Beavers: Written By Deborah Hodge Illustrated by Pat Stephens

For the last week the arrival of beavers seems to be from downstream rather than upstream. We are used to seeing the kits come out from the upstream lodge and make their way to explore their world and the dam. We even saw a kit lay mud on the primary dam for the very first time this week. Lately though they are reminding us of something Skip Lisle always says “The principal of beaver life is dynamism”.

Beaver change things. Including their habits!

I’ve been frantically looking up references for lodge transitions and see that it is common especially over the summer months for families to go between lodges. Giving a lodge a break can be a good way to lower parasite populations and be close to a different food source. My human sensitivities are irrationally concerned that the family transition TOGETHER as a unit and nobody gets left behind - but they all seem to be keeping track of each other. Dad and the kits showed their most serious engagement ever this week and GQ is in full view with kits seeming to follow him wherever he goes. All the kits still are happy to see eachother and no sibling is ‘less liked’ as far as I can tell.

What will happen? Will the beaver family settle downstream or is this a summer fling similar to the ‘frat house‘ the yearlings experimented with years ago? Are dad and the yearling maintaining separate estates to increase their chances of each attracting a mate? Could the city of Martinez get another famous beaver colony? If so what happens to these kits? Will they become ‘joint custody kits’ shuttled back and forth between lodges? If the family stays together downstream will they still maintain the primary dam or will it become less important real estate? Will Skip’s installation become unnecessary? Or will we end up hiring him again to build three more?

The possibilities are apparently endless. Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of…”As the colony turns….”

Children’s Mural Available for Display

Worth A Dam is proud to present the children’s Mural for Alhambra Creek. This colorful and engaging diptych piece was created by a hundred young artists at Beaver Festival III in downtown Martinez and is now available for loaned display. FROgard, of the East Bay Artists Guild, painted the background with help from Randy Stansberry, based on graphic artist Libby Corliss creek map for the area. FRO provided guidance, instruction and a little judicious editing to help the mural come to life.

Each segment is 36″ x 48″and the pair should be hung in tandem. Imaginations were allowed to flourish letting each child share his or her own vision for the beaver habitat: a close look at the artwork shows that in addition to the green heron, baby ducks and beaver family, there is even a pirate beaver with a “hook” claw! One pragmatic child painted a golf bag with a ‘hole in one’ just in case dad would like to play a few rounds at the Beaver Park.

The hidden treasure of Martinez, CA is revealed not just its famous beavers but also in the delightful and caring children that respect Alhambra Creek and its wildlife. Funds and materials for this mural were donated by generous supporters and it is the hope of the children, the artists, and Worth A Dam that it will be seen around the downtown area in Martinez, inspiring each of us to see the wild beauty of the world around them.

If you would like to display the mural in your office, foyey, stairwell or gallery, contact Heidi Perryman at (925) 283-4499  to make arrangements.

This notice went out as of 3:00 pm Wednesday.As of 9 pm last night we already had expressed interest from the superintendent of schools, the Contra Costa Bar Association, and Superior Court. Worth A Dam is feeling like Scarlet at the ball! Thanks FRO and Randy for your outstanding work on this project. Thanks Mitch Wagner (long time hero of another very famous beaver case) for the generous donation. Worth A Dam promises never to let generous donations go to waste!

Out in Massachusetts the disgruntled folk from the Committee for Resposible Wildlife Management are headed to a lazy man’s victory. The bill making it easier to circumvent humane standards for killing beavers has been approved by the governor and is in its final stages before passage. Just remember, where beavers are concerned the problems rarely have anything to do with reason. (Martinez knows that fairly well through first hand experience.) The original law  requiring humane traps passed in the commonwealth back in 1996. It included a list of 9 lengthy exceptions to the rule under which traditional trapping could still be used.  At that time, Clinton was president, the economy was booming, and everybody knew somebody that was doing a start-up.

I guess times really do change.

So my brief obsession with superciliary vibrissae lead to Sherri Tippie sending me some early kit photos that showed they were present from a young age. Mystery solved, but ohhh looking at these photos has caused such a grand commotion of oooohing and awwwwwwing among Worth A Dam members that we are incapable of forming complete sentences. I thought I’d share the source of my affliction with you, but first, the answer to the mystery, so we can lay that to rest. Look at those wiry black hairs above the eye. Not as stiff as an older beaver and certainly the sense isn’t as developed, but those are vibrissae.

Okay now that we’re done with that mystery, check out the entire photo. Remember Sherri is the top beaver relocator in the country so she often ends up caring for or raising kits/orphans. In this picture her friend Chris is holding a week old kit. Look at that tail against her wrist! . I’m thinking a visit to Colorado next June is in order?

