Month: February 2013

“Discovering it for Wyoming”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental February 23, 2013

One of my favorite comediennes, Paula Poundstone, used to do a bit about the irony of Columbus claiming to discover America when there were already a bunch of people living there. When as an industrious student she had raised this point to her teacher she had said “Yes but he was discovering it FOR SPAIN”. As in it may have been important to all these other folks but Spain didn’t know about it. Paula would talk about how off-putting that might be, sitting alone in your apartment and having someone ride up with a flag and “discover” it for Spain, and how that might feel.

Which is kind of how I felt when I read this article from Wyoming yesterday.

This is one of many dams built in the Pole Mountain Unit of the Medicine Bow National Forest. Courtesy photo

Student studies beaver ponds on Pole Mountain

Hundreds of beavers live in the Pole Mountain area, changing the landscape each time they build a dam and flood a meadow.

As the landscape changes under their watch, so do the plants, wildlife and fisheries. Matt Hayes, a University of Wyoming graduate student, found a way to quantify some of those changes for his thesis project, which he completed in November. Hayes’ advisor was associate professor Scott Miller.

The project was funded by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“A lot of times we focus on beavers being negative, but when managing Pole Mountain, the beavers are instrumental to these fluctuating changes that are happening in riparian areas,” Hayes said. “You have to have those changes throughout the system to have the healthy system we have up there.”

Well, alright then! It turns out beavers are helpful in Wyoming too! Sorry, that’s overgeneralizing, they’re helpful on Pole mountain in Wyoming. Better do other graduate research on every mountain in the state to make sure it applies. I mean we certainly can’t apply research from Alberta and New Mexico and Maine and Alaska to someplace like Wyoming. It might be totally different.

Hayes said beavers might be a possible management tool when looking at increasing winter forage or rejuvenating aspen growth.

Beaver ponds hold snowmelt for long into the summer, keeping storm run-off from flooding downstream, plus they contribute to the quality of fishing in Pole Mountain.

“Without beaver ponds, there wouldn’t be any fishing habitat,” he said.

Alright then. Kill the fatted calf or whatever. Late to the table is still at the table! Beaver Festival Wyoming anyone?

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This appeared yesterday from Kate Lundquist of the OAEC, shown here watching beavers in the black hat on the footbridge. Enjoy!

: Click Flag to Listen

“A series of pools…”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 22, 2013

It seems fitting that after yesterday’s feature of NCLC stewardship for Stanley Marsh (which was the very best beaver story I have covered in 5 years) there should follow a response to the worst beaver story I have read. Ever. No we’re not talking a tail-bounty or trip to the trapper’s back porch for an entire third grade classroom. In the 5 years of writing about beavers I’ve gradually become thick-skinned to those stories and they shock me less and less. I don’t much react to city politics or legislative lying to kill beavers. I don’t get startled anymore when folks pretend beavers eat salmon or harm salmon or kill trees for birds. This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve seen it all before.

But THIS took my breath.

Keifer Oklahoma is in Creek county in the upper right corner of the state. Home to barely 2000 , its biggest excitement occurred when its primary paper the “Sapulpa Daily Herald” declined to report in November 2008 that Obama had won the presidential election and indicated instead that McCain had won handily in Creek county.

(Okay then.)

Apparently there was a city meeting the other night where concerns could be addressed by public works and it was mentioned that the Department of Environmental Quality had asked for some water tests. When they went to assess the creek…well, read for yourself…

“I have walked the banks along Chiders and noticed there seemed to be Beaver Dams almost every 10 feet,” Gary Hudson said. “The Beavers have made the creek into a series of pools,” Ashford said.

Consensus among members was that the action of the beavers was definitely reducing the water flow and perhaps contributing to the degradation of water quality within Chiders.

As to what course of action to undertake to thin out the beaver population it was noted that in order to trap, remove, or kill the rodents that permits from the state were required when Kiefer undertook efforts in the past to remedeiate the beaver problem.

