Bats on Parade

heidi08 New Species, Recent Sightings May 27, 2010

Early morning visitors to the dam this week have been treated to a spectacular display of winged mammals over and under bridges, over and under trees and swooping back to bed under the clay tiles they call home. These are Mexican freetailed bats, such fast flyers that they are considered the “jets of the bat world”. They prefer to roost in caves but will settle for attics and abandon buildings. They like to be close to water because it draws the insects they eat and also allows them to drink.

The Evening Emergence: Photo © Lynn McBride

A single bat baby is born each summer and must roost on its own. It’s mother must find it to feed, identifying its call out of hundreds or thousands. Before you reach for that phone to call the exterminator you should know that a single colony can consume as much as 250 pounds of insect a night. Every individual can eat 600 mosquitoes a night. Now that’s what I call a bug zapper.

If you head down to the beaver dams after dinner, before they’re out, and you are blessed with sharp ears you can hear them chittering as they get ready to wake up for a night of feeding. These bats migrate every winter to mate, and are among the most widespread mammal we have. However populations are sharply declining, and this is thought to be do to all the insecticides sprayed on their nightly meals.

Our bats are not declining. While you’re looking down in the water for beavers don’t forget to look up for bats. They’re quite a sight.

“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Lewis Carrol

I have decided to give up trying not to post about the oil in the gulf. It’s on my mind. I want it to be on everyone’s mind. Last night on PBS Newshour BP Managing Director Robert Dudley said that they had deliberately underreported the amount of oil originally so as not to alarm people. The mind reels. The jaw drops. I’ll just post a daily piece of news about the effects or the arrogance or the heroism or the cowardice or the ramifications under my beaver-beat and I promise when they plug the leak I’ll stop.

Advice for Advocates

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, Why We Care July 8, 2010

I’ve been fiddling for a while with a list of things the beavers have taught me and trying to turn it into something helpful to present at my talk at Close to Home in June. Mind you, this isn’t Letterman’s top ten list, but I’m pretty happy with it. Let me know if you think I missed anything.

1. Pick a subject that you love. Because you’re going to be stuck with it for a while.

2. Bring a camera. It helps if you can show people what you care about.

3. Offer solutions, approach the problems realistically. Find out whose famous for solving that problem and email them for help. It’s surprising how many well-known people return an email and how few will return phone calls.

4. Media. Don’t expect them to know about natural concepts like predators or tides or habitat or gravity. Provide photos, they like cute animals. Provide pithy quotes, they like easy copy. Provide video that is worth stealing and don’t expect credit.

5. When you say something don’t expect to be able to take it back. You have to get it right the first time. There is no time for context or mitigating circumstances. Short understandable sentences that are easy to relate to are best. Be prepared for the media to give the ’powers that be’ lots and lots more chances than they give you. Understand that they will probably never call them on obvious lies.

6. Identify your ultimate goal and be willing to make temporary alliances with anyone that moves you towards it. I mean anyone.

7. Remember that ultimate goal in your heart and be willing to sever or interrupt ties with anyone that threatens it. I mean anyone.

8. It’s not about you. Officials won’t do the right thing because they like you and for the most part they won’t do the wrong thing because they hate you. Mostly they have their own goals, alliances and Faustian contracts. You don’t matter at all. Keep that in mind.

9. Bring children. Children’s Art. Children’s Education. Images of children with the animal you are trying to save. Mothers with Children! Repeat as necessary.

10. Realize that the powers that be are counting on the fact that by the time you truly learn and understand steps 1-9, you’ll be so exhausted and demoralized that you won’t have the energy or inclination to do this again for some other species. Save something for the ride home and prove them wrong.

LA-17, a female Loggerhead, has just arrived at Audubon Aquatic Center, a facility of Audubon Nature Institute.Pictured from left to right Amanda Adkins, Jamie Mullins and Melissa Tomingas. photo credit Meghan Calhoun

Booming School 101

heidi08 Environmental July 10, 2010

This video was produced using the Daily KOS diary by “Fishgrease” who has worked extensively in the field of oil production. This is a short, succinct, shocking, description of what oil booming entails and why BP’s efforts are worse than useless. It took my breath and I’m still waiting to get it back. It has the kind of language I hesitate to post on this website (def NSFW), but it makes the point powerfully and will change forever the way you look at boom. I know not everyone watches every video I post but I hope I’ve conveyed how direly I think all of America needs to watch (or read) this one.

Friends at the Coast

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere May 24, 2010

How’s this for a delightful beaver read? You can thank the good folk at North Coast Land Trust in Oregon for this article. Check out this spring’s newsletter that features our hero. It’s quite a testimonial. They must have heard Michael Pollock’s talk at the Oregon beaver conference because they are clear and dramatic disciples! I’m thinking the reporter deserves a little thank you note as well. Enjoy!

