A new [John] Day is dawning…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Why We Care January 11, 2014

“Beaver” dams aid fish restoration in John Day River drainage

Ecologists and biologists working in a tributary of the John Day River in northeast Oregon are encouraging the building of dams to restore degraded stream habitat – beaver dams, that is.

The stream recovery operation has already significantly increased wild juvenile steelhead survival in Bridge Creek as opposed to the control tributary Murderers Creek.

The researchers from NOAA Fisheries Science Center in Seattle did this by increasing the local beaver population’s ability to maintain long-term and stable beaver dams. The outcome is a healthier stream habitat that is less channelized and has less annual erosion from floods.

Here’s a lovely article about our friends working at John Day, who are making ‘starter dams’ to increase the staying power of beaver dams along this watershed with significant results. Maybe you’re thinking, ” I don’t have any friends at John Day” – but you’d be wrong. Click on the video in the left hand margin (or below) and you’ll recognize the players, including Dr. Michael Pollock who will be presenting on this very topic at our beaver seminar at the salmonid restoration federation conference. He actually grew up in Walnut Creek so he’s an old local. Here he is visiting with me and the dams in Martinez:

Biologists will continue to monitor both the stream’s health and the health of the threatened steelhead in the stream. They are also considering expanding the techniques used in this project to the remainder of Bridge Creek. In the meantime, Pollock is fielding phone calls from interested agencies throughout the West, his crew is producing a how-to manual and they will hold workshops on their techniques in the winter of 2014-15.

“It’s been exciting to see the number of agencies interested in using beavers for stream habitat recovery,” Pollock said. “It’s an affordable technique and very effective.”

Pollock is one of the key players that was so famous and busy he never wrote me back after all my many emails until our own wikipedia Rick tracked him down and got him to be a reviewer on our Sierra paper. When I was invited to speak at the state parks conference in Yosemite I asked him and Rick to come as well. They both accepted and we drove in Rick’s Range Rover up and back in 24 hours. We drank too much wine and had a glorious dinner at the Tenaya lodge with some overly attentive waiters. The best part of the entire trip was when he showed a photo of a nutria in his talk instead of a beaver. Cheryl and I said nothing but exchanged THAT LOOK which he did not miss. (I dare say he will never, ever make that mistake again.) Here he is with Cheryl and Rick in front of my house after our marathon drive.

What a good article to wake up to! I can’t wait to hear the updates in Santa Barbara. All people should care about beavers for their own sake. They’re fun to watch, good at what they do and helpful to wildlife. Bur even if they don’t – we might be able to get them to care about beavers for steelhead’s sake.

Time Flies

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental January 10, 2014

Over the break I filled out the application for Worth A Dam to return to the Flyway Festival at Mare Island. (Their website is down for renewal so I can’t give a link just yet.) This will be our fourth visit to bird Mecca and we couldn’t be happier. This is a massive expo of everything and everyone you wanted to know about our feathered friends. There are tours and trainings and field trips. Plus beavers. Who could ask for more?

I’m always particularly interested in talking about the relationship between beavers and birds. Whether it’s blue heron’s nesting in flooded trees at a beaver pond, or wood ducks benefitting from beaver habitat, I’m thrilled to make the link. This year I want to really emphasize the Cooke and Zack study that showed that beavers make ideal nesting habitat with their chewing by promoting coppicing – which makes the trees regrow bushy and dense. Their study found that the result means that as the number of beaver dams go up the number of migratory and songbirds also go up.

But how to preach this gospel in a way that resonates? There are always a lot of smart children at the flyway festival, so I thought we’d put them to work on the idea. I’m imagining something like this. A large poster that explains:

Then get them to teach the concept for us! The idea is that first we teach about beavers providing habitat by promoting coppicing, and then we let kids ‘populate’ the trees with birds and nests!

This bare tree poster will be blown up on a cork board at our display. Children will be encouraged to make birds and nests using construction paper, tissue paper, yarn, glue, paper plates, cotton balls, patterned paper, then stick them on the tree wherever they like. I’m imagining it might look something like this when it’s finished. Only much, much better.

Beavers and Birds! What a combination!

Devon Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental January 9, 2014

Do you remember the beaver project in Devon England where a few brave souls were arguing for their reintroduction by showing what good impact a pair had on fenced land? Well here’s their initial report of how things are going.

In March 2011 a pair of juvenile Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber) were released into a 3 hectare fenced enclosure on private land in northern Devon. The objectives of the project are to use beavers to restore an area of nationally important wet grassland and to understand the effects that this native, but UK extinct, species will have on this environment.

This project aims to study the effects that beavers have on these wetland. This will help to inform future decisions about the potential reintroduction of this species into the wider countryside.

