So the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Havest and Wildlife Festival is doing something different this year – something we might have done if folks had been ready for it back in June. The October 24th event is going virtual.

We’re doing something different this year: Many events will be livestreamed; others will be available as short videos for you to watch at your leisure.

WHEN: We’ll be releasing all the video content at once (synchronous) on Saturday, October 24.
WHAT: Each video should be 5-10 minutes in length, submitted as .mov files.
SUBJECT: Family-friendly educational content primarily for elementary-aged children, focused on animals or environmental subjects. The message should represent or fulfill your organization’s mission statement.
INFO WE NEED: Please provide a high-resolution Logo for your organization, and your website that we can include.
DUE: Please submit your videos to us no later than October 1. If you need a little more time, let us know.

Now I had originally planned to just send off our standard short presentation but when I read that they were looking at presentations aimed at school-aged children I knew I had to create something new. I will say it was kind of fun trying to think of a kid-friendly way to tell our story. I’ll leave it to you to decide if it worked. I just about have it all finished and will share it soon. My very old mac is ‘baking’ it in the oven as we speak.

In the mean time I see Ben is getting ready for his ownvirtual beaver presentation as well, with an upcoming October 8th talk for the Lopez Island Library,

Virtual author talk by Ben Goldfarb, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

The Friends of the Lopez Island Library invite the public to their 2020 virtual annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, featuring keynote speaker Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author. Goldfarb will offer a virtual presentation on his recent book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

“Eager” reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”— including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens— recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts.

Lopez Island is part of the San Juan Islands scattered between Washington state and Victoria, which I’m sure makes it a pretty darned interesting place to live. I’m sure they are starved for content because of Covid just like everywhere else, so I expect good turnout.

Goldfarb is the winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and Eager was named one of the best books of 2018 by the Washington Post. He is also the recipient of a 2019 Alicia Patterson Fellowship, through which he’ll be covering the global ecological impacts of roads. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Science, National Geographic, The New York Times, Audubon Magazine, and many others. He edited and coordinated the Solutions Journalism Network‘s “Small Towns, Big Change” project, an award-winning multi-newsroom collaborative that produced solutions-oriented coverage of social and environmental issues. Goldfarb is happiest with a scuba tank strapped to his back or a fly rod in his hand.

Really? Scuba tank? I guess that’s the sentence they give to introduce you on the dating game. Okay, if you say so.

The presentation will be broadcast at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, as a Zoom Webinar. watch the presentation live on October 8th at 6:30pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82975590761

See you there!

If you can’t wait you can always watch this talk, recorded at the West Linn library in Oregon and loving powtooned by yours truly.

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