Salmonid Restoration Federation conference

I just got back from attending the 32nd annual SRF conference in Santa Barbara, and I’m pretty saturated with data and new ideas. As you’d expect this year, most of the news was bad—drought, low flows, regulatory gridlock, no money, and etc. For me, the only positive response to bad news is to do or make something. Not to talk about, study, write a paper or commission a sub-committee regarding the bad news, but to do or make something.

On the drive north, we kept seeing California Welcome Center signs, and Brock suggested that the state had picked the wrong animal. It wasn’t hundreds of thousands of bear pelts that drew people west at first. It wasn’t gold, either—that came later. What everybody was after initially was BEAVERS! So I modified their sign a little.

Update: the very next day. So…apparently the first design looked like a vampire beaver (not a zombeaver, luckily). I’ve tweaked it a little here, and if you’re the kind of scofflaw who could turn this into a stick-on temporary graffito for use before next year’s conference on our local signage, please email me. Imagine it, eh? Carloads of travel-weary fish geeks droning along the highway, and one of these suckers flashes by…doubletake…huhwha?

We talked about the ubiquitous Keep Tahoe Blue stickers too, and that one’s an easy fix. We need a bumper sticker strip that goes on top of the existing sticker to make it say that Beavers Keep Tahoe Blue. The folks at League to Save Lake Tahoe have asked me to take down the graphic I posted, so you’ll have to use your imagination. And some scissors. And maybe a lawyer…

That’s all the indoor stuff I can handle for now. After sitting for five days, I’m excited to get back to roaming around and checking out the creeks again. A million thanks to everybody at the conference who blew my mind and dashed my hopes and raised my awareness and offered so many great ideas and contacts. Next year it’s going to be here in Santa Rosa, and I expect it’ll be nuts.