooming-yearling — Yearling grooming-Photo Cheryl Reynolds

The Rossmoor Nature Association (RNA) is hosting an informative lecture and slide show on Wednesday November 14th at 3:00 p.m. in the Peacock Hall at Gateway. The speaker for this fascinating program about urban beavers will be Dr. Heidi Perryman a noted local beaver advocate and founder of the “Worth A Dam” educational organization. As improbable as it might seem, beavers are living comfortably in downtown Martinez—however, their presence there has not been without heated controversy.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D., is a child psychologist with a private practice in Lafayette. She is also a board member of the John Muir Association at the National Historic Site in Martinez and became an accidental beaver advocate when she started filming the Martinez beavers in 2006. She started the organization “Worth A Dam” to manage their continued care and educate others about their value in the watershed. She has been particularly interested in the way that the beavers’ struggle has connected residents more closely to their environment, to their city government and to each other.

In addition to a very popular annual beaver festival, Worth A Dam does several community outreach and educational programs a year, including fieldtrips and class room visits. Dr. Perryman has also collaborated with beaver management expert Michael Callahan of Massachusetts to help release an instructional DVD teaching how to live with beavers (featuring footage of the Martinez Beavers). Most recently she worked with an historian, archeologist and biologist to publish groundbreaking research on the western fur trade and the original prevalence of beavers in California – a subject that has been surprisingly misunderstood for a nearly a century.

The beaver (Castor canadensis) is the largest rodent in North America and the only land mammal with a broad flat tail. Beavers and their ingenious dams help to create wetlands, store and filter water, augment fish populations, raise the number of migratory and songbirds, and have a dramatic positive impact on wildlife. Dr. Perryman feels that working to help people understand and coexist with this single species will continue to have a dramatic trickle-down impact on the environment in general. The Peacock Hall’s doors will open at 2:30 p.m. and the program will begin at 3:00. The length of the presentation will be approximately 60 min. with time for questions afterward. Visitors are always welcome to attend any of the RNA’s activities. For information about the Rossmoor Nature Association’s program series, contact Penny Ittner at 891-4980 or by e-mail at pennyittner@comcast.net. Related attachment (1st week): Beaver1bw Caption: “The North American Beaver”.

The Call of the Wild

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions November 14, 2008

UPDATIEST:

Our friends in the media did their part to raise awareness. Did that reporter actually say “no one has been harmed yet?” Am I dreaming? Check out the reports here and here: we expect something from the SF Chronicle tomorrow.

UPDATIER:

Friends at MDAS enlist support. Worth A Dam contacts media buddies to see if we can get news cameras on site. Lindsay Museum says they have offered alternatives and support, and have many volunteers who live there and are dismayed by the decision. Following letter sent to Rossmoor paper.

Woodpecker Damage best managed through exclusion: Not A Shooting Spree.

I read today through Gary Bogue of this senseless plan to save buildlings by killing birds. Acorn Woodpeckers are one of our only polygynandrous vertibrates, meaning there are multiple males and females protecting one clutch. After having spent a year saving the Martinez Beavers, I am sadly familiar with how Fish & Game gives easy permission for extermination rather than real solutions for solving the problem. I have also had more than casual contact with how maintenance costs can be exaggerated to justify the easiest, most selfish course of action. I wonder what alternatives were presented to the community. John Hadidian of the Humane Society talks about exclusion as the most important deterrent method. There are several sources of information on line including this from Cornell University. Rossmoor isn’t the first place to face woodpecker management problems. The solutions are easily discoverable with a little effort. It’s time to show your grandchildren that you can solve problems with compassion and creativity. Don’t let this Thanksgiving’s trip over the river and through the woods end with the echo of gunfire.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

UPDATE:

Just found out Gary Bogue will be speaking next week at Rossmoor, maybe he can mention something about a more sensible woodpecker control plan? Also heard from Robert Carlton of the Rossmoor Nature Association, who said that this was being driven by a small group of residents who have pushed the board for this action, and not the management. He did say he reads this website daily and is a friend of the beavers. Lets hope our beavers can help his woodpeckers.

