An Interview with Kate and Fred of the San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade
BY DOLORES HOWARD
My first memory of volunteering for the SLO Beaver Brigade puts me bouncing and laughing in the back seat of a truck driven by Fred, with the guidance of Kate, as we traveled to trash pick up sites in the Salinas River.
“There is no other place I would rather be than in this River,” Kate shared as we set out on foot to search for plastic, paper, tires, glass and more. Fred, smiling while swinging bags of trash onto the truck and inventing ways to tackle particularly challenging trash items, kept us smiling as well, with tales of his boyhood years in the River. Kate recounted stories of people that live in the River, their rock sculptures and other art installations, and their struggles, as well as their part in our cleanup work. She shared out loud her observations of our surroundings, teaching me of native plant life and the sounds and signs of birds and other wildlife, revealing as she did a respect for all life in the River. I began to feel the roots of a new adventure for me within a loving community of beaver folks. I realized that if I gave all my attention to Kate and Fred’s stories and observations, I could hope that in 20 years I might begin to know the River the way they do, not merely as a series of facts, though they certainly possess that kind of knowledge as well, but as a relationship with the River -its plant, animal and human life, its language, and its gifts.
After that day, there were other times that I shared with Kate and Fred: explorations of beaver dams, challenging (and also appreciating) Phragmites australis, an outing to see the August blood moon over the Salinas, and of course more trash cleanups. It was Kate and Fred that taught me, by example, to look, really look, and to feel the River. Each time I was with this River couple, I felt the treasure of their presence, but it was only recently that I could sit down with them to try to capture in writing some of how they know the Salinas River.
DH: Fred and Kate, what do you want to share about yourselves and your experiences with the River and beavers?
About Fred
Fred: I was born and raised in Atascadero. As I was growing up, I was always fishing. I spent a lot of time in the late 1940s exploring Graves Creek, Atascadero Creek and other creeks looking for new spots to fish. I tied my own flies, as I was taught by a man named Les Schrader, who had been a park ranger in the Sierras. He taught me to make my own fishing rods too. I hiked way up these streams and caught trout and sometimes steelhead. Once I caught a trout of about 28 to 30 inches and I took it home on my bike and my mom cooked it for dinner. Once I saw a worker catch two steelhead with a pitchfork. I roamed the creeks often, sometimes with a friend or two, but always with my dog Skeeter. My parents didn’t worry about me, as long as I was home for dinner. One time I was out exploring with a friend of mine, and we got lost. We realized that we wouldn’t be home in time for dinner. We decided to write a note and put it on Skeeter and send him home. The note said, “Don’t worry. We’re lost.” But Skeeter didn’t go home. However, in those days, there was no reason to be scared. Landowners didn’t have the same attitudes about people in the streams that they do now. You never saw “Private Property, No Trespassing” signs the way you do now and people were not afraid of the liability risk. We were free to explore. I was mapping the creeks and it intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about the animals during the fluctuations of the creeks. I followed the creeks from where they entered the River all the way up as far as they went. There was one place, Eagle Ranch, where there were beautiful waterfalls on Atascadero Creek, probably 30 to 40 feet high, and there were a lot of fish there. But, the property owners did not want anyone fishing there, so they had a security guard named Henry. Henry wore a six-shooter on his leg, but Henry got to work about 9 or 10 in the morning. I just made sure I got there about 5 in the morning, before Henry arrived and that way I could do my fishing.
I went away to college at Humboldt State to get a degree in Forestry. That move changed my perspective quite a bit, as it rained for the first 30 days that I was there. What a difference from Atascadero! I didn’t see the sun at all that first month and I began to have second thoughts about being there, but Humboldt was a pretty good college. We did field trips in the woods and saw how logging without regulation resulted in forests being clear cut. Now, having grown up in the chaparral belt, I wasn’t really a woodsman, but I found that I really enjoyed being in this new environment. After graduation, I began to work for Cal Fire, and eventually was in charge of my unit. It was a great job – I made a lot of good friends, traveled around a lot and I could do almost anything I wanted to do in that job. I have a lot of good memories from that time. One was that we did controlled (prescribed) burning events to improve range production and those were followed by big barbecues. Eventually I transferred from Calaveras to San Luis Obispo County.
I encouraged my parents to plant trees on their property, which is named Hidden Springs Tree Farm, because of the springs there in the creek channel, which is perennial in places, but dry upstream. Dad and I planted 10 acres, put in the irrigation, and dug ditches. They did pretty well and the Christmas tree farm is still going today.
