by Dolores Howard
Saying goodbye (for now?) to the 2024-25 College Corps Fellows
Left to right: Jin, Roberto, Ellen, and Sunny
The SLO Beaver Brigade bids farewell for now to the 2024-2025 College Corps Fellows, who worked with the Beaver Brigade while engaged in their studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Each of them, Ellen, Jin, Roberto and Sunny, contributed so much to our work this year and we have much gratitude for them. We hope that they will return to work with us in some capacity in the future, and we’re certain they’ll find themselves exploring beaver dams wherever they end up!
Below are some parting thoughts that they shared about their experiences in the SLO Beaver Brigade…
Ellen
A highlight of my time with the Beaver Brigade was going to the river every week. It was a great experience, and not normal for most jobs to get out in the river, see some fish, dams, beaver activity, and dam progression. It’s awesome to see how fast beavers work. I didn’t expect to experience that! The more time that you spend in the river, the more you get to see changes in vegetation, and in the habitat that beavers create. A bonus was getting to watch the camera footage. Beavers are so much fun to watch on the footage.
The particularly unique part about our time on the river was when we got to see the process of beaver dams being built. Chalk Rock and Phragmites dams were already in place when we began monitoring them, but we then started noticing new dams, which was great to see them progress.
We also became more observant. When I first started going out with the Beaver Brigade, I was surprised by what Audrey knew about tracking, for example, and the fauna. And now that I know so much more, I get excited about beaver scat and beaver chew!
I enjoyed the community connections we got to make during this fellowship. It wasn’t just the Beaver Brigade; we connected with Earthshine and helped with trash cleanups. It was great to see how all these organizations can help each other achieve similar goals.
I’d also like to share about working with the beaver monitoring program. It is very inspiring to witness how much people care. They’re a great group of people who are involved, and they play a big part in Beaver Brigade work. With volunteers in other organizations, it’s hard to get this much activity. I loved hearing their ideas, they’re awesome.
For incoming College Corps Fellows, I’d say, “Be prepared to learn! It’s a little overwhelming at first, but once you get out in the river, it will click. Make sure to take it in and enjoy.”
Jin
A highlight for my time this year in the Beaver Brigade was going to events, like the Beaver Festival or tabling at other events. It was fun and interesting to talk to people, especially to see how surprised they were to find out about beavers.
At the Beaver Festival, I helped with the children’s activities. I hadn’t expected to meet so many kids that already knew about beavers and ecosystems. That was surprising to me!
We got a lot of positive comments from people that saw our beaver camera footage. That felt really good.
A few tips for future College Corps Fellows:
- Make a schedule for your class and study time that leaves time for Beaver Brigade work.
- Events come up, sometimes on short notice, and sometimes on weekends. So you need to find a way to balance your class responsibilities and your College Corps work.
I really appreciate this opportunity to work with the SLO Beaver Brigade. I didn’t know anything about beavers before starting this fellowship. Working with the Beaver Brigade opened my eyes to the local ecosystems, to beavers and to knowledge from beaver experts.
Roberto
I think the biggest highlight from this year for me was the Beaver Festival. It really was a unique experience, and we did a lot of things in the little space that we had. The event attracted a lot of people and it was nice to be able to help with it.
Another highlight was the Earthshine trash cleanup events. Picking up trash and exploring different areas of the county was fun and fulfilling. A plus was that we got free food at the end! I actually lived in the dorms until this year, so I hadn’t gone to too many places in the county, but participating in these events allowed me to do that.
One challenge about this internship might have been the number of interns and the scheduling of tasks. There were four of us, and it seemed like there weren’t enough options for work for all four of us. It’s always nice to have extra people with you when you do the work, but it was tricky to schedule things like beaver cam maintenance. I would have liked to do more of that, but with the four of us having busy schedules, it was hard to find times that worked for everyone. Sometimes when I hear about the dams from the other Fellows and the volunteers, I don’t know what locations they’re talking about because I wasn’t present for the beaver cam maintenance work. I know that those tasks are fun and interesting, and I would have liked to do more of them.
I think the SLO Beaver Brigade does important work, and I believe that more people should be involved in it. Many of us don’t realize the important role beavers play in supporting ecosystems. Their dams help improve water quality, create habitats for countless species, and even help reduce wildfire damage. Before I joined the Beaver Brigade, I didn’t know much about beavers, and I actually thought they were the same as otters! Now I understand that beavers are one of nature’s best engineers, and I think more people should learn about and protect them rather than destroy their dams.
Sunny
This year, I really enjoyed going to the River each week. In the last few months, there’s been so much more movement in the beaver dams. For example, before Phragmites and Chalk Rock dams were already well established, and so you couldn’t see as much progress- they pretty much looked the same every time. But now, there’s a new dam or two a week! The water level is changing drastically, in real time, and so you get to really experience how beaver dams are changing the environment.
I also really liked how the Beaver Brigade incorporates the Fellows into community events: the Earth Shine trash cleanups, the ECOSLO tree planting day. I especially enjoyed the tree planting that we did. It’s cool because with the Beaver Brigade, you’re not just doing the same thing every day; you’re mixing up and talking to different people in the community.
For future Fellows, a challenge is that you have to commute to different places, so this fellowship is best for people that have access to a car or can carpool with another Fellow. College Corps does reimburse you for mileage, but you can only count the miles that exceed the distance from your house to campus and back. So there’s some math to do – I had an excel spreadsheet, but after a while, I didn’t have time to track that.
Another thing I liked was that the Beaver Brigade had us do something for social media every week, such as my “Sunny at the River” posts. People are loving our social media presence and we get compliments about it. And we all enjoy Ellen’s posts of game cam footage. Our social media work was fun for all of us to do.
I didn’t start out being very observant in the River because when you begin, you don’t know that much. Then you start to notice the little things that you wouldn’t have otherwise, like Ellen is getting good at identifying scent mounds. Now, I’m striving to be a beaver expert!
About College Corps
In January of 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom and the leaders of California’s college and university systems launched the largest state-level investment in a college service program in California history. College Corps has provided more than 10,000 college students with opportunities to support and learn from community-based organizations working in three priority areas: K-12 education, climate action and food insecurity.