Month: November 2011

“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 30, 2011

Or maybe how many fingers it has…or whether there actually IS a right hand at all. Remember the beaver-dragonfly dilemma of Upton Massachusetts? They wanted the dams gone and the beavers dead but the ponds maintained to preserve the rare dragonfly. I heard from Mike Callahan that he had been out to present to the commission and they were half in favor of hiring him and half against. I guess they both got their way because this mornings article makes as much sense as any series of opposite contradictions I’ve ever not-read.

Upton commission decides to lower water level in war on local beavers

Conservation Commission members said last night they will give a beaver control specialist the go-ahead to lower the water level on the 30-acre bog by a foot over the next two weeks, 6 inches per week.

Michael Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Southampton will install a $1,280 pond leveler, a pipe system that pumps water out while keeping beavers away, over the next two weeks, but that is only a short-term solution, Conservation Commissioner Marcella Stasa said.

“Once the level is down, we have to trap all the beavers, because their inclination is to bring the level up to where it was,” she said.

Where to begin? I was excited at the beginning of this article but my hopes were well and truly dashed by the end. Seems one of the commissioners is a former trapper, which, well why shouldn’t he be on the conservation commission? Things that are dead are conserved, right? – well, preserved? After they finish paying Mike for getting in the near-freezing water and installing the pipe the former trapper has volunteered to pick them off one by one.

Commissioner Tom Jango has volunteered to trap the beavers free of charge, commission Chairwoman Christine Scott said.

Mind you, that quote is from the chair herself, which means the deep confusion in this committee runs from top to bottom. Are they keeping the beavers? Killing the beavers? Draining the pond? Not draining the pond? No one knows, certainly not the reporter who is not nearly as curious about this whole zen cohen as you might expect. Don’t you love how the flow device installation is a short-term solution but trapping is the real answer? I guess Upton thinks these are the LAST BEAVERS and once they kill off these castor-dinosaurs there will never be any others. Who has the heart to tell them?

The gnarled old trapper. The bright young scientist. The peacemaker who won’t take sides. I can’t help thinking that the commission meeting must look something like this.

10,600

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 29, 2011

"Trapping is not about money, Neil Olson of Bethel said. "The day it turns into work. I quit. I just love trapping." Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Well-known Bethel trapper is one of only five left in the state

Daren Slover: Sun Journal

Olson started trapping as a kid with his father, something Olson is seeing less and less of. “Kids have so many more choices to choose from now. So many more opportunities,” said Olson, the third base coach for his grandson’s baseball team, the Southern Maine Black Flies.”Kids are getting so far removed from nature,” worries Olson.

Olson is doing the best he can to keep kids interested. “My best days trapping are when my grandsons go with me. Trapping teaches kids how to work. Teaches them responsibility,” Olson said. “When you leave a trap, you leave a responsibility out there. The next day you have to go take care of that trap.”

Olson has kept a handwritten daily record of his harvest since 1973. He has trapped 10,600 beaver, more than 3,000 red fox and 1,400 coyotes.

“Trapping is not about money, Olson said. “The day it turns into work. I quit. I just love trapping.“

10,600 beaver in 39 years? That’s 271 beaver a year or about a family a week. Gosh, what else can I possibly say?

Beaver Moon

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental November 28, 2011

Audubon Society holds ‘Beaver Moon’ hikes in Antrim

By KATHY CLEVELAND ANTRIM – Deep in the woods of New Hampshire, a busy family is preparing for winter, making their shelter tight and making sure there will be plenty of food for everyone.

The adults work through the night, so under the full moon it should have been easy to see the adult beavers packing mud over their lodge that will harden to a rock-like material no predator can break through, or bringing slender trees and branches that will be their winter food supply.

But we didn’t see any beaver, or any other animals, for that matter.

We were on a 1-mile hike through the dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary around a mill pond on what was billed a “Beaver Moon” hike by the New Hampshire Audubon Society in honor of the November full moon.

There is just about nothing I like better than a story about a beavermoon hike lead by Audubon. When bird lovers become beaver friends the results are a fantailed epic. Just look at our own list of bird-minded beaver friends, which includes Mt. Diablo Audubon, Golden Gate Audobon, the Burrowing Owl Consortium, Sonoma Bird-ing and the Flyway Festival!

When I wrote to thank the author, she said that no one from the conservation group quite rises to the status of beaver-believer, but its a start. Audubon has been noticing the beaver-bird relationship for at least 60 years so we can only assume the rest will come.

Like a child who loves to see her name in the paper, this is transparently my favorite part of the article: under the fun facts about beavers in the right hand column.

The beaver has transformed Alhambra Creek outside San Francisco from a trickle into multiple dams and beaver ponds, which in turn led to the return of steelhead trout and river otter in 2008 and mink in 2009.

Remind me to thank our friend Wikipedia Rick! They say they’re publishing my letter to the editor in response and for a special beaver edition “Where’s Waldo?” moment, you might spend some time looking for the capybara photo they included by mistake! (Hint: it’s missing an epic tail.)

