Ohhh whew. Thank goodness the heroes at Trout Unlimited got rid of those pesky cheerleaders just in time for the football team to arrive at the party. You know how much they hate hanging out with each other.
Tell me when fishermen are going to stop removing beaver dams as if they were water condoms, blocking the creek’s manly flows? I was alerted to this article from Joe Wheaton who was alerted by Chris Jordan of NOAA, so you know much smarter minds are trying to change this stubborn behavior. Apparently with little success in our middle states.
Much better article this morning from Manila of all places…
Previously their dams are obliterated by dynamite and bulldozers because of causing flooding, but now they are becoming respected as a defense against the withering effects of a warmer and drier climate. They raise the water table alongside a stream, aiding the growth of trees and plants that stabilize the banks and prevent erosion. They improve fish and wildlife habitat and promote new rich soil. And most importantly beaver dams do what all dams do: hold back water that would otherwise drain away.
The beaver is famed for its industriousness and its building skills. Beavers burrow in the banks of rivers and lakes. But they also transform less suitable habitats by building dams. As a family moves into new territory, the beavers drop a large tree across a stream to begin a new dam, which creates a pond for their home called lodge. They cover it with sticks, mud and stones. As the water level rises behind the dam, it submerges the entrance to their lodge, which makes entry nearly impossible for any other animal. By constructing dams they create wetlands – lush environment which host a variety of animals, fish, birds, frogs and other creatures.
And why is it that people in the Philippines know why we should coexist with beaver but people in North America don’t? Well, I guess we should just be grateful and not speculate on whether it’s easier to admire beavers when you don’t actually have to deal with them plugging your culverts.
This morning I heard from Suzanne Fouty that she is coming to the state of the beaver conference and looking forward to my talk! I’m so excited! She said she was coming in 2011 but got tied up with another job. Then said 2013 but that didn’t work. Then she and Jari Osborne of the beaver documentary talked about coming to the beaver festival last year and that didn’t work out either. Fingers crossed she and I will finally get to meet in person in five days time! In this clip she’s carrying the backpack on the right.
Finally a smile sent by Rusty from Napa, whom you should all be getting ready to welcome because he’s taking over website duties while I’m in Oregon. (Thank you very much!) Now I would find this comic very witty IF I hadn’t already seen Dad beaver personally do that when kits brought wood to the dam. He’d let them enthusiastically stick it in any which way, appear to approve, watch them swim away and then very quietly move it to the proper place. 🙂
Yesterday, Joe Wheaton’s webinar offered an intelligent and dynamic look at the issue of beaver and climate change. I was particular struck by this slide about the projections for snow pack water storage in the western states. Look at California. We’ve been relying on the sierra snow pack for so long we can hardly imagine living without it. This slide predicts climate change will lower that by a a third in 2050. Hmm you’d think that would make folks interested in the best water saving engineer the world has ever known, wouldn’t you?
It was fun to know a lot of the people attending the webinar. I would have loved to see the ones I didn’t know so I could track them down! I was glad to see that this website was prominently featured under additional resources.
Big smile too when he talked about the awesome research on beaver prevalence from those great researchers in California! (blush). He walked us through the BRAT tool application which he has completed for all of Utah, and talked about some applications in the Appalachians he’s doing now. Afterward there was time for questions and answers and someone asked about how to get change to happen in his community. Joe had an interesting answer about communicating to interested parties by using voices from their own experience. He thought that it was important to be pragmatic and know the science, and he thought things like “beaver festivals” were of limited value at changing minds.
This of course sparked a response from me (no, really?) and an interesting conversation ensued by email. I asked Joe, Mike and Mary for permission to share their responses and thought you would be interested in what they had to say. The conversation isn’t over by any means, and if you want to add your thoughts you can always send them to me.
Thanks for the great seminar Joe, I really enjoyed it, but was left with lots to think about with the question at the end about attitude change and beavers.
