Month: February 2012

Friends and Family

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers February 10, 2012

Three Little Beavers by Jean Heilprin Diehl, Illustrated by Cathy Morrison

These siblings, who live with their parents in the lodge on Beaver Creek, work a great deal. Bevan is an expert – he is what you would call a ‘master’ beaver. He can twist and alter those twigs and mud into perfection every single time. His sister, Beverly, is amazing, too. She can do underwater somersaults and all kinds of fancy tricks. These are two beavers who will grow up to be masters at their craft.

Unfortunately, Beatrix just can’t seem to get the hang of anything. Her mud patches fall apart, she’s not all that good with building, swimming, and, frankly, she’s tired of being around siblings who are better than she is. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what it is that we’re good at; after all, we all have a special skill, but Beatrix just cant find hers. So, off she goes.

Oh what a lovely start to a story! We all need a copy of three little beavers right away! The author is apparently from New Hampshire (not the friendliest beaver state in the nation) so its surprising that when the search for her talent gets Beatrix caught in a trap it happens to be a live trap from folks who never wanted to hurt beavers in the first place!

Not a scary trap, mind you, it’s a trap set by kind people who are just trying to make sure that beavers don’t rip apart their lawn, but they would never hurt an animal. Unfortunately, Beatrix can’t get out of the trap and when her ‘superstar’ siblings come along to save her – they get trapped, too. Who has to save the day? Beatrix, and all of a sudden she knows exactly what she’s good at.

Yeah Beatrix! Well….not really sure what kind of ‘trap’ keeps beavers off your lawn or come to think of it why a beaver would want to bother your lawn anyway…BUT still…great ending and nice moral to the story. The Seattle Pi review makes it sound like a delightful read and I can’t wait to get mine, but I confess to feeling a little apprehensive about this;

And the ‘fun’ extras in the back of the book teach everything from beaver facts to building dams with your hands!

Okay, but if it says they live in the dam and eat fish I’m going to demand a retraction!

Oh and a followup from Wednesday’s post about the Beaver Count in Idaho. I wrote the event organizer Mike Settell and he wrote back, delighted to find fellow beaver friends! He will guest blog about his work in Blaire County soon, but he gave permission for sharing this email:

Thank you so much for the note! I know that I’m not working in a vacuum, but when I see work like Martinez Beavers, well, I just well up.

Right now, I am in the midst of an event, not a festival, but HEY what an idea. Someone wanted to have a conference, but a festival sounds so much more fun. Can we borrow your ideas? Can we pirate your beaver tales and educational materials?

Please keep up YOUR good work and stay in touch.

Happy beavering!

Mr. Settell says that outside his county beaver policies are a little less informed. He says his work can be frustrating because of all the bureaucracy!

Ya don’t say….

Welcome Back!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Festival February 9, 2012

Beavers have returned to Evanston’s North Shore Channel after 10 years.

Staff at the Evanston Ecology Center, 2024 McCormick Blvd., discovered trees with fresh chewing marks and a dam along the bank of the canal last week, said Claire Alden, environmental educator at the center. Beavers disappeared from the area during the construction of waste tunnels underneath the canal in the 1990s, she said. “It’s exciting for us because it just shows the overall improving health of the canal,” Alden said.

Now that’s what I call a warm welcome! Looks like beavers are back in Evanston Canal just up the shore from where our own Wikipedia Rick went to med school! This is actually the very response EBRP had to our beavers! Privately. They knew it was a compliment for 50 years of restorative work, but they never wanted to say so out loud and enter the fray. The late and truly remarkable Hulet Hornbeck told me so himself.

(Beaver Swimming: Ayla Bouvette)

The area has a complicated history with beavers at best, displaying them happily in the zoo, killing them dramtically at Lincoln Park, then eventually earning the protection of countless advocates across country! Still this is a very good sign!

She said she invites Northwestern students to participate in the center’s canoeing programs to take a close look at the wildlife. “I’ll show them exactly where the dam is,” she said.

