Some days there is so little beaver news that I am left sorting through my ragged thoughts and trying to find something new to say about them. This week has been a beaver explosion, so I can barely keep up. First there is the smart new beaver page out offered by Esther Lev of the Wetlands Conservancy and some graduate students who accepted the beaver challenge. You will have fun browsing the projects. Use the link to visit the site which connects to each project. I’ll let them describe the ‘zine’ themselves.
During the 2017 Winter Term, eight graduate students from the Master of Urban and Regional Planning, Master of Fine Arts, and Master of Environmental Science and Management programs at Portland State University engaged in a study of beavers in the Pacific Northwest. The question was whether better understanding the beaver could help us understand more about the culture, identity, and character of the Pacific Northwest, particularly for those of us engaged in planning and other activities with and for communities in the region.
The project had two components. First, each student identified a topic associated with beavers, and developed a research paper that explored that topic. All of those papers are posted here for your use and enjoyment. During the term we read Frances Backhouse’s Once they were Hats, her very informative and engaging book about beavers in North America. Thanks to Esther Lev, Wetlands Conservancy Executive Director, and Sara Vickerman Gage, we were able to spend a morning discussing the book with Frances Backhouse. We gratefully acknowledge the importance of both Frances’ work and her presence in the class with us. If you are interested in and/or care about beavers, do read her book!
Second, each student used their paper as the point of departure for creating pages for a class “zine” about beavers. A zine is a short, self-published, and mostly hand-crafted magazine. Usually combining words and images, the zine form attempts to both transmit information to and engage the imagination of the reader. Preliminary research in Portland revealed hardly any zines about or featuring beavers. We aimed to fill that void, at least in part.
TWC is who had me talk in Portland last year and is responsible for the art show “Beaver Tales” that is in its second venue. They are doing beaver-work wonders. I am thrilled that they’re on the scene and that all these students will remember beavers in their masters training.
A second exciting development came from our beaver friends in the Czech University of Life Sciences. They recently completed the English translation of their ‘living with beavers’ guidebook. There is a lot of great info on management and history, so I would take some good time to browse. There’s a great discussion of tree protection and flow devices, as well as some pretty creative solutions for preventing bank burrows. Enjoy!
Yesterday there were a handful of swift volleyed crises that I swat back over the net with pretty admirable precision. It’s a lot of work planning an event like this but it’s SO much easier when I’m not also working full time. I can’t imagine how this ever all happened before. Can you?
Yesterday was media day, which started out with a charming little Gazette article about encouraging kids to take a bicycle tour of the murals. We were numbers six and seven!
The kids are out of school, acting bored, looking for something to do. The following articles outline tours of Martinez designed for the entire family and meet my “4 F’s” criteria: Fun, Frugal, Family and Fascinating. They are reminiscent of when my six children were young, money was scarce and minds were curious. The first tour, and possibly the longest, I call:
Murals of Martinez!
Continue east on Escobar and immediately at the little bridge look on the left for the ceramic tiles, this is next to the Creek Monkey Tap House. This is the site the famous Martinez Beavers and is our sixth mural. The tiles were drawn by local school children. Their imaginations show the wonderful life of our beavers. This is a good place to park, sit for a while and take a look at Alhambra creek and beaver dams, maybe even see a beaver or two. A great family educational opportunity. Our Beaver Festival is held annually on the first Saturday in August.
Continue on Escobar about two blocks and turn left onto Ferry Street, go one block, turn left onto Marina Vista. Travel about two blocks on Marina Vista (stay to the right) and just past the entrance/exit to the Amtrak Station is our newest mural: “Martinez Beavers”. It was commissioned by our local beaver advocacy group Worth-A-Dam as a memorial project to honor the memory of the Martinez beavers after the local beavers had all but disappeared from our local waters. But on May 2, 2016 a sighting occurred and it was soon confirmed that the beavers were back! Now the mural is being hailed as the :Un-Memorial” mural. This beautiful work of art was completed by artist Mario Alfaro (of the plaza history mural fame).
How much do I love seeing my word “UNmemorial” in the Gazette? Very, very much I can tell you. And I’m even happier that it’s meaning still holds. Generating interest in the beavers through artwork has always been a cornerstone of our work. And this year is a blazing example, earning a fantastical festival promotion also from Jennifer Shaw for the Mercury News.
The family of beavers in downtown Martinez continues to inspire people’s curiosity and compassion for their well-being.
“Beavers are not only a keystone species, they’re also a charismatic species, so people want to learn about them, photograph them, draw and paint them, celebrate them, and watch them. That is essentially what saved our beavers is people could actually see them,” says Heidi Perryman, founder and director of the nonprofit Worth A Dam.