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. Jack London

Every now and then I think of this quote when I hear the plaintive beaver vocalizations as they communicate to each other. Certainly it is nothing like Buck’s fierce, existential, howl, but it is an unmistakable portal into another world: a deeply social world in which the other is an extension of the self, and even isolation is commual. Sometimes when I hear it I feel like it claims me as a guardian, keeping watch over the beaver’s difficult lives because I can. Sometimes I just want to turn to the person nearest me and create a parallel sharing: “did you hear that?”. Always I am aware that it is rare and precious, eavesdropping on the call of the wild.

Yesterday I got an email from beaver friend CB who wrote sadly about the death of one of the two adult white Geese who have become Starbuck’s Sentinels. She compassionately wondered what would happen to the other goose, now that its mate was gone, and wondered whether something could be done to move it back to the duck pond. I replied that I thought this particular pair of geese had all the skills necessary to survive, and that even alone, the widow would find its way back to the crowd if that was the right thing for it to do. CB’s kind attention to the geese and the beavers is a touching reminder of our capacity to answer the call of the wild with our own voice of compassion.

I was wondereing if you knew about the demise of one of the white geese outside of Starbucks on Main st..While the remaining mate called greetings to us and ate moldy bread, surrounded by beer bottles and plastic cups, she drank from water slick with oil. And I’ve been worrying about whether she is safe there by herself, or may be better off trying to survive at the waterfront with the other geese.Of course, she could go there on her own, but this is her feeding spot that she’s been inhabiting for awhile.I guess I’m just afraid she will suffer a similar fate as her mate, and wish there was something I could do to help. They were a symbol to me of the burgeoning life the beavers brought to the creek, and brought more of a sense of community downtown, with children gathering to feed them and say hi, and people of all ages enjoying their presencse. We are also great lovers of the beavers and with the long summer days, it was easier to visit the geese on our downtown strolls, and swing by hoping to see the beavers if we were out late enough.One of my daughters first 30 words was BEAVERS! She has seen them and gets excited everytime we’re downtown hoping to see them. Now it will be easier with darkness falling so early. They came right around the same time we moved to Martinez, so they are somewhat of a personal icon for us, their babes coming around the same time mine did. I’m so happy they’re doing well and have new kits and have brought new life to the creek.They are a blessing to Martinez and I’m thankful to all who have helped them.

Sincerely, CB

Lastly a sad call to the wild from Rossmoor where they have received permission from Fish and Game to exterminate 50 Acorn Woodpeckers which are burying their favorite treasure in unwelcomed places. Exaggerated costs are being used to justify the killing. I have to wonder, does F&G ever say no? The shooting is slated to happen this week. Write your local paper to get the word out, give them a call at (925) 988-7682 and stop this slaughter, or get your video camera and see if you can get some images on you tube. I can imagine a sister “save the woodpecker” sight…maybe Worth A Nut?

[Comment From Molly Mullikin]
We live in Rossmoor in Walnut Creek. They have obtained a permit from US Fish/Wildlife to shoot 50 acorn woodpeckers who are stashing their winter supply of acorns in some of the residences. I sent you 2 letters regarding this (at Susan Heckley’s suggestion of LWM) but you didn’t print them. We (some concerned Rossmoor residents) were hoping to elicit public outrage. How come you avoided the subject? Woodpeckers are due to be exterminated this week. So sad!!!!

8:49

Gary Bogue: Believe me, the subject hasn’t been avoided. You aren’t the only one to write me about it. I’ve passed the notes along to a reporter who is looking into it. I am also researching them and contacting the feds to get them to explain why they have issued permits to KILL all those protected birds. There are other ways. Keep me posted on things you hear. Also send me your phone number so we can talk about it. Thanks.