Celebrating Beavers Event with The Beaver Believers Film Premiere

Join us for an evening celebrating our new climate & ecosystem heroes, the beavers!
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network hosts an evening of fun & film, featuring the recently released documentary, The Beaver Believers, to be shown in the spacious outdoor patio of Bici Centro (Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition), in downtown Santa Barbara. Families welcome, bring your own picnic sandwiches, snacks provided.

The Beaver Believers documentary film tells the urgent, yet whimsical story of an unlikely cadre of activists – a biologist, a hydrologist, a botanist, an ecologist, a psychologist and an hairdresser – who share a common vision: restoring the North American Beaver, the most industrious, ingenious, bucktoothed little engineer, to the watersheds of the American West.

The Beaver Believers encourage us to embrace a new paradigm for managing our western lands, one that seeks to partner with the natural world rather overpower it. As a keystone species, beavers enrich their ecosystems, creating the biodiversity, complexity, and resiliency our watersheds need so desperately to absorb the impacts of climate change.

Beavers can show us the way, and do much of the work for us, if only we find the humility to trust the restorative power of nature and our own ability to pay a positive role within it.

Shot in eight western states, also Mexico and Canada, through desert drought, raging wild fires and floods, and wetland tranquility, the Beavers Believers film will change the way you think about climate change and inspire you to think about the opportunities of working with nature for solutions.

Most south coast residents aren’t aware beavers were in our region, and some still remaining, but when hiking in the backcountry behind Santa Barbara and Ventura, you might come across beaver rock art done by the original native peoples of this land, proving beaver have been here for thousands of years. Let’s welcome them back to help rehydrate the land!

Ray Cirino, local artist, has fallen in love with beaver, and will display and share his Summer Solstice Beaver Float, and other beaver artwork. Others are encouraged to bring artwork, poems, or favorite books about beavers to share.

The free event takes place on Friday, June 28, 7 – 9pm, and will be held at Bici Centro, 434 Olive Street, in an outdoor courtyard (bring sweaters & jackets). Please come early to explore the community bike center, the beaver artwork & float, feel free to bring sandwiches, informally picnic, some snacks provided. The event is FREE and no reservations are required. For More Info: margie@sbpermaculure.org; www.sbpermaculture.org; 805-962-2571.

-This event is a part of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Civics 101 for Climate Change educational series-
Event Co-sponsors:
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition (Bici Centro)

More Info:
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
www.sbpermaculture.org

Facebook Event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/470609313701149/
Learn More:

Beaver Believers Film Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/133200746

BEAVER IN CALIFORNIA: Creating a Culture of Stewardship
Booklet Download:
https://oaec.org/publications/beaver-in-california/

Extensive research has recently heightened recognition of the important role beaver (Castor canadensis) can play in watershed health and climate change resiliency. The species’ ecological services include enhanced water storage, erosion control, habitat restoration and creation, listed species recovery, the maintenance of stream flows during the dry summer period, and other beneficial adaptations to our changing climate conditions

Eager, The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded wetlands dried up and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/eager/

THE ECOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF BEAVERS – Martinez CA Beaver Festival June 29 2019

Because the beaver isn’t just an animal; it’s an ecosystem:
https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/the-ecological-benefits-of-beavers/

Beavers in Santa Barbara County:
https://songsofthewilderness.com/2010/12/31/beavers-among-us/

The historical range of beaver (Castor canadensis) in coastal California – an updated review of the evidence:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264420916_The_historical_range_of_beaver_Castor_canadensis_in_coastal_California_-_an_updated_review_of_the_evidence

Beavers Used to Be Almost Everywhere in California, by Alison Hawkes:

In an interesting historical footnote mentioned in the paper, California brought back some beavers to stem erosion from 1923-1950, bumping the statewide population from a dwindling 1,300 in 1942 to 20,000 by 1950.
The translocations happened in 58 counties — including Marin, Napa, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Cruz — and are thought to be responsible for the beavers that live here today….So, it’s not a crazy idea that beavers could be brought in again to help mitigate twenty-first century problems like climate change-induced droughts and water shortages. https://baynature.org/article/beavers-used-to-be-almost-everywhere-in-california/

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