Wikipedia tells me that Kiefer has nearly two square miles of land and zero area of water, but apparently a little bit of the mostly dry Chiders creek runs through one corner.

The ironically named “Creek county” is the furthermost right bottom dark red one above. Red meaning EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT (which is worse than the very bad categories of Severe or Extreme) Red which means it is eligible for FEMA money for disaster relief for the alarming and enduring drought conditions it has suffered. I haven’t found yet just how much money its received, but I will. It’s definitely hundreds of thousands to pay for crops or livestock or business failure due to drought. Don’t get me wrong. FEMA is supposed to pay for disaster relief. That’s one of the reasons why we have a federal government. I’m happy my tax dollars help people after Katrina or Sandy and thrilled that even though the paper couldn’t bring itself to write the dread “O” word, the county is happy enough to cash his checks for disaster relief. But this sentence takes the cake

“there seemed to be Beaver Dams almost every 10 feet,” Gary Hudson said. “The Beavers have made the creek into a series of pools,”

If I were the Secretary of the Interior and I read a sentence like that in a meeting where they went on to discuss ‘thinning’ the population, I would crumple the check in my hand and light a cigar. “Mary,” I’d say, putting my feet up on her desk. “If you’re trapping the water-savers you obviously have no need for this money.” I’d take a few pointed puffs and watch her surprised face through the smokey haze of exhale. “I thought you learned something in the dust bowl, but I was obviously wrong.”

Are you sitting down?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental February 21, 2013

Courtesy of Neal Maine The North Coast Land Conservancy will hold a Saturday work day Feb. 23, to help restore beaver habitat at Stanley Marsh. Submitted photo by Neal Maine/PacificLight Images

Help build a home for Seaside beavers

SEASIDE – Join the North Coast Land Conservancy (NCLC) Saturday Morning Stewardship volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 23, to help build safe homes for the North Oregon Coast’s best construction engineers – beavers. At the NCLC’s 80-acre Thompson Creek-Stanley Marsh property in Seaside, beavers are playing a key role in restoring ecological balance to the creek and surrounding wetlands. Thanks in no small part to the beaver’s good work, Thompson Creek now supports the largest run of native coastal coho salmon for a stream its size on the North Oregon coast.

You dream about things like this. You imagine the day over and over again in your head, making a scrap book of your crazy hopes so you can glance at it when you get discouraged. You pretend each day that maybe a glimmer like this will someday come around the corner. You hardly need a whiff on the horizon to keep you going. But nothing prepares you for this. Nothing.

In the fall of 2012, volunteers created habitat for resident beaver colonies at Stanley Marsh by providing foundation points for dam construction in Ditch Creek, excavating old pasture to create permanent wetland habitat, and building beaver kit houses to provide denning habitat for beaver families. During the upcoming work party, work will continue to add the finishing touches to the beaver kit houses by planting and stacking willows around the openings and walls of the lodges and plant additional wetland scrub-shrub species to provide food and shelter habitat for beavers.

Volunteers making stater homes for beavers. Planting trees to encourage them. Dam assembly kits where its easier to get traction. The North Coast Land Conservancy is a smart, savvy and very effective group of river keepers. Go check out their website if you want a reminder on how to do it right. And if you have cousins or uncles in Oregon tell them to turn out to help this Saturday!

Beaver Fealty

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere February 20, 2013

The ‘beaver brand’ is one that inspires customer loyalty, or at least enduring name recognition. Just look at the excitement this morning along the Rogue River in Michigan.

Are There Beavers Living in Booth Park?

Is this a beaver dam along the Rouge River in Booth Park? Credit Mary Ellen Johnson

One reader was wondering that very thing, tweeting a picture of what appears to be a beaver dam along the wood chip trail in Birmingham’s Booth Park.

According to the photographer, resident Mary Ellen Johnson, the photo was snapped this weekend during a walk along the trail. Her dog, she said, even used the collection of sticks, leaves and mud to cross the Rouge River as it runs through that section of Booth Park.