Sure grown-ups and skilled professionals can manage to hold a beaver. But how difficult is it? Wouldn’t those incisors take out a finger? We are constantly meeting people (usually trappers) who tell us how vicious beavers are. I guess she’s holding that kit a special way or something to make it harder to get a dental grip?

Meet Anna R. who is 8 in this picture. Sherri tells me that when she was 5 she became cheerfully obsessed with beavers. Her dad says she used to walk around the family home repeating “Sherri Tippie! Sherrie Tippie! Sherri Tippie!”. (I know the feeling.) Even though she was too young to help with relocation, she wanted to be involved. This is such an traffic-stopping photo the police should be called. Here’s another one in case you want to see Anna and the beaver smile.

Photos courtesy of Sherri Tippie

Gosh those are lovely, thank you so much for sharing! And just in case you think we are just bunny huggers around here, I’ll offer some intellectual stimulation as well. Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife lets us know that her letter to the Buffalo News.com was printed in Thursdays issue. Remember the nice article about some researchers noticing that the beaver dam in Woodlawn Wetlands was actually helping water quality and restoring the stream? I wrote them that this wasn’t unique to Buffalo and that if New York could allow more beavers to improve the watershed we’d all be better off. Sharon thought so too

 

12 min version: Summer Dam Removed to Create Fish Refuge - Camp Meeker Dam Removal from Ben Zolno on Vimeo.

Beaver friend Brock Dolman of OAEC’s Water Institute sends this newly launched video telling the dynamic story of creek restoration and dam removal in Camp Meeker. You probably know where this is located. Have you ever driven to Occidental from Guerneville on the Bohemian Highway? As you wind through the twisted redwood drive you see parts of a lovely creek along your right. The creek used to dead end in a swimming hole that was the center to the early community of Camp Meeker, and salmon would have to go hiking back down the water and look for another route. This video is a smart, engaging look at how to pull the community together with environmental restoration. Here’s Brock’s invitation to see for yourself.

For those who have been following the Dutch Bill Creek Dam Removal and Restoration Project, our construction partner Prunuske Chatham, Inc. has just started the implementation of Phase II to complete this project.  Today, Michael Fawcett, PhD and Sierra Cantor (GRRCD Ecologist) moved hundreds of fish (steelhead) upstream of the project to a safe refuge downstream, and construction should commence by next week.

As a kick off to this final phase of the project, I invite you to view the shortened version of the video and then come down and check out the site.  When its done, come get your feet wet – and next year hopefully come see the salmon happily spawning.

Make sure you have the sound on – the input from the community and our restoration partners really make the video into a story worth listening to. Please feel free to distribute as you wish.  The longer version (also on our website) is equally entertaining, if not more so – its just, well, longer….

Nice work all! And great soundtrack by the way. (Do I recognize the music from the Secret of Roan Inish? Gosh i loved that movie…)

Well, no cranes needed for Alhambra Creek at the moment. I’m off to meet with city staff about the mom-beaver & kits memorial by artist Paul Craig. Nearly two months have gone by since we lost our beloved matriarch. (Is that all? It seems like a million years ago). Hopefully we’ll have her image displayed before too long. Wish me luck!

Update:

Met with Bob Cellini and city staff who were enthusiastic about the beavers and willing to take on responsibolity for hanging them on the sheetpile themselves. We offered suggestions that were well received and left the adorable metal beavers in capable hands. Look for them soon coming to a sheetpile wall near you!

Some visitors to the park have been kind enough to send me a copy of their letter regarding park name. I thought you might enjoy a sampling…

Yesterday we drove again to the eastern side of the Sierras where we had accidentally found a series of beaver dams years ago. Turns out this fork of the carson river is central to the debate of whether beavers are native at higher elevations. Fish and Game says that all the beavers around Tahoe and Yosemite were ‘introduced’ in the 20’s. There are plenty who argue that this was actually a ‘reintroduction’ and point to trapping records and native lore to support it.

One tipping place of the debate seems to be the Washo tribe. These were the natives to the Lake Tahoe Region and were intimately connected with the eastern sierras. There is an argument that says that there couldn’t have been native beaver ‘because there’s no word for beaver in Washo’. However, our wikipedia friend whose looking into this recently found an online Washo database put together by the University of Chicago where the word for beaver is clearly listed.

c’imhélhel

It turns out that the very area in question, the sight of the fork of the Carson River where this debate is playing out, is the place where we stumbled upon beavers 8 years ago. We were drawn by the strange lunar landscape of the high desert, intrigued by the tribal lands of the Hung-a-lei-ti tribe, fascinated by the miles of sage and pinyon pine - suddenly on display after driving through a vista of fur trees. We followed the footsteps of Kit Carson and were ultimately directed to this very spot.

