Month: March 2012

Keeping Promises

heidi08 Beavers March 17, 2012

I was going to “go meta” this morning and write about the trials and tribulations of keeping this blog, scouring for beaver stories, dealing with browser inconsistencies, correcting spelling errors and combating ongoing html eruptions, but when I was looking for something else I came across this. Maybe its all the excitement from yesterday’s Scotland news, but since I still can’t get through the first two paragraphs without tearing up I assume its worth posting again.

We were once them,

and now are their custodians.

They know we are different

and their eyes tell us to keep our promise.

Geoffrey Lehmann: The Animals

This poem leaped at me from the pages of this issue of The New Yorker. I was just quietly minding my own business waiting for a Dr.’s appointment, when the beavers sneaked into my magazine and asked about my promise. Saving beavers is hard work. Sisyphus hard. Sometimes in the complexities of being educator, tour guide, researcher and booking agent, it becomes more difficult to maintain my primary role as custodian. Maybe I’m here writing the web page instead of down at the dam at dawn, or preparing for the next talk instead of sneaking down in the evening.

I remember, back when Skip was installing the leveler, and had taken the dam down by three terrifying feet, we were all in a panic that the beavers would leave. The first night a crowd watched while all (then six) beavers worked on repairing the dam, ripping out tulles and even taking sticks from the lodge. There were panicked phone calls and very upset supporters, and I went to sleep with an ache that I might never see my beloved beaver family again.

That night I dreamed I was standing at the shoreline of the Marina and saw the entire family swimming away in a line. I knew in the dream that they were relocating, that they had given up on this habitat and all our intrusions. In the dream I understood that they would never be our beavers ever again, but I was so grateful that I had seen them one last time. They were all together, no child had been left behind or parent scattered in the confusion. And they were all right, swimming away free and strong…and I could say goodbye.

I don’t know if that dream was my promise or not, but I know it felt like a commitment to see this labyrinthian journey through to its sweet and sad conclusions; to let these animals touch and reshape my life; to let the people who care about them build new pathways for understanding. Nothing looks the same as it did that night 18 months ago [five years ago], but the beavers are weaving stories and I will keep my promise.

Heidi Perryman July 26, 2007

Victory in Scotland!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers March 16, 2012

Good news for all our friends at Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay!

A decision to trap escaped beavers living on the River Tay has been reversed by government ministers. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) ordered 16 months ago that any beavers on the Tay should be captured and “rehomed” at Edinburgh Zoo. But the Scottish government said a decision on their future would now be postponed until 2015.

That’s right! No zoos or culls for the scrappy D-I-Y beavers who scoffed at the fancy knapdale reintroduction and made a plucky go of it on their own! The minister just announced this morning that they’re safe until 2015. Gentle-gentry heroes Paul and Louise Ramsay rallied an awesome multi-disciplinary and internationally-voiced team of supporters, and in the end the ministry decided it was harder work to convince all those people that they needed to track and remove all the unintended beavers than it was to simply keep an eye on them. Now he’s recommended they use science to keep thinking about their impact!

The entire story is told properly on Radio Scotland here starting at 2:20. But the broadcast was recently put forth by Peter Smith using photos from the group’s facebook page. There’s a couple you should particularly enjoy!

Because we are the most timely beaver broadcast network on the planet (what makes me so sure? Well chiefly because we’re the ONLY beaver broadcast network….at the moment…I expect grand new developments will follow!) this sunday’s interview will be with beaver hero Paul Ramsay! How timely is THAT? Don’t miss the rousing tale of castor fiber activism in the Highlands!

Congratulations Paul and Louise and all our friends at Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay. Your best problem ever comes next: choosing a new name!

Beavers Rule – Dinosaurs Drool

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, History March 15, 2012

A love of flowers allowed the group of mammals to blossom during the dinosaur era, research has shown. Multituberculates flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaur's reign Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2114978/The-secret-peaceful-beaver-like-mammals-lived-alongside-dinosaurs-20-million-years.html#ixzz1pCLmnwbw

Or something. A recent article in Mail online tells us that beaver-like creatures lived along side dinosaurs, adapted to their menacing ways by nibbling flowers and even outlived the cataclysmic event that killed them off.