Looking for some nice beaver-bird footage, I was reminded of this quirky Green Heron who would stretch his neck like an egret to keep beaver kits from bothering his fish. Enjoy!

Why WI?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 27, 2011

Patricia Randolph’s Madravenspeak: Rather than slaughtering beaver, we should protect this builder of wetlands

American Indians called beavers the “sacred center” because they create the cradle of life that supports biodiversity, rivaling the tropical rainforests. When beavers were almost exterminated by 1900 for the beaver hat fad, most wetlands were destroyed with them. Now, in some parts of the country, beavers survive at 10 percent of their numbers before Europeans settled here, but not in Wisconsin.

The DNR promotes beaver genocide with unlimited trapping. Trappers sell dead beavers for $13 each. In 2008, the Department of Natural Resources estimated that there were 66,800 beavers in the entire state. During the 2008-09 winter, trappers reported killing 37,425 beavers, and in 2009-10, killed another 31,049, totaling 68,474. The DNR calls this regulated trapping. They cannot call it responsible science.

Thirteen dollars for a dead beaver! That’s quite a bargain. This article from the heart of beaver-killin’ country in Wisconsin was sent by our new friend from Georgia. Its heart is in the very best place but its science needs a little bit of work. Hang with us a little while, Patricia and we’ll set you up with everything you need to know. The funniest part of the article was the section about the Trout Unlimited Chair asking for folks to vote to help eradicate beaver.

Kim McCarthy, chairman of Trout Unlimited Wisconsin, posted a letter and DNR beaver survey to the membership on their website that explains beaver destruction. He urges members to respond to the survey “to let the department know that we feel strongly about continuing to remove beaver from trout waters.”

See if we can keep the beavers away and keep draining the trout numbers by removing free trout-producing dams they’ll be more need for fisheries where they can grow their own with good american tax dollars. And if you think its unlikely that DNR relies on fish hatcheries to pay their salaries, then I invite you to do a random search for employee by subject. There is one wildlife biologist in the entire department that is supposed to be an expert on beavers. There are 20 such experts on trout including two for PR.

The author goes on to discuss the cruelty of trapping and the alternatives of flow devices, but if I were her I’d go straight for the pocket book. How much does the average wisconsinite pay each year for fishery maintenance and reintroduction, while the state is avidly killing the furry engineers that would do the work better, every day and for free.

This wholesale cruelty to beavers and destruction of our most valuable and diverse ecosystems defies all science and is baffling — unless you understand the DNR. Eighty years of killing-license funding has biased the agency to an obsession with destroying our wildlife and the vital natural systems they create.

A solution urgently needed is to legislate general public funding in lieu of killing-license bias. Fair participation of all citizens would create a vibrant Wisconsin, enriched with the beauty of living wildlife as the “sacred center” of wild native nature.

Go read the whole thing. Thanks Patricia for picking up the beaver gauntlet in WI. We’ll be happy to provide you with support and ammunition!

Here there be Dragon-flies…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 26, 2011

Ahhh! What a conundrum! The town of Upton, MA has this wet boggy area that turns out to house an amazingly rare species of dragonfly. Apparently its so rare that they don’t even want to say its name. Why the secrecy? Well, they say they don’t want folks to come out and take samples, but I’m guessing it could also have to do with the fact that wetlands supporting them is being maintained by some beavers they want dead.

Town officials are doing a juggling feat in trying to prevent flooding on several major roads by trapping pesky beavers in a local bog who contribute to the problem, while at the same time keeping water levels there high enough to protect endangered dragonflies.

On Wednesday,town officials went with habitat protection specialist Lynn Harper to Southboro Road Bog, a 30-acre plot that is prone to flooding, but also home to a rare species of dragonfly that requires a wet habitat to survive.

Picard said the Department of Public Works will replace three old, partially collapsed culverts under Southboro, Westboro and Northboro roads this fall, and will also try to trap more beavers, as their dams contribute to flooding.

“We really need to get rid of the beavers because even if we reduce the water level, the beavers will work diligently to dam it up again,” he said.

Penko said beavers started to be a problem about seven years ago. Since that time, they have built additional dams atop two human-built dams that were likely constructed in the 19th century.

See we like dragonflies, but we hate beavers, so what’s a city to do? At the moment they’re paying a trapper to take out the latter and promising to apply human efforts to maintain the water level at a comfortable height for the insect. I’m curious. If the beaver came 7 years ago, when did the dragonflies appear? I’m guessing it was sometime after that. Never mind that Upton is barely an hour away from Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions who could control their pond height without harming the road or the dragonflies or the beavers.

The story reminded me so much about the teaching tale of the watercress darter in Alabama. Remember that story? Huge lawsuits were filed because the city removed some beaver dams that destroyed habitat for the very rare fish. Will Upton learn from Alabama’s mistakes? Will it take the time to see the solutions right in front of them? Or will they continue on their current path without a moment’s reflection? I’m curious to see how this story plays out. Hopefully someone will want better options.

One beaver has been trapped already. Will their supply of ignorance run out before their supply of beavers? We can only watch and hope.