Beaver bound…

heidi08 Beavers March 11, 2015

Heading off to Santa Rosa this morning for the Salmonid Restoration Federation talk on restoring urban creeks with beavers. Wish us luck!

Beaver Ponds are Education just waiting to happen

heidi08 Beaver Behavior March 10, 2015

Beaver Ponds is an Environmental Education center at 10,000 ft on 70 acres of land in Fairplay Colorado. It defines itself with the mission statement:

To introduce people to the role and importance of preserving and promoting a physical environment that is healthy and sustainable for all living things – people, animals and plants.

It seems like a fairly dynamic teaching site, and must have recently revamped its website because I just got an alert about the group the other day. They have a link to the recent New York Times beaver article on their website including the correction about beavers not living in the DAM prompted by yours truly, but I was still suspicious. It wouldn’t be the first time that all the beavers were trapped out to make room for a shiny education facility.

Were there any actual beavers at BPEEC?

10423880_621167851330036_6790454730464803252_n — Beaver Ponds Environmental Education Center
August 20, 2014 ·Photo take at 6:20 AM. Beavers are usually not out when the sun is up.

Apparently there were. I poked around their facebook page and found these photos of night shots of their beavers. I was very happy to see them, but since there about 85 miles away from Sherri Tippie they need to bring her on up and get a little more beaver education I think.

Um, no. Despite what that guy in college told you, this isn’t what love looks like. This is what Hope Ryden called a ‘push match’ where two yearlings wrestle to see who is stronger. If you had any brothers at all in your life you’ve seen it before. It’s not aggressive or amorous, but it definitely helps them practice for the big world they will find when they disperse.

Here’s two of our 2009 yearlings doing the very same thing at the primary dam. Enjoy!

Tales of Tails

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? March 9, 2015

Into every life a little rain must fall….

I love this photo, sent by Paul Ramsey of Scotland of the beaver dam on his property washing out during a storm while we were all busy conferencing. Doesn’t look like the cover of a novel you can’t wait to read?

I’m sure that novel would mention that sometimes, after it rains you get things like this:

I spent yesterday organizing 200 x 20 buttons for the keystone species project at the beaver festival. Mark Poulin and his amazing staff finished the order and shipped it this weekend. Kids can ‘earn’ these at the many different exhibits and get a grand tail to display what they know. Honestly if you live anyhere in California or even the west you had better plan a visit on August 1st, because if your child misses out on this delightful opportunity they will never let you hear the end of it. Mark designed each button for us personally and even borrowed a larger machine to make a slightly bigger beaver! Thank you so much Mark for your creativity and hard work!

After which they can add all those buttons to a burlap beavertail that will eventually look like this:

Now I’m off to settle the account for this magical effort. Let’s hope the K.E.Y.S.T.O.N.E. project grant is funded by our friends at the fish and wildlife commission. Don’t you think it deserves to be?

Beavers high and low

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, City Reports, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers March 8, 2015

Polish beavers scale new heights

Poland’s sole high-mountain national park gets its first-ever beaver colony, the park rangers said on Tuesday. The beavers, which have so far limited themselves to scouring the foothills of the Tatra mountains, have scaled the slopes up to the level of 1,100 metres above sea level this winter.

This marks the first time that rodent engineers have been spotted this high. “These are pioneer climbers,” among beavers, ranger Marcin Strączek-Helios is quoted as saying.

The rangers are yet to see the beavers with the naked eye, but the effects of their presence have been obvious since October. Felled trees with trunk perimeter of 10-20 centimetres blocked the Palenica stream near the famous lake of Morskie Oko, creating a pool of water 1.5 metre deep and 10 metres wide.

Two animals, thought to be international migrants from Slovakia, have been caught on camera. The exact size of the colony is yet to be determined.

Tatra National Park boasts views like this, a high peak of 8100 ft, miles of rivers, waterfalls with oohs and ahhs from grateful tourists but is probably best known for its over 650 caves.Many of which are open to the public, including the world famous Demänovská Ice Cave and the breathtaking Demänovská Cave of Liberty.

All of which made me think about the entirely new idea of beavers in caves.

Think about it. Beavers aren’t very keen on eyesight, they live mostly in the dark anyway, have thick fur coats so they won’t mind the cold, and spending 3 months in a frozen lodge can’t be all that different from spending a year in a cave. Of course I had to go looking to see if such a thing ever happened. And what do you think I found?

Eureka! Not only does that make total sense and suggest our Polish friends might be thriving in caves, it also explains the ANCIENT mystery in my mind of how beavers can coexist with alligators, which being reptiles are cold blooded and need more sun than their dam-building neighbors. You can read the rest of the Florida article here, but suffice it to say that the next explorers in those Polish caves shouldn’t be at all surprised if they see this:

Last night we met Danielle from the Academy of Sciences down at the beaver dam. She is writing an article for their new longer web format and had talked to Michael Pollock earlier about beavers and salmon. She said she hadn’t been lucky looking for beavers in Yellowstone but her luck changed in Martinez. She was rewarded with a happy adult sighting and very surprised to find out that beavers were BIG. After she headed home to Oakland mom and kit popped out to say goodbye. A good beaver evening, and thank goodness day light savings is over and we can see them earlier.

Birds and Fishes…

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water March 8, 2015

BirdWord: Beaver dams help birds’ habitats

SHASTA COUNTY, California – Special to the Record Searchlight Last October found the Sacramento River dropping lower and lower. The slough along Redding’s Cascade Park dropped to ankle-deep water. The ducks were gone. But wait, despite low Keswick Dam releases, residents along the slough noticed the water level begin to rise.

Puzzled, they followed the slough down to Cascade Park and discovered an amazing beaver dam more than 50 feet in length and 3 feet high, constructed of tree limbs and branches, twigs, grass and mud. Its height gradually increased to 4 or 5 feet. The dam survived December’s downpours and, even after our dry January, continues to hold water in a pond that extends over a quarter mile. The pond is well appreciated. Birds, like all creatures, need the right habitat. The Cascade beaver pond is creating a winter home for mallards, wigeons and other dabbling ducks. The dabblers are those who tilt bottoms-up to browse for pondweed, snails and underwater insects.

Along the pool’s edge, an egret patrols in its sharp-eyed hunt for fish, frogs,or just about any animal it can gulp down its long white neck. A steel-blue kingfisher rattles over the pond, taking advantage of the still water to spot its prey. Even a Barrow’s goldeneye, a diving duck typically found in the deeper river, has found a place to rest in the quiet pond.

This article is very good, but that picture is an all-time favorite. It says the message better than words ever could. Yes, beaver dams save water, and yes birds and fish and frogs rely on the water they save, and yes, sometimes people are smart enough to co-exist with beavers by using long-term solutions instead of just trapping.

Shasta county is closer to getting the message than most.

Of course saving water isn’t the only way beavers help birds. Zack & Rosen found that beaver chewing of trees created a natural coppicing of those trees that made more dense and bushy habitat creating ideal conditions for the nesting of migratory and songbirds. Their research showed that as the number of beavers go up, the numbers of birds go up too.

Despite this vital relationship, would you believe that beavers are routinely trapped out because they are said to be a threat to birds? Hmm…people will lie about anything to get there way I guess. Once I heard that beavers were killed at a Contra Costa reservoir to protect the “red-legged frogs”.

No. Seriously.

And while we’re listing off the things beavers are good for, we have to talk about salmon and trout. They’re in a class of fish called salmonids, and the Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference is next week. I will be presenting on beavers at the urban stream workshop on wednesday and this is my very last weekend to get everything ready. I can’t believe it’s already here. It feels like I just got back from Oregon. Go Beavers! The workshop is sold out apparently. I’m at the end of the day after Trout Unlimited and before Lake Tahoe.