Friends of San Pedro Valley are Friends of Mine.

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 7, 2015

What a fun night! It was warmer in Pacifica than we expected because the fog had not yet spilled down into the city. The drive was merciful and the ocean majestic. We slipped easily into the jewel of a park, nestled among steep hills, green with thick with alder and buckeye. A parking pass was provided at the gate, but we weren’t quite sure we were in the right place until we say the visitor’s center was plastered with signs about the beaver talk. Someone obviously had fun promoting this. I could imagine the classic Don LaFontaine voice in the movie promos, “In a world, where beavers don’t belong, and cities never want them, this unlikely family found their home.“

We met our host Carolyn Pankow and were taken inside where all the equipment was ready in the visitor’s center. Attendees trickled in at first, and then suddenly it was a packed room. Full of smart environmental folks, some of them who had seen the beaver in person or at least on TV. There was even a mother with two children at the back, so I made sure to keep things as engaging as possible. They laughed and groaned in all the right places, and afterwards I realized that my last two talks (salmon and trout) had been such challenging crowds I had forgotten how much fun it could be to talk to people that were really eager for beavers. There were about 45 people in the packed space.

Afterwards there were questions and praise, an honorioum for the talk and we were taken to an excellent companionable dinner at the local beloved Chinese place by the board of Friends of San Pedro Valley. They were all fascinating individuals, docents at point lobos or otter spotters for Elkhorn Slough. The myriad varied plates and ecological conversation passed around, and we delighted in each. They were especially eager to hear stories of nearby beavers to figure out how soon they could get their own. Then it was time for a moon lit drive bacl over the hills, along the coast and through the city to get back to Martinez at ten that evening. We had the familiar, pleasant feeling that we truly had been beaver ambassadors and paved the way for success when the lucky colony finally comes to town.

That’s the last talk of the year. Now it’s on the Beaver Festival planning in earnest!

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My mom called Saturday to say she had heard a clip about the beavers two times on KCBS radio. It was presented as a fun novella describing the soap opera story of dad’s remarry. Did you year it? A final note, I picked up this new photo from facebook where it was the winner of a Missouri wildlife photography competition for obvious reasons.

Now THIS is what we need in Martinez this year.

family patty bitterman — Photographer Patty Bitterman

Here’s looking for you, kit

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's saving beavers now? June 6, 2015

Capture — Beaver Grooming: Susan Tripp Pollard

Photos: Martinez beavers at home in Alhambra Creek

Springtime has brought out wildlife at Alhambra Creek in Martinez, Calif. Right at dusk, beavers were spotted swimming about and chomping on a fallen arroyo willow tree. Heidi Perryman and her husband Jon Ridler make a comfy spot with camping chairs as they wait to see the beavers. Perryman, president of Worth A Dam, and Ridler, treasurer, were perched quietly hoping to see a newborn kit. On its website, Worth A Dam describes itself as a citizens group that fought to protect the beavers and sponsors the annual Beaver Festival that will take place on Aug. 1, 2015.

This was a nice surprise after meeting photographer Susan Tripp Pollard at the dam on Wednesday night. Follow the link to see all the photos, because it won’t allow me to embed. Nice to see that she got the name WORTH A DAM and the date of the Beaver Festival correct! Of course it prompted other media outlets to contact me yesterday and say “oh the beavers are back”? I did an interview with Doug Padilla of KCBS at the dam trying to explain that the beavers never actually left, just the media did. Ahem.

Looks like the Oregon discovery was big enough to make the Smithsonian.

Mini Beavers Once Roamed Oregon

Fossils of a squirrel-sized from in eastern Oregon may be related to modern beavers; Oregon was once home to rodents of unusual size.

Paleontologists have unearthed fossilized remains from 21 ancient rodent species in eastern Oregon, including the skull and teeth of a previously unknown miniature beaver called Microtheriomys brevirhinus. At about the size of a squirrel, this particular beaver would have been ten times smaller than modern relatives, as Tara Kulash reports for The Oregonian. The finds appeared in the May issue of Annals of Carnegie Museum.

In 2012, the beaver fossils were unearthed less than a mile from the visitor’s center for the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, reports Jeff Barnard for the Associated Press. Nine other new species of rodents have been found in the area — some in the same fossil beds, most on nearby government lands. Some of the fossils are more than 20 million yeas old. The sediment surrounding the beaver fossils contains layers of volcanic ash, and by dating radioactive elements within the ash suggests the fossils are from the Oligocene period between 28 and 30 million years ago.

While the burrowing beaver’s line went extinct, it’s also possible that this ancient aquatic mini beaver has modern relatives.

You mean there might have once been many mini beavers? Hey I know what news from John Day about beavers belong in the Smithsonian and National Geographic and Time and every other magazine you can think of. It’s the news that the normal-sized beavers we have right now could save our salmon and restore our incised creeks if we could stop killing them for a while.