Revealed: the secret of the peaceful beaver-like mammals which lived alongside the dinosaurs for 20 million years

When the dinosaurs ruled the earth, some mammals actually flourished – living alongside the lizards for 20 million years.

And the secret of the creatures’ survival was not huge fighting prowess – the rodent-like creatures adapted to eating flowering plants.

They even survived the ‘mass extinction event’ which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago – thought to have been caused by an asteroid or volcanic activity.

See while everyone else was being big and terrifying (or little and fast) the mutituberculates decided that rather than chase down a meal every day they would consume a renewable resource that would be there again for them tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. In fact, since they were pruning these flowers and dropping their bits in all over the countryside, the flowers actually increased meaning that even when things got scarce for everyone else they weren’t scarce for our flower eating beaver-like heroes.

And the moral of this story? Use renewable resources or go extinct. Makes sense to me.

Although not known to many people, they have a 100 million-year fossil history, the longest of any mammalian lineage.

What eventually wiped them out? Horses and rodents, which we’ll talk about later. Examples like Castoroides the giant beaver that roamed the earth.

These Things I Know to be True…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, In the News, kits March 14, 2012

Baby animals are cute. Tiny kittens, fuzzy rats, baby wombats. Lets face it: baby everything’s are cuter than what they eventually grow up to be. We were cuter when we were babies. Baby animals are cute even if the adults versions are scary or scaly or carnivorous. It may be in the evolutionary best interest of baby animals to be cute so that their parents want to see them and take care of them – and that if their parents get lost or killed we agree to take over! I’m prepared for the ubiquitous “awwww” factor when viewing baby animals. This ain’t my first rodeo and I’ve been around the baby animal block a few times before.

But this is different.

No bunnies or puppies could prepare a person for this image. Take a moment to look at that startled face, curled tail, the webbed toes , and those little fingers clutching her hand. This is a baby beaver, called a kit and recently donated with her two sisters to the Chehaw Wildlife Center by the good folks at DNS (who probably killed her family). The article says they were found when the ‘dam’ they were living in was destroyed, so clearly we’re dealing sophisticated beaver minds.

I’m saying “her” because of their names, Molly, June and Penny, but there’s actually no telling if they knew enough to check the gender before they slapped the names on them. They clearly didn’t know anything about their development because this article says they’re “6-8 weeks old” – which unless they’ve been starved for 4 of those weeks, is absolutely impossible. I would be very surprised if they were more than 2 weeks old, and looking at how wet they are in the next two photos it is clear that they aren’t producing (or using) their own castoreum and no one at the ‘education center’ is waterproofing them or drying them off in the mean time.

Two of the kits will remain in their care to be used in educational programs – which, if the caretakers come to realize that these are babies and need to nurse for 6 more weeks and be treated with waterproofing or at least dried off with a cozy towel then they might live long enough to help. Certainly Georgia needs education about the role beavers play in the ecosystem and their importance for rivers and streams. Georgia is the state where the Clemson Pond Leveler was invented lo these many years ago, and certainly has a few folks who know a thing or two about beavers. But its also a state where they paid a bounty for tails and encouraged folks to keep them in their freezer until officials could get around to paying for the deaths. So it’s safe to say they need some education.

No word yet on the fate of third kit, and that’s a little creepy in itself. I will write them with some information and hope for the best.

UPDATE: Good News from the Responsible Folks at Chehaw….

Thank you for your resources! I know our Education Coordinator, Jackie, has been in contact with several zoos and rehabilitation centers (including your own) trying to make sure our beavers receive the best possible care! As an AZA accredited Zoo, they have received both expert veterinary and daily care. They will indeed play an important role in educating the public about ways to coexist with beavers and other native animals. I will make sure Jackie receives these links.

