Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Month: March 2011


Lodge, dams and flow device washed out by evening. This footage was taken by Robert Rust today who saw three beavers, an adult and two kits.I hope they find a cozy hole tonight…

Lory called at 1:00 and sent this photo. The water level was about two feet away from the bridges and the beaver lodge was almost entirely submerged. She ran into beaver friend Rob Rust who said he saw two kits and an adult beaver hunkering under the blackberry bushes by the secondary dam. The water is almost as high as the sheetpile image of mom in this photo. When Jon went down at two mom was under water.

The good news is a big beaver is here, so if it ever stops raining the kits will have help rebuilding these dams. We’ll keep you posted.


I got a few heads up on this report last night from Oklahoma. So lets look at this report out of Owasso. I’m going to preface this with a caution. This is a shockingly ignorant video, which we can handle and which I’m happy to talk about. But it is also a stunningly cruel one, and I say this as a woman whose watched barbaric behavior towards beavers  for four long years. If you think of yourself as someone with a soft heart (Jean I mean you!) you should not watch it, and I’ll do my best to summarize the stupid so we can take it on together.


Alright. If you watched it I’ll give you a moment to recover and a baby duck to take your mind off it. Isn’t this adorable?  If you’re skipping it you’ll probably enjoy this anyway.

Better? Basically this news clip shows a park where beavers are eating trees (horrors) and a manly trapper (Reginald Murray of Oklahoma Wildlife Control) comes and saves the day. It shows him setting traps near their lodge, carrying and disposing of the bodies, and demonstrating their evil incisors.  Reginald loves wildlife. He doesn’t hate beavers, of course not! Apparently he likes them so much he does the same thing with them that the Romans did with the Christians.

He also has shares some very colorful facts with an unquestioning media. Such as noting that “shooting beavers doesn’t work because they’ll just go underground for a couple months and start eating roots!” (No, I’m not kidding!) Beaver-moles! His website says they never tell lies, and never surprise customers with hidden costs. Hmm. Does that mean they talked with Owasso about the fact that trapping out beaver causes a population rebound? Gosh when I think about the 5000 beavers killed by USDA each year in Oklahoma, and the multitudes ‘redirected’ by Reginald, I think there must be one heck of a rebound! Apparently Reginald wasn’t totally happy with his beavers-as-christians footage because wildlife control has posted four times in already on the news discussion site.

When I despair that this maybe this is a incurable regional insensitivity. I see the comments and am comforted.

JoJo – 3/22/2011 10:13 PM

Jesus Christ,I changed the channel as soon as I saw that you sickos @ fox 23 showed a dead wild animal “hello” these animals are doing what they do and to show a dead animal on “live” tv could you have not at least said something along the lines of “the following maybe graphic” I will never ever watch your station again, your obviously catering to the rednecks of this state………..shame on you!!!!!!!!!!!

justin32 – 3/22/2011 9:32 PM

Just watched your story on beavers and was very disappointed. I am an animal lover and to continue to show the dead beaver was over the top. Not to mention the trapper’s response “a dead rat for a cat” then splat he threw it to a big cat at the sanctuary. Additionally, the comments at the end where your reporter stated the trapper had found car engines in a beaver damn, patio tables/chairs and even a rifle. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I beaver pulling a car engine into their damn. I understand they are doing damage but the report could have been put together much better.

The good folk of Oklahoma Wildlife Control have tried to respond to these spurious claims of inhumanity, claiming the news media got it wrong. The stunning thing is that any ‘Roman’ would allow himself to be filmed throwing the ‘Christians’ to the you know whats, and actually think that was good press. i can’t imagine what Reginald thinks the media got wrong. Was it his humanitarian side that was over emphasized?

Let’s hope this outrage prompts someone to take a chance on these new fangled flow devices that have been researched for 20 years and do this the right way. it could happen. I know it’s Fox news, but when I was watching this I couldn’t help but think that maybe someone holding the camera felt exactly the same way about Mr Murray as much as I did and was lulling him into revealing as much of his nature as he could on film. Kind of like I felt when I saw this…


 

Today is the opening of the Salmonid Restoration Conference in San Luis Obispo.  Fresh from Yosemite State Parks Conference,  Michael Pollock will be the keynote speaker talking about the role beaver dams play in salmon populations, and tireless historical prevalence researcher Rick Lanman will be presenting about where beavers actually belong. The final day of the conference will see a beaver band of advocacy with water wizard Brock Dolman once again emphasizing the good they do. Today they were supposed to start out with a field trip to the Arroyo Grande River to see some actual beaver dams, but apparently they are inaccessible at the moment. Never mind, I’m sure they had some excellent scouting anyway.

I just read through the ominously named ‘beaver management’ plan for the Arroyo Grande Creek Channel Waterway Management Program that Rick sent last night. It was completed by Waterways Consulting Inc in 2010. It outlines several ostensibly good things beavers do for streams then astonishingly mentions that “With regard to aquatic habitat, anecdotal evidence suggests that the beaver dams may enhance rearing habitat for juvenile steelhead by creating deeper pools with complex cover habitat around flooded willows.”