	Monday, May 24, 2010

5/21/2010 1:12:00 PM

Beaver colony gets its teeth into restoration work

By CASSANDRA PROFITA
The Daily Astorian

SEASIDE – A colony of beavers is hard at work building dams up to 100 feet long in Seaside’s Thompson Creek.

The creek is home to one of the largest runs of coho salmon on the North Coast, but it’s floodplain has been choked out by invasive plants.

Much to the delight of leaders at the North Coast Land Conservancy, which owns 80 acres on either side of the creek, the beavers have engineered a way to use invasive plant material to fight further invasion while simultaneously restoring the floodplain and creating juvenile fish habitat.

The beavers moved in and started restoring the creek before the land trust even got a chance to invite them, said NCLC Director Katie Voelke.

“Beavers are like nature’s engineers,” said Voelke. On Thompson Creek, they’ve designed a way to restore wetlands and juvenile fish habitat at a fraction of the cost of a human-engineered restoration project.

NCLC is inviting the public to celebrate beavers and their positive effects on the natural landscape from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.

Thompson Creek cuts through the 31-lot Thompson Falls Estates subdivision, which was designed to preserve connections between existing streams, tributaries and ponds. The area is living proof that people and beavers can coexist, Voelke said.

Beavers have used invasive blackberry and Scotch broom around Thompson Creek to build dams that are drowning out invasive reed canary grass and clearing the land for native plant growth.

Beaver dams decrease the flow of water in the creek, creating pools where juvenile fish can rest and feed and allowing the creek to spill out into the flood plain and recreate natural wetlands.

The beavers are building dams to secure food for their colony, said Doug Cottam, district biologist with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. But the fringe benefits help fish and other wildlife including elk, who graze on the herbaceous plants in the habitat the dams create.

Cottam is involved with the state’s Beaver Work Group, a diverse team that helps find solutions to conflicts between people and beavers – particularly on salmon-bearing streams. Common problems between beavers and people arise when beavers eat people’s plants or crops or when they cause flooding problems. The work group is currently designing a system of relocating beavers from areas where they are unwanted to areas where they are needed.

“From a biologist’s standpoint, they’re considered a keystone species,” he said. “They play a key role in the stream aquatic environment. They provide very valuable habitat for a variety of fish and wildlife species. They create an environment where vegetation of all kinds grows and insects flourish – they provide an incredible amount of food for other species.”

On Saturday from NCLC will explain how the industrious beavers are restoring an entire ecosystem, one dam at a time. To get to the site, follow Lewis & Clark Road east from U.S. Highway 101 in Seaside for a half-mile to Nygaard Road. A map is available at (www.nclctrust.org/event_beavers2010)

Because the event happens to be during NCLC’s invasive Scotch broom removal Broom Buster week, volunteers will be on the property removing the invasives from 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. To join in that effort, bring gloves and loppers, and pack a lunch.

Needed Comforts

heidi08 Environmental, Recent Sightings May 23, 2010

Last night we stopped down after dinner for a little beaver watching. Mom was out by 7:30 and making the customary rounds. She looked a little scruffier and skinnier but not horrible and her eyes look small but less swollen and affected. She did some graceful display swimming to show off for the visitors from amtrak (who picked up the flier and came to see for themselves) and then some sneaky swimming, leaving a rapid trail of bubbles from the lodge to the dam before she shot up and over and swam downstream. No difficulties moving around, apparently.

The primary dam is tightly woven and lovingly surfaced with mud. It looks better than I’ve seen it in months. And the amtrak people said they watched Dad earlier working on one of the secondary dams down below. Very impressive water management. Maybe he heard about his cousins building the dam visible from space and had a little spurt of jealous motivation. It was warm and familiar to see them and their work and know that even if our yearlings are off on their own and grown up (?) we still have a very active beaver colony.

I know a beaver blog can’t simply act horrified every day at the oil that’s gushing into the gulf, but this week has been beyond terrifying and I can’t help myself. Obama’s decision to form a commission to study the spill should be comforting to no one unless his real plan is to use those weighty prominent members to PLUG THE PIPE. We don’t need to study the leak. We need to STOP IT. They’ll be plenty of time to not-blame BP later. We need to stop the leak, not save oil, not save face, not hide the damage, but STOP THE LEAK. Putting BP in charge of the process is like letting Nazi’s promise to resolve the holocaust by sponsoring a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission. The EPA firmly told them Friday to find a different dispersant, and BP answered very respectfully “you’re not my mom, you can’t make me”. Now scientists are saying that these fragile marshlands might be impossible to clean. Mind you, these are the pathway for 75% of our migrating birds. So remember the next time you take out your binoculars in Oregon, or Colorado or Wisconsin or Quebec and go try to add to your lifelist between now and 2060 you probably won’t get the numbers you’re used to. Don’t believe me? Watch this: