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Celebrating one of Nature’s Greatest Engineers: The Martinez Beaver Festival
“A beaver! There’s the beaver!!!” yells a teenage boy next to me.
Watch the Martinez Beavers make an appearance:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=632NNN1nYqQ[/youtube]
Most of the “eager beaver” (sorry-I could not resist) watchers had attended the sixth annual Beaver Festival that afternoon in the area next to the creek affectionately known to locals as “Beaver Park.” Worth A Dam, the non-profit that hosts the event, assembled over forty area wildlife groups to help celebrate one of nature’s best engineers. A documentary film company, Tensegrity Productions, even filmed the festival for inclusion in their series, “The Beaver Believers.”
“We were amazed by the turnout, and heartened to see so many people interested in our resident beavers. Lots of people learned yesterday how beavers are good for creeks and wildlife,” said Heidi Perryman, President & Founder of Worth A Dam.
Yet the festival is also meant as a testament to how the Martinez community rallied around the beavers, who were slated to be removed in 2007 after being deemed a flood hazard. Alhambra Creek runs right through the middle of town. The Amtrak station is a stone’s throw from the creek, and many businesses sit on its banks, including the Creek Monkey Tap Room, an excellent place to have a brew while watching beavers (and you might try the fried Oreos for dessert-I did).
To save the beavers, Perryman formed Worth A Dam, a group dedicated to maintaining the Martinez beavers in Alhambra Creek through responsible stewardship, creative problem solving, community involvement, and education. In a town that boasts the home and final resting place of John Muir, it seems appropriate that a modern conservation battle was waged here. Muir would be proud of the tireless crusade Perryman and other community members have fought to keep the beavers a part of their city.
And now Martinez is proud that their successful experience can also help educate other urban areas about co-existing with beavers. “This is our sixth festival and definitely our biggest. Last year there were four festivals modeled after our own nationwide and two in Canada! We are so happy to be reaching out to cities all across the state teaching them how and why to live with beavers,” observed Perryman.
Beavers are pretty remarkable animals. The largest living rodent in North America, beavers can weigh up to 70 pounds. They are excellent swimmers and can remain under water up to 15 minutes. Their monumental feats of engineering are rivaled only by humans in the animal world, as Alice Outwater notes in her book, Water: “Beavers do more to shape their landscape than any other mammal except for human beings, and their ancestors were building dams ten million years ago.” Several generations of beavers have been working on a gigantic dam in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park since the 1970’s—it currently spans about 2,700 feet and can be seen from space.
And what better way to celebrate than to attend next year’s Martinez Beaver Festival. I promise you’ll have a dam good time.
Check out NWF California Director’s Facebook album for more photos of this year’s Martinez Beaver Festival.
Follow NWF California on Facebook for more great wildlife stories and photos from across the Golden State!