Santa Barbara Permaculture Network presents
The Freelance Beaver Detective: Tracking Urban Wildlife
Film premiere
with Pamela Adams of Beaver Insights,
joined by documentary filmmaker Kay D. Ray
Friday, July 10, 6-8pm, 2026
FREE, Kids Welcome
Location: SBCC West Campus, Fe Bland Auditorium
721 Cliff Dr, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
“It's not what you look at, it is what you see” Pamela Adams
Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network & Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade as we host Pamela Adams of Beaver Insights, & filmmaker Kay D. Ray, for an evening of talk & 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 & the wildlife their watery homes support, sometimes with the use of non-invasive trail cameras she has taught many citizens & 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 states, “When you follow beavers, you follow a whole ecosystem”.
A cosponsor of the event, the Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade is a local advocacy group that has joined the Bring Back the Beaver campaign, helping to educate the public, landowners & policymakers of the many benefits of beavers, often referred to as “ecosystem restoration heroes”. A cofounder of the annual Central Coast Beaver Festival, SB Beaver Brigade welcomes the public to attend their monthly meetings.
The Friday evening event is followed by Wildlife Trail Camera workshop with Pamela Adams on Sat, July 11, 9am-Noon. Space is limited & reservations required (must attend the Friday event to reserve a spot).
Learn more:
Movie Trailer for The Freelance Beaver Dectective
https://youtu.be/OVsBimzkIHohttps://youtu.be/OVsBimzkIHo
Bio: Pamela Adams:
Pamela Adams majored in Fine Arts at San Francisco State University followed by careers in hospitality, and owned her own commercial Risk Management company until retiring to the Pacific Northwest to heal from cancer, where with the help of her time in nature she recovered. Adams began leading crews in the San Francisco Golden Gate National Recreation Area with the Youth Conservation Corps in 1979. During the Covid pandemic when living in the high desert of Bend Oregon, she began using noninvasive wildlife cameras, learning by what they revealed, that beavers were indeed not extinct, as she & many mistakenly thought was true, but are actually illusive nocturnal animals, not very visible during day. She also observed they were actively re-wilding watersheds all over Oregon and Washington. She began learning everything she could about the life history of beavers, and putting her hobbies of noninvasive cameras to work, she began pioneering community-based beaver ecology, especially focused on urban beavers, encouraging others to also become “freelance beaver detectives”. 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 of how beavers are thriving in an urban setting. She teaches & does numerous public speaking engagements, and is the subject of the documentary The Freelance Beaver Detective: Tracking Urban Wildlife, by filmmaker Kay D. Ray, that tells the story of her journey & work.
Pamela Adams Website Beaver Insights: https://beaverinsights.com/
FACEBOOK PAGE Beavers of Longfellow Creek Seattle: https://www.facebook.com/groups/638459631548760/
Bio: Kay D. Ray:
Seattle based producer & filmmaker Kay D. Ray of Kay D. Ray Productions has been following Pamela Adams, interviewing city agency representatives, and beaver conservation professionals exploring the challenges, and the benefits of beavers in Seattle's watersheds.
Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade:
Monthly meetings the 2nd Tuesday of the month 6:30-8pm (no meetings in July or December) at the South Coast Watershed Resource Center, Arroyo Burro County Park (Hendry’s Beach), 2981 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109. All welcome.
Sponsored by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network & Santa Barbara Beaver Brigade & SB CC Environmental Horticulture
www.sbpermaculture.org 805 962-2571
