Just six pages?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 26, 2014

Emily the Trapper is 26, smart, loves animals, and thinks your ideas about fur trapping are all wrong

As a 26-year-old female, Lamb is a rarity among fur trappers, but her work ethic and foul mouth quickly endeared her to colleagues. While some of the fur she harvests is sold for use in the fashion industry, she also works closely with government officials, wildlife researchers and the oil industry to help study and sustain animal populations in the wild

Lamb has always found animals beautiful. She used to spend entire afternoons sitting in the hay feeder on her family’s Sundre-area farm when she was a girl just so she could see the cows up close when they came to eat. After graduating from high school, Lamb decided she wanted to be a veterinarian or a Fish and Wildlife officer. She eventually earned a diploma in Wildlife and Forestry Conservation online, then began an internship with the Cochrane Ecological Institute.

Joining the business as an outsider was a challenge for Lamb. So was being the first and only woman in the company. “You don’t expect a girl is going to be OK with going out and killing stuff,” she told me. Lamb found the physical demands gruelling. “It’s pretty intense work,” she said. “Tearing around with 70- or 80-pound beavers in your backpack for undeterminable distances. And setting traps with poundage enough to break your arms.” There is also, of course, the locker-room talk that comes with being the sole woman in a crew of men. “Trust me, I hear about a million beaver jokes a day,” she said with a laugh. She considers the ribbing good-natured. “Obviously, I am an easy-going gal.”

This is any trapping company’s wet dream. A cute, young, sympathetic girl they can push to the front of the line to put a humane face on their ghoulish activities. No wonder the paper dedicated 6 entire pages to her story. (No word yet on when it will run a 6 page story on beaver benefits, or the rodent rebound from trapping coyotes, or why wolves help rivers.) There’s no time for fluff pieces like that when we have a cute 26 year old voyageur to write about.

Trappers are rarely paid for these contributions. They do it because they share a common commitment to wildlife understanding and sustainability. This is something Lamb wants the public to understand. “All of us–hunters, trappers, environmentalists, tree-huggers, hippies–every one of us, in the end, wants there to be as big and as healthy a population of wildlife as possible. Period.”

The style of beaver trap Abercrombie and Lamb use is a “body-grip killing trap”–often called a Conibear trap after inventor Frank Conibear–which a beaver springs by swimming into it. The trap is powerful enough to break a person’s arm. “That’ll wreck you pretty good,” Lamb said. The Conibear’s loaded jaws will catch a beaver around the neck and fracture its spine while compressing the carotid artery in its neck. Death comes painlessly and instantaneously.2 “The animal is living his life the way he lives his life, doing what he does every day,” Lamb said. “Then he’s not.”

Why is it that if you say that beavers are good for fish or wildlife reporters have to talk to someone who thinks differently to present a balance – but if you say conibears never make wildlife suffer they just obediently write it down with a flourish? Is there nobody in Alberta who disagrees with Emily? I’m assuming from the 60+ comments that there are. Maybe you could have contacted Dr. Hood for a quote about the impact of trapping beaver on surrounding wildlife?

Furthermore, the selective trapping of overpopulated animals like beavers and coyotes sustains their numbers. Abercrombie “traps out” about half of the beaver lodges on Chip Lake. In this way, he doubles the resources available for the remaining colonies and reduces their competitive stress. “I am keeping the population at a consistent high level on the lake by employing trapping as a management tool.” Abercrombie told me that 10 years ago, without enough trapping on the lake, the beavers clear cut the trees off every island. “They literally ate themselves out of house and home.” Those that didn’t starve contracted parasitic infections due to overcrowding. Eventually, every one of Chip Lake’s 200 beavers died. Now, thanks to Abercrombie’s trapping, about 60 individuals reside on the lake, a little more than half of what he figures the area can support.

You do realize animals move locations right? I mean if they chop the trees in one lake they move to another lake while those trees are coppicing and coming back to life? If you drink all the beer in your refrigerator what do you do? I assume there are more trees at the lake than there are in Alhambra Creek. Its been 7 years and our beavers haven’t eaten themselves out of house and home or died of tularemia. I’m surprised the Alberta beaver species must be way more greedy.

“As a trapper, this is my responsibility,” Abercrombie said. “I do it as a steward on behalf of the citizens of Alberta. I manage the fur-bearer resource in this area. That’s what trappers do. The government doesn’t do it. The animal-rights people don’t do it. We do it.”

Oh pul-eeze. I can’t stand this much selfless patriotism without a martini. I’m reminded of a certain self-justifying poem by Oscar Wilde.

And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Oscar Wilde

Stopping to smell the roses – er castoreum.

heidi08 Beavers March 25, 2014

Leave It to Beaver at Juanita Beach

If you’ve ever walked along the old roadway turned boardwalk at Juanita Bay Park and looked into the watery marsh, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a beaver dam on the east side of the walkway. If you are lucky, you may have caught a glimpse of the furry rodent.

While I was walking in Juanita Beach Park’s west end at the creek this morning, I caught a glimpse of the elusive little guy. This quiet part of the park was only occupied by a few pairs of ducks. The stillness of the scene was only jarred by the unmistakable paddling tail of a little beaver motoring his way up the creek. I tried to snap a photo of him but he wasn’t in the mood to say ‘cheese’. So, no luck in the photo department. The one above is compliments of Wikipedia.

