This morning’s visit to the dam started with shadows, first a gray tailed phantom below the secondary dam which turned out to be a raccoon walking feeling his paws blindly downstream in search of tasty morsels. Apparently it was working rather well because he went as far as I could see in his swirling, hurple-gait. (And yes hurple is a word and it describes exactly what raccoons do since their front and back legs aren’t the same length.)
Then Reed loomed onto the scene, floating very slowly so he could keep an eye on the interloper. When the raccoon moved out of view he decided to do some work and carried a couple of loads of mud onto the dam. It must have been very low tide because when this beaver came home he had to walk up the creek in places. (:30)
Someone had definitely eaten their wheaties that morning because after this roaming beaver returned s/he went straight to work, lifting mud onto the dam and poking branches into better places. Swirls of mud hovered at the banks and scooping locations, and often only the wrinkle of water or a fizz of bubbles told you where the beaver would emerge next. There were several rounds of this;
And equal potions of this
Then working beaver dove into the bank hole by the footbridge. I noticed Reed was in the water, watching this subtly. Then working beaver re-emerged and swam towards Reed, and they circled about in an exchange that I was so happy to see I didn’t attempt to film. (I haven’t seen beavers interact since…March?) Then working beaver and Reed retired to the bank lodge. And I cheerfully came home.
Yesterday we picked up this years tshirts, designed by Amelia Hunter and lovingly printed by Courtyard Customs. I think you’re really going to like them. If you can’t come next saturday to get your own, you can always order one off zazzle and add your own name or logo!
A flooded Highway 9 in Blue River during July’s high water hearkens back to a Western landscape governed by beavers.
It’s been said that the West we’re accustomed to — the “fast-flowing streams and invitingly open banks, celebrated in photographs and songs and pickup truck commercials,” Kevin Taylor wrote in the June 2009 issue of High Country News — is an illusion. It’s a message Grand Canyon Trust project manager Mary O’Brien preached in Taylor’s story.
Gosh it’s nice to see a reminder ofTaylor’s seminal article again after all this time. I love that it made enough of an impression to get a mention two years later. I remember being so excited to read it and learn about heroine Mary O’brien preaching beaver gospel with “her thick rope of a gray braid” that when I travelled to Oregon for the conference I scoured the 200+ attendees looking for that rope.
(I quickly realized there were far too many gray ropes to identify hers in particular, and had to wait until we were properly introduced. Now she’s coming to the beaver festival to see about starting her own in Utah, and you’ll have a chance to see for yourself!)
Looks like at least half the gospel was heard in Colorado, since everyone is willing to admit that beavers are a Keystone species but no one seems willing or able to install a flow device.
“There’s been some pesky ones up there by Highway 9,” he said of the beavers — and Blue River second-home owner Mark Ronchetti agrees. Speaking on a drive to his Albuquerque, N.M. broadcast meteorologist job, he said when he bought his 9-acre property the area was “so choked off by beavers building dams that it stopped up the water to make it like wetlands.”
He said he found 10 to 15 dams “clogging the flow” that he’s since broken up. He’s also relocated some of the architects because beavers are such hard workers, they’ll rebuild a dam within days, sometime hours.
“Without that, the house would’ve been flooded,” Ronchetti said. He’s noticed properties north of his lot that are vacant, and where beavers are happily abiding. “It’s been ignored,” he said. “I understand having beavers and habitat, but we can’t just let it go. Some wetlands is good, but there must be some control of what’s going on. The Blue River has got to be able to flow through there.”
Hmm. “We only need so much of this habitat business. A river has to get where its going, otherwise they’ll be anarchy! I can’t be held responsible for ripping families apart when there are young to take care of. I’m a meteorologist for gawdsake. Never mind that if I move THESE beavers I’ll just get new ones. You can’t expect me to think of past tomorrow’s forecast.”
Taylor called the rodent a time shifter, “having the power to extend the release of water late into summer, saturating the ground and healing watersheds. It has the power to re-create the primordial, wetter West that existed for millennia — a West we just missed seeing.”
Beaver activity can transform an ephemeral stream that traditionally runs for just a few days in spring into one that lasts for several months. The present disconnect with the beaver comes largely from the trapping era, when beavers were extensively eliminated. North America had an estimated 60 million beaver before European settlement, which eventually dropped in a century of trapping to roughly 100,000, common figures show. According to Taylor, the West held just a fraction of that. They’ve since made a comeback that beaver-restorers believe still has a long way to go.
