The Freelance Beaver Detective: Tracking Urban Wildlife with Pamela Adams of Beaver Insights and filmmaker Kay D. Ray

It’s not what you look at, it is what you see. — Pamela Adams

Join Pamela Adams of Beaver Insights and filmmaker Kay D. Ray for an evening of talk and film, with the premiere of the documentary film The Freelance Beaver Detective: Tracking Urban Wildlife.

Pamela Adams is a Seattle-based urban wildlife researcher, educator, and self-appointed Freelance Beaver Detective, who is pioneering community-based beaver ecology—especially focused on urban beavers and the wildlife their watery homes support, sometimes with the use of non-invasive wildlife trail cameras that she has taught many citizens and communities to use.

Encouraging citizens to participate, Pamela’s vision is to foster more “freelance beaver detectives” in every urban waterway in the West and beyond. A hopeful, science-grounded look at how cities and wildlife can thrive together. As Pamela Adams says, “When you follow beavers, you follow a whole ecosystem”.

This event is followed by a Wildlife Trail Camera workshop on Saturday, July 11, 9am–12pm. Space is limited, and you must attend the Friday event to reserve a spot.

Pamela Adams majored in Fine Arts at San Francisco State University followed by a career in hospitality. She owned her own commercial risk management company before retiring to the Pacific Northwest to heal from cancer, from which she recovered with the help of her time in nature. Adams began leading crews with the Youth Conservation Corps in the San Francisco Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1979. While living in the high desert of Bend, Oregon, during the Covid pandemic, she began using noninvasive wildlife cameras. They revealed that beavers were not extinct, as she and many others had mistakenly thought, but are actually nocturnal animals. She also observed that beavers were actively re-wilding watersheds all over Oregon and Washington. She began pioneering community-based beaver ecology, encouraging others to also become “freelance beaver detectives,” with a special focus on urban beavers. Now living in the city of Seattle, she has been tracking beavers in Longfellow Creek in West Seattle since 2022, her ongoing research informing that city how beavers are thriving in an urban setting. Pamela teaches and does numerous public speaking engagements.

Kay D. Ray, a Seattle-based producer and filmmaker, has been following Pamela Adams, interviewing city agency representatives and beaver conservation professionals, and exploring the challenges and benefits of beavers in Seattle’s watersheds.

The Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade, a cosponsor of the event, is a local advocacy group that has joined the Bring Back the Beaver campaign, helping to educate policymakers, landowners, and the public of the many benefits of beavers, often referred to as “ecosystem restoration heroes”. A cofounder of the annual Central Coast Beaver Festival, the Brigade welcomes the public to attend its monthly meetings, held on the 2nd Tuesday of the month (except in July or December) from 6:30–8pm at the South Coast Watershed Resource Center, Arroyo Burro County Park (Hendry’s Beach), 2981 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara, CA. All welcome.

A community program hosted and sponsored by The Santa Barbara Permaculture Network and co-sponsored by the The Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade and the SBCC Environmental Horticulture Dept.