I like that Juanita Beach Park has both active areas with beach volleyball, swing sets and kids playing in the grass, yet a stone’s throw away, one can see ducks and beavers swimming around in their own world.

Here’s the thing. If I’m reviewing an article about destroying a beaver dam, flooding, trapping, blocked culverts or getting rid of beavers it could pretty much be from state – East, North, South, West, you name it. But if it’s an article about enjoying beavers – standing and watching them in a city park, it could pretty much only be from two places. Washington or maybe Vermont.

Hint: It’s mostly Washington.

Someday that will change. Some day California will be as smart about beaver as our pacific cousins. Some day they’ll be a beaver blogger writing about how wise Martinez is and why can’t we all be like that? But for now we will just enjoy a reporter enjoying beavers in his creek. Makes a nice change!

Let’s Pretend…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 24, 2014

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child I might play for hours with any classmate who started with that magical invitation. Let’s pretend we’re explorers on the moon. Let’s pretend we’re lion hunters on the Serengeti. Let’s pretend we’re butterfly princesses who run a restaurant. I was always a sucker for a good story.

So, apparently, is Nova Scotia.

It has decided to pretend that the reason it had to close Bayswater beach because of E coli this year is the result of a beaver dam across the street. No, really.

Ahh those imaginative folk at the DOE! Not just imaginative, but cost-cutting! An unknown cause of E coli could mean months of study, or new toilets, or heavy fines. No one has to pay if it’s a beaver dam! Well, except for the beavers.

Can beavers carry e coli? Yes, like any other warm blooded mammal. But they have to catch it first. A local tells me that there are houses in the region that release sewage into the beach. And a fish farm near by. I also read that 40 miles away there was an e coli outbreak this year a couple month ago that caught heat because it wasn’t released to the public for 5 days. Hmmm. Too bad they didn’t have a nearby beaver dam to blame.

Nova Scotia officials knew of E. coli outbreak 5 days before public: documents

HALIFAX — Public health officials in Nova Scotia knew they were dealing with an outbreak of E. coli five days before they informed the public about it in early January, documents obtained by The Canadian Press show.

Notes from that day’s meeting, which were released under access-to-information legislation, show that Health Department officials knew there were dealing with seven confirmed cases of E. coli 0157 affecting people ranging in age from 18 to 83.

Gosh that one little beaver dam caused a lot of problems! Thank goodness they’re going to get rid of it! But one wonders, what will they blame next summer? The birds?

Let’s have some good new after all that imaginary silliness. How about bigger megaphone for the ‘bring back beavers’ campaign in England?

Weatherwatch: Bring back the beaver!

Beavers could be one answer to many of Britain’s flooding problems. It sounds a crazy idea – after all, beavers make dams that create their own floods. But beavers build their dams on small shallow streams and rivers, and these mini-reservoirs slow down the flow of water feeding into larger rivers, which helps to cut major flooding during heavy downpours of rain.

The problem this winter with much of the flooding was land drainage, dredging and straightening of rivers that all speeded up the flow of water into rivers and made them more likely to flood.

Not only are beavers good at protecting against floods, but they also provide cleaner water, boost fish numbers and enhance all sorts of other wildlife and also plants. And beavers have another enormously attractive advantage – at a time of severely stretched public finances their hard-work flood control work comes virtually for free.

As Louise Ramsay noted when this article came out, “Well done. I couldn’t have said it better myself!”

Conference Highlights

heidi08 Beavers March 23, 2014

Easy 6 hour drive back home to find 3 new donations to the silent auction, a box of wildlife trekking scarves in assorted colors and a ripped out bathroom with no wall or fixtures. I assume the new shower will get here eventually, so in the mean time I will just share a few highlights from the conference.

TALKING ABOUT BEAVERS FOR FOUR DAYS.
Watching the Large Woody Debris presentations and grinning.
Seeing Michael Pollock in a beaver hat.
Mary Obrien asking good (but pesky) questions of Dr. Rick Lanman after his talk until he caved.
Sitting in the sun on the deck looking at the ocean.
Cormorants nesting in the eucalyptus trees on the ocean.
Seeing Mike Vukman 6 years post beaver.
Talking over lunch about beaver and flow devices to the Staff Environmental Scientist of CA Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A mocking bird singing all day every day at our house.
Meeting Stephen Swales who is writing the report for Fish and Wildlife on Beavers and salmon for the Coho Recovery Team. He wants to come see our beavers himself.
Being told by Riley that my presentation was one of the best she ever saw at SRF.

Last Act

heidi08 Beavers March 22, 2014

The Poster session was a heavily attended, catered event that ran until 9:00 and wasn’t slowing down when we sneaked out. Salmon people really know how to party and the image of a tipsy Michael Pollock wearing a beaver hat and making his way around the hall will probably make me smile for weeks. I made a few exciting contacts, the fish and wildlife warden from Lagunitas Creek in Marin that can’t wait until they have beavers, the woman who saw a beaver chew on the Navarro and the officer from Mendocino County that bemoaned never having beavers on the Navarro. (ahem), someone who loved my talk wednesday and is coming to hear me again this morning, and a caltrans worker in Contra Costa who was trying to figure out how to keep a beaver along 680.

This morning it’s off to Riley’s seminar on urban stream restoration while Jon checks out of our haven away from home and takes the dog for a walk. And then we hit the road, following 101 until it makes friends with 680 again. See you soon!