Riches

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, History October 18, 2010

beaver kits martinez beavers

These adorable silhouettes are the work of our map-creating friend Libby Corliss. We scoured through Cheryl’s photos to find the right images. Libby is helping us get the images to artist Paul Craig who will be making a metal two-dimensional sculpture of mom and kits as a memorial. Originally we were planning to have the artwork adorn the very un-artistic sheetpile wall, but in talking with flood expert Mitch Avalon we learned that there would be more concern of debris getting stuck behind it in high flow. Now Paul is leaning towards the upstream side of the Main Street bridge, which would be visible and water-safe.

Paul is the artist behind the metal sculptures at the Martinez library and has been a great friend of the beavers. Because this is truly a small town, his wife was my PE teacher in 7th grade. Go figure. We have already had some expressed enthusiasm from the council for the project. It’s probably the most visible place for it, and Starbucks is where the public interest in beavers really began. It’s where we picked up mom on her very last day, curled weakly in the weeds and grasses. We’re excited about the project and hopefully we’ll have more to report soon.

I also heard yesterday from the retired supervisor of Sunol Regional Park who knows about several ‘remnant beaver dams’ in and around the area and beyond. Hopefully he will lead us on an expedition to get some samples for carbon testing! This is useful because the current mythology says there were “no historic beavers in Alameda Creek” and so of course you’re completely justified in killing the ones there now. Looking forward to changing that myth. I’ll keep you posted.

Osprey

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, New Species July 13, 2010

The summer osprey are back in the west hills of downtown Martinez. (Remember the false alarm “eagle nest” in the football field last year?) The Osprey roost in the evenings in a large dead tree near the top of green street and fish during the day at the Marina. When I get home at night I can hear their piercing chirp to each other. Sometimes if I imitate it just right I can lure their flight circles right over my house. Jon saw the young one begging for food from mom in the air over the beaver dam. (Don’t worry about our kits, though, these are strictly fish eaters!) If you’ve never had the remarkable sighting of an osprey catching a fish check out the video below. Imagine how much better it gets in the middle of a lake of forlorn and unlucky fishermen.

A wildly beloved female osprey “Lady” is the oldest known Osprey in the UK and has returned every year to her webcam nest to raise 56 off spring. This year she got very ill, and supporters worried she would die with no new eggs, or not survive to see the offspring fledge. Her rally to health was celebrated accordingly.

An osprey thought to be just hours from death a few weeks ago has survived to see her chicks leave the nest.

The first fledging took to the skies at the Loch of the Lowes centre in Perthshire on Sunday morning, the Scottish Wildlife Trust said. The second made its first flight at 1000 BST on Monday. The chicks’ mother, a 24-year-old osprey called Lady, suffered a bout of ill health in June. Experts feared the bird would die when she stopped eating.

But thousands of webcam viewers witnessed her sudden recovery days later.

Female ospreys live an average of eight years and produce about 20 chicks in that time.

But Lady – the oldest breeding osprey in the UK – has produced 56 eggs and has now seen 48 fledge.

The bird has developed an international following through the webcam trained on the eyrie throughout the breeding season.

Wildlife centre manager Peter Ferns said: “We are overjoyed that our female breeding osprey has once again been successful in producing and raising chicks which have fledged the nest.

“This is the 20th consecutive year we have watched over this bird at Loch of the Lowes and it’s certainly been one of the most dramatic.”

Mr Ferns said it was an “emotional moment” for staff at the centre and webcam viewers when the chick fledged.

He said: “A few weeks ago we didn’t think we would see this day after the female became so ill. Since her remarkable recovery, she has amazed us all again with her tenacity and dedication to her chicks.

Sound familiar?

Teapot Update

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers elsewhere July 12, 2010

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The tempest from Bemidji has been soundly resolved. You may have heard about the public art project in Minnesota that allowed 10 artists to complete their own works of art around beaver sculptures? Well one of the productions, “Gaea” by Deborah Davis got some unintended attention when a few folk thought that the image on the beaver’s tummy looked like a vagina. A few phone calls later to the city council and the statue was removed. (They said 20 but I’ll eat a bug if there were more than 2)

The artist protested, saying that the ‘vagina in question’ was supposed to represent a praying woman’s folded hands with roses coming out to show her faith. The city shook its head, saying public vaginas were only meant for the popular strip clubs of the town, and had no place on beaver statues.The internet did what it does best. Tweets were twittered. Articles and emails were forwarded. And lo and behold! the town of Bemidji decided that it didn’t want to be the beaver censorship capital of the world.

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The statue was restored.

Add this to the list of ridiculous beaver stories you have no doubt been accumulating. I’m glad the beaver is back, and if Deborah wants to donate a little something for the silent auction we’d surely appreciate it!