Anecdotal? Anecdotal? Gulp. Have fun listening to the ‘anecdotes’ of your keynote speaker.

It is true that the good news may be slow to get around, but Pollock’s seminal paper was published 6 years before this report was written. Isn’t a cursory literature review standard in any scientific paper?  Or did you just hear about the work from someone at coffee and never bother to actually look it up for yourself? (I guess that could be anecdotal.) It’s not just beavers. Checking the bibliography I see that everything regarding wildlife is at least 10-20 years old.  Based on the savvy reading of the literature  it goes on to say that beavers will bring in too much silt and destroy the riparian border and should be selectively euthanized to manage the stream. Of course they should! (Why do people insist on using that word? One assumes the beavers aren’t in any pain?)

I hope principal scientist Mr. Dvorsky is sitting in the front row for Dr. Pollock’s presentation. And I hope he likes the part about beaver dams and smolt production especially.

It should be an exciting couple of days.

Here’s what Brock wrote about the conference back in December when it was being finalized:

I just wanted to let you all know that our ‘Pro-Beaver is Pro-Salmon’ perspective will get a bunch of myth dispelling boosts at next spring’s Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference in San Luis Obispo 2011! Dr. Michael Pollock will bestow his abundant research-based beaver basics as the keynote speaker for Conference!!! Fellow Beaver-Booster Paul Jenkin of Surfrider Foundation will inspire us with the exciting vision for the removal of Matilija Dam and Ventura River Recovery!! Paul, like many of us, is clear that “not all dams are not created equally”!!

Afflicted with an unrelenting case of Beaver-Fever – I will be facilitating a day long ‘Sustainable Water Conservation’ workshop, with a roofwater hands-on project and for the morning have lined up for the speakers portion a few of our Castor-Compadres: Rick Lanman – Beaver-Buddy extraordinaire with his very informative historical distribution information on the pre & post contact occurrence beaver in CA! Mattolian Beaver-Booster Tasha McKee will be talking about her work with Beaver mimicry efforts in engineering beaver ponds until the real deal can be re-introduced into the Mattole Watershed!

So Cal Steelhead Super-Star – Matt Stoecker will inspire us with Dam removal efforts in the Santa Maria & Sisquoc Watershed and reinforce his observations that where he has observed beavers he has generally observed greater numbers & larger endangered Southern Steelhead!!

(This is still my favorite part….)

Bit by Bit and Bite by Bite – Down come the Trees of Beaver Fallacies …Limb-by-Limb and Whim-by-Whim shall Castor and Coho be comrades again!!??

Thanks Brock (and Rogers & Hammerstein) for inspiring this….

The salmon and the beaver should be friends
Oh, the beaver and the salmon should be friends
One thing likes to eat a tree, the other likes to swim to sea
But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.
Waterbody folks should stick together
Waterbody folks should all be pals
Beavers dance with the salmon’s daughter
Salmon dance with the beaver gals!

 
 
 
I’d like to say a word for the salmon
He swims from little creek out to the ocean
He bumps among the foam, then he jumps to get back home.
I can’t imagine where he gets the notion!
The salmon is essential to the water
He feeds at sea and brings back all its glory
Makes food for other things with the nutrients he brings
And all our fishermen can tell the story!
 
 
But the salmon and the beaver should be friends
Oh, the salmon and the beaver should be friends
One thing brings the sea to shore, the other makes the water store
But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.
Waterbody folks should stick together
Waterbody folks should all be pals
Salmon dance with the beavers daughters
Beavers dance with the salmon’s gals!
 
 
People always worry about beaver
Will dams they build cause flooding when its wetter?
Could all these dams prevent fish from getting where they went
But once we understand we all know better!
The beaver builds without a plan or rebar
His dam makes ponds that all the critters share
In summer and in snow, salmon have a place to go
And everybody hungry gathers there!
 
 
Waterbody folks should stick together
Waterbody folks should all be pals
Beavers dance with the salmon’s daughters
Salmon dance with the beaver’s gals!




Young Ian Timothy released episode six of his Beaver Creek series, yesterday. So of course  I had to drop everything and watch. I won’t tell you the most adorable part, because you’ve read enough of me by now to spot it for yourself. And I won’t tell you which part I wanted to come true for our beavers because you will probably exactly feel the same way. Just watch it, at least once. When you consider the ratio of two hours of filmaking for two seconds of footage, you realize how impressive it is for a teen to make this in his spare time AND go to high school.  If you want to remind yourself a little about the artist, go here and read what a remarkable young man he is.


Look at Mom's tail

UPDATE: I wrote Ian this morning, is that mark on mom’s tail what I think it is? He just wrote back. Yes it is! Just for the Martinez Beavers! Wow. sniff. Make me cry at work….sheesh…..

