Month: May 2014

Deja vu all over again

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Recent Sightings, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 21, 2014

Napa kit — Napa beaver kit – Photo Rusty Cohn

Who was it that said “The more things change, the more they stay the same”? Here at beaver central we say that every day. Sometimes this familiarity is delightful, like when Rusty sends me excitedly the first photo of a kit he took recently. Or when the PRMCC commission gives full approval for another festival at last night’s meeting. Or when a reporter from Carmel calls me excitedly to discuss how to attract beavers to the area.

And other reruns are less cheerful, such as the grisly discussion they’re starting in England over the unauthorized beavers in Devon.

River’s rare beavers face cull threat

A family of beavers is living in the River Otter but campaigners believe they are in danger because the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) does not view them as native.

They claim that Natural England is drawing up plans for a cull even though a programme has begun to reintroduce the animals into the wild in Scotland.

Derek Gow, an ecologist and member of the Beaver Advisory Committee for England, said he feared Defra was using the threat of a rare parasite tapeworm (Echinococcus multilocularis) found in the European beaver to remove the three animals in Devon.

The tapeworm can be passed to humans who handle infected animals or eat contaminated food. It is known to cause a headache, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Although it is not known where the Devon beavers come from, Mr Gow believes that trapping them for testing could be traumatic and risks killing the young.

“Trapping and culling these animals would be an appalling thing to do. The risk of this parasite is very small as it is only found in directly imported adult animals,” Mr Gow told The Independent. “The real reason Defra wants to trap them or kill them has nothing to do with beavers; it’s to do with pressure from a small minority of angling organisations.”

When the story that they were thinking about the possibility of maybe killing the intrepid beavers who moved into the river Otter trickled out, the officials got an earful from upset residents who are fond of the brave recolonizers and did some quick back-peddling.

“There are no plans whatsoever to cull beavers. We are currently working out plans for the best way forward and any decision will be made with the welfare of the beavers in mind.”

Hahaha, just in case you wondered what it looks like when someone speaks out of both sides of their mouth, here’s your example. With three international papers running the story today, you can bet he’ll be equivocating more soon. Still, I can’t help thinking of the grinch.

And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head,

And he got her a drink and he sent her to bed.

And when CindyLou Who went to bed with her cup,

HE went to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!

Just sayin’.

Fur trade feminism

heidi08 History May 20, 2014

Madeline La Framboise was born on Mackinac island, the daughter of a french trapper and an Ottawa indian. Her father died when she was just three years old and she was raised among her mother’s family in an Ottawa village at the mouth of the grand river in Michigan. At the ripe age of 14 she married trapper Joseph La Framboise. The pair had two children and repeated the marraige for the Catholic church several years later.

During the spring of 1806 young Joseph La Framboise and his courageous wife traveled by canoe from Mackinac and established a trading post one and a half miles west of the present site of Lowell, on the bank of Grand river. There a cabin was built of logs chinked with clay and bark, and about thirty feet long.

Madeline knew the trade, and was a great help in the business so her dealing was essential to its success.

In the spring of 1809 the La Framboises’ were returning from their winter quarters at Mackinac with their usual retinue of French voyageurs and Indians. Dusk coming on they encamped on the lake shore midway between the present cities of Muskegon and Grand Haven. That night Joseph La Framboise was murdered by a drunken Pottawattamie Indian.

Her husband murdered by a drunken indian? Considering that she was half Ottowan herself, and the grandaughter of a chief no less, that seemed a little unlikely. The tale sounded so much like racism I scoured for more stories, but found none. Whatever transpired left Madeline a widow with two small children and a tradepost to manage or sell.

Through the long sad summer that followed Madame La Framboise carried on the work at the trading post so efficiently that the Astor Fur Co. made her the official agent in place of her deceased husband. The Indians held her in high esteem.

“For a female to be that involved in the fur trade — to be the boss — was incredible,” said David Schmid, a Byron Center amateur historian and historical re-enactor who has studied fur trading of the Great Lakes and early French explorers like Étienne Brûlé Robert de LaSalle and Father Jacques Marquette.

She must have been good at what she did. She could neither read nor write but spoke four languages fluently. French, English, Ottawa and Chippewa. She became a wealthy woman at a time when belts were already starting to tighten in the fur trade. She never married again, and she fought off the encroaching competition of Astor for a valiantly long time.

She aptly fended off competition from John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company until convinced to sell her interest to Rix Robinson in 1818, who moved the post to Ada.

Her role as boss was notable from a European cultural perspective, Schmid said. However, in native culture, which was much more matriarchal, La Framboise’s position as a female businesswoman was likely less surprising.

Not to mention the culture of the animal whose slaughter they were getting rich off. Which also happens to be matriarchal. Or was before it was destroyed. Maddy got out at the right time because by the 1820’s there were very few beaver left in Michigan. Or Wisconsin. Or Wyoming. And ten years later there were not even any left in California. So well did the trappers do their job.

