Month: April 2012

APHIS – AERIAL

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental April 30, 2012

Yesterday I told you about part one of Thomas Knudson’s meticulous take down of wildlife services. Today makes yesterday’s articles look like cocktail hour. I wasn’t sure how effective this reporting was going to be until I heard from my parents taking with their neighbors the upsetting reports. My dad is an 83 year old man who walks a mile to get his “Bee” every morning, and then gossips with the other residents about what’s inside all the way back. Other examples of its effectiveness? I heard from the newly formed group at beaver-killing El Dorado Hills that they bought copies for all their members and are having a meeting to discuss the news.

Stories make a difference, and this story is going to shine a lot of light on a government agency that has thrived in darkness for a long time now. You really should go to the Bee’s website to see everything yourself, because there are four new stories today and some documents from his FOIA. But a summary of what most got my attention follows.

Wildlife Services’ Deadly Force Opens Pandora’s Box of Environmental Problems

Here, in rugged terrain owned by the American public, a little-known federal agency called Wildlife Services has waged an eight-year war against predators to try to help an iconic Western big-game species: mule deer.

With rifles, snares and aerial gunning, employees have killed 967 coyotes and 45 mountain lions at a cost of about $550,000. But like a mirage, the dream of protecting deer by killing predators has not materialized.

“It didn’t make a difference,” said Kelley Stewart, a large-mammal ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The article goes on to describe in detail the vast array of devices they use to kill coyotes. From instruments invented in the dark ages to the apex of modern technology – no purse strings remain unopened and no holds are barred for the fauna-fiends at APHIS. Snares, Cyanide, aerial shoots!

Aerial gunning is the agency’s most popular predator-killing tool. Since 2001, more than 340,000 coyotes have been gunned down from planes and helicopters across 16 Western states, including California – an average of 600 a week, agency records show.

“When they take that plane up, they kill every single coyote they can,” said Strader, the former Wildlife Services hunter who worked with aerial gunning crews in Nevada. “If they come back and say, ‘We only killed three coyotes,’ they are not very happy. If they come back and say, ‘Oh, we killed a hundred coyotes,’ they’re very happy.

“Some of the gunners are real good and kill coyotes every time. And other ones wound more than they kill,” Strader said. “Who wants to see an animal get crippled and run around with its leg blown off? I saw that a lot.”

There is even a quote from the UC professor I implored for help a million years ago about our beavers. I believe his compassionate response mentioned something about hats, but that’s blood under the bridge now…

“I call it the boomerang effect,” said Wendy Keefover, a carnivore specialist with WildEarth Guardians. “The more you kill, the more you get.”

In California, researchers have found that having coyotes in the neighborhood can be good for quail, towhees and other birds. The reason? They eat skunks, house cats and raccoons that feast on birds.

“The indirect effects (of predators) are often more important than the direct effects,” said Reg Barrett, professor of wildlife ecology and management at the University of California, Berkeley. “We just don’t know enough about what’s going on.”

This follows a nice discussion of the value of predators, noting how they tend to keep a herd healthy by killing off weak or sick animals. although it’s not as nice as this:Go to 2:33 for the very best description you are ever likely to hear of why predators are important.

Part three of the series airs sunday and will focus on nonlethal devices. I’m hoping he talks about flow devices!

The Beaver Revolution Will Be Interrupted…

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 29, 2012

A coyote hunts rodents in the Sierra Valley north of Truckee. The animals generally pose little danger to cattle.

We interrupt this beaver broadcast for the new alarming tale of Wildlife Services from reporter Thomas Knudson, who contacted me before last year’s beaver festival and wanted to talk about APHIS statistics on beaver killing. He sent several FOIA reports he had obtained and wanted to talk about the parts of California where the most beaver are recourringly trapped. Later he visited Mary and Sherry of the Sierra Wildlife Coalition to talk about bears! Then he toured Elk Grove and learned all about their beaver contracts, which prompted this oblique article when I was dying to be able to talk about his discoveries. Without further ado, let’s go grimly onto the first of Knudson’s three part article.

Since 2000, its employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West. They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves.

And in most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures were killed, or why. But a Bee investigation has found the agency’s practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.

Got your attention? Good, it should. Go read the entire, chilling article and brace yourselves for part two and three. One of the things that most interested Tom in our discussions was the ‘accidental’ killing of otter that occurs by the thousands when placing traps for killing beavers ‘on purpose’. I connected him with our new friends at the River Otter Ecology Project to chat about its implications.