Every night

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits July 11, 2010

A sleek steady beaver swims close enough to eye the people on the shore, does some brief nuzzling of a kit. gives a beaver-back ride or brings a branch, and slowly makes his or her way over the dam for some alone time. Most nights we lose sight of the two year old somewhere around the first scrape, where sneaky swimming becomes their habit. We believe they may be scent marking near the damlet, but we can’t know for sure. I have no idea what happens if a passing beaver takes him/her up on their offer. Will they move in or move on?

We know the rule is one breeding pair per colony. So we assume dad is also leaving scent marks for potentials. If the two year old gets lucky first, evolution would argue that dad would ‘retire’, although I have never read about that happening. At least two beaver experts have mentioned the possibility that Dad might breed with the two year old, if its a female, but that’s a lot to wrap our heads around. Go read Hope Ryden’s Lily pond which has a long account about why it isn’t a genetic problem if you’re interested. Sharon Brown of BWW described a widowed father beaver that was rebuffed by a yearling with an ‘I don’t think so’ and eventually found another partner. I think if the two year old is clearly working on attracting a mate, its a pretty good indication that its a boy, and that complicated issue won’t even come up.

Cheryl took this photo on Friday night. We have taken to calling the two year-old GQ (even though we can’t know the gender) because it is always so meticulously groomed and so much sleeker than Dad. GQ is not the most gentle of parents. He’s a little gruff with the kits and awkward at times. The other night he gave one of the kits such a scolding for going over the dam that no one has dared approach it for days. When you think about it, the two year-old hasn’t been around children before. Our last yearlings had new kits in the lodge with them when they were just a year old. But since our 2009 kits died he never got practice being with youngsters until now. It’s fun to watch him learn.

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

This is clearly the “Gloria Swanson Moment” for beavers….

lie lie lie

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, In the News, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

Anne of Green Gables’ homeland is back on the beaver warpath again. They announced a few months back that they planned to kill 150 beavers because moving them wasn’t working. (New ones just moved in. You know, kinda like they’ll do after you kill some.) They got a fair amount of public pushback and now say that they won’t kill quite that many. Of course, the environmentally sound P.E.I loves beavers and recognizes that they do good for the watershed, but they have to kill them, and guess why? Say it with me now.

“To protect the salmon”

The chairman of the wildlife conservation fund, Bruce Smith, reports that dams will interfere with salmon passage.

“(Beavers) do create wetlands but the problem is at the same time they can obstruct salmon migration,” Smith said. “The colony is removed from the problem areas only after a thorough investigation into how destructive the beavers’ presence is in the area and active dams are never touched until the beavers are removed, Smith said. “

Lets just pause to consider that remarkable sentence, shall we? Under the weight of the massive literature which I personally can attest Bruce has been sent he grudgingly admits that beaver dams do some modest good. Then insists the more pressing issue is that they prevent salmon from passing. (lie lie lie) Then quickly assures people that these roadblocks which do ‘some good’ will be preserved anyway until the beavers are killed. A beaver-friend exchanged emails and articles with the powers behind the decision and was told all that compelling research about beavers and salmon didn’t pertain to P.E.I. because Atlantic salmon were different and beavers weren’t native to the island. After a few historical trapping records were noted he conceeded that they might be a “little bit native”, but it didn’t matter because their salmon were still different. Ahh, disabled?

A vocal advocate, Peggy Ruge, has worked with our friends at Fur-bearer Defenders and is advocating those whacky humane methods the kids are all trying these days.

“The methods Ruge is referring to mostly involve treating the trees with either a type of paint or solution that discourages the beavers from chopping them down or a metal type of shield on the base of the tree. Smith said the problem with painting the trees is there are too many and it would take up a great deal of time and money. “In a lot of the sites they are eating alders. You’d have a hard time painting all the alders”

Once again, Bruce provides some remarkable language and truly circular reasoning.

Bruce:”The beavers must be killed because they will eat all the trees
Peggy: “There are a lot of trees.”
Bruce: “There aren’t enough trees.”
Peggy: “Then paint the trees you want to protect”
Bruce: “There are too many trees to paint”
Heidi: “Help me out here, Bruce. Is the problem that there are too many trees? Or too few?”
Bruce: Waaaaaaaaaaaaa. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So Prince Edward Island will destroy the winter pools for juvenile salmon and pay taxpayer dollars for a solution they will have to repeat in three years all because they listened to a man whose initials are BS.

Anne of Green Gables Trapping Beavers

(BTW, if you didn’t click on the video, take a moment to marvel at the new skill I just learned of cueing it up to play right where you want. Ahhh the internet!)