Do you remember, waiting for the dentist or the pediatrician, reading those old highlights magazines when you were a kid? There was one page called “Goofus and Gallant” that was about two boys the same age, one who did impulsive or badly planned things and one who did helpful, generous things. I suppose it was to encourage children to think about their choices and what kind of actions they wanted to take, (although where the girls were in this morality play is anyone’s guess). Well, sometimes when I look at the Grand Canyon Trust I think of Goofus and Gallant. They do such deft, coordinated, elegant and hardy work. And we do….a beaver festival? If Worth A Dam is a candle in the wind they are a 1.2-megawatt SunPower Tracker. Don’t take my word for it. Just watch for yourself.
This is some great beaver marketing from our friends. Somehow they just keep managing better and bolder things, (and securing better funding!) Take a moment to watch this smart look at what beavers can do for the habitat. Jeremy Christensen starts the film, and our old friend Mary O’brien appears at the end.
Here she is checking out the tiles on Escobar bridge.
I guess even ‘Goofus’ can manage a few good actions once in a while. Oh and after her visit they decided to have their first beaver festival last summer.
Signs along the 2500 block of Spring Creek Drive indicate the city of Laramie’s attempts to capture and relocate a beaver that has dammed off a section of Spring Creek just east of LaPrele Park. JEREMY MARTIN / Boomerang photographer
Busy beaver poses problem
“They just struck out on their own and looked for a place that was a suitable habitat,” Keith Wardlaw, interim parks manager, said. “If you were a beaver and living in the mountains, you’d have found the right place.”
But if you were a beaver, your home at 25th and Spring Creek Drive would the potential for some real-world impacts. Park and residential amenities such as cottonwood trees and other foliage could suffer thousands of dollars in damage. Trees weakened by your incisors could potentially fall and injure Laramie residents walking through LaPrele Park.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that with the amount of material that they’ve pulled into the channel there to build a dam we’re going to have to go ahead and remove that material,” Wardlaw said. “It does present a flooding situation there if we get a heavy runoff or if we get a rainstorm along the face of the mountain out here on Sherman Hills, that would potentially cause some kind of damage in that neighborhood.”
Hence the trapping signs. At least they warn humans about their intentions because there are plenty of places where it happens without warning and pets are needlessly killed. Beavers, of course, are always needfully killed. Well in this case relocated. Which is slightly less bad, but since they don’t even know how many beavers there are and its winter I’m going to assume there may be death involved.
No one’s certain exactly where the beaver, or beavers, which have made their dam just past the east end of LaPrele Park, came from, but it’s most likely they came up from the river. Wardlaw said he’s likely a young beaver who moved up the creek channel from the Laramie River in late October or early November looking for a good home after reaching maturity.
“From our best estimate at this point in time, we think it’s probably just one, but there may be two,” he said. “They probably got thrown out, so they’re looking for a new home, and that was the first spot they came to that looked good, I guess.”
But it’s likely they won’t be there for long. In order to mitigate the dangers of having a beaver in town, the City of Laramie has contracted with a local trapper to capture the castor alive and move him to a location out of town.
“He’s going to come in and over the next couple of weeks sometime, and we’ll start trapping for that beaver and try to move him out of there,” Wardlaw said. “We’re not absolutely sure the beaver is still there. We haven’t’ seen a lot of traces of evidence at this point in time, so he may have already moved off on his own. But our intention at this point is to get him trapped before we take the dam out. Otherwise, we’ll just displace him to another point either farther upstream or downstream, or wherever.”
Once trapped, the Wyoming Game and Fish will release the beaver in a suitable point away from Laramie, Wardlaw said
Quick check. The temperature in Laramie tonight is supposed to drop to 10 degrees, and its supposed to snow on wednesday. This alleged beaver or beavers will be relocated away from any food cache or family, and there could be weeks more winter to brace for. Why are you relocating now? Or better yet, why are you relocating at all?
Although the beaver will likely be relocated, Wardlaw said he understands and respects the allure nature has for many Laramie residents, but added that must be balanced with best administering the city’s parks and other amenities.
“We’re always trying to take care of these citizen-owned facilities in the best way we can,” he said. “We understand they enjoy wildlife, and we do as well, but there are certain conditions that sometimes just cause us to have to move that wildlife to another location.”
Because you know beavers can’t possibly be tolerated in cities. That never works. The problems they cause can’t be mitigated and we just have to choose sometimes between nature and people.
COQUILLE — A visiting conservationist will give a free presentation about beavers Feb. 25.Wayne Hoffman, coordinator of the MidCoast Watersheds Council, shares his presentation up and down the Oregon Coast to build support for beaver conservation. In smaller streams where beavers build dams, they can help stream ecology and watershed processes by improving the quality of habitat for juvenile salmon and for a variety of other wildlife.
