Month: February 2012

Birds of a Feather

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, New Species February 20, 2012

On the Fly – Birds of the Beaver Dam

Jeannine Gendar – Martinez Patch

The people at Worth A Dam, the group that has been advocating for the Alhambra Creek beavers since their 2006 arrival, have film of hooded mergansers at the beaver dam and great photos of other birds that are taking advantage of habitat improvements the beavers have made: kingfishers, cormorants, grebes, and egrets to name a few, and a couple of herons. Okay, technically egrets are herons, but I’m talking about green herons and black-crowned night-herons.

If you missed Jeannine’s beautiful ode to birds and beavers you should hop over to our friends at Patch and savor it. It’s a delightful reminder that the beavers have played a huge environmental and civic role in Martinez, and a good place to begin gathering your thoughts for their upcoming 5th anniversary!

Back at the beaver pond, songbirds too are finding their habitat improved. A 2008 study by the Wildlife Conservation Society found that where there are more beaver dams there are more songbirds. The dams and ponds recharge water tables and improve the health of streams. Taking out pondside trees, the beavers encourage low-growing plants; chewing willows and cottonwoods to the nubs, they stimulate new shoots on those trees. All of this creates cover for songbirds and nesting habitat for waterfowl.

Don’t you wish every the ‘Patch’ of EVERY city had a similar bird & beaver report? Hmm…we’ll work on that. For now THANK you Jeannine! This lovely article prompted two donations this morning from beaver supporters I haven’t even met! What an important look at our creeks through a new lens of feathers and fur!

Speaking of new friends, yesterday I interviewed FS hydrologist Suzanne Fouty of Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, and I will tell you that in addition being thoroughly delightful and dazzlingly brilliant she brought a lot of new words to the habitat conversation, including ‘cross-sectional’, ‘ungulate’, ‘buck and pole fencing’, and WOLVES.

You won’t want to miss this.

Mary O’Brien: Agents of Change

heidi08 Beavers February 18, 2012

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Beavers go Rogue…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Why We Care February 18, 2012

Draft plan to protect coho outlines multiple options

February 16, 2012 Mark Freeman Mail Tribune

Improving side-channel habitat, curbing the urban influences on water quality and getting more beaver dams are all identified as steps for helping wild coho salmon reverse their trend toward extinction in the upper Rogue River Basin.

Ahh now that’s music to my ears! Mind you this is from the state where beavers are still classified as a predator on private lands so they can be killed without a paperwork burden. Well, let’s just say the state’s attitude towards beavers represents some ambivalence and conflict – although not as much nefarious conflict as California.

The plan states that upper Rogue wild coho face a moderate risk of extinction, with rearing habitat for juvenile coho as the biggest single obstacle for recovery in the upper Rogue.

Coho need cool, clean water outside of streams’ main channels to survive and thrive during their 14 months rearing in fresh water before they migrate to the ocean, the draft states.

Improving rearing habitat can be as simple as increasing the numbers of beavers whose construction efforts have proven to create excellent rearing habitat, according to the plan. They can also be as expensive as the multi-million-dollar WISE project meant to make irrigation water delivery more efficient in the Bear Creek and Little Butte Creek basins while adding more water to coho streams suffering from a lack of water in the fall.

The best way this has been described to me was by Michael Pollock while we were driving to Occidental. He said aptly that Coho need time to grow up so that “They fit in fewer mouths and more things fit in THEIR mouths on the way out to sea.” Now that’s an explanation that makes sense and could be right out of harvard business school!

Champagne and cigars all around! Now that’s a beaver promotion to be proud of! Of course all the usual folk wrote letters to the paper saying ACK beavers are RODENTS and cause problems that can’t possibly be solved with our limited brain cells! But if you’d like to add your voice to the argument go here and explain what smart solutions look like.

Tomorrow’s podcast will feature Mary O’brien of the Grand Canyon Trust. Wait until you hear what she has to say about ‘beaver ghost towns’.

Go DEEP!!!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 17, 2012

Town Takes Action to Lower Water Level at Mills Pond

Licensed wildlife officers [i.e. trappers] employed to assist in reducing beaver population.

Looks like the water’s too high at mill pond. Time to kill some beavers again. Apparently that’s the kind of forward thinking they are proudest of in the nutmeg state. Mind you they don’t appear to kill all the beavers, just a few. Because you know, if the dam is high it means the population is getting too large. Get it?

Like that wall in China.

Town officials said some beaver trapping is generally done every few years and said increased water levels were causing drainage problems on Simonds Avenue. The water was also encroaching on the high school property and a little league field, officials said.

“It’s gotten to the point where we had to do something,” Public Works Director Robert Martin said. “We don’t take it lightly and follow the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection procedures.”

The town of Avon has two DEEP certified nuisance wildlife officers that trapped the beavers, Martin said.

Mind you the acronym DEEP does not signify their level of emotional maturity and isn’t a reference to how far they are in the pockets of taxpayer dollars. It refers to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. (Because, you know, the two things just ‘go together’ and who else would you put in charge of beaver non-solutions?) So DEEP came in and killed a few beavers (hopefully a pregnant female with this spring’s kits) and now the town is happy again.