This is an issue near and dear to my heart especially since I’ve kind of been involved in all aspects of this over the last 8 years, with the festival, our historic prevalence papers, and the website. I think what has been very clear to me is that beaver attitude change operates on three vastly different fronts – really a trident of change – and those three prongs tend to have very different foot-soldiers. In my observation they are in danger of thinking they’re the most important. But ultimately they are all essential, probably each necessary but not sufficient.
In Martinez public opinion was the engine that started everything, Nothing else could have done that. There would never have been a subcommittee to persuade without that. That meant kids and parents and people getting personally involved and all the layman mistakes that entails. It meant beaver tails and cameras and a festival. Public involvement drives media. And media gets people’s attention and attention interests politicians.
Popular opinion and media moved the politicians in our city to try something new. I won’t hesitate to say ‘shamed’. No amount of science or data could have done that. Even advice from other cities who had been through the same situation wouldn’t have done that. Even financial “proof” wouldn’t have done that. Only the bright light of public attention forced them to study the issue at all, which made it possible for me to take the time to learn everything I could and use the science to move the scientists on the committee. They were persuaded by the science and that made a difference.
But it was public opinion that made it possible to get the city to hire Skip to actually do the work. And it was his expertise that allowed that work to prove itself. which persuaded city government to allow it. If his flow device hadn’t worked none of the above would have mattered, because flooding would have trumped. And if the people hadn’t rallied no amount of persuasion would have forced the city to hire Skip.
Public outcry moves politicians, sometimes. Science convinces scientists, sometimes. And pragmatic success makes it all work, sometimes. None of these work in a vacuum. That’s what I’ve learned in Martinez. I just wanted to say my idea about that.
Thanks for a great conference Joe and Mary!
heidi
Thanks for you kind words and thoughtful analysis of my off-the-cuff responses to some of those questions.
I like how you’ve identified three very different foot soldiers. I hope I did not come off as too dismissive of any of those groups. To be clear, I certainly don’t think science is the most important group ;). I also agree, they all have an important role to play and you’re absolutely right that the public awareness and support is critical and the result of the outreach.
Thinking about my response in retrospect, I probably should have qualified that. I feel like today, mainly thanks to the outreach efforts of folks like you, the Lands Council, Mary, Wildearth Guardians, Mike, etc., the public support and awareness part has largely been won. That’s not to say that we should stop doing any of those outreach efforts, and keeping up those efforts is important. However, from my narrow perspective as a scientist, and from my own experiences in working on restoration projects, I feel like the most pressing urgency for outreach needs to be targeted at a much narrower audience. Targeted interactions with the folks who can either make this stuff happen (i.e. decision makers, managers, and to a lesser extent practitioners), and the folks who can keep it from happening (i.e. certain interest groups, specific land owners, specific decision makers and managers) are critically important now. The public pressure exists now on both those groups because of the outreach efforts. In my limited experience, these groups are actually surprisingly receptive too. I guess I feel like I can be most effective by engaging with those groups, recognizing their concerns, and attempting to propose solutions that pay due considerations to their concerns and consider this broader agenda.
There is not a right or wrong… like you say, we all have a role to play. You’re spot on with the observation that the facts and science don’t necessarily matter. Scientists love to believe that their data and analyses make the difference. Fortunately, there are still some decision makers who like to leverage such data and information to inform their decisions that allow us to keep that delusion alive. However, perception is ultimately far more important in influencing the decision. Where the rubber meets the road is when decisions are made and actions taken; the effectiveness of those actions and their impact depends both on how accurate those perceptions were and how well the data and analyses describe or forecast reality.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing the ideas and perspective, and keep up the great work. I am so slammed these days that when I eventually look at my own web pages I’m always embarrassed how out of date they are. I love that you keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and spread that word. We’ll keep chipping away at the science where we can. BTW- nice articles on the expanded range work in CA… very cool.
Best Wishes
Joe
Joe thank you for your thoughtful remarks which I will read over again many times. But I just want to say quickly that I wasn’t trying to say science was useless. I was just saying that it doesn’t convince everyone. Climate change is a case in point. And I don’t think the battle of public opinion is as far along as you might. I think we underestimate the value of storytelling. Heidi
Hi All,
Joe, thank you for an interesting and informative webinar yesterday. I appreciate you doing it, and I rest assured I did not feel that your “off-the-cuff” answers in any way diminished the importance that the non-scientific community has in promoting coexistence with beavers.