We received the beavers over four weeks ago and were told they were about 2-3 weeks old at that time. Before deciding to acquire the beavers, we carefully considered their husbandry needs as both kits and adults. While I cannot attest for their care before they arrived, I can assure you that all of their needs are now being met. They are being bottle fed around the clock with rehab-recommended formula (from the care sheet on your website). Their bottle feeding schedule and implementation of solid foods was researched through a number of different zoos and rehab facilities. They have even begun to eat solids including Mazuri Rodent Pellets, carrots, and apples. The current temperature here in southwest Georgia is about 80 degrees during the day, and after each swim, I can assure you they are thoroughly towel dried. They are regularly checked by our staff veterinarians and have been accurately sexed as female. As for the third kit, she will find a wonderful home at another zoo with a colony of beavers. Hopefully all three will help educate people about living with beavers.

Feel free to call us if you would like to further discuss the care of our beavers. I will leave you with the contact information of our Education Coordinator. Thanks for your care and concern!

Not to be accused of regional bias, LK offers this local example of beaver misinformation in yesterdays SF Gate photo identification contest, in which we are assured the photo is of a beaver “Swimming on its back”

To which I can only reply that this is a ‘beaver’ in much the same way as the Iraq war was an excellent use of American resources and after 5 years of publishing articles on the Martinez Beavers the SF Gate should know better!

And some really good news comes from Oregon where Jimmy Taylor (perhaps the one of two folks at the USDA with a favorable impression of beavers) will be presenting on thursday about beavers at the Alsea Watershed Alliance in his two hour talk titled “Understanding beavers here in the Beaver state.”

And this final note from Guelph where the mayor wrote me back and assured me she had lead volunteer groups to wrap trees in the past and would continue to do so in the future! Nice to be published in Canada!

Robust

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 13, 2012

If you ever had the odd [mis] fortune of being responsible for several children at once, you must have noticed that there was that *one* child who would always cause dramatic misdeeds and even when confronted at the very moment his hand was in the cookie jar or her fingers were on the kitten’s tail or actually removing money from your wallet (what the Catholics would call In flagrante delicto) and we would more generally describe as caught RED-HANDED said child would look at you with a mixture of innocence and indignation and say “What????“

Apparently this philosophy has figured heavily in the civic minds of St. Matthews, where they spent most of yesterday writing back folks that they

A) had been misunderstood and falsely accused
B) knew nothing at all about what happened
C) knew something about what happened but surely never harmed the beavers in any way
D) upon reflection may have ripped the dam but never flattened the lodge and
E) oh you mean flat area in the photo with the bulldozer tracks on it?

At no point did a responsible politician, with the sincerest interest in his community, step gallantly forward and say, yes I requested this thing be done for the good of our citizens. Or widows and orphans. Or whatever. It honestly made me think of this sketch, which when I saw it so many years ago I assumed was an exaggeration. I would encourage you to watch it again count how many times Palin’s character is willing to lie, obstruct, distract and generally excuse his behavior. I count 12 if you don’t include the possible effort to derail the complaint with a gender argument at the beginning.

Obviously, we can’t all respond like this grand master to an assorted-chocolate-box of bald-faced lies. Sometimes robustly delivered lies can take our breath and leave us sputtering in disbelief, looking around for a witness, or wondering if we possibly misunderstood. Obviously It’s going to require the spirit of John Cleese to get these folks at St. Matthews to fess up to what was probably a phone call to public works and a discrete request to ‘Bubba’ to take care of the problem, knowing full well what he would be likely do.

In the meantime your heart can be consoled by this remarkable tale of kindness to beavers, weirdly from the middle of beaver-killing Nova Scotia, where a family of beavers moved into the ditch behind a River John home and was apparently welcomed with open – er- apples!

The video actually makes me a little anxious, but their heart is clearly in the right place and the story could soften public attitudes in a very beaver phobic region….sooo…..