Wayne Hoffman again to the rescue! It’s nice to read that this is happening in another city. After the last article I tried to write and introduce myself, but have heard nothing yet. I even wrote Mike and Skip about his idea of installing starter dams away from the culvert, which they both thought was interesting, and I passed their feedback along to him, – still as yet there has been no response.
Never mind. If folks are already preaching the beaver gospel….there’s no need for a ‘connect with the home office’!
Beavers also can be pests by plugging culverts, flooding agricultural lands and eating valued trees and plants. This presentation will include techniques for avoiding these problems and fostering peaceful coexistence between beavers and humans. A short Q & A follows the presentation.
Peaceful coexistence with humans. I like the way that sounds! Great work Wayne in teaching folks how and why to live with beavers! Let’s talk soon about teaching a JOYFUL coexistence with beavers…
Sadly the ‘making of the beaver whisperer’ mentioned here yesterday is visible in Canada only. It is dark in America and Europe. Believe me when I say I tried to figure the whole thing out, and received a slew of bi-continental emails from folks eager to help. The wisest was the startled response that “The Nature of things” episode on beavers airs in March and Canada, and not on PBS until November. Argh. They aren’t letting the cat out of the bag, and the video is not downloadable.
I’m told a producer will send me one, but I’m sure they’re very busy with gay soirees and launch parties so I’m not holding my breath. So close and yet so far!
Great news this morning from researcher Glynnis Hood who has the magic touch when it comes to getting the media to report why beavers matter. Seems she’s just published some new research on how active beaver ponds increase geese reproduction. Go Glynnis!
Ponds in Alberta where beavers were active tended to result in earlier thaw of winter snowpack, giving the geese a better chance at reproductive success, according to the study, published recently in Mammalian Biology.
The study is the first to link beavers to early season nesting habits of Canada geese in a Northern climate.
A team led by Glynnis Hood, an associate professor in the Department of Science at the U of A’s Augustana Campus, surveyed 32 active and 39 inactive beaver ponds at Miquelon Lake Provincial Park in east-central Alberta.
Nice! I don’t know what surprises me less: That beavers help geese or that Glynnis found a way to prove it. I don’t know how many more species beavers would need to be proven to help before folks start to think that the reverse is true. (I.E. If beavers help geese and frogs and salmon and birds then removing beavers hurts geese and frogs and salmon and birds.)
Let’s get some funding for that research?
Now for some fun news and a complaint. Fun news is that I received Sherri Tippie’s Wildlife 2000 newsletter yesterday with this photo on the cover, reminding me that the project we’ve been expecting for over a year now is nearly due. The film by Dawna Trebicz and Jari Osborne is due next month, but I’ve been chatting with them about the project since 2011. At one point they were even considering buying Moses’ footage of our beavers. The movie will follow 7 “Beaver Whisperers” including Sherri Tippie, Glynnis Hood, Michele LeClair (an earlier flow device installer in Canada) and others. It will air in Canada first but we should get to see it too eventually. I’ll keep you posted but if you want to read all about it and Sherri’s starring role you should subscribe to her newsletter here. You won’t regret it!
Sherri Tippie, beaver kit and fllmmaker Jari Osborne
And finally my annual complaint of the apparent rash of beaver photo swiping from the website. In the broadest sense it is true that we like to share, and some of Chery’s excellent photos are on wikipedia so anyone can use them, but I like our friends to let us know before they promote their activities with the Martinez Beavers. To be clear, there is a “right way” and a “wrong way” to feature some one else’s photos on your website. The “right way” just points to the photo that is already on the other person’s site. Like the geese picture above for example. That’s what we usually do here. It’s like opening a html window up on your own site that points to exactly what you want people to see. I never consider this stealing, because it is not.
The other way which I am much less happy about, is to download the photo and appropriate it onto your own site or graphics yourself. I am never ever happy when this happens unless folks ask. Just so you know we have never said no when asked. Here are two recent examples:
Consider this a reminder that the website isn’t a grocery store after Katrina and you should not walk down the isles picking and choosing what to loot. I’ve tried to make this simpler by offering this easy template.
Dear _____
We really like the photo you posted on _______ of ______ and would like to feature it on our ______. Would that be okay with you?
Well, sometimes when I look at the Grand Canyon Trust I think of Goofus and Gallant. They do such deft, coordinated, elegant and hardy work. And we do….a beaver festival? If Worth A Dam is a candle in the wind they are a 1.2-megawatt SunPower Tracker. Don’t take my word for it. Just watch for yourself.
