‘Greenies’ and ‘Meanies’

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 10, 2011

Here are the thoughts of Stan Pietrowski, president of SURCP and emcee of the conference with regard to the idea of the beaver mapping tool.

Heidi and all,

Be it far from me to cast undue aspersions on Douglas County, Oregon. It is my home and has been for two decades. I have deep spiritual roots here that stem back to the last 1960’s. I consider myself a person of place from the Umpqua Basin.That said, I feel I must elaborate on conditions here that make exposing beaver populations very dangerous.

First of all we are talking about more than a mere occasional incident of cruelty. Up until the 1980’s the vast majority of the economy base forDouglas County was focused almost entirely in the timber industry. In the 1980’s billions of board feet of timber were harvested from public andprivate industrial timber lands ANNUALLY. If you go to the Roseburg City Hall Chambers there is a very large wood carving that covers the entireback wall of the council chamber illustrating the cutting and hauling of timber with the words, “Roseburg Oregon,the Timber Capital of the World”embossed out of wood. Over 5,585,000 acres of timber lands have been cut in the geographic boundaries of the Umpqua Basin, which are also the physical boundaries of Douglas County, since 1925.

The listing of the Northern Spotted Owl put this rapacious decimation of the forest landscape to a near halt. Timber harvest was reduced to 5-10million board feet per year from public lands. I am not aware of the figures still harvested from private industrial timber lands. The porcupines and beavers had been all but extirpated from most watersheds in the Umpqua Basin by government poisoning or trapping. The Coastal Coho and anadromous fish runs are dieing off at alarming rates. The once spectacular Summmer Steelhead run of the South Umqpua River is now extinct. The Pacific Lamprey run of the Umpqua Basin once consisted of hundreds of thousands. In 2006 64 lamprey were counted at Winchester Damon the North Umpqua. In 1964 the Spring Chinook run of the Upper South Umpqua was estimated at 4000 fish. In recent years the average has been

hovering around 130 individual fish with some years as low as 24 specimens. Douglas County is in a cultural and ecological tailspin.

Folks like Leonard, Lois and myself were left displaced and out of jobs when the timber jobs collapsed. Some of us were fortunate to be in a position to have an alternative source of income but by and large theeconomy here imploded and has not recovered to this day. While the rest of the Nation has enjoyed unemployment numbers as high as 12 % Douglas County hovered between 19 and 21 percent unemployment rates for years. I think we are at 17% currently. We have one of the highest methamphetamine and domestic abuse rates in the State. Visualize in your hearts and minds a West Coast version of the Appalachian Coal mine economy. As the dust hassettled the large mills of the region have amassed billions of dollars and have retooled by automating mill processes. This has reduced the workforce demand considerably. It was only at the initial phases of the Iraq War or during the repairs of the impact of hurricane Katrina that someemployment rose for a short time.

It is only natural that the environmental movement both locally and nationally would be blamed for the disaster that is Douglas County. The backlash was phenomenal. The girdling of the Sugar Pine was not a lone incident. Government employees who were responsible for protecting whatwas left of the old growth habitat resorted to being armed because dire threats to their lives were a regular occurrence. A culture of mistrustand revenge entrenched itself in the general populace. Spotted owls were regularly killed. An easy task because of the large tracts of unoccupied landscape.

There is emerging in Douglas County a voice of reason, reconciliation and restoration. Not that the fundamental paradigms have changed but there ishope. The reason the South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership formed was for the expressed purpose of healing the lands and the people. The Beaver Advocacy Committee was the first unit to form and lead the way. The malicious backlash toward the environmental movement and the naturalresources it seeks to protect have only slightly diminished. The courage of people like Leonard and Lois to go against the tide can not beoverstated. Operating on a shoe string as BAC has for the past five years is not accidental. There has been willful effort to starve us out

literally. BAC has been faithful even though going through many phases of near giving up. The State of the Beaver conferences have had immeasurableimpact for good here. The State, the Tribe, Federal Agencies our neighbors in rural Oregon have seen a ray of hope in what Leonard and Lois are doing. The people who once counted the Houstons as traitors and sellouts to the “greenies” are beginning to see why they are willing to pay theprice that they are paying. They are the elders. They remember spending their youth fishing and hunting in the wilds of the Umpqua forest. That ismostly only a memory now. The people hear it when Leonard talks about wanting to have his grandchildren see real life on the landscape once again. Beaver ponds, fish runs birds and rainbows can happen again.