Ahh pull up a chair. Let’s see how beavers get on in the rolling grasslands of Devon. Remember that I myself am the grandaughter of a Cornish tin miner from St. Austell (prounced almost as ‘Ozil’). My grandfather was brought as a boy to work the gold mines in Sierra City when the tin mines stopped paying. (Look up the name ‘Perryman’ the next time your in the southlands!) This beaver sight is just off the Tamar river which bordered Cornwall from the rest of England. It used to be said that a man would be born, live his life and die without ever crossing the Tamar. And that if misfortune made you cross it you had encountered an evil fate indeed.

Beaver release

On 16th March 2011 a pair of beavers were released into the enclosure. The male and female beavers were both selected from captive bred animals of the eastern race of Eurasian beavers that originated in Bavaria. They were two years old at the time of release and were housed together for a number of weeks prior to being moved into the enclosure.

The beavers were placed directly into an artificial log and turf lodge that had been constructed alongside a small pond. All had been carefully designed to help the beavers settle in their new surroundings.

Although the beavers had transponders implanted into them, it was decided, for welfare reasons, that they should not have radiotracking devices attached to them. Instead they have been monitored using a network of camera traps located in various places within the enclosure.

Can I just stop and say how much I love that decision! Let’s try actually watching the animals instead of radio tracking them! Hurray for Devon! Shhh it gets better…

Prior to works commencing in 2010 open water was restricted to a trickle of water that flowed through the woodland, and only in parts was this a defined channel. In the woodland, a few pools could be found under upturned root plates of windblown trees.

By March 2012 (end of first year) a total of 8 large ponds had been created, with a total surface area of over 900m².

That’s right Devon! Imagine what our beaver would have done if the flow device had never been installed and city streets weren’t important! The pond used to go up above the level where we stand now, and it could easily have reached to Castro Street or beyond. All that stream complexity makes a huge difference in the creatures that can be sustained by that water. Just look:

The open water habitats are readily being colonised by a wide range of aquatic invertebrates, and this is expected to further increase as the ponds become more stable. 16 species of water beetle, four stonefly species, five caddis fly species, five dragonflies and a range of other groups were all recorded over three visits in the summer 2012.

It’s a great look at the effects of some beavers left to their own devices. You might want to check out the whole thing. What happens when all those bugs show up? Well all the things that eat bugs can’t wait to stop by.

For amphibians like common frogs there were limited opportunities for breeding prior to the introduction of beavers. A walkover survey in spring 2011 identified ten clumps of frog spawn, mainly in disturbed ground. By the spring of 2013, 310 clumps of frogspawn were counted, and 75% of these clumps were found in the shallow margins of four of the beaver ponds.

As an anecdotal observation at the start of the project, most of the woodland was easily navigable in wellington boots. However, some parts of it are now so treacherous, that surveyors risk sinking to their waists. The range of additional ecological niches that have been created is impressive, possibly at the expense of areas of dense mature willow woodland.

I can’t wait to see what the next couple of years will bring. Thanks Devon for doing such a thoughtful and responsible job showing the world what beavers can do, and thanks Duncan Halley for sending me the report!

What Hopkinton Wants: Hopkinton Gets

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 8, 2014

If beavers read the paper they could have seen 7 articles in three months about the woeful folk in Hopkinton tearing their expensively-treated hair out because beavers were ruining their beautiful riverside home and realize their own fate was looking grim. They would be able to sling their belongings over their shoulder, bid goodbye to the old haunts, and travel in a mass exodus to friendlier climes. Enos Mills (In Beaver World) wrote about once seeing a long line of beavers make a migration in hopes of finding a better home. Several colonies together moving en mass – I wouldn’t swear it was true but I wouldn’t dare say it was fiction either.

But the Hopkinton beavers had no such warning. And the landowners and property developer finally got what they wanted all along. Remember, on your next trip to Massachusetts, to never, ever spend a single dime in Hopkinton and shake the dust from your sandals when you leave.

Beavers removed near Hopkinton development

A trapper hired to stem flooding at Legacy Farms caught 42 beavers last month, he said Tuesday.

Malcolm Speicher, who this winter also trapped for homeowners off North and South Mill streets, said he spent 15 days on the south side of 730-acre East Main Street housing development.

Beavers can endanger homes, buildings and septic systems if their dams cause flooding.

“We just kept going and going and going, and we just kept finding and finding and finding,” Speicher said.

I could pointedly ask why reporters generously use the words “caught” and “removed” instead of the words “KILLED” and “SLAUGHTERED”, but big kill stories upset me. I have little sarcasm left. They remind me of the horror I felt, way back in the beginning of all this, to read that Elk Grove in CA (which to this day has anti-beaver propaganda on their public works site) trapped 53 beavers after their big beaver bruhaha. I’m shocked as much by the futility as by the cruelty of it. Never mind that one of their city council wrote me about flow devices and had a great conversation with Mike on the phone. Never mind that they are 30 minutes away from the answer. They wanted dead beavers and they got them. Of course, since trapping is a short-term solution, Hopkinton is going to be whining about beaver problems again before you know it. In the mean time, let’s all hate them very, very much, okay?

I suddenly have a very strong need to hear Carl Sandburg’s voice reading this…