Month: May 2015

Beavers Bitter and Sweet

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, kits, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 31, 2015

So what kind of person are you? The one who says give me the bad news first? Or the one who happily opens all his Christmas presents even though his nervous looking parents say they have something important to talk to you about? What kind of person should I assume you are? Like me, get the hard stuff out of the way so that the easy stuff is easier?

Here’s the hard stuff. It starts with a hard hitting article in this mornings SF Gate and features two familiar faces (but only one of the pretty): Wildlife Services and Camilla Fox.

Wildlife groups take aim at lethal control of predators

Brennan, a 55-year-old trapper for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, has killed coyotes, mountain lions, bears, skunks, raccoons, bobcats and, by his own estimate, 400 dogs.

“He represents a kind of mind-set, a culture,” said Camilla Fox, the executive director of Project Coyote, a wildlife advocacy organization that is calling for government support and training in nonlethal methods and techniques for controlling natural predators, and for widespread adoption of programs like one that has succeeded in Marin County for 15 years.

Brennan and his fellow trappers are the target of a nationwide campaign by Project Coyote and other wildlife conservation organizations to stop what they characterize as indiscriminate killing of wildlife by a rogue agency that still lives by the outdated slogan “the only good predator is a dead predator.”

The latest sortie occurred in February when five conservation groups sued the Department of Agriculture for the “wanton killing” of wildlife in Idaho. They want the agency to promote nonlethal methods of control, including guardian dogs, fencing, hazing techniques, night corrals and lambing sheds.

So Camilla Fox and the Coyote Project teamed up with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Animal Welfare Institute to sue Mendocino County for renewing their contract with WS without the necessary environmental review. The team already managed to pressure Sonoma away from renewing its contract.

You better believe this kind of work is making an impression on both politicians and a certain population of hunters and trappers who are deeply devoted to making the scrutiny go away. Case in point? When the John Muir Association named Camilla as conservationist of the year, our board was peppered with complaints from a few very difficult men who objected vociferously over and over.

Should WS maintain contracts all over California? Or the country? You can guess my answer. I went through the numbers yesterday and saw where we fall in comparison. California USDA doesn’t kill the most beavers, by any means, but we’re definitely in the top 10.

Congratulations Camilla on a very sympathetic article. You are really good at your job, which is apparently three times harder than ours. (WS killed 60000 coyotes nationally, and 22000 beaver).

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Now for the good news. Rusty and Robin at Tulocay creek last night were delighted to find TWO kits instead of one. Although they never posed together in the camera frame they were clearly witnessed, and the smaller one generously hung out with mom for a while providing what is possibly among the top five cutest beaver videos I have ever seen. Watch it all the way through. If this doesn’t melt your heart you should see your cardiologist immediately because there’s probably something wrong with it.

Oh is that all?

heidi08 Beavers May 30, 2015

USDA Wildlife Services has released its national death count for 2014. Here’s what they report for beavers in California. I was surprised to see more beavers killed by rifles than traps, but I guess that makes sense. No wet feet required.

Thats a total of 1095 dead beavers in our state last year JUST at the hands of USDA. In our review of all the depredation permits there were 82 solely issued for them and half of those were for an unlimited number of beavers.

By my count this suggests unlimited means about “19”. Or three families.

One of the problems I have with unlimited permits is that it gives us no idea of how many beavers were killed. Should we assume federal trappers are extra thorough? Or that unlimited always means 19? Looking at our review of the depredation permits that would put California’s beaver death count 1841 in 2014. But who knows, Maybe wildlife services is especially good at it.

For now just realize that your tax dollars paid our federal government to kill 22, 496 beavers nation wide. Which I guess makes someone happy.

Apparently we’re getting another scathing article about this on Sunday, I’ll wait with baited breath. In the mean time you should really have a look at the surprising list, Blue Herons, Avocets, Voles, Woodduck. It would make a very scary serial killer list. Which of course it is.

Our kit-watch remains more suspenseful than satisfying. But at least we were able to see that once again our Martinez mom is recognizable, this time by her white-ish muzzle. Have a look. Here she is checking us out. Remember that great photo with teats pointed us in the right direction.

Never mind that we’re still waiting for kits. Rusty in Napa snapped this great photo if the little kit beside the big lodge. He looks so dwarfed! Like I feel around the tall buildings in San Francisco.

big lodge tiny kit — Little kit – Big lodge: Rusty Cohn

New beaver – New beaver management

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, In the News, kits, Who's saving beavers now? May 29, 2015

So much news today, I am fairly bursting at the seams. First the and most relevant is that Jakob Shockey of the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council from Oregon is currently training with Mike Callahan learning flow device installation in MA. This all came about at the State of the Beaver Conference when folks really felt like they needed their own expert in the state. Well now they’re going to have one. They repaired a culvert fence and installed protections on a spill way.

