Tag: Suzi Eszterhas

Santa comes early for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2016

Around this time of the Holidays everything starts to seem like “too much”. There are too many presents to wrap or cookies to frost or ravioli’s to make and there is barely enough time to squeeze them all in. Add to this that there is now a SURFEIT of beaver news to share. But I take my job seriously so I’m going to start with this, even though I’m saving the selfishly best for last.

How’s this for a headline? You gotta love Scotland.

Tree felling by beavers may save millions in flood repairs

CONSERVATION experts predict the controversial felling of trees by beavers will help save millions of pounds spent on flood damage and defences after the animals were spotted for the first time on National Trust for Scotland property.

The creatures are often blamed for causing flooding on farmland by building dams. But conservationists said their habit of gnawing down trees also encouraged multiple new younger stems to grow, which could help to prevent flooding by reducing erosion.

The nation’s largest conservation charity believes the beavers will play a key role in cutting its multi-million pound bill due to floods as they continue to spread across the country following the Government’s decision last month to grant them protected status as a returned native species.

That’s right, the country’s largest charity is excited that beavers are cutting down its trees because the coppicing will help prevent erosion. (And no, I didn’t just make this up in a basement with my beaver fantasy 500.) Follow the link and see for yourself. It’s for real. Never mind that in our silly country the Nature Conservancy is paying to kill beavers to save trees because they’re stupid. Imagine if our largest conservancy was excited about beavers!

Speaking of EXCITED (yes, I know I’m shouting), I heard from photographer Suzi Eszterhas that her beaver photo shoot is officially approved and can be shared by us. The Ranger Rick article will come out in the fall and in the meantime she generously arranged for allowing me to use her amazing photos in presentations and the website. There are 274 and at the moment I’m just like a happily confused child sitting in the middle of the candy store wondering which to enjoy first, but I thought I’d share a few beauties today.

Seeing these images is of course, bittersweet because it was that year that our kits died and our beaver family disbanded. There were no answers and few comforts. But every time you start to feel misty-eyed, I promise you will be cheered by the crazy curved tails of the Napa beaver kits. So you have to keep looking.

Most of the photos are of our Martinez beavers, including some wonderful images of our human children helping out, some are Napa images or rehab in Washington and Lindsay Museum (not ours). It is enormously special to have this record and I am so grateful for her remarkable work. If you want to browse the entire collection you can check out her website here.

There’s never enough time, I know.

Avoiding a beaverless state

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? September 27, 2016

There are a few things to catch up on before they get away from me. First is that I was contacted by Enviormental writer Ben Goldfarb a few weeks ago who said he was writing a book about beavers for Chelsea Green Publishing and wanted to talk about the Martinez beaver story. If his name seems vaguely familiar it’s because he was the author of several important beaver articles in High Country News recently – the major one being “The Beaver Whisperer” about Kent Woodruff and the Methow project. Kent told him he should talk to me next, and we had a great chat about our story and the response we saw in the creek when the beavers moved in. He’s in the early stages of the book so we won’t get to enjoy it for ages, but I left him with a long list of people to talk to next and he was happy.

Meanwhile our eager Ranger Rick readers, waiting for their beaver story, saw an interesting clue at the end of their September issue. It started with a riddle about a beaver dam that they said would be answered next month and ended with this:

So does that mean we’ll see our beavers in the next issue? I don’t know. The last thing I heard from Suzi is that the issue would come next summer. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get a surprise or maybe we’ll get beavers TWICE in Ranger Rick!

And speaking of beavers fixing drought in California, here’s a result of not letting them that’s been on my mind lately. My parents lost 18 trees to the bark beetle but looking at this film I realize they are getting off lucky so far. The words Forest Succession echoing. I knew it was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad.

Here’s some of our damage:

Friends with Cameras

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, New Species, pictures February 7, 2016

It was lovely to come across this article about the talents of someone we know. Suzi deserves every bit of attention she gets, and we’re very lucky that she lives in the area.

Award-winning Petaluma-based photographer Suzi Eszterhas lives on the wild side

Petaluma-based wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas is living her dream.

The 39-year-old animal enthusiast graduated from a childhood spent observing squirrels and birds in her backyard to photographing jaguars in Brazil and traveling around the globe documenting the lives of animals while sharing a message of conservation with future generations.

“Basically, I worked my whole life trying to make a career in wildlife photography,” the Marin County native said. “I knew as a child what I wanted to do. I’ve never really known a life with any different goals.”

Eszterhas has been published in more than 100 magazine covers and feature stories, including Time and Smithsonian magazines and BBC Wildlife and she’s earned recognitions in prestigious contests including Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Environmental Photographer of the Year competitions as well as the National Wildlife Photo Contest, but it’s not the fame that’s important to her, she said.

What a great article! I’m so happy that we got to cross paths! Suzi is smart enough to have worked her whole life to make a living doing what she loves, and she deserves this kind of article from her home town.

Though she’s done work internationally, Eszterhas, who moved to Petaluma about a year and a half ago, has also been active locally, documenting the Ninth Street Rookery in Santa Rosa, a median on a city street where birds nest, and the Tulocay Beaver Pond in Napa, where beavers established a home in a creek near a large hotel, she said.