As for La Framboise herself, she died April 4, 1846 on Mackinac Island, where she had become a Sunday school teacher. Her son, Joseph, became a fur trader and lived most of his life along the Minnesota River Valley. Her daughter. Josette, married the brother of President Franklin Pierce and died young.

Her home on the island has become a hotel for tourists, the Harbour View Inn. She was buried beneath the altar of St. Anne’s Catholic Church, beside Josette and a grandson, and later moved to a sepulcher in the church yard.

She was 66 when she died, and at the height of her trade was making 10,000 a month which was far more than her competition. She is remembered as one of Michigan’s first (and finest) business women. She never had her picture taken, but the home on Mackinac island where she retired is still visited and remembered to this day.

La Framboise in English translates to “the rasberry”. So think of her and the tycoon compulsion we have to exploit resources for unspendable amounts of wealth the next time you enjoy this seasonal fruit.

A beaver night to remember

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, City Reports, Creative Solutions May 19, 2014

Beavers build a foothold in Napa waters

A few hundred yards off the road, the creek’s waters slowed to a stop amid a grass-shrouded mound of branches and mud, forming an unexpectedly placid pool amid the strip malls and car lots. Two hundred feet upstream sat a mound of earth and twigs, and the willow trees from which the branches had grown — the telltale sign of a pair of beavers who have made this obscure stretch of water a home, for themselves and other wildlife.

“Further up the creek it’s dry and overgrown with trees,” Rusty Cohn, a Napa resident and frequent beaver watcher, said during a morning stroll along the bank. “Here you might see a large bass, or five or six turtles sunning themselves on a tree. It’s like an oasis here.”

Beavers have formed at least 20 dams on the Napa River and its tributaries, according to Shaun Horne, watershed and flood control resource specialist for the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

A very positive beaver-article from Napa this morning, offered with great enthusiasm by reporter Howard Yune. In addition to getting the details and facts right, he doesn’t make a single beaver pun, which is well worth a wine tasting trip in gratitude! It’s hard to believe how different Napa is behaving in response to its beavers than Martinez once did. Do you think we paved the way in some small measure?

The return of beavers to the Bay Area reached its peak of attention starting in 2007, when a mating pair dammed Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, formed a den and toppled trees the city had planted during a $9.7 million flood control campaign.

A proposal by engineering consultants to euthanize or relocate the beavers sparked an outcry from naturalists and residents, who formed the nonprofit group Worth a Dam to spare the water dwellers and call attention to their benefits. Eventually, the city spared the beaver family, which has produced at least 19 offspring since, according to Heidi Perryman, founder and president of Worth a Dam.

“We’ve seen improvements in our creek,” she said Friday. “We see otter, steelhead, wood ducks, turtles, even mink, all because of habitat the beavers make”

No such human-vs.-beaver conflict appears imminent around Napa, Horne said while viewing the Tulocay Creek dam, where the water level of the resulting pond is about 6 feet below an adjoining hotel’s parking lot.

Despite the animals’ reputation for choking waterways, Horne said the county flood district generally restricts its intervention to annually surveying streams and removing thicker fallen trees, or surrounding others with wire to shield them from gnawing. Cattails and other vegetation are considered a higher risk for increasing silting, and the district trims back cattails and prunes some willows every two years.

“Generally we leave them alone,” he said. “Usually, beaver dams will break up when you have high enough flows, and then the beavers come back and rework the sites again.”

I don’t know about you, but after an article like that I’m so well satisfied I feel I might need a cigarette. (And I don’t even smoke.)

Last night in Martinez amazing photographer Steve Zamek of Featherlight photography made a trek to donate to our silent auction and do a little beaver watching in the city. Before he came he pragmatically asked how close the beavers would be and if he should bring his long lens, which kept us chuckling for a long, long time. We started off watching by the primary dam and were rewarded by this early arrival. It must be three years since we saw muskrats at the primary. I was so happy to see this HUGE specimen gracing our waterways again! The lightening shutter you hear clicking to my left is Steve. Apparently this muskrat was so efficient at his job that he convinced several families that they were seeing a baby beaver. We were told over and over again that they had watched a kit “with his tail going back and forth”. Ahh, brings back memories!

Steve generously donated four amazing prints to the silent auction and wrote about us on his Flickr account today, so I added the copyright mark to protect his good work as much as possible. If you want to see it in its gloriously unmarked state, go here. And if you haven’t gasped in awe yet this morning, go look at Steve’s website here.

Last night at the beaver dam the air was humming with excited comments about the beaver documentary on Nature. Two little girls told me cheerfully that beavers were “attracted to the sound of running water” could “hold their breath for 15 minutes and “Timber just chewed leaves, he didn’t know how to chew sticks!” I was so impressed with how much they remembered I asked them if they wanted to record a video letter to the producer.

She very kindly wrote back to all of us this morning.