Martin said the action is unfortunate and feels beavers help create ponds that benefit many other species but as the population grows, it’s harder and harder to control the water levels, he said.

“At some point you need to control the amount of beavers in there,” Martin said.

While there are Water Level Control Devices that allow increase flows through a dam site, town officials said they followed the most practical solution.

If by PRACTICAL you mean TEMPORARY, I completely agree with you. Wouldn’t wanna use one of those silly pipes that actually solve the problem when you put on waders and can kill a couple beavers every couple years instead!

Canton resident Gary Laviana said he is upset by the activity. Laviana said the beavers are remarkable animals but agrees that the population was likely too large. But the town should have done a study, with public input, on the issue rather than rush into action, he said.

Laviana said his biggest concern is the pond. He said the water level could drop too much and the town may have done “irreparable damage to the dam,” causing it to fail given the right circumstances, such as a heavy rain.

Gary, Gary, Gary. Let’s have a little chat shall we? Come over here and take a seat. Comfy? Now this may come as a shock, so brace yourself. But sometimes cities don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to beavers. Shocking, I know. Have some water. Better? It gets worse. Sometimes they KNOW BETTER but they still lie, because it’s easier and they can get away with it. They can get away with it because no one challenges them. Because YOU don’t challenge them. Here, watch this video from 45:00 and see what happens when people do their homework. The beavers need you. You, Gary. This pond and every wild living thing in it needs you to learn the facts.

Young beavers disperse before they become adults. So even though the dam is higher it doesn’t mean the population is growing. The only way you’ll be able to tell if the population is growing is to come down several times bundled up warm toting coffee and bacon sandwiches and sit in the shadows and count what you see all night every night. Do you think your city did that?

Me either.

Tomorrow’s GOOD beaver news will include NOAA asking for public comment to restore coho habitat on the rogue river. And I’ll give you a hint about the solution. It has a flat tail.

Oh and guess whose back? full plumage male and 2 females!

Don’t try this at home…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 16, 2012

Sometimes you find a beaver story on the news and it melts your heart and stiffens your sinews with the inspiring community outpouring of support it elicits. And sometimes you read a story with such indifferent, abject, and ignorant cruelty that it turns your stomach with a seismic shudder. But every so often you get the story that does both at exactly the same time, like this from Stallings North Carolina.

Residents in a Stallings neighborhood are upset after a family of six beavers was trapped and killed, and a picture of the carcasses was posted online. People who live in Fairfield Plantation said the beavers had been a part of the neighborhood for years.

“The beaver dam was huge. It was about five feet tall. It was really a good, interesting nature lesson for my grandchildren,” said resident Jeff Hatch.

But the Fairfield Plantation homeowners’ association was concerned about the beavers’ dams in the neighborhood creek. HOA members said the beavers were threatening the hardwood forest, and that flooding from the backup of water was creating a deep water hazard for children in the local park.

Dam. Another dead beaver story, you are probably thinking. Why does Heidi write about such morbid subjects all the time and bum us out? And if that was the END of the story I would partly understand your muted disdain as you moved about your day onto other subjects. The economy perhaps or the primaries….

Ahh but there’s more.

Last week, the neighborhood HOA president sent out a newsletter, informing residents, “We hired a trapper who apprehended six, four of whose mug shots can be seen at fairfieldnc.com.”

The president, Larry Evans, then posted a graphic picture of four of the beaver carcasses on the website, but quickly took it down a day later after a resident complained.

That’s right. The tone-deaf HOA president not only decided to have the heroes killed, he decided to post the photograph on his website. (I guess since that dead tiger photo from Ohio was so popular!) One can only shudder to think what he might have posted after the rat trapper came or after having the sewer line succefully snaked, or a criminal apprehended.

We might as well face it. For the rest of time there will be abysmal people with cell phones who have the kinds of impulse-ridden brains that drive them to do horrific, inhumane things and then that one neuron devoted to understanding how technology works that makes them want to take a photo and post it on line. Look what I did! Isn’t it cool?

Well, if you would like to explain to Mr. Evans how not cool his decision was, you might consider dropping him an affectionate note here. And if that rousing earthquake didn’t just shake your bad mood away, I got this photo from our beaver friend Ian Timothy yesterday.

When beavers bite off more than they can chew!I

This is obviously the work of a yearling or two, trying to prove themselves. I can imagine the scornful looks from Dad saying ‘son, that’s too big’ and Jr. setting his jaw firmly and chewing and chewing and chewing….Mom comes by hours later and says “honey why don’t you try a smaller tree?” and he hunches his shoulders and keeps chewing and chewing and chewing….his brother comes by in the morning and says “aren’t you done yet?” and he says “SHUTUP” and keeps chewing and chewing and chewing….

I will remember this photo as a lesson every time I take on a project that is impossible to finish! Thanks Ian! And episodes 4-7 will be featured at next weekends Colorado Environmental Film Festival. Since Sherri Tippie lives 15 minutes away I know Twigs will be in excellent company!