Newsletter

Please join us on Saturday May 18th from 10:30-3 for this hybrid event, hosted by the Cal Poly Initiative for Climate Leadership and Resilience, with nonprofit partners SLO Beaver Brigade and the Morro Bay Open Space Alliance.

Register today, as there is a capacity of 130!

Event Description

This hybrid in-person and online seminar will focus on the major role beavers can play in improving and maintaining ecosystem health if they are able to return to coastal watersheds in California. Featuring presentations from experts in the field as well as interactive discussions, this seminar aims to inform community members living in coastal California as well as inspire students to research the potential role of beavers as a restoration tool and ally.

Additionally, please join the SLO Beaver Brigade for one of two tours of local beaver habitat on the Salinas River in Atascadero on Sunday May 19th. Space here is especially limited, so sign up today!

Please register for the event by Wednesday May 15th. If you do not register in time, you may still come in person, but food or a spot on the tour will not be guaranteed.

In person location: 52-E37 at Cal Poly
If you are unfamiliar with and/or parking on campus, please review this CalPoly map for a guide of where the event and recommended parking are on campus. Before the event, please visit Cal Poly Maps for interactive information on where the building is and parking.

If you have any questions, please email Hadley Willman at hwillman@calpoly.edu. Thank you!

Schedule

• 10:30: Arrival and opening remarks
• 10:45-11:30: Steph Wald, Creek Lands Conservation. “Protecting and Conserving Small Coastal Watersheds of the Central Coast”
• 11:30-12:15: Cooper Lienhart, Nature’s Engineers. “Process-Based Restoration: mimicking beavers to restore stream health”
• 12:15-12:30: Breakout discussions
• 12:30-1:15: Free lunch from Woodstock’s Pizza (for attendees who registered by May 15)
• 1:15-2: Kate Lundquist & Brock Dolman – Co-Directors of Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute, “Lessons Learned and Replicable Strategies for Coexisting with and Bringing Back Beaver in California”
• 2-2:30: Interactive breakout sessions
  • Choose between a student research session and a property-based restoration session
• 2:30-2:45: Closing remarks

Details on Presentations:

First Presentation: Steph Wald, Creek Lands Conservation

Title: Protecting and Conserving Small Coastal Watersheds of the Central Coast

Abstract: The health of the creeks in our coastal watersheds as it relates to steelhead, and CLC projects/ role in watershed health focusing on challenges and opportunities for resilience and rewilding for fish and wildlife, and for increased public access for connecting people to their waterways.

Second Presentation: Cooper Lienhart, Nature’s Engineers:

Title: Process-Based Restoration: mimicking beavers to restore stream health

Abstract: Beavers stewarded the creeks in the Morro Bay Watershed for millions of years, maintaining lush wetland ecosystems, until they were hunted completely out of the area for their fur. Now, many of the streams flowing into Morro Bay are incised and degraded, supporting little water and life. Process-Based Restoration is the practice of giving an ecosystem the inputs it needs to restore its natural processes and build itself back up to health and self-sustainability over time. By building human-made Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs) with mostly hand tools and human labor, streams have the structure and complexity they need to slow and hold water, store carbon, support more life, and rebuild the habitat for beavers to return.

Bio: Cooper Lienhart is the president of the local restoration business, Nature’s Engineers. He graduated from Cal Poly in 2020 with a degree in Environmental Management and Protection and a minor in Indigenous Studies. For the past 4 years he has been working with the non-profit SLO Beaver Brigade to educate our county and beyond on the many benefits beavers can bring to our lands and waters. After learning how to restore rivers and streams by building Beaver Dam Analogs as well as training in beaver coexistence services with the Beaver Institute, Cooper founded Nature’s Engineers to bring this restoration work to the Central Coast where he lives with his wife Hannah and their two cats and four chickens.

