And in case you want to sing along…(Verse 6 is my favorite!)
Now for some follow up to the week’s news, Mike Callahan is in Washington having his first meeting with Ben, Mike and Jake this morning about installing flow devices that allow salmon passage. Doug and Brien wrote me back this morning from Indiana to say thank you for the helpful information about managing beavers in DePauw Nature Park. And Bonnie from Texas who convinced a developer to pay for installation of a “beaver deceiver” that would drain the pond and make the beavers leave has thoughtfully pointed out that my article on the effort was sarcastic.
The only thing I remember reporting about Indiana and beavers (aside from the Marion lab story where I was delightfully wrong), is a report from the state fair where they were proudly offering “beaver on a stick“. (Ugh!) It has not exactly been a shining beacon of beaver progressive thought. In fact every state it happens to border has a very nearly abysmal beaver record, so beavers obviously need to inspire disciples there. Well, maybe this is a start.
This issue became clear when, last December, a local trapper set up beaver traps in Big Walnut Creek, sparking opposition from disappointed University faculty and staff members.
The unanticipated backlash provoked Nature Park Ranger Brien Holsapple to address the trappers, who decided to remove the traps in order to prevent any further controversy or conflict.
Harms then mentioned the trapping incident to English professor, Ellen Bayer. Bayer, who was troubled by the news, decided to contact Holsapple as well.
“For the previous couple of months, my wife and I would go hiking a lot in the Nature Park,” Harms said. “We had seen beavers…and a dam was starting to be built.”
Harms thought that seeing the beavers behaving naturally was “kind of cool.”
Hurray for Doug! And Ellen! And Mr. Holsapple for deciding to listen instead of react indignantly! This is a great story of folks starting to think about beavers in a new way and I wrote everyone of them with problem-solving tools just in case their good cheer changes when things get harder. In the mean time, it’s very good news for beavers in Indiana. But be careful, Doug. I seem to remember a resonable person I once knew that liked to take walks and watch beavers just because they were ‘kinda cool’. You’ll never believe what happened to her.
“I guess I’m just glad that when people raise a concern, it’s possible to not only have immediate response,” Bayer said, “but also to have the campus body’s input taken seriously.”
Holsapple also expressed his appreciation and encouragement for this kind of communication to continue in the future.
“Without a doubt, I appreciate the students and the faculty’s input and I received a lot of it – some good, some bad – but don’t ever hesitate,” Holsapple said. “This is our park.”
The beaver incident and the way it was dealt with demonstrated the constant need for adjusting to the world’s changing environment, even on such a small scale of beavers in the park.
Maybe this means there’s hope for the next Indiana State fair?
A lovely photo from Cheryl this week. It was taken near the Creek Monkey wall where dozens of admiring onlookers watched. The photo demonstrates that kits have no fear and rely on responsible humans to do the right thing and remind them that they are wild animals. (Which, if you’re ever approached in a similar fashion, means making noise or clapping so that they are startled off. Clapping sounds like a tail slap and they know exactly what that means!) It happens every year, with similarly adorable results, but it always worries us a little. For now, take a deep breath and enjoy!
Beaver kit foraging – Photo Cheryl Reynolds
Isn’t that lovely? His nose is really getting bigger. Not a little snippet anymore. Here’s a video of a similarly fearless approach in 2010. The kit was a little younger because they were orphans and unsupervised, but same general idea.
I spent a delightful morning watching mom fastidiously repair the secondary dam. Junior helped a little, and a kit was happily munching some willow in the cove. Mom did an excellent, thoughtful job, moving mud, bringing branches and stopping every trickle. She started at repair “A” and worked so steadily that soon no water was flowing there at all. In fact with the new security in place area B started leaking. She kept working on A for a while and I wondered if she was stuck in her routine and unable to pay attention to the new problem.
Almost as if she could hear my thoughts (or feel the current) she swam over to investigate B. Then started laying mud on its surface, and patching the edges with sticks. Soon there was no more tricking sounds on A or B or anywhere else for that matter. A kit filled the silence with a whine, which might have been “come play with me”. This she ignored at first. Then swam about enough to get him to come over to her side. She continued on the dam, and he gave a little poke to it with his nose. I’m sure she was proud.
Bring your “kit” to work day!
The secondary dam has been in roughly the same place and pretty much the same shape for five years. It has been ripped out with a bulldozer by city staff, and squashed flat by massive flow and still rebuilt exactly the same way. Until now. What I don’t understand is why suddenly it has a new apparently carefully maintained right angle. Mom clearly has the commitment and the skill to fix it any way she choses, and she has willing helpers near by. They have materials and mud aplenty. It’s not that they’re in a hurry or not up to the job. So why the Escher stair structure?
There are of course beaver dams with lovely curves that turn to accommodate flow or an existing trunk in the stream. There are beaver dams that snake for miles in undulating waves.
I will of keep researching the subject the way I usually do, but at this moment, as far as I know Martinez has the only beaver dam in existence with a right angle.
FAIRVIEW – A Collin County developer has found a different way to solve a beaver problem where he’s building that won’t cause any harm to the animals living there.
About 100 yards long, the beaver dam is next to a site where million dollar homes will be built in Fairview and has likely been hidden on the land for years. Now, the algae-filled pond created by the dam poses a problem to future homeowners.
“Typically what other people do is they hire a trapper and set traps and catch the beavers and relocate them or kill them,” said Bonnie Bradshaw, of 911 Wildlife. “And that’s not either humane or effective.”
So far, so good. Everything looks promising until – well see for yourself.
That’s right. The beaver deceiver is draining the pond so the beavers will be forced to leave!
“If we just came in and destroyed the dam and the beavers moved downstream, another family would come back and try to rebuild in the same area,” Reynolds said.
With the pond gone, the beavers will have no choice but to move on their own, preventing flooding, mosquitoes and the need for traps.
Beaver make-leavers?
Now I’ve thought about this a great deal. 911 Wildlife isn’t silly enough to think flow devices scare beavers away. I wrote the owner Bonnie Bradshaw last year and made sure she knew about Sherri’s book and Mike’s DVD. When they helped the students install that one in Grand Prairie they seemed to know what they were doing.
“The way it works is, they put a pipe on the front of it, and they put a cage on the front of it to trap the debris, and the water flows right down the middle of it, but it keeps the dam intact,” explained sixth grade science teacher Lenora Tygart.
So this has to be the fault of the reporter (s), who misunderstood every word that came out of her mouth. Because of course the point of this would be to make beavers LEAVE. Who on earth is crazy enough to spend money to make them stay? But if you look closely even the graph shows that they aren’t trying to “drain the pond”. Remember the height where it bends over the dam determines the height of the pond.
Oh, and who uses that old box filter anyway? That would be straight from Laura Simon’s paper. In fact that graphic is directly lifted from it. Interestingly the paper fails to mention how beaver deceivers force the animals to depart.
So KHOU really thinks its a good idea to drain ponds and cut down trees to keep beavers away? Seems a little bit extreme. Don’t you need water for those golf courses? And what are all those cattle going to drink?
It’s a good thing Texas never had any droughts or anything.
So now that we’re talking about climate change, this picture of the fire currently burning its way towards Yosemite horrified me this morning and I had to share.
Gladstone thinks it’s only fair she puts out a welcome mat for urban wildlife. “We are taking over their habitats,” she says. “They will stay and we have to learn to live with them.”
Her view is embraced by naturalists and conservationists. Animal populations have rebounded in North American cities and everyone — two legged and four — must adapt. But this accommodation will take effort: “We’ve largely taken ourselves out of the working landscape and mostly forsaken both the destructive ways and the stewardship skills of our ancestors,” says Jim Sterba in his engaging 2012 book, Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds. “But the comeback of wildlife and forests all but demands that we reconnect to the natural world around us, relearn old stewardship skills and develop new ways of practising those skills better.”
It’s not the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe. They (and countless others) reviewed Sterba’s handy published excuses for killing wildlife without so much as a single inconvenint fact check. We had to wait for the Toronto Star to put this brilliant piece together. Go read the whole thing all the way through, and email it to five of your friends. Then send a note of thanks to the author Liz Scrivener, who deserves a TON of credit.
Take the worrisome example of beavers.
“Beaver numbers are definitely high,” confirms manager Toninger. “We have beavers swimming around million-dollar yachts on the harbourfront.”
Most complaints are about beavers damming and causing flooding in recreation areas but on occasion the problem involves backyards. In the winter, problems associated with North America’s largest rodent concern damage to trees. “They can level a whole forest and over the course of a winter can take down hundreds of trees.”
Residents usually want beavers trapped and relocated. But that’s not the way nature works, Toninger explains.
“Our understanding of wildlife is scripted,” he says, referencing Walt Disney. “That you can trap him and somehow he’d be happy and frolic somewhere else. You’d be trapping beaver for the rest of your existence. Move him somewhere else and the beaver dies a lonely existence in an area it doesn’t know. It can’t set up a territory and can’t feed. They are not like deer. They need a home base, they need a lodge. It’s no different than a stranger picking up your teenage son and taking him to a country he doesn’t know.”
The conservation authority recommends installing a system of pipes called “beaver deceivers” or “beaver bafflers” so beavers can learn to live with lower water levels. Trees can be protected by wrapping them with wire.
Hurray for the conservation authority! Hurray for Liz and the Toronto Star! Honestly when I read this article I get the strangest feeling all over that there are a few reasonable humans in the world. It’s very, very strange, and wonderful!
I hope Mr. Sterba suffers from terrible indigestion today.
Our friends working on the beaver believers project have surface again after some much-needed rest. They posted this picture with USFS geomorphologist Suzanne Fouty.
Well this will certainly be a memorable summer for each one of them. I can’t imagine how Sarah is going to go through all that footage and end up with a 20 minute documentary, but I’m very intrigued to find out!
They also posted some stills of their interviews so far. You might recognize these folk.
And in case you want to sing along…(Verse 6 is my favorite!)
A lovely photo from Cheryl this week. It was taken near the Creek Monkey wall where dozens of admiring onlookers watched. The photo demonstrates that kits have no fear and rely on responsible humans to do the right thing and remind them that they are wild animals. (Which, if you’re ever approached in a similar fashion, means making noise or clapping so that they are startled off. Clapping sounds like a tail slap and they know exactly what that means!) It happens every year, with similarly adorable results, but it always worries us a little. For now, take a deep breath and enjoy!
There are of course beaver dams with lovely curves that turn to accommodate flow or an existing trunk in the stream. There are beaver dams that snake for miles in undulating waves.
