It’s Friday! And not a moment too soon! I got the go ahead from the new city channel Comcast 28 to do a 10 minute promo for the beaver festival and IF it’s acceptable to every member of the council they’ll run it, so I know what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’m thinking about using the council’s own audio as narrators, so let’s see if my theory of beaver inoculation is successful!
I thought the effort merited a truly delightful beaver glimpse, enjoy!
Alison Brownlee
The responsible mayor of Huntsville, Ontario wants property owners to pay for harboring criminals – well, beavers. He and the council have decided that beaver dams pose such a risk to the tenuous transit system in the region that they should pay for dams that create any problems for roadways in the area.
He said property owners should be liable for any damage done to a municipal road if the damage was a result of a dam breaking on the property owners’ land, whether naturally or otherwise.
“Whereas the Town of Huntsville has had a number of incidents of damage to the municipal road system as a result of beaver dams breaking, and whereas direction has previously been given to staff to take steps to mitigate the risk to the municipality, therefore be it resolved that staff proceed forthwith to take action by all means available against the property owners on which the beaver dam adjacent to Beaver Meadow Road is located.”
Public works liked the idea so much they said, why just beaver meadow road? Let’s apply it everywhere!
I’m a little confused why this ordinance is even necessary. I assume if you have an old tree on your property that falls across the road requiring city staff to remove it, they send you a bill for that work, and if a dog on your property bites a child you have to pay for that also. So why is it necessary to say specifically that if a road is damaged because of your beaver dam you need to pay?
Discussions have been held at the District of Muskoka level, said Keeley, and public works departments from across the region have recommended drafting letters to property owners requesting dam maintenance. Whether the letters will be sent in Huntsville is unconfirmed. Management could include deconstructing part of the dam or contracting trappers to remove the beavers, which happens on a bi-weekly basis.
I guess it’s reasonable. I don’t really have a problem with it as long as you will also be sending letters to all the property owners without beaver dams, letting them know that Huntsville will hold them financially responsible for any future drought conditions, and fish, bird or wildlife shortages down the road.
It’s only fair.
Looks like our beavers just looked up the word “busy” in the dictionary and decided to give it a try! The smallest kit/yearling was working like a ranch hand this am and apparently yesterday morning as well, reeding and mudding the secondary dam. He continues his fine tradition of basket weaving that no other 
Martinez beaver has ever mastered. It is true we have seen dad pull tules to staunch a breach in the dam, but Dad always combined them traditionally with actual sticks. Not so Reed Jr. He happier to build with reeds than with anything else and that works out because there are a lot of them.
This morning his languid sibling came slipping over the secondary dam appreciatively and decided to help a little. Sharon Brown of Beavers:Wetlands & WIldlife said once that male kits tend to be smaller than females, and I’ve always had the notion that our two jumbo bookends are sisters, and Reed Jr, who followed GQ everywhere and built his first little reed dam at 6 months, is a boy. In the absence of any other data I think its as good a theory as any, and would explain his slightly different attitude towards construction and feeding. Still, to any beaver work should be irresistible, they just need one to start the chain and everyone should get motivated. Apparently this has happened, and lord knows not a moment too soon if the temperature is any indication of what’s to come. The secondary dam is actually holding back water! Both of them went to bed in the bank hole by the footbridge looking more like actual beavers than I have seen since March. Go Beavers!
There’s a slew of stories about beavers in Anchorage viciously biting helpless dogs when pet owners take them for a walk in the mornings or evenings. The bloody tale made it onto the AP so that means it’s been picked up around the country by other journalists who are happy to pass along incomplete information that contains graphic stories of injured pets.
How can I accuse the Associated Press of misinformation? Here’s how:
Dogs have been going after beavers at University Lake so long that the beavers have drawn a line in the sand, says state Fish and Game biologist Jessy Coltrane. Come in the water near their lodge, get bitten. “They were harassed for years. And they finally said, ‘that’s it,'” said Coltrane, the Anchorage area wildlife expert.
Really? Really? Really? It’s June and this is the best explanation that the wildlife expert from Anchorage can come up with? Beaver revenge? A beaver vendetta? Are you honestly telling me not a single biologist from the entire Deparment of Fish & Game could bother to weigh in about what exactly beavers are doing at this time of year? No suggestion that there might be a slightly delicate operation in process that merits greater protectiveness? Not even one reporter thinks to raise the question?
Just “beavers are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore”!