Whether it is raising a child or creating the right conditions for attitude changes towards beavers, it takes a village. I like Heidi’s term of a “triad” as a good way to visualize the public outreach, hands-on implementation, and scientific research working together to support coexistence with beavers.
In my experience what happened first was that there were individuals who did not want the beavers killed that were causing problems. Their passion is what created the need and desire for an alternative approach. Even when all the wildlife professionals were saying the flow devices did not work, isolated committed individuals were willing to take a chance on any alternative that would spare the beavers. Without those idealist people, my work never would have gotten off the ground. When these people were able to band together as they did in Martinez, then public officials were sometimes willing to listen and try these alternatives. It is my experience that cultural attitude change on a societal scale is an absolute necessity for longstanding changes for beaver management. Society’s attitudes and values determines where its energy and money are spent. So public outreach and education is not only necessary to get things started, but are also necessary for long-term success.
The second fork of the triad is the physical work that must be done to provide real solutions to real problems. Without successful solutions, then even the most committed individuals and groups will soon be tuned out by society. In my experience, talking usually did very little to change people’s opinions. Everyone has an opinion and are usually reluctant to change it. However, when talking was combined with real life examples of problems being solved, that is what changed most people’s minds and opened them up to the possibility of coexistence. And when those solutions were able to not only solve the problem but do it in a way that was better than the old solution, then wow, interest in these solutions began to expand rapidly. As more and more flow devices got installed, more and more people witnessed them and real momentum was achieved. I am amazed that here in MA flow devices went from being universally dismissed less than 20 years ago to now being widely recognized as the preferred management technique.
Now that flow devices are well established in my small area of the country we have only just begun the task of their widespread adoption. Solid scientific research is crucial to make this next step. Government agencies, and other groups as well as interested individuals want unbiased evidence of a solution’s effectiveness before adopting it. As we heard in the webinar yesterday, people want to know if are there any scientific studies looking at these solutions. These studies are the tools for widespread adoption of coexistence. Being able to cite scientific literature referencing what has worked elsewhere is immensely powerful when these solutions are being considered in other parts of the country where they do not have a large number of flow devices to see for themselves. Whether it is basic research on the geomorphological or hydrologic changes beavers create or hard numbers of flow device successes, it all matters and adds to the momentum of change.
I am grateful for the work each of you are doing. It is a great team to be on!
All the best, Mike Callahan
Lovely description of the triad, Mike.
And a value of all of us being in communication is that in different communities, different social/political regions of the U.S. (and world), and different geographical interactions with human infrastructure, one leg of the triad may be worked out differently than in another.
Socially, geographically, and politically, for instance, Martinez, CA is quite different than Garfield County in so. Utah. So it not only takes a village, as Mike says, it takes a really adaptable, flexible village, with the team learning from each other as well as helping each other. Which we do.
Mary Obrien
FWIW, I don’t know how ‘flexible’ Martinez is. Because if another family of beavers were causing a problem today they’d still trap. Just as quickly and silently as possible.
One huge part I forgot to mention on the trident was the beavers themselves. Who happened to move into the downtown creek where everyone could see them. If they had picked someplace more private, the public would have never cared. Heidi
As you can no doubt see, this is a complicated conversation that could take place over several decades and hopefully a couple tall beers. I’m extremely grateful that they were all so approachable on the topic and allowed me to share their comments with you. It is a privilege to be part of this discussion. You can watch the entire seminar online here and it is definitely worth your time.
A beaver that repeatedly set up a dam on a pond near a Lancaster County shopping center has allegedly been illegally trapped and killed, according to news reports. The beaver used sticks to create a 25-foot dam on the waterway beside the Red Rose Commons shopping center in Manheim Township, according to LancasterOnline.
It was first noticed in November by David Kilmer, executive director of the South Central Transit Authority. During a hard rain, the beaver dam caused some parking spaces to flood at the transit authority’s nearby headquarters on Erick Road.
