UPDATE:

Go here to find out what happened at the meeting.

The question of access to the beaver dam will be considered by the newly formed Parks, Recreation, Marina, and Cultural Commission Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm in City Hall (525 Henrietta St). This kinder, gentler civic body counts several beaver friends as members, so we are more likely to get an outcome that is good for both the beavers and the city than when the ominous but ineffective chain was hung across the path with a warning from the Police Department.

To be truthful, Worth A Dam is rather ambivalent about the access issue. On the one hand we want to keep visitors from approaching the beavers, climbing on the dam, or visiting the lodge. We don’t want homeless sleeping or drinking down there, and we don’t want pets to come sniffing either.  But on the other hand we can see the immediate softening of hearts that comes with standing on the bank and seeing beavers so close. Families and children and groups of all ages are mesmerized by the experience, and we all know we protect the things we care about. Our photographer could never have taken the pictures she has without access.  I didn’t actually use the bank to watch beavers until the sheetpile-palooza left me worried about their safety and wanting to closely check each one. Before that all of my videos were filmed from bridges or street side. That is until I felt I was worried about mom’s eye and wanted to see it regularly.

Ambivalence is a developmental accomplishment. Having mixed feelings is something you are incapable of doing when you are three or five or a member of the Bush administration. To be able to hold both sides of an issue in your heart, to see gray area, and to really feel two ways at once is the sign of a more mature mind trying to figure out the complexities of the world. Our mixed feelings about access center on the fact that we want the beavers to be safe, and we want people to have an opportunity to be moved by their closeness.

Separate from either of these goals is the need the city has to not be sued if someone falls in or breaks an ankle. We think that issue can be easily solved by signs saying “Enter at your own risk” or some such language to indicate that the city doesn’t maintain liability for the area. We have suggested “Sensitive habitat” signs warning people not to approach the wildlife, bring pets, or climb on beaver structures and Worth A Dam has offered to pay for these. We generally feel that any fencing built should be gated and that Worth A Dam members and docents should be able to provide access, so that if a docent is on sight you can come down if you wish. Certainly we feel that any fencing that prevents access from the dam should prevent access to the lodge as well. And finally that nothing built to block access should interfere with the habitat or the trees in any way.

It’s a tall order, and maybe a few supporters in the audience would help guide the process. Come by tomorrow if you can and support compassionate decision-making that will keep our beavers safe and valued for years to come.

No this isn’t the iris of a deeply attentive cyclops, its the graphic illustration of the relationship between species as illustrated by the Muir Web project envisioned by Eric Sanderson, an ecologist that works with the wildlife society at the Bronx zoo. He became interested in creating an accurate representation of what New York looked like 400 years ago, right down to the beavers and bogs, and this tool helped him understand the relationships.  His hard work produced “the Manhatta Project” which was exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York and is featured in this month’s National Geographic.

The article begins with a discussion of the mysterious arrival of Jose, remember him? He was the beaver outside the Bronx zoo that was named after congressman Jose Serrano who pushed through 15 million in federal funds to support the river’s cleanup. I wrote about his appearance last year when his positive effect on birdlife was noted in Audubon magazine.

The article goes on to describe the Manhatta Project in detail, of which the creation if the Muir Web tool was just one piece. The idea is to  better understand our ecological heritage and know what Henry Hudson saw when he first  looked at Manhattan.  The project has sponsored a flurry of attention, and the teaching curriculum is available online here. It even references our good buddy Bob Arnebeck.

Computer Generated Image (top) by Markley Boyer, Photograph by Robert Clark

Of course you’ve already guessed my favorite part of this article. Take a look at author Peter Miller’s description of a certain familiar landscape engineer.

Consider a beaver that lived at Times Square in 1609. If you grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him out of the web, you’d find lines connecting him to a slowly meandering stream, to the aspen trees he ate, and to the mud and twigs he used to build a lodge. Not only that, you’d also find lines to the bobcats, bears, and wolves that depended on him as prey and to the frogs, fish, and aquatic plants that lived in the pond he helped to create. “The beaver, it turns out, is a landscape architect, just like people,” Sanderson said. “You need him to flood the forest, which kills the trees that attract the woodpeckers that knock out cavities that wood ducks use for shelter.” Lifting a beaver out of the web disrupts scores of other residents, which demonstrates how important it can be to think about an ecosystem as a network.

Well gosh that’s nice to read in National Geographic, but frankly the city of Martinez figured that out all by itself! Go find your own copy because there’s a beaver graphic in there that will blow your mind!

