Late-Breaking Beaver News….

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 26, 2012

Beavers saved by mayor now homeless thanks to city, says community

Neighbours Daniel Burns, Anita Utas and Anne Sturgeon spoke out for the mother beaver and her kits. They said the city needs to think up better ways to handle animals in a new Wildlife Strategy.

Lucky the beaver is missing and presumed dead by Stittsville residents who are looking to the city for a new Wildlife Strategy after workers destroyed a lodge he and his partner made for their two kits.

“I find it very odd that Lucky has disappeared,” said Anita Utas who lives near the storm water pond in a Stittsville suburb where the beavers make their home. “They are monogamous and the adults stay with the kits for two years.”

The beavers named Lucky and Lily have two five-week old kits and became a cause celebre in late 2011 when Mayor Jim Watson said the animals would not be trapped and killed as per city policy.

Well the media has finally come lumbering onto the scene, almost a week after the city ripped out the protection of 4 beavers who reportedly weren’t there at all. The Mayor keeps writing me back as if he were reasonable and interested in actual information, but I know he is making this decision with as much thought as you put into having your knee move when the Dr. taps it with that rubber mallet. Maybe less.

“You can’t come down this path with out finding someone who cares about the beaver,” said Anne Sturgeon, who lives near the site. “I don’t think it’s right they destroyed the home of a Canadian icon on Canada Day weekend.”

Nice! I’m glad to see Anita has some companions in this campaign, its hard work worrying about beavers when a city is determined to pretend they don’t matter. Anita is a beautiful artist who donated a lovely encaustic painting of a beaver to the silent auction, a painstaking process in which

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added.

See? Anita paints with hot wax. That must mean managing crazy lying city council members is child’s play to her. Keep up the good work Anita!

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In other news, I did an interview with Glynnis Hood Sunday who resurfaced after her relaxing sebattical and it will air on Sunday. It’s a great story and a behind the scenes look at her new book which we’ll also be offering at the festival. We were approached by the National Humane Society of the US who said that Stephanie Boyles sent them our way and they wondered if they could use photos from the website! Janet Snyder wondered if all these images of beavers were from free, wild beavers since they were so close? Ha. Yes, indeed, I told her. I’ll let you know what they chose. And if you’re interested in browsing more about next weekend’s festival, check this out! Didn’t Amelia Hunter do an amazing job? Maybe you’ll consider hiring her for your next graphic job!

Oh and speaking of amazing artists have you seen this? By our own FROgard Butler, who, as usual, will be helping children do amazing art at the festival,? Guess what her middle name is?

Fish Run at the Beaver Dams!

heidi08 Beavers, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 25, 2012

This morning started quietly enough. I stood at the bridge and saw a sneaky beaver mudding the new apartment, and the usual green heron on the dam. Jon kayak-cleaned the creek yesterday so I was eager to see how bright and shiny it looked. The craggy lump under the Marina Vista bridge turned out to be a night heron, and after he flew overhead I started to get the feeling that someone was watching me.

I thought it was the little beaver, peering out from the blackberry bushes and going from side to side above the footbridge. Then it crossed the secondary dam and I realized it wasn’t a beaver at all, but in fact two otters, obviously a mom and a pup, making their way around the creek.

Otters stick their heads out of the water so far when they swim. What are they looking for? While I was putting the events together in my mind, another night heron flew over. Followed by three green herons who paused to eat at the footbridge for a while.

Then a king fisher dove from under the Marina Vista bridge, while a croaking great egret made a grand show of landing beside it. At one point I counted 5 green herons. I knew why I was there. Why were they? Obviously some kind of delicious little fish is making an appearance, mating or spawning or migrating. We didn’t see anything large, but the birds and otters knew what they were doing here. Clearly only one soundtrack is fitting for this morning’s adventure, which I highly recommend:

Excitements

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Burrowing Owls, City Reports, Environmental, Festival, History July 24, 2012

Beaver concerns boil over in London at city hall meeting

By Angela Mullins Metro London

Call it a battle for the beavers.

Animal activists, including those on the city’s Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, want to see councillors pass new rules for how the woodland creatures — and their dams — are handled in the city.

“Typically in London, trapping is used. That’s the archaic method,” said Deb Harris, who until last month sat on the committee and is continuing to work on the issue. “Other municipalities have employed non-lethal alternatives successfully.”

No no no, you haven’t gone back in time 5 years and history is not repeating itself. This story is from Guelph Canada. (And I just met someone who explained that this doesn’t rhyme with ‘elf’ just so you know) Ahh it brings back memories though doesn’t it?

Tempers flared in the beaver debate Monday when city staff asked council’s planning and environment committee for permission to continue trapping the animals if they pose harm to infrastructure, like drains.

That, members of the animal welfare committee, flies in the face of a June council decision requiring that administrators trap no more beavers until a report on other means of warding off the creatures is heard.

Coun. Bud Polhill, chair of the planning committee, pulled administrators’ request off the consent agenda, asking that a report come back at a later date with more information.

Members of the animal welfare group, who said they didn’t know about the staff request until late Sunday, hope that means they’ll get a chance to state their case. They’re prepared to make a report, recommending the city consider using tools to ward off the wildlife instead of removing those that pose a threat.

Oh how exciting! Tempers flaring! City staff pontificating! Passionate pedestrians protesting! Are these meetings video taped? I’d love to watch with some popcorn and a nice bottle of this…

Need more good news? The proofs came this weekend for our historic beaver prevalence articles…we are really being published – which means a century of misunderstanding is really about to be overturned!

Little Ones

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, kits July 23, 2012

Brace yourself. This story will make your stomach lurch, your eyes well and your fists clench. Remember the Stittsville beavers that had the misfortune to settle in a storm pond in a suburb outside Ottawa? The city wanted them dead and then Anita Utas got some friends and made some fuss and got them to back down. The Mayor even posed with the giant stuffed beaver they had at a protest. The media went away, Anita got to keep her beavers, and everyone was happy.

Then last month, without notifying anyone who actually cared, the city sent in some ‘experts’ to rip out the lodge during the national holiday long weekend. They said it would ‘discourage the beavers from living there’. They swore there were no kits and all the beavers all got away safely. They said we know beavers do good things some places but not in storm ponds and flow devices can’t possibly work here, so we have to move them out.

So here’s what Anita filmed (press release here) in the pond where there are no kits and the beavers would move along.

For those of you who’ve never seen our beaver kits, believe me when I say these are tiny. When kits are born they are so fat and floaty that they are great swimmers, but they can’t dive without adult assistance. That works like a kind of natural childcare because they can’t get OUT of the lodge (or back into the lodge) unless an older beaver helps them through the plunge hole.

But thanks to the mayor the Stittsville beavers have no lodge. So they are out out way before they’re ready. And worse than this, they have no safe place to sleep in the day, and Anita took this photo of mom beaver sleeping with her kits off the path in the bushes. Dad hasn’t been seen since the destruction, and maybe he’s alive and looking for new territory to move the family to, but with the drought in the region there aren’t many ideal waterways nearby.

Mind you this isn’t out in some clearing in the middle of a forest. This is outside some townhouses in a subdivision and people walk their dogs on the trail every day. These beavers need triage, stat. You can’t relocate them yet because the male may come back. Mom can’t build a new lodge even if you hadn’t made everyone wrap the trees because she’s BUSY full time at the moment. And the kits are way, way, way too young to be of any help whatsoever.

What they need is a prefab lodge to make up for the destroyed home, that can keep them safe, give them some protection from dogs, (and keep dogs safe from them) and let the kits get bigger while you wait and see if Dad makes it back. If you MUST relocate, in about a month bring in Sherri Tippie and move the family to safer ground, and then sit down with Anita Utas and Donna Dubreuil and work out a plan to never…ever…ever do this again as a city. Send your protests and persuasions here: Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca; shad.qadri@ottawa.ca;Nick.Stow@ottawa.ca

And mean it!

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Now if you need a better kit story to get that Stittsville taste out of your mouth, you might read this where some 4-H moms and their kids rescued a couple orphaned beavers

Orphaned beavers rescued

KEESEVILLE — Kerri Lamarche heard something strange one evening when she took her children to play at a small pond near their house.

“It sounded like a newborn baby crying,” she said. It turned out to be to be two beaver kits.

NOT EVERY DAY’

The children won’t soon forget the experience. “It was fun,” Kylie said. “It’s not every day you get to save a beaver,” Kylie said.

“I have something to remember it for,” Tanner said. He brought the small log that one of the beavers had chewed on to school to show his class.

Tanner loves animals and seems to have a knack for caring for animals other than beavers, too. He won first place in novice showmanship at the Clinton County Fair for his handling of the Lamarches’ Silky chicken Fuzzy.

Kerri and Samantha lead their children’s 4-H Club, Keeseville Cozy Creatures, and on Aug. 17, the seven-member group will make a trip to the refuge center and present it with a donation they are now collecting.

“They’ve got their whole group interested in these beavers,” Kerri said.

Disconnect

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 22, 2012

This colorful map was released by NOAA on Thursday. It show that 60 percent of the United States is under Severe Drought conditions and nearly 40 percent is in ‘exceptional’ drought. With unrelenting heat in many of our farm states, there is talk of a possible food shortage in the growing belt. Talk of the Nation devoted an entire program to the issue Thursday, and farmers called in to talk about hauling water, draining aquifers, and dying crops.

Guess what nobody talked about?

Of course the irony is that if we could superimpose a map showing the areas where the most beavers are most routinely killed I’m sure they would fit together PERFECTLY. I wrote the host and guest and NPR to let them know. Looking at that map it should be on everyone’s lips:

The not-so-surprising-update to Anita’s beaver lodge destruction in Stittsville is that she DID see a kit last night. The city has assured her there were none and they are busy ripping out whatever the beaver parents try to build so maybe you want to send word to the good mayor who says flow devices never work in Storm ponds? Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions says he’s installed plenty. Call 613-580-2496 or email is Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca.