Saving Creeks from Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 12, 2011

Our beaver-wikipedia friend Rick sent me this today, a pamphlet on Laguna Creek in Wilton, CA. It’s a very nice and glossy brochure about protecting the watershed by reducing pollution and encouraging folks to volunteer time and money to keep their creek healthy. So far so good. It was this next section that got my attention:

Did you know it was dangerous for creeks when they flood? Neither did I. I always assumed it was kinda natural, apparently its very bad for creeks when water flows all over them, erosion on one bank prompts meandering onto another and soil is deposited on the opposite side. Who knew? Certainly not the Egyptians who for thousands of years relied on this nutrient deposit cycle to grow their rice on the fertile Nile.

Ohhhhhhhhh that makes sense. So flooding isn’t a problem to the CREEK but to the roads and properties along the creek. And too much woody debris is bad because it leads to flooding. Got it. And Beaver dams have to be ripped out and if for some reason this uniquely brilliant intervention isn’t successful beavers have to be killed which means they’re always, always killed.

We have to protect our creeks from beavers!

Where is this place anyway? Who ever heard of Wilton CA? Let me google it and see. Hmm, Southeast of Sacramento. What’s near there?

Ahhh well that explains it. New readers may not remember that Elk Grove is the famous location where USDA killed 51 beavers and the beaver ‘expert’ who allowed them to do it, Mary Tappel, was repeatedly consulted by our fair city shortly afterward. Mary is a botanist who would never come and talk to us on the beaver subcommittee directly because she felt we were too adversarial, she did tell the papers that beavers breed for 50 years and mention to public works that the father beaver should be killed so that the mother would need to mate with one of her sons. About 250 residents met her when she showed up unannounced at the Council Chambers meeting in April 2008. If you don’t remember her testimony, you might watch this for a colorful reminder at 02.28, which is probably worth viewing just for the expression on my face in the right hand corner.

For the record Wilton, protecting creeks from beavers is like protecting banks from money. It’s like protecting Whole Foods from Vegetarians, or protecting Stanford from bequeaths or protecting Steve Young from footballs. The creek you’re working so hard to defend will never have a better or more tireless advocate than the furry animals you’re struggling to discourage. If you need some real advice about managing beavers and controlling flooding, why don’t you give us a call or look here or here for real solutions.

On a lighter note, this morning Dad was hard at work on the primary, which is looking air tight. I met a man who told me he is ‘mayor’ of the beaver dam on the foursquare app for Martinez. Who knew?

heidi08 Beavers October 11, 2011

Beavers and Salmon: Part MMMDCCXXIX

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 11, 2011

Beaver friend Matt Stoecker of Beyond Searsville Dam sent me this lovely article from the High Country News and Patagonia’s Adventure Journal. Here’s an excerpt but you really should go read the rest for yourself:

In the mountainous West, swift, cold, snow-melt streams such as Pennock Creek support relatively little aquatic life, and fish are usually few and small. The calm, warmer waters of beaver ponds are biologically richer and support more and larger fish, although global warming may be changing this.

Studies in Washington’s Puget Sound Basin by Michael Pollock of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that in streams populated by beavers, Coho salmon are larger and more plentiful than in streams without beavers. Pollock believes restoring salmon runs will require restoring beaver populations.

Beaver-salmon- beaver- salmon- beaver- salmon….what will it take until people get the connection?

I like Chuck’s article almost entirely, although he gets a little passive at the end.

What if they flooded my bottomland or cut down my trees? Would I still yell, “Go, Beavers!” as I do at Oregon State football games? Not likely.

What if your puppy got hit by a car in your front yard? Does that mean that neighborhoods shouldn’t allow driving anymore? Or that we shouldn’t build houses near streets? Or people shouldn’t be allowed to have pets? Hmmm, how about you wrap the trees and install a flow device to solve your problem because you realize these inconvenient beavers are fixing problems we’re not even prepared to tackle. Then you can keep yelling “go beavers” all you like.

Radio interview with Susan Allen of Open Range this week, I’ll keep you posted.

Beavers on NPR

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 10, 2011

Beaver friend Brock Dolman was alerted to this weekends beaver news by one of HIS beaver friends! Beaver restoration was discussed in Living on Earth – it happens to feature OUR beaver friend Amanda Parish from the Lands Council who came to dinner and a Martinez Beaver viewing last month!

Eager Beavers Engineer Ecosystems

GELLERMAN: For the past few weeks, Living on Earth has been reporting on the efforts to remove dams around the country. Well, this week, we talk about building them. On a tributary of the Spokane River in Washington state, new dams have gone up – helping to raise the water table, remove pollution and pesticides, attract fish and wildlife, and they cost: nothing.

Because we’re not building the dams, beavers are! Amanda Parrish has been busy with the new dams – busy as a, well, you know! She’s director of the Beaver Solution – a program run by Spokane’s Lands Council to protect beavers, and promote their engineering talents. We caught up with Amanda Parrish while she was knee deep at work.

Go listen to the interview which starts at 24:30.

The next segment was a reading from author Mark Seth Lender, author of Salt Marsh Diary. His description of the beaver and pond was so lovely I had to put it with footage (see below).

More treats, you ask? Well, okay “Oliver”, how about this? Remember the visitor from Utah who came to the beaver festival this year, Mary O’Brien? She just wrote me about this new site they are developing for beaver-assisted restoration. Click on the banner to check it out.

Not impressed yet? Well have a good look around and then stop off at the section titled “Interesting Web links on Beaver”. Hmmm, I wonder what’s there?

Now that’s what I call product placement! Thank for the plug, Utah!