Month: June 2012

Stittsville Eviction

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 1, 2012

Let’s say, (and why not?) that you’re the mayor of a nice little suburb to the west of the nation’s capital in Canada. You are generally well liked, get free lattes and get an excellent parking place. When the note crosses your desk that there are some pesky beavers in a drainage pond you barely register as you pass it along to public works to take care of it. Then you go back about your business, ribbon cutting the new showroom or securing school lunches or what have you.

Then SHE pops up in your email. Anita Utas. One of those animal-hugging artists. On your phone. In your paper. On your evening news. “Save the beavers” she starts saying, spouting nonsense like wrapping trees and flow devices. A neighbor says “kill the beavers” and since its one against one and one of them agrees with you, killing wins out. You hire the trapper and that’s that. Then she’s back with friends. SAVE THE BEAVERS! They repeat! Louder! If this story sounds familiar, it should. You can reread about the Stittsville beavers here to refresh your memory.

Imagine the mayor’s surprise when they returned with the media and cameras!

You start getting mail from all across Ottawa, then all across canada, you even get something from some crazy town called Martinez California 2300 miles away! You get tired of answering the phone to angry people complaining about killing beavers. You do what any normal man would do under the circumstances. You’re no fool. You know better than to blow against the wind. You save the beavers.

For a while.

You show up for the photo op with the rodent. You accept the gratitude and adulation from the animal lovers. You post a sign over your office that says “move along, nothing to see here” and you write back all the letter senders and say ‘don’t worry’. Then you wait and bide your time until early summer when the kits have been born, pick a national holiday long weekend when everyone will be out of town, and send your goons in on a friday afternoon to rip out the lodge.

This is the email I received from Anita Utas yesterday:

Ottawa – Today, Friday, June 29th, around noon, about a dozen City workers descended on the beaver lodge at Paul Lindsay Park Pond, home of Lily and Lucky and possibly two kits that were born in May. City workers tore out the lodge and removed the branches. Nothing remains.

The beaver had not been blocking pond culverts or taking down any trees. Many people enjoyed seeing them at dawn and dusk, eating the overabundance of lily pads, which is their favourite food.

One lone beaver is trying to rebuild the home. It is not known whether the mother and possible kits escaped unharmed, or whether they were killed during the destruction.

She was away when it happened. Someone called her to the scene where there was no lodge, no sticks, and a struggling beaver trying to rebuild. What an outrage! For the first time it almost makes me feel sorry for public works. City officials make the heinous decisions and send the dirty-work-crew out to implement it and get all the blame. Somebody knew this was the lodge, and it was a great way to get rid of the beavers after you persuaded Anita to wrap all the trees so they couldn’t possibly build it again. Who ever passed along this order knew did it to get what they wanted, avoid bad press and save what matters – the drainage ditch.

For the sake of our younger readers I’m going to assume that everyone sleeping in that lodge leaped safely into the water when branches started moving. I’m going to reassure myself that those beavers, like most all beavers, had bank holes nearby they had scoped out previously and retreated there and are taking their time while they think over what to do next.

Then I’m going to write letters. You should to. They deserve massive public shame for this underhanded eviction which is so cowardly and cruel it almost makes Martinez look saintly by comparison. You can email mayor Watson here (jim.watson@ottawa.ca) and councillor Qadri here (shad.qadri@ottawa.ca). Really. I know you’re busy, and it’s the weekend, but take 5 minuts and do it. Beavers may be nocturnal but apparently the constant application of daylight is the only thing that saves them.

Send them my regards.

Jealous?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 29, 2012

Dam man’s beaver behavior

by Johnny Boyd, Aspen Daily News Columnist

Beaver ponds catch silt, keeping it from our gold medal trout streams. The silt rebuilds our meadows — a renewal process man can’t wrap his mind around since we seldom renew anything. Beaver ponds retain water. Drive up Brush Creek Road this week and you will notice the only green areas in a sea of brown grass surround the beaver ponds. It’s insane to allow all that water to escape simply because a beaver cut down a few aspen trees.

I spoke with Dr. Werner von Heineken about the beaver and why it is so persecuted. “Ze beaver iss a creature that causes jealousy in man,” he explained through a thick Vulgaristani accent. “Man doesn’t like competition when it comes to engineering nature.”

This clever article from Johnny Boyd gets right to the heart of the matter and with the device of “Dr. Heineken” quickly exposes our inexplicable reluctance to share with beavers. I thoroughly enjoyed most of its 10 paragraphs although that last two left me a little pale. I wrote him my appreciations but said that he forgot to mention salmon, birds, wildlife and all the creatures that depend on beaver-created wetlands. Oh, and also climate change!

