Orphans in zoos & Cities in debt

Turtle Bay names new beaver Timber

REDDING, California – Turtle Bay’s newest animal, a young male beaver, has a name, Timber.

The rodent came from the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minneapolis. Turtle Bay officials say the beaver will live in the Viewable River Aquarium inside the museum.

The 22,000-gallon aquarium, which opens up to the outdoors on the other side of the viewing glass, will be enclosed with netting material to keep birds out. The park will also build a barrier so the beaver can’t dig out.

That’s right, we happily ripped this beaver out of his family imprisoned by Minnesota’s concrete zoo to bring him 2000 miles away where he will be the only beaver in OUR zoo. He’ll grow up without any family whatsoever and since he came at 7 weeks and never had the least beaver training, we hope he won’t dig or build dams. It’ll be fun to watch him grow up, and when he’s stopped being an attraction, we’ll just trade him or euthanize anyway.

Turtle bay reflects the mercenary vision of Redding itself and its CEO is the former city manager, who clearly understands and values wildlife. He took over for the original horticulturist who was mysteriously relieved of duties after only two years. The city bailed out the money hole to the tune of 400,000 dollars. But couldn’t help anymore when the recession hit. Mr. Warren generated some controversy by doing what management types usually do, streamlining, lowering salaries and doubling duties. For everyone but himself that is – he still makes 7600 dollars a week for three days work.

The famed Sundial Bridge that we’ve all seen (funded mostly by the McConnell Foundation) connected Turtle Bay’s south campus to its Arboretum and Botanical Gardens. As a reward for the McConnell generosity, the foundation gets to buy 14 acres of land to build a hotel on, and since its part of the Turtle bay grounds they can avoid paying those pesky union wages. Mr. Warren has said this will keep Turtle Bay well attended, but the hotel will not contribute anything financial to the park, so whether it will actually help is anyone’s guess.

The whole action was challenged as a major land grab and will be on the ballot come November.

And in the meantime, the park is building a NEW river habitat where it will house its lonely beaver so children can gape at him while he swims by underwater. You can imagine how enthusiastic I feel about that.

I have an AMAZING story of beaver resilience to share, but I’ll wait until tomorrow because this story bugs me too much.

Stay tuned!

Friday Funnies

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational September 19, 2014

This is one of those ‘come to Tennessee for our great fishing and have the vacation of your life” websites. I just happened upon it when I saw this photo with this very surprising caption.

While using a trolling motor to venture up Manskers Creek close to the dam, I saw two muskrats swimming underwater chasing fish. Later, when leaving the creek, there was one on the bank eating a fish.

Ahh, Vernon, you seem like a nice guy. But there are three little problems with your finely curated caption.

1) That’s not a muskrat
2) That’s not a fish and
3) He’s not eating it.

That’s a little beaver sitting on his tail to groom. I’ll grant you, you aren’t the first one to think beaver tails are a little scaly. (The Bishop of Quebec in the 17th century actually classified them as fish so good Catholics could eat beaver during lent.)

So you’re in good company.

One more funny from Lory and the times last week and a kit photo to start the weekend right. Our Scottish beaver friends are disappointed but 85% voter turnout is nothing to sneeze at, and I know you’ll get there one day.

cedar salad — Kit at Ward Street: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Kit at ward street — Kit at Ward Street: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Shifting Territories

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 18, 2014

Remember that huge, undisturbed beaver dam visible from space in the Canadian wilderness? Well, consider it ‘undisturbed’ no more.

Rob Mark, an amateur explorer from New Jersey, recently became the first person to reach the world’s largest beaver dam. It took Mark nine days to cover the 200 km from Fort Chipewyan to the 850-metre-wide dam in Wood Buffalo National Park. Here he is in a selfie taken while he was standing on top of the the dam.

U.S. explorer reaches world’s largest beaver dam

EDMONTON – An American explorer recently became the first person to set foot on the world’s largest known beaver dam — an 850-metre-long fortress built painstakingly over decades in Wood Buffalo National Park.

After four years of planning and nine days of bushwhacking through swampland and dense boreal forest, Rob Mark reached the structure in the northeast corner of Alberta on July 20.

The location is so remote the only previous sightings of it have been made by satellite and fixed-wing aircraft.

“It was incredibly angry I was there,” Mark said. “It kept slapping its tail against the water.”

Yes, that beaver was furious to see a biped in its territory where one hadn’t been seen for centuries. That’s exactly what beavers are feeling when they tail slap: anger, irritation, pique, rage. They are such resentful animals.

Not alarm.

Where are you going next? I look forward to your many bold explorations so you can misunderstand some NEW species! Maybe the antarctic? Where you can keenly observe that penguins didn’t fly in front of you because they were secretive?