Cheryl just pointed out what appears to be ‘en hommage‘ to mom in the dining scene. Hmmm. Looks possible.  I have written the creator for verification, but wouldn’t that be lovely? A memorial in film as well as sheetpile?  This makes half a dozen episodes making Twig charming and accessible without being threatening. Still there is almost no part of this series that brushes the grim reality for beavers in general. Is it just me or do you think its time to put a little well-placed pressure on human responses to beavers? The morbid realist in me says that Episode 7 could feature a farmer who rips out the repaired dam and waits to shoot the beavers that come and fix it. Mom, Dad and Snappy would of course be killed leaving the kits orphaned to starve on their own. Twig could adopt them to save the day. But everything would brighten when the farmers’ cousin ‘Slip Kisle’ could come show him how to install a flow device next time?

It’s just a suggestion…Once again great work Ian. Martinez has your biggest fans!


Wolves in the Wallowas: wildlife terrorists, or climate-change warriors?

Whitman College students, through an innovative program mixing environmental and political studies, camp out in northeastern Oregon for an up-close look at wolf packs.

By Anthony B. Robinson

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife: A male wolf from the Wenaha Pack in Wallowa County,

Whitman College professor Phil Brick was in town the other day to talk about wolves in the Wallowas. The Wallowas are a rugged mountain range in an isolated but stunningly beautiful region of northeastern Oregon, Wallowa County.   Brick and his Whitman colleagues are the creators of an innovative experience for about 20 Whitman students each year. Known as “Semester in the West,” the course is a term-long field study sited in the Wallowas or northern Nevada, but including study of other western lands from the Canadian Rockies to Mexico.

SITW, as the venture is known, takes an interdisciplinary approach, with students gaining credit in environmental studies, writing and politics. The idea, as Brick put it, is “to see landscape whole,” as a complex and integrated system of land and watersheds, animals wild and domestic, as well as people and their history and culture.

First, an aside. I tracked down the author of Joe & Amanda’s great article Saturday and wrote him a thank you note. He wrote back that he’d like me to be on his radio program and talk about beavers someday. Joe whispered to keep my wits about me because he’s kinda ‘political’! I of course assured him that beavers are always very political and I’d be prepared for that. It turns out, in order to save some animals you have to be fairly adept in the sausage-making of at least local government. Which brings me to this new article on this fantastic wildness program at Whitman. Wildlife – Politics – Environment – and Writing. Wow. What a combination! Do your students need to intern any where? We could definitely find work for them!

Brick and his students understand the ire of cattle ranchers and other local residents. They have spent a good deal of time sitting down with them to hear their concerns, which not only include the costly loss of stock, but the general mental duress of wondering what’s happening to your herd as the nights wear on and the wolves howl. Of course, not all Wallowa County residents are down on the wolves. Some imagine a small town like Joseph, Oregon, becoming a center of eco-tourism, a jumping-off place for people who want to catch a glimpse or hear the howl of the wolf in the wild.

But Brick also developed another perspective, that of the wolf as a crucial link in the chain that might help us to withstand and adapt to seemingly inevitable climate change and warming.

Barren arroyos and streambeds that may flow full and fast with water in the spring are dry as a bone by early summer (Brick’s photos captured this familiar sight). Climate warming has exacerbated this problem because it means that runoff from snowpacks happens more rapidly in most parts of the West. Snow melts earlier and faster and runs off quicker. With each rushing flow the channels are cut deeper and the water moves off the land faster.  

Areas that once were a combination of lakes and ponds or boggy meadows are now cut by these deepening channels and left dry.  Enter the wolf. In Yellowstone the presence of wolves has regulated the once uncontrolled elk and deer populations. With elk in check something happens along streams and rivers — namely willows and cottonwoods begin to reassert themselves where they had been chomped into oblivion by the elk and deer.

You know how this story ends right? Regular readers of this blog should be miles ahead by now. We could easily skip to the end but its fun to hear it all again. Ooh look, goose pimples!

Turns out willow and cottonwoods are the raw materials needed by the best dam builders in the world: beaver. Beaver had themselves been trapped to the edge of extinction in many parts of the American West in the 19th Century. But when the stream-side growth of trees returned to Yellowstone so did the beaver. The beaver quickly began the process of restoring the ponds and lakes and boggy meadows that function as natural water-holding facilities. With the water staying on the land longer, vegetation is renewed and erosion arrested; as a result, water needed for agriculture in late summer is more plentiful.

So let the wolves scare the cattle away and allow the riparian border to grow stronger and the beavers will come do their magic on your stream beds and perennialize your creeks.  That’s a morality play every rancher could grow to love.  You are definitely on to something, and have created an excellent forum for teaching how it all comes together. We here in Martinez had to learn by the skin of our teeth, but we got it eventually. We saw our creeks and their population change with the arrival of the beavers. Keep in mind that beavers in arid regions now have a much harder job than God intended, and watch the NOAA video on the left to show you how judicious posting can assist them in their restorative job.  Send us some interns, we’d be happy to share!

(Mind you, freshly back from the State of the beaver conference and Yosemite State Parks conference I have become a woman familiar with terms like ‘perennialize’ and ‘ungulates’, which may be nothing to be proud of, but is an achievement all the same.)

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