Month: January 2011

Not a Concerto

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 7, 2011

Monday beaver friends Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife and Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions will be trotting down to their local public television stations to record an interview for Canadian Broadcasting about the beaver situation in Brandenburg Germany. Click the video for a nice summary of the situation. Officials are concerned that (wait for it) burrowing into banks could cause a collapse of the levee that protects the town. (Gosh sounds familiar…) Apparently there are still a few level heads in the country who have suggested that digging produces irrational fears in humans and people are panicking unnecessarily. I made sure they had Skip’s digging report and wished them well.

UPDATE: Beaver friend and WORTH A DAM foreign correspondent Alex Hiller sends these remarks:

What is being reported in the article is a long lasting problem depending on poor dam protection at the Polish side of river Oder. The border between Poland and Gerrnany goes along the middle of the river. On German side all dams were improved after the so called century flooding of 2001.

On the Polish side of river Oder nothing was done – except for repeated complaints. I learned about that situation from local German beaver defenders of that region when I was exploring beaver sites over there in autumn of 2005. It was supposed the complaints were meant to receive money from European Union funds, getting flood protection sponsored.

The big dams along the riverside are set back into the flat land at least fifty yards or more. I haven`t seen a beaver lodge being build on dry land with a tunnel of fifty yards to get access to the water.

What was in discussion and is still highly recommended are emergency hills to be built artificially between the riverbank and the flood protection dams that would offer refuge to all kind of wildlife. I learned about people that had stepped onto dams in the century flooding of 2001 after their villages had been flooded due to broken stretches of the same dams and started clubbing beaver families that climbed up onto the same dams because the people were afraid the beavers might dig into those dams and destroy them.

Beavers are being strongly protected by nature protection law in western European Countries ending at the eastern boarder of Germany, exactly in the middle of river Oder. In all eastern European countries, starting with Poland just across river Oder beaver affairs are being covered by hunting law. Complaining about the beaver means increasing the numbers of beavers for shooting ( they do not set traps in eastern European countries but shoot ). The Riga beaver conflict of Latvia was about hunting by shooting in town which is prohibited,

In Germany we have two cities named Frankfurt: Frankfurt at (river) Oder, a big town at the German-Polish boarder about an hours drive east of German capital Berlin vs. Frankfurt at (river) Main where I live just in the middle of Germany and about five hours drive southeast of Berlin.

Alex

Thanks SO much Alex! Of course remember all too well our own sheet-pile-palooza.

(A little aside. For some reason the German video was only possible to embed in – uh – German so I downloaded it in English, converted it and put it back up since I discovered that my personal Youtube account has been ‘upgraded’ to hold longer files. Hmmm. Who knew? Documentary?)

s-Tay Beavers!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental January 6, 2011

So wickedly stupid beaver-catchers at SNH went back to their offices yesterday and the hunt is on once again to catch more ‘wrong’ beavers in Scotland. I thought you might enjoy this ‘insider’s view’ from Paul Ramsay of Bamff. I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about when we meet in Oregon at the conference. Remember Bamff is the country estate in northern Scotland that has a controlled colony of these ‘wrong beavers’.

Scottish Natural Heritage is the government body that is targeting the beaver for removal. The chairman is Andrew Thin, the link to whose résumé you give, and the Chief Executive is Ian Jardine (mailto:ian.jardine@snh.gov.uk).

SNH will give the legalistic reply, based on the British Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, that the beaver is not normally present in Scotland and thus it is illegal to release it or allow it to be released into the environment. This itself is curious because in 2005 Scottish Natural Heritage, having applied to the then Scottish Executive for a licence to carry out a trial release in Knapdale (Argyll, in the West of Scotland), was turned down partly on the grounds that if any released beaver had to be shot as part of an exit strategy, if the trial was considered to be a failure, that would be a contravention of the European law. Thus the beaver was thought to be protected under the provisions of the European Habitats’ Directive of 1992 by the government of the day.