I’m betting that if she takes 16 students three times out in canoes to show them the dam, that these beavers stand a pretty good chance at being protected. Which is great, because the Evanston needs beavers and Illinois needs beaver education!

Al Dornisch (One Beaver Creek Place- Rachel Buller) Maybe a beaver festival? Or a beaver Art Festival? Looking at the images on this page you can see the creatures inspire! Stranger things have happened! I just read this morning about a Beaver Festival in Georgia! Well, almost.

Beaver Count 2012

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational February 8, 2012

4f314a95d3808.preview-300[1] — Mike Settell

Nature’s engineers: Volunteers will learn what to look for during beaver count

Tammy Scardino

POCATELLO — The public is invited to scout out areas near the East Fork of Mink Creek today, Jan. 28 in order to search for signs of beaver activity.

Interested persons should meet up with members of the Portneuf Valley Audubon group at 8:30 a.m. at the Pocatello Nordic Ski Complex.

Mike Settell, the group’s planning/grant coordinator, will clue people in on what they should be looking for ahead of the official “Beaver Count 2012” event slated for Feb. 11 at 8:30 a.m.

Can I come? Oh, I’m at Mare Island talking about birds and Beavers that day. The grant was awarded to Portneuf Valley Audubon Society. How’s that for enviable? Well, let me start you off with a count of 4! I’m trying to imagine a state where it is generally assumed that beavers are important enough to count. Nope can’t do it. Let me try again. I don’t believe CDFG has bothered since 1920 here, they just apply the regular number “too many” and leave it at that.

We are trying to get an accurate estimate of the beaver populations in the Mink Creek drainage area. To my knowledge, the last census that was recorded for this area was back in 1989. The beavers help cool down the water and help create a deeper pool of water, both of which make for a more favorable habitat for fish. In particular, the Yellowstone Cutthroat benefit from this here locally. The beavers also help improve the quality of water, because the dams they build block debris from moving downstream where the sediment can clog up areas of the river. The animals also help with flood control efforts. Their existence actually raises the water table up so that the river can maintain flood plain connectivity.

Mike is especially interested in helping youth understand and connect with beavers. Hmmm. Well, California may be light years behind Idaho in its approach to beaver management, and have not even the vaguest understanding of their value in the watershed but Worth A Dam has some great ideas for helping kids connect with the importance of beavers. Idaho State! Beaver festival Idaho? Think about it….

Bad Apologies

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 7, 2012

Something about this story from Canada reminds me of that old joke of the young farmer deciding to broaden his hopes by adding chickens to his investments. He goes to the feed store and asks for 50 baby chicks, tucks the box under his arm and walks away. A week later he is back again, asking for 100 chicks. Again he takes the purchase carefully away and disappears. The third week he comes back asking for 200 chicks! The feed store owner can’t help but comment and says ‘wow you’re really liking this chicken career!”

The farmer shakes his head, “It’s not working out at all.” He laments.

“I must be planting them too deep!”

Death of beavers accidental, says Parks Canada

JOE LOFARO /METRO OTTAWA

A Parks Canada official says two beavers that built a lodge near a wharf at the Hogs Back locks were accidentally killed when rising water levels drowned them inside a live trap.

He said Parks Canada hired a licensed trapper with the Ministry of Natural Resources who is experienced with trapping beavers in urban areas.

Area resident Jenni Meldrum claimed she saw kill-traps at the site when she walked her dog on Tuesday, but Mazurkiewicz said that is not true.

“It was not a snare trap,” said Mazurkiewicz.

“Because of the warm weather and the way the beavers had put the branches and so on around their beaver lodge, water built up and they were drowned.”

So beavers built up their lodge because of the warm weather? (Um, that doesn’t make sense. Beavers build up their ‘lodge’ for cold weather.) Can we just assume he means ‘dam’ and doesn’t actually know the difference? And can we assume that any person that hires an ‘executioner’ as a ‘birthing coach’ probably doesn’t care too much about outcome?

Let’s give trappy the benefit of the doubt and say he DID use Hancock or Bailey traps. Any trap that kills is a ‘kill trap’ essentially. That is why a person might visit his trap the next morning. Or why a responsible human wouldn’t use a live trap at all during rain or snow melt because it would be dishonest to say the animals can be safely trapped when they’re going to be flooded before you get around to freeing them.