“We pride ourselves on our ability to go in and get the job done quietly without many people knowing about it,” said Dennis Orthmeyer, acting state director of Wildlife Services in California.

Basic facts are tightly guarded. “This information is Not intended for indiscriminate distribution!!!” wrote one Wildlife Services manager in an email to a municipal worker in Elk Grove about the number of beavers killed there.

Just ONE of the many comments that got my attention in the paperwork he sent me. I’m sure there were memos of a similar nature circulated in our city, lo these many years ago. Probably circulated still with a big red underline when some yearling turns up in a tributary nearby.

Armadillos, badgers, great-horned owls, hog-nosed skunks, javelina, pronghorn antelope, porcupines, great blue herons, ruddy ducks, snapping turtles, turkey vultures, long-tailed weasels, marmots, mourning doves, red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes and ringtails. Many are off-limits to hunters and trappers. And some species, including swift foxes, kit foxes and river otter, are the focus of conservation and restoration efforts.

“The irony is state governments and the federal government are spending millions of dollars to preserve species and then … (you have) Wildlife Services out there killing the same animals,” said Michael Mares, president of the American Society of Mammalogists. “It boggles the mind.”

One critical loss occurred two years ago when a wolverine, one of the rarest mammals in America, stepped into a Wildlife Services leg-hold trap in Payette National Forest in Idaho. It was the third wolverine captured in agency traps since 2004 (the other two were released alive.) “Shot wolverine due to bad foot,” the trapper wrote in his field diary, which The Bee obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“Oh my God, that is unbelievable,” said Wendy Keefover, a carnivore specialist with WildEarth Guardians, an environmental group in Colorado. “Wolverines are a highly endangered mammal. There are very few left. Each individual is important.”

Goodness, go read the whole article, including the accidental trapping of pets and the instructions to remove collars from dogs in cities and bury them quietly. Then plan on getting very, very angry. Jimbob, Bubba and Vern obviously knew his article was coming because they commented on its liberal ‘everything hugger’ elements early on. Add your informed comments to the mix, because we saw what happened in elk grove and we know what happened to the acorn woodpeckers at Rossmoor. Oh, and in your travels, don’t forget to check out the amazing interactive map.

Don’t forget Part B of the article about all the otters that are accidentally killed in beaver traps! I can think of a GREAT way to make sure that never happens again!

No podcast today either, as my sadly limited time to keep prompting interviewees (who have agreed to do it but just keep postponing) has offically dried up. There are three more interviews I wish I could still do, and if they work out you’ll be the first to hear. But we’re in alarming beaver festival preparation season now and we have an event with 20,000 girl scouts coming up next week so lucrative radio career will have to wait.

This Just in: Beaver Chew Trees!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental April 29, 2012

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/meriden/article_d454d384-8fe8-11e1-8fbf-0019bb2963f4.html — A beaver swims in a pond between Beaver Pond in Meriden and Silver Lake in Berlin Wednesday afternoon, Aporil 25, 2012. Beavers have built dams in the area and caused flooding into surrounding woodland areas. The pond has risen nearly five feet. (Christopher Zajac / Record-Journal)

Beavers fell trees, ‘raise havoc’ near Meriden’s Silver Lake

The beavers are back — with a vengeance. They’ve expanded Little Silver Lake — which is on the Meriden-Berlin line, across the train tracks from Silver Lake — to about four times its previous size, and not everybody is happy about it.

City Councilor Trevor Thorpe. “Quite honestly, (beavers) are not the cuddly, nice creatures cartoons make them out to be,” Thorpe said. “They are actually quite destructive. They’ve raised havoc down here. They have been down here for well over a year now.”

Listen to Trevor! Beavers aren’t cuddly. They’re destructive. They’re like furry organic bulldozers – well not like bulldozers because bulldozers mean development and parking lots and money for the city – and beavers don’t bring money. They’re WORSE than bulldozers. They’re like wrecking balls! Forest fires! Tornadoes!

Got that?

After a walk across a large field and down a trail scarred with ATV tracks, Thorpe pointed out the beaver den, a large hut offshore made of wood and mud. A great blue heron perched atop the hut for a few minutes before flying off in the direction of Silver Lake.

Nearby, a beaver swam in and out of the small trees where the shore used to be. It slapped its tail on the water a couple of times before retreating back to the hut.