With all due respect to Heidi (she has been fighting the good fight for a long time), Douglas County is another world in many respects than mostplaces. We are not talking about chronic mischief of a few. We are talking about a culture of desperation that has unleashed its angst on creatureswithout a voice. Your involvement with the work of BAC means more than you know. It is more than merely attending a conference. It is more thanprotecting and sheltering what remains of a particular keystone species population. It is a new shoot of life springing out of the ashes of a cultural conflagration. Our neighbors and friends are joining us wondering if we’ll succeed. They gingerly lend a hand when they can.

Our hesitation to make the beaver locations public is in this context. Nothing would please us more than to see a real paradigm shift that would not endangerour furry friends. We are seeing it. It is just beginning to emerge as a real force for life and change in our countryside, in our watershed. It isembodied in what BAC is doing. Timing is everything. Your wisdom and input are needed. We don’t pretend to know the way. We’re just moving forward.

High regards,

Stan

Croatia?

heidi08 Educational, Environmental February 9, 2011

One of the things Dr. Hood asked me in the airport was whether I was planning on coming to the 6th annual beaver symposium in Croatia. I laughed aloud and said that I had a day job that didn’t allow me to talk about beavers all the time. But I did approach Alex Hiller, our beloved ‘foreign correspondent’ in Germany to see if he’d be there next year. Guess what I got back?

Indeed I`m planning to attend the 6th Int. Beaver Symposium in Croatia as your foreign correspondent. Glynnis Hood must have been impressed by your presentation and what else you contributed in talks among the participants and become a strong voice in beaver advocacy and research. The Damlet story touched my heart. Best Alex

Gee thanks and that should be fun! We are so lucky to read Alex’s brilliantly composed (and translated!) notes. Let me say that it is much harder to do in person. If the talk is transportingly inspiring and memorable you are too distracted to write down what you love. And if the talk is awsomely tedious and dull, I find i’m too deeply in a coma state to form complete sentences. Alex on the ground works the best for all of us.

I just received word that I’m to ‘call in’ to Ken Brown’s “Mornings in Sonoma” radio program when Tom Rusert will be the guest and discuss the upcoming presentation in Sonoma. (Gulp) The goal is to sound so intriguing that everyone listening will have to come Thursday night to find out more. The best part is that the host is also in his 4th term on the city council, so getting him to be a beaver believer would be a major accomplishment. If you’d care to listen in on the 22nd at 9:30 am go here or if you’re in range, tune into 91.3.

It’s a little bit beaver crazy around here at the moment. Oregon. Sonoma. Yosemite. Thank goodness they lost our application for the Flyway festival and we can take the weekend off. The beaver mapping tool idea has produced some very interesting conversations amongst the conference attendees. I apparently am the sole voice of disclosure, which is interesting. I just heard from Stan Pietrowski, president of SURCP, that he’d be willing for his complex, intelligent email on the subject to be a guest blog if its okay with everyone else. Stay tuned.

Protection

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions February 8, 2011

I have a Chinese figurine of a woman crouching under a broad hat that’s supposedly titled ‘protection’. She looks braced for whatever ills might come her way, and fully devoted to her survival. Her eyes peep out from under the hat and scan for danger. You don’t need to be a psychologist to observe that when we’re huddled for protection we’re not exactly receptive, comfortable or inviting. The woman isn’t ready to laugh or fight or fall in love or make new friends. She’s ready to withstand danger, and that’s all. And sometimes that’s enough.

