Christmas Cheer for Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions December 21, 2013

Did you read the very nice article about the Martinez Beavers on KQED science blog yesterday? I’ll give you a taste and then you must go read it yourself so they know exactly how many people are interested in this story. Promise?

I talked with Mark Ross from the Martinez City Council. “The beaver turmoil calmed down long ago. Where else can you see beavers within fifteen yards of parking meters?” Ross relayed that, “Flow devices to control the height of the beaver pond are vital to their success, allowing beavers to flourish in an urban area while helping to keep the dam at manageable levels.” He went on, “Beavers are the best ambassadors for Martinez since John Muir, who also made his home here. People come to look for them.”

Ahh, isn’t that nice? Go read the rest where the flow device, Worth A Dam, and Beaver Festival are mentioned. And if you, like me, are having flashbacks reading this quote to a certain childhood story of a petite crimson barnyard fowl – just stop it. What’s good for beavers is good. Period.

More good things from the Trout Unlimited Blog where John Zablocki takes on the beaver dam – trout conundrum. He doesn’t actually come out and say that the controversy is bunk and beavers are good news for trout, but he comes pretty dam close!

Beaver Ponds… Does a River Really Flow Through It?

Should these dams be considered barriers and removed in order to reconnect streams? Strong opinions can be found on either side, but the question remains open. Nevertheless, there is a growing awareness among fisheries scientists and restoration ecologists that beavers and their dams may be allies in the effort to restore North America’s streams and armor them against climate change. Beavers can help regenerate floodplains, enhance water storage, and create refugia for trout threatened by wildfire. On the other hand, they accomplish this by creating dams, which have the potential to act as barriers.But do beaver dams really function as barriers to trout?

A group of researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and Utah State University decided to bring science to bear on this question. They studied two Northern Utah streams containing native Bonneville Cutthroat Trout populations along with non-native Brook Trout and Brown Trout. The researchers captured 1,357 trout over several years and implanted them with Passive Integrated Transponder tags. They then tracked the movements of the fish at different times of the year to determine the extent that fish were migrating past beaver dams. Their findings, recently published in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society show that trout are quite capable of passing beaver dams, at least in the systems they studied. In fact, they observed 481 passes through the 21 beaver dams they monitored.

Go read the rest of this smart article and like it on facebook so they are rewarded for their good thinking! Remember that fish voices are very much louder than beaver voices, so any vote of faith from them counts double.

At least.

Yet another reason to trap beavers in PEI

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 20, 2013

Salmon recovery pleases conservation group

Beavers moved to make way for spawning salmon

Workers in the Souris area have been removing one of the major hurdles to saving the salmon, beavers. The wildlife federation works with local trappers to remove the beavers. Large rivers are cleared of all colonies and dams.

“Salmon couldn’t jump the beaver dams. Fish couldn’t get to the habitat,” said Cheverie.

“There’s still areas for the beavers to work off in some tributaries. We’re not trying to run them out of house and home, there’s still a place for them, The point is in order for fish to spawn, we have to have our major spawning areas with good habitat, they have to be open.”

Prince Edward Island is the home of the fictional character Anne of Green Gables and some of the craziest beaver logic on the planet. They have argued with us that beavers weren’t native, weren’t helpful, weren’t controllable, and weren’t vegetarian. Recently they have reluctantly admitted they’re probably native after all, but said that it doesn’t matter because their streams are so gradual that beaver dams don’t blow out in the winter, so of course their salmon must be protected.

Which is bunk because how sharp is the gradient in Alhambra Creek? A tennis ball would barely roll down stream, and it still blows out several times a year. And anyway, if the salmon are returning to where they were born in order to spawn, how did they get there in the FIRST place if there was no one on hand to rip out the dam before?

PEI is rapidly becoming the Bakersfield of the East. I feel I have to post this every time I read an article about them. I am not going to even bother linking to the research from Michael Pollock or pointing out the film about reintroducing beavers to restore salmonid habitat on the left. Apparently you can lead the entire town of Souris to water – but you can’t make them THINK.

