Month: November 2013

Headlines that make my head hurt.

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental November 10, 2013

I like to think that I’m more suited to Salon.com than TIME magazine or readers digest, but I may have to change party affiliati on after this article, boldly entitled “11 species that are destroying the planet” and featuring a cover photo of a beaver. Never mind that the article is talking about the beavers in Tierra Del Fuego which should never have been there in the first place and were the result of some Brazilian Nazi get-rich-quick scheme. Never mind that the trees in that zone don’t coppice and the conditions beavers cause have nothing to do with beavers in America, where they belong.

8. Argentina: Beavers

To grow its fur trade, Argentina imported a mere 50 beavers from Canada in 1946. Bad idea. Since then, they’ve swelled to a colony of more than 200,000 and have spread to Chile, felling endless trees in their wake. Officials have tried trapping them with little success. Their other solution? Encouraging restaurants to add beaver to their menus.

Mind you, the article also mentions how badgers are ruining England with bovine disease and white tailed deer are destroying the US by causing climate change – so the author’s staggering ignorance isn’t limited to beavers but honestly, I expect some actual thinking to occur when a Salon.com article is written. Even if it was lifted from Global Post. Not a bunch of urban legends from a scary sleep-over where beavers become a poster-child for destruction!

Go please and politely comment here:

Baindu Kallon

Intern at Global Post

Currently a junior at Northwestern University studying journalism and international studies. Looking to combine both passions for storytelling and international issues such as refugees, migration flows and human rights. Interested in using different media platforms such as social media and online journalism, to raise awareness on these challenges that face the developing world.

Alright Baindu, you’re a student and I’m willing to overlook your wildlife ignorance if you’re willing to learn something about our natural world before pontificating about it. Wikipedia Rick went to North Western, and he turned out awesome, so I’m sure there’s hope for you. Maybe you should come to the beaver festival and talk to us, and the coyote people, and the badger people, and the bat people, and the bird people, and understand what’s really at stake before you use a powerful platform to set back environmental thinking 30 years.

Sheesh.

Environmental Writer (and beaver friend) gets award

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, In the News, Why We Care November 9, 2013

Exposé of federal predator control overkill wins Knight-Risser journalism prize

Thomas Knudson is the author of the hard-hitting series of articles in the Sacramento Bee last year “The killing agency: Wildlife Services’ brutal methods leave a trail of animal death.” It started with a mountain of FOIA requests and long conversations with folks who knew all about it. Including an hour conversation with me and a visit to Elk Grove where he learned that they had spent a bucket of money on the re-education campaign to teach children that “beavers are bad.”

He also traveled to Tahoe to visit mutual beaver friend Sherri Guzzy when our Sierra beaver nativity article launched and they removed some beaver dams so the (introduced) salmon could get around and enjoy their festival.

The 2012 Wildlife Services project, in articles, slideshows, video and interactive graphics, focuses on a little-known U.S. Department of Agriculture agency whose strategy for controlling animals deemed of risk to livestock and the public has killed millions of predators and other species across the West, often in ways that are inhumane, excessive and at odds with science.

It shows how the wide-scale killing of coyotes has proven ineffective and can backfire biologically by contributing to population explosions of prey species, such as rabbits and rodents. And it describes the indiscriminate nature of the agency’s traps, snares and poison, which have caused the often tortuous deaths of many thousands of non-target animals over the decades, including family pets and such rare, protected species as bald and golden eagles.

When the original report launched, readers were so shocked and outraged that the country folk living on my parents lane in the foothills gathered together to pour over the new issue when they met at the paper box to get their paper. It made a big impression from coast to coast. The well-deserved prize brings with it 5000 dollars, lots of recognition for his hard work, a reminder to newspapers to do real journalism and a nudge for all the other reporters to move in the same direction. I couldn’t be happier for Tom, who is a concerned, respectful nice guy that has made a huge difference in how we think about “the killing agency”.

Tom writes for the Sacramento Bee, the flagship of the McClatchy newspapers which (for my money) does some of the only real reporting across the country. Congratulations Tom! Now for the next award-winning series about beavers and salmon? Beavers and drought? Beavers and biodiversity? California is spending money every day to get rid of a solution that would save them millions.

That sounds like an expose just waiting to happen.

In which Cheryl and Heidi get helpers…

heidi08 pictures November 8, 2013

From this morning’s Huffington Post:

Beaver Gets Behind The Camera

The unlikely shot – teamed up with one of the critter peering into the screen of a laptop – are the sneaky work of photographer Leopold Kanzler.

