Month: March 2013

2013: Year of the beaver?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental March 26, 2013

Beavers may offer environmental second chance

The key variable wasn’t precipitation. It was the presence of beavers, whose deep-water ponds and connecting channels were actually mitigating the effects of severe drought. “They’re really hydrological engineers,” says Hood. “Everything they do is about maximizing water.”

Hood’s work figures prominently in The Beaver Whisperers, a documentary from filmmaker Jari Osborne that airs March 28 on CBC’s The Nature of Things.
It also reflects how scientists and environmentalists are starting to amend some long-held views of Castor canadensis.

Lots of good news about Thursday’s debut of “The Beaver Whisperers“. I am practically a kid in a candy shop. It is still March and we have already had 7 articles this year about the benefits of beavers, from places like Nevada and Alberta. I just love the impact this documentary will have.

You know there will be folks that are upset that they don’t talk enough about chewing trees or ruining culverts, but lets hope when they sit down to write letters, they google the issue and find their way to US who will be delighted to help them find real solutions.

Scientists like Hood believe we should, and it’s not just because beavers have survived climate change in the past. In our own age of global warming, beavers may offer us a kind of environmental second chance, courtesy of their ability to preserve water resources, mitigate drought and boost biodiversity. By helping them, we help ourselves.

Just how many beavers now populate North America — and hence the extent of their recovery — remains an open question. Hood, for one, is cautious about offering an estimate, save that any habitat capable of supporting beaver probably has them today.

“They’ve come back as much as they can,” she says. “They have done a remarkable job.”

Hmm. I can think of LOTS of more places that could support more beavers if we could just use a crowbar or a power tool to open some minds and educate some cities about their value. Take Martinez for instance. We could have a few colonies upstream to slow all that seasonal flash. And Concord and Walnut Creek and Clayton. Beavers are missing from LOTS of places they belong, Glynnis. If we had protection at every culvert to start maybe we could creep a little closer to the 60,000 million beavers we were supposed to have at the beginning.

International Acclaim

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental March 25, 2013

Beaver boom benefits German rivers

Beavers, long believed to be under threat of extinction, are making a comeback in Germany. The dam-building critters are now even a common sight in big cities such as Frankfurt and Berlin, said German conservationists over the weekend.

The beaver boom is a welcome development, said Harthun, as their presence encourages the growth of other species along Germany’s riverbanks. “Beavers pave the way for the rehabilitation of our rivers,” he said.

Nice to see the Germans recognizing beaver benefits! And love the rehabilitation sentence. It’s especially welcome after that exciting crocodile mistake earlier in the summer. (I have to be honest. That remains one of my favorite stories. Ever.) In case you forgot:

‘Crocodile’ terrorising German town turns out to be a beaver

Two visitors to the Bavarian city’s local lake, Klauensee, claimed to have spotted a crocodile in the water. After deploying dozens of searchers, including a dramatic night-time boat operation with more than 70 police, fire fighters and aid workers, officials in the town now believe they have spotted the missing reptile. But Klausi the crocodile, it turns out, is actually just a beaver.

My helpful graphic was offered to assist the challenging discrimination at the time. Ahhh memories.

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Well, onward and forward! Reviews are in on “The Beaver Whispers” which debuts this Thursday in Canada. Veteran critic James Bawden says the program is a ‘delight’.

I’ve just finished reviewing a CBC documentary about dogs. Now I’m being asked to review one on beavers? I was skeptical but after plopping in the DVD I couldn’t stop watching. To her credit Osborne seeks out the experts who argue beavers can bring back long neglected wetlands. They may be one part of our ecological survival –miniature animal flood control engineers.

Pre-hype is excellent wondrous news because it means more folks will sit down at their TV and learn why beavers are good for water and that there are actual ways to solve problems instead of trapping. Exciting. I can think of a few city mayors and magistrates in particular (and I’m looking at you, Jim) I hope open a cold one, put their feet up, and pay attention.

Now this third and final promo is excellent advertisement, but it contains one truly miraculous bit of mind-blowing footage that I want to be the first to draw your attention to. Watch specifically at 1:08, where an underwater sequence shows how their tail can propel them underwater at jaw-dropping speeds. The first time I saw it I thought it had been sped up. Now I know why the pope in the 14th century classified them as a fish.

Click for final promo — Click to watch amazing underwater footage

The Beaver Whisperers –Final sneak peek…

Are you sitting down?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere March 24, 2013

Look at the new project of the Grand Canyon Trust! It allows donors to sponsor dams for a mere 50 dollars! And look at its clever name! Give a Dam!

Recognizing the extraordinary feats and benefits of beaver, the State of Utah has a great plan to help people accommodate beaver where possible and to live-trap and translocate beaver to good sites when they’re setting up in irrigation ditches or other places that are difficult for us and them. You can help Grand Canyon Trust implement this plan and welcome beaver back to Utah.

A dog is often called “man’s best friend.” But beaver just may be Utahns’ best wild friend. Beaver create wetlands for ducks, frogs, fish, and small mammals. They also expand streamside willows and cottonwood for birds, deer, and a host of other animals. They reconnect stream beds with their floodplain, slow the force of floods, extend late-season stream flow, and subirrigate the valleys below their dams.

For $50, the Grand Canyon Trust will help you adopt an active beaver dam! We’ll provide you with information on beaver — and directions to a dam near you. You can help beaver thrive in Utah by going to that dam a time or two each year. Let us know how the beaver are doing, perhaps take photos of their ponds and dams, and telling us about fish, birds, or any other wildlife you see.

You’ll be a member of the Grand Canyon Trust’s network of Dam Watchers. Beaver would thank you if they could.

Well, people always get our name wrong anyway, it drives me CRAZY. So now when they look up the wrong name expecting to find us they’ll find something good instead! (And imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery.) Maybe some day they’ll be hundreds of organizations like “Not A Dam” and “Deserve A Dam” and “Cost a Dam”. That would be cool.

And the fact that they made 1945 dollars already, well, 50 dollars a pop is proportionally way cheaper to contribute to take care of a dam than working every single day for six unforgiving years of your life – so maybe they’re onto something.

Bruce Thompson was the one who tipped me off about this program. He’s the conservation education specialist from Wyoming that created the crossword puzzle we were struggling over last week. Mine wasn’t RIGHT but it was FIRST and that apparently counts for something in this life. This is what arrived yesterday in the mail.

First a charming note card telling me what I’d won. Just in case you’re wondering, that’s a beaver dropping specifically chosen. I imagine there are other kinds. I want a set of these more than I have ever wanted a set of note cards in my life. In fact, I have a biologist niece getting married this summer and I bet she would love these as thank you cards for the wedding gifts!

But wait there’s more. Two adorable bandanas, one with to-scale animal tracks and one with illustrations of actual to scale animal droppings. So you can be hiking, and pull off your scarf to check what you find. How cool is that?

scat-scarf_400x464_gray[1] — Pangraphics Scat Scarf and Track Scarf

Here’s a close up of my favorite part: Don’t worry, I know I have to donate it to the silent auction. (Sigh) In the mean time, thank you Bruce!

Bruce sent this info when I said folks might be interested in some droppings of their own.

“Oh, good, I can do some shameless marketing…The “Dropping You A Note” cards are from the “Literary Movement” Collection of greeting cards that I am about to begin field testing. (I also have a “Just Keeping Track” version in the collection, featuring footprints instead of scat.) A boxed set of 12 cards (6 species, including beaver) will eventually retail for $15, but I can let a limited number of interested BMF fans try ’em for half price, plus shipping, if they’re willing to give me feedback. Best to contact me via mailforbruce (@aol.com) for details.

Saturday Sunrise

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental March 23, 2013

Multimedia beavers? Well, you know it had to happen. This morning beavers better qualities are hitting the air waves across the country and we should enjoy it. Let’s start with this excellent radio broadcast from Michigan Radio.

The Beaver is back in southeast Michigan

›Listen

It has been nearly 150 years since the beaver has made its presence known along the Detroit and Rouge Rivers.The hardy little critters were done- in by trappers and toxic water.

It’s a nice look at the period of 5 seconds of enjoyment folks first have when beavers come back to a river. Don’t miss this glorious moment in time, but I’m sure we’ll hear from them again soon.

And this from Utah which was both adorable and thoughtful enough to unclench my purse strings to make a donation. You should too. When we think of expensive re-branding efforts and major ad campaigns, a donation is pretty cheap good-will investment. (Plus beavers wrapped in towels.)

Capture — Click for adorable footage and an excellent beaver quote

The story inflicted me with the magical memories of Dr. Seuss last night so you get my own meager version of the final stanzas of Horton Hear’s a Who this morning.

“Keystone species”, they said, “with their toothsome behaviors

Chopping trees, building dams, they’re the watershed saviors!

It is time for all folks who want rivers to flow

To recognize beavers save water, you know!

We’ve got to keep dams in much greater amounts

So, get to the watershed, for every dam counts!”

Thus she spoke and she typed until everyone knew

Beavers are working for me and for you

And that spill-

That one leaky pipe put caught the cam’ras

Until finally at last they knew what good the dam was

And beavers were seen, in all their furred glory

While fish and birds smiled, “Now do you get the story!”

They’ve proven their value, to all sir and ma’am

And their whole world was saved by that one beaver dam!

Beaver Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, Educational, Environmental March 22, 2013

Do you remember Teage O’connor? He was a faculty member of the University of Vermont who was interested in some local beavers and involving his students in studying their impact on the trees and pond. He installed some night cameras, corresponded with Worth A Dam, looked at information about flow devices. The Campus is located about 2 hours from Skip Lisle so I thought for sure things were going in the right direction. Then in December we read about kill traps being installed in the pond. And now this.

Melvin’s murder: the story

The UVM physical plant decided to take matters into their own hands by setting lethal traps that resulted in the death of one beaver. The problem?

Physical plant employees did not realize that one of these furry little creatures had a name, Melvin, and was being studied by an environmental class on campus.

Of course they did it during winter break when the risk of student outcry would be at a minimum. Of course they chose to use kill traps rather than actually solve the problem. What boggles my mind is that Teage and his students did everything right.

After the death of Melvin, Green Mountain Animal Defenders (GMAD) stepped in to give the University proper mitigation strategies and the traps were quickly removed by the hired trapper. A meeting took place between UVM, GMAD and John Aberth, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. They discussed future plans of the retention pond. Lori Keppler of GMAD proposed a water flow control device, better known as a “beaver deceiver.”

Traps have an 84 percent failure rate, while these beaver deceivers have a 97 percent success rate, Keppler said. The beavers will work until the water stops running, they do not like the noise of running water. The resolution determined by the group was to let the beavers stay in the pond and see what they do come spring.

Well maybe this is a case of the wheels of justice turning more slowly than the wheels of bad decision. Teage just wrote and assures me that the University has arranged for a flow device to be installed in the spring. That the remaining beavers are fine and that no more will be killed. Okay then, I would advise you to believe it when you see it, but I can see you have some finely suspicious minds already working for your team. Go beavers!

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Third diesel-drenched beaver found at spill site

Looks like a third beaver was found in the diesel soaked pond in Utah. You know there are more. I’m not hopeful for their chances at this point but they should definitely keep looking.

The beaver was found Wednesday evening. It was transported to the rehab center Thursday, where it is being treated for prolonged exposure to the leaked fuel, which coated its body. The beaver’s skin was irritated, Erickson-Marthaler said, but responded well to a bath.

Keep looking for beavers, because grooming every night when you’re covered in Diesel is a death sentence, and I don’t mind saying it if nobody else will:

Beavers wrapped in towels are adorable.

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Finally some lies from Alaska that I just HAD to include because the constant forehead slapping this story provoked is giving me a headache. Can it possibly be true that the Alaska department of fish and game really isn’t familiar with Michael Pollocks findings on beavers and salmon? Really? He did his internship and began his research in Alaska!

Mat-Su blames drift fishery for poor runs

Pat Shields, area management biologist for ADF&G, disputes Knowles’ claim that while also targeting the commercial fisheries, listed high-seas bycatch and environmental issues, growing population in the Mat-Su and associated habitat issues, major flooding and invasive species like northern pike, although it did not mention problems with beaver dams restricting out-migration of smolt, which has been a persistent problem in the Susitna drainage, according to Shields.

“I’m not saying it’s all pike, we’re (ADF&G) not willing to only blame pike,” Shields said. “There are some habitat concerns, there are beaver dams. They’ve always been around, and of course we need to be concerned about harvest levels,” he noted.

Restricting out-migration? Really? I’ve heard the old yarn about salmon not being able to jump UP the dams, but do you honestly not know that rains and snow melt top dams and make it easy as pie for smolt to wash over the top? Let me get this straight: the ADF&Gs position is that it can’t be massive, money- raking, inexpensive drift nets exploiting all the salmon, it has to be those pesky beaver dams that make it hard for smolt to swim downstream.

The mind reels. The jaw drops. The fingers type.