Month: May 2010

Alls well that Ends Well in Newberg

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

Remember the Oregon story of teenagers rallying to prevent beavers from being killed along their local creek in Newberg Oregon? It had all the makings of a successful beaver story en vitro, so I made sure to write the media, city council and public works folks about better options than trapping and why they were worth doing. I got a very nice response from a councilwoman, a very flippant response from public works and no response at all from the columnist. Turns out he was busy closely reading the articles I sent. I was happily surprised with this:

Beaver believers urge mitigation for local population

Wildlife lovers recommend ways to keep Sheridan Street culvert clear without trapping

By: David Sale Published: 5/12/2010 12:00:00 PM Newberg Graphic

After the city of Newberg Public Works Department reversed its decision to trap beavers on Chehalem Creek, supporters and detractors of the animals are making their voices heard.

“I am the primary property owner where the damage is occurring,” said Sheridan Street resident Terry Carlson. “The beavers are taking tree after tree from my property that is costing me in devaluation — (and) it is causing an erosion issue and cleanup costs.”

“Trapping beavers is a problem-solving tool that lasts a season,” argued California wildlife activist Heidi Perryman, whose group, “Worth A Dam,” seeks to spread word on humane methods of beaver control. To prevent blocked culverts, other municipalities have erected “beaver deceivers,” or fencing arranged in a trapezoidal shape along both stream banks and across the channel to deny beavers access to the culvert itself, and catch debris from upstream. Flooding from beaver dam failure can also be controlled by creating a culvert in the dam itself — a section of 10-inch flexible tubing run underneath the dam, its upstream end screened to prevent blockage.

“This allows the culvert to be protected and the beavers to build habitat for wildlife, which is what they do best,” Perryman said. “Beavers are a keystone species and an investment in your wetlands. In fact, NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) fisheries report that they are essential in creating habitat for juvenile salmonids.”

Perryman provided a 2006 report from the Virginia Department of Transportation to city officials. Not only are beaver to be found in “the Old Dominion,” but they are equally prone to plugging culverts as their West Coast brethren. After suffering $145,000 in flood damage that year at 14 such sites, Virginia transportation officials trapped the beaver for an additional $6,000 — only to see the sites resettled the following year.

After investing a total of $44,526 in flow control devices, beaver-related road repairs dropped to zero at the 14 sites in question, with maintenance of the devices costing about $276 per year. “For every $1 spent, VDOT saved $ 8.37,” the report concluded.

“Flow devices are the proper solution,” fellow beaver supporter Dr. Rick Lanman added. “Killing or relocating will fail as the beaver will recolonize. The flow device option is by far the cheapest anyway.”

Now THAT’s what I call a happy ending! Ohhh wait there’s more – from the May Editorial.

A hearty ‘hear-hear’ to the Newberg public works department for taking a step back in the drive to eradicate beavers from a stretch of Chehalem Creek near West Sheridan Street. The department originally dispatched a trapper to rid the waterway of the rodents, who were blocking an important culvert with a dam. The department has been approached by a national group about erecting “beaver deceivers” to protect the culvert while sparing the critters. We’re all for that because, after all, the beaver is the symbol of our state and the mascot for one of our favorite college teams.

National Group? Well I guess we are at that, having officially affected the outcome of beavers in Alaska, Oregon, Wisconsin, Chicago, New Jersey, Georgia and Washington. Don’t forget Ontario. Does that make us International? Gosh. Close the curtains. I’m blushing.

Beaver Goodness Mid-Klamath

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental May 16, 2010

This guest blog is from Beaver Friend and Watershed expert Brock Dolman of the OAEC. Brock was our guest speaker at the JMA Earth day event where he charmed us by saying that everything he learned about helping watersheds he learned from beavers. Here’s an exciting tale of what happens when folks get it right.

I had a spectacular beaver discovery day yesterday on the Klamath on a tributary called Boise creek just downstream from Orleans. I went out with fish biologist and restorationist Will Harling, who is also the director of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council.

This location on private land, with pro-beaver landowners who run an organic vineyard/winery operation, has had a long history of beaver being there. But it appears that this season this family group really got their groove on! From the photos you’ll see that they have, for what appears to be the first time (?), made a full dam across the main channel of Boise Creek that was about 4’ to 5’ tall. Consistent with their well deserved reputation as genius hydro-engineers, the location of this dam could not have been better chosen or constructed! When the instream pool is full, it now sets up the capacity to laterally divert a significant amount of water towards either bank and directly into the upper portions of a series of old historic flood channels and back water basins. And yet, the diversion is not so significant at this time of year as to really affect the bypass flows as can be seen from the falls at the mouth photo.