About Kate
Kate: My first experiences with beavers happened on the East Coast. Every summer my aunt would take us cousins to a wildlife preserve in Massachusetts to “see the beavers”. It was not surprising that we never once saw a beaver, as they survive by being quiet and elusive most of the time. But then years later when we were canoeing in that spot again, we did finally see a beaver. It surprised us, swimming right up alongside our canoe hauling a leafy willow branch in its mouth. We could see the flat head and shining eye as it silently glided at our side. But learning anything more about beaver behavior came slowly, over decades, until I moved to California and accepted my dream job teaching at Santa Lucia School in Templeton. On my first day visiting the campus, Jan, the school’s inspiring founder, took me down the steep back hill to Paso Robles Creek where she gleefully pointed out the partially submerged twisted willow roots of an active beaver den in the water.
Santa Lucia School is small, dedicated to outdoor learning, art projects, field trips, science, and Peace Education. A major factor in the decision to purchase the Templeton property for the school was that beavers were established there. The curriculum developed as we took the students to the creek every week for activities from rock collecting, to native plants, swimming, and camping out there overnight to observe the beavers. We didn’t see them that night, though they surely saw and heard us and we did hear them chewing on the willows all night long. In the morning we found the fresh chiseled willow saplings and piles of wood chips those busy beavers had spit out. At Santa Lucia I learned along with the students to appreciate first hand for myself the impacts beavers have had over many thousands of years, shaping our environment.
Soon I joined Audrey Taub, a self-taught tracker and founder of the Beaver Brigade, and a group of her admirers, who were meeting on weekends to hone their tracking skills in the riverbed. We learned to identify most of the wild land mammals that live in and along the Salinas River, some of the birds, and many of the native plants. One day about 10 or 15 years ago, I had an amazing magical beaver encounter while walking knee deep in the Salinas River in Atascadero in broad daylight. I was enjoying the fresh cool water and could hear it flowing, and then I sensed a presence behind me and slowly turned to see what it could be. Two skinny wet arms and hands were dragging down a long branch of willow growing on the riverbank. (Beavers are highly skilled at using their fingers and hands, which are very similar to raccoons’. They aren’t actually black but look black and skinny when they are wet.) For an instant the animal and I both froze, watching each other. Just as I realized it was a beaver, it disappeared into the river with a loud slap of its tail on the water.
With moments like this and watching the large old beaver patrolling his dam in the evenings, we gently came to have an ever deepening admiration and affection for our favorite and largest rodents, the beavers. By now we have learned they have been inhabiting and caring for this continent in many important ways far longer than people have.
Phragmites australis
DH: What would you like to share with us about Phragmites australis, or Common Reed, a wetland grass native to the Middle East?
Kate: Phragmites australis is a very tall, successful, highly invasive non-native reed that I wish everyone in the Northern Hemisphere knew about and abhorred.
My first exposure to Phragmites australis occurred one summer in Massachusetts after I had graduated from college and was visiting relatives on the East Coast. The Phragmites had apparently washed ashore during flooding from a hurricane along the Atlantic Coast and had become established there. It was growing very tall and dense and looked like a huge patch of giant cornstalks.
I am not opposed to all non-native plants. After all, many plants growing wild in California are not native. Also, plants, both native and non-native can be offensive to us, such as blackberries with all their thorns, poison oak with the worst itch, stinging nettles with a bothersome rash, even hemlock which can be deadly. Phragmites, however, is the one I will work at trying to eradicate where it is non-native. Phragmites is a new arrival to this continent but it will dominate and crowd out other plants and all kinds of birds and other species that require riparian habitats, including places people love. Landowners along the Salinas notice that Phragmites has taken over the River beaches where just a few years ago their children used to swim. Those beaches have disappeared. Phragmites is not impossible to eradicate. But it will take patience and people, an incremental and persistent effort. The good thing is that Phragmites is non-toxic and has no barbs or thorns. But it is rapidly displacing native vegetation and it creates a habitat that beavers and other native wildlife cannot do well in.
A River Worth Knowing
DH: Kate and Fred, what should we understand about the Salinas River?
Kate: As we visit the Salinas River now, having learned so much in recent years, our greatest wish is that we can assist the beavers by allowing them a peaceful natural habitat free of pollution, trash, and Phragmites. So they can keep on working.
Fred: The River drains through our Central Coast. It is both our friend and our neighbor and it is our water supply. We actually have to have that River. We still have much to learn from it. Is the water that we see now in places that we didn’t before in the River due to the return of beaver ponds? What do we need to know about the geology of the River? What else will we come to understand from the River? This is all exciting and we are happy to continue to learn and share about the River. The Salinas is a river worth knowing.
Thank you, Kate and Fred.
Additional links to explore:
- River cleanup blog posts previously written by Kate:
2020 update
2021 update
2022 update - Meet Our Volunteers
- Join us at a River Cleanup!
- Volunteer with the Beaver Brigade