Kilmer told LancasterOnline he dismantled the dam weekly, but was willing to co-exist with the wild beaver. The news organization reported he was “thrilled” with the presence of the beaver, which each time would have the dam rebuilt overnight.
Reconstruction seemed to end this week when evidence suggested someone likely trapped and killed the animal.
Okay, I know this looks like a bad story, but think about it. This is Pennsylvania and the director of transportation was happy to rip out the dam every day and unhappy that the beaver was killed. Have I been wrong about everything? First Ohio wants to coexist and now the transit authority in Lancaster Pennsylvania? Will Alabama be next? It was reported in the PAPER! People were upset by this! Hundreds of beavers are killed even in California without the smallest alarm or conversation. Heck, even the permit to kill our beavers was originally issued without a blip on anyone’s radar.
Alcoa used to operate a plant in the area and still owns much of the wetlands there. When the company determined the beaver dam was causing flooding at its pumping station, the company contracted with Lititz-based Critter Catcher Inc.
The wildlife specialists were hired to humanely capture and release the beaver to best protect the animal and the property, a company spokeswoman said. But someone else apparently had another agenda and set up a Conibear trap – a body-gripping trap designed to kill animals quickly – on the ground next to the pond, according to LancasterOnline.
Blood was also found next to the pond. Though the trap is legal if it is used in water, it is illegal to use it on land.
Really? It’s okay to drown beavers but not to crush them on land? If it’s true it must be about protecting accidental pet injuries, because I can’t imagine it makes a difference to anyone where beavers are killed. But still, considering the state this story comes from it’s a sign of remarkable progress. Whenever beaver deaths are reported as shocking and unplanned it is progress. This story confronts without defending, instead of wrapping up the incident with a rosy package and calling it ‘management’. In fact there isn’t even an attempt to exonerate the offending party or let them lie or try to explain that the beaver was harming property and needed to be removed to protect public interest. We didn’t even get that in Martinez, where the media was always giving the city council several paragraphs to explain the damage the beavers would do if left alone. This article is just stark reporting of the death. Which is pretty amazing.
Since I’ve been reporting on beavers I have learned something about their news cycle. There are a handful of compelling scientific stories about beaver benefits every year from across the world. There are even fewer valiant neighborhood watch stories that show how to live with them. There are plenty of stories about how great trappers are, and how much damage beaver cause, but there really are no frankly bad-ass stories that just describe what actually happens to them when we call the critter removal company. There just aren’t. Not in Pennsylvania. Not in Oregon. No where.
I am celebrating with something else shockingly bad-ass and unexpected. Let’s think of it as crushing myth, ignorance and expectation.
Need something beavery to do tomorrow morning? There’s still time to sign up for Joe Wheaton’s webinar on Beavers and Climate Change. Offered in combination with the Grand Canyon Trust and Utah State University, you know I’ll be there and it will be a dam good time!
They are the West’s most savvy water engineers. Here on the Colorado Plateau, ground zero for climate change, we humans have a lot to learn from these furry creatures.
What Can Beaver Teach Us About Adapting to Climate Change and Building More Resilient Systems?
FREE WEBINAR February 11, 2015 10 -11 a.m. MST
Utah State University fluvial geomorphologist Joe Wheaton studies rivers and the changes we humans – and beaver – bring to them. Joe and his colleagues observe, map, and document what happens when rivers are fortunate enough to have beaver, both here in the West and around the world.
In this 1-hour webinar, Joe will share what he and others are learning from beaver, explain where and how their dams interact with climate change, and take your questions.
Now it’s time for our awed thanks to our Martinez resident talent Amelia Hunter who has outdone herself yet again on the poster image for the 8th beaver festival. I don’t know about you but that might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Note mom’s tail. This is the first painted image of a beaver getting a tail ride on the entire internet. I’m expecting it to inspire a Canadian coin design next year.
Looks like Ohio has decided to return to its natural shape so our opinion of them won’t need to be adjusted any time soon. Remember that cool story from Yellow Springs where people were advocating for beaver benefits and wanting to coexist? Well apparently Hamlet was right.
virtue cannotso inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it.