By Mike Callahan

Jakob Building a Flexible Pond Leveler to install on a manmade dam spillway in western MA.. We also fixed a failed Trapezoidal Culvert Protective Fence that had worked perfectly for 5 years, looked great a month ago, and then suddenly the beavers dammed all around it. Very strange. I don’t know why it happened. Maybe related to our current drought. Nevertheless that same day we also built a Flexible Pond Leveler and installed the pipe through the failed fence to control the water level and keep a highway from flooding. Jakob is very bright, a good worker and a pleasure to spend time with.

I just love when smart people working together make beavers safer! Oregon is going to be so proud! They have a lot to brag about at the moment because they just discovered a previously unknown beaver fossil in John Day. A missing beaver-link if you will.

Prehistoric beaver fossils unearthed — where else? — in Oregon

A fossilized skull and teeth from a newly described species of beaver that lived 28 million years ago have been discovered in Eastern Oregon.

The fossils worked their way out of the soil within a mile of the visitor center at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, said the monument’s paleontologist, Joshua Samuels.

The find is significant, he said, because unlike the other species of ancient beavers found at the monument, this one appears related to the modern beaver, a symbol of Oregon found on the state flag. The others all went extinct.

The species is named Microtheriomys brevirhinus.

It was less than half the size of a modern beaver and related to beavers from Asia that crossed the Bering land bridge to North America about 7 million years ago, Samuels said.

This diminutive beaver roamed the earth during the Oligocene period after the dinosaurs but with neighbors like the three toed horse and sabertooths. While there are really only two types of beaver left today, fossils tell us there used to be hundreds, which is awfully fun to think about. I love the idea of a tiny beaver. Just imagine how small THOSE kits were!

Speaking of kits, Rusty snapped this last night of his famous new Napa family member. Doesn’t it look like a new species of lesser-known beaver-snake?

Our own beavers have been hard at work and it looks like dad is getting ready for the new kit debut by making a training tree available they can munch on. Do you think he saved it for just this purpose?

Oklahoma admits beavers help ducks….

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, kits May 28, 2015

Waterfowl less problematic at airport, despite persistent beaver pond

Waterfowl around the airport are a direct consequence of beavers. A shallow stream runs on the west side of the runway’s north end. Beavers have dammed a culvert, which handles overflow. The stream is now a pond that attracts ducks and geese. A few teal were present Wednesday.

“We’ve torn that dam out a couple of times, but the beavers keep rebuilding it,” Blish said. “We will need to get them out of there using trapping measures. We’ve been waiting for the rain to let up, but we are going to work on it this weekend.”

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation issues licenses for nuisance wildlife removal. A Westville contractor will remove the beavers at the airport.

And so it was that the state that reports almost no earthly use for beavers admits that they help waterfowl as a reason to eliminate them. I believe that’s called a ‘mixed blessing’ but at least it emphasizes their ecological role.

Remember that our friend in Tulsa the Skunk Whisperer wanted to install a flow device after he got Mike’s DVD and couldn’t find a single person in the state who wanted beavers on their property even when he promised to do it for free.

Rusty Cohn in Napa was waiting patiently for the big reappearance of their new kit last night, and was frustrated to have a crowd and chatter instead of the hushed watching he wished for. Still he managed to get this at 8:30 which is pretty adorable.

It made me think how smoothly adult beavers enter the water, like a silk scarf being pulled into a tube. With no effort at all. And how gracelessly young kits enter the water, flinging themselves into the abyss as if something could go wrong any minute. Since diving is the most challenging thing kits do, I’m sure it often does go wrong. They are very buoyant, and getting their little floating selves underwater takes practice.

They hurl themselves into the water and hope it stays open long enough for them to pass through.

There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Douglas Adams:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Congratulations Napa, it’s a BEAVER!

heidi08 Beavers, kits May 27, 2015

Rusty sent this very excitedly last night. He was thrilled to meet this youngster for the first time, and believe me when I say I know just how he feels.

tail kit napa — New kit Napa: Rusty Cohn

Just a reminder that we were lucky enough in Martinez to have kits with our old mom four years. And this will be the new mom’s fourth year too. We’ve had four kits twice, three kits twice, and one kit twice. I think that means this year the odds are in favor of having two kits. Don’t you?

It’s amazing to me to think that we’ve had our new mom almost as long as we had our old mom. And also to notice that our new mom is a little more attentive and protective of the kits than our original. They’re supervised longer and stay in the lodge longer. But it goes without saying that we will always love our original mom of the special tail best.