From where the train tracks split Silver Lake and Little Silver Lake, the small side appears to have a higher water level, which Thorpe said is unusual. It is unclear if beavers are clogging the culvert or if debris is in the way.

While beavers may be causing headaches for some humans, wildlife is taking full advantage of the larger pond.

A swan sat on a nest at what used to be the edge of the swamp. Huge trees near the edge of the trail stand dying, their bases completely under water.

Gosh that sounds destructive! Swans and blue herons and beavers! I bet there’s otters and turtles and frogs too! Those rotten beavers and their wicked wetland ways! Thank goodness Trevor came on the scene just in time! No telling what kind of wildlife riffraff might have moved in!

Is it me or do you get the feeling this reporter was touring the area, struggling to keep a straight face, and all the while thinking: are you insane? Destructive? Look at everything the beavers created! This pond is a Connecticut Oasis!

It’s a nice article and given last Saturdays reminder from Massachusetts that flooded trees in beaver bonds create great blue heron rookeries, it couldn’t be better timed. I think some folks get letters.

Oh and here’s a video of the not-at- all-cuddly-villain in question in case you’re looking for them on the post office wall.

(I actually hate this video because these folks apparently found the orphan, took him for a photo shoot and then dumped him about a mile from where he got lost, but it IS remarkable footage. And the not-at-all-cuddly thing is SO cute that I apparently cannot watch more than 25 seconds without bursting into protective tears!
Good luck!

Κάστωρ

heidi08 Beavers, Educational April 27, 2012

Capture — Leda And The Swan mosaic at Aphrodite temple, Kouklia, Cyprus.

Why on earth is there a mosaic of a naked woman with a swan on a beaver website? Why indeed! Allow me to explain myself. Perhaps in your many visits to this dark beaver forest you have gleaned that CASTOR is the latin name for beaver. You may have thought the name familiar, and something to do with mythology. It is also familiar from the old references of Castor oil – (made from the interestingly toxic castor bean and nothing whatsoever to do with beavers except it wistfully got its name when all the real castoreum supply dried up – as in no more beavers because we killed them all.) But Castor was also a famous son or Zeus.

So Castor = Beaver. Are you with me?

Okay, a diversion. One thing I have always enjoyed about the Greek Gods is that they were filled with flaws and human weaknesses. They were greedy, wasteful, petulant, vain, and lustful. (Oh how lustful!) Which kind of makes sense to me since sometimes the inexplicable things that happen on earth are easier to understand if you believe that “God” makes mistakes. Say children dying or endless wars or the success of the cruel, these kinds of things all make more sense if you believe that the Gods controlling our fates can be vindictive, impulsive or vain, instead of an all-knowing benevolent deity who always does things for a good reason.

So Zeus was the CEO of all the God’s, and like many CEOs he was constantly on the prowl and looking for new skirt to conquer. Now he happened to have a very very jealous wife (think “Dynasty” with Beatrix Kiddo overtones), who had a bad habit of working out the insecurity raised by his infidelity by destroying the babe in question. So when a woman saw Zeus was interested in her she was naturally terrified for her safety and hightailed it away. Sure he was a handsome bit of godly stuffing, but who needs her hair burned off or her eyeballs plucked out for a roll in the hay? There are plenty of fish in the sea.

Zeus was frustrated by these fears; though he cared little about the skirt’s safety ‘afterwards’, he wished very much that Hera would accept his offer of an “Open Marriage” and let him do whatever he wanted without scaring his playthings. Since that seemed to have an ice cube’s chance in Hades of happening, he developed an alternate strategy. He transformed himself into another creature, and came to the woman in disguise.

This time as a swan.

Zeus appeared as a swan to Leda and either seduced or raped her, depending on the telling (I suppose some men find it so difficult to tell the difference). The subject created an opportunity for some of the raciest art in history, drawing the tumescent brush of such greats as Michael Angelo and Leonardo Di Vinci and even raising eyebrows today! We know Leda was endowed with children from this visit, including the famous Helen of Troy and these children were hatched from eggs. In some tellings she also was impregnated by her husband that night and those children were born mortal. Regardless of which tale you’re reading, two children that hatched from the subsequent egg were the twins Polydeuces (Pollux) and CASTOR.

Castor = meaning “beaver”, or “he who excels”.

