Some days I feel like I am scrambling to chip out beaver news from an already depleted quarry, grateful for a handful of pebbles I can string together incoherently. And some days I definitely get the feeling that everything is handed to me on a silver platter and all I have to do is savor and share.
Like this picture, sent yesterday by Mary O’brien of the Grand Canyon Trust. Don’t laugh at these boys with beaver on a leash because if it wasn’t for their hard work fixing the damage of the fur trade we wouldn’t have any beavers at all. I love their ruddy faces and the beavers complete impatience for the photo shoot. We won’t complain about a hard strap around their middle because its at least wayyy better than dropping them out of airplanes in a box.
Good excuse to repost this:
But wednesdays are full of riches around here, and yesterday when I was reading rather indignantly the dissertation that said flow devices don’t work I was checking out her references for this fact and came upon a researcher from Alberta I hadn’t encountered before who listed among his many publications, this recent one.
Potential Conservation Benefits of Wildlife Festivals
by Glen T. Hvenegaard
Wildlife festivals promote a variety of social, educational, economic, recreational, and community development goals. As ecotourism activities, wildlife festivals should also promote conservation goals. This article examines five potential conservation benefits of wildlife festivals which can be generated by providing: 1) incentives to establish protected areas; 2) revenue for wildlife and habitat management; 3) economic impact to nearby areas, encouraging residents to conserve wildlife; 4) alternatives to other uses that cause more environmental damage; and 5) support for conservation by educating local and nonlocal participants. The discussion includes wildlife festival examples, along with research and management needs.
The amazing thing about reading this paper is that all these schemes, efforts, and strategems we made up out of our own exhausted brains are actually commonly employed methods for using eco-tourism to promote conservation. Who knew?
Wildlife festivals are short-term celebrations of local natural wildlife features. They attract mostly local and regional visitors, and offer a variety of social, recreational, and educational activities.
From an organizational perspective, wildlife festivals are open to the public (Lawton & Weaver, 2010) and usually offer activities such as guided walks, presentations, birding competitions, wildlife carving competitions, children’s crafts, and trade shows (Hartley, 2005). Most wildlife festivals attract a few hundred visitors, although attendance can range from a few dozen to several thousand.
I cannot tell you what it feels like to read a recipe that so clearly spells out how to make a dish you thought you invented. I don’t say that in a proprietary way, but rather in the way someone who stayed awake all night reading War and Peace for a test might react when their friend tells them the next day that there’s a movie. We’ve been reinventing the wheel without even understanding the term ‘wheel’!
I got a kick out of reading how much money other festivals require and generate, and also how many were than one day so that folks stayed over in an area and spent more money. But I was especially impressed with this list:
Check out how many of those festivals are for fur-bearing mammals. (That would be none.) Note how many of them are for animals of the feathered variety. The Martinez Beaver Festival is apparently a frickin’ unicorn.
This is my very favorite part of the article in directions for future research.
How is burnout of organizers and volunteers managed?
Now, for those of you following on at home, this was published in 2011 and is from the science department at the Augustana campus at the University of Alberta. Where Dr. Glynnis Hood is also a professor. In February of that year she attended a conference where yours truly presented on the Beaver Festival for the first time. Coincidence?
