Month: December 2013

Beaver Clan?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 11, 2013

Hanover highway superintendent gives beaver update

D’Angelo said he has had a number of people contact him who were interested in helping the town trap the beavers, but D’Angelo said he is going to stick with a trapper he has worked with in the past. He thinks there are numerous beavers working on this dam, since it can be rebuilt overnight, and all the beavers are part of a clan.

Because honestly, who hasn’t looked to the Highway Superintendent for a beaver update? I can’t wait for the weather report from the meter maid, the traffic update from Dairy Queen and the fiscal news from the Car Wash. Anyway, what’s wrong with saying that beavers live in a “Clan”? Those Duck Dynasty guys who blow up dams seem to?

I read about Mr. D’Angelo a couple weeks ago but spared you the drama because more important business was afoot. I had hoped, since Hanover is 4.5 hours from the folks at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, that some wisdom would eventually sink through. But apparently the soil is mighty parched in Hanover.

Just so you know, beavers live in a COLONY not a CLAN. And the word colony just means FAMILY not extended family of Hatfields and McCoys. And every beaver family whose safety depends on the dam will fix the dam in a single night and by the way that’s been true since the discovery of fire.

Now we head to the opposite coast where the beaver conveyor belt is hard at work:

Volunteers keep Klamath beavers moving

FORT KLAMATH, Oregon — Just like the animals they’re helping, Terry Simpson and Jayme Goodwin have been as busy as beavers.

Simpson and Goodwin, retired biologists who live in Crescent, are members of the Klamath Watershed Partnership’s beaver management team. Over the past two years, they and others on the eight-person team have relocated nine beavers.

When she was a Forest Service biologist for the Chemult Ranger District, Simpson learned how beavers can create better habitat for fish and help farmers and ranchers because their dams and resulting ponds can create season-long flood irrigated pastures. A study in Washington determined beaver ponds created as much water storage as a large Columbia River dam. So, when the Partnership’s beaver team was created, she quickly volunteered.

“I’m extremely interested in helping with beaver restoration, relocation and mitigation,” Simpson said, a sentiment echoed by Goodwin.

I got excited about this story yesterday because I thought it was on the Klamath in California, which would be news because California doesn’t allow relocation. Eli Asarian pointed out that the Klamath goes from Oregon to the golden state, so I dutifully got un-excited. My favorite paragraph in this article is the shortest…

As part of a project involving nuisance beavers in the Sevenmile area near Fort Klamath, Simpson and Goodwin waded into the drainage, where they used shovels and other equipment to replace a wire fence in the creek so water can again freely flow through a culvert under the Sevenmile Road. The dams had begun blocking water flow through the culvert, which could have resulted in flooding that could wash out the road.

I’m going to bet there was no corresponding article when they protected the culvert. I’m glad there’s a Klamath beaver team at all and thrilled they know how to protect a culvert, but I cannot for the life of me understand why moving a problem makes for better copy than solving it.

Do they also rotate the flat tire rather than change it?

Beaver NIMBY

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental December 10, 2013

Yakima is having some more good press for their beaver relocation program. I met a few folk from their program and think their hearts are in the right places. But I can’t help being frustrated that moving beavers out of town is accomplished with such fanfare, while the long hard slog of teaching a city to LIVE with the beavers they have hardly gets a blurb. Think about it, the beaver battle in Martinez was covered in the media excitedly, the money spent on sheetpile is still heralded to this day, the plan to rip out the dam with an anchor was on national news, but Skip’s flow device and its success was never ever mentioned once.

(Once in an interview with a KTVU anchor she reminisced fondly, “Oh I remember being here during all that uproar! I was pregnant and my daughter is three now! Someone put in that pipe right? I guess it didn’t work because I never heard anything else about it”. To which I replied “It worked so well that no one ever talks about. If it hadn’t worked you would have been back to report on the story!)

Well the KQED program dedicated to “sustainability” has an interesting take on this short-term solution.

