Calling all ‘weird rodent’ fans: Beaver Festival is returning to SLO this weekend
Calling all beaver fans — the San Luis Obispo County Beaver Brigade will host its second annual Beaver Festival at Mission Plaza on Saturday.
The free festival includes live music, expert speakers and even a beaver trivia contest, according to the Beaver Brigade website.
The goal of the festival is to celebrate beavers and highlight their importance to the environment.
Beaver dams offer numerous ecosystem services, such as slowing down water so it can sink into nearby aquifers while supporting the growth of wetlands.
“These dams turn single thread streams into lush wetlands full of life, offering solutions to our most pressing problems including climate change, wildfires and droughts, and our oceans and bays inundated with pollutants, excess nutrients, trash and excess sediment,” a news release said.
What to expect from the Beaver Festival
The Beaver Festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Mission Plaza on Saturday.
Local singer-songwriter Elliott Johnson will kick off the event at 10 a.m. with an acoustic performance.
Then, at noon, author Leila Philip will give a speech about her book: “Beaver Land, How One Weird Rodent Made America.”
The book offers “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,” the website said.
Then, attendees can enjoy a trivia contest at 12:30 p.m., according to the event schedule.
From 1 p.m. to 2:30, the Brigade will host a speaker series on “efforts to protect the environment and combat climate change.”
Speakers include Beaver Brigade river restorationist Cooper Lienhart, Los Padres California Conservation Corps native plant propagation specialist Ben van Hamersveld and San Luis Obispo city biologist Freddy Otte.
Meanwhile, local high desert dance music band Cuyama Mama and the Hot Flashes will perform from 1 to 3 p.m.
The first Beaver Festival, held last April, had more than 1,000 attendees, according to the website.
The event was sponsored by the city of San Luis Obispo’s Cultural Arts and Community Promotions, New Times, KCBX, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, the Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade, Morro Bay Open Space Alliance, the Beaver Institute and Tetra Tech, according to the release.