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More head scratching from Ramara in Ontario that can’t imagine why they’re not fixing the beaver problem even though its shelling out 150 per tail to trap them.

Ramara is losing a battle against beavers that are building dams faster than the township can remove them, says Mayor Bill Duffy.

Compared to surrounding municipalities, Ramara is “on the high side” when it comes to how much money it’s paying beaver trappers, Duffy said.

In 2013, Ramara paid $7,125 to trappers.

Sipos said the township should hire more trappers to tackle the problem.

“We don’t have enough trappers. We only have two. Each trapper has so many traps, but when we have a problem, we have problems at the same time, so we want to have more trappers,” she said.

The township is looking a creating a beaver-trapping policy to determine when the township is responsible for removing beavers and their dams, when a private landowner is responsible or when both are.

When you’re completely failing it’s important not to try anything NEW. Just keep doing the same thing over and over, and maybe faster. I’m sure that will take care of the problem.

Sigh.

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There’s too much news this morning to cover it all, but we have local news to report. Last night we saw the ENTIRE FAMILY spread out across Alhambra creek from the railroad tracks to Green Street. 3 beavers by the footbridge and 3 beavers above Ward street. One beaver walked the dry stretch by Starbucks in between to get to family at Ward street, and one beaver was sleeping below the secondary dam and came up when we got there at 6.

Oh and one beaver scaled the bank wall like this. 9.9 from the German judge.

The kit was with Dad and a yearling at ward street and mom was keeping an eye at the secondary. There was a kingfisher diving from under the Marina Vista bridge, and when we watched at night above the ward street bridge we saw a number of bats making darts from underneath. Truly a beaver safari night.

Dad at Ward street — Dad beaver at Ward Street: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Oh and I worked very hard yesterday on a new toy for us all to play with. Tell me how you do and try out the snazzy new SHARE buttons at the bottom of the page.

Finally, good luck today to our Scottish friends. Polls are open until 10 pm, and there is a whopping 80% turnout expected. For the first time 16 and 17 years olds will be allowed to vote and it should all be decided by tomorrow morning. We certainly know which side the beaver-protecting Ramsays are on.

Best Onion Ever

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental September 17, 2014

A few folks yesterday sent me this column from the Onion in 2006. It made me smile, but I honestly am so DEEP in the story I hardly get the humor. Of course beavers plan their work and some of them overthink. Remember Reed who only built with tule? Even though Dad wanted him to use branches? He had definitely had a firm artistic style all his own.

HUNTSVILLE, ONTARIO—Local beaver Dennis Messner is spending an inordinate amount of time and effort in the planning and construction phases of building his dam, according to neighbors close to the project.

In the past four months, Messner, 4, has visited hundreds of other dams and drawn up detailed and extensive blueprints. He has researched topics ranging from advanced dome acoustics to the near-extinction of the North American beaver in the early 20th century, and plans to incorporate much of his research into his design.

Dennis Messner

“There are two primary schools of thought on dam building: the instinctive school and the adaptive school,” Messner said, studying the river’s current. “I’m more of an integration-minded postmodernist. I don’t believe that form should follow function, like most of my colleagues do. On the other hand, a dam is a celebration of beaver culture, and that is what it should reflect.”

Never mind that the column features a photo of a groundhog. It’s still a smart bit of writing and makes such perfect sense to me I almost couldn’t laugh.

It reminded me of years ago I showed the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on the “Duplicator self” to a young patient because they were operating with several personalities at the time and they were getting into all kinds of trouble. I had thought it would help us talk about duality – what happens when, for instance, one self is doing class work and another is scrawling the principals name with a word that rhymes with ‘duck’ in the yard in black marker.

The thoughtful child just read it soberly without the faintest trace of humor, but deep, deep understanding. They weren’t even surprised to read something that so described their life so clearly, but rather, confused why I would be showing them something that in their mind was so obvious. I realized then that like every child in the world they thought everyone lived that way and had absolutely no idea why the comic was funny.

Obviously I felt the same way reading this column. Why is it humorous to imagine beavers thinking about their impact on the ecosystem?

Messner rejected the criticism. “Not everyone in this area cares or is even aware of how dam building alters an ecosystem,” Messner said. “But I am, and, yes, I do wonder what kind of impact my dam will have on the environment. How can I make this the most positive experience possible, while still minimizing adverse impact on the wetlands? What kind of beaver would I be if I didn’t take erosion science into consideration?” To that end, Messner has reached out to the local otter, fish, and waterfowl communities, and has incorporated their input into his design.

Go read the whole thing. It’s definitely worth it. Oh and how did you do on the quiz below? 10/10?