Month: January 2011

Sierra Wildlife Coalition

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers January 12, 2011

Our friends in Tahoe (Now calling themselves the “Sierra Wildlife Coalition”) have their work cut out for them. Now Truckee is gunning for beavers and they are leaping into the fray. I thought you might enjoy their first EVER newsletter. Can a website and book deal be far behind?

Happy New Year to all –

We thought winter would be a quiet time for our Sierra beavers and friends, but not so – here are a few updates:

A friend of the beavers, Richard Lanman, MD, has updated several Wikipedia pages with references proving beaver were indeed native to the Sierra – or as he says: “Of course they were. How could an animal that lives from the Sonoran desert in Mexico to the Arctic tundra, and every mountain range from the Atlantic to the Pacific somehow not live in the Sierra?” interesting reads here and here and if you go to ‘Griff Creek’ in Wikipedia, our group’s activities and articles are there!

In Truckee, the Town currently has out for comments a “Proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration” for their proposed Trout Creek Restoration that repeatedly says they plan on removing beavers to “protect creek function” – but their goals sound like an ad for beavers…. A great deal of the plant and animal habitat restoration the Town of Truckee’s engineers are proposing IS done by beavers. If you have time, go to the Town of Truckee website (under ‘engineering’) and send in comments before the Jan. 18 deadline. We will forward Sherry’s summary and comments for reference, as soon as she gets them organized 🙂 The upcoming Truckee Town Council meeting at which Trout Creek will be discussed is scheduled for Thursday, January 20 – we will send an agenda as soon as available.

Better news in Tahoe Donner, where Elaine and Patrick McDonough have contacted the Tahoe Donner Association Forester and Board. They have agreed to install a flow control device in a beaver dam at the intersection of Fjord and Alder Creek Road that often threatens to flood a home and roads during heavy rains and run-off. This is a very visible dam (and lodge, check it out!) and we are very excited that it will make a great demonstration site for officials and citizens from our entire area to view! This is also especially important because there are approximately another 20 beaver dams along Alder Creek alone, and more could become flooding concerns.

Lately in Reno, the Gazette Journal published a one-sided article reporting on the damage done to the cottonwoods along Reno’s Truckee River corridor. Although wire-wrapping trunks was reported to work, the names of three exterminators were also provided as an alternative. On December 26 Mary wrote the reporter, Susan Voyles, introducing Sierra Wildlife Coalition and some of the background we have had with beaver. She offered the services of the Beaver Brigade (that’s us) to consult with homeowners on tree wrapping, while also explaining the method of tree protection using latex paint mixed with mason sand. As of January 6 there has been no reply from Ms. Voyles so another, let’s say more attention-getting, letter is on its way.

Lastly, Mary and Sherry are planning to attend the “State of the Beaver 2011” Conference in Oregon, February 2-4. They have a great line-up of speakers, including Heidi Perryman, our friend from Worth a Dam in Martinez, and Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, who’s on the video we saw demonstrating how to build flow control devices. The more the merrier – check it out and join us if you can.

Hope you’re all enjoying winter, and have recovered from the holidays – we’ll try to keep up and keep everyone posted –

Mary and Sherry

“Beavers Don’t Stretch”

heidi08 Uncategorized January 12, 2011

So the fine state of Pennsylvania has issued a management plan for two of its greatest American wildlife heroes. One is the Bald Eagle and guess what the other one is? I’ll give you a hint, it has a flat tail. The draft report is being offered for public comment and responses will be accepted until March 3. (You might not remember, but Pennsylvania is the state where the famous trapper told the paper he was only coming to kill the ‘soldier beavers‘. So I figure almost anything is better than that.)

Actually the report so far isn’t horrible.

In keeping with our agency mission, beavers must be managed for the benefit of other wildlife species, their habitats, and all Pennsylvanians for generations to come. Our beaver management mission is to establish stable beaver populations in balance with their habitat for the benefit of wetland wildlife species and humans through proper population monitoring, harvest management, and damage control. The goals of Pennsylvania’s beaver management are to (1) establish sustained beaver populations within suitable habitat, (2) monitor the beaver harvest, (3) minimize beaver damage complaints, (4) increase public awareness and knowledge of the benefits of beavers and their habitat, and (5) provide opportunities to use and experience beavers.

