A STAR IS BORN, AGAIN

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers August 21, 2019

The rapidly rising Beaver Believers film got another showing last weekend, this time with a very special cameo.

The much beloved Sherri Tippie joined filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg on stage for the packed crowd and of course Vail fell in ldve all over again. Later Sarah stopped by the house for a final visit, and I thought you’d want to see the new demonstration models Sherri shared.

We got to squeeze in a final visit with Tippie – and a peek at her models of beaver flow devices – before heading to the airport to fly home. Thus ends a fantastic trip to Colorado! (For more on these precise designs, check out www.beaverdeceivers.com*)

These are updates from Sherri’s previous displays. If you look closely you’ll see that the beavers figurines are clay figures that she makes herself. She was kind enough to donate a stash for one beaver festival, and if you knew what’s good for you you kept yours in a special place like I did.

I’m sure i don’t need to tell you what a national treasure Sherri is, or how many beaver affections she launched and hearts she has touched. I just thought you’d like to see a reminder of why.

GOOD BEAVER NEWS COMES IN THREES

Yesterday I was proud to ‘grandfather’ another beaver celebration into the world. So I made a little housewarming gift for our friends at the Methow project. I like the way it came out.

Now there’s a great NCPR interview I’ve been just dying to share.

Chewing over three books about beavers

Aug 14, 2019 — Traveling around the North Country it is easy to see the work of beavers – dams and ponds and sometimes flooded roads. Are these clever rodents a nuisance or a benefit to our landscape? Todd Moe talked with Betsy Kepes after she read three books about Castor Canadenis, the North American beaver.

It’s a fun interview, and its wonderful to read that someone else cried when the matriarch died in Lily Pond. We were driving home from the mountains 6 months after mom beaver died and I wept so much we had to pull over. Hope really touched a lot of people, didn’t she?

Now lets go back to Washington state and K5 news where some beavers are being reintroduced after showing up in the wrong culvert. I admit, it isn’t often I like everything I see about a beaver relocation undertaking, but this seems pretty smooth.

Beavers in King County trapped, relocated to help salmon habitat

SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN!

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy August 2, 2019

You would think, with the hours and years of my life I have spent watching beavers and analyzing their footage and staring at photos I would have seen every SINGLE thing I could possibly see about them. Every nuance. Every detail. There are posts, for example, where I talk about nothing but their eyebrows or how to tell our beaver noses from muskrat or castor fiber noses.

I thought I’d seen it all. I was wrong.I let you all down. I’m so sorry.

Last night, filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg posted this image to announce her upcoming screening in Scotts Valley. And my head went whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa so loud you could hear it next door.

You see it to right? That pink little tongue as if a beaver was a cocker spaniel. I asked Sarah “was that beaver sick or stressed?” And she said no, she saw it on all kinds of beavers everywhere she filmed. A darting tongue that would just pop out usually just before or after they were finishing a meal.

Photoshop is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Was this changed or colored? No, she promised and posted footage of beavers eating so I could see it myself. I wish I could share them here but I hope to soon. Beavers chewing and that tiny tongue lapping up that last bit of flavor.

Of course I asked others, Cheryl, Rusty, Jon, Jari Osborne who made the famous beaver film. have you ever seen this? Suzi Eszterhas with her huge camera lens who photographed them for months. Is it just me not paying attention?

I scoured my own footage. Surely I had seen it somewhere hadn’t I? had anyone else picked it up?

Even if you slow that down don’t see anything, Try it yourself using the wheel on the bottom and select ‘playback speed’ .25.

Nothing. To a man my fellow beaver photographers were all shocked and had never ever seen this. Sarah thinks it is because she’s scrolling through footage frame by frame on a huge screen that she noticed. Maybe,

And then I remembered ancient ancient footage that Moses had first shot of our 2008 kit when he was first seen trying to feed atop the lodge. In the very beginning seconds he was in the water you see a little. I remember when we saw it we were commenting that it appeared like he was just in between learning to eat leaves and nursing, because he kind of chewing and spitting at the same time saying “Ew this isn’t dinner!”

It’s in the very first few seconds that you see tongue. Nothing like that still of Sarah’s. Beaver tongues must be very very short, and nothing like a dogs, But its there all the same. Oh and you should watch all the way to the end and see him fall off the lodge and plop into the water. That’s pretty adorable.

Though not nearly as adorable as this. I guess we live and learn.

DOES THIS LOOK TWITCHY TO YOU?

heidi08 Beavers and climate change April 5, 2019

Today we have guests coming associated with the Sequoia River Lands Trust because they want to ask questions about beavers. They are hoping that hearing the Martinez story will encourage them on next steps. So Jon is making lunch for us and I am trying to be coherent.

