Victory in Amherst

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational August 21, 2012

Amherst no longer killing pesky beavers

This weekend I received a phone call from Amherst New York where they were getting ready for their own city council meeting about the plan to trap beavers gnawing memorial trees. She wanted advice for how to present their opposition and how to offer reasonable solutions. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife was on the case as well and had been talking to the council and reporters. Well today there’s good news:

Amherst to stop trapping, drowning beavers

The Town of Amherst will no longer trap and drown nuisance beavers in response to the public outcry against what one animal rights organization called “tax-funded torture.”

At the board’s meeting Monday, representatives with the Animal Advocates of Western New York and Animal Allies of Western New York criticized the town’s “inhumane” treatment of beavers and said they would be glad to work with the town to find non-lethal methods for dealing with the tree-taking dam builders.

Whoohoo! Great work all! I was told the meeting was a 3:00 pm and hard for anyone employed to attend, but obviously they made it work. I remember how excited we all felt after the November 7th meeting, lo these many years ago, and I’m a little jealous of the enthusiasm they must be enjoying right now! They even had their own nay-sayers to play the comic villain of the melodrama:

Some Amherst residents who live along the water, however, say they didn’t have any issue with beaver trapping. Lenora Canna, a North Forest Road resident whose property backs up to Ellicott Creek, said she had three trees worth hundreds of dollars taken down by beavers since she moved into her home 17 years ago.

She asked the town for help last year in getting rid of the beavers damaging her private property and the town refused, she said. So she began wrapping her trees in barbed wire and hired a trapper with her own money. He placed a trap out in her backyard and caught a large 55-pound beaver within a couple weeks, she said. Damage has been mitigated since then.

Canna said she’s sorry the town is ending its own trapping practices. Beavers are active all year long, and have damaged both her trees and bushes, she said.

“They are a nuisance,” she said. “They are a glorified rat as far as I can see.”

Boo! Hiss! Throw popcorn! I love the scene where the villian ties the beaver to the railroad tracks and then it gets rescued just in time! Ohhhh wait, wrong movie! Still, what a great end to a fantastic tale (tail?) and it all started because of a very interesting verbal slip from the DNR employee who went on camera accidentally mentioned that trapping was humane because the beavers ‘drown’.

Obviously he never got the memo that said in bold letters “Always lie to animal rights groups by saying that conibear traps INSTANTLY CRUSH the beavers so they feel no pain’. Maybe he was sick that day. Maybe he had just stepped out. Maybe he is a Worth A Dam secret supporter. Whatever the reason once he said ‘drown’ – for an animal that can hold its breath for 15 minutes – the jig (as they say) was up!

With these changes, she said, “people can come to the park and think of the beauty and peace of the park and not think of the beavers struggling to get to the surface and drowning.”

Once again, a thundering round of applause and a very deep bow for Amherst and for Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife! Congratulations from all your friends in Martinez!

“Night of the Living Beaver”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 20, 2012

Beaver dam has Medfield neighborhood warily eyeing rising water

Sigh. Massachusetts again. Complaining about humane trapping restrictions again. Shorter answer to the city of Medfield that has been robustly resisting information and all offers of help on the mysterious subject of beaver dams in late summer:

“It’s like a horror movie.” That’s how one Stagecoach Road resident described the stinking, algae-covered lake threatening to engulf her property, thanks to a beaver dam on the Stop River near South Street.

Yes, exactly like a horror movie. Screaming, helpless victims scattering everywhere. Sawdust and felled trees strewing the streets. Ignorant people run screaming from nature to persuade the authorities to use ray guns to exterminate their last hope for survival. I’m not hopeful about Medfield, since I already wrote everyone involved and they’re about an hour away from Beaver Solutions and they still don’t know better. Still, this handy fact sheet might help with the endless repetition necessary to change a few calcified minds. Click on the picture for the full pdf with references.

Robert Redford and Beavers?

heidi08 Beavers August 19, 2012

If this movie doesn’t spend time talking about the millions of beavers we trapped out of the Colorado river, and the terrible impact that had on banks and silt and waterstorage, I will be very disappointed. His son who produced this film, lives in Fairfax apparently. What are the odds that he never heard about the Martinez Beavers?

Airport fix includes tree removal, beaver dam mitigation

An almost reassuring report from Oregon where an airport has set aside ‘money’ to remove a beaver dam, but not to trap them or install a flow device. No word yet on whether the airport has heard the ‘eensy weensy spider song” or is aware that beavers rebuild.