The change of government in Scotland in 2007 resulted in a new application for the trial release of beavers in Knapdale to be carried out by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, with Scottish Natural Heritage charged with monitoring the trial. This time the application succeeded, but hedged around with a multitude of restrictive conditions. The suggestion that the beavers, once released and established, might come under the protection of the European Habitats’ Directive of 1992 seemed to be forgotten. We are told now that the beavers in the Knapdale trial were not, and are not, under any legal protection at all.

In the meantime (i.e. between 2000 and 2007) European beavers came to several other places in Scotland, in particular in the area of the River Tay and its tributaries from 2000. The first escape happened in 2001, when a beaver was seen in the River Earn. Later that year a beaver was seen on the A93 road south of Blairgowrie.

Beavers were reported east of Glamis on a tributary of the Isla, itself a tributary of the Tay, in autumn 2006 and near Bridge of Earn at much the same time (November). The problem for SNH is that they are supporters of the official trial, which is costing charities and SNH £2million. The unofficial re-establishment of European beavers has cost taxpayers and charities nothing. The Norwegian University, whose staff carried out the trapping of the animals that were to be taken to Scotland for the Knapdale trial, charged £20,000 for each animal caught.

SNH has been put under great pressure by the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, formerly the Scottish Landowners’ Federation, the National Farmers’ Union for Scotland and the Salmon fishing interests (landowners and salmon fishing interests are, as you may imagine, almost the same thing). Another factor is that the landowners are feeling pressurised by the Scottish Government, which is (rightly) making fiercer sounds about punishing landowners for letting their game keepers poison birds of prey. The landowners are saying, ‘If you are going to punish us for controlling raptors, you must do something about the ‘illegal release of beavers.’

So far as salmon and beaver go, SNH commissioned a report from Southampton University, published in 2010, that showed that most of the literature was in the beaver’s favour as a benefactor to salmon fisheries, but this has had little public impact on the salmon fisheries’ organisations, which remain adamantly hostile to the return of the beaver. Any help on that front would be most welcome.

I read the Prince Edward Island report and discussed it with Professor John Thorpe, a fisheries’ biologist who worked with Atlantic salmon for many years (at the Government’s research laboratories at Faskally near Pitlochry). His view of the beaver/salmon interaction is totally in contrast to that of the commercial fisheries people and is that of the true ecologist and scholar that he is. John Thorpe thought/thinks that the PEI report was mistaken. Curiously the author of the report, Daryl Guignon, had gone on record in the past as pointing to problems of water pollution and run off of sediments from agriculture in PEI as being the main problems for the salmon of that part of Canada. Needless to say the Scottish salmon people fell on the PEI report with enthusiasm.

So far as challenging the SNH/Scottish Government on the legal position of the free-living beavers of the Tay, we are taking legal advice in the hope of getting a judicial review. In the meantime we are mobilising local support to watch out for traps set for beavers.

With best wishes, Paul

Paul! Get Children! Draw some ‘wrong beavers’ on a banner and fly one at your estate and tie the other to the fence outside the most visited park on the river Tay. On second thought since its winter maybe put it on the wall of the most visited PUB on the Tay! Good luck!

Monterey Beaver Released

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation January 8, 2011

Check out this successful release from the Monterey County SPCA. You have to double click but you’ll get there eventually. This little beaver is off to seek her fortune!

UPDATE:

I was off this morning to film some ‘new years resolutions’ at the beaver dam for PATCH. Cameraman John Beck of Sideshow Video did a great job and was very impressed with the local fauna. I told him our top resolutions were (1) Three kits grow up healthy! (2) Worth A Dam continues to spread the beaver gospel and teach other cities to follow Martinez example. And (3) our Beaver Festival IV is the best ever! (I also did my best to convince him to come back!) After he left me he was headed off to video the mayor’s new years resolutions for the town so I told him to say ‘hi’.

UPDATE II:

After writing about the fantastic River Discontiuum paper yesterday I contacted the primary author to praise her work and invite her to the beaver conference. I also let the ‘gang’ know about it and Michael Pollock persuaded Len Houston to invite her to speak. She’s lacking funds to get there so I’m still hoping a big whoosh of grant money will come her way. Today Science Daily picked up the story!