Kanzler lured the creature to him using a trail of chopped up apple on the banks of the Danube river, near Vienna. He said: “I had to be extremely patient while waiting for the beaver to stand in all the right positions but it was worth the wait, the pictures are very funny.”

Finally! Some help around here! Now I can sleep in and leave the reporting in these capable paws. I enjoy these photos an indescribable amount, they tickle every funny bone I have – especially when I think about what won the battle against our city council lo these many years ago. No wonder they lost. We had helpers!

(BTW – Just so you know, that wooden tripod isn’t long for this world.)

Make that 101…

heidi08 Massachusetts Trapping Law November 7, 2013

Okay, we’re going back to Massachusetts. Hopkinton to be precise, where the waterside homeowners want some beavers dead and can’t possibly wrap their trees or solve their flooding problem by hiring expert Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions who lives an unfathomable 77 miles away from them.

From Hopkinton, MA to Southampton, MA: 77 miles

From Grafton,VT to Martinez,CA 2991 miles.

I guess a miss really IS as good as a mile, when what you’re missing is information.

Hopkinton woman urges approval of trapping bill

A Hopkinton woman and her neighbors who are unhappy over flooding caused by beaver dams urged lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a bill that would make it easier for trappers to use deadlier traps.

“It’s a big mess for homeowners,” DelGaudio said, telling the room about her own flooding problems and those of her neighbors. Water is rising around septic systems, pools and sheds, not to mention homes themselves, she said, especially in the past four to six months.

But trappers, including Rick Merchant, who spoke at the session, need permission from local boards of health to use traps that kill beavers. A 1996 ballot question made lethal traps illegal and animal rights groups continue to oppose them. The new bill would reverse parts of that law.

Beavers are also causing headaches for homeowners in other MetroWest towns, including Holliston. In that town, trappers only need permission in the off-season to trap using Conibear, the “quick kill,” traps, said Health Agent Ann McCobb.

Just so we’re clear, the rules need to be followed in every city in the state, and the rules say you can still kill beavers just not with crush traps. As inconvenient as it might seem you need to live trap them and then shoot them through the head. Unless one of NINE EXCEPTIONS are met, and then you can kill them ol’ any way you like.

The above provision shall not apply to the use of prohibited devices by federal and state departments of health or municipal boards of health for the purpose of protection from threats to human health and safety. A threat to human health and safety may include, but shall not be limited to:

(a) beaver or muskrat occupancy of a public water supply;

(b) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of drinking water wells, well fields or water pumping stations;

(c) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of sewage beds, septic systems or sewage pumping stations;

(d) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of a public or private way, driveway, railway or airport runway or taxi-way;

(e) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding of electrical or gas generation plants or transmission or distribution structures or facilities, telephone or other communications facilities or other public utilities;

(f) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding affecting the public use of hospitals, emergency clinics, nursing homes, homes for the elderly or fire stations;

(g) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding affecting hazardous waste sites or facilities, incineration or resource recovery plants or other structures or facilities whereby flooding may result in the release or escape of hazardous or noxious materials or substances;

(h) the gnawing, chewing, entering, or damage to electrical or gas generation, transmission or distribution equipment, cables, alarm systems or facilities by any beaver or muskrat;

(i) beaver or muskrat-caused flooding or structural instability on property owned by the applicant if such animal problem poses an imminent threat of substantial property damage or income loss, which shall be limited to: (1) flooding of residential, commercial, industrial or commercial buildings or facilities; (2) flooding of or access to commercial agricultural lands which prevents normal agricultural practices from being conducted on such lands; (3) reduction in the production of an agricultural crop caused by flooding or compromised structural stability of commercial agricultural lands; (4) flooding of residential lands in which the municipal board of health, its chair or agent or the state or federal department of health has determined a threat to human health and safety exists. The department of environmental protection shall make any determination of a threat to a public water supply.

It’s funny how I have never in six years read a single article that even obliquely MENTIONED these 9 exceptions to the trapping law. I guess they’re too busy writing how miserable beavers make things and how the voters ruined their lives in 1996. They never forget to mention that fact, do they?

The traps are inhumane and indiscriminate, said Linda Huebner, deputy director of advocacy department of MSPCA.

“They can catch whatever animal happens upon them,” she said.

The problem is not that there are too many beavers, but that humans have settled in areas too near beaver habitats, she said.

She said trapping won’t solve the problem permanently. One of several smarter solutions, she said, are flow devices, designed to outsmart beavers so water can flow through dams.

“If the habitat can support beavers, other beavers will populate that site,” she said.