Third Presentation :Kate Lundquist & Brock Dolman – Co-Directors of Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute

Title: Lessons Learned and Replicable Strategies for Coexisting with and Bringing Back Beaver in California

Description: After more than 20 years of Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s Bring Back the Beaver Campaign actively campaigning to change the way California approaches beaver restoration, we have recently achieved some huge successes. We will share some of the strategies and tactics that worked for us over these years to arrive at this exciting new beaver moment in California. We will talk about our various educational efforts to address both the nativity of beaver in California and also share about the many benefits of beavers. We will also address ideas for how to non-lethally coexist with beavers, provide updates on new State beaver policies, and discuss issues & opportunities for relocation.

Speakers: Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman

Kate Lundquist co-directs the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign. Kate collaborates with landowners, communities, tribes, conservation organizations and resource agencies across the arid west to uncover obstacles and identify strategic solutions to conserve watersheds, recover listed species, increase water security and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Kate works to catalyze the greater acceptance, funding and implementation of beaver and process-based restoration in support of biological and cultural diversity. Kate is a co-founder and member of the California Beaver Policy Working Group and the California Process-Based Restoration Network (www.calpbr.org) and serves as a member of the Beaver Institute’s (www.beaverinstitute.org) advisory board.

Brock Dolman is a co-founder of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (www.oaec.org), where he co-directs the Permaculture Program, Wildlands Program and the WATER Institute in Sonoma County, California. He is a wildlife biologist, permaculture designer and watershed ecologist and has been active in promoting the idea of Bringing Back the Beaver in California since the late 1990’s. He is a co-author on both the 2012 & 2013 historic ecology papers published in the California Fish and Game Journal. He was given the Golden Pipe Award in 2012 by the Salmonid Restoration Federation: “ …for his leading role as a proponent of “working with beavers” to restore salmon native habitat. With his Co-Director Kate Lundquist they have been busy as beavers working on education, training and policy change in California resulting in the historic creation of California’s first Beaver Restoration Program in 2022. In 1992 he completed his BA in Agro-Ecology & Conservation Biology, graduating with honors from the University of California Santa Cruz with the Biology Department and Environmental Studies Department.

In February, 2024, the SLO Beaver Brigade became a hub for Drinkable Rivers.

From the Drinkable Rivers Website: Our Story:

In 2005 Li An Phoa canoed the full length of a river in Canada, the Rupert. All along the way, she could drink water straight from the river. Three years later, Li An came back and she could not drink from the Rupert anymore. The river was polluted as a result of dams and mining. Fish died, people got ill. The delicate balance in the ecosystem was destroyed.

Li An realised that drinkable rivers are an indicator of healthy living. Indeed, when we can drink from our rivers, it means that a whole ecosystem is healthy and in balance. Rivers can only be drinkable when all actions and relations in an entire watershed contribute.

We propose to use drinkable rivers, as a guiding principle for our societies, as a replacement of economic growth. Drinkable rivers as an ancient and new compass, guided by the following, simple question: “Does this behaviour, this measure, or this innovation contribute to drinkable rivers?”

Rivers are vital for all life on earth, rivers are our lifelines. We cannot live without water, we are water. All living beings are part of a watershed, so we will all benefit from drinkable rivers.

It might seem like an impossible task, but it’s a 200 year plan that starts with this first step. Hope you can join us along the way.

March 23rd, 2024 10am – 3pm, SLO Mission Plaza, 939 Chorro Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. If you’d like to volunteer with us for this event, please sign up here!

The SLO Beaver Brigade invites eager beavers of all ages to the Second Annual San Luis Obispo County Beaver Festival on Saturday, March 23rd in Mission Plaza from 10 am to 3 pm. Free bike valet will be provided. Kids welcome and encouraged to come and learn about beavers with us!

Entry is free. The day will include live music, children’s activities, a beaver trivia contest, speakers, and a plethora of information on the benefits that beavers provide to us in our state and county. Live music by Cuyama Mama and the Hot Flashes and local singer/songwriter, Elliott Johnson.

