There are some things in life that nothing can quite prepare you for. Sure, you’ve been around the block and heard most of the beaver jokes ever invented (and most of the dick jokes for that matter), but then you see something like this and it truly takes your breath away. The idea that Park Rangers wake up every morning and put on their pointed hats and BD uniforms to go to work at Beaver D is awesome in ways I can barely imagine. That busloads of high school students and traveling senior citizens would snigger their way through the grounds is certain – the noise must be like a burr of insects, constantly humming in the background.
From hero to punchline and a park that traces its journey. He doesn’t sound like a bad guy, (grading on a curve) but from this day forward I’m going to believe in Karma. Clearly the irresistible ridicule of this name is in my mind a fitting consequence for a lifetime of beaver trapping. If I can resist a pilgrimage, I’m thinking that all future, potential, would-be trappers should view it as a warning. “Don’t let this happen to you!” From now on when people make remarkably stupid beaver decisions I am just going to post this picture and we’ll all know what it means .
Look at his whiskers! That beaver is cold and has been cold for a long long time! I found this by accident over the weekend and have been marveling at it ever sense. His warm breath must have been adding to that snow-sker for hours.
The first winter I spent with Jon was in Germany and supposedly the coldest weather they had seen since the war. The temperature dropped to 25 below (celsius). It was so cold that you could spit in your hand and make an icecube (if you were so inclined). We went strolling through the snow and laughed when his mustache froze.
But it didn’t freeze as much as that.
If you need something else even more fascinating and cold, check out this amazing tale of the ‘brin-icle’ from the new documentary Frozen Earth.I love the time lapse photography at the end with the star fish and sea urchins scurrying into the ice. I couldn’t understand at first why they all seem eager to die, but have decided there must be an easy stream of sluggish plankton to feed on at first. Must be your best meal ever before it’s your last.
When Brock was rooting for farming truffles, he unearthed this amazing report from ODFW (Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife). Allow me to preface by saying that the states display increasing amounts of beaver-stupid as you move farther down the pacific coast, so Oregon is smarter than California, but not as good as Washington. In what used to be called schizophrenogenic parenting, Oregon beaver are protected on public lands and listed as a predator so they can be killed without paperwork on private lands. There is clearly strife among the policy makers because that compromise is making no one happy. Oregon recently changed their policy to allow beaver relocation but they were frustrated that no one seemed to be doing it – (mind you it requires such things as getting permission from the neighboring property owners 6 miles up and down stream!) But still, they wanted to learn more about the attitudes towards beavers.
Many fish and wildlife biologists and land managers understand the critical role that beavers play in improving aquatic and floodplain functions, and have initiated reintroduction efforts to restore beavers to many areas in Oregon. Beavers are beneficial because their dams help to create wetlands and habitat for fisheries recovery, and some people enjoy the aesthetic value of seeing beavers. To realize these benefits of beavers, there is an urgent need to address current and potential future conflicts between landowners and this species. This is important if measures are sought to reintroduce beavers into unoccupied areas, especially on private lands.
So Oregon wanted to know how Oregon felt about beavers and they brought in Dr.’s Needham and Morzillo to do a massive survey and report on landowners. They sent 5200 questionnaires to all 4 regions of the state and received back 1512. (Which, if you were a grad student doing your dissertation, is a response rate you’d be pretty thankful about.) They asked questions about attitudes towards beaver, experience with beaver, problems with beaver, feelings about beaver and knowledge about beaver. Apparently people in Oregon on the whole feel better about beaver than people on our city council, because their general attitude seemed remarkably tolerant, even when it came to questions about what kind of problems justified lethal action.
Landowner Incentives and Tolerances for Managing Beaver Impacts in Oregon
Pretty remarkable considering the news I cover about beavers every day. There were things in this paper I hadn’t ever considered, mainly that there’s a whole division of wildlife ecology that has to do with peoples attitudes towards wildlife. Whoa! Psychology and Ecology Combined! Maybe my life will make sense after all. Of course they also wanted to know who had seen one:I don’t know about you but I’ll eat a BUG if 43% of the 432 Eastern region folks saw beaver more than 10 times in their lives. That’s 185 people. For comparison, I’d bet there aren’t 185 people in all of Martinez that saw the beavers more than 10 times, and our beavers are the most visible creatures that ever ate willow. I have met a host of people that THOUGHT they saw a beaver when they actually saw a muskrat, or an otter or a turtle. I’m willing to believe 185 landowners in Eastern Oregon thought they saw a beaver more than 10 times. Does that count?
Interestingly the East had the most experience with beaver and historic damage from them. The glowing feel-good of Portland’s “hypothetical” beavers seems to give way when they were talking about “actual” beavers who gnaw trees and flood properties.
Landowner Incentives and Tolerances for Managing Beaver Impacts in Oregon
I’m just guessing but I believe these numbers would look very different in California. “Beaver damage is major” would probably top 70 percent in some areas, certainly 525 Henrietta St. It does seem like people are predisposed to ‘like’ beavers, from story books and cartoons and only find out they dislike them later when they cause problems. Hmm, that’s worth thinking about. Oh, and find me those three fellas that are afraid of beavers because we need to talk.
Landowner Incentives and Tolerances for Managing Beaver Impacts in Oregon
This is an interesting piece of the puzzle. I think the concerns to property are lower than they should be and the concerns for disease and pets are higher than they should be. People don’t really know what they’re dealing with do they? Beavers can cause serious problems. Look it up. People need to know what to worry about with beavers so they know what to do to prevent it. And they need to stop wasting time with stupid concerns.
Landowner Incentives and Tolerances for Managing Beaver Impacts in Oregon
An abysmal number of people have taken preventative action with beavers and an even fewer number have done so humanely. This was a stunning chart that must have made ODFW bristle. Note that they didn’t include “Shot the beavers” as an option I guess because that’s illegal and people might not want to get in trouble or feel spied on. But you know it happens.
Okay this is my favorite part of the whole survey.
Ahhh basic beaver 101. The authors called this “knowledgeable” about beavers. So 38% of these folks who have never wrapped a tree or seen a beaver, believe that beavers eat fish. Of course they do. Heck nearly HALF of the Portland population does!
Well, I guess it’s not so surprising. Shh, and brace yourselves, but I went to school for a long, long time and when the beavers first came to Martinez I can remember a conversation with Jon on the bridge where I speculated they must eat fish sometimes. I can barely remember thinking it, and I quickly learned otherwise, but it just seemed impossible they would spend all that time making “hatcheries” and never reap the rewards.
Well, beavers don’t eat fish. They don’t catch fish. They don’t have the stomachs to digest fish. I have sat on this video a long time because I don’t want to confuse anyone. But today you’re ready. You can remember that they are vegetarians BUT they aren’t stupid and some deals are too good to pass up.
In proving foresight may be vain;The best-laid schemes o’ micebeavers an ‘menGang aft agley,An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis’d joy!Robert Burns1785
Beaver friend Brock Dolman is getting ready for an address to the Wild Farm Alliance, and he wants to include information about how truly useful beavers can be to water and soil management, so he went surfing through the annals of history and look what he found!
That’s right, straight from the USDA a recommendation to start beaver farms along the Canadian border. That’s the father of APHIS who eliminated about 30, 000 beavers last year from California alone, not to mention all the ducks they shot at airports and woodpeckers they kidnapped from Rossmoor. Why on earth, you ask, would they recommend beaver farms? Let’s let the once-evident knowledge of USDA answer that question for us.
through storing water in the reservoirs along mountain streams, they would do much good by helping prevent floods and extensive erosion, by increasing the stream flow in dry weather, and by improving the fishing resources of streams and lakes.
Ahhh the former wisdom of the ages. Sniff. How we miss you. Don’t worry. It gets better worse. Nice to know they weren’t THAT smart about beavers….otherwise I’d get all depressed and wistful. Let’s let them keep talking. I’m sure we’ll get to something familiar eventually.