“We try to be as humane as possible with the trapping, and it’s unfortunate that the beavers died,” said Mazurkiewicz.

Hand me a Kleenex! Your heartfelt regret is gonna make me cry! Is it just me or are you SICK of these people who apologize without admitting they ever did anything wrong in the first place? ‘If I hurt you I’m sorry’. ‘If you misunderstood my intentions I apologize’. “If the beavers drowned its unfortunate.”

PULEEZE!!! Spare us the faux-regret. You wanted these beavers OUT of the way and spent a little extra money asking for live traps so huggers like Ms. Meldrum and her friends at the PTA wouldn’t make your little ‘parks-&-rec‘ kinda life any more miserable than it already is. You knew the water levels were likely to change. You knew relocating beaver in January was a death sentence. You knew that Timmy the trapper would probably kill them anyway. You just wanted them gone.

Just so you know, the dead beaver in that trap could have been somebody’s prize poodle – lets say the wealthy matron in charge of gift baskets for your Christmas parties – you could be in a hundred gallons more hot water than you are now. Think about that the next time you decide not to inconvenience your residents with the horrific burden of explaining how to wire wrap their precious trees.

Domus Castoris!

heidi08 Beavers, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers February 6, 2012

Oh, it’s good to be home! That was too close for comfort! How I missed you! Attentive readers may have noticed that the website was disabled from Saturday morning until last night at 9:15, (but who’s counting) with all sorts of horrific happenings in between, including a starter site from WordPress inviting me to start all over again! When I logged in for help and it said ‘welcome NEW user’ I thought I was done for. Then I couldn’t even log in at all. It was like I never existed.

This time it wasn’t my fault as I’m told the servers crashed and our overlords at Bluehost spent superbowl weekend trying to fix them, then trying to restore all the websites they had erased in the process. During the long, bleak tea-time of the soul where my work for the past 4 years was erased, I wondered what I would do if it was never restored. I wondered if I would start over or simply move to another state and pretend none of this had ever happened. What would you do?

Most of the website was recovered last night, but all links were broken and all links to the website were still dread 404’s. I called this morning and got that fixed so now we can visit the menu bar and the archives. There may still be a few unconnected surprises down the road to deal with, but the worst is definitely over. Sunday I went down to visit beavers and remember how it all began, with no website, no camera – just my curiosity and two beavers. Reed was swimming about at the footbridge and went to sleep in the bank hole under the missing tree. Another yearling joined him. They didn’t seem upset about the server.

What’s remarkable to me, is that after all that happened and all the panicked tech calls all the distressed emails I returned from readers this weekend and all the angst and stress I tried not to feel – we appear to have lost ONE DAY of our 4-year chronicle. One. Saturday’s news.

So in the interest of full restoration and harmony allow me to repeat that we will be at the Flyway Festival in Mare Island next weekend teaching folks about the relationship between beavers and birds. You should stop by and say hi, its a great place to learn about birds, try some new binoculars or hear about the Martinez Beavers!

Saturday 2:30pm-3:30pm

How Martinez saved its beavers and helped its birds In 2007, the town of Martinez was faced with a problem. Beavers had built a dam in a downtown creek already prone to flooding. No one expected the massive public response which forced the city to control the beaver dam, humanely. New wetlands made and maintained by the beavers since that time have created remarkable habitat for steelhead, otter, mink and a variety of new birds. Come see how a community allowed beavers to restore its wetlands, increase the fish and wildlife populations and broaden its bird count. Beavers really are Worth A Dam!

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.is an “accidental beaver advocate” who began filming the beavers in 2006, served on the subcommittee that addressed beaver management and started the organization “Worth A Dam” to deal with their continued care. She presented in Oregon at the State of the Beaver Conference and is currently working with a multidisciplinary team on beaver historic prevalence and the role of beaver-assisted salmon recovery in California.

Oh, and I missed you! Can you tell?