The good doctor has a point. Man considers himself to be the smartest animal in the forest. Still, we love to do dumb things. Worse, even if we know what we are doing is idiotic, we continue as if we can’t do anything else — like that carcinogen spewing thing. Nature evolved the beaver to do exactly what is needed in the habitat it is indigenous to, and our inability to coexist with the creature is more about our shortcomings than the beaver’s.

Since the article’s from the Aspen Daily News he shouldn’t really waste his time with Dr. Heineken. He should drive 150 miles to visit with Sherri Tippie in Denver and she’ll tell him everything about beavers he needs to know and then some. Of course I would add that “Dr. Perryman” has noted that men also dislike beavers for being so thoroughly domestic – going home every morning to the same woman year after year. By killing them they feel they have touched the mustang wildness missing in their own lives.

But that’s just the shrink in me talking, I’m sure. I can’t compare with Dr. Heineken.

Kingfisher Update

Your kingfisher has a fractured mandible. Shannon was performing surgery yesterday. If she wasn’t brought in she would have died as she can’t eat on her own. Other than that her weight is good and she should survive. Lindsay is participating in the beaver festival this year.

Missing the point…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 28, 2012

Belgrade will continue removing troublesome beaver dams

By Mechele Cooper: Staff Writer Morning Sentinel

BELGRADE — The town will continue removing troublesome beavers that build their homes in culverts, a problem that has gotten worse this year and can lead to problems for landowners and costly road repairs.

“Beavers have become a serious problem,” said Selectman Ernie Rice. “Not only are they a hazard on roads when they flood, but also they do a lot of damage.”

Rice said the town has put up barriers to discourage beavers and are sensitive to people’s feelings toward the animal. But beaver dams in the culverts can cause flooding and washouts that can lead to costly road repairs, he said.

Road Commissioner Kevin Hawes said the town has had a number of problems with beavers returning to places they were removed from.

This just in. Beavers block culverts. Even though it annoys us. They could, of course, build a long dam across the inlet or outlet and leave the culvert entirely protected so that our roads drain the way they were meant to drain. But do they, even once, think of our traffic needs? No! Beaver selfishly think only of the most direct route to getting the pond of their dreams. They look at all their options and choose the culvert to build a dam in because its easy. EASY! Those lazy, slacker rodents! Then the good souls at Belgrade Maine (who know that bleeding hearts don’t want them killed) pay a trapper to pick up the rodents and move them somewhere else! And the ungrateful creatures come BACK! How’s that for thanks?

MacCabe charges 50 cents a mile to move a beaver to another location. His invoices include fees for catching a beaver, baiting traps, the removal of animals and transporting them.

For example, May 12 to 14 removed a beaver on Knowles Road and charged $170, including $35 to trap the beaver and mileage to and from the job, and then 70 miles to the release site.

From May 15 to 21, MacCabe dealt with several other beavers, catching and rebaiting traps and bringing them to other locations. His invoice for those jobs was $340.

Just curious. How did you get the DNA results to know that they were the same beavers that came back? You know beavers are hard to tell apart, so it wasn’t just looks right? I mean because if you were going to pay 340 to move some beavers out of habitat that looks so alluring that new beavers move IN and set up shop then that would be kind of a waste of money. Gosh, is that what you did? Hey, I know what you could do instead! Talk Mr. MacCabe into building one of these at that pesky culvert, or you know, every culvert connected to a waterway with a nice stand of trees.

Then the beavers can stay and keep other beavers away. The culvert will keep flowing freely and the road won’t flood. The huggers won’t be mad at you, the transit authorities will be pacified and since this will last a good long time you might just save some money for next time! Wouldn’t that be a great idea?

“We’d rather not kill them. Most of the time we relocate them to another floodage,” Christianson said. “We have people on waiting lists who prefer to have beavers on their land.”

Christianson said there are non-lethal beaver management methods available, including a mesh wire fencing at the culverts’ outlets. His department prefers to work with landowners and highway departments to find out why beavers build in particular spots year after year.

Maine is obviously a LOT smarter than Martinez. There are people who want beavers on their land! They don’t want to kill them! They even know about ‘wire fencing at culvert outlets’. Wait a minute. What’s that called when you know the right answer but keep doing the wrong thing over and over again and hoping for better results?

I’m sure it has a name.

Replay

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers June 29, 2012

Two years ago we anxiously pushed through the last sad hours of mom’s life and an unbelievable drive to UCD with her body packed on ice to deliver it for necropsy. Then we anxiously went to the dam after sundown to see what would happen. I thought we should remember it all again. It seems like it was a million years ago and just exactly yesterday, but I guess that’s how dramatic losses feel. The strange thing is that the two year old who adopted the kits seemed so much older than the three grown kits we have now, although they are exactly the same age.