Nice start. Here’s the first thing that got my attention was this

1.2.2. Develop and test a field technique to estimate family group size based on characteristics of constructed features (age, number, and height of dams, condition of lodge/den, food cache size).

I puzzled a bit over the idea that you could determine the size of a colony based on the dam or lodge, and asked around. Our own Skip Lisle said “certainly not” and Sherri Tippie gave this thoughtful reply this morning.

I’ve seen people try to use all kinds of things to try to determine a beaver family size.

Beaver are like people, they are all individuals. I’ve seen a family of 2 huge adults, with 2 yearlings and 6 six kits, come out of a very modestly built lodge, and dam. At first look, you would never think there were that many beaver living there. I’ve also seen just 2 adults build a dam that was almost 8 ft high, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen in an urban environment. It looked like way more work than just 2 beaver could accomplish. I’ve been told that you could tell the size of a family by looking at the size of a food cache. But it didn’t take me long to discover that didn’t work all the time either. And the beaver who live in Clear Creek west of Coors, don’t create a cache because the water is too swift. Kind of funny. . . a long time ago someone from the BLM gave a paper that explained how you could tell the weight and age of a beaver by measuring their tail. Well after catching a few I soon learned that wasn’t true. As soon a someone thinks they have something nailed down to figure out a beaver family size, they’re more than likely to run across something that discounts it. That’s just what I’ve found. An old ex-trapper, once told me – the only way you can determine for sure how many beaver are in a family is sitting out at night an counting heads. But then how can you be sure you’re not counting the same beaver twice. I just love um and catch um!

Sherri, we love you. Your loving beaver pragmatism completely chisels through the layers of Beaver Sophistry (BS) and bureaucracy that adorns reports like these. How would we possibly know how many beavers were in our habitat unless we watched? A lot? (A very lot!) There are three dams and two modest lodges for five beavers now, but there used to be four dams and one modest lodge for eight beavers! In general I think its a good idea for Pennsylvania to recognize that beaver are valuable in providing wetlands and that they should know how many there are in order to decide how many they should allow people to kill. I support the effort. But this next finding made me giggle so much though I had to put the report down for a more somber day.

He also observed the lack of some beaver behaviors typical of most rodents. He noted that beavers never stretch, nor do they lick, even during grooming.

kit reach — Beaver Kit Reaches: Photo - Cheryl Reynolds

foot fettish1 — Grooming - Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

big reach upright — Mother beaver Stretches - Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

When you think about it, how could ANY short legged mammal that lives in water but whose fur isn’t waterproof and needs to groom itself daily to survive NOT STRETCH??? Don’t feel bad, Grinnell of the UCB zoology department said that California beaver don’t leave footprints, don’t live over 300 feet elevation and fight competition to the death to mate with the herd. So very smart people can misunderstand beavers. There’s precedence. (There’s a LOT of precedence.) We’ll do what we can to nudge you to the light. Just in case you think those images above were photo-shopped, here’s video as well. The ridiculous laws of youtube require me to show the original in very small format here High Hopes1 but if you want a closeup of the curious “STRETCHING BEHAVIOR” go you can do without the soundtrack.

I think this report will be fun. Why don’t you go get your own copy and play ‘spot the fallacy’ with me!

Beavers on Stage

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers January 10, 2011

Actor talks theater, beavers

By Chris Quintana | New Mexico Daily Lobo

: Law Chavez & Fellow Playwrites

Meet Law Chavez, a MFA student at the University of New Mexico who was one of the four young minds whose new plays were produced as part of the Words Afire Directed Readings series. I heard about him this morning from Sarah Summerville of the Unexpected Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, and promptly had to learn what I could. Wait until you read this

LC: And my play I have been talking about, Caballos Muertos, it is about the beaver population. Did you know about that?

DL: No, tell me more.

LC: Before New Mexico went into Mexican territory and Americans were allowed in, the beaver population in New Mexico was huge. It actually controlled the watershed of the Rio Grande. Within a matter of years, the American beaver trappers came in. There was a huge demand for beaver fur in Paris and London. The Americans came in and pretty much wiped out the beaver population. Once they did, the Rio Grande just flooded, but it couldn’t control it’s flooding anymore.

So then the Army Core of Engineers came in and straightened the Rio Grande and put in all those levies. As a result, since the river can’t flood itself at all, the Bosque is dying. So we have all these species dying, a great big fire hazard, and all because they messed with the beavers.

Did anyone else just get chills?

I promptly wrote our friend Catherine Wild of The 7th Generation Institute in New Mexico and said, do you know this guy? She answered that she did not, so that’s a relationship waiting to happen. Gosh, a talented young actor and playwrite who understands about the impact of beaver on the watershed and feels like talking about it all the time? Pinch me! Boy do we have a story for him.

A Mixed Bag

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions January 9, 2011

Beavers near Anderson Civic Center allowed to stay

By Kirk Brown

Photo by Nathan Gray A sign with information about beavers is placed outside a stream off Martin Luther King Boulevard where beavers have built a dam.

Beavers have built a dam in a stream across the street from the Civic Center of Anderson (South Carolina). The dam is near a wooden overlook beside an informational display on beavers that is part of the county’s Recycling and Education Center. Although the nocturnal beavers tend to be reclusive, visitors can enjoy listening to the soothing sound of water trickling through their dam, which is only a stone’s throw from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.The beavers’ new home will be left undisturbed, said Greg Smith, the county’s environmental services director. “It hasn’t become a nuisance,” Smith said. The beavers received a less hospitable reception in the past when they built a dam near the civic center.

Did you ever argue when you were kids who the family dog liked better? And to prove it you and your sisters all called it at exactly the same time and that poor dog just stood in the middle of the living room not sure what to do? That’s kind of how I feel about this article. It has true bright spots of beaver hope and still the sharp edges of fear and ignorance, all in the same place. When I read it I honestly can’t tell if its a victory, a delayed defeat or a dark omen of things to come.

First things first, congratulations Anderson! Leaving a beaver dam in the center of town could become a focal point, an educational opportunity or a demonstration of your civic pride and compassion. It could be a reminder of the benefits of ‘hard work’ and inspire your public works crews or waitresses or teachers to keep trying when odds seem insurmountable. It can remind everyone what can be accomplished when we work together as a team. The dam will trap sediment and organic material, microbugs will move in to break it down, bigger bugs will come to eat them and fish will come eat the bugs….soon new populations of bigger fish, birds and wildlife will be eating at the food-chain you’ve encouraged. That’s pretty good news for a recycling and education center.

Okay, now the rest. Just so you know, beavers don’t live IN the dam. They live in a lodge. Think of the dam as where they ‘work’. Imagine what a difficulty it would be to build a ‘hollow’ dam that a family of five or seven could live in. Of course it would be much, much more vulnerable to washouts. The dams solid base of mud and sticks gives it strength. Your beavers probably live in a bank lodge a little bit up from the dam, so the raised water levels protect their entrances and keep predators out.

“The main problem is the flooding that they cause,” said Greg Yarrow, a Clemson University wildlife ecology professor. A one-foot-high beaver dam can flood as much as 100 acres, which can create problems in timber stands and on farms, as well as threatening low-lying roads and railroad tracks.

Clemson. Clemson. That names sounds familiar. Hmmm. Oh, it must because that was the place they invented the Clemson Pond Leveler in the early nineties. You know, the perforated pipe that goes through the dam and lowers the water level to control flooding? Come to think of it, that guys name seems kinda familiar too. Maybe its because of this at the bottom of the paper.