Oh, Heidi–that’s why I do it! That they saw, watched, cared and remembered details! Thank you so much for capturing that and sending it my way! It made me smile. I watched it many times. Thank you so much, April, Alana (sp?) and Heidi!!! Girls, I am so delighted to know you watched, enjoyed and cared about what you saw on Leave It To Beavers. It means so much to me to hear from you! ~Jari

You are more than welcome. And now that the beaver-muskrat refresher course is once again needed, I will end by posting this reminder.

Beavers for Dummies

heidi08 Creative Solutions May 18, 2014

Here’s a little something I put together for RCD and the Flood District in Napa last week. You should be able to click on it and open or download it. I honestly don’t think they need much help from us, they seem so beaver smart already. Even the construction site wrote me asking how to protect those beavers!

right near hotel — Beaver lodge near hotel parking lot in Napa – Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Our own Cheryl Reynolds did a field trip yesterday and snapped some great photos. You don’t get a lodge that lovely without a landlord. Here she is mowing the lawn.

She also saw two kits after it got dark, so our contact’s very excited. Tomorrow the story should go public in the Napa Valley Regisrtar. Here’s the beautiful creek those beavers are creating. I talked to the reporter Friday and he wondered about the great beaver debate in Martinez and why it happened in the first place.

Funny story.

Nice graphic from PBS too.

Beaver Success

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, featured May 17, 2014

In the wake of the recent beavermentary I thought I’d would baste you in the afterglow of some other beaver triumphs. First in Scotland where the historic Knapdale trial has been called a resounding success.

Scotland wild beaver reintroduction trial ‘an outstanding success’

The reintroduction of beavers to the wild in Scotland for the first time in 400 years has been an “outstanding success”, according to the team of ecologists that brought them back.

The four pairs of beavers reintroduced in Knapdale five years ago have produced 14 young, engineered 18-metre-long dams and lodges the size of double garages and significantly boosted tourism.

Monitoring of the UK’s first ever licenced mammal reintroduction programme finishes at the end of May, after five years evaluating the impact of the species on the local environment and the potential to attract tourism. The results will be presented to Holyrood, which will make a decision on the future of beavers in Scotland next year.

Simon Jones, project manager of the Scottish Beaver Trial, said the project had been an “outstanding success” that provided an opportunity to study the ecology and biology of an animal that has not been seen in Scotland for more than 400 years.

Return of beavers to Scotland a success

“The Scottish Beaver Trial is the most exciting and groundbreaking wildlife project that I have worked on in my 15-year career within nature conservation,” states manager Simon Jones on the project’s website .

It’s worth emphasizing this is a *re*introduction.

Fast forward to recent times, and ecologists realized that the loss of the beaver was, truly, a loss. Because it had once occupied an ecological niche, its absence left a vacuum. Wetlands (and their associated creatures) that once relied on the engineering prowess of the beaver no longer had fresh dams flooding new areas. The beaver had played an important role.

The solution then, was logical. Go find some beavers and bring them back to Scotland.

Since then, there’s been a lot of research to assess just how well the beavers have been doing – and how well Knapdale Forest has responded to their presence. The answer on both fronts: Just fine.

It’s all been awesome and wonderful to have so many scientists saying aloud the things we say every day. And the free beavers in Scotland probably wouldn’t have been safe without the legit beaver trial to balance them. I can’t believe I’ve been in the ‘beaver biz’ for so long that I remember being excited when this trial started! Remember we had children place their clay beavers of the map of Scotland during the procession at the 2nd ever festival. I know you’re busy, but you have to watch the video made in 2009 if just to see HOW SMALL the festival was. I can’t believe how much open space we used to have! (Oh and take a moment to fondly remember GTK who filmed this for us and died a few years ago.) (Thanks George)

Wow. I am very, very old. And so are our beavers.

Moving right along, here’s a refreshing headline you don’t see every day, from Missouri.

Beavers have built a dam on an eroding earthen dam in Jefferson County. This photo shows the beaver dam built on top of the eroding earthen dam. (Festus Rural Fire Protection District)

Beaver dam keeping earthen Jefferson County dam from failing, officials say

A beaver dam was just about the only thing keeping an earthen dam on a Jefferson County lake from failing Friday night, and more than 40 homes were under a voluntary evacuation.

The dam is on a six-acre lake on 100 acres of rural, private property just south of Hillsboro and north of De Soto, between Highway 21 and Castle Rock Road.

A resident noticed the issue late Friday afternoon and notified authorities. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, police and fire officials were at the scene.

“We’ve had scares in the past, but it’s the first time we’ve had an issue of this magnitude,” said Warren Robinson, director of emergency management of Jefferson County.

“We’re just trying to err on the side of caution here, but DNR advised us this dam can go at any minute. The only thing holding this water in right now is a beaver dam.”

It’s nice to see people grateful to a beaver dam for a change. Maybe we should take a photo of this moment to remember it by. I don’t know about you all, but I’m feeling kinda biblical.