Month: May 2015

What do other people do on the weekend?

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? May 11, 2015

How was your Mother’s day? Thanks Rusty for the nice recap of your year of beaver watching in Napa. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife aptly posted this on their Facebook page and I feel it’s something we should all see. If you’ve ever had your mother hold your chin while scrubbing something off your face that shouldn’t be there, you know EXACTLY how this feels.

Saturday night at Safari West saw a bouncing crowd gathered for the beaver talk, many families with young children including a few of the attentive serious kind, and a few of the boisterous crying kind. It pretty different than the last few talks I gave and I did my best to adapt. We had dinner in the lodge with Marie Martinez (in charge of carnivores) and Danny Cusimano director of education and research. He was a paleontologist finishing his thesis and talked about their work (currently doing a study on hand-rearing vs parental rearing) and looking at population successes. He also seemed very interested in hearing about our work and the primary challenges facing beaver in urban settings. A few others dashed in and out during our dinner, updating them both or asking questions. It was definitely a dynamic place to be.

After dinner we came back to our luxurious tent, sat on the beautiful deck and drank a glass of wine while the light dimmed and the animal sounds took over. All night we heard the whooping lemurs, grunting flamingos and lowing whatevers in the distance. It was wonderfully cold at night in those beautiful hills, and the beds were unbelievably comfortable and warm. We both slept like children.

In addition to the excellent overnight and jeep tour Safari West generously made a donation to Worth A Dam and presented a certificate for our silent auction. I made sure to bring a list of wildlife friends I thought would be great speakers for the future and we swapped stories and ideas for how to engage people about nature.

Then it was home to meet Greg Kerekes for an interview. He was hired by the Guadalupe RCD to produce five videos on urban wildlife. The first was on Grey Foxes which you can see here.

The next is supposed to be on beavers. I expected a ten minute interview but our conversation lasted nearly two hours. He hadn’t really known the Martinez story before and he found it very interesting. His wife had an injury that meant she couldn’t climb the stairs so she was waiting in the car outside the whole time! ( You might remember her as the dancing beaver from our festival two year’s ago.)

Greg said he was surprised that I never seemed to say “um” or seemed at a loss for word like the others he interviewed. (Ha – plenty of practice!) We talked about beaver challenges, beaver benefits, beaver nativity, beaver depredation and the history of Worth A Dam. They were excellent questions and he was a great listener but I was exhausted by the end. Not sure how much of our conversation will find it’s way into his short film, but he said he was interested in doing a bigger project too and it would help down the road.

Fortunately for me (and the people I work with in my day job!) I’m off today, so I can rest and enjoy NOT talking about beavers. Then I can start focusing on the festival. (Eek!) The application that Lory was kind enough to fill out (all 19 pages of it) goes to the city just as soon as I can get the event insurance taken care of.

A year of watching Beavers in Napa

Rusty Cohn Beavers May 10, 2015

Happy Mother’s Day

May 8th marked a full year of watching the Napa Beaver pond. During this time there have been two kits born and probably another set that haven’t left the lodge yet. Three Beavers have died from unknown causes.

May 18th 2014 Napa Valley Register runs story about the Beavers.

http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/beavers-build-a-foothold-in-napa-waters/article_1999d544-45f4-5d41-97d7-8e375fd614ec.html

May 20th 2014 saw first of two kits

Kit again May 22nd. Notice how buoyant it is.

May 23rd. First and only time saw a Beaver working on top of the lodge.

Locals come out May 26th to see the Beavers

June 14 Black Crested Night Heron eating

June 15th very cute kit eating

July 1st 2014 spotted first Mink

July 2nd spotted first Great Blue Heron

July 12th new visitors to pond

July 17th Napa Flood Control clearing out dead trees under watchful eye of several concerned locals

August 12th 2014 Juvenile Herons spotted

August 25th 2014 day after earthquake

September 2nd Beaver Dam and lodge survived earthquake with no damage, and creek that feeds Beaver pond which had been

dry starts to flow

December 2nd Dam breached by first storm of season

December 11th dam underwater during 2nd big storm of season

December 15 River Otter visits pond

December 18th main dam gone

December 19th Cormorant visits pond

December 23rd first visit by Hooded Merganser

December 26th Main Dam under repair

January 1st Main Dam repaired

January 4th Beaver Lodge next to People lodge (Hawthorne Suites Napa)

January 28th 2015 female Bufflehead

February 10th 2015 Main dam breached by storm

April 20th 2015 Red Wing Blackbird chasing Egret

April 27th Muskrat

May 4th Beaver chewing through branch

You’re not listening….