Act 3 Scene 1
Or in other words, that council-driven leopard rarely changes its spots.
At their Jan. 20 meeting, Village Council delivered a setback to a group of local environmentalists who sought to develop a management plan for a wetlands on the Glass Farm. The group requested Council’s approval for a federal grant application that would provide funding to help manage the wetland, increase species diversity and also find solutions for flood control and other neighbors’ concerns.
“Yellow Springs could become a model” for how to balance the needs of wildlife and humans in wetlands development, according to Nadia Malarkey, a member of the newly reconstituted Environmental Commission, which sought Council approval for the grant.
But the majority of Council worried that the group was moving too quickly, and that a grant would lock Village government into a project it has not fully embraced, and which may have unintended consequences.
“I don’t think this is a bad idea …” said Village Manager Patti Bates, who recommended against the grant application at this time. “I’m concerned that we’re rushing into this without proper preparation.”
And how much preparation does YS usually take before killing beavers and destroying wetlands? Oh that’s right. None. You were THIS CLOSE to getting this right. It is so frustrating to see how remarkable efforts can still be tossed aside.
The grant would have provided funding for developing a management plan for the area and to purchase fencing that would protect trees, create new flow-devices if necessary to control flooding and remove invasive species, according to the proposal. Overall, the grant-funded activities would enhance efforts to allow beavers and humans to share the area, according to EC member Duard Headley.
However, several Council members feared the grant would pave the way to a commitment to the wetland that they had not signed on for when they approved funding the original “beaver deceiver” flow-through device.
I’m sorry for the derailing of this particular wetlands train bound for glory, but I’ve not run out of hope yet – and you shouldn’t either. These are a smart group of people doing the right thing for the right reasons.
The resulting wetland has led to a significant increase in new species in the area, according to Hennessy, who presented a slideshow of photos of the area taken by neighbor Scott Stolsenberg. The photos show great blue herons, red-winged blackbirds, indigo buntings, great egrets, red-shouldered hawks, grey catbirds, cedar waxwings, green frogs, snapping turtles and other wildlife that live near water.
“Beavers are a keystone species that create an environment that ____supports other species,” Hennessy said. “Most of these species would not be here without the wetlands.”
Several neighbors who support the wetlands spoke in support of the project.
“The change in the last three years has been amazing. It’s like a second Glen,” said Lew Trelawny-Cassity, who said he and his young children enjoy watching the birds and animals. “This is a great place for families. It impacts the neighborhood in a positive way.”
As alarming as change for the better is – it is for the better. Eventually even the city council will see the writing on the wall and have the sense to steal credit for the idea instead of looking stupid and out of touch by preventig it.
Ours did.
I worked yesterday using my ‘negative space beavers’ to put together a short film. I decided to use the audio from Ellen Wohl’s excellent interview on Santa Fe Radio a few years ago. I think it works rather well.
I also talked to Michael Howie of Fur Bearer Defender Radio and Jari Osborne of the beaver documentary about getting my poem recorded in resonant tones so I can make a video. We’ll see but I’m expecting great things.
Finally a bonus prize this morning, because a friend from Florida sent a photo of a mystery bug that research showed was really surprising. I thought you’d be interested.
The Scarlet Bodied Wasp Moth, Cosmosoma myrodora , is a moth species that mimics wasps as a means of survival. Since the harmless moth resembles a stinging wasp, many predators will give leave it alone. Here’s the amazing part: the adult male moth extracts toxins known as ‘pyrrolizidine alkaloids’ from Dogfennel Eupatorium (Eupatorium capillifolium) and showers these toxins over the female prior to mating. This is the only insect known to transfer a chemical defense in this way.”
Tell me when fishermen are going to stop removing beaver dams as if they were water condoms, blocking the creek’s manly flows? I was alerted to this article from Joe Wheaton who was alerted by Chris Jordan of NOAA, so you know much smarter minds are trying to change this stubborn behavior. Apparently with little success in our middle states.
