Recognize the hatless cowboy in the back with waders? That’s Skip Lisle, who installed our flow device in January 2008. Before he came for the install he had a commitment in New Mexico and you can watch parts 1 & 2 of that project on their website here. At the time, he had come to speak to the Beaver Subcommittee and seen our habitat, then was retained to come back in January. Interestingly, he mentions the lucky Martinez Beavers at 9:00 minutes and again later at 56:30 minutes. (Apparently we were very much on his mind! Are we surprised?)
The video is a nice chance to see an install up close, remember Skip’s pragmatic good will, and watch a rare cooperation between tribal folks, fish & game, and parks people. It’s interesting to compare the Skip “pep talk” to what he said in his presentation on the subcommittee. While there were many similarities, for the New Mexico crowd he emphasized the keystone role of beavers in the habitat, and his own experience as a wildlife biologist. (Our staff didn’t even know Skip was a biologist, and kept uselessly saying we needed to ask the botanist for beaver clarification). Also he says very clearly SEVERAL times that you need to pick the highest water height you can possibly tolerate in the habitat to increase the chance that the beavers will accept the flow device and make your investment worthwhile. We had to work very hard to get him to mention this to the subcommittee, maybe because he could sense that warning against a massive lowering would have meant no beavers would be allowed to stay. The three feet worried a lot of us, but turned out okay.
It’s rather slow-moving, although things pick up the pace in part two. My favorite part (besides hearing our famous beavers mentioned!) was Skip explaining how he uses a “bendy” pipe to adjust the cut wires for the round fence. (He explained the real name was a 6 inch nipple.) “Bendy” pipe sounded like the kind of Buffy speak language that I would be inclined to use. On a practical level the application of the hollow pipe was clearly enormously handy —wish we’d known about that when we were out wrapping trees and getting poked and scratched! But the gerund-into-adjective-switch amused me. (Like hummy bird or shoppy cart) I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the man who coined the phrases “Beaver Deceiver” and “Castor Master” is interested in tweaking language sometimes. Especially when the pipe in question has a rather startling name for mixed company!
