Today I heard from Michael Pollock who is on his way to Scott Valley for a FIRST EVER beaver workshop tomorrow – and no before you ask, its not “how to kill beavers faster, or what are the twenty five best reasons to kill beavers?” It’s something completely different. Check out the lineup which is not exactly heavy with traditional beaver-loving types.
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Be still my beating heart! Fish and Game is facilitating a beaver workshop? OHHH MICHAEL!!! Preach gospel to the non believers and turn their faces towards the rising truth! Let California begin the trickle of understanding that will pour down the pacific coast and tap the heads of salmon counters all along the state! Put that federal trapper Dennis right in the VERY front row and give him a road to Damascus moment. Great things are beginning to happen in the northern parts of our watershed, and if people ever come to understand the truth anywhere, iIt will start there.
This great article by Will Harling is a fantastic introduction to the issue. After this taste gets your attention, go read the whole thing which should make converts out of the non-believers.
Restoring Coho Salmon in the Klamath River, One Beaver At A Time
By Will Harling, Executive Director, Mid Klamath Watershed Council
After a sleepless full moon night with our 18 month old daughter, Rory, (a night where my wife bore the brunt of her midnight antics and our guests sleeping in the living room must have been guessing who was torturing who), I bundled our girl onto my back and walked down to the Klamath River in the pre-dawn light. To say I altruistically wanted everyone to sleep in would be a half-truth given the fishing pole in one hand, balancing out the diaper bag in the other. I had a spot in mind, just downstream of the Orleans Bar River Access, where the river slides over a broad riffle so shallow the fish are forced into a narrow slot that one could cast across, even with a groggy, grumpy, sleep-deprived toddler strapped to their back.
The relatively wide Orleans Valley gives the river a chance to meander a little here, reclaiming its sinuousity stolen over the past six million years as the Klamath Mountains began to rise from underneath, forcing it into steep sided canyons tracing fault lines in the uplifted bedrock just upstream and downstream of the valley. Fall chinook salmon moving upstream to spawn left wakes in the glassy water as they navigated up through the shallows, and the Klamath’s famed half-pounder steelhead run was coming in with them. Across the river, I noticed a furry head moving slowly upstream. The light brown tuft of hair visible above the water looked like what I thought a beaver would look like, but couldn’t be sure.
Just then I heard a rustle of grass and a swish of a tail on the near shore and backed into the willows to watch. Sure enough, a beaver was swimming up towards us along the edge of the river just 20 feet away. As it cleared the riffle, it moved out into the river and I slowly followed it upstream. Big whiskers and a large black snout, those dark beady eyes and two cute little ears quickly disappeared when it spotted me, and a loud thwack of its tail as it dove alerted it’s kin that danger was near. Walking home, giddy with excitement from this rare close encounter, I noticed all the stripped willow sticks along the shore, even a clump of uneaten willow shoved under an algal mat, possibly left for a mid-day snack.
Beaver are slowly coming back to the Klamath, recovering from intense trapping that began in the mid-1800’s and continuing for nearly a century after until they were almost extinct. In 1850 alone, famed frontiersman and trapper Stephen Meek and his party reportedly trapped 1800 beaver out of Scott Valley, which at the time was called Beaver Valley. The last beavers in Scott Valley were trapped out by Frank C. Jordan in the winter of 1929-1930 on Marlahan Slough1. Beaver throughout much of the Klamath basin suffered the same fate, and even today as they return to less inhabitated areas along the mainstem river and its tributaries, they are still shot and trapped in streams where their dams pose a perceived risk to residential and agricultural property.
Good luck gang. Our future is in your hands.