Here is our tentative schedule:

1. Schedule:
   1. 10:00 Welcome 
   2. 10 am – 11:30 Elliott Johnson Musician
   3. 11:30am Official Opening & Welcome
   4. 12pm Leila Philips
   5. 12:30 Trivia Contest
   6. 1pm-2:30 Small Amphitheatre Speaker Series (Local restoration projects and Leila Philips will close this series)
   7. 1pm-3pm Cuyama Mama and the Hot Flashes

Featured Speaker: Leila Philip

Author of Beaverland, Leila Philip will be our featured speaker!

We will be hosting Leila Philip, an award-winning writer, and author of BEAVERLAND, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the twentieth century.

Musicians: Cuyama Mama and The Hot Flashes

Cuyama Mama & The Hot Flashes

Original High Desert Dance Music: The most rockin’, foot stompin’, apron flauntin’ musical act in the Cuyama Valley. You can blame us for the heat!

Cuyama Mama & The Hot Flashes is:

• Jan Smith on vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica and aprons
• Gary Sangenitto on bass
• Jody Eulitz on box and vocals

Find Cuyama Mama & The Hot Flashes online: Instagram: www.instagram.com/cuyamamama/ FaceBook: www.facebook.com/cuyamamama

To arrange interviews with the band or for more images or video, please contact: Jan Smith, jan.lamberton.smith@gmail.com, 805 325 8890

Musicians: Elliott Johnson

Elliott’s music is handcrafted here on the central coast out of willow bark and frog legs. It can be bitter, it can be weird, and no one knows if it’s healthy to consume. It is best enjoyed in the woods, around a campfire. The flavors of his tunes range from phunny to filisophical and it is clear he never knew if it was intended for children or adults. So come see for yourself as he stirs the cauldron with his big guitar and talks in cadence with his bubblin’, musical stew.

Speaker Series

Local and statewide organizations will be present to share materials about their efforts to protect the environment and challenge climate change. Speakers from the following organizations:

• Cooper Lienhart, SLO Beaver Brigade/ Nature’s Engineers
• Ben van Hamersveld , Los Padres CCC-Native Plant Propagation Specialist
• Creek Lands Conservation
• Freddy Otte, City of SLO
• Greg Ellis, Upper Salinas-Las Tablas RCD

Beaver-related merchandise and other items will be available, along with food and drink. Of course, the Plaza is just steps away from local shops, restaurants and other interesting sites to visit.

Come to the beautiful Mission Plaza in downtown San Luis Obispo to learn about and celebrate beavers and the benefits they bring to our human and non-human community. 

The Second Annual Beaver Festival is sponsored by the Beaver Institute,  Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, Morro Bay Open Space Alliance, New Times, KCBX , Tetra Tech and the City of San Luis Obispo.

Why do we celebrate beavers?

Because we see them as climate change superheroes! Beavers build dams in our creeks and rivers, turning them into lush wetlands. This SLOWS the water down, allowing it to SPREAD out and SINK into our aquifers (slow it, spread it, sink it)! Not only does this help us in droughts, but their wetlands also create refuge from wildfires. Come join us on March 23rd to learn about all this and more at our second annual SLO Beaver Festival.  

Read about last years festival here!

Sponsors

Thank you to our Sponsors!

(From the CDFW Beaver Webpage )

The CDFW Beaver Restoration Program is updating the current range map of beavers in California. To help improve this dataset and our understanding of the current range of beavers in California, the BRP is requesting submissions of additional beaver observation data.

Beavers were once one of the most widely distributed mammals in North America. However, by the late 1800s beavers were eliminated from much of their range due to unregulated trapping for the fur trade. In California, beaver populations were further impacted during the 1900s by habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. With the growing recognition of the beaver’s role in ecosystem restoration and conservation and CDFW’s budding beaver restoration objectives, a better understanding of the current and historic range of Northa American beavers in California is needed. As such, the Beaver Restoration Program (BRP) is undertaking an effort to compile North American beaver (Castor canadensis) presence data from throughout the state to update CDFW’s current range map for beavers in California.

No comprehensive beaver population survey has been conducted in California. As such, the map below represents the current known range of beavers in California according to the best data currently available to CDFW.