They are a keystone species that restores riparian habitat and raises the water table. Their fur was used for felt in beaver hats, a fashion later replaced by silk hats — a shift that likely saved the beaver from extinction, according to the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
“No mammal other than humans has a great an influence on its surroundings. This is a ‘keystone species’ in riparian communities; without them the ecosystem would change dramatically,” states the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The ponds that well up behind their dams create navigable waters beneath the ice so they can be active year-round.
Ahh Kevin, we missed you. It’s great to read you again. Come to think of it your article never mentioned flow devices. That might have been a mistake. Not quite sure the state of Colorado is quite ready for your vision. They seem to be missing a lot of the point.
Further north, in Silverthorne, public works director Bill Linfield and his crew spend hours, days and sometimes up to a month in spring breaking dams at Straight Creek as it approaches the outlets and Willow Creek upstream from the Willowbrook neighborhood.
Wetlands in Willow Creek require Linfield’s crew to go in with wader and pull the dams apart “one stick at a time,” Linfield said. “By the next morning, the beaver has rebuilt the dam. It’s a constant battle.”
Which is why he’s relocated several of the beavers. This year, no trapping took place, but it’s been an almost annual occurrence since public works took on the task of protecting the outlet buildings and the Willowbrook houses.
“We don’t want to kill them. We just want them to go somewhere else,” Linfield said.
Once again for the folks at home,you want these beavers to stay just where they are. Honestly. If you move them out new beavers will move in and you’ll have to deal with this problem all over.Figure out what are the conditions you require to maintain safe roads, properties,ranches and find out what tools will allow you to have those conditions EVEN IF THE BEAVERS STAY. A flow device? A culvert fence? A dam reinforcement? Figure out the right tool(s) for the job and then build it. Then thank your lucky stars that those beavers will keep any others away.
Nice article, but missing key points of the sermon kinda reminded me of this,
Our badger friend Susan Kirks of Petaluma’s PLAN wrote last night alerting me to a truly depressing bit of animal husbandry. Seems there was some unidentified growling coming out from under a parked vehicle in Forestville so an animal control officer came out and shot it. Chris Smith for Press Democrat
BADGERED, BOTH: No one felt good about what happened after a houseguest in Forestville heard wild noises the other night and peeked beneath a parked ca
You can imagine the sensations that coursed through him as he spied a growling badger. His hostess, Arrow Olesky, figured the animal posed a threat to people, pets or both and dialed 911. A county animal-control officer drove out to Olesky’s place. And shot the badger. Olesky feels terrible but figures she did the only thing she could do.
The only thing she could do?Really? How about the garden hose? How about that tried and true method called “walking away and coming back in ten minutes?”. Well, this pie of blame has at least two pieces and the smallest one goes to the Olesky’s. I assume when they heard animal control was coming out they thought something intelligent would be done – some bit of fur-bearer management that would save their pets and keep the wildlife lovers happy. I don’t suppose they thought animal control would drive out all that way at night to stick a rifle under the car and shoot it.
It’s not as if Badgers don’t have a hard enough life anyway. Check out these unexpected photos from a kayaker in the Klamath via a friend of Brock Dolman.
The small Sunshine Coast community of Gibsons is about to set an anti-trapping precedent for the country. A bylaw banning leghold, conibear and snare traps has passed second and third readings by the town council, and a final reading has been set for Aug. 2.
The move to ban traps began in early spring, after a dog that was out for a walk with its owner in Sechelt got stuck in a leghold trap intended for wolves and had to be rescued by a conservation officer.
“This is the toughest anti-trapping bylaw in Canada. It not only bans leghold traps, which most people think were banned a long time ago, but … also bans conibear [which crush the head and neck of an animal] and snare traps, which together are the three most common.”
“Typically what happens is a lot of municipalities are struggling with beavers, and it’s cheap and easy to hire trappers,” said Fox. “The ‘old school’ way is to trap and kill them all, and this bylaw in Gibsons is a big step in promoting humane and non-lethal ways to live with wildlife.”
Those quotes are from Lesley Fox, director of Furbearer Defenders and the driving force behind this legislation. They’re so committed to the new world of beaver management they’re bringing out Mike Callahan and Sherri Tippie to do a free training in September. Living with Wildlife Agenda Conference. Don’t you wish you could go?
Not enough good news for you? Well hopefully we’ll get a great beaver article in the next couple of days from the Sacramento Bee and this is guaranteed to make you feel better about the world and the humans in it.
Amazing conversation today with reporter who has unearthed mountains of depredation permits on beavers and wanted to talk about beaver management, beaver benefits and the history of Martinez. Stay tuned and expect great things.