Last night we went anxiously to see what happened with our newly “orphaned” kits. The day’s loss was heavy on our hearts but we were worried that our kits could face a tough road ahead. I had a long conversation with Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife about whether our kits were old enough to stop nursing. She assured me they were. And then we watched and waited.

The biyearling (one of our three kits from 2008) has been hanging around the pond more than usual. S/he used to head downstream for long forages on his own. The last few days s/he has been much closer to home and there have been several protective tail slaps seen. This is a sleek, handsome, nearly adult beaver. Last night they approached the area where the kit was feeding and we were hopeful for a full on acceptance of him or her as parent. It didn’t happen at first.

The biyearling brought branches from the dam into the lodge. Then went up on his own and gathered some from the area of the felled tree and brought those in as well, like a suitor bearing daisies to win the girl. He or she swam around protectively and made their presence known. Then we saw this. I’m leaving the audio in on purpose so you can hear the kit whining for care and attention. I wish the sounds of human weeping weren’t also audible, but it was a long day and the whole scene was heart-wrenching.

I realized at this moment that our kits have been “acting older” than they are because of mom’s health. Their foraging and being out on their own was merely an attempt to get food that they couldn’t receive with her. With mom there, even sick, the yearling felt less responsibility to step up and take care of them. Now that mom was gone, our babies were acting like babies again. And our yearling was becoming a parent.

We haven’t heard adult-directed whining for a week or more. Or seen a beaver back-ride since that first film of baby and mom. It’s as if our kits were given a fresh start last night. They get to be cared for and babied. And their dependency activated remarkable parenting in the yearling. It was truly lovely to see.

The light was fading fast, but in the above you should dimly be able to see two kits perched on the biyearlings back and carried into the lodge. Our babies can be babies again, and in the span of 24 hours our biyearling has become a remarkable parent. Surely some of this process is instinctual, activated by the need of the kits and the corresponding need to nurture. But some of this parenting must be learned, because our biyearling had the very best possible teacher on how to be a mom.

The teacher herself would be so proud.

Remember the Maine!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational June 26, 2012

Hard rains have forced Lega’s beavers out of their lodge at the park and downstream to a pond behind the post office. Her dedication remains undaunted and she sent this copy of a recent letter to the city engineer.

As you have probably deduced, the Shorey Park beavers abandoned their lodge when it got flooded and have now built a dam and an odd sized lodge across Willett Brook next to the Post Office. This is causing considerable flooding to the rear of the Post Office. Although this new wetland has already attracted a flock of mallards, its location is obviously problematic. Instead of trapping the beavers for relocation or killing them, it is my hope that the town will consider using a flow device to stop the flooding. These devices require only wire fencing and piping and volunteers are willing to do the installation if the “go ahead” is given. Why not give it a try?

On another note, the beavers are not likely remain in this immediate area for long because by winter they will need to build a lodge with access to deeper water that remains unfrozen so that the food that they have stored on the pond’s bottom will be available. Since there has been a sighting of a beaver crossing Main Street by the Corn Shop Trading Company and another report of one on Depot Street, it is safe to assume that the beavers (probably a pair) are indeed looking for more permanent lodging.

Again, it is my hope that Bridgton’s Downtown Beavers will be protected and valued as a beneficial species. In Bridge Creek, Oregon, the National Park Service, NOAA-Fisheries, and the Bureau of Land Management have collaborated to build structures (vertical wood posts driven into the stream bottom) to encourage beaver dam creation so as to “accelerate stream recovery and improve production of the creek’s salmon population”. Beaver ponds in downtown Martinez, California, led to the return of steelhead trout, otters, herons, mink and tourists. Corvallis, Oregon has for many years been in constant battle with beavers whose dam building activities periodically flooded the softball fields in Sunset Park. Earlier this year, the city decided on a truce and is installing water leveling devices in order to “try and see if we can live with the beavers”. Countries such as Belgium and Sweden are known for their safari tours that highlight beavers, their dams and lodges.

After the most recent Ice Age, the industrious ancestors of Bridgton’s beavers were partly responsible for creating the landscape that we so love in the Lakes Region. Surely we can learn to co-exist with this watchable wildlife species by becoming more tolerant and by limiting beaver damage. Again, water leveling devices and wrapping favorite trees with galvanized welded wire (placed 6-12 inches out from the trunk and stand up about three feet high from the base of the trunk) are solutions that work in many communities..

The following websites, www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress, www.beaversww.org, and www.beaversolutions.com (read the testimonials) are excellent resources and I can also be reached if you have questions or need referrals.

Lega Medcalf

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed! And Lega you win the beaver advocacy prize for the year. Honestly, you’re the best!