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions November 20, 2015

I’m off tonight to give my third beaver talk in six weeks, which is a little more than I bargained for when I accepted this remarkable gig. Besides preparing and adapting there’s been other beaver demands. Requests for interviews, help getting the word out, connecting professionals who should know each other but don’t, and generally pushing beaver chess pieces around the board. Just last week I talked to a producer from Oregon Public Radio about an Urban beaver project they’re working on, and introduced a woman from the laplands (who was the first to document beaver sign in her country) to the researcher from Norway who’s studying this.

It’s been a journey.

Which might explain why I’m feeling a little beaver-fatigued at the moment. And thinking about all the time I spend talking to people who don’t listen anyway. I never really noticed it so obviously before. But there are people (ahem, men) who have an idea of what they know is true, and even when I tell them with video and research the opposite they STILL think it’s true. It’s stunning that you can say something very clearly and a second later someone can ask whether the opposite is the case.

Just look at this comment from the man who hosted me at the salmon talk at SARSAS two weeks ago. At the time he asked about dams blocking passage, and I and others explained why this was not an issue. In fact there was a very knowledgeable chorus from fish biologists on the topic all saying the same thing. I sent him the great article from Oregon yesterday, and HERE was his comment.

James Haufler says:

Please let me know how many salmon are able to get up over, around or through the beaver dam when they come upstream to spawn later this year.

Argh. I was just there! Talking about this very thing. Why did I spend four weeks preparing and get up at 6 and drive to Auburn so you could have the opportunity to NOT listen to me? Couldn’t I have just stayed in bed if we all wanted for that to happen? Unpreturbed by the question, the author gave a really beautiful answer in response.

Bonnie Henderson says:

Thompson Creek has long had the largest run of spawning salmon among all of the Neawanna Creek tributaries and has also had beaver dams as a part of its ecology. The dams make ponds that create wonderful calm-water nursery grounds for baby salmon to grow in, and by the time the rains come and the spawners return, the water overtops the dam readily and fish can jump it and find little overflow channels around it. So I think that 100% of the Thompson Creek spawners get past the beaver dams to spawn. And this year, most of the dams are on the off-channel wetland areas so are not in the path of spawners at all. (Answered by Katie Voelke)

So do you think James will ask this question again in five minutes? Or do you think having a fish expert packs more power than a beaver expert and he’s finally seen the light? And I don’t want to pick on James. It happens ALL the time. People’s minds are made up before you talk to them. And Damascus moments happen less often than you might think.

It’s not just about fish issues. People have ideas about population expansion, tree felling, and flooding that are impervious to what you might say to the contrary. If I say “We’ve had 20 kits born in Alhambra Creek over the years and our current population is 3”. It is not at all uncommon for a listener to nod and then say “so you have too many beavers now, right?”

Sometimes you can get them to stop talking about their very firm opinions just long enough to listen to your presentation, but sometimes you can’t. And they mumble to a friend through the whole thing. And then when you’re done they raise their hand in what appears to be a question, but is really just an opportunity to disagree with you in a public way, parasitically exploiting the attention of the group you assembled.

(Do I sound bitter?)

I have one more talk after tonight but that’s not until June and should be a good crowd. The Friends of San Pedro Visitor’s Center in Pacifica who specifically want beavers in their park as soon as possible. And tonight I will get to sit in the tent and listen to animals calling at Safari West, so that’s easy enough. But it’s surprising how long it takes to change minds though. Even with good video and pithy facts and 8 years more experience behind you.

To be honest, that was my strongest feeling when I was on the beaver subcommittee. Just disbelief that it took so LONG. That even if I said the right thing, in the right way, to the right people, over and over. They still didn’t change their minds. Did my city eventually change its mind about beavers? I don’t think they did. I think that changed their minds about how easy it would be to keep saying “no” to the voters. And the flow device seemed to work, and has seemed to work for seven years. But I don’t think really anyone’s mind was changed. I’m not sure if they moved to a new city they would ever consider this again, or if new beavers moved into another creek they would show anything resembling a learning curve.

This work is a marathon, not a sprint. Brock Evans famous quote is

“Endless Pressure, Endlessly Applied“

Not “adequate pressure applied for a little while.”

__________________________________________________

Cheryl and Lory are tabling at the Wildbirds Event today in Pleasant Hill, and we are off to Santa Rosa for the big night. I feel like seeing something wonderful and I’m happy to share. So here’s a rescue video from Wild Heart Ranch in Oklahoma. The doting voice you here is that of Annette King Tucker who is the heart and soul of the operation. I especially love what the kit does around 38 seconds. Ahh!

Safari overnight 179 — Heidi Perryman & Marie Martinez (Carnivores Dept at Safari West)

Beavertopia!