And sometimes it’s not.

I bring this up because there’s been discussion since the conference of the idea of using a public beaver mapping tool. If everyone could locate the colony in their region we’d have a much better sense of their prevalence and a more accessible way to study populations. We could easily identify the ‘beaver nearest you’ and keep track of their whereabouts.

But there are worries about safety. If such a website was public would the beavers be in danger? Would it become a tool for putting them in harms way? Stan wrote this morning about a news article in Oregon identifying the tallest pine tree in the state. This recognition prompted someone to go out and girdle it with a chainsaw. Would a public beaver forum produce the same response?

I have a great deal of respect for these debates. They are motivated on both sides by compassion, and I admire the voices that wage them. Still, my feelings about them haven’t wavered. There is no mistaking the fact that our beavers have been safe precisely because everyone knows where they are. They’ve been safe because they’re seen, and everyone who sees them is seen. The opposite is also true. No one could argue that if our beavers hadn’t been visible the city wouldn’t have killed them long ago.

I wrote before, that their visibility has been the ‘opposite of camoflauge‘.

I realize not every town has the energy or opportunity to be like Martinez. Not every community has people in it who can be bothered to protect beavers, and some communities might have many more that are interested in harming them. Still, I come back to this point over and over again. No one needs a website or a mapping tool to do harm. It might be hard to find the tallest pine tree, but no one needs a news camera to come point out the closest colony for killing. Trappers and shooters find their targets all by themselves. The beaver-slayers of the world do just fine without these tools.

Beaver damming, chewing and digging produce enough evidence of their existence that someone always finds out when they’ need killing’. Always. Beavers don’t make a secret of their existence. Miles down the watershed landowners notice the difference in flow from a washout or a new dam. Those motivated to take action against beavers have all the clues they need.

The mapping tool would help the people find out who might think they need saving. One for the good guys.

If beavers were more secretive, their advocates could afford to be more secretive too. But beavers broadcast their existence and we have to use a platform and a megaphone just to keep up. There are specific areas where, for example, there are large public properties that have biologists on staff that know about ‘secret beavers’ and know their bosses wouldn’t approve, so the tool should have the capacity for privacy. But even I can’t imagine gangs of unruly beaver-shooters getting together on friday night to download the location of the nearest colony. They already know where the nearest colony is, because the beavers told them themselves.

Since we can’t protect them with secrecy, I say ‘hats off.’

Damlet

heidi08 Beaver Behavior February 7, 2011

I came home Saturday feeling like I had been gone for 4 years, not 4 days. I can’t seem to catch up with the news or the rhythm of things since I’ve been away. Saturday night helped though. A local author had attended the conference and wanted to see the beavers so off we went. There was full turnout and great visibility of our three kits. My favorite part, though, was seeing the new dam.

Have you noticed it yet? Walk towards the end of the footbridge and look down the overflow channel heading towards amtrak. This is part of the scraped area that the city made to accommodate a broader flood plain. Although we had initially worried about the process removing food from the beavers, it has turned out to be a blessing. Not only do the wetlands make more habitat for nesting ducks, they also serve as a pressure release valve for the secondary dam. In high flow the water is channeled into this side passage, and the dam takes less of a hit.

Well now our smallest kit, (formerly referred to as ‘dainty’), has taken it upon himself to build a tiny dam in the channel. There was always a gnarled log in the path of the water which he wisely used as an anchor to attach mud and reeds. The short dam is mostly tules, and allow me to assure you, it is entirely adorable. Jon watched him working on it fastidiously one morning and was thoroughly impressed. Saturday night we saw the other kits checking it out.

Although we’ve seen every beaver working on every dam, it does seem like the beavers have particular dams they are more associated with. GQ seems primarily responsible for the secondary dam by the footbridge, while Dad is in charge of the primary dam with the flow device. And the beaver formerly know as dainty is definitely in charge of the damlet.

Sniff. They grow up so fast.