Slow Learners

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 6, 2012

Kevin Ellis has been keeping an eye on beaver activity during his daily walks in and around the Welland Recreational Canal.

Dam beavers!

The training officer with Welland Fire and Emergency Services takes almost daily walks along the waterway on Canal Bank St. during his lunch break, and recently he began noticing distinctive markings on area trees. After inspecting several trunks, both large and small, along the water, it became apparent to Ellis that Welland is now home to a colony of beavers.

Several attempts have since been made to remove the lodge and makeshift dam that has been backing up water, but the beavers are persistent in rebuilding their home, Bering said.

“They’re pretty industrious.”

Beavers have made their presence known in Niagara more prominently over the past five to eight years, said land management director Darcy Baker of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

“They’re really expanding their territory,” he said, with sightings coming in from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Fort Erie.

Dam removal can be tricky, he said, as beavers are tenacious and will work to repair their damaged dams, whether patching or rebuilding entirely. Dam removal should be done in consultation with the Ministry of Natural Resources, Baker said, to ensure it’s done properly.

You might remember the amount of angst and outcry caused when nearby St Catherines sought to remove some beavers a while back. Now Welland wants in on the beaver-killing action. Don’t worry though because the article gives helpful comments like “Discourage beavers on your property by removing trees and brush.“

It’s that time of year again, when every day gives a smorgasbord choice of beaver-killing stories. You can literally search on the Google and find complaints from PEI to Arizona and everywhere in between. Sometimes it wearies me, especially when I’m sent an email thread between CDFG and Caltrans about the Weaver Creek beavers being extirpated on the Klamath because their dams were causing problems for Coho.

Honestly, have we learned NOTHING?

The Greatest Beaver Story Ever Told

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental December 5, 2012

Cary looks for peace with beavers

The town of Cary is trying out a new answer to an age-old question: How do you stop a beaver damming? It’s a challenge that’s dogged town staff since the summer before last, when the rodents flooded a new wetland on the southeast side of Bond Lake in mid-western Cary.

Got your coffee and slippers? This is the kind of story that brings families round the fire with shining faces and children ask to be retold every Christmas. Honestly, I am as fond of Cary, North Carolina as I have ever been of any city not named Martinez. Just look at this:

First the local government tried the traditional method: A contractor in February set traps for the beavers, but the town had them pulled amid outcry from residents and birders, who liked the new beaver pond.

Cary, Cary, Cary! I think I’m in love! Go Birders! Go Beavers!

Next came a non-lethal show of force, with the town destroying the beavers’ dam in the hopes that they’d just go away. Castor canadensis was back within months.

Wait, wait don’t tell me. I know how successful that plan was. Why do humans think tearing down dams works to discourage beavers? It’s not like humans even leave when they’re work and home is destroyed? Why would beavers?

Now the town is trying a new tactic that staff hope will subvert those natural instincts.

In foreground, the pipe that the town of Cary hopes will pass water undetected through a beaver dam at Bond Park. Andrew Kenney

The idea of the $3,500 project is to let the beavers think their dam is working better than it really is. If it works, the “flow control device” will allow water to pass silently through the dam, keeping the water levels in check without alerting the beavers to the leak in their dam.

Not only is Cary very nobly doing the right thing, their reporter is even using the right language. Way to go Cary! It doesn’t say who’s doing the install but I’m going to guess Stephanie Boyles is involved because she was involved in the other South Carolina case and no one is saying ‘Castor Master’ (Skip) or ‘Flexible Leveler’ (Mike).

However, the town’s not out of the swamp yet. Installation of the pipe damaged part of the dam, by necessity, and drained the pond. The contractor did all the work by hand, hoping not to traumatize the beavers, but the semi-aquatic rodents haven’t yet returned to the site.

Lewis isn’t surprised the animals haven’t rebuilt their old stomping grounds yet.

“Not only have we unearthed their dams, but we’ve also exposed the holes in the side of the wetland where they stay,” she said. “We knew it would take weeks before the very first one would show up.”

Hmm. Who was this contractor? When Skip took our dam down by three feet it exposed the holes to the lodge and it took about seven hours before we saw the beavers come out and start rebuilding. I’m hopeful that they’re just not watching that close, because beavers have more than one sleeping spot in anticipation of water level changes.

Caroline Morgan, a local birder, is anxious for the repair of the little ecosystem tucked at the edge of the park. “It’s pretty unique, just because of all the diversity,” she said, pausing from her photography near the dam. “The fact that the beavers turned this area into a swamp brought all kinds of animals here.”

Now that sounds familiar!

Martinez Beaver Dam-age

heidi08 City Reports, Friends of Martinez Beavers December 4, 2012

Watchful eyes have been checking on how the storm has hit our beavers. Last night Worth A Dam watched little Jr come out and groom on one of the banks, with a larger beaver in the vicinity. We know he wasn’t washed away with all the rain, even if the dams need some major repairs. This morning Jon says that a night heron is perched at the biggest gap in the primary dam and just chowing down on whatever crosses his path!

photo (2) — Primary Dam and Flow Device - Photo: Lory Bruno

Bob Rust (of the inflatable beaver-fame) filmed our beavers Sunday morning during the hardest rains. I’m so grateful for his effort and to be able to see how they gamely swim upstream in even the strongest current.