But not a mention of US??? The original urban beavers? Your friends who told you about the beaver pond in Napa and took you there in the first place? No mention of sitting all those nights on the bank eating pad thai out of a box and enjoying the best beaver sightings you will EVER see?

Napa didn’t give you a shirt, Suzi, sheesh!

Well as it happens I was sent some other lovely Napa photos this morning, and the timing couldn’t be better to share them. These are burrowing owls at the nearby golf course, and Rusty says it’s what photographers do in the winter when beavers are hard to see. I just think it’s pretty fortuitous that we’re seeing these on SUPERB OWL SUNDAY! For reasons best understood only by me, I especially love the grumpy one.

Superb owl — *Wake me up when it’s over. Photo by Rusty Cohn*

superb Owl sunday — *Now what is he looking at? Photo by Rusty Cohn*

Nice work Rusty. I was staggered the first time I saw owls living in the ground like feathered hobbits. Rusty was even lucky enough to catch a photo of the architect and tenant side by side. So I couldn’t resist playing a little.

The Epic Tail

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 14, 2015

This weekend acclaimed wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas posted about her work with the Martinez Beavers on her facebook page. She told the story of their arrival, protection and untimely death, and checked with me first to see if she had gotten everything correct, accompanying the post with my June video of her working.

June was so complicated because we were bursting with joy to have four kits, but Suzi asked me not to post about them or her so there would be more time for undisturbed photos. She has A LOT of photographers who follow her in the hopes of taking pictures of whatever she’s taking pictures of. And she wanted them not to be summoned. So I kept my mouth closed for a month which was really hard to do.

And then in July they started dying, which is a very unjust cosmic reward for my patience.

Not surprisingly, there have been a lot of responses to the story on her much-trafficked facebook page, and it has been surprising to me to see so many people react to the story with “How sad” or “That’s awful”. “What a tragedy.” Which has been unsettling not becauset I’m UNSAD about this turn of events -(I’m sure I wept more tears than anyone) – but I just don’t think of the Martinez Beaver story with “How sad!” Its a joyous, fierce, dynamic, hopeful, tragic, EPIC story. It’s the story of civic pride and a big money battle leading to David beating Goliath. It’s the story of urban renewal and a polluted creek awakened from the dead. And I’m not sure we’ve reached the final chapter yet.

It made me think of this iconic scene from Northern Exposure which I loved when it was on a million years ago. The technology is sooo old I can’t embed it, so you will have to click on the photo to see Ed and Marilyn discuss our beavers’ fate this summer at the laundry mat. She tells the perfect tribal story for our situation. You’ll have to watch a short silly ad, I can’t help that, but I believe it will be worth it.

It’s in the bag!

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Festival, kits September 28, 2015

Ohhh it’s so nice to be back on the HUGE familiar pc screen where everything is still broken in the usual ways. You might have to hear more from me as a result, I’m sorry to say. I thought I’d share some photos from the beaver art project taken by Suzi Eszterhas. Other photos taken that day might make it to the Ranger Rick story but she said I could share these and they’re a great introduction to a fun use of Susanna Street park.

This is Ethan who is wearing an original Martinez beaver shirt that he made himself. He’s proudly showing his Father and son beaver bag puppets. If you wish you could make some of your very own, the patterns are here. The paws are wooden forks. The tails and hind feet are from Dugmore’s Romance of the Beaver, but don’t forget it was Heidi’s endless labor that got them to print double sided. (The hope is that since the book is 101 years old now it will be public domain-y enough for Ranger Rick to print our pattern. And we really MIGHT have an army of beaver puppets across America.)

Bella made a beaver kit and her own frog original puppet. She knew just about everything about the beavers and explained to the other children why they should use orange teeth on the older puppet. Towards the end of the event she got a little restless and went around the park picking up large sticks for her beaver to eat. It was pretty adorable.

This is Brynn who wore two charm necklaces from the past beaver festivals. She also finished the buttons this year but said that her favorite festival was two years ago when she was able to bring her best friend. If you peek to the left of the kits tail you can just make out the dragonfly and mom’s tail charms. Imagine growing up with beaver festivals. She’s been coming since she was 4.

For some reason I didn’t get photos of April and Alana from Suzi to share, but they were a dynamic duo of beaver information. April posed her beaver kit with a Fennel stalk and explained how Mom beaver liked to eat it when she was pregnant. Alana described how it might have been the salt water that killed the kits. They were both very attentive to details and asked through their grandmother if they could have their own children’s booth at the festival next year. No, really. Since I don’t have their photos to share, I will share this clip from when we met on the footbridge after the PBS beaver documentary aired. They had this feedback for the Canadian producer Jari Osborne:

Jari, btw, was delighted when I sent her this clip and wrote back on youtube:

Thank you so much, April, Alana (sp?) and Heidi!!!
Girls, I am so delighted to know you watched, enjoyed and cared about what you saw on Leave It To Beavers. It means so much to me to hear from you! ~Jari