Beavers in the Rouge River have been top of mind for many area naturalists recently. In the spring newsletter for the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Environmental Interpretative Center (EIC), the EIC’s Rich Simek writes that he snapped a picture of a beaver swimming in the Rouge River in Dearborn in July 2012.

I love love love the fact that cities who polluted their water for years and years (in 1969 it even caught fire) get excited when they think they see beavers because it means things are getting better. (Which it does.) In a nano span of a hair’s breadth they will rapidly reach the tipping point where they start to panic that beavers are going to flood everything and ruin the roads and eat all those trees they planted. So enjoy it while you can, Birmingham.

Sadly, I don’t see a beaver dam in that photo, and none of the logs appear chewed, BUT if there isn’t a dam yet, there will be one day, so they might as well use all this public interest to educate the community about living with beavers. Am I right?

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Need more proof that beavers bring loyal fans? How about this letter to the editor after the article that ran earlier this week in Wyoming. If you can read through the local color its a pretty nice reminder that folks seem to like beavers – at least more than they like city officials.

Leave the beaver alone

I’m a proud flag-flying, dues-paying member of the LTB (Leave The Beaver)…

The city has decided to eradicate (relocate) a beaver in a waterway within the city to prevent floods. Aside from the fact it rarely, if ever, rains here anyway, we apparently need flood control. The beaver must go say the city fathers, but we argue the beaver has some overlooked benefits. It is in a beaver’s nature to build a dam which creates a pond. The pond could be utilized to eliminate the need for a fancy new swimming pool in the proposed new high school. (Didn’t we just build a fancy new swimming pool a few years ago?) This would save the taxpayers some $10 million plus. The students could use the pond as an outdoor lab to study the beaver going about his/her work. This would obviate the need for a lab in the new Taj Mahal, I mean to say “school,” saving taxpayers $1.75 million. A track could be built around the pond and a couple of bleachers installed, both to watch track meets and the beaver. Private money could build the concession stands, saving another $2.8 million. Of course, all the figures are just cost estimates so the saving produced by the beaver could be much greater. Problems solved all thanks to the humble beaver.

Wyatt Skaggs Laramie

Thanks Wyatt! Of course I would have gone with raising the water table and increasing fish and game populations. But, hey, a beaver pond swimming pool is good too. I guess. Beaver festival Laramie anyone?

Things to come?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental February 19, 2013

Glynnis Hood’s excellent research on geese and beavers has been making the rounds, but a substantial piece appeared on Science: The Last Word yesterday. In addition to studying how beavers impact waterfowl, the article mentions several ongoing projects with students.

MSC student Nils Anderson is currently completing his thesis, under Professor Hood’s guidance, on how the modification of aquatic habitats by beavers influences amphibians. It will detail interesting findings about the way that digging of channels by beavers aids in the dispersal of metamorphosed wood frogs. There is also some indication that breeding adults returning to the pond might use these channels in a preferential nature.

How cool is that? How’d you like to get your dissertation by counting frogs in a beaver pond? Our own friend Jeff Alvarez of the Wildlife project. He has apparently had an article accepted for publication in Herpetological Review this summer. Apparently beaver lodges are very important to the endangered red-legged frogs, which should surprise no one! Check out some of the other research Glynnis is involved with.

“Dr Larson and I currently have a paper in review that presents results relating to aquatic macro-invertebrates,” Professor Hood told me. “Again the channels dug by beavers in their ponds seem to be hotspots for various taxa of aquatic macro-invertebrates, the predators in particular. We also have a paper in preparation that will reveal the dramatic physical alterations beavers make to these ponds and how those alterations influence landscape connectivity.”

I recently asked Glynnis how she managed to get such awesome press coverage from a million sources all on the same day her article was released. She said that the campus has a media specialist that writes and handles all their releases, and that she was wonderful. I obviously agree!

Maybe all these rumors of research don’t mean much to the average reader so here’s something that is truly inspiring. It’s an community climate change awareness art project that just happened in Oregon. Look at this video and imagine that instead of reminding people about climate change and salmon, it was reminding people about all the wildlife that depends on beavers.