As you can see, the beavers here are clearly going about their business. They abandon the 5 year investment in their curving dams downstream and just started in on several new ones upstream. With  singular and furry focus they are entirely indifferent to the argument of whether or not they have a right to be there. Isn’t that wonderful?

So last night the beavers got a pretty special visitor in the Who’s Who of environmental education. John Muir Laws (’Jack’) drove out from San Francisco for a special beaver viewing and introduction. He brought his sketch pad and board and sat under the willow trees on the bank to draw the beavers as they swam about obligingly. Jack is a firm believer that seeing and drawing nature is the best way to truly understand it, and he dismisses the commonly held belief that artistic ability is a ‘gift’ rather than a pursuit.

He heard the ‘epic tail’ of the beavers salvation and the story of the exciting sheetpile vista that greeted him.  Then he was treated to a tour and the remarkable sighting of GQ strolling over the beaver dam in all his attractive prowess. While he settled to watch the constantly unfolding story of three kits navigating the waters on their own, families with wide-eyed children poured down to watch  Jack shared his excitement with them by passing along his expensive binoculars for a closer look. Jacks illustrations are the last word of Bay Nature Magazine and his drawings of our beavers will appear in the October issue.

Every now and then as he worked and watched he would pause and then exclaim “this is SO COOL!!!” a doxology with which certainly none there would object. Jack was invited to see the beavers by some friendly docents at the Audubon Canyon Ranch who had attended my talk at “Close to Home”. He asked my thoughts about what to emphasize and I stressed two things: the impact of the beavers on the habitat (green herons and pond turtles provided backup for that argument) and the impact of the beavers on the community (for which the hushed bright faces of appreciative children provided ample proof.)

All night he remarked on seeing beavers in Tahoe and Montana or Wisconsin but never seeing them like THIS. He enjoyed my observation that these were ADA accessible beavers, which of course they are, but I pointed out the flow device and stressed that any city who is willing to use creative tools could have local beavers of its very own. At the end of the evening he agreed that this was truly a special wildlife viewing opportunity saying that “Everyone in the Bay Area should come here, watch these amazing animals, buy a burrito and visit this town!” - which I’m sure the Chamber of Commerce would love. He also remarked that this was an essential opportunity for teaching stewardship, since people don’t learn to love nature because of what they saw on the discovery channel: they love first what is in their own backyard.

For their part the beavers were in top form and brimming with artistic merit. Just look at the photo Cheryl took last night.

Beaver Kit: Cheryl Reynolds

Before you go, your help is desprately needed by the poor city of Martinez which can’t possibly think what to name the park where 2000 people have attended the beaver festival over the last three years. Gosh, maybe you have a suggestion? Unless we’re calling it “Sheetpile Vista Plaza”  or “Drinking-in-the-daytime Park” I can really only think of ONE name that makes sense, and it starts with a ‘B’. But why don’t you write and let them know yours?

It seems like every 6 months we get new complaints about the awful flooding caused by the increase in beavers in Massachusetts that blames the crazy hippies who were tricked into banning leg hold and body crushing traps in 1996.  To these troglodyte minds, the onerous burden of being asked to spend five minutes  completing the necessary request is a bridge too far: they won’t stand for it! Now the powerful lobby has attached more exceptions to the exception list in a rider that slipped in at the end of the house session. It sits politely on the governor’s desk with a name like “protecting babies” or “safer streets” to await his unknowing signature.  The Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is asking residents to call and remind the governor that there are already perfectly adequate lethal solutions in place and we don’t need to add more.  Perhaps you’d like to join them.

Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, who is admirably much more even-handed than I, was interviewed about the story yesterday by CBS channel 3 Springfield. Now this is must see TV!

Our beaver-friend Ann Riley sent me the July issue of “Mother Earth News” with a four page article on beavers and a nod to our friends at Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife. It was fun to read about their activities from someone who appreciates them, but I had mixed feelings about parts of the article. My sense was that the author advocates for keeping beavers in the same way that a bud light commercial advises you to “drink responsibly”: they have long figured out that you won’t do it anyway.

My sensibilities were particularly ruffled by two parts of the article: the first was that damming was entirely ‘based on instinct’, which if it was true, why would beavers stay with their parents for 2-3 years? And why does a particular beaver’s damming behavior get better over time? More importantly, his statement that beaver populations have ‘recovered’ is true only if you use the kind of mindset that the Bush Administration did when they took bald eagles off the endangered species list. (”Well there are so many in Alaska!) It’s ‘recovered’ in the sense that they probably aren’t dying off any time soon, but it isn’t ‘restored’ to its original numbers by a long shot.

Here’s my letter to Mr. Krautwurst. I haven’t been able to find an address to post your own but you can use the form at the website if you’d like.