She noted that prior to their efforts to educate about beavers’ essential role in saving and creating habitat, there had been a push to eradicate them — citing flood concerns — and instead the group managed to turn the perceptual tide to invigorate their population.
Visitors at Saturday’s ninth annual Beaver Festival — with this year’s theme “Ecosystem Engineers” — can see that a two-dimensional beaver has a new home, appearing on a mural depicting the Martinez marshlands, joined by frog, egret, turtle, and children painted leaning over a fence watching the beaver build his dam.
Shhh. This is my favorite part!
In 2011, after passers-by had inquired about the missing beaver, artist Mario Alfaro had painted him as part of a Main Street mural about Martinez life, but had been told by city personnel to remove it.
Initially, Alfaro’s mural, located on a bridge to the right of the Amtrak station entrance, was envisioned as a memorial to the kits that died last April, and as a tribute to their parents, who deemed the place unsafe and left, notes Perryman.
Fortuitously, a pair of beavers has since settled here, with their babies due anytime.
Perryman and Alfaro continue their advocacy and artistry, showing that humans and beavers can “peacefully, happily coexist,” Alfaro says.
Perryman’s grass roots activism recently caught the attention of Oregon’s Wetlands Conservancy which asked her to speak about how her outreach, and specifically the festival, has turned things around.
“She turned a problem into something valued in the community,” says Sara Vickerman, a member of the conservancy’s Beaver Lodge advisory group that has organized a traveling exhibit featuring 70 artists’ work with beavers as the common thread.
Calling the festival “attitude changing,” Vickerman adds, “it’s such a different way to reach people than just writing letters to your congressmen.”
Thank you Sara! Your praise means a lot. We’ve learned that people get engaged in multiple ways but the secret to saving beavers is the same as teaching your kindergartner to sort the laundry or set the table – letting people feel INVOLVED even if they do it wrong. And honestly, why write a letter to your congressman when he’s coming in PERSON to give the beaver festival an AWARD. And something else I’m very excited about and can’t yet mention. Let this demonstrate my eagerness.
Since 2011, Martinez resident and graphic designer Amelia Hunter has been creating the promotional brochures for the beaver festival, with the vision for this year’s festival, inspired by Perryman: “how the West was watered and how it can be done again.”
“Doing these brochures, I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for beavers,” says Hunter, also a watercolorist and member of the Martinez Arts Association. “It’s made me much more aware of how I impact my surroundings.”
Thanks Amelia! I’m so grateful for your talent that has helped us so many years. We are getting quite a collection of fantastic beaver images in retrospect. And thank you Mario and Jennifer! That was a perfect promotional article encouraging folks to come be curious about the beavers and see how they have been represented in the mural. Completely by Chance the project Sara Vickerman has been working on was in the news too. Seeing beavers in a new way is part of the challenge and I’m sure our influence was not unimportant in this project.
NEHALEM, Ore. – The Lower Nehalem Watershed Council is partnering with The Wetlands Conservancy to host a Beaver Art Exhibit and Sale, to be held in August of 2017 at the North County Recreation District, as part of a statewide recognition of Oregon’s official animal.
Project sponsors are seeking artwork of all kinds featuring the beaver and wetland habitat, including photographs, paintings, prints, cards, quilts, etc. Pieces can be in any style – realistic, abstract, whimsical, collage, etc. Three-dimensional pieces could be ceramic, wood, fiber art or other media. Artists can choose to sell or display their work. Interested artists should contact Sara Vickerman by email at svickerman@comcast.net or by phone at 503-936-4284 for more information or to register.
The Wetlands Conservancy’s Beaver Lodge advisory group has planned several art exhibits throughout the state featuring Northwest artists, roughly in conjunction with International Beaver Day, April 7, 2017. The planning is well underway, and will include exhibits at several locations large and small around the state in 2017, kicking off in February with a reception, exhibit and sale at Oregon State University’s LaSells-Stewart Center. Other exhibits and events will be held in Lake Oswego, Seaside and at the Oregon Zoo.
The beaver is woefully misunderstood and blamed for dam-building, flooding and munching on plants. In fact, Oregon beaver, nearly eradicated by trappers by 1900, create wetlands, spawning and rearing habitat for salmon and steelhead as well as for insects, birds and amphibians and create pools that keep water clean and moderate fluctuations in water flow. They are nature’s hydrologists.
We’re happy to help! We have some amazing beaver artists right here in Martinez that could lend a hand?
TWC is who had me talk in Portland last year and is responsible for the art show “Beaver Tales” that is in its second venue. They are doing beaver-work wonders. I am thrilled that they’re on the scene and that all these students will remember beavers in their masters training.
