You might remember that last year I wrote about the “State of the Beaver” Conference in Oregon organized by the South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership and the Cow-Creek Umpqua at their casino in Canyonville, Oregon. Everyone of beaver note was there, including Skip Lisle, Sherri Tippie and Michael Pollock. I very much wanted to be there too, and I wrote Leonard Houston begging for 15 minutes of space for the famous Martinez Beavers. He promised to make room but in the end our timing didn’t work out and we mournfully decided not to go.
Guess what came in the email box Friday?
I wouldn’t exactly describe it as an invitation. It was more like a royal summons without the letter head. It said “Heidi, we have added you onto the schedule on the second day of the conference, along with Sherri Tippie, Glynnis Hood and Steve Zack. We’ll pay food and lodging and if Worth A Dam covers your travel expenses we’ll add your organization as a sponsor.” He went on to add,
We are targeting Traditional Ecological Knowledge, wetlands, climate change, beavers birds and wildlife and breakaway brainstorming sessions on day 3. We will of course be including non-lethal management and alternative solutions for problematic beavers. Lot to squeeze in but we are going too.
Now, dear readers, let me just say privately to you how enormously affirming it is to be formally on the schedule and granted accommodations. (Come to think of it, I have, in my vast professional career – for which I went to college for ten – count them ten years and received a license from the State of California – I have as a psychologist attended many conferences from Louisiana to Michigan where I’ve presented and even been paid for my time but have been given accommodations for exactly ONE of them.) Hmm. Apparently my psychological skills are a dime a dozen. But my beaver skills, for which I received no formal training whatsoever, might be worth investing in! Who knew?
Readers of this website must all know Sherri Tippie, but the other names might be less familiar. Glynnis Hood is the Canadian researcher who has been the driving force behind the argument that beavers can mitigate the effects of climate change.
“Removal of beaver should be considered an environmental disturbance on par with in-filling, peat mining and industrial water extraction,” said researcher Glynnis Hood, lead author on the study and an assistant professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose, Canada.
Not to be out done, Steve Zack is the co-author behind the “Beaver Dams increase songbirds” research. I remember when his article came out the folks at Wild Birds Unlimited laminated several summary pages for us and were very pleased to finally have a formal reason to explain their friendliness to the beavers. Being in the same lineup as these remarkable heroes from the beaver-research frontlines is intimidating in the extreme, but also very, very exciting.
(What do I know about beavers really that’s worth a an hour of anyone’s time in that setting? These folk don’t need to be told that beavers mate for life and don’t eat fish! What does an accidental beaver advocate have to contribute to the conversation? I mean besides having a lot of great footage and images of them, observing their effects close at hand every day for the past four years, organizing opposition to local government, coordinating support, using research to combat ignorance, endless education and outreach, seeing the beavers make a difference in hundreds of children’s lives, and seeing hundreds of children make a difference in the beavers lives, maintaining a website that has become a global hub of beaver information, helping launch a DVD about beaver management, reviewing and advising countless cases of beaver activity across the nation, instigating a research project to document historic beaver prevalence in california, and getting famous beaver folk to spend a little more time talking to each other.)
Come to think of it, I guess I have rather a lot to say.
Okay, I won’t be intimidated. This is a great club to be invited to. I’ll sit in the front row, write everything down and ask a hundred questions. I’ll sing the praises of Worth A Dam and argue that any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver. I’ll show how beaver families interact and if anyone asks me my ideas about charging property owners a ‘salmon tax’ for killing beavers I’ll make sure I let them know where I stand.
Thanks, Len.
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On a separate note, GTK wonders how many beaver mom’s can possibly die in one year?
