Month: September 2013

Gimme the good news, first.

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 25, 2013

Paul Lurie, a resident of Woodland Pond in his late 90s, enjoys the breathtaking view of the **beaver pond** from the scenic viewing platform. / Courtesy photo

Woodland Pond adds viewing platform for senior community residents

NEW PALTZ — Residents at Woodland Pond, a senior living community, oversaw a project to create a scenic viewing platform by a small pond at the end of a nature trail behind the community. The committee that executed the project will host a dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. today as part of National Active Aging Week.

Now the article doesn’t mention the word beaver but look at the caption on the photo. That’s a beaver pond they’ll be enjoying and benches to stop along the way. That means the retirement community spent money to value beavers. And all these seniors will be enjoying turtles, frogs, herons, wood duck and the occasional otter or mink too. If I worked for this particular New York retirement community I’d definitely update the brochure. Of course I sent it to our friends at the 4 seasons beaver-killing central. Do you think they’ll be building an overlook to their destroyed beaver pond any time soon?

Now from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Beaver damage relief available to landowners

Ellis County landowners and land managers experiencing pond and pond dam damage resulting from beaver activities can sign up to receive trapping service from Wildlife Services, a part of the Texas A & M AgriLife Extension Service.

Nice. Texas A & M providing Wildlife Services to kill animals at your beck and call. I had to go look at the website to see the list of stewardship services they offer. This was a particularly vivid photo from pages.

The mission of the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (WS) is to provide Federal leadership in managing conflicts with wildlife. WS recognizes that wildlife is an important public resource greatly valued by the American people. By its very nature, however, wildlife is a highly dynamic and mobile resource that can cause damage to agriculture and property, pose risks to human health and safety, and affect natural resources. WS conducts programs of research, technical assistance, and applied management to resolve problems that occur when human activity and wildlife conflict with one another.

Ugh. Traumatized yet? Two consolations. California Congressmen were spurred by Tom Knudson’s shocking articles into working to challenge the WS sadism club. And secondly, allow me to offer this antidote which is the very most comforting thing I have yet seen on the internet(s). The little girl woke up frightened from the fireworks. Dad is showing her how to offer herself musical distractions and reminding her that she is safe.

Trapping v. Abandoment

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental September 24, 2013

Ecology of Aspen, Beaver Ponds, and Trout

Fred Rabe, University of Idaho professor emeritus, will describe changes that occur in an ecosystem once a stream is dammed by beaver: more water storage and enhanced growth of native trout populations due to ample invertebrate biomass. He will also discuss the direction of plant succession after beaver abandonment, which has occurred at 49 Meadows and other wetland sites in northern Idaho.

This talks looks really interesting and I’d like to be in the front row with my hand permanently raised. I sent it to our Idaho beaver friend and he pointed out that it’s misleading to call it beaver “abandonment” if the animals were trapped, which in much of Idaho they are. It is sort of like saying the Cherokee “abandoned” their land in Georgia and North Carolina or the Jewish people “abandoned” their store fronts on Kristallnacht.

Was your beaver pond carried to full term? Or was it aborted?

This matters because if the dammed stream wasn’t able to have a natural progression over time, the effect of “abandonment” will be entirely different than if the beavers stayed a time in one area and then chose to move on because they had used up available food sources. Did the invertebrate community have time to develop? Did fish population have time to alter its density and diversity? Was there enough tree chewing to stimulate coppicing that created enough dense bushy new growth to become nesting habitat for migratory and songbirds? Or are we just talking about a sudden ghost town after all the cowboys were shot? Maybe someone would like to do their dissertation on the topic and study the difference between several ‘abandoned’ sights and several ‘beavers destroyed’ sites.

The same question could be asked of relocation. What happens to the stream after beavers are taken out of one area and forced into some other stream? I know from talking with Dr. Glynnis Hood that this was an area that interested her. Interrupting a beaver pond prevents second generation wildlife from taking hold.

A win-win for beavers, humans and our habitat

But when beavers and humans share a waterway, the ponds can undo much of what the humans have wrought. While much depends on the size of the stream, the average dam is about 15 feet long and 5 feet tall — but it’s not unusual for their length to exceed 300 feet. This can back up water into nearby fields and homes. Plus, there’s the impact of what they do to trees with their powerful jaws.

To enhance the beneficial effects of beaver dams and limit their detrimental side to human activity, biologists have embarked on the Yakima Beaver Project. A collaboration of state, federal, private and tribal interests captures beavers in the populated lowlands of Yakima and Kittitas counties and moves them to higher ground — and farther away from people.

