Month: December 2014

Town Rallies to Save Beavers in Connecticut

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 7, 2014

Essex Beavers Will Live Another Day

Thanks to an outpouring of opposition from local residents at the Dec. 4 Essex Conservation Commission meeting, the beaver family that has currently taken up residency at the Viney Hill Brook Park, will not, as originally—and controversially—decided by the commission, be trapped and drowned.

Upwards of 150 residents, young and old, filled the meeting room at the Town Hall, ready with written statements and heartfelt speeches about why the beavers should be allowed to live freely at the park
“The beavers were here before people came in; it’s more their land than ours,” said 11 year-old Jack Simon who attended the meeting with his mother Laura Simon, a representative from the United States Humane Society.

The elder Simon explained that she would be more than happy to work with the town to come up with a viable solution that doesn’t involve trapping the beavers.

“There are simple alternatives such as wrapping the trees and painting the trees,” Simon said. “These are great community service and boy scout projects.”

This is just the kind of story we love best to hear at beaver central! John Ackerman was a resident who started asking questions on the beaver management forum a while back. I gave him all the advice and inspiration I could, but honestly, I needn’t have bothered. John is apparently adept at being creative and engaging on behalf of beavers all by himself!

“I think we should let the beavers do what they do best, build dams and create wetlands,” said 13 year-old Essex resident Jake Klin. “Viney Brook swimming hole was a mistake for humans, but great for the beavers. Please don’t drown the beavers.”

“I personally would like to see the beavers stay. I think they can be lived with,” said former first selectman and current State Representative Phil Miller.

“Instead of being negative about the beavers, why don’t we see them as an opportunity for education? They are a keystone species in Connecticut. We should be working with them not against them,” said resident Megan Schreider, who works at the Denison Pequot Nature Center in Mystic. “This town instilled in me my love of nature growing up and I hope it continues to that for future generations of children. Keeping the beavers alive is one way to do that.”

When I read something like that I am so excited I can hardly stop grinning. The town will bring in Mike Callahan to review the situation and make recommendations. And public works will start wrapping trees. Congratulations John and the people of Essex! You did something extraordinary and should be enormously proud of yourselves. I almost wish Martinez could go back in time and save our beavers all over again! Fantastic work. The meeting wasn’t filmed or photographed unfortunately, but I’m sure this is what it looked like.

Now it’s bird count morning! Tom and Darren will be busy in the field today with the first of their two highly successful bird counts for kids. If you miss this one, you can still catch the 18th. In the meantime if you need to remember who they are the photo from the beaver festival might help. Tom and Darren have helped us get our footing every step of the way, They have made sure to include us on many of their ground-breaking events, the Duck Stamp art show, the Optics and Nature fairs. the celebration of the wilderness act in California. Tom and Darren won the John Muir Conservation award last year, and have been invited to Canada and Washington D.C. to implement their ideas. we couldn’t be prouder of them or their friendship

Christmas Bird Count for kids

Calistoga families looking for a fun, outdoor activity that doesn’t involve a ball, but does involve a little math and education, may want to consider the Christmas Bird Count for Kids this winter.

There will be two nearby opportunities for citizen scientists to take part in the National Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). On Sunday, Dec. 7, a CBC will be held at Connolly Ranch in Napa, and on Sunday, Jan. 18, a CBC will be held at Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma.

Tom Rusert and Darren Peterie of Sonoma Birding launched Christmas Bird Count for Kids (CBC4Kids) in 2007.

This Just In…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior December 6, 2014

Winter is Cold!

Beavers live in the water!

Trees are involved in someway!

News at 11:00!

Cache of sticks and a tail that’s thick

One fall a young beaver, probably a two-year-old kicked out by its parents, built a small lodge in the old mill pond below our house. On cold January days when temperatures were below zero, I looked at the snow-covered lodge and wondered if the beaver was still alive. But when the ice melted in late March, it was swimming around again.

First of all, beavers don’t get kicked out by their parents. (Your parents may very well have kicked you out, but beavers don’t) That’s the kind of ignorant myth that gets repeated at the very worst scout hikes. Second of all, that headline is the kind of rhyme attempt I HATE. (Like Clicket or Ticket.) Unless you’re writing for preschoolers or alzheimer patients thick and sticks don’t rhyme any more than moon and moo do. Besides, this is a news headline, not a nursery story. So just cut it out.

Third, and this is my real point, I’m starting to get good and sick of these winter stories about beavers living in frozen streams and surviving off a food cache. We KNOW already. Stop using column spaces to print pictures like this!

View inside a beaver lodge in winter.
(Photo: Adelaide Tyrol illustration)

You think I exaggerate?

