I was happy to see this meeting got attention, especially in the Bay Area. This is from the Bay City News, which has always been a good friend to our beavers in Martinez.
Bring Back Beavers: California Seeks Conservation, Restoration Of Beavers For Ecosystem
California state agencies are taking a new approach to beaver management in the state to prioritize conservation of the ecologically important species as they call upon Californians to be “beaver believers.”
To support beaver conservation and enable California’s ecosystem to benefit from their activity, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is partnering with native tribes, non-governmental organizations, private landowners and other state and federal agencies.
At a panel discussion Wednesday, beaver researchers and members of the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spoke about the history of beavers in California and their beaver restoration project.
Hurray! Now lets all fold are arms and carefully observe what happens because I’ve seen more than one agency get undeserved credit for major rebranding that didn’t produce any major changes whatsoever.
At the center of the state’s approach is helping public and private landowners meet their resource management goals through implementing beaver coexistence measures, mimicking habitats in places where beavers had not yet returned and relocating in cases where coexistence failed, said Occidental Arts and Ecology Center WATER Institute director Kate Lundquist, who works on the project.
The industrial fur trade saw beavers as a commodity and contributed to them being wiped out of California waters at high rates, according to Ben Goldfarb, conservation journalist and author of “Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers.”
This caused ecological damage that “permanently shaped North American landscapes” as streams suffered catastrophic erosion, wetlands dried up and rivers disconnected from their floodplains, Goldfarb said.
Go Ben! Do you ever stop an and about how crazy lucky beavers are to have had a writer like Ben tell their story? Lottery lucky, that;’s how. Do you know he has an article in the Atlantic this month?
“Few states need beavers more than California,” Goldfarb said.
The Tule River Indian Tribe of California is one tribe that is striving to get its beavers back. They are hoping to revive the watershed on their reservation that has suffered since the drought in 2014.
“Our beaver culture and history go back a long way,” said Kenneth McDarment, a member of the Tule River Indian Tribe of California who added that the tribe’s pictographs featuring beavers date back to 500 to 1,000 years.
“Elders that we still have on the reservation talk about beavers that were on different locations of the reservation when they were kids,” McDarment said.
Well the wheels are in motion now. Let’s all watch what happens from here.
