So this video was approved to air on the new local channel (Comcast 28) and tree-planting Mitchell Maisel received his Eagle scout Badge for the work he did on Alhambra Creek. There’s a nice article about it here in the Martinez News Gazette. I guess it takes a while for the paperwork to get processed and clear because this project took place in 2009 and the badge was awarded last weekend. Never mind, we’re excited for you, and happy for our creek.
One of the most exciting things that occur “backstage at the website” is the list of visitors to this site from other countries so I can see how beaver information is trickling to folks around the world. The second column shows how many unique visitors we’ve had from that country this month.
Yesterday, more evidence came in the form of an interested reader. You can read a delightfully translated page about her films here. It refers to beaver lodges as ‘castles’ which amuses me.
I (Willy, woman, 59 years) am a beaverlover from The Netherlands and I make movies/documentaries about the European Beavers who live in our country. They were re-introduced in 1988 and now there are about 600/800 beavers in The Netherlands. If you are interested, you can watch some films at YouTube. All made in the free Dutch nature. You can put the links on your website if you want.
Nice to watch your website en to know that there are beaverlovers all over the world. Best wishes and greetings, Willy
Even though the attached videos are in dutch you won’t want to miss this spectacular footage. She clearly has been working hard to see what happens in beaver world. I told her they deserve an English voiceover or subtitles and she said she’d do it when she had time. In the mean time you probably can guess what she’s saying anyway.
I asked her about the recording of the vocalizations of the kits and told her it was the sound that got me involved. This was her reply:
Indeed, it is a lovely sound that makes you happy. I recorded the beaverkits with a small micophone (and a MD-recorder) that I layed on the lodge between some branches. It was a lodge where I heard the babybeavers often but mostly on different spots in the lodge. Sometimes close to the microphone, sometimes to far away from it. On this photo you can see that Lodge in wintertime when the water was high. In summertime the waterlevel is about 1 meter lower and you can see then how big this lodje is.If I ever come to the USA, I hope I can visit the Beaverfestival. Willy
A new documentary about “beavers in the Netherlands”. A unique and versatile film with lots of casual shots of beavers in the free Dutch countryside. . Made with love for this interesting animal. Already three years following and filming the journalist Sittard / nature cinematographer Willy King beavers. The vast amount of visual material and knowledge she now has a documentary assembled with a complete story about the life of the beaver. This is sometimes quite surprising, even for the experts. . With images of a beaver who fled to the high water on top of the lodge sits, with pathetic sounds of young beaver little from a lodge, toy factions between adult beavers and their offspring, beavers at ease grooming or images of beavers, are unobserved thinking he had arrived, quietly walk on land.
The DVD contains three versions. As the first comprehensive documentary for adults (30 minutes), slightly less than a complete story for 9-12 year olds (20 minutes) and thirdly a simple way complex information film for 5 to 8 year olds (15 minutes). Each film contains information, music and language appropriate to the age group. The DVD, in lovely DVD box, with a total of 65 minutes footage costs only € 15.00 (excluding shipping) and can be ordered by sending an email to:
Kit Hayden is a blogger and journalist for the Republican Journal in Maine. He just saw some beaver felled trees in the boundary waters and decided to use what looked like pointless beaver activity as a metaphor for the political fallacies in his state. He writes:
The incident caused me to wonder what useful purpose the beaver serves in nature’s order. Unfortunately I haven’t found out, because all the sources I read refer only to the beaver/Homo sapiens interaction, and in this the beaver is pretty much a nuisance. The pelts were once profitable, but animal fur exploitation has been out of fashion for some time. The Eskimos used dried beaver testicles to relieve pain, but now we’ve got Ibuprofen and the like. We can eat the beast, but the meat’s said to be tasteless. Generally, the beaver makes a mess of our riparian environment, and so we’ve reduced his population in North America from about 90 to 10 million. Small wonder the boys on the island are picking on me in retaliation.
Yeah, if only beavers could quit ruining our riparian environment and let us get back to covering it with concrete and sheetpile, everything would be fine! It’s funny that we didn’t see a big increase in our forests, fish populations, and steam flow when America killed of 60, 000,000 beavers. You’d think there’d be this huge rebound and yet it was almost like all those things got worse…I wonder why that was?