Beavers in winter

Beavers seldom venture into the open air outside the lodge in winter, when ice covers their ponds, so for months a family of beavers breathes “indoor” air, using oxygen and generating carbon dioxide. Beaver lodges have underwater entrances, and mud seals the walls, so air exchange is effected through a ventilation hole in the roof. Apparently this roof vent is sufficient to keep carbon dioxide from building up and allow an influx of oxygen, because when researchers measured the levels of those gases inside an occupied lodge, they stayed nearly constant.

How about this story from Malibu recently?

Furry Woodsmen Excel At Forestry

Among their remarkable traits is the flat, hairless paddle-like tail that allows beavers to prop themselves up while standing and whack the water in a highly effective, loud warning mechanism. Their dense undercoat of fur provides excellent insulation in water. Their lips close behind the huge, ever-growing front teeth for underwater chewing. They have self-stopping ears and nostrils for diving and large back feet with webbed toes, making them powerful swimmers. Two serrated claws on each hind foot are used for combing water repellant oil through their coat. Small, agile front fingers allow delicate handling of tiny objects.

Don’t get me wrong. I like for people to talk about beavers. I do it every day. We all should. But these articles advance the conversation not at all. These stories take up space and later when someone wants to write about real issues like beavers and salmon, or frogs, or drought the managing editor will say, nooo we can’t run another beaver story. We did that one in December.

So just stop it. Think of your mother’s advice. And if you can’t say something important about beavers, don’t say anything at all.

The Scottish Beaver Trial Report

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, Who's saving beavers now? December 5, 2014

Scottish Beaver Trial publishes its final report

The Scottish Beaver Trial, the first formal reintroduction of a mammal ever to take place in the UK, has published its final report. The five-year-trial, at Knapdale forest, Argyll, is a partnership led by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

The first Norwegian beavers were released in Knapdale in 2009 and monitoring ended in May. This report will help ministers decide on the future of beavers in Scotland.

Now this is worth curling up and reading next to a good fire with a cup of hot chocolate. Or maybe Scotch. It’s a huge file and is taking forever to download but the entire thing is accessible here and you can count on me for some highights. I thought it was impressive but Victor Clements just scoffed that its mostly presentation with little information. I was interested in details of the beavers lives. Here’s the family tree, (ours is so much better!)

The first thing that really caught my eye is that the trial site turned out not to be secure and maybe some of the beavers got away into the sea!! (Which our friends of the River Tay Beavers should find fascinating!) They installed a kind of flow device in the first dam and then realized it didn’t matter if the pond flooded! I was also interested to learn that two of their kits were predated, one by a fox and one probably by a large domestic dog. This surprises me not at all, but is worth remembering the next time someone says beavers don’t have predators.

Two kits were also found predated during the course of the Trial. One of these was a Dubh Loch kit found dead on 8 September 2011 in shallow water at the edge of a flooded track at the marshy eastern end of the loch by the SBT Field Officer while carrying out a routine field-sign survey. The cadaver was collected and taken for full post-mortem examination, which indicated that the beaver had been in good body condition but had died as a result of traumatic injuries to the head, possibly caused by a large predator. Although unconfirmed, it was felt by SBT staff that this could have been caused by a domestic dog–a diagnosis strengthened by later comparison with a kit killed by a fox. The second kit was found on Loch Linne by researchers from the University of Stirling, who were undertaking vegetation transects as part of their annual data collection. This kit was quite badly decomposed, and all internal organs were missing, so full post-mortem examination was not possible, though from the location of the puncture wound and marks on the bones it was presumed that this individual had been predated by a fox.

Remember that these beavers got “injected, inspected, detected, dis-infected, neglected and selected.”They had Ear Tags, tail radios and GPS systems on their backs. They were weighed, sexed, measured and monitored at regular intervals. Their private moments were caught on film and they still managed to elude the researchers at times. Dispersal, it seems was really hard to catch, and the first and second year it didn’t happen at all. Population density seemed to really effect behavior because where there was only one male at Dubh Loch the father (Bjornar) surprised everyone by mating with his own undisperssed offspring (Mille) who went on to have several kits. This is not totally unprecedented, but theu didn’t exactly issue a press release!

And speaking of press releases, there is an entire section on how they educated the media and the public for this monumental undertaking. They really included public support at every level and I am not at all surprised it worked for them. This is a great learning activity they did with the lower grades that has me thinking about the beaver festival! They made sure there was accessible, inviting viewing for the public and encouraged visitors. They did what they could to bring the public along with them and make sure everyone understood where their tax dollars were going. There’s a very good reason why the Scottish Beaver Trial received an award for being the best Conservation Project of the year.

The report concludes with these exciting remarks:

The authors of this report, along with many others across Scotland, Wales and England, look forward to the coming months when a decision on the future of beavers in Scotland will be made. Perhaps one day we shall see the widespread return of this native species to our lochs, rivers and burns.

