Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!


As a reviewer of beaver headlines for 17 years I have learned a few things about the business of reporting. I have seen all the puns and the alliterations. “BIG BUSY BEAVERS BRING BUCKETS” to “Beaver chewed trees present a gnawing problem“. Ho Hum. I thought I’d see  it all. But THIS.

This is the single best beaver headline I have ever beheld.

Biologist explains why beavers are ecosystem royalty

Nature’s best engineer, and the largest rodent in North America, might be living right in your neighborhood. Meet Castor canadensis, the beaver.

“Originally there may have been different subspecies of beavers in different areas of the U.S., but during reintroduction efforts there was a big mixing of beavers from all over,” said Torrey Ritter, Fish Wildlife and Parks non-game biologist.

Ritter said the actual numbers today are unknown, as FWP doesn’t do surveys like they do for game species.

You know because beavers don’t count. So why count beavers? Oh I bet Torrey is going to tell us  why. Listen up.
“We can do beaver surveys using aerial photography,” Ritter said, adding that beaver dams and lodges show up well in photographs.
His best guess is that Central Montana’s beaver populations are either stable or increasing, based on observations of suitable habitat and beaver activity.
While good habitat — areas with water and trees such as aspen, willows or cottonwoods — is plentiful, Ritter said many streams have experienced degradation to the extent that they can’t any longer support beavers.
But the beavers themselves may change that.
You bet your bottom dollar they can! Sing it Torrey!

Beavers are masters of environmental engineering, building dams and lodges made out of sticks, tree trunks, rocks and mud. This instinctive activity results in raised water tables. Behind a beaver dam underground water can be as much as 2 to 6 feet higher.

“It slows down snowmelt and rain so that water trickles through the system much more slowly. The general result is a lot more and greener vegetation grows farther out from the stream and later into the year. That’s the benefit that can happen,” Ritter said.

On the flip side, beaver activity can flood roads and fences, plug culverts and prevent water from reaching a field or pasture, which might explain why some ranchers and farmers are not so happy if beavers move in.

“There are ways to work with beaver conflicts other than trapping them out or shooting them,” Ritter said. “There’s a program for beaver conflict resolution, and landowners have been really, really receptive to it. Ranchers, farmers and municipalities are seeing the benefit of getting beavers up into the headwaters of streams to capture more water.”

Beavers can do great things. And we can do easy things to cope with any challenges that come up. Okay.

For Ritter, though, it’s the beavers’ ability to recharge riparian ecosystems that should be celebrated. “A lot of the biodiversity in some landscapes is tied to beavers. I consider them to be one of the most important species in North America because so many other species benefit.”

While importing beavers from other areas is one approach to increasing their numbers, another happens as a successful beaver colony grows and younger beavers move out. Ritter has studied beaver dispersal, and found they can travel surprisingly long distances.

“The amount of vegetative growth that comes from their dams balances the amount they eat,” Ritter said.

 

Yup. Beavers are the rodent who gives back. Good point, Torrey.

Ritter said the largest misconception about beavers is that they’ll chop down every plant around where they live and leave a muddy mess with no plants.

“I’m a non-game biologist and normally I wouldn’t work with beavers because they are fur-bearers. But they are such a biodiversity powerhouse. When you look at the surveys of non-game species that are threatened in Montana, beavers can assist with almost all of them.”

However Ritter said getting a colony of beavers established requires “decent amounts” of healthy flood plain vegetation.

“You can’t just come into a really degraded stream and turn it into a great ecosystem. The majority of my job is helping people determine when an area is ready for beavers to be reintroduced.”

Beavers can fix a lot of things. But sometimes they need a little help getting started. I heard that princess Diana needed her sheets washed 4 times before she could sleep in them. Beavers are royalty too but they’re easier than that.


Now this is MY kind of article. Enjoy!

Coexisting With Beavers

Beavers are aquatic rodents that depend on tree bark for their winter food. They don’t want to risk their lives wandering over dry land to get it, so they build dams on waterways to make their tree cutting and branch gathering easier and safer. But people don’t want flooded roadways, backyards, or farm fields.

When beavers lay claim to a stretch of water near humans, people usually respond by trapping and removing beavers, tearing down their dams and un-clogging beaver-blocked culverts. Soon other beavers come along, the people and the beavers keep doing what they do, and the conflict continues.

Trapping removes beavers only temporarily. They live and travel in family groups, and even skilled fur trappers don’t always catch all the animals from a given area. Live trapping and transferring beavers must be done in accordance with state game regulations. The beavers must be released in a suitable place, otherwise they become somebody
else’s problem.

Yep. That’s the problem. What we need is some kind of beaver hero to come swooping in and take care of things. Do you know of anyone like that?

A Northern Virginia-based organization, the Human Beaver Coexistence Fund (HBCF), encourages people to share land with active beavers while addressing beaver-caused flooding and tree-chewing in long-term, cost-effective ways. Alison Zak, founder and executive director of HBCF, conducts workshops and presentations for landowners and conservation groups about beaver behavior, natural history, and how beavers improve wildlife habitat. HBCF provides instruction and assistance to landowners wishing to minimize adverse effects of beaver activity.