Putting Nuisance Beavers to Work

With their strong buck teeth and flat tails, beavers are the engineers of the natural world. Their craftsmanship, however, sometimes impacts man-made environments such as houses, roads, and farms. As a result, beavers are often considered to be nuisance animals and killed for the trouble they cause.

Now, beavers throughout central and eastern Washington State are being saved. In March 2011, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) established a three-year pilot project to relocate troublemaking beavers from homes and farms and move them to upper river tributaries. WDFW biologist William Meyer has been working on the Yakima Basin Beaver Project since its inception.

“I originally got the idea for this project from the Methow Valley Beaver Project,” said Meyer. “I thought, ‘I need to apply for a grant and do this project in the Yakima Basin.’” Meyer received funding for the project from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board.

Clearly KQED’s quest is smitten with this ‘problem relocating project’. (Never mind that they never reported on our beavers OR responded to the press releases about the six Beaver Festivals. Do I sound bitter?) It is indeed better to move a problem than to kill it, but remember the original plan in Martinez was to move OUR beavers, (well two of them anyway – they’d still have killed the rest).We found an successful alternative. And the success rates for the Methow Project on which this is based is about 50%. Which means that half the beavers are dead or eaten the following year.

“I think this is a win/win,” said Meyer, “These little ecosystem engineers can restore habitat, and [by moving them] we can solve someone’s problem.”

Those are some “Hunger -Game-Odds” but I guess its better than being killed outright. Still, let’s be honest, sometimes its a win/lose right? And since the property owner will face the same problem next year and will have fewer fish and birds, more erosion and a lower water table, I guess it can be a lose/lose too.

Tell me how a plan to move beavers is sustainable, QUEST? Is there could be a conveyor belt of some kind involved?

All in a days Beaver Work!

heidi08 Beavers December 9, 2013

There’s lots to do this morning. First a chance to listen to this very fun beaver podcast From Fur-Bearer defenders radio in Toronto. It starts appropriately with our hero Adrian Nelson and ends with his teacher Mike Callahan. In the middle of this all-boys club we managed to squeeze in a interview with me during my 15 minute lunch hour on a crisis filled-8 patient Thursday. Considering the dramatic circumstances I think I did okay. I regret that he never asked me about Worth A Dam and that I messed up the estimate that historically North America had 40-600 million beaver – but honestly that’s a really stupid estimate so can I be wholly responsible? (I have no idea what scientist counting streams originally hit upon that pretend number but its like writing your Astro Physics thesis saying that the number of starts in the solar system is somewhere “between 1 and an infinity”.)

Anyway it’s a done deal now and you’ll need to study up for your next job, so enjoy. Unfortunately I can’t link to it directly but try following this:

Now that you’re all experts on how and why to live with beavers we have work to do. The ubiquitous TIME magazine has a new issue following the advice from Jim Sterba’s crowd-pleasing book called TIME TO CULL! In it the CULL CULT spouses the profoundly poorly thought-out advice that all we need to do to be happy is kill more beasts – including you-know-whats.

America’s Pest Problem: It’s Time to Cull the Herd

Too many deer, wild pigs, raccoons and beavers can be almost as bad for the animals as too few. This is why communities across the country find themselves forced to grapple with a conundrum. The same environmental sensitivity that brought Bambi back from the brink over the last century now makes it painfully controversial to do what experts say must be done: a bunch of these critters need to be killed.

Your polite 100-word letter to the goes here: I know that the Humane Society, the Grand Canyon Land Trust, and yours truly have already sent ours.

When humans kill one problem we often create another – such as increasingly poisoning rats with rodenticides that unintentionally kill the very raptors that would keep the population in check!

Beavers are a keystone species whose wetlands increase desired fish and game AND whose problems can be easily managed with inexpensive flow devices. My own city installed a one to control flooding 6 years ago, and now because of our safe, beaver-tended wetlands we regularly see otter, steelhead, woodduck and even mink.

If we did our job learning how to live in harmony with nature there would be fewer ‘pests’.

Live Free or Kill a Beaver!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 8, 2013

State removing ‘nuisance’ beavers near Exeter dam

(Translation: ‘Nuisance beaver’ = Beaver).

EXETER — The state has hired a wildlife control operator who began trapping a group of beavers that built a dam off Brentwood Road and caused water from Little River to spill onto nearby properties, according to town and state officials.

Town officials asked for the state’s help in dealing with the beavers as Brentwood Road/Route 111A is a state road. If the town had to pay to have the beavers trapped, it could have cost as much as $3,000, Town Manager Russ Dean said.

Neighbors have complained about the flooding since they noticed the waters of Little River rising. In a letter sent to town officials in November when the problem first began, Dr. Thomas Oxnard, a Greenleaf Drive resident, said the water level “has been approaching the road for the last few years.”

The dam is in the woods across from Greenleaf Drive.

“In the past, heavy rain storms have flooded over the road and at times closed the road to traffic,” Oxnard wrote. “I fear this will happen again.”

He also noted the beaver dam has caused large areas of “standing water on both sides of the road and the woods.”

I know it is uncharitable of me to refer to concerned citizens of the Granite State as “Whining” but I can’t help it. This postage stamp of a state is surrounded on all sides by beaver experts who could fix that flooding with a flow device in less time than it takes to wash the license plates where their snappy motto appears. (Did you know, in 1971 the legislature mandated that ‘Live Free or Die’ would replace the boring old motto SCENIC – which explains a lot.) If you lived in New Hampshire you could barely walk out your door or swing a dead cat without hitting someone who knows how to handle this problem much smarter. Vermont fits together snugly with the state like horses stand nose to tail, or some other well-known numerical positions. Skip Lisle, the inventor of the beaver deceiver, with more than 30 years of expertise in this area is 122 miles a way and could fix this problem in his sleep.

(For problem-solving comparisons: Martinez brought Skip 3000 miles to handle our flooding concerns. New Hampshire can’t stroll across the dam state line to find answers?)

More than 90 percent of the time, trappers set up the traps to kill the beavers, Tate said. “In my experience there’s no sense relocating them because they just cause problems somewhere else,” he said.

Exeter Highway Superintendent Jay Perkins said it’s far from unusual for beavers to cause problems by damming up a stream or a river. “It’s New England,” he said.

Tate said despite efforts to address the Exeter situation, the problem statewide is not going to go away. “Beaver nuisance situations have been occurring since the presence of beavers,” Tate said. “They’ve always been present in New Hampshire and they’ve always caused problems.”

Yes beavers have always caused problems. Except for the during friggin’ fur trade when they made the greedy bastards come here in the first place. Honestly, this story just steams my cup. The reporter’s name for this story happens to be Jeff McMenemy. Which I can really, really believe.

He’s certainly no McFriend of beavers.

acorn — Photo: Skip Lisle installs “Castor Master” in Martinez CA 2008
Graphic: Schematic Drawing from Mike Callahan’s Flexible Leveler.

Beaver Candidates

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere December 7, 2013

Who should be The Salt Lake Tribune’s Utahn of the Year?

Should the hero beavers of Willard Bay, whose dam stopped an oil spill from spreading across sensitive wetlands, be named The Salt Lake Tribune’s Utahn(s) of the Year? We’ve come up with 17 finalists for the distinction – also including former Utah Attorney General John Swallow, Senator Mike Lee and RSL coach Jason Kreis. Utahn of the Year is designed to note who most shaped the news in 2013, leaving an indelible mark on our state. Weigh in with your choice from our finalists – or write in your own candidate – here:

Our Utahn of the Year most often is an individual or a group recognized for motivating others, inspiring hope or contributing in a way that altered Utah’s course.

Hero beavers » The six beavers are credited with mitigating the environmental impact of a March diesel spill at Willard Bay State Park. Dams they created slowed the spill from reaching Willard Bay reservoir.

GO VOTE, HERE! GO VOTE, HERE! GO VOTE, HERE!

Oh, and I vote the Salt Lake City Tribune never uses the word ‘UTAHN’ again. It’s a little creepy.