Ahh Linda, we are so happy you’re out there in the trenches! Fighting the good fight. I wrote the reporter too and she said she’s working on a longer piece about beavers and goodness my website has a lot of information and would I like to chat?

Guess what I said.

‘Pond’ Beavers, ‘Carnivous Doves’ and other lies.

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 6, 2013

About this time every year, (usually a little bit earlier) so many stories of beaver problems clutter the newswires that I begin to despair of ever catching up to report on them. I start to wonder if it all really matters, if there’s any hope of changing hearts and minds, if a wishful girl with a beaver mission can possibly make a whit of difference is this crazy beaver-killing world. Well, I’ll let you know the answer to that question when we get farther along in the story, but for now we’ve got lots to talk about.

Beavers causing problems at Turner pond

Seaman attributed the change in water level to changes in the dam and beavers. Selectman Kurt Youland, who also owns property on Pleasant Pond, said many of the historical beaches around the pond have disappeared. He said there are about six active beaver lodges on the pond, which equates to nearly 40 animals.

Seaman said she has done all she can legally do and has hired a state biologist to trap beavers, raccoons and seagulls. She said it cost $70 to $100 per animal.

You kill seagulls? This is Maine, mind you. And you think you have six active lodges with 40 beavers in a single lake? Well, it looks like the pond’s about a mile across so that seems pretty unlikely. You know what a great way is to tell how many beavers are in an area? To get up early or stay up late and actually watch them for a few days! See who’s living where and who has young. You might even hear them, talking to each other and asking for favors. It could happen. But if you did that you would realize these are very social families who work hard and really care about each other. And then you wouldn’t be so excited to trap them, would you?

You know, I met a very reasonable-looking man from Maine on the footbridge yesterday. He was not very enthused about our beavers and said cautiously, “I’ve seen beavers before back in my home state. But they were smaller. Those were POND BEAVERS not these huge RIVER BEAVERS.”

I tried explaining politely that what he saw in Maine were kits, and that full grown beavers are much larger. I even tried to allow that our beavers do not have to fast during the winter freeze so they might carry a few more pounds. But he would have none of it, what he saw in Maine were POND beavers, a completely different animal.

So I have been muttering this to myself for three days now and wondering that we let people who think these outrageous things drive and vote and own firearms. My mom had a neighbor the other day tell her that “Doves were the most vicious birds, they attack other birds for no reason. You have to get rid of them.”

I guess that’s why we release them at peace ceremonies? To scare are enemies into keeping the truce?

My point (and I do have one) is that half the time (or more than half) people who sound very sure of themselves don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And they don’t WANT to know, because their mind is made up, and like a double bed in a sleeper car, they don’t want to have to make it again. Reporters do not appear to know this. And they constantly confuse “sounding certain” with “being right”.

Here’s another example.

Beavers a dam nuisance to Hopkinton homeowners

HOPKINTON – MA

A group of neighbors in the South and North Mill streets area have hired a professional beaver trapper to combat what they call out-of-control flooding on their land created by beaver dams.

Speicher has applied to the town for an emergency permit to trap beavers using a kind of “quick kill” trap only allowed with special permission. He met Tuesday with town officials.

Meanwhile, a bill is making its way through the Legislature to permit wider use of quick-kill traps and streamline permitting by putting the state in charge instead of municipalities.

Of course a bill is making it’s way through the legislature. It always is. The one thing that we can be sure of in this world, besides death and taxes, is that a bill is always winding it’s way through the state house to overturn the will of the voters and remove the beaver scourge. Of course, even if it passed handily, it will do no such thing. Because the beaver population is growing whether you use kill traps, suitcase traps, or electric chairs to control it. It’s growing because that’s what successful populations do. Do you think Connecticut or New Hampshire never complain about beavers because they weren’t “tricked” into outlawing crush traps?

Someday I’ll get tired of making fun of Massachusetts for its ridiculously constant whining about the voters in 1996. I’ve written about it maybe 100 times in 6 years, and I received a personal letter from the governor last year regarding it. Some day I’ll give up and realize the state is on a crash course to beaver-stupid and can’t wait until it gets there and can conibear to its hearts content.

But not yet.

Beaver dams popping up in Springfield

In the mean time there’s a nice beaver story from Springfield MA, which very kindly reminds the viewer that tampering with beaver dams is illegal!

“All this time I haven’t seen any, and these beavers are really something new because they were not here three months ago…I hope they don’t touch them just leave the beavers alone. they are a good thing I think,” said Luisa Powers from Springfield.