Castor and Pollux were fast friends, and heroic adventurers.Castor was a trainer and tamer of horses and Pollux an excellent boxer. They fought bravely in battle and their likeness is usually shown on horseback with a white helmet – (said to be a piece of eggshell leftover from their unusual birth!) They traveled on the argo with Jason and his Golden Fleece. At one point the waves threatened to sink the ship and fellow passenger Orpheus played his harp to soothe them. The storm ended and stars appeared on the heads of the twins, thereby making them the protectors of sailing and seamen for evermore. This morning I read that they were also considered visible in “lambent flames” (which I had to look up and you’ll be happy to know means ‘flickering’).

So when Castor died in combat, Pollux was bereft and went to his father for comfort. Zeus allowed both men to share incomplete mortality, living partly in Hades and partly in Olympus, and immortalized as the brightest stars in the constellation Gemini.

Which brings us to tonight’s sky and the point of this very strange post:

In the meantime, tonight, you can also use the waxing crescent moon to find a famous pair of stars this Friday night, April 27. They are Castor and Pollux, the beacon lights of the constellation Gemini the Twins. They’re sometimes called ‘twin’ stars even though the kinship of these stars is more imaginary than real. Why twins then? These shimmering luminaries are named in honor of mythological twin brothers, Castor and Pollux. Looking for Gemini? Here’s your constellation Pollux is the brighter of two Twin stars. Castor is six stars in one!

Here’s another thing I never knew: Castor is actually six stars – not one ! Three sets of binary stars that take turns showing their brilliance. A Colony of stars, if you will. So look towards the heavens tonight, and find our namesake and think about “he who excels”. Oh, and here’s another coincidence. Guess what loves to nest on top of Beaver Lodges?

Just sayin’

Follow-ups

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental April 26, 2012

Our young stop-motion films and beaver hero went to the city council meeting at St. Matthews last night about the beavers in Draut park. It sounds like it went excellently, here’s his summary of the evening.

Update!

The council meeting went great. I got up and talked for about 15 minutes, they asked quite a few questions, and told me how beavers destroy trees. One of the councilmen is in charge of the parks, and another was a biologist and they were very interested in it, the parks guy is going to watch Mike’s DVD and I am going to be meeting with him in a couple weeks at the park and we are going to figure out what we are going to do, he was very open to the idea of a flow device, (if we even need one).

I’ll let you know if anything else happens, but overall I think meeting was very successful. All of the council members, (except the above mentioned) said I did a good job with the presentation.

Great work Ian! We are rooting for you! Good for Mike for donating a DVD! And great work beaver protection S.W.A.T. team that appeared from everywhere to fan out over roof tops and behind parked cars until we had them surrounded! Please keep us posted. Since they are trying to protect a culvert, he better start the DVD here….

The next follow up isn’t nearly as cheerful. Remember the beaver found in the slurry pitt in Devon that was assumed to be the third ‘missing beaver’ from Derek Gow’s farm? Well, uh guess what? It isn’t Igor!

George Hyde, operations manager at Dartmoor Zoo, which took in the creature, said they were “99 per cent” certain that this is a different beaver.

“The male that got away was 35 kilos,” he said. “He was known for being a big beaver. “This one is only about 15 or 20 kilos. At an educated guess he’s about two or three years old. It’s a real mystery where he’s come from.”

Ooh! Ooh! I know! Call on me! Looks like there’s a beaver underground in the UK! Knowing that the population is too superstitious to believe the science and too paranoid to accept the change required to protect their creeks and streams, Castor Fiber has taken matters into their own hands – er – paws and started reproducing on their own! And its been happening for two or three years already! (Apparently doing it on your own is so much easier than having a team of scientists looking over your shoulder every minute ruining the mood!)

This particular beaver is a youngster so it’s fairly reasonable to believe that mum and dad are not too far away,” said Mr Hyde.

“The fact he was found in a farmyard suggests he was exploring and looking for territory of his own.”

Yeah, about that…Well the British country side wasted no time in abandoning their stiff upper lips to enjoy a good panic. Beavers breeding in the wild for the first time in 400 years! Giant rodents rampant on the countryside! Snakes on a plane! Jeremy Goodwin from the Free Tay beaver group summarized it dryly and made me snork coffee yesterday morning, saying: “Zombie beavers! They are coming to eat children’s brains.”

You’re thinking we exaggerate? Just check out this from This is Cornwall yesterday!

Beavers, for example, damage river banks and trees, alter water courses and eat, or at least hinder, wild salmon.

Why bother with the facts when it will sound so true to so many readers? I am reminded of this famous introduction 7 years ago.

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