Month: July 2011

What’s in a name?

“People get upset about that, but that’s why we call them aquatic rodents,” he said. “We want to stress that they are rodents … not furry, cuddly teddy bears.”

Thank you Greg Hall, the street superintendent of Norman OK, for putting a long-suspected trade secret into language everyone understands. We should all respect your authority and pay attention. Officials call beavers “rodents’ when they want to discourage any opposition to killing them. Officials say beavers ‘breed like rodents” when they want to justify the need for killing them.

Officials are hoping that instead of seeing this:

: Beaver Kit 2008 – Cheryl Reynolds

You think about this:

: Big Black Rat – Anonymous

So they can do this:

: USDA Self-Adminstration

“People think beavers are cute and cuddly, from what they’ve seen on TV, but they can cause real problems in an urban area like Norman,” Hall said. Beavers, who build dams to store food and raise their families, are also destructive and can lay waste to a fully grown tree overnight.

“You can go to sleep one night and the tree’s fine and then wake up the next morning and it’s gone,” Hall said. “They work quick and they can do a lot of damage.”

What a relief to know that when we read the word rodent it doesn’t apply to the literal meaning – you know the fact that their teeth keep growing their entire lives (Latin Rōdentia- meaning “gnawer”). Wikipedia tells me that rodents in general make up 40% of all mammals and appeared shortly after the last winged dinosaur around 65 million years ago. It is true that MOST rodents breed quickly and are important to the ecosystem by being a good food source and spreading seeds around before they die. Beavers are unusual rodents in that it takes a long time for them to breed and, like porpcupines, (another atypical rodent) they are only in estrus for a few hours a year.

But as Greg helpfully illustrates, calling them rodents has nothing to do with anything except to explain the big red target on their backs. Of course we can’t expect Oklahoma to wrap trees or manage beavers in a more solution focused way through the use of flow devices, even through the Skunk Whisperer is nearby in Tulsa and can’t wait to install one. We certainly can’t expect Oklahoma to use fewer federal services from the USDA when statistics for 2009 show it is one of the highest users in the country (I guess the tea party might hate taxes but it loves them some uncle sam beaver-killin’). We obviously can’t expect Oklahoma to think of the droughts it faces each year or the trout or wood duck it wants to harvest down the road.

We can just be grateful for Greg telling it like it is.

“We want to stress that they are rodents … not furry, cuddly teddy bears.”

(Just a thought, but I’m pretty sure Greg would have something to say about bears too.)

Once Upon A Time…

heidi08 Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 22, 2011

A very talented man with a love of the natural world decided to turn the beautiful things he photographed into jewelry. He named his business Wild Bryde, and like any new bride, he made sure she was treated lavishly. .His lovely designs were regularly sold at wildlife and nature stores around the bay area, which is how we eventually connected. In 2009 he joined us for the beaver festival.

Mike was a big hit at the festival, but he doesn’t usually do many events. Too bad for wildlife lovers everywhere, I’m fairly certain that he sold every single pair he had of these:

Last year Worth A Dam launched the Keystone Species Charm bracelet activity with help from a private donor. Lucky for us because it turned out the president of Kiwanis was in a booth directly opposite ours at the Flyway Fiesta Girl Scout Event where we first tried the activity. This allowed the president to see first-hand how enormously popular the event was and helped us get funding to repeat it at last year’s festival. The idea is that children “earn” charms for the bracelet by learning how beavers affect different aspects of the environment. This allows kids to understand pretty complex concepts of habitat and ecosystem, and gives them a beautiful reminder to remember or explain to their friends or parents.

The first year we bought charms from a bead store in Seattle. They looked like this. I spent a lot of effort begging the bead store to donate a little to our effort, which I assumed was in their interest to do since at least three other organizations liked the idea so much they decided to try the activity as well. Alas, even though I was clearly the best customer for animal charms they were ever likely to have, they declined my invitation to sponser us. I hate to be refused. That got me thinking.

When I talked with Mike about joining us for this year’s festival I complained a little about the stingy shop in Seattle and Mike said, hmm, take a look at these. I make custom designs and I bet we could figure out what you need. We might even get the suppliers to donate a little. That way you can pick exactly what you want and make your project unique.

I spent hours and hours pouring through Mike’s amazing creations. I was a little scared to think about what might be possible in case it didn’t work out. I gave him some draft images and he worked out some remarkable choices and I crossed my fingers to see if it could happen. Guess what came in the mail yesterday?

120 each of nine charms, designed and cut by Mike Warner and paid for by Martinez Kiwanis. The activity will be free for children while supplies last. If you have a daughter or grandchild I would definitely bring them along to make one of these. For adults who simply can’t resist there will be a materials fee of 10 dollars. I wouldn’t wait.

Thank you SO much Mike! I love them all, but can you guess what one is my very most favorite? Does this shape remind you of anyone?In case you want to study ahead, this is what we’ll be asking children to explain to the various booths that will have each charm. Who wants to invite Fish & Game?

Oh and turn on channel 28 at 10 or six today, because the beaver festival promotion will be on TV!