This “headworks” dam becomes the key to allowing the beaver to manage an ideal volume of diverted flow, which has created three major parallel contour terraces (each 1000’ or more long) that are made up of several dozen ponds and/or long linear sloughs and swamps. As these travertine type terraces, which make one visualize Balinese Rice Paddies, drop their elevation over smaller dams made of mud, grass and twigs it all ends up at roughly three primary discharge points that reconnect with the mainstem of the Klamath upstream of the Boise Creek confluence about an 1/8 of a mile or so.

From the fishery perspective this system was rockin!! With the use of my binoculars Will was able to peer into many pools, especially in the lowest terrace pool complexes that parallel closest to the Klamath, and see many hundreds of juvenile salmonids, with chinook, coho and steelhead all present!!! Besides their abundance, based on Will’s field experience, he felt that they all looked really healthy and comparatively extra large for their age class. In this area – it is hard to imagine a better rearing and refugia system for these threatened fish than what we witnesses yesterday! The MKWC and Karuk fisheries folks around here survey upwards of 60 tributaries for fish and finding places like this that appear to be able to hold so many fish, especially coho!!, appears to be critically important to a vision of coho recovery in this part of the system?

The coolest (literally) part about each of these points of river-reconnection is that they are low gradient and very easily passable slow water situations for juvenile salmonids that are rearing in the beaver pools above to head out or, hopefully allow entry for summer juv., salmonids looking for cold water refugia to escape from the hot mainstem? In essence they have created a braided series of delta channels with varying depth and velocity, which would appear to optimally allow for in and out migration passage of varying sized/aged juveniles?

See the one photo that shows the Klamath on the left with some sandy bottom and open willow areas with a small flow moving amongst them. This creek to river mouth access stands in stark contrast to where the primary Boise Creek mouth meets the Klamath which is a raging whitewater torrent over bed rock falls that is absolutely impassable to juvenile fish! See that photo for comparison.

Interestingly, from where the primary headworks beaver dam is on Boise Creek to the raging creek mouth is less than 100 yards of creek that appears to provide very little functional habitat for fish. But with the beavers pulling this proportionately small flow off the main creek and Slowing It – Spreading It – Seeping It for Salmon!!!, the actual total amount of newly accessible, way more productive and functional habitat that has been creating by the beavers is likely many orders of magnitude greater!! Ooh yeah- the neo-tropical migrant breeding bird songs and frog songs were thick around us the whole time as well! We need a grad student to work up & publish this whole beaver-re-storyation situation…anyone got such a eager student???

I want to say thank you to Will for being willing to spend that much time with me out of his busy life to go and witness such and inspiring and reinforcing situation. Always nice to find a place to enhance the feeling of more confident that our efforts to restore the reputation of beaver in CA as a friend of fish and people is a good path to being walking right now!!

From the front lines of Beaver-landia – over and out,
Brock

Anne of Green Gables to kill 150 beavers

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

Well not Anne precisely, because she is a fictional character and unable to set a trap. Instead, some very real nonfictional characters on Prince Edward Island are teaming up to do and defend it. Drew Halfnight’s smart article in the National Post documents their decision. They’re calling the kill a ‘cull’ targeting ‘nuisance beavers’. The plan is to take 150 this summer and sell the pelts, funneling the money back into environmental management. (Mind you, summer pelts won’t fetch much, but no matter). The accusations of damage are legion and include “beaver cause flooding and destruction of roadways, kill mature trees, contaminate water and interfere with migratory fish runs“. The solution, of course, is binary: conibear traps and underwater snares which “humanely cause drowning after 5 minutes.” Not quite sure how that works out for an animal that can hold its breath for 15 minutes, but it says it’s humane in the paper so it must be true.