Worth A Dam welcomed the trial in 2009 and is proud of its conclusion in 2014. And when you watch this inspiring baptism think about how much bigger our festival is now.

Beaver Friends & Foe

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 4, 2014

brockkate — Brock Dolman & Kate Lundquist

KRCB is the local public radio station in Sonoma and yesterday it featured beaver friends Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. Click and listen to three and a half minutes of beaver praises. The photo is from our fifth beaver festival in 2012. (You can tell by Bob Rust’s giant inflatable beaver in the background!)

I love when beaver benefits are extolled on the air waves! Great work team beaver! (Although I’m not totally sure the west coast is without its own dramatic examples of cities living with beaver. Ahem.)

Yesterday saw some heavy, heavy rains in Martinez. So heavy that we were worried that filter had been knocked off the flow device again. Jean saw a confused beaver swimming at high tide during the day, probably when his bank hole was filled with water. But by afternoon the level was back down and we could see that the filter had not moved, and there was a huge snag on one of the stabilizing posts holding the pipe that we thought was the filter. The dam had been breached by the heavy flow. And more rain came later at night. In weather like this we’ve seen the beavers sit tight and wait for the excitement to be over before they begin repairs. Stay tuned.

As if to compensate for our worry yesterday, there was this headline from Ohio which provided us with the warm feeling one needs in terrible weather. Maybe it will warm you too. And it might be time for a German lesson.

Worker injured removing beaver dams near Hinckley

An 84-year-old man struck in the head with a log while blowing up beaver dams Tuesday remained in serious condition Wednesday at a Rockford hospital, DeKalb County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Gary Dumdie said.

Ivan Dremann of Ohio, Illinois, was using explosives to remove beaver dams from Little Rock Creek for a farmer on Lee Road west of Rimsnider Road northwest of Hinckley about 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a DeKalb County Sheriff’s news release.

Ouch. This is a very good time to observe that I don’t believe a person of any age was ever injured installing a flow device.

scha·den·freu·de

German, from Schaden damage + Freude joy

“a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people”

BWW to the rescue!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 3, 2014

Town, residents to work on solution to beaver dams

Owen and Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, an educational

nonprofit with 30 years of experience in providing solutions for beaver problems, visited Carlson Road on Nov. 13

and said in a report to the town council the water level at the culvert outlet across from the Prestigiacomo pond was three feet below the road surface.

“A downstream dam that rises only a few inches above the water level is unlikely to cause a problem because of the almost three feet of clearance to the road surface,” said Owen Brown, adding maintaining secondary dams is not a high priority for beavers. “But they will maintain their primary dam as if their lives depend on it, because they do. If the water in that pond is drained, the beavers will lose access to their winter food cache.”

Sharon Brown added it’s not unusual for beavers to reduce the amount of road flooding.

“Having dams upstream — such as the one across the road from Gordon Robotham’s home on Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo’s land — slows and stabilizes the water flow because beavers build leaky dams,” she said. “The water isn’t completely trapped.”

The Browns added during a deluge this past spring, water just downstream of Carlson Road rose high enough to threaten the road. Since the dam just downstream on Robothom’s side of the road was likely at least two feet under during the event, they said in their report to the town it was their opinion the dam did not cause the flooding.

It was a few weeks ago I saw a news item about the beaver dams in Dolgeville NY causing concern among the city council. I recognized the location and thought since it was in Sharon and Owen’s city they’d want to know. Obviously they’ve been hard at work since then, with some pretty great results. Looks like they even got locals to stand up for the beavers as well.

DOLGEVILLE — Leave the beaver dams along Carlson Road alone.

That’s the message residents who live along the road in the town of Manheim have for the town council and anyone else who wants to have the dams removed.

“There’s been no flooding since the beavers came in years ago,” said Gordon Robotham. “If there’s a problem with the beavers, it should have come up before now.”

Like Robotham, Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo have a beaver pond on their property. They installed a leveler system with a 12-inch diameter pipe in the dam last year to manage the water level, and said they have not experienced any problems since.

“There’s also gates or fencing that can be used to protect the culverts. The beavers don’t have to be killed to address the town’s concerns,” said Barry Prestigiacomo.

Manheim Town Supervisor John Haughton said the town only recently received a legal opinion from attorney Kenneth Ayers that any damage to the road as a result of flooding caused by the beaver dams would be the town’s responsibility to repair.

Ahh, memories! It was a letter from the lawyer of the 500 block on Main Street that started the excitement in Martinez all those years ago. (It’s always a lawyer!) Well it looks like Owen and Sharon knew what to do to fix things. I’m not worried about these beavers at all anymore. Too bad we don’t have little beaver M.A.S.H. units all over the country that can swoop in and solve problems at a moments notice.. We need at least one in every state, maybe as many as the state has electoral votes.

Someday!