When a beaver family in an urban area becomes noisome the beaver huggers will generally insist on a relocation effort instead of the more efficient murder. According to Wikipedia, the relocation cost is $4,000+ per animal, and the beaver or his cousins always return. Maybe with the government shutdown we can save on this sort of expense in Minnesota.
Beaver huggers! I guess he means us. You know us whacky people that irrationally care about the health of our watershed, fish populations & wildlife. Go figure. I assume this means he won’t be coming to the beaver festival this year? Or the State of the Beaver Conference next year? If he did that he might end up running into some actual facts about beavers, and that would just clutter up their blogging metaphor services.
Beavers use anal scent glands to mark off their positions. I believe this shows them to be more highly evolved than our politicians. I have no idea how the latter come to their opinions, but I’m thinking that it’s not with their anal scent glands. Not infrequently I read that a hippo has been elected mayor of some town. Why not a beaver? Maybe a beaver will run in the next election where I can vote for him. I confess to a grudging admiration at least for their chewing efficiency in gnawing down the birches. Makes my teeth hurt to think of it. Anyway, I guess I’ll break out the chainsaw and make firewood of those trees, for it’s an ill wind etc.
I know our beavers would have won in this town if they ran for city council, but I always assumed that was just because of the competition.
Nice article, but I have a very hard time believing that you looked all over and couldn’t find anything explaining the “point of beavers”. Never mind, I’m happy to help. Unlike politicians beavers are a keystone species. The dams they create maintain a network of wetlands that support dense, diverse populations of fish, birds & wildlife. They raise the water table and cool the stream though hyporheic exchange along the banks. They actually increase the riparian border and species diversity. Their dams trap silt and nutrients in the soil and old beaver sites become rich meadows and farm land. Their chewing of trees becomes a kind of natural “coppicing” which is a forestry term for hardcutting a tree so it grows back denser and more bushy. This provides excellent nesting habitat for migratory and song birds. There is even research that beavers are essential in providing habitat for juvenile salmon and trout.
For the record, I agree with you that relocation is a short term solution — so is trapping. Because beavers are territorial with their use of castoreum to mark their boundaries, the beavers you have are warding off others. When you get rid of them new ones always move in. A better solution for flooding/damming problems is to install an inexpensive flow device, which you can also read about on wikipedia.
My low lying town found ourselves with a colony of beavers 4 years ago who built a dam in our urban creek. There were fears it would cause flooding and the beavers were going to be exterminated. Literally hundreds of people protested and forced the city to find another way to control the problem. We ended up hiring Skip Lisle from Vermont who came out and installed a flow device at the dam, which allowed it to be maintained at a safe height with no problems since.
I am fond of saying that any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver, and folks who care about clean water & wildlife, hunting or fishing, know why they should bother.
Please let me know if you would like any of the countless research that substantiates these claims. I will give you only one excellent read which is the last chapter of “In Beaver World” by father of the Rockies National Park, Enos Mills. It was written 100 years ago, when America was just beginning to notice what was happening to all our rivers and streams after we trapped our 60,000,000 beavers. A more modern article is here but I believe he answers your question better than anyone else ever could.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D. President & Founder Worth A Dam www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress
Anthropormorphic Alert: Am I the only one that imagined a beavery reunion where Dad beaver scowled at the state of things when he came back and said “Jesus! What the hell have you been doing with these dams, son?”‘
It isn’t hard to suspect Jr. defended his work staunchly and answered “They were holding just fine until that water came up from down stream” and then bitterly added,
“Maybe if you were here you could have helped, but you took off and we had to do it all by ourselves!”
Of course that would make Dad defensive about his “walkabout” and he would have snapped back “It’s a good thing I left when I did! So I didn’t have to see this! Your mother and I never taught you to use house plants on the dam!” which would make Jr fold his arms, eyes flashing and answer staunchly,
“You never understood me, father. You never even tried. I’m an ARTIST. Reeds are what I do best. It’s who I am so you better just get used to it.”
The pair would glower at each other in the water until the peacemaker sister pipes in trying to calm both tempers, saying earnestly, “He did a good job dad, he worked hard and he tried to take care of things just like you while you were gone, but it was hard – we both missed you”.
And Dad’s voice would break a little when he says gruffly, “I missed you too”.
I imagine there would be a long pause while the three looked at each other and their home, so changed and still so familiar. Then dad would cock his head at Jr. and pick up a tule scowling amiably, “Reeds huh? Alright, then where do you want this, son?”
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy
