One of my very favorite stories to tell about the beavers came after the famous meeting that forced the city’s hand. The very newly formed Worth A Dam wanted to do its part and plant willow trees to replace the ones the beavers had eaten – thus taking some of the burden and showing the city everything would be okay. We had volunteers lined up and had worked with a nursery to buy natives and arrange free delivery.

The city, having been pushed around long enough by the beaver masses responded by saying before any planting would be allowed we needed an advanced biological assessment of the creek showing the trees they had taken and the effect on the ecosystem of the trees we wanted to replace them with. Basically it is clear in retrospect that they knew we were poor as church mice and they hoped we’d go away and take our rotten beavers with us.

Undaunted I picked up the phone and started calling environmental firms in Contra Costa County, Then in Alameda County. They all said they could do it but they all wanted $$$ and none of them loved beavers and wanted to help us out of the goodness of their hearts. Sadly I started to think the entire plan to show that the beavers could ‘pay for themselves’ and add value to the city wasn’t going to work.

I must have sat around sadly for an hour, and then the phone rang. It was Wendy Dexter then the head of Condor Consulting in Martinez, one of the very first to turn me down. Her voice sounded different right off the bat,

“I have a daughter” she said. “She’s four years old..”

Intrigued, I listened closely and said nothing.

“She made a tail at your recent event and she loves to wear it. She loves the beavers so every Saturday night we have to take her down to the bridge so she can wear her tail and watch them in the creek.”

If I’m telling the story in a formal presentation I usually show this photo:

“So we’ll help you. I send our senior biologist to do the assessment and he can start monday. Will that be soon enough?”

We got our assessment and we the beavers got their trees and we also got a story that has charmed generations of advocates from Montclaire to Mt Diablo Audubon.

And that little four year old is at UCDavis now.

Because sometimes all you can do to combat horrific obstacles is to simply be persistently and vociferously adorable. Which I thought of this morning when I read this.

Just when will beavers find a home again among the waterways of Wales?

A frustrated biologist who has ditched plans to reintroduce beavers in Carmarthenshire says a proper management plan is needed because the animals are gaining a foothold further afield. Nick Fox, of wildlife management group the Bevis Trust, said he had hoped to release a small number of beavers on a trial basis in the Cowin and Cynnen rivers, west of Carmarthen.

But he said after three years of discussions with environment body Natural Resources Wales (NRW), he felt sufficient progress was not being made. “I ran out of patience,” he said. “The disease risk assessment (of the application) was £6,000, and they wanted us to do a hydrological survey of the whole river system.”

Ahh Nick, we understand. It is enormously frustrating to know in your head that if you could just do the thing you have planned it would work out fine and everyone would be happier and better off. But they won’t let you show that it will work so you have no way of proving your point to the world and they just want to sit at their desks and count up the number of things that could go wrong.

I don’t know the answer and I don’t have £6,000 to give you. But I have learned over the years something about this process of bending unwilling minds and I can see right now that the answer is going to have to contain lots and lots of tails.