Just in case you need a Geography lesson, the headquarters of the Sequoia River Land Trust is in Visalia, which south of Fresno and North of Bakersfield. Here’s their mission statement:

Sequoia Riverlands Trust is a regional nonprofit land trust dedicated to strengthening California’s heartland and the natural and agricultural legacy of the southern Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley. The wealth, productivity and beauty of this land inspire our work to conserve it for future generations.

If the name sounds familiar its because years ago one of the designers of this website, Scott Artis, took a communications job with them and I was one of his references. Scott worked in the medical field and wanted to break into environmental biology, so used Worth A Dam as his credentials for a while – which was great for us, and I assume great for SRLT. Scott himself longed for the Bay Area and eventually moved onto the Audubon Canyon and I believe is working independently now. But beaver paths that cross leave deep tracks, as well you know. I’ll let you know how it all unfolds.

Mean while Sarah’s Beaver-Climate change documentary is on the front page Sunday news in Walla Walla.

Filmmaker finds hope in charismatic tree chompers

Sarah Koenigsberg is used to telling other people’s stories.

The Walla Walla resident has been all over the map in her role as owner of and producer for Tensegrity Productions. In 2013 though, Koenigsberg was ready to devote serious time to her own project, a longer piece that would require the right topic and level of commitment to bring it to fruition.

“Then I just happened upon multiple people in various fields of restoration … all espousing how beaver restoration could be a profound way to come at climate adaptation,” she said.

Beavers? Like the furry creatures who live in the river and build dams?

Yes, beavers.

Nice intro! Of course beavers. It’s always beavers. Around here anyway. Need help saving salmon or removing nitrogen of fixing a deeply incised bank? BEAVERS can do it. Prevent fires, recharge the ground table and save us from climate change? Why the hell not?

“The Beaver Believers” is whimsical — with those big chompers and twitchy noses, beavers look ready for prime-time comedy — but carries the urgency of climate change conversations.

The story revolves around an unlikely cadre of activists who share a common vision of rebuilding the population of the North American beaver, which Koenigsberg calls the “most industrious, ingenious, bucktoothed engineer” in the watersheds of the arid West.

Unlikely? Who are you calling unlikely? I’ll have you know I was voted most likely to save beavers in my graduating class of 83. Or would have been, if there was such a thing in the Reagan years. And honestly, twitchy noses? You are thinking of rabbits. Does this really look twitchy to you?

Then the Carlton Complex Fire in the summer of 2014 sparked the opportunity to get really visual. At the time, the Okanogan County inferno was the most massive, recorded wildfire Washington state had experienced, burning more than 250,000 acres.

Her camera could capture the effect of the blaze blasting through beaver restoration areas, to record if the believers’ hypothesis would hold. That example of ecosystem resilience was “kind of gold,” she said, noting that functioning drainage systems are natural firebreaks.

“Water doesn’t burn. It doesn’t take a Ph.D to know that water doesn’t burn.”

Oh no it doesn’t. This is just the right thing to be reminding viewers of. Although preaching to the choir was a phrase probably written specifically for the idea of showing a beaver documentary in Washington state.

“I’m getting flooded with messages from people across North America. They want to try all these things, plant willows, learn about local farms. There’s a whole ripple of ways people are trying to bring it closer to home in what they do.”

I bet she is, I bet she is, because I’m having lunch with strangers from Visalia for goodness sake! And not surprisingly, the premiere is sold out. Could you possibly go to Alabama or North Carolina next?

BEAVERS IN BANFF AND CALGARY

heidi08 Beavers and climate change October 23, 2018

Sarah Koenigsberg and her beaver film are in Canada. Here film is screening at the Banff Mountain Festival. In the meantime she is busy stocking up supplies to calm her frazzled nerves. This photo smiled at me from FB. Look, she found our much admired wine “Frisy Beaver”. I still want them to donate to the festival.

I like “beaver riot” on her shirt too. That’s clever. There may be an homage in our future!

Meanwhile the film will go next to Calgary where it will debut the night before our election {GO VOTE} in the science building of the University of Calgary campus.

The Beaver Believers, U of C Film Screening

Monday, November 5, 2018 from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM (MST)Calgary, Alberta

Join director Sarah Koenigsberg for a private screening of her new film “The Beaver Believers”, a film about “passion and perserverence in an era of climate change”. Filmed in 8 western US states, Mexico, and Canada, this film focuses on the restoration and management of the North American beaver in watersheds of the American West.

This event is being sponsored by The Miistakis Institute (www.rockies.ca) and the Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society (Cows and Fish) (www.cowsandfish.org).

So many of our friends together in one place! Hurray! I knew C&F would want to be part of a screening. I’m so glad its coming together so nicely in this “year of the beaver”.

Speaking of which, I heard from Ben Goldfarb that he liked he film and Robin pointed out that he had uploaded one of his own about some beaver relocation he was part of in Washington. Enjoy.