I don’t see a Science Blog about Martinez Beavers on KQED yet, but I’m hopeful. (UPDATE: Here it is.)It doesn’t really matter. Because if you’re at all like me, PEI and Bakersfield and Hopkinton can be as stupid as they like, and folks can break every single promise they can make, but it all adds up to nothing because Bob Cratchit and I are still on VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three good things…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Creative Solutions December 21, 2013

Lots of great news this morning, the most exciting of which is that Worth A Dam and the Martinez Beavers will be on the KQED science blog tomorrow morning, and I couldn’t be happier that they have decided to feature what happens when you decide to live with beavers, not just when you relocate them! Stay tuned for a link tomorrow.

The schedule for the Salmonid Restoration Federation conference is out and I see that my two presentations are on the first day and the last day which means that beavers will be the Alpha and the Omega of this year’s discussions and also means I have to take 5 days off work and spend a grueling week in Santa Barbara. Go beavers!

Finally, this story from the Czech ministry may be the funnest beaver report ever. Apparently the newest plan to get people to appreciating nature includes a big request for funds to – well go read it yourself.

Environment Ministry ends year with beaver underwear

The list of items the ministry wants to buy for this money sounds a bit like a well-known song The Twelve Days of Christmas: six thousand pens, crayons, bags, umbrellas and stickers, two hundred cufflinks and scarves. And the item that has got many riled up is the order for one thousand pieces of underwear with a picture of a beaver on women’s knickers.

Jaromír Bláha, photo: archive of Hnutí DuhaJaromír Bláha, photo: archive of Hnutí Duha Critics have noted not only the inappropriate connotations of the images, but also the unlikely promotional value of the items. The outgoing Environment Minister Tomáš Podivínský is convinced of the opposite, with the news server Lidovky.cz quoting him as saying that this is a way to make the media talk about the environment and that it will help people realize that we have to continuously care for our beavers.

Yes, Jaromir, yes we certainly do.

Beaver Druthers

heidi08 Beavers December 18, 2013

Recently I received an email from Dr. Duncan Halley. a researcher in Norway who is very interested in beavers. He’s the author of several papers on beaver population settlement. Duncan was the scientist on the recent beaver fieldtrip in Scotland teaching anglers about how and why to live with beavers. One of the facts he reported was that beavers ‘prefer to be in large bodies of water’ where they don’t need to build dams. I scratched my head at this and asked him to explain his thinking. He wrote back,

Left to themselves beavers prefer to settle where damming isn’t necessary; but of course, especially later in the process of population development, all those places will be taken. It’s a bit like the first farmers in a district using the fertile valleys, and some of their grandchildren opening up the stony hillslopes – not because they prefer them, but because you can make a living there and that’s all that’s left.

Now mind you, he’s talking about Castor Fiber, not Castor Canadensis. But I’m not sure the behavior would be that different because of 2 genes. What makes me curious about this is whether a big body of water like the Carquinez Strait is really a better place to be a beaver than our cozy Alhambra Creek. Did our beavers ‘settle’ for this habitat because there were too many beavers in the big water to make a living? How would something like the strait (which the Benicia Bridge passes over) ever be ‘too full’ of beavers? I suppose the banks could run out of food, but we know our beavers go into the strait every night to feed, so doesn’t that mean there’s more food in the Strait than there is in the creek?

I like Duncan very much and am very interested in his research. But I’m going to have to say I consider this observation ‘suspect’ and not supported by what we’ve seen over the last 6 years. Since the Carquinez Strait is not ‘thick’ with beavers, I have to think that our beavers settled in Alhambra Creek because they wanted to, not because they had too. If anything the behaviors we have seen suggest that beavers prefer small damable creeks where it’s easier to mark their territory and protect a family. They settle for large bodies of water when that’s not possible. I’ve always thought it was kind of like the difference between being adopted by a family or staying in a large orphanage.

I can’t even imagine how we could design a study to figure this out. Can you?