So last night a pair of Berkeley beaver supporters took amtrak to our shores to cash in on their “private beaver tour” purchase at the silent auction. Worth A Dam was there to meet them, explain the habitat and introduce our beavers. They will be cycling over the new pedestrian portion of the Benicia Bridge when it opens. Phil is the thoughtful author of the Bay Area Bird Blog, and I met Juliet through her work with the Sierra Club back when the were drafting their position statement on the Martinez Beavers. She is also featured on our video letter to the mayor from last year’s beaver festival. The couple are avid environmentalists and have restored their Berkeley garden as a native plant oasis. They gave us a crash course in willow care while we toured the 3 and a half dams.

The beavers were very obliging last night and made a charming and intimate appearance, even giving them a stand-up view of their ambered bottom teeth. A pond turtle and a slider were seen at the lower dams. The banded green heron displayed boldly by fishing at the end of the pond leveler pipe, and a wiggling little muskrat made a dash on the dam before giving a longer display at the edge of the grass.

All in all the animals were in fine form last night, and the human visitors were all polite, curious and helpful. One of the things I loved at the start of the tour was someone stopping us to explain where to look for the beavers and their general habits. It was no one I recognized, just someone doing their part to introduce our famous residents!

Here’s hoping the ride across the bridge gives them great views! We know you have sharp eyes and won’t miss a single bird sighting on the way over!

This is what a hero looks like:

I don’t need to show you what a villain looks like: you’ve all seen the photo. Whatever you take from this horrific news story I hope you remember that the campus police at UC Berkeley can sniff out evil in 18 minutes that the city of Antioch has ignored for 18 years.

I’m sure that you all remember our badger friend, Susan Kirks, who has been working to save their habitat by protecting open space in Petaluma. She was at the beaver festival and made a slew of connections. The city of Petaluma is partnering with her organization Paula Lane Action Network (P.L.A.N.) and is negotiating a deal to purchase the land for a community wildlife corridor and educational center. There is just a little more fund raising to do to make it possible.

Carolyn Jones, the reporter from the Chronicle who has almost always been kind to us, met up with Susan and ran a nice story this week on the Petaluma Badgers. To my mind it has too many quotes along the lines of “beavers flood creeks” etc, and not enough about the good that they do, but still it got people’s attention and it was good press for her cause. Because of this I was able to send it along to our friends at Bay Nature, the Daily Planet, and the SF Bay Wildlife Info who can’t wait to follow up. It’s exactly the kind of story that gets written about because who thinks of badgers in Petaluma?

THANK YOU for being you and being where you are.  I had no idea a simple request for doing an article on badgers, to connect with beavers and other wildlife, might lead to this.  I’m hoping for all positives!  The City of Petaluma is abuzz.  People are being very nice to us!  S

Bagpiper Jeff Campbell, who lead our Scottish Procession at the beaver festival, sends this picture of the soon to be commonplace combination of kilt and beaver shirt. Don’t they look great together? (Ya hear that Scotland? Take good care of your beavers and you can have your own soon!) Jeff did us a huge favor without a whit of compensation, but we couldn’t send him away empty handed!

Speaking of t-shirt payment, we got notice from our beaver buddy in Frankfurt that Europe will host it’s 2009 5th Annual Beaver Symposium September in Lithuania. Guess who’ll speaking about beaver management? Skip Lisle.

Solutions to beaver-human conflicts that are long-lasting, reliable, and
preserve precious wetlands: an update of successful flow device
techniques in North America and Europe
Lisle S., Czech A.

The conference is a research-heavy beaver exploration with words like “phylogeny” on the agenda, but the part I would love to be there for is the update on the Scottish Beaver Trial, which includes a discussion of how they’re doing so far. That’s the group that Skip’s involved in.

Our Frankfurt friend will be in attendance, and kindly volunteered to offer daily updates for posting. I snatched up his offer greedily and dubbed him our “foreign correspondent”.

I would like to sent daily e-mail summaries to you as your correspondent:
There are several topics that are of interest to US-Americans, please make your choice.

As payment for his foreign service, we sent him our 2008 and 2009 Worth A Dam t-shirts. I hope he’s sitting in the front row when Skip looks out and sees our t-shirt staring back at him. It will blow his mind!

True confessions of a blogger, I connected with Alex because of the last conference in Europe. Backstage at the website you can see all kinds of things about visitors, (it’s good for snooping on the city when the city is snooping on us)  and I noticed that someone had sent my columns to Hope Ryden of Lily Pond Fame. I looked up his email address and found the list of attendees at the last international beaver conference. Eager to track down knowledge, I wrote him and we began a dialogue. He’s spent time with Hope Ryden and worked with Sherri Tippie, and is a generally good fellow. It’s fun to have a beaver friend in Germany, and I honestly can’t wait until he is reporting for Worth A Dam from Lituania.

Oh, look what’s in the paper at Bakersfield.com! More stories about the River walk beavers terrorizing trees and earning extermination.

The trees or the beaver? The beaver or the trees? It’s a question to bedevil even the most ardent of nature lovers and one being debated yet again after a weekend bender by the infamous bike path beaver made toothpicks of a pair of good-size cottonwoods at the Park at River Walk.

What a confounding riddle for environmentalists everywhere! Clearly there is no possible way to take care of both the beavers AND the trees.  The article goes on to describe the never-before-faced insurmountable conflict where the city is forced to spend hard earned dollars removing tree stumps after the ruthless rodent attacks. It poignantly illustrates city staff’s good hearted plight in their noble effort to wrap trees with this telling photograph.

The mind reels. The jaw drops…The fingers type:

Monogamous Herbivore threatens to Improve Habitat!

If Bakersfield doesn’t act now, its quiet River walk runs the risk of having recklessly improved water quality[1], increased wildlife[2], greater bird density[3], and returning salmon[4]. Important drought conditions may be mitigated[5]. Obviously something has to be done to prevent this neglected little stretch of scrubby trees from becoming an actual habitat.

Fortunately the department of public works knows just how to uselessly apply non-solutions that assure the appearance of unstoppable damage and will ultimately mean the beavers merit a final solution. Bravely ignoring countless prescriptions to wire wrap trees for protection or paint the trunks with a sandy coating, dedicated staff were clever enough not only to use orange construction plastic, but to garner media attention for doing so! “We tried saving the beavers humanely by wrapping the trees in cellophane and hello kitty dolls, but it just didn’t work!”

Diane Hoover, the director of public works, notes that it can cost up to 500 dollars to remove the stump and replace the trees. Clearly she is well aware that if these stumps of Populus fremontii were left in the ground they would continue to prevent erosion and coppice to sprout future growth. This new growth would run the risk of producing dense bushy cover that would be a haven for ghettos of nesting migratory birds. Much better to chop out every remaining stick!

Thank goodness there are heroes like Eric Covington of the USDA to come to the rescue and protect Bakersfield from these furry eco-terrorists. This large governmental body is every bit as committed to the environment as Chevron or Walmart, and more importantly understands the important role that beavers play in employing trappers.

Yes, Bakersfield seems to have all the tools necessary for not at all solving this problem. If, however, there is a single person in the entire city that would like to consider actual humane alternatives that work, they can contact Worth A Dam at www.martinezbeavers.org, and we can easily show them how its done.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

e.e.cummings

Have you ever opened your email and something wonderful popped out? Well this weekend I found out about the State of the Beaver 2010 conference in Oregon put together by the Beaver Advocacy Committee of SURCP.

We need water! We want our native salmon runs back! And we want them for less cost, no additional taxes and less paper work! Welcome to the State of the Beaver 2010 Conference where we will learn to work with beavers to gain their benefits and minimize the problems they can cause.

The three day venue February 3, 4 and 5  will feature our good friends Skip Lisle, Sherrie Tippie and John Hadidian, as we as the exciting new addition of Dr. Michael Pollack of the NOAA. He’s the chief researcher of the beavers and salmon study group paper we wrote about earlier. Go read the agenda because there’s three days worth of goodies no self-respecting beaver fan would want to miss, including a great discussion on the importance of beavers to the native americans and the new research on reintroduction in Europe.

BAC Co-chairs, Leonard and Lois Houston, wrote me in 2008 after hearing about our struggle to save the Martinez Beavers. They tell me they are currently hard at work with a five year radio tracking research project to locate the movements of nuisance beavers. Oregon has been a pioneer in beaver reintroduction as a tool for increasing salmon. A mere 6 and a half hours from Martinez, the conference is chock full of remarkable things and you can bet Worth A Dam will be there.

Sent to the Gazette for publication:

Lucky for this little fellow, Worth A Dam member Cheryl Reynolds was standing by when a young man fishing near the beaver dam accidentally caught this Western Pond Turtle. Reynolds is a volunteer at the International Bird Rescue and Research Center, and once managed the Lindsay Wildlife Hospital, After the turtle was safely released back into the water, she was able to explain that pond turtles are considered a “species of special concern” and their numbers are carefully watched around the state.

The young man hadn’t intended to catch anything but carp, but Reynolds explained there are unintended and dangerous consequences to fishing in such a sensitive habitat area. “We find fishing tackle and tangled line all over the banks and dams, and this creates a significant risk for birds and other wildlife.” Although the mayor has been approached regarding an ordinance prohibiting fishing in the area, no action has yet been taken. “In the mean time its up to us to explain the risks and encourage youngsters to take their fishing somewhere else.” Reynolds observed, “It’s a big creek and if the beavers are left undisturbed to do their restorative work, they’ll be lots to fish for in the future.”