p1000860

Visitors & Casualties

heidi08 City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? November 8, 2014

Last night’s visitors from San Francisco were 30 high school students with backpacks and notebooks who came to see the beavers.They were accompanied by their energetic and fearless teacher/handler Catherine Salvin. I gave a little talk on the footbridge about beavers as ecosystem engineers and described their physical adaptions to life in the water. Then Jon took them on a tour of the dam and up to ward street to look for the kit. On the way she made sure they sketched the dam, the flow device, and the chewed trees.

There were some great questions, some appreciative listeners and a few who predictably couldn’t have been more bored. They had read the New York Times article beforehand, and were fairly schooled in the basic story. (Someone couldn’t exactly remember the word and said they were ecosystem technicians, which I loved.) I’m happy to say that not one student thought beavers eat fish or live in the dam. That’s Catherine right front below.

After their tour our smaller yearling made several appearances, swimming obligingly and foraging for them to watch. When it first emerged 30 noisy bodies trampled for a closer look and it dove immediately. I was surprised how quickly they learned to watch silently so they could see and sketch the beaver at leisure. A second beaver appeared later on and a great egret fished ostentatiously at the bridge during the quiet moments.

All in all it was a good night, for beavers, for ecological education and for Martinez. Thanks WALC!

This morning I heard from Robin that the second wave of depredation permits for beavers (the not-computerized ones that had to be scanned by hand) had arrived. She wrote,

“Yes, we have Region 4 well represented with counties Kern, Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Madera. Also Region 6 with Mono county. Nothing in the Southern coastal region- Los Angeles to San Diego.”

What does this mean? 4 – Central Region Serving Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. Region 6 Serving Imperial, Inyo, Mono, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That means permission to kill the water-savers in the driest regions of the state. Robin will generously donate her weekend to get the stats together. But she can’t possibly go fast enough for me.

I recently was talking to a reporter from the guardian about depredation in California, and she wanted to know if the numbers were going up or down. I realized we couldn’t know for sure, but might glean something from earlier records. I don’t have access to earlier depredation permits, but I do have the stats from a FOIA request by reporter Thomas Knudson on beavers killed by the USDA in 2010. Comparing the two is kind of like apples and oranges, because one is ‘permission given’ and the other is actual beavers killed, and just because a permit is issued the beavers could be killed by someone else and never wind up in the USDA stats. Think of it like “All mothers are women” but “not all women are mothers” grouping problem. Remember the column on the left is the actual number of beavers killed by USDA. And the column on the right is the number of depredation permits issued (which might valid for an unlimited number of beavers).

However you slice it, we still have our grim winner:

So Placer county is still the leading beaver killer in the entire state. No surprise there. Even more interesting to me is second place. USDA killed 108 beavers in Colusa County in 2010. But in 2013 the entire county got only got 4 permits. What gives? Did they suddenly have a change of heart and think that killing beavers was wrong? No indeed. Those 4 permits were issued for the incredible number of 94 beavers PLUS one unlimited wildcard of dead beavers. And they were all awarded to USDA. Let’s assume that those US killers are good at their job and always get their beaver. 94 + X (make that at least least 10 probably a lot more) and that puts them right back in their number 2 spot.

Some things never change.

WALC this way!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Friends of Martinez Beavers November 7, 2014

I think it was 2008 when I first wrote Catherine Salvin of the WALC school at Balboa High in San Francisco. WALC stands for Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative and is an outdoor-immersion-ecologically-minded splendor that is accessible to both continuation and Balboa students. As you can see it is definitely not your typical school.

Last year Catherine wrote that there was FINALLY money to get the kids here and they would like to make a visit to see some urban beavers. I told them the viewing was better before November but this is the first chance they had to make the trek. Jon and I are meeting them tonight down town for a beaver tour, and I’m hopeful that the beavers will cooperate. With any luck they will inspire some essays or artwork and I will get to post it here! (Not to mention fostering a healthy respect for urban beavers and their contributions later in life.)

Fingers crossed that we will see actual beavers in our beaver habitat!

In the meantime I’ve been thinking some pretty fanciful thoughts. Bear with me. (Remember my day job is a child psychologist so it’s an occupational hazard.) These thoughts are about mermaids. No seriously. Now everyone has seen the little mermaid and knows about mermaids in the ocean but did you also know that there are old stories that say some mermaids travel up estuaries to fresh water lakes? Estuaries like the Carquinez Straits? (Humphrey did it!)There is even some indication that they go to fresh water when they’re pregnant and give birth in fresh water. Which makes sense, considering salmon and steelhead go out to sea and come back to breed and lay eggs. Can’t you just imagine a mermaid tagging along beside a salmon and finding herself surrounded by cattails?Mermaids have also been described as being able to swim up rivers to freshwater lakes.

And since you already agreed to come this far with your imagination, can’t you imagine how mermaids would enjoy swimming around with beavers in their murky splendor? I mean, you’ve seen paintings of them with seals, and dolphins, so why not beavers? Visiting their underwater houses, helping with a repair or two and playing with the kits? There are numerous stories about mermaids helping humans so it’s not unthinkable to imagine they would even warn beavers about trappers or underwater snares.

In the vast entirety of the internet, where one can spend days and months looking through every possible crazy idea that is dear to someone, there is not a single thing written or drawn about beavers and mermaids.

Until now.

beaversandmermaid — Beavers and Freshwater Mermaid – Worth A Dam

Beavers of Color

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental July 15, 2009

One of our jobs as board members of the John Muir Association is to think about smart, dynamic others in the community we can enlist to pull the dogsled, take us faster to more places and make the load lighter. I have met plenty that fit that description in my beaver wanders, so I’ve been going through the list in my head. When I think about what this highly qualified, and environmentally inspirational board needs I can see a real need to diversify their cultural resources. Like too many boards, it has a hue deficit, and there is not enough color to fill a cream puff, let alone to encourage a heterogeneic, multi-ethnic interest in the Muir site and its role in the larger environment for years to come.

So I started to go through the mental list of beaver supporters that represented a broader ethnic background, and I was alarmed to find it was shorter than I expected. I talked about this with others and was told that this was similar in Audubon and other environmental groups. WALC (Wilderness Arts Literacy Collaborative) is well aware of these challenges, but why do they exist? When we go into the schools to teach beavers and talk about wetlands, we have universal attention and excited commitment from the suburbs to the inner cities. These events have taught me how to say “beaver” in Spanish, Vietnamese, German and Sign language. African American children are every bit as interested in beavers as their whiter counterparts. So what changes? What do we do wrong as a culture that turns off this dynamic interest in the natural world, or makes certain groups feel unwelcome in the larger environmental community?

Photos from: Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative

Life is complex, and the multiple meanings of race are hugely complex. I was cautioned to be “careful” when I discussed writing this post, but I am certain it must be better to start the dialogue, (however awkwardly or gracelessly), than to observe it unspoken. I want to know what we do wrong in our environmental work to discourage the participation of every one. I want to know how everyone can be assured that they bring unique value to the table and that the earth is a better place when you care for it with a group of friends. Certainly the environment touches every life powerfully, and sometimes it’s minorities that are exposed to our most significant environmental damage. A cleaner watershed benefits everyone, and is probably supported by most. How can we be more inclusive in our reaching out to the community?

If you have thoughts, let me know. I’m opening this post for comments or you can email them privately.