How about leading with that story for a change?

Fun footage from Rusty in Napa last night. That’s a yearling and adult in back and a night heron in front. Because beavers, as you know, build the neighborhood for everyone to move in.

Off to San Pedro Valley Park in Pacifica tonight to talk about the ecology of urban water-savers. Wish beavers luck!

What is in a name anyway?

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? June 12, 2015

Beavers take over SPVP

Dr. Heidi Perryman will be at San Pedro Valley County Park Visitor Center on Saturday, June 6, at 6 p.m., for a talk she likes to call “Ecosystem Engineers in Martinez: understanding how and why to coexist with urban beavers.”

Beavers descended on Martinez in 2007, and by October of that year they had built a dam that the City Council determined could be a flooding hazard; the little dam builders were slated for extermination. Did the people of Martinez sit on their hands on this one? Come to the Visitor Center and find out about the story of the beavers in this Bay Area town.

Wow great start! So far I’m really impressed with this article that calls me Dr. and puts the story in context, making sure to give credit to the hundreds of concerned residents who made the difference! I’m sure it continues on in this wonderful vein, right?

Perryman is the president of “Give a Dam“, the citizens group that fought for the beavers. She is a child psychologist who’s probably naturally attracted to the problems of little creatures and says that she is used to speaking to a mixed age group; so bring your older children with you–probably age 10 and above. Dr. Perryman is part of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, where she helps investigate and implement social action for ecological health. She was also on the committee that first responded for action for the beavers after meeting with the city council back in 2007, and which eventually gave rise to the Martinez beavers’ website.

ARRRRRRRRRG! What a paragraph. Easily and verifiably wrong in so may ways. Why does the world seems so quick to change our name? When I contacted them about the press release the author explained she saw on the OAEC website this sentence:

“In 2012, Perryman, Lanman and Brock Dolman from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute wrote their first paper reviewing the evidence for beavers in the Sierra Nevadas.“

To wish I can only say, sheesh. Don’t colonize me with those your dangling participles! Rick and I were not from the OAEC (and by the way there was another author listed too). And as for the name of our ACTUAL organization – we aren’t stupid in Martinez. We know our city will NEVER give a dam. I have Ann Cameron Siegal to thank for this apt musical response.

On the “Worth a Dam” internet location you can investigate more about this industrious engineer: just how it contributes to the health of any area in surprising ways, why beavers are valuable to all of us, and where their original distribution was in California before these large rodents were devastated by the fur trade and habitat loss.

It’s a nice article and should bring a good turnout, which is good because Pacifica will have beavers of its own soon enough. And I can take a few moments to correct the misunderstandings. Of course I sent copies to the mayor last night, so he can see their publicity in action. Wish me luck. I HAVE to practice today. I’ve spent too much time lately mooning of the images of the Napa kits and wondering when ours will show. And yesterday I had an useful burst of beaver begging for the silent auction, where I found THIS wine label that made me laugh as hard as I can remember doing in a long while. I sure hope they donate.

Martinez Beavers go to Pacifica

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Who's saving beavers now? May 18, 2015

June 6th is my final beaver talk for a while and will be at the San Pedro Valley Park visitor’s center in Pacifica, ending one of the busiest 6 months of beaver-speaking I’ve known. It started with the SF waterboard in Oakland, then the State of the Beaver in Oregon, then the salmonid federation in Santa Rosa, then Trout Unlimited in Coloma, then SARSAS in Auburn and Safari West in Santa Rosa. Now there’s just one left and then I can focus on the festival.

SPV is a county park in the peninsula hills described as “A vast area embracing the middle and south forks of San Pedro Creek, which are Steelhead spawning grounds, this park is nestled amongst the Santa Cruz Mountain range and the foothills of Pacifica. ” They also happen to be interested in having beaver, and originally contacted me thinking relocation might be an option. I explained that the only way to get beaver in California right now is to let them come to you and they invited me to come talk about benefits and solutions. They did an awfully nice blurb on their newsletter. I especially like “repatriated”.They might not have all that long to wait. We have a beaver sighting 5 miles east at the water treatment facility, and a beaver killed on the highway 5 miles south. Since several forks of the San Pedro Creek flow through the park, the odds are good beavers will find their way eventually. Since it’s a new crowd I thought I’d work on some new graphics, which is always fun. This should remind me not to leave anything out when I discuss their physical adaptions! And this could be a good prompt for discussing beaver chewing of trees and why not to panic.

But the last was the most fun to do. And really will be the most powerful. Because, in the end, it isn’t science that saves beavers. Even though it should. People don’t change their minds because of data. We all learned first hand in Martinez, it’s not brains that convince. It’s hearts.