Paying Attention…

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Environmental, In the News January 4, 2011

Beaver dams a model for river restorers

River restorers who consider the role of beavers could save money and create a more natural environment. (CBC)

River restorers can learn a lesson from the beaver that will produce a more natural ecosystem and save money, U.S. researchers say. Taking out old man-made mill dams on rivers and streams is a popular practice in New England and certain other states, said Melinda Daniels, an associate professor of geography at the Kansas State University in Manhattan, Ka.

Let’s be honest, there is really only one part of this story that’s surprising. We all know that beaver dams have enormous restorative effects on streams, and we all know that they’re a model of environmental responsibility. The only part that comes as a shock is that there’s a place in Kansas called “Manhattan“. Who knew?

Denise Burchsted from the University of Connecticut was lead author — with two other researchers and Daniels — of The River Discontinuum: Applying Beaver Modifications to Baseline Conditions for Restoration of Forested Headwaters. The article appeared in a recent issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Science

“The River Discontinuum” is the finest phrase I have ever encountered. Here’s a link to the paper. The title seems to wink from existence like something from a Wrinkle in time. I sense that Denise very much would like to find beaver friends across the country, and will write her immediately. In the meanwhile go read the comments on the CBC page. The mood about beavers is changing in Canada. If we aren’t very careful they’re going to get the answer long before we do.

Billions of dollars are being spent in the United States to restore rivers to a desired, yet often unknown, reference condition. In lieu of a known reference, practitioners typically assume the paradigm of a connected watercourse. Geological and ecological processes, however, create patchy and discontinuous fluvial systems. One of these processes, dam building by North American beavers (Castor canadensis), generated discontinuities throughout precolonial river systems of northern North America. Under modern conditions, beaver dams create dynamic sequences of ponds and wet meadows among free-flowing segments. One beaver impoundment alone can exceed 1000 meters along the river, flood the valley laterally, and fundamentally alter biogeochemical cycles and ecological structures. In this article, we use hierarchical patch dynamics to investigate beaver-mediated discontinuity across spatial and temporal scales. We then use this conceptual model to generate testable hypotheses addressing channel geomorphology, natural flow regime, water quality, and biota, given the importance of these factors in river restoration.

Abstract: The River Discontinuum:

Applying Beaver Modifications to Baseline Conditions for Restoration of Forested Headwaters

Denise Burchsted, Melinda Daniels, Robert Thorson and Jason Vokoun

Historic Prevalence

heidi08 Festival, History January 3, 2011

Even though the beaver research group that formed last march has (temporarily?) disbanded, our chief historian has been soldiering bravely onward, pouring through volumes and looking for evidence of beaver in the sierras prior to the 1900’s. His Wikipedia beaver-in-Tahoe page has grown to stunning proportions. He introduced his thesis at the Santa Clara creeks conference to rave reviews, and then submitted it as an abstract for a paper which was accepted for presentation at the salmonid restoration conference in March. Recently, he has been working to persuade some Tahoe scientists to see the light since the rumor that beaver aren’t native is making the rounds again for the current batch of beaver killing in Truckee.

The other day he pointed my attention to this from the Tahoe Science Institute:

Summer 2009 (clarification of one point of this article is required – beaver were native to the Sierra Nevada, apparently got trapped out by the early 1800s, and then were reintroduced in the 1930s and 1940s. While we don’t usually point people to Wikipedia for their research, there is a fairly exhaustive treatise on the matter, with references, HERE)

Chipping away at beaver mythology, one branch at a time! Thanks Rick, we’re grateful for your patient persistence. I mention this because last night he sent out the final edits of archeologist Chuck James paper on beaver prevalence which will eventually be submitted for publication. Let’s hope we can convince a few journals to be interested. As Rick is fond of noting, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” (Thomas Paine) It’s important for people to stop using lies about nativity as an excuse for killing beavers. Not that they won’t find plenty of others, but its a start.

Other good news to start the work week? Our own Cheryl Reynolds gave me a lovely beaver tote for Christmas that was so adorable I had to track down the makers. I wrote BlueQ just last night to see if they’d considering making a donation for the festival. You never know what will happen when you ask. I heard back from them today that they were pretty much persuaded by the secret-weapon photo I sent. Fingers crossed, expect the best ever goody-bag at this year’s beaver festival!