July 22 10:02:14 am & 6:02:14 pm

To be-aver or not to be-aver

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions July 21, 2011

City busy as a beaver finding humane solution

Tara Chislett

Problem solved: A beaver baffle has been installed along the Gibson trail near Marysville to deter beavers from building dams that flood the trail.

Two residents concerned with Fredericton’s wildlife policy in wetland areas are praising the city for its decision to stop killing beavers that have been damming the culvert and flooding the Gibson trail. Gabriela Tymowski, a year-round trail user, said the city’s installation of a beaver baffle – a device designed to confuse beavers and stop them from building dams in wetland areas – is a positive step toward sustainable beaver management.

“The beaver baffle works by tricking the beaver into thinking that they are successfully damming a culvert, when in fact, they can’t because water can still successfully get through the baffle,” she said.

Tymowski, who’s been using the Gibson trail year-round for the last 12 years, said she contacted the city after coming across a dead beaver that drowned after getting stuck in a trap. After it was confirmed the city hired someone to kill the beavers, Tymowski said she requested a meeting with staff to come up with an alternative.

This article starts out with such a bang I got very excited. Fredricton is over at the very edge of Canada in the area that’s looks like Maine’s hat. Just miles away from Vermont & Massachusetts, it’s not very far from real solutions, but clearly accurate information has a very hard time flowing up hill.

“This means that the area will no longer flood, and because the beavers need a certain amount of water in order to survive – their entrance and exits to their lodge must be underwater – they will be forced to relocate.”

Since installing the baffle, Murray said the city hasn’t had any problems with beavers. “We put that in and they packed their bags and left,” he said.

Ahhh, Gabriela & Don you were THIS CLOSE!!! You were almost beaver advocates manque! Well, listen up young grasshoppers. The point of installing a flow device isn’t to get them to leave. The point is to control the water at the height you can tolerate so that the beavers STAYYY. If they leave, new beavers will move in and put a new lodge in a different area and dam the whole thing all over and you will have wasted your time and money. Let the beavers stick around, maintaining valuable wetlands, augmenting fish population and improving habitat for birdlife.

And always remember, to paraphrase Hamlet

“Better to bear those beavers you have than fly to others you know not of.”

In the mean time can you get me the name of that expert at UNB? (I’m assuming University of New Brunswick!) I clearly have some education & explaining to do.

Beaver Contrarian

heidi08 Massachusetts Trapping Law July 20, 2011

More castor-kvetching from the state that believes no one has suffered like they have suffered under the 1996 trapping restrictions. Never mind that the new rules still allow beavers to be killed – no questions asked, just using a slightly different weapon. Never mind that the new rules allow beavers to be killed in the traditional ways with the old weapons if a few simple conditions are met. Never mind that most towns end up doing just exactly what they would have always done anyway.

It’s the animal-lovers fault. It’s got to be.

SOUTHBOROUGH —

“Earlier this month, a Wood Street resident called town officials to complain about rising water in her backyard threatening her septic system. The Department of Public Works deduced that a culvert 48 inches across had been blocked, but it took a little digging to find out how.

“The employee crawled into the pipe and found a beaver dam,” DPW Superintendent Karen Galligan wrote in a memo to the Board of Health. Southborough Health Agent Paul Pisinski said the Board of Health unanimously approved a 10-day emergency trapping permit for the DPW as well as a 30-day extension if it’s needed.”

Brad Petrishen

Memo! Don’t tell me that burdensome PETA-law forced DPW to write a MEMO to the health department!!!!! It’s outrageous to make our hard-working men and women of public works write a memo! And after all that exhausting DEDUCTION and crawling into a pipe too! Now the health deparment has to take valuable time away from their immunization shots and e coli outbreaks to casually hold a unanimous vote! Ohhh the humanity! No wonder nothing gets done in government when our officials time gets swallowed by molehills of paperwork and casual slaughterhouse agreements!

A lesser mind might read that article and think, gosh, the rules worked the way they were supposed to – an exception to a rule was granted for a serious concern and the problem is swiftly going to be solved. Ahhh but that mind would be wrong. This article isn’t about the system working. It’s about the icky, icky law that made all this necessary.

“Some may wonder why the Board of Health, not a state agency such as the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, is signing off on such a request. The answer lies in a 1996 ballot referendum that shifted the authority for permitting from MassWildlife to local boards of health. More importantly, the question barred trappers from using certain types of traps – a decision that wildlife experts say has led to an explosion in the beaver population, with accompanying problems.

People had good intentions when they banned so-called inhumane leg-hold and lethal body-gripping traps, Larson said, but they probably had no idea that the decision would lead to a beaver increase. “Beavers are rodents, and they breed like rodents,” she said. “They don’t have many predators since they live 80 percent of their lives in the water, so they’re becoming very prolific.”

The body-gripping trap is not much more than an enlarged mouse trap, Larson said, without which trappers have either had a difficult time trapping beavers or given up and moved on to a different animal.

“Beaver are taking advantage of even the most marginal habitats for creating housing for themselves,” she said. “It’s quite a challenge for everybody concerned.”

Beavers taking advantage! And trappers out of work because it’s too hard to set up the suitcase! My my my. Something these columns just write themselves. Do you think Marion wants to be my new BFF?