Sigh. Since no one in all of anchorage (or CT or MA where this story was also run) can be bothered to actually do their job I will endeavor to provide a somewhat more reasonable explanation of why beavers would suddenly be more territorial and aggressive to canine intruders. My answer is based on a complex and subtle understanding of fur-bearer biology, reproduction habits, wind direction and the tilt of the earth. Let me know if I’m going to fast for you because obviously only a RARE GENIUS COULD THINK OF THIS, certainly not a wildlife expert from Anchorage.
When beaver kits are born they require significant care. Although they can swim right away, they can’t dive to get away from predators or even to get out of the lodge or get back in without help. Beaver kits in Martinez are born in May, and temperatures in Anchorage were 50 yesterday so I’m going to guess they’re born in June there, or are very close to being born. Beavers protect their kits by using their massive incisors to fight off intruders who show up uninvited, (say big floppy-eared gallumping hounds leaping through the water when their owner lets them off leash). Beavers are usually pacifists and just avoid these intruders, but now they actively seek them out to discourage any foe from harming their kits.
From an evolutionary perspective its in the parents interest to protect the offspring. Maybe you heard something about it before?
Here’s a suggestion for even the laziest reporter which should include most of you. Google the terms “Anchorage beavers biting dogs” and check to see if this outrageous canine fatwa ever happened before? OMG! It did? When? June 2008? You don’t say!
Since its an annual occurence you might think about posting signs near the water “Caution: Dogs on leash May-June wildlife will attack to defend young”. You could take them down in July and keep them at the AP office during the year.
Grr.
If you need cheering up after that big bit of beaver-stupid, go to the right hand margin and check out our two new toys! Scroll down to follow the Keystone species story all the way to the otter!
Good Lord its monday again so I think we need a positive read to start our week in the right direction. This definitely qualifies.
by Mary Parker Sonis
It is surprising that some people still regard our largest North American rodent as a pest. Humans and beavers are the only animals that actively change their environment; however, only the beaver can be relied upon to consistently improve the environment. When a beaver dams a waterway to establish a deep pond, the end result is an increased area of open water, and extensive wetlands, with multiple channels. These wetlands are not only great nesting sites for waterfowl and other wildlife, but they slow the flow of a stream, which mitigates erosion while removing sediment and pollutants from the water. The presence of beaver colonies has a positive effect on fish populations as well.
Did I mention Mary’s in North Carolina? The state that used an awful lot of stimulus money to kill beavers? The State that famously wanted beavers out of an audubon creek they were trying to restore? Not only is this article good news for the region, it’s good period. It might be one of four favorite beaver articles ever! (Thank goodness the list is getting longer by the day!)
By now, the beavers are quite used to my visits. I love to watch them interact. The male and female will often eat at separate channels, but when they pass each other in the creek, they pause to touch noses. When the kit whimpers, a parent will quietly reassure the youngster with a nose touch and perhaps a share of the particular stick they are stripping of bark. I have never witnessed any act of aggression between family members. Occasionally, I will see the adult pair canoodling at creeks edge. They gently touch noses and cheeks together when they meet, and then go about their grazing.
So Mary has a colony near her home that she visits regularly and has seen the family grow and change (like us). It’s lovely to read as someone discovers them and their habits. I remember, almost with the wispy magic of childhood, the feeling of filming our beavers in the beginning – before the drama and the November 7th meeting and the media and Worth A Dam. In those days I always stood at the Escobar bridge to film with my sleepy old dog Caly laying on the sidewalk beside me. Somehow the primary dam seemed impossibly far away, like a dreamscape, and the creek seemed mystically to go on forever, the old lodge the center of all beaver activity.
In the next few weeks, the new kits will be shyly swimming in Bolin Creek. As tiny kits, they are vulnerable to predation by coyotes, foxes and great horned owls, so they are likely to dive underwater at any moment. It will be a joy to follow a fourth generation of this peaceful family. With all that they offer, from balancing stream ecology to providing homes for wildlife, it is no surprise that Native Americans called the beaver “the sacred center.”
Thanks for the lovely read Mary, and we want a follow-up article to learn how everyone’s getting along. You recalled some magical days, and here’s a glimpse of what it was like back then. This was filmed on June 23rd, 2007, (the moring we were leaving for a week of camping in the sierras), with my old camera and old computer and the most basic windows movie maker. The kit is grown and dispersed, the tree where the owls nested is long since shaved and empty of owls, but this is still magic to me.