Beavers, the Survey has found, can be kept readily in a fully controlled if not a fully domesticated state. Because the animals are comparatively clumsy and slow walkers, they rarely go more than 20 or 30 rods from their home stream.To confine them to a narrow strip along a certain stream, therefore, it is only necessary to fence across the stream a short distance above and below their colony, running the fences at right angles to the stream about 30 rods on each side.
Now that I recognize! Expedient ignorance posing as research to reinforce the already foregone conclusion! Some things never change! “Don’t worry potential farmers! Beavers never wander! There’s no wind in the desert and we have pages of science to prove it.” I have to wonder what the a fore mentioned “survey” consisted of. Do you suppose it involved a researcher with a clipboard?
“On a scale of 1-5 how likely are you to walk overland away from your home stream? Choose 1 for Very Likely, 2 for Moderately likely, 3 Not Sure, 4 Moderately Unlikely and 5 Very Unlikely.”
Whoa. I’m having a Test Construction flashback. Give me a minute until the Likert dust resettles. Whew, that was close. Okay, let’s leave the cobwebbed shelves of graduate school and visit the halls of beaver research. First of all what’s a rod anyway? It’s an archaic measurement of distance that equals 16.5 feet. So 20-30 Rods would be about 300-400 feet. Hmm. That’s not very far. I thought beavers could go farther than that. What do beaver experts say?
or beaver can cross watersheds by overland travel of up to several kilometers. In a study of 46 dispersing beaver in New York, 74% initiated dispersal downstream, 35% moved to neighboring colonies, and females moved farther than males (Sun et al. 2000).
Baker, B. W., and E. P. Hill. 2003. Beaver (Castor canadensis). Pages 288-310 in G. A. Feldhamer,B. C. Thompson, and J. A. Chapman, editors. Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management,and Conservation. Second Edition. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Several kilometers, a bit imprecise but lets say that means between 5-7. That translates to about 4 miles. Or 21,120 feet. As opposed to 350 feet. Which makes USDA wrong by a power of 60.
That seems about right.
Anyway thanks for the delightful read, Brock and good luck taming the wild farmers! And btw if you’re having a hard time choosing that special gift for the beaver lover on your list, check out these adorable pillows. The knitted snugglers sold on Etsy in 2009 but there must be more out there.
Today’s beaver business takes us from the latte strewn streets of Seattle to the briney lobster traps of Maine. We are coast to coast here at all-beavers-all-the-time. Check out this delightful up “aren’t we noble” update from Seattle’s publicly owned power company. Apparently in addition to providing electricity City Light also purchases and preserves wetlands to protect salmon AND BEAVER!
With this acquisition, the Endangered Species Act Early Action Land Program is now responsible for over 2,712 acres to date, protecting fish habitats (mostly for Chinook salmon, but also protecting beavers, bull trout, steelhead and other species) and from pollution and destruction.
As we pass over the united states at a great speed I will just stop briefly over Minnesota to say that the reporter of the Humongous beaver article wrote me a kindly letter yesterday, ( which was surprising since I am fairly sure I was not trying to be kind). I thanked him and wrote back that there are precious few beaver advocates out his way and if he ever wanted to join the club we’d save him a seat.
Okay now onto Maine, where they celebrated the end of leftover turkey with the charming old trapper who never did it for the money and just wanted to be out in nature. Remember him?
It is unfortunate that Maine doesn’t know any other way to teach its children about nature; how to make them responsible and manage wildlife, other than by trapping. Since beavers create wetlands, augment fish and bird populations and increase wildlife, allowing these animals to maintain their habitat would improve the region’s game count rather than deplete it.
For the record, there are plenty of old-time trappers who have learned new tricks about humane wildlife management, and who make a better living solving problems than killing them.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D., president and founder, Worth A Dam, Martinez, Calif.
There are some things in life that nothing can quite prepare you for. Sure, you’ve been around the block and heard most of the beaver jokes ever invented (and most of the dick jokes for that matter), but then you see something like this and it truly takes your breath away. The idea that Park Rangers wake up every morning and put on their pointed hats and BD uniforms to go to work at Beaver D is awesome in ways I can barely imagine. That busloads of high school students and traveling senior citizens would snigger their way through the grounds is certain – the noise must be like a burr of insects, constantly humming in the background.