The Noble Trapper: Episode MCMVII

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 3, 2012

Scott Rall’s column about the lost art of trapping in The Worthington Daily Globe is the latest in a never-ending homage to people who make a living killing things for money – well, not for money because, of course, according to the article “No one does it for the money anymore“. Mr. Rall goes on to nobly blur the boundaries between the concept of being connected to the natural world and being in the service of folks who are inconvenienced by it. Nice.

“Randy checks his traps each and every day. This is a huge commitment. You never get a day off and there are very few people you can call on to cover the trap line for you…Nobody that traps is in it for the money. A good week of trapping will cover the cost of fuel to run the trap lines that week….Trapping to Randy is truly a calling — much like restoring habitat is a calling to me. You do it for the history and nostalgia and to keep tradition and an American way of life alive. After a few hours I got the feeling that trapping is a connection to the land that can only be achieved by participating in the predator-prey relationship.”

The mind reels. The jaw drops. The fingers type. Where to begin?

Shall I begin with the comment that folks nowadays don’t have enough commitment to do something every day anymore? (Ahem.) With the notion that trapping connects you to history and nostalgia? (Killing Indians and keeping slaves was an American way of life once. Should we consider it noble now to keep that tradition?) The disservice to the term “calling” by using it in this way? (Mother Theresa had a calling. Martin Luther King had a calling. John Muir had a “calling”.)Randy has about as much of a calling as Dexter, the Artful Dodger, or Thenardier.

But I think the clearly onanistically derived fantasy about participating in the “predator-prey relationship” is as rich as anything you are likely to read in this lifetime. I don’t know if Mr. Rall longs to be on Randy’s dinner menu or if he has just been immersed too deeply in his daughter’s copy of The Hunger Games but there is no excuse for a grown man getting paid for that level of hyperbole.

Rather than be outraged at the language, the cruelty or the glorification of this excuse for laziness, or even without commenting on the ironic failure to realize that the best way to protect habitat might be not to kill the animal that creates it, I will just say that Mr. Rall is unoriginal. Five columnists in the past three months have written a better articles praising trapping then you. This is old news. Here’s a description of one of my favorites.

Most bitterly ironic sentence from the entire article deifying beaver killing?

“With so little water left around the area due to drought, the prime spots for setting traps are dramatically reduced. I would guess 90 percent of what is normally wet is now bone dry.”

frozen beaver pond — Photo taken from a trappers forum where they were discussing great ways to kill beavers.

In the way

heidi08 Beavers December 2, 2012

Oh the humanity! Poor fishermen have their carbon producing motor vehicles inconvenienced when trying to launch and load! What is that selfish beaver thinking? Doesn’t he know that the Lake Delta, which is in a NY State Park, is there for people not wildlife? I suppose he’s hoping to feed his family all during the freeze season. The nerve!

DELTA LAKE — Leave it to beaver.

Since last month, New York state’s official animal has been making a home at the Lake Delta boat launch, getting in the way of recreationists trying to launch or dock their vessels.

Who you going to call when beavers become a nuisance? The state Department of Environmental Conservation. DEC Spokesman Stephen Litwhiler said the DEC got a call from Park Manager Laura Tully last month reporting the beaver structure, which was proper protocol.

“In a situation like at Lake Delta, the beaver is just plain in the way,” Litwhiler said. “But if they’re on the lake shore, people may have ornamental trees they want to protect from becoming beaver food. It’s not an issue off in the middle of the woods, but it is an issue on someone’s property.”

First of all, if there’s that nice a lodge in the lake we’re not talking about one beaver. We’re talking about a family and since its winter the female is probably pregnant and expecting more kits in the spring. And if you destroy their home you expose them to all kinds of dangers. You’re from the Department of Environmental Conservation for goodness sake. Don’t you know anything useful about beaver management in New York?

To keep beavers at bay, for instance if a dam or lodge were to be constructed on some farmland, then the farmer is advised to lower the water level on their property to help solve the problem, Litwhiler said. If local residents feel they need to protect their sacred birch trees, then they should wrap them with either wire or hardware cloth, he said.

That’s it, Stephen? “Lower your water level to discourage beavers” says the DEC! Does the NYPD also tell people to throw away their valuables to discourage burglary? You must be a smart man, and the state of New York must know that killing beavers impacts wetlands which impacts wildlife, which is why beavers have a nanospan of protection. I assume you know that LOWERING THE WATER LEVEL does that too, right? Delta lake is a 45 minute drive from Beavers: Wildlife and Wetlands. You must have heard of flow devices right?

Well I wrote Sharon and gave her all the appropriate contact info so I’m hopeful that these Delta lake beavers have a sporting chance anyway. In the meantime, the city of Seattle is on the phone Martinez, and they’d like their weather back.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

Twelfth Night