If you already have a beaver pond on your land but don’t want beavers to flood the surrounding area, HBCF recommends setting up a pond leveler. An important flood management tool, it keeps the pond at a manageable level while allowing beavers to remain. Pond levelers last five to ten years and are more cost effective during this time than periodically tearing down dams and trapping beavers.

Speaking of heroes! Go Alison! And hurray for Martinez for showing everyone that this was possible!

Beavers immediately try to plug any leak in their dam so a pond leveler creates a leak beavers can’t find. A corrugated plastic culvert pipe is inserted through the dam and extends upstream, anchored to the bottom by weights. The upstream end of the pipe connects to an intake cage, where beavers can’t reach it. The height where the culvert pipe goes through the dam sets the water level. During periods of heavy rain, or if the beavers build the dam higher than the pipe, the water in the pond stays level with the pipe. Propelled by gravity, overflow goes through the dam and downstream, undetected by the beavers. A pond leveler can be adjusted for the depth of the pond, as chosen by the landowner, and suited to the size of the pond. It should be set to keep the beaver pond as large as possible, otherwise the beavers move on and create another dam elsewhere.

When beavers block a culvert, flooding results, so HBCF recommends setting up steel fencing around a culvert. Steel mesh fencing and metal poles are the best materials, and you need to inspect the fencing regularly to remove any debris blocking the water flow. Fencing needn’t extend high above the water since beavers don’t climb, but it should be buried deep enough into the substrate so beavers can’t
dig underneath.

Nice clear advice on the best way to deal with the beeves. This  reporter apparently drew the illustration too. Good job. We like him.

Over the past several months beavers have chewed trees and dammed Bullskin Run at Cool Spring Preserve, the Potomac Valley Audubon Society’s Jefferson County property. Bullskin Run was backing up, and water was overflowing the road near one of the culverts next to the preserve. In partnership with HBCF, PVAS volunteers and staff installed culvert fencing and wrapped trees with special protectors to discourage damage by beavers. So far, these efforts seem to 
be working.

HBCF has launched a Beaver Habitat Stewardship and Compensation program. Landowners in Maryland and Virginia who have beaver ponds on their property, and need to manage the beavers, may receive financial compensation, based on the impounded acreage plus a 35-foot buffer surrounding the beaver pond. Program participants who meet certain qualifications could receive up to $300 per acre over a three-year period from HBCF. For more information about this pilot program, 
see coexistwithbeavers.org

Beavers create wetland habitat for threatened or endangered wildlife. Beaver dams have been found to improve our own water quality by reducing levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. They help control and retain sediments, reduce peak flood flow, raise the water table, and enhance groundwater recharge. Humans and beavers can coexist, even though our activities sometimes put us at odds with each other.

Beavers do more good things for the environment by the time you pour the coffee than most engineers do all day. Hows that for a new slogan?


A decade before there were beavers in Alhambra Creek there were beavers in Moorhen Marsh at Mountain View Sanitation. To be clear they weren’t exactly welcome but not exactly unwelcome either. Somehow Lindsey Museum got involved in doing a “Study” to find out how many there were and what they were up to. Volunteers watched them in the mornings or evenings to find out what was happening. The project issued a report.

Yesterday I was reminded to look over that again and marvel at all the things we understand so much better today. Apparently there was an orphan kit rescued from Discovery Bay and the plan was for Lindsey to release him with that family when he got better. No recognition of the fact that it was a big deal to introduce a kit to a strange family and that it might not work.

Fortunately the kit died  before that could happen.

There were also comments that didn’t make sense to me. Like volunteers seeing “Beavers feeding on their backs” and “Muskrats swimming with their young“.

????????????????????????????????????

To be clear, I never ever say a beaver on its back like a sea otter. And while I did once observe a mink swimming with its young, I never saw a muskrat doing the same thing. When I looked around on the internet I got an AI statement saying they sometimes swam with their young on their backs but I could find no photos or videos of such a thing. Even this nice Wild America episode says muskrat moms are not very attentive.

But it also shows footage of muskrats building nests says they can dig bank dens and notes they can hold their breath for 20 minutes!!! which I did not know. So maybe I’m selling them short.

Clearly there was so little known about beavers locally that they wanted to continue the study just in case they could observe the massive population explosion that was sure to follow.

Leslie said yesterday that she saw two or three kits in the marsh study, so one of those was probably the founder of our beavers in Alhambra Creek. I like to think it was mom because she was tolerant of human observers already and built external lodges which you could see above ground just like the study.

Dad never did.


Way back when we were first trying to save our beavers I would occasionally meet someone who had worked with the Lindsay Museum project to monitor the beavers in Mountain View Sanitation years earlier. There was apparently a beaver lodge and adult beavers for a while there and I often think they were “our beavers” that eventually moved to Alhambra Creek.

Well turns out there was a mother=daughter duo that volunteered for that project and happened to be keeping watching when kits first emerged on the scene. That little girl was soo taken with beavers that she dedicated her bedroom to a collection of them and now that she’s grown and married her mother thought that she might donate those beavers to our festival.

Does this mean there will be another great beaver giveaway? Stay tuned…

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