To help improve this dataset and our understanding of the current range of beavers in California, the BRP is requesting submissions of additional beaver observation data. If you would like to submit a beaver observation (including their dams and lodges) and contribute to this mapping effort, please report your observation through CDFW’s California Beaver Observation Survey(opens in new tab).

It was quite a highlight for Cooper Lienhart and myself, Audrey Taub, to get to attend and present at the State of the Beaver Conference in Canyonville, Oregon this Nov 13-16, 2023. We were able to hear from the founders of this conference, Stan Petrowski, Leonard & Lois Houston and feel their passion for their watershed and their conviction in the work of the beavers to return health back to their creeks and rivers. They presented decades’ long experience of restoring creeks and relocating beavers back into their habitats. If you want a beaver story, go no further than Stan, Leonard and Lois. Truly inspirational frontline restorationists.

Dr. Suzanne Fouty, another hero in the beaver world who has been instrumental in researching the beavers impact on streams and stream restoration for over 25 years, and how beavers and wolves interact to accelerate stream restoration. Dr. Fouty presented on her efforts to close federally managed public lands to beaver trapping and hunting as a strategic response to the emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss. She is working tirelessly to shine the light on the often unspoken and unnoticed quantities of beavers that are still being trapped today on public lands all over this country. Even as many dollars, hours and energy is being spent to restore streams to create the conditions for beavers to return, once the beavers do arrive, trappers often remove those very beavers from the watersheds, ultimately limiting the benefits of those restoration efforts.

Kevin Swift of Swift Water Design gave a presentation on his teams efforts at restoring the watershed of Tásmam Koyóm, the ancestral lands of the Mountain Maidu currently owned and maintained by the Maidu Summit Consortium. Using low-tech process-based restoration techniques, his team of restorationists have restored many miles of Yellow Creek and much to their delight, and the ultimate sign of success, have seen the return of beavers back into these restored waterways.

Cristina Valverde of Beavers Taught Salmon to Jump, was seen with camera in hand, always alert to this story of reconnection and the restoration of this connection by beavers, people and indigenous ecological ways. She is a skilled story catcher and is very often at the center of beaver/human activities, capturing the events as they unfold.

So many great moments to share, there will be more to come on this post in the upcoming months.

Visit by 19 high school students from Yarm School in northeastern England to the Atascadero beaver dams, October 24, 2023.

photos by Brittany App

At first, hesitantly dipping their toes in the Salinas River, but ultimately getting their sea legs while witnessing the delights of Beaver habitat, a group of 19 high school students from Yarm in northeastern England and their four instructors toured the Atascadero beaver dams recently with the SLO Beaver Brigade.

Yarm School is an independent day school founded in 1978 in Yarm, North Yorkshire in the North East of England. The trip involved students majoring in biology and political science and gave the participants rich opportunities for experiencing the intersection of environmental issues and public policy on a 10-day trip through the Golden State.

Audrey Taub, Executive Director and founder of the SLO Beaver Brigade fielded a wide variety of questions from the participants, as she led them through a walk to the local beaver dams. Topics covered during the walk included characteristics of beavers, their diet, habits and dam building, as well as the benefits that beaver dams create: fire refugia, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration and sediment and pollution capture. Two of beavers’ favorite sources of food, cottonwoods and willows, were easily visible on the walk, as were the beaver chews from these trees that also serve as building blocks for the dams. Students and teachers alike marveled at the quantity of water held back from the dams, as they saw first-hand how beaver dams create lush wetlands and capture water, contributing to the local drinking water supply. Not to be outdone by the SLO Beaver Brigade’s dedication the local watershed, the Yarm School students carried out 15 tires from the side of the River, placed there by local horseback riders and their horses that pulled them from the riverbed.

Yarm School students had a busy agenda during their trip, which included fun and educational activities at points north and south, but several students shared with SLO Beaver Brigade volunteers that the Beaver dam tour was the highlight of their experiences. 

Stephen Edwards of Yarm School stated, “We felt so welcomed, so embraced into the Beaver Brigade project, and so privileged to learn from their  significant insight and experiences.”