Map of Depredation Permits in CA
Drought regions in CA
Month: August 2014
Overwhelming support for River Otter beavers to stay wild heard at consultation
OVERWHELMING opposition against the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) proposals to remove a family of beavers from the River Otter this autumn was expressed at a public consultation event.
The wave of public support for the animals was demonstrated at the Devon Wildlife Trust staged event in Ottery St Mary, which is just upstream from where the beavers are thought to be residing.
But critics of the proposals believe that the suggestion of rounding up the beavers is an “over reaction”, and the benefits they bring to the environment, far outweigh any negatives they may be culpable for.
During the meeting, which followed an afternoon drop-in event, local residents were informed of Defra’s plans to plot traps along the river, potentially from as far downstream as Budleigh Salterton and upstream as far as Honiton, this autumn.
The trust also informed the some 100 attendees that the process of trapping and testing is likely to be anything but swift, due to the complicated and invasive testing procedure and the risk that Defra could face a legal challenge to releasing the unlicensed animals back into the wild, meaning they could be in captivity far longer than planned.
Independent ward member for Ottery St Mary, Councillor Claire Wright, added: “The most important thing to remember is that beavers are a native species and they will live in harmony, and enhance, the natural environment and biodiversity.
“The chances of them having this disease is so remote, this is a completely over the top, irrational reaction.”
Hurray for the hardworking families of Devon who took time out of their Tuesday to support the first wild beavers in 500 years. And hurray to the media that was there to run the story. I hope it gets picked up by the bigger news feed soon, because there is no guarantee DEFRA will do the right thing.
But as of 10:30 last evening there is officially a slightly better chance. Good work!
Ed Engle: Beaver pond cutthroats in the high country
I arrived at the trailhead into the Buffalo Peaks Wilderness Area as early as I could because I knew it was about a three-mile hike to the beaver ponds that I wanted to fish.
Cutthroat trout themselves are always a draw. I knew most of them would be small, probably 6 inches long or less, but you never know, and besides big trout aren’t the reason I hike into the high country to fish. If I wanted to catch big fish, I’d head to a tailwater or one of Colorado’s trophy trout lakes.
Along the way, I remembered other dry fly tips for fishing beaver ponds such as, “Just leave the fly sit and let the trout find it, and if that doesn’t get their attention, give the fly a little twitch.” Or better yet, if nothing happens when you twitch the fly, try retrieving it very slowly so that it causes a rippling wake on the water’s surface.
That’s the way I caught my largest cutthroat of the day — a chunky 10-incher.at the trailhead into the Buffalo Peaks Wilderness Area as early as I could because I knew it was about a three-mile hike to the beaver ponds that I wanted to fish.
That was the first of many cutthroats.
But wait – I thought that beaver dams raised the temperatures and ruined things for trout? And that recent master’s thesis got published saying beavers destroy conditions for native fish and bring invasives? And in PEI watershed folk were ripping dams out to protect cuttthroat? How could this crazy outdoor reporter ever get things so wrong? Doesn’t he realize how much damage beavers do to fish? What does he know about fishing the high country anyway?
Ed Engle Fly Fishing
FLY FISHING PRESENTATIONS
Ed has a wide variety of fly fishing PowerPoint programs designed especially to meet the needs of your fly fishing club, organization, corporate group or fly shop. Programs range from technical fly fishing topics to more general interest themes suitable for banquets and fund raising events. See the descriptions of Ed’s programs below.
- OFFBEAT TACTICS THAT CATCH TROUT
- CATCHING DIFFICULT TROUT
- NYMPHING FUNDAMENTALS
- FLY FISHING WESTERN TAILWATERS
- A WESTERN FLY FISHER’S LIFE
Oh.
When Suffering From Drought, Being Inspired by Nature Can Lead to a Solution
That’s why a group from the tribe is looking to the beaver (yes, the animal) to get things flowing again. They call themselves Mni which means “water,” and they’re working to rehydrate the land and their lives.
Fifteen years of on-and-off drought has left the soil in the region very dry, so now, when it experiences steady rainfall, the ground is too dry to absorb the water. The rainwater runs off the land and into the creeks along the Mississippi River causing flooding but no quenching replenishment of the land.
The Mni’s plan? To build thousands of beaver-like dams in creeks and gullies all over the reservation, which will slow the rainwater long enough so that it can be absorbed into the ground. Beavers have been the ones controlling the water flow for centuries, so Mni is looking to the experts.
This is so close to being good news. A tribe that imitates what beavers do naturally to keep water on the land. A tribe that knows not allowing water to soak into dry land means creating land that is unable to hold the precious water when it finally comes. Just keep in mind that it uses humans to build these dams, and not any actual beavers.
Don’t be silly, not even the Lakota tribes will tolerate actual beavers.
I’m reminded of a passage from Terry Tempest Williams in her book ‘Finding beauty in a broken world.”
In 1950, government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navajo Reservation [in Arizona] in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep.
The Navajo elders objected, insisting, “If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.”
The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan. The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert [on the affected parts of the reservation] became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan. The result: fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion.
I suppose next the tribe will be digging holes like prairie dogs?
There is no beaver news today, honestly. But today is an important day, so I thought I’d share with you that it’s the day Don Perryman’s Ohlone collection is given to the Martinez Museum. Museum director Andrea Blachman and member Cathy Ivers are driving to my parents home in volcano to make the transfer. My father willed it to the museum before he died and was eager to have this collection shown to the public.
My dad, who never graduated from highschool, served as a merchant marine because he was too young for the army during WWII, later pursued his GED and an AA degree in night school. He worked his way from an oiler to the top of management at general office in steam generation for PGE. In his spare time, as a shift work operator with 6 children he managed to become an amateur archeologist, researching, spotting and excavating Ohlone (he called Costanoan) sites around the Bay Area before the asphalt was poured over every piece of once tribal land.
One of these sites was the Fernandez Ranch in Franklin Canyon (unincorporated Martinez) which is where much of the collection was found. He was shadowed at the dig by UCB archeology students who later wrote up the findings in Archeological Survey No 49, papers 75 & 74 published in 1960.
My father was meticulous and would tag and record every item, even if they just got placed in a shoebox later. Although he had stopped digging by the time I was born, he taught me how to recognize midden piles from Ohlone sites, and spot the glint of obsidian in the soil. Parts of his collection have hung before in the museum, and even in city hall when I was in Kindergarten. He was very proud of his work, and loved to talk to you about it, explain what it was used for or tell you how it was found. His primary resource was the beloved red massive tome of Kroeber’s Handbook of the California Indians, and it seemed fitting to me that this was the first place I looked for data on the historic prevalence of beavers and sits on my bookshelf now.
I grew up surrounded by arrowheads, ear pugs, charm stones and mortars. They are among my earliest memories and seem like the borders of my childhood. My father died in February of 2013, and it is a solemn and fullsome feeling to pack them up this morning. I know he would want it to happen and delighted that more people would see the treasures, but I think I’m glad he doesn’t have to be here when it does.
Apparently Perrymans will make a difference in Martinez for years to come.
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