“There is a good population of beavers east of the airport,” Wallace said. “If they aren’t doing any direct damage to the airport, we don’t bother with them, but if their dam construction affects the area, we will take the dams out and we have done that from time to time.”

Diplomats?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions August 18, 2012

Capture — A Eurasian beaver is netted and placed back in its cage for further monitoring before it is released. (Photo Pearly Jacob)

Mongolia: Ulaanbaatar Signs Up Nature’s Engineers to Restore River

Ulaanbaatar is importing foreign experts to combat falling water levels in Mongolia’s third longest river. Qualifications include sharp incisors, flat tails and webbed toes. Meet the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber). If all goes according to plan, the task of restoring the headwaters of the Tuul River will be left to these rotund rodents, with extra thanks to Germany and Russia. At home, due to poaching, their numbers have declined sharply in the past 20 years. But in May, Germany gifted 14, and Russia another 30—just for this special task.

You might remember something about this story from back in May when 14 beavers were delivered from Germany under the catchy headline “German Engineers arrive to save the Tuul river“. I guess the program’s continued apace because now they’re getting ready for releases. Apparently they are taking the long view.

Citing a beaver reintroduction project in Bavaria, he cautions this is a long-term project with little hope for immediate success. “They hunted their last beaver in Bavaria in the 1960s. After they re-introduced beavers from Russia in 1966, it still took nearly 10 years for the beavers to successfully adapt and build their dams,” he says. “Beavers are diplomats of the environment,” says Delgermaa Yunger, director of the Nature Protection Agency’s office at Ulaanbaatar’s City Hall.

Diplomats? Really? I’m a big fan of beavers, but I’m scratching my head on that one. I’ve seen their dams called ‘the earth’s kidneys’. I’ve seen them called ‘ecosystem engineers’. and of course ‘keystone species’. I’ve called them the ‘job creators of the natural world’ but diplomats? Do they help warring species get along better or are they just really polite?

As welcome as the animals are, there are still some worrying signs.

In Yunger’s office at the City Council, a furry artificial flower sits among her pens on her desk. “It’s beaver fur,” she admits sheepishly—a gift from a beaver farm in Russia she visited while scouting for donors. But this, she insists, will never happen in Mongolia, because local community support for the project will deter illegal hunting. “These beavers are strictly here to help restore our rivers,” she said.

You’re kidding, right?

Compensation for Assange?

heidi08 kits, Video, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 17, 2012

With Ecuador stepping in, it looks like the Swedes won’t get everything they want right away…but apparently there are compensations. Although Sweden remained neutral during WWI and II, this headline gleefully announces their pacifism only extends so far…

Local authorities prepare to hunt Swedish beavers

In their application to the county council, the municipality board asked for all the animals to be shot, but they were only granted permission to shoot one adult animal and any potential young beavers born last year. The flooding has reportedly been a nuisance for residents in the Aspö area of Skaraborg, where some football fields have become waterlogged and walking paths flooded.

This is a country that has enough brilliant minds to know better than to use a shooting spree to solve a problem that could be easily fixed with a flow device. Especially when the “solution” is going to wreak havoc on countless species in the area. In fact they might want to plan on heading south next month to attend the 6th international beaver conference in Croatia where experts will go over the solutions in detail. Day three is all about biodiversity.

How do I know the Swedes know better than this? An upset biologist is quoted in the article ‘

“Imagine having these fine creatures so close to the town. The flooding isn’t their fault,” said disgruntled field biologist Manne Ryttman to local paper Skaraborgs Allehanda. “It is completely wrong to shoot them, they are useful and an integral part of the Swedish fauna,” Ryttman told Skövde Nyheter.

Right there with you, Manne. And check out this commenter (‘Keith’) whom I feel is a powerful beaver advocate waiting in the wings…Worth A Dam Swedish office?

Of course, their ponds are of absolutely no use to any other life forms – birds that are attracted, fish that spawn, frogs that breed, insect life that is rejuvenated in the pond area.

Vegetation increases around the pond area and the diversity of life in that area is increased.

Respectfully, Eric 1, nature has it’s own ways of balancing the equations. You are only expressing one aspect of the equation.

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On a brighter, less beaver-killing note, our Kentucky-based stop-motion wizard of beaver creek fame released a new film last night and I can only say that it’s worth the short time it will take you to watch, and probably the time it will take you to comment with praise afterwards. Ian is a remarkably gifted young man and I’m going to predict that you will hear his name again and again in the next 50 years.