You’ve heard of penis envy? Freud said it was real and apparently we still suffer from it. But BEAVER – envy is a thing too. It’s getting especially serious in California, I can tell you.

We are headed for some happy beaver news, I can just feel it. Seems like whenever the news cycle starts to get bored with its usual topics of politics or covid, it entertains itself by writing about beavers. Don’t believe me?

SLO Beaver Brigade Sets the Stage for Academic Research

SAN LUIS OBISPO — Beaver Believers easily find each other in a national network of land managers, academic researchers, and community volunteers who value the role of beavers in our river ecosystems.

SLO Beaver Brigade is the catalyst that initiated a public discussion in San Luis Obispo County on the merits of beaver-made hydrologic conservation. The group formed in 2020 with a philosophy of collaboration, reverence for nature and biodiversity, and community service with a mission to raise awareness around beavers in SLO county and to educate communities on the benefits beavers provide — fire-resistance, drought-resistance, flood-resistance, and maintenance of riparian habitat for a host of other plant, animal, insect, and aquatic species.

Our friends at SLO are rapidly becoming the new movers and shakers in the beaver world. I say wonderful! Because there are still plenty in the area that aren’t sure beavers are native.

The 2020 Biodiversity First! Research Grant: “Beavers, Climate Change, and Ecosystem Resilience” will result in the first peer-reviewed study of beaver habitat in San Luis Obispo County and will be shared online and at academic conferences in 2021 and beyond.

The Brigade has inspired two new regional activist citizen groups that adopted the same moniker, Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade and Ojai Beaver Brigade. SLO Brigade members Kate Montgomery and Fred Frank organized major clean-ups of abandoned homeless camps along the Salinas River with volunteers who removed tons of litter from the riverbank.

Biodiversity First! is a sponsor for the Beaver Brigade’s educational activities. Ecologistics is SLO Beaver Brigade’s fiscal sponsor. Donations can be made at www.slobeaverbrigade.com. For more information, email Audrey Taub at slobeaverbrigade@gmail.com, visit online www.emilyfairfaxscience.com, and @slobeaverbrigade on Instagram.

Boom! A fiscal sponsor! A research grant! And a team of experts! Emily Fairfax is going to do research at SLO and move the beaver conversation even further. We are all lucky,

I was especially happy to see this recently from Wyoming Game and Fish:

Living with beavers – a quick guide

There are many solutions that can mitigate landowner concerns while also allowing beavers to provide their beneficial ecological services. Below are some common concerns about beavers and recommended options for landowners:

Live trapping is difficult, time-consuming, and often proves ineffective as a long-term solution for beaver-related issues. If they establish in a location once, that means it’s good beaver habitat and even if you remove one beaver, more will find that good habitat in the future. When possible, it is best to find ways to live with beaver, while mitigating potential conflicts, as outlined above.

Seriously? This is what the Game an Fish Department has to say about beavers in WYOMING? But in fricken California we can barely get them to admit they’re native? Now I’m jealous. Soo jealous. It’s not fair! Why can’t we have nice things?

Well if you’re mood needs lifting or beaver cheering, you might be just in time to join our friends in Idaho for the Beaver Dam Jam online. Go see the wonderful things Mike Settell and his team are doing in Idaho.

Topic: BeaverDamJam-Idaho-Home Edition

Time: Nov 21, 2020 03:50 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/92703691020

Meeting ID: 927 0369 1020

I’ve been gloating for a couple days. Time to be crumpled with envy again as we watch other beaver advocates enjoy the sweet success of their efforts for which we can never hope. This time it’s from our friends in San Luis Obispo who recently had a very special visitor. Dr. Emily Fairfax came for a beaver visit and brought her favorite equipment with her.

What a treat, I got to show our beaver dam to Dr. Emily Fairfax, Assistant Professor, California State University Channel Islands, Environmental Science and Resource Management. She was the researcher that studied large-scale wildfires and beaver habitat and made a great stop-motion video demonstrating her findings.

**Thermal Image of beaver dam, showing 90 degree wood in dam and 60ish degree water. (by Dr. Emily Fairfax)**

It was so fun to walk around the beaver dams and beaver lodges and learn so much about an area that I visit regularly. First, she called our beaver dam a “Jewel” of a beaver complex. She pointed out all the ways the beavers have committed themselves to this area, the 7-foot deep moat around their bank den, the beaver lodge (ie. second story) they were adding on to the beaver den (that I never even noticed before), the series of micro-dams on the hidden back side of the den that were widening the river and creating a safe hidden path to food sources.

As we walked in the water, we would occasionally pass through really cold patches of shallow water, she said these were places where the ground water was coming up, cooling the water and recycling the river water back into the ground (something like that), keeping the river water at that perfect fish-loving temperatures. She took a thermal image of the water and the dams also, which are sooooo cool.

Oh I remember having ‘experts’ come to the beaver dam. And how we would hang on their every word and ply them with endless questions. Experts from out of state or across the country. We learned so much from them. In retrospect though from years of experience I can say that nobody really knew our beavers better than we did. No matter how much they knew about beavers.

And the best part!?!?!?! She wants to do a study of this beaver complex, watching, recording, capturing photos, as the seasons change, gathering data within the beaver complex and comparing to data outside of the beaver complex. Is that the most exciting news ever or what!? I can’t even believe it.

That is VERY exciting. For you. I sooo wish that had happened for us. Sniff. I whimpered to Emily and she said gamely “I can still come and study your beavers!” But I sobbed

“No you can’t because we don’t HAVE any beavers. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

But still. Still. It’s GREAT news for our friends in SLO and great news for beavers in general. I’m so glad Emily is on the job! You MUST go to the website to see the AWESOME 360 image of the beaver habitat. I can’t embed it here but it’s amazing!!! Those are some happy beavers munching on all those cat tails.

Oh and speaking of great news, Robin of Napa had an excellent sighting at Pearl Street.

[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://youtu.be/F7tbxG2rMEE” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]