Apparently everyone is on board for this exciting (not-so-final) final solution, “What we’re doing is in the interest of public safety,” said Shelley Cole-Arbing, an environmental officer with the Department of Transportation and Public Works. “This isn’t something we want to do. This is a necessary part of our lives.” (Explain to me how disliking a foolish, wasteful decision makes it better, Shelley?) “I wish we had a magic wand to fix the problem,” said retired P.E.I. biologist Daryl Guignon. “But it’s not easy, let me tell you.” (Well goodness Daryl, Anne might expect you to have a magic wand, but we certainly don’t. I was just thinking you might have a pair of pliers and some clippers. Too much to ask?) “In some instances, [euthanizing the animals] is the best option,” said Tracy Brown, director of the local environmental association in Bedeque Bay. “It’s not like we have a declining beaver population.” (Ahh Tracy. Spoken like a true naturalist! I just had to look up your organization and saw that it is actually focused on environmental management. Well, it has environment in the title right? Beavers aren’t endangered, that’s true. I wonder if any species that depend on their ponds are endangered. Birds or salamanders or tree frogs or fish. Go ahead and look, I’ll wait while you check.)

Clarence Ryan has been a government-contracted trapper in eastern P.E.I. since the beaver management program was first launched. Last season he killed 87 beavers with two types of traps, a traditional Conibear clamp and a submersible snare. The first, the “trap of choice” for professionals, is supposed to kill the beaver instantly, though some environmental groups say it often doesn’t. The second is meant to drown the animal in under five minutes.

Wow. You need to kill twice as many this year and you’re calling it a solution? Wouldn’t a solution mean you have less of a problem not more of a problem? Hmm. I wonder if their might possibly be a rebound effect for the population after you trap 150 beavers. Better set aside some money right now to trap 300 next year. And so on. Maybe a trust fund.

My favorite part of the article comes at the end. I just love how the ‘schoolyard, siblings-fighting-in-the-back-seat, BP finger pointing technique” closes it.

A spokesperson for the province’s transportation department pointed out that other provinces cull animal populations, too. Last month, the National Post reported that Nova Scotia is introducing a $20 bounty on coyotes.

Lives could be lost. We have to do it. It won’t hurt. It won’t matter. And finally, the old standard “he started it!” The newly varnished PEI answer to “I didn’t do it. He had it coming“.

Beaver-week

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational, Festival, Recent Sightings, Video May 14, 2010

This has been quite a week for beaver advocacy. Dad beaver made an important tree removal decision so mom has been hanging around eating the remaining branches. She’s coming out around 7:45 so its a very civilized time for beaver viewing. Taryn of Wisconsin writes that there was a town meeting last night with a lot of good feeling and an engineer stepped forward to volunteer his services to protect the culvert and keep the beavers. I also got three confirmations this week for our musical lineup for the beaver festival!

On Wednesday I got a package from Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions containing an early copy of his soon-to-be-released beaver management DVD. Of course you now I dropped everything and got out the popcorn for a preview. I was so pleased and impressed at how clear and understandable he makes this work. Every part of the process is explained in a step-by-step, easy to understand, how-to video. And guess whose lovely beavers frolic in the background!

My footage of the Martinez Beavers is sprinkled throughout the first chapter – Mom coming over the secondary dam and our 2008 yearlings working at repairs. Ahhh what a treat to see them put to such good, beaver-saving use! An impressive testimonial section at the end is filled with burly, public-works-types, saying how they were doubtful at first but now they are grateful it saves them such time and money! At the end is a reference section with other documents about beavers and beaver management, including the ‘what good are beavers’ we collaborated on.

Truly it was a thrilling and affirming moment to see that this work will get easily done by beaver advocates for generations. The package also contained a generous donation to Worth A Dam which I will surely find good use for. All in all it was like one of those graduation moments where you sniff at your child growing up, remember all the late nights and know in your heart how importantly they’re going to contribute. I have it on very best authority that Worth A Dam will get a few copies for auction at the festival, so you can share the moment.

Yesterday I received a lovely thank you note from powerhouse Diane Burgess of Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed for the talk I did there last Thursday. Truly the very best friends beavers could have. Monday I will be giving the same presentation to the Environmental Alliance at the John Muir House and Tuesday our artist Frogard Butler will be helping me tell the beaver story to St. Catherine’s preschoolers. “Once upon a time there was a mommy beaver and a daddy beaver and they looked and looked for just the right place to make a home for their family” Ahhh, that’s going to be fun.

Always an adventure, up on beaver creek!

Oil Update

heidi08 Environmental, Uncategorized May 13, 2010

Because after you see this

and this

You will need to see this just to convince yourself to stay on the planet and not give up completely.

Watch this video all the way to the demonstration at the end. Amazing! Learn more about “matter of trust” here. Tell your hair stylist and your dog groomer. They are based in SF and I’m thinking they need an invitation to the beaver festival!

7:00 AM Beaver Update: