10 dollars a tail. That’s what you you earn in Cleveland County Arkansas when you kill yerself a beaver and bring the proof. The county judge speaking in this video is the Hon. Gary Spears. As you can see, he doesn’t know why “these beavers are building dams” but he knows that capital punishment is the only solution. He reports that there are 100 of these criminals in the county, which is about 600 square miles, only one of which is made up of water. It is possible that someone is exaggerating on the numbers, but if the county spends only 1000 dollars to solve its problem and ends up killing some neighboring county beavers too, who’s going to complain?

I’m not exactly sure why the Hon. Spears appears in this interview or why his role as county judge requires him to be involved in the bounty hunt. He also is apparently using a track hole, not typical activity around the court house. Beaver killin’ is usually left for public works, or the highway commission. Bring in the scales of justice to deal with the scales of the beaver tail! Maybe its because Arkansas takes great pride in its forests, and the timber industry is their primary economic base. The Arkansas  Forestry Commission provides sound, environmental advice for land-owners about the value of keeping their trees. The website says:

Manage Your Forest Your forest provides wildlife habitat, wood products, clean air and water, and a place to relax. Trees improve the quality of life in your community.The AFC provides landowners information, advice, and services to manage their forests.

Some unexpected wisdom from the AFC. I don’t disagree. There is, of course, an implication from the video that beavers threaten the lumber industry and will ruin all those good forests everyone loves. But what if it weren’t true? What if beaver taking of trees produced a natural coppice cutting that encouraged new growth? What if the denser new growth produced better habitat for migratory songbirds, and beloved game birds like woodduck? What if blocked culverts could be easily and cheaply controlled by the judicious use of a beaver deceiver? What if dams that caused road flooding could be controlled by the simple installation of a pipe? What if the habitat around a beaver lodge supported vastly more kinds of wildlife than similar habitat without a lodge? What if the AFC helped property owners manage their beaver population instead of just their trees?

Manage Your Beavers Your Beavers provide wildlife habitat, fishing, clean water, and raise the water table to recharge the aquifer. Beavers improve the quality of life in your community. The AFC provides landowners information, advice, and services to help landowners manage their beavers.

Gosh. A girl can dream, can’t she?

How’s that for a dramatic name? The beaverkill is the most famous flyfishing river in the United States, located in the Catskills in New York. It is to flyfishing what woodstock is to music festivals (famous and over). I was thinking grim thoughts about its name the other day, searching for the massive slaughter that lead to its appellation. Beaver friend Bob Arnebeck was the one who told me that “kill” is Dutch for “creek”,  so beaverkill just means beaver creek.

Which makes sense, because if it was named after a whoppingly successful slaughter every single river in America could have been named “Beaverkill” at one time.  The name is still pretty unusual, even though the experience was ubiquitous. This particular river was once full to bursting with trout, which does imply lots of successful breeding pools for juvenile salmonids, thanks to some happy beavers long ago. It is now mostly underground, pent up in concrete like most of our rivers. It was overfished even before the 1900’s, and there are now hatcheries along it to keep the anglers happy.

I was reading about the beaverkill because a reporter that I had recently made contact with let me know that she was going to be the editor of the Watershed Post, which covers New York’s watershed, spanning five counties in the Catskill mountains. I had written this reporter when she initially covered a presentation given by Beaver Solutions to the Massachusetts state house in not very beaver-generous terms. She took a little hunting to find, and in the course of doing so I learned that she was an interesting writer and worth attempting to convert. Turns out she was intrigued by my email, loved the name “worth a dam” and wants to set an interview when she transitions to WP. She thought writing about beavers in Albany watersheds might be a good idea.

Given the hatchet job performed by the NY Times earlier this year, I couldn’t agree more. We’ll see what happens.

And you thought them crazy Beaver people would be satisfied by saving beavers in Martinez!!! Ha! That was an appetizer! A practice run! We have a larger agenda that will make the last two years look like child’s play! Our big plans are moving solidly forward; I thought I’d give you glimpse into my day yesterday.

• I got an email this week from Skip Lisle, the installer of our flow device, saying he was thinking about coming out to the bay area for a family event and did we know anyone who needed beaver work done while he was here? I took the opportunity to write a neighboring city with a beaver colony we have been watching, letting them know that there were options, and that eyes were upon them. I got a phone call yesterday from the manager of public works asking to have a conversation about “these flow devices” that can allow them to “keep the water low and preserve the habitat”.
• This week we finally set up the conference call for the authors launching the paper proving beavers were historically in california over 1000 feet. This will be a collaboration between the archeologist from BIA who found the dam and had it carbon tested,  the hydrologist from USFS/USDA we met at the Flyway Festival, and some others. This paper WILL really be written. Tappe WILL really be challenged. And Kings Beach WILL have to come up with a different excuse to kill the next round of beavers.
• I got an email yesterday from a buddy of Brock Dolman’s who works for Northern California Fish & Game. He has been working with Brock on a literature review of the benefit of beavers, beginning with their effect on salmon. He is very impressed by the enthusiastic research we’ve been doing so far and wants our wiki friend and myself to be co authors in his upcoming paper designed to completely reconsider the way Fish & Game responds to beavers in California. Read that sentence again. Completely reconsider the way Fish & Game responds to beavers all over California!!!!!!!
  

It’s a beaver REVOLUTION!!!

Watch that leap after the beaver crosses the street! Now there’s something I’d love to see!

The Crow Woods Beaver from Haddonfield Civic Association on Vimeo.

Our friend Sarah from Unexpected Wildlife Refuge, alerts me to this video from her friend Butch Brees about the Crow Woods beaver(s). Last month I read a lovely article about the local conservation commissions response to the new resident, and now it’s here on the little screen! Notice the fact that their citizen association spends money to actually film the story of these beavers and put footage on the website. (The city of Martinez won’t even provide a link or a photo.) Notice also they invested in lengthening the bridge when the beavers flooded it, instead of bemoaning damage to their trails and hiring the trapper. Bruce tours the area with a Haddonfield Conservation Commissioner and talks about the new habitat the beavers are creating for wildlife.

It’s almost made me teary to think of a video explaining the beaver value and habitat on the same website as video from the school board and city council. I can’t even really imagine it. One would think that Conservancy organizations are the obvious friends to beavers, but alas, it is rarely true. Sarah has clearly done admirable work spreading the beaver gospel in her neck of the woods. The BEST PART about this video is at the end, when Butch talks about how the park benefits from the raised water level because of the beavers, but if the beavers raise it too much they can install a flow device. Wow. A city that knows its options. Hand me my smelling salts, I’m feeling faint.

Speaking of Conservancy commissions, Massachusetts has about 300+ of them, one for every municipality. I have written several this year advocating a humane investment in beaver management. I just learned that Saturday Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions will be giving a talk at the state wide conservancy conference.They are pairing him with “on-the-other-hand, why-not-try-killun” representative, Laura Hajduk to present all the options.

Devoted readers of this website will recognize her name from the New York Times article where she bemoaned the successful (but very partial–Ed. note) recovery of the beaver population in the state, blaming it on ‘them pesky environmentalists who outlawed body-crushing traps’, (even though any creative man, woman or child with two IQ points to rub together could still get permission to use those traps under almost any circumstances). There will be a kind of “dueling beavers” note to the conference as they argue management from both sides of the crick. (I’m proud to say that website wonders allow me to note that several people searching for Ms. Hajduk over the year have come to our website, which is just plain fun.)

Final Note: Jon watched the otter for an hour this morning, in fine display! If you haven’t seen him yet, you still have time!

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Cheryl caught dad in the act yesterday, working hard to bring this tree to the secondary dam. Daylight wasn’t kind to her, but Mr. Beaver was and let her see how hard it really is to get a 90 pound sapling over a twiggy muddy dam.Three other beavers were in attendance, but not much help. Ahh look at that nose. Even though our yearlings are adult sized, they don’t have noses like that! Very broad and unmistakeable. Nice to see the fam in full display.

Interestingly, this trunk was part of a fork of a tree with the woodduck box in it. Jon sand painted it to protect the ducks from having their home toppled by a toothy bandit, and stopped at exactly the point where this was chewed, which does seem to prove that sand painting works, although one could observe that it wasn’t painted quite high enough!

I would write more, about the diligence of beaver ethics, and how it could benefit our lives, but I am very jealous of Cheryl’s amazing good luck and just have to go see for myself! Come along, why don’t you?

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n't be gone long. You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n't be gone long. You come too.

Robert Frost: The Pasture

Update: Mom seen this morning, doing what she does best. Also a yearling in the most languid of poses. Mom’s eye condition looks no worse, but is sadly no better. I’m just thankful that she is keeping a lazy schedule because there was a massive dog fight in the water at 6:45 and I was nervous she would show up in the middle. Two large hound dogs showed up from no where, biting and snarling at each other in the water right at the tunnel to the damlet by the Marina Vista bridge. An unlucky raccoon was forced to swim much farther than he might have wanted to make a getaway. I made as many scary noises as possible to get the dogs to clear out, one was hurt in the fray and wouldn’t leave until the victor vacated the area. Jon will repair the fence today and see if we can keep further canine intruders at bay.

Anyway mom was completely unperturbed, and the beavers had a calm and easy morning, which was nice to see.

This weekend I embarked on some historic sniffing to help our wikipedia friend in his effort to document the presence of beavers in the South Bay. Knowing the history is an important defense for the argument that “beavers don’t belong here so kill them”. Most have heard of the reference for Captain Sutter bringing 1500 pelts to the San Jose mission, but the question remains whether they were taken from local beavers or are “imports”.

So it’s a matter of following up with who trapped where and what they found, and its a lot more exciting than you might think, although sometimes I am pushed into reading something I really should leave to others with harder hearts. This is what I found this weekend, trailing facts about the Fur desert, the Hudson Bay Company and the use of native peoples as trappers.

Ice chisels on long poles. Shades of Basic Instinct come to mind. Except times a billion. First drain their pond, then lock them in their homes. Can you imagine someone nailing poles to trap our beavers in their lodge and hacking them to death with an ice chisel? I’m still shuddering. Hmm well I’m sure some would have imagined it if they had known that was how its done.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes. The article goes on to describe the slow progress of beaver genocide even after the arrival of the steel trap in the 1750’s. Apparently no one could figure out what to bait them with. A tasty willow leaf just wasn’t cutting it, and they didn’t seem interested in fish. (No kidding!)  By accident it was discovered that they went crazy for the smell of castoreum, (oil from their scent glands) which was easy enough to get from the beaver you caught yesterday. By 1818 most natives were trapping beaver with steel traps they bought from trappers and baited with Castoreum.

Game. Set. Match.

Gosh. It really IS like basic instinct. Using your own sexuality against you. Luring you in with the promise of a good time and then hacking you to pieces. So when beavers tried to procreate and identify their family members they were killed. Although the slaughter taught them to adapt to a nocturnal life and start building sneaky bank lodges instead of obvious island lodges, evolution couldn’t possibly eliminate THAT instinct. Charming.

And this is why I should dedicate my spare time to connecting with supporters and potential supporters, and stop reading historical snuff films. Note to self.

Ian, Ian, Ian. When are you coming to Martinez so we can brain storm about what to do next? How about a Public Awareness campaign for the entire state of Georgia?

Love the pantry stocking. Love the snowball fight. Love the ducks in V. I was just sorry I didn’t get to see your beaver break the ice though, because I was curious how you’d pull it off.

Enjoy all of Ian’s brilliant (now fifteen year old) artistry.  That’s his dad playing the banjo and we SO need him at our beaver festival. Look for “beaver creek” on youtube. Apparently just because every episode has been nominated for a national scholastic award he isn’t taking a break.  Keep them coming Ian, we love you!

I was contacted this week by Mary Grim of the Contra Costa Resource Conservation District. She was involved with a project to provide materials to elementary teachers in Brentwood and Oakley about their local environment. Might I consider sharing the kids beaver powerpoint for them to use?

Might I indeed!

Brentwood and Oakley are two areas of California in particular with whom I’d be happy to pass along some beaver-understanding. There are beloved beavers at Big Break in EBRP and some protectively undisclosed beavers around the watershed, but the delta region in general is phobic of beavers. (Worried that they will tunnel through the eroding levy walls and cause massive flooding.)

So I can’t imagine a better way to effortlessly pass along the things we’ve learned about beavers first hand. I added notes to the presentation so that teachers would have an easier job, and included the handout I worked on with Mike Callahan for his DVD, “What good are beavers?“  The powerpoint emphasizes the way beavers adapt to their environment using our beaver photos with children’s photos and drawings.

Anyway, Mary was thrilled with the product, and very generous with her enthusiasm. She also wanted to know if we had really seen all those new species first hand and did I really think they were drawn by the beaver ponds?

I assured her the photos were most definately taken here, and invited her to come see how beaver ponds attract wildlife for herself!

St. Louis Missouri’s alternative weekly RTF posts news of this fund raiser, an off campus party with a 5 dollar cover, held tomorrow night. Martinez might possibly be the only city that would require greater specificity on this, but funds go to a nearby women’s shelter, to stop violence against women, especially rape.

Ohhh that kind of beaver! Ah, well Martinez doesn’t begrudge a beaver symbol to be used in such a noble service. We wish you God Speed and a friendly tail slap from us! We have certainly fielded all manner of sniggering jokes from politicians, teens, and reporters alike. (The reporters have honestly been the worst.) In doing so we have become hardened to the innuendo through careful practice, but we wish the women of the University Village Loft apartments well, and we hope they raise more than their last year’s total of 450.00.

And if any of you go on to wonder about the violence done on a daily basis to the other kind of beavers, look us up!