Busy Beaver Praised at ‘Best Yet’ Conservancy Forest Feast Fundraiser

According to board member Lyn Lampert and executive director Camille Richard, Monday evening’s Lake Fork Valley Conservancy annual “Forest Feast” fundraiser was the “absolute best yet” both in terms of food and staff, vastly increased beaver knowledge, environmental comaraderie and, perhaps most important in terms of finances, financial remuneration with revenues from the event topping a whopping $50,000.

While the monetary intake was record-breaking, Executive Director Richard explains September 7 revenues are commensurate with Conservancy’s many equally large and ambitious environmental programs.

As briefly enumerated by Conservancy board member John Coy, serious in his address to the overflow crowd while dressed in a buck-toothed beaver costume, Lake Fork Conservancy’s ongoing and ramped up projects include the Slumgullion Pass astronomy site and three-year Lake Fork River water study with hoped for achieving “outstanding waters” designation.

Introducing himself as “Bob the Beaver,” following an illuminating program by Colorado Natural Heritage Program’s Sarah Marshall on the benefits of beaver introduction, serious-faced Coy ended his remarks to applause, “nice gnawing you.”

Marshall, a Wetlands Ecologist from Boulder, Colorado, spoke on the benefits of a re-energized beaver population in the state in terms of diverse wetland habitat, aquatic and terrestrial plant habitat, and, especially significant in drought year 2026, the fact beaver ponds and associated wetlands mitigate drought, wildfire, and aquatic sediment loads as a result of climate change.

“Beavers,” said the enthusiastic Marshall, “are helping us get through the drought.”