For further information on the Clemson Beaver Pond Leveler contact Dr. Gene W. Wood, Mr. Larry A. Woodward, or Dr. Greg Yarrow • Department of Aquaculture, Fisheries and Wildlife • G08 Lehotsky Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, (803) 656-3117.

Goodness! Talk about hiding one’s light under a bushel! A reporter asks you about a beaver dam causing flooding and you didn’t think to mention that you invented a proven tool for managing flooding? I know Clemson’s have fallen out of favor because they’re stiff and hard to implement and tend to get plugged up, but you laid the ground work for the Castor Master and Flexible Leveler that followed! Your work pioneered humane beaver management. Call me crazy but I think that’s worth talking about.

(Aside to reporter: it’s possible that since you have an expert on the phone you should ask a question at this point. Something like, “are there any ways to control flooding?” Just a suggestion.)

In Dorchester County, which is northwest of Charleston, public works crews broke up about 200 beaver dams after residents complained about flooding last year. The flat-tailed rodents, which are Canada’s national animal, also have been blamed for causing millions of dollars of damage throughout North Carolina. “They certainly can be very challenging to deal with,” Yarrow said.

Sigh. You see the cause for my hesitation about this ‘good news’. This reporter is very excited about the likely damage these wicked creatures will cause Anderson down the road. He doesn’t spare a paragraph, a phrase or even an adjective for the good work that beavers do for urban streams. I have to wonder if public works really broke up 200 dams in Dorchester County (which Wikipedia tells me is only 577 square miles total, 2 of those being water). 200 beaver dams in 2 square miles? Maybe they broke a 100 dams twice? Or 50 dams four times? I don’t know, what’s the learning curve on useless effort that squanders taxpayer money and has to be repeated again and again in Dorchester?

Well, the good news is that Anderson is keeping its beaver dam FOR NOW. I wrote the paper and the environmental services director just letting them know what options exist.

Photo by Nathan Gray Beavers have built this dam in a stream off of Martin Luther King Blvd.

Gudrun

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 8, 2011

Woman risks fine, jail over well-being of beavers

Gudrun Scott tried to safely relocate beavers from a dangerous situation along a state road. For her trouble, she was ticketed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation — and several of the beavers were later killed by vehicular traffic. On Monday, Scott’s case will be heard in Alfred Town Court, where she faces a maximum $250 fine and/or 15 days in jail. Scott believes the environmental policies for beavers — New York’s “state animal”—are antiquated and must be changed — especially the agency’s reluctance to relocate beavers instead of killing them.

Now that’s a story worth waking up to! Gundrun contacted me on Facebook a while back and I put her in touch with Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife. Now Sharon will be appearing at her hearing. Seems Gundrun had some nice farmland where the beavers she enjoyed eventually moved on. She wanted some new ones and asked the humanitarians at DEC how to get them. They came and checked her property but never got back to her so her husband learned how to do ‘live trapping’ and decided to rescue some beavers in the middle of the interstate. An officer showed up and opened the trap and let the animal out on the freeway. Where it was promptly hit by a car. Then he fined her 250 dollars for trapping out of season.

All the makings of a successful LA LAW episode.

Biologist Sharon Brown, who also directs Beavers, Wetlands and Wildlife, an educational non-profit in the Adirondack foothills, said the DEC has made some changes in its thinking towards beavers, but not enough. “State wildlife agencies in general were created to deal with nuisance animals and to support hunting and trapping, and that has been a big part of the philosophy they operate under,” Brown said. “Even though we now know more about their ecological benefits since the days when beavers were almost wiped out [by trapping], the policies are changing too slowly.”

Gudrun and Sharon are upset because beaver relocation is illegal in New York (and California and Massachusetts and..well you get the idea.) They argue that beavers are so good for the watershed and do such important jobs that reasonable compassionate humans should be able to take them from one place where they’re causing problems and move them gently to a new place where they can live in peace.

Wouldn’t you like to read that testimony when she appears monday? Good luck Gudrun! You have all the support you need. Classy BWW will be your expert witness but remember Worth A Dam will bring you the cake with a file in it if you need us.