Once upon a time I was the new kid on the block trying to save beavers. Those days are (thankfully) history. Now there are beaver disciples all across the land. Making huge difference. This is the recent post from Rachel Siegel who was motivated to save the beavers when her HOA wanted them killed in Glanview Park in Illinois. She started the facebook page Glenview Beavers fan club, republished our urban guidebook for their state and now has become a nonprofit under ISI just like us.

I have emerged unscathed from my meeting with the IEPA today! With the help of Representative Jen Gong-Gershowitz, I was able to make a polished pitch about the role that process-based restoration (and beavers!) can play in improving our water quality and creating floodwater storage capacity.

We left the meeting with a couple of action items, including setting up a meeting with staff at the IDNR. So in the meantime, I will continue to work on setting up my new organization, the Illinois Beaver Alliance, which is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems, Inc. , and thus has nonprofit status.The mission of the Illinois Beaver Alliance is to improve the health and function of Illinois watersheds, which will increase climate resilience, improve water quality, increase biodiversity, and create floodwater storage capacity; and to educate the public about the ecological importance of beavers and the modern tools for resolving human-beaver conflicts. I’ll tell you more about it soon!

Tomorrow we have our meeting with the Village of Glenview and then I am going downtown with Donald Hey of Wetlands Research to pitch nutrient farming (or water quality credit farming) to a prominent Clean Water Act attorney.

Did you catch all that? She presented her position to her state representative and is now going to meet with fish and game a water attorney. Is your mind blown completely? Beavers: The Next Generation has some fine recognition of our buddy Rusty Cohn in the County RCD Monthly Newsletter.

July Conservation Champion: Rusty Cohn

We are 100% certain that at least some of you know our July Conservation Champion, Rusty Cohn. If you’re on Facebook or NextDoor, you may know him as the one sharing photos of local cute baby animals: the downtown Napa beavers!

Rusty does a great job inspiring us to treasure the wildlife that we have in our downtown. In addition to sharing his photos, he also shares stories and behaviors he observes while photographing these creatures. So who is Rusty?

Rusty has been in Napa 10 years and says his favorite part about being here is that it is a small town with a slower pace of life that is matched with a great diversity of wildlife so close by. After visiting his daughter here, he and his wife fell in love with the area and decided to move here once he retired. Now, Rusty keeps busy with several hobbies (including photographing local wildlife) and walking his dog Toby.

**Beaver building dam with two rocks: Rusty Cohn**

After first noticing a beaver dam next to Hawthorne Suites Hotel while out walking, he became fascinated with beavers and all of the other wildlife that were living in and near the beaver ponds. Rusty says his favorite part about photographing and sharing the animals found in our urban landscapes is that you never know what you might see next. He finds it exciting to observe the variety of wildlife, and he hopes his photos encourage others to become more interested in viewing and protecting the diverse wildlife of Napa County.

One thing Rusty wants us all to know: “Napa is a wonderland of biodiversity, get outside and enjoy it!”

Not only does Rusty share photos on Facebook and NextDoor, he also shares videos on his YouTube page!

We love community members who are excited about seeing and sharing local wildlife, and Rusty is a great example of that. Thanks for helping us get to know the nature in our own neighborhoods!

WHOO HOO! Rusty has been a good friend and supporter of Worth A Dam and helped out at our festivals AND earthday! I’m so happy his hard work is getting noticed.

Meanwhile I my hard work is apparently only worth stealing because my OpEd was stolen again by a letter to the editor for the Eugene Weekly. Hope my words are having fun being kidnapped!

Leave It To Beavers

Oregon is killing off one of nature’s best firefighters.

Last summer Oregon endured the single most flammable year in modern history. Record-setting fire after record-setting fire churned through the state, yet once again we continue to ignore or even kill the water-saving firefighter who would work for free to protect us: the beaver.

Recent research, published under the title “Smokey the Beaver,” found beaver complexes were three times more resistant to wildfire than similar areas without beaver. Beaver habitat, with its dams, ponds and canals, showed less wildfire damage than un-beavered streams. In keeping water on the landscape, beavers reduce fire, mitigate drought and recharge groundwater.

Beavers save water and reduce the risk and severity of wildfire. They do it all day, every day, at zero taxpayer expense. Their ponds have been consistently shown to increase biodiversity from stoneflies to steelhead. Beaver ponds help fish survive at a time when the Pacific coast is hemorrhaging salmon.

Our own self-interest dictates our attention. Yet Oregon isn’t learning.

Susan Libby

True. This time it contained five whole original lines of her own specific to Oregon which must have been exhausting to pen. I hope the shoplifter isn’t too tired to steal more?

Editor adds this

Editor’s note: Since this letter was published in EW, we have learned that it draws heavily and without attribution on a column by Heidi Perryman published in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26.

That’s the thing about good ideas. The really good ones get stolen and passed off as original. I’m sure there were lot of tossers saying they came up with the theory of evolution too when Origin of the species was first published. From the point of view that getting the word out is the only good thing, it’s still good news.

How a group of beavers prevented a wildfire and saved California a million dollars

Graig Graziosi

A dried-out floodplain in Place County – just north of Sacramento, California – was in perfect condition to fuel wildfires. It was 2014, and California was in the midst of its worst drought in decades. The floodplain was full of dry brush and devoid of moisture. Fire prevention and ecological workers in the state were desperately working to mitigate potential wildfire fuel sources anywhere they could. Ecologists – facing a dangerously dry floodplain and a price tag of $1m to $2m for a major construction project to fix the site – did something surprising. They called in the beavers.

Note that the stealing is so entirely opportunistic that they didn’t even have the sense to get the NAME right. It’s Placer county, you moron. Not Place county. Sheesh. Of course this article isn’t written by “GRAIG” but by Isabella Bloom who was once the intern at the Sacramento Bee and is now at the UCB graduate school of journalism.

The Sacramento Bee spoke with researchers involved in the furry gambit to protect the state and revitalise the land.

Ultimately the Doty Ravine project only cost $58,000, which was used to prepare the land for the beavers to come in and do what they do.

Damon Ciotti, a US Fish and Wildlife Service restoration biologist who led the project, estimated that the beavers would take about a decade to return the dried out land to streams in the region, but the critters blew away his expectations. By year three, water was back in the floodplain.

The success of the project has spun off a number of other projects using beavers for land revitalisation throughout California.

Yeah yeah yeah. We know, Because we read it four days ago in an American paper, you lazy Brit. And besides that’s a ridiculous way to spell “Graig”.

Ms Batt said that federal programmes were beginning to take notice and offer training on how to use beavers for wildfire mitigation, and indicated that universities and nonprofit programmes were also interested.

This stealing must happen ALL the time. Lazy reporters who just rewrite stuff as their own because honestly who is going to know? If I weren’t such a weirdo reading every single article published about beavers I wouldn’t.

This is personal though.

How about a letter to the editor in the register guard which is published in Eugene Oregon.

Fighting fires with beavers

Susan Libby, Eugene

Last summer, Oregon endured the single most flammable year in modern history. Record-setting fire after record-setting fire burned through the state, yet once again we ignore or even kill the water-saving firefighter who would work for free to protect us: the beaver.

Hey, wait a minute, you’re thinking. I read this before, But I don’t think it was about Oregon.

Beavers save water and reduce the risk and severity of wildfire. They do it all day, at zero taxpayer expense. Their ponds have been consistently shown to increase biodiversity from stoneflies to steelhead. Beaver ponds help fish survive at a time when the Pacific Coast is hemorrhaging salmon.

Our own self-interest dictates our attention. Yet Oregon isn’t learning.

GOD DAMMIT. I know its for the good of beavers and we need to share credit but hemorrhaging salmon is MY line. I had to look up how to spell it THREE times. Stoneflies to steelhead is MY line. I worked hard on the alliteration. Our own self-interest dictates is MY line. Like anyone else ever talks like that, SHEEEESH.

Okay, I just heard from Suzanne Fouty that she shared my op-Ed with Susan and others that are working on the beaver bills. Um okay. But its still stealing if you lift entire phrases off the page. GRRR Someday you can bet we’ll have a conversation about copying someone else’s paper and passing it off as your own. HRMPH