Best night ever to be a cop in Ohio

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental October 20, 2011

We all remember the colorful Ohio story of the grandma who beat a fawn to death with a shovel, and the remarkable tale of animal husbandry from the Ohio trapper who told the paper he was only going to kill the ‘soldier beavers’. Maybe you even recall the nature center that brought in the trapper to tell stories of his hilarious animal killing adventures for children and families. Ohio, allow me to be frank, is insane. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that the head line today is of shooting escaped wild animals from a preserve in Zanesville.

As daylight came to this rural area 55 miles east of Columbus people were being told to stay inside. Officers with assault rifles patrolled the area looking for the wild animals ranging from tigers and bears to cheetahs and wolves.

“We’re telling people to look around, be cognizant of what’s around them,” Zanesville Mayor Howard Zwelling told CNN Wednesday morning. “We’re being cautious about it.”

Zwelling said he got a call from the city’s safety director around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday that Terry Thompson, the owner of the farm, had set the animals free and then shot himself.

So four schools are closed, people are staying in their cars and police have spent all night shooting lions, tigers and bears. Knowing what we do of the good sportsmanship in the state we have to assume that this is the very best night ever to be a member of the thin blue line in Ohio. Imagine the tales back at the station of the lucky officer who shot a wolf on the highway not to mention the water-cooler ribbing of the poor sod who only got a camel.

Let’s not think about the fleeing, frightened creatures who may be enjoying their first disorienting hour of freedom before being gunned down by Ohio’s finest. Don’t think about the Chimpanzees or Orangutans that lived in his house either. Lets just hope that when people in every state read this story

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had revoked his license to exhibit animals after animal-welfare activists campaigned for him to stop letting people wrestle with another one of his bears. USA Today

it makes them think about this:

Ohio has some of the nation’s weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them.

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Here’s some good news to wash that icky Ohio taste out of your mouth. Fur-bearer Defenders raised money last week to install a flow device on Bowen Island In British Columbia. This morning there’s a photo essay of their efforts on facebook and a nice story in The Province.

Bowen Island residents, animal protection advocates and municipal officials teamed up Tuesday in an effort to save the island’s “nuisance” beavers from their own damming ways.

A dam on the island’s Grafton Lake — which acts as a reservoir for the drinking water of nearly 4,000 residents — has been overwrought with beavers, who have been plugging a spillway daily with an assortment of mud, sticks and other dam-making debris.

“We have to dig it out every day. It’s costing us money,” said Bob Robinson, public works supervisor for the municipality.

Robinson said it’s his job to ensure that water is supplied downstream, but like other island residents he doesn’t want it to come at the expense of trapping or killing the furry animals.

So Robinson joined a handful of other island residents and members of the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals at Grafton Lake Tuesday with a potential solution — constructing beaver-exclusion fencing, made from timber and wire, which prevents the beavers from building dams and blocking the waterway.

Oh, and more good news comes from our beaver friends in Scotland, where the
Scottish Wild Beavers group has just been granted charity status and launched a new website. Go check it out and think about giving them some beaver love from across the pond.

It’s interesting to think that when I started this beaver campaign there were exactly two active beaver websites on the entire internet. Three if you count the Department of Public Works in Washington. Now there are nine, and when Sherri Tippie launches hers there will be ten. That’s a pretty nice proliferation, considering that trickle down that follows.

Lets aim for 20 by next year? Maybe one in Ohio?

Princeton (im)Propriety

heidi08 Beavers October 18, 2011

My goodness, it looks like the gripping trial to consider possibly slightly inconveniencing Animal Control Officer Mark Johnson is delayed yet again. You will remember that Mark found time after his busy day of dog-catching to shoot two unlucky beavers in a public park after making a special effort to let a passing damsel know his intention. The case was originally transferred because no one wanted to try him in the town where he worked, and it was then moved to nearby Ewing where it was subsequently cancelled because of a ‘conflict’ with the judge before being moved to Lawrence where it has just been cancelled because of a ‘conflict’ with the prosecutor.

Remember in legalese ‘conflict’ means ‘I’m reluctant to find you guilty because you’re my friend or I might need you one day and I don’t want to have to admit it’.

Since he can’t possibly be related to all these people Mr. Johnson is either a magnetically congenial man who hypnotically endears himself without effort to everyone on the bench OR he is relied upon for a steady stream of mysterious favors that no one in New Jersey wants to interrupt. Don’t forget that all of this dramatic shuffling is for an offense considered so minor that even if found guilty and prosecuted to the full extent of the law will still only set him back about 300 dollars.

A new venue has not yet been named in this macabre justice roulette, and maybe that’s really the safest decision. If he doesn’t know where his trial is going to be he won’t have a clue of who to make ‘friends’ with. I say announce the venue the day before and quarantine everyone in the courtroom so he can’t buy anyone dinner.

Who knew a beaver-shooting dog-catcher could be so charming?

Hood-winked

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental October 17, 2011

The rodent refuses to play by our rules

They grace our money and symbolize our national parks. Yet Canada is in conflict with the beaver. Its hard work and tenacity – traits we value – also put them at odds with us, explains Glynnis hood in this edited excerpt from The beaver manifesto

Early settlers wore beaver hats to keep warm and not for any sort of symbolism for or against the rodent. This one was spotted on the head of executive board member Paul Pruszynski at the 2006 Turin Olympic Winter Games. Photograph by: Donald Miralle, Getty Images, Calgary Herald

Go check out the glorious Glynnis Hood article in this sunday’s Calgary Herald. It is an excerpt from her new book and squarely confronts the myriad of reasons we dislike beavers – even though like broccoli or brusell sprouts – we know they’re good for us.

So why all the conflict between beavers and humans? My theory is that two control freaks will battle over the same tree until long after the last of its stump decays back into the forest. Humans simply do not like to be outdone by a rodent, plain and simple. The historical record, however, shows that not only the beaver but also the Norway rat and the mouse have almost always won the war. Although cockroaches are touted as the most persistent animals on the planet, they were never trapped for their furs, turned into hats or marketed as a perfume. The evidence is in, and rodents rule the world.

Hmm….When I was chatting with the grad student at the beaver dam about what research remains to be done I was tempted to say, “We don’t need any more research! We know beavers are good for water and insects and fish and birds and riparian borders and pollutants and soil and mammals and climate change! They only research left to do is why in the hell we are so resistant to an investment in our creeks that will do our job for us!”

(But being that her field is NOT psychology, that topic probably won’t inspire a dissertation.)

Go read the article, but I would venture to disagree with Glynnis on one point. Beavers aren’t control freaks. They could never have adapted as well as they have if they insisted on having things ‘their way’. I have seen beavers tolerate intrusions, thefts and interruptions a human could never endure. Beavers are more like very persistent buddists. They work very hard to do what’s possible, but when things are not possible they give up and do it somewhere else.

We should all be so pragmatic.

Speaking of what’s impossible, yesterday the universe has decided to play the very funny joke on me in the form of a trojan that opens security doors to my computer every time I do a google search. I am furiously working to repair it because an internet without the capacity to search is very like a perfectly tuned automobile with no tires, and a very very bad idea for anyone who saves beavers for a hobby. Microsoft said, pah, I don’t see anything! Anti-Malware said, ooh there’s something nasty but its too big for me to get. I am now on the 15 hour of an Ad-aware scan, and then it will be time to bring in the big guns, so wish me luck!

heidi08 Beavers October 16, 2011

Another Dam Cam…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, featured, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 16, 2011

Well, lodge cam to be exact about it. This one is in Tamarac National Refuge in Minnesota. For most of the land beavers are given free range and have even been allowed to build an 8 foot dam.

One big beaver dam in Tamarac –8 feet tall and growing

10-16-beaver-dam-3-cmyk — This beaver dam at Tamarac Refuge is 8 feet tall and some 30 feet long. Read the article: One big beaver dam in Tamarac -- 8 feet tall and growing

There are roughly 200 beaver families and lodge structures inhabiting the Tamarac National Wildlfe Refuge, according to a spring 2011 survey by refuge researchers.

Those beavers have constructed hundreds, maybe even thousands of dams on the refuge’s 42,700-plus acres — but there is one such structure that towers, quite literally, above the rest.

The Aschbacher Beaver Dam, so named for the refuge volunteer who discovered it, Pete Aschbacher, stands more than eight feet high at its apex and spans approximately 30 yards in length.

Nice. Tamarac recently got a grant to install a lodge camera which the beavers promptly removed. They’re hoping to have it replaced soon, but in the mean time they think they’re the first ones to try this and are busily re-inventing the wheel instead of asking for help. I made sure to write them that there is at least ONE other successful lodge cam operated on forestry lands and pointed them towards the one in Tongass national forest– which is apparently now an underwater cam aimed at the plunge hole.

Here’s some lodge footage they took last year when it was working:

Well its nice that Tamarac recognizes these beavers as a benefit to their refuge, but don’t plan to retire their yet, apparently their welcome sometimes include the other kind of ‘open arms’.

Such structures are rarely tampered with; there are other dams, however, that lessen or completely block critical water flow through culverts and natural drainage areas. This can cause flooding or even road washouts in various parts of the refuge and surrounding areas.

High water can also threaten wild rice habitat; “Then, we have to remove them,” Deede said. He typically employs three methods of dam removal, depending on the severity of the problem: By hand, with a backhoe, or using explosives.

Deede took the necessary training to be certified for explosives use, though he does not take on such projects outside refuge property. He must take a refresher course once every three years.

Sometimes, beavers prove so resistant to removing the dams in these critical areas that they must be removed as well. In these instances, paid trappers or shooters are brought in to remove the animals; such cases are rare, however.

What, ripping out the dams doesn’t work? Wow you must have the very rare REBUILDING beaver species. That almost always never happens. If you are looking for real solutions to controlling waterheight and protecting culverts to manage behavior of the focal species introduced in Washington DC this year as one of three key players to watch in federal lands across the nation, then try here or here or here and tell Deede to stop playing with matches.

We’ll be happy to see the lodge cam when its up! In the mean time, readers might enjoy visiting the new feature on the website in the task bar at the top called “Solutions” which goes through primary beaver dilemmas and how to solve them. Cheryl checked out the amazing beaver habitat in Benicia we talked about this weekend and found three lodges! Also last night we visited a UCB grad student at the beaver dam who is looking for a dissertation on the ecology of beaver ponds in California. We had LOTS to talk about! I’m hoping we can get her to repeat Glynnis Hood’s beaver pond floor differentiations as a cause of biodiversity with some temperate beavers. Stay tuned!