This must be my favorite sentence ever. Just move them farther away from PEOPLE and all the problems will be solved. I mean it’s not like those people need water, or wells, or fish, or birds, right? I’m more inclined to call this decision a ‘lose-lose’. The colony loses their home. And the city loses its beavers.

Oh well, they’ll get another chance next year to make this decision all over again.

Beavers in Big Sky Country

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental September 23, 2013

Comments from readers

Heidi Perryman: Beavers can also do restorative work in cities and parks, too, without the trouble and risk of translocation. Too often it is considered easier to kill or relocate, rather than solve the challenges they are causing in the first place. My city installed a flow device six years ago to control beaver flooding; now we have a stable pond and because of the beaver-tended wetlands we regularly see otters, steelhead, heron and even mink in a tiny urban stream.

Plus, since the beavers remained, they use their own territorial behaviors to keep away others.

Imagine that Washington state is deep crystalline pool of beaver wisdom and the other states are washcloths slowly soaking it up. Knowledge seeps out to the closest neighbors so that Oregon is wetter (smarter) than California and everybody is smarter than Texas. Almost against its better judgment, Idaho is starting to get damp and now Montana is next on the campaign trail. Amy Chadwick has been teaming up with Skip Lisle to install flow devices there, and I am very happy that my letter provides support and emphasis along the way.

Which is not to say that there are not other fonts of knowledge around the country, Utah, Colorado, New York, Vermont, even bitter Massachusetts – but something about the geography of those states swallows that wisdom into a sink hole. The soil beneath is either too hollow or too bedrocky for moisture to pass through and out to the borders. It just can’t seep. Our own state has been dry of beaver knowledge for so long it will take a while to permeate the soil, but I’m hopeful nevertheless. Eventually we’ll all reach saturation point and start spilling into the borders.

And then Ohio and Pennsylvania better watch out.

Rewildling Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental September 22, 2013

Grey Owl: Canada’s great conservationist and imposter

One hundred and twenty five years ago, a great conservationist – and imposter – was born in East Sussex. Known as Grey Owl, he was one of Canada’s first conservationists and is said to have saved the Canadian beaver from extinction.

Two years later, after a long trapping season, he trapped a mother beaver and the kittens were left in the lodge to die but Anahareo convinced him to take the baby beavers home. The episode led him to stop trapping animals and begin his writing and conservation work, warning of the dangers of the logging and fur industries and how they threatened Canada’s native beavers with extinction.

There’s a nice new article from the BBC on Grey Owl which begins to have a sense of proportion about his relative accomplishments versus his completely unimportant ‘fraud’. Go read the whole thing and begin to appreciate what a remarkable man this was who understood so much of nature, ecology and beavers at a time when everyone else was thinking the ‘disposable forest box would never run out of tissues or trees’. Among my most treasured possessions is a book signed by Grey Owl. I came across his remarkable story when I found this picture when I was working on “The Sacred Center”. I was as intrigued as I could possibly be.

For the record, I’ve yet to tempt a beaver into my canoe, although I haven’t given up hope. Here’s the best moment of the 1999 David Attenborough film on his life, who had attended one of his lectures as a boy.

Now for something to read on my Autumn Vacation at the coast where I had the strange fortune of seeing my very first beaver.

Paradise lost? Our memory of nature is in tatters

The Once and Future World, By J.B MacKinnon

Human beings are shortsighted by nature. We experience our brief lives as vast expanses of time, even with a knowledge of history measured in billions of years. Our attention spans are in tatters because of smartphones and tidbit media, and it’s harder and harder to find sustained moments to just look at the world beyond our screens.

The shortsightedness, and the bee thing: Both figure into Vancouver writer J.B. MacKinnon’s new book, The Once and Future World. MacKinnon likes to keep nature close. With Alisa Smith, he co-wrote the bestselling 100-Mile Diet, which helped to launch the local eating movement. He also wrote the narrative for the NFB’s online wildlife surveillance documentary, Bear 71.

Here, he advocates for an even deeper connection to the land we live on, and a longer knowledge of what we take from it. The Once and Future World argues that, when it comes to natural ecosystems, we are continuously forgetting what the Earth really looks like, and as such have forgotten what it is capable of. It is one of those rare reading experiences that can change the way you see everything around you, recommended for anyone interested in anything that lives and breathes.

MacKinnon’s book has a place in a wider movement called “rewilding.” The term is a slippery fish. It can refer to a conservation approach that favours restoring large-scale wilderness areas and connecting them, to protect the habitats of so-called keystone species – animals, like elephants or beaver, which play a role in engineering their ecosystems. It can mean the reintroduction of native species to an area from which they have disappeared, such the return of grey wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

It’s curious to think of Martinez beaver rally as a peoples quest for wilderness in their own neighborhoods, and interesting to consider what might have awoken in me when I began watching our beaver family closer. The book will be released on September 24th and you can pre ordered your copy here. You can bet I will be quoting the best bits for your enjoyment.

The sweetest thing. Ever.

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere September 21, 2013

Yesterday I spent my birthday evening with the beavers who had obviously been out carousing late to the harvest moon and didn’t wake up until 7:00. There was sneaky champagne and baked treats enjoyed with Jon and Cheryl, and Lory texted wistfully from Sedonna. The sky was looming with weather and I felt three drops that might have been classified as rain but it politely waited until the carousing was over. And then the beavers gave me the most generous present I could have imagined and I saw the sweetest thing I have ever seen in 6 years of watching beavers.

But we’ll talk about that later. Let’s talk first about letting children learn about beavers by dressing up as a beaver and making a lodge of pretzels.

Busy beavers bewilder

Julie Bartolone, naturalist for Mill Creek Park, said the program was offered on Smythe Island because it’s one of the places in the park that the beaver calls home.

“If you ever want to see them, this is the place to come,” said Bartolone.

Bartolone said that beavers have become one of her favorite animals. “There’s so many interesting things about them,” said Bartolone. “[I like] the fact that they mate for life, and how they build their lodges, because the entrance is only under water.”

Mind you. This is in Ohio, one of the beaver belt of states that regularly do the wrong thing. It’s a state where I can’t send anyone to an expert who knows better because there are none. I couldn’t be happier that one of Julie’s favorite animals is the beaver.Wait ’til I write her about the ‘keystone species charm bracelet’ activity!

So Ohio sent me a birthday present. And then there was this lively gift from Ireland of all places!

Would beavers from abroad improve Irish riversides?

Our waterways have become tunnelled with alder and willow, blocking light and reducing bioproductivity, says a reader, who suggests the animals would fell the riparian trees and let in the sun

In the Scottish Beaver Trial, overseen by official and voluntary groups, 11 beavers from Norway were released, unfenced, in a working forest in Argyll in 2009. This followed public consultation, with a mostly favourable response, and the Scottish government will make a final judgment on it next year. Meanwhile, however, unlicensed and unauthorised beavers are living in unknown numbers at more than 40 sites elsewhere in Scotland and at others in Wales and southern England. Beavers never reached Ireland, so far as archaeology can establish.

I’m sorry but I have read this “no beavers in Ireland” malarky before and I just don’t buy it. I know you feel all different from Scotland and separately autonomous, but the distance from Northern Ireland to Northern Scotland is less than 40 miles as the beaver swims. We know they have gone longer distances across salt water than that to find a new home, and you’re trying to tell me that some industrious pair of yearlings, when their family members were being hunted to extinction, never did that before? Allow me to be deeply doubtful. Plus there’s this:

Gearóid Mac Niocaill (in his book Ireland Before the Vikings) writes that Bibraige, if its purported derivation from ‘beaver-people’ is correct, “must derive from a remote continental past” because the beaver “is not known in Ireland”.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight with you. Then you win. Mark your calendars for when the beaver conversation started in Ireland.

Now back to last nights delight and the sweetest thing. Ever.

When I review the list of the most adorable beaver moments I observed since 2007 my list typically looks like this. The first was the morning in that first fall of 2007 when I came upone 4 kits all chewing willow in the stream. Computer traumas mean I no longer possess the original footage, but it’s still on youtube, and it still makes me smile. Especially the moment when the second kit tries to swim THROUGH the third. The fourth kit is just out of the camera shot, but trust me he was there.

A second runner up for cuteness I never saw, but saw footage of from Moses and involved a yearling beaver playing with a kit by rolling him over in the water. See here:

But up until last night the easily most adorable thing I’ve ever seen was when mom was sick and giving her three kits a good start before she left them forever. One was so happy that she was swimming over to him he raised his tail in anticipation. You’re on you own for this video because I am incapable of watching more than two seconds before I burst into sobs. The tail greet appears around the one minute mark and is as much proof that beavers feel affection for family members as any the world will offer.

But what I saw last night (and sadly have no footage of because it was too dark) rivaled the scene. Our young, attentive mom was flanked by two pesky kits who were looking for attention while she fixed the dam, and she did one of those wholly understandable parent moments like “leave me alone for a dam-moment will you?” and they swam dejectedly off. But a moment later she had a change of heart, swam over to them and ducked under the water beneath them turning her white belly to the sky like a sea otter, and floated up under them, rolling them both in her arms in a moment of pure beaver love. Cheryl, Jon and I all awwed at exactly the same pitch.

It was, and at this point I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur, the very sweetest thing. Ever.