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, 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? May 8, 2015

Great new article from the North Coast Land Conservancy in Oregon. Check it out for yourself:

Beavers, and beaver believers, transform Stanley Marsh

The waterway formerly known as Ditch Creek, trickling into Stanley Marsh on the east side of Seaside, is undergoing an incredible transformation—or perhaps incredible is the wrong word. In fact, it is exactly what you would expect to see after you take a few simple steps to invite beavers into the landscape.

It was suggested to the developer that he consider compensating for the loss of the wetlands at his place of business by enhancing the wetland at Stanley Marsh. Doug Ray of Carex Consulting is a former board member and big fan of NCLC; he was able to create a plan for his client that matched NCLC’s vision of stewardship for the property: rather than bringing in lots of heavy equipment to reshape the land according to a human’s idea of restoration, take simple steps to create the conditions that would encourage nature’s own wetland engineers—beavers—to do it.

For their part, the beavers are just taking care of themselves, creating and growing ponds that allow them to travel by water and avoid terrestrial predators. In that process, they’re also creating refuges for juvenile salmon, shorebirds such as snipes, songbirds such as bluebirds that use the hummocks in the marsh—all those species and many more have been spotted in the newly inundated marsh this spring. “This diversity of life—it can’t be there without what beavers do,” Doug says. “They’re a keystone species.”

It’s definitely not a ‘ditch creek’ anymore. It’s like Beavertopia.”

Fantastic work and an excellent new word from Doug Ray! This is smart beaver-assisted restoration which will quickly make the beaver rounds I’m sure. I must confess that my favorite part is when they put in the ‘starter dam’ to attract the beavers, but the beavers decided to build their own from scratch 3 feet upstream! Nobody knows creeks better than beavers.

The article has the misfortune to start out with this photo described as a beaver. Ahem.

This is probably a relative of the beavers currently working Stanley Marsh; Neal Maine caught this beaver in action at Thompson Creek a couple of years ago.

I don’t blame Neal. It looks exactly like this photo of a “beaver” from the famous High Country News Article.

There’s a reason they look alike. And it’s because neither of them are beavers. They’re both muskrats as we know too well here at beaver central. I wrote HCN ages ago to change this, but they decided in their infinite wisdom to ignore me. So let’s see if NCLT is more responsive.

Never mind. It’s a great article. And if more people follow its advice they will all end up seeing the real thing more often and being able to tell the difference for themselves!

If you hadn’t figured it out already, all involved (including staff at the land management agencies) are thrilled with the outcome; the project’s success has exceed all expectations. “It’s just this miracle that results from letting the beavers do their work,” as Doug puts it.

“I kept my faith in the beavers.”

As should we all, Doug. Nicely put.

There’s some nice new research from Cherie Westbrook in Alberta, who might want to re-estabilsh her beaver cred after her silly ‘beaver cause global warming’ research last year. This is much better, and is featured today in science news.

Flood planners should not forget beavers

MONTREAL — Busy beavers can curtail rising floodwaters, new research shows. The work suggests that beaver dams can provide natural flood protection and that officials should consider encouraging beaver construction projects as part of flood prevention plans, the researchers say.

As 19 centimeters of rain soaked Alberta, Canada, over three days in June 2013, Westbrook, of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and colleagues monitored beaver dams along a stream. Water levels behind the dams rose 10 to 50 centimeters during the storm, postponing and reducing the peak surge of water flowing down the stream.

During the rainstorm, a 10-meter-wide breach burst open in one of the dams, causing a torrent of water to gush downstream. Surprisingly, despite the large rupture, the damaged dam still held back 15 centimeters of water as the storm progressed.

Excellent! It must be great to be a beaver researcher looking into benefits. Because you never run out of material. I’m sure as the climate changes they’ll be contrasting poles of interest all across the world. Beaver dams help flooding. Beaver dams help drought.

Don’t you sometimes get the feeling that no matter what science finds people will ignore it and kill them anyway? I mean we’re already ignoring their impact on salmon, trout, frogs, drought, flooding. I suppose tomorrow they might report that beaver dams reduce Alzheimer’s and we will still keep right on trapping them.

Stories with Pictures

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Who's saving beavers now? May 7, 2015

Did you know 7 out of 10 depredation permits in California were issued to protect trees? I find it especially frustrating since it’s such an easy problem to solve. I’ve decided what beavers need most is effective ad campaigns. Where’s the Don Draper of the beaver world? (ha probably making beaver jokes in the back room). Until someone really talented comes along beavers are going to have to make do with me.

Last night we were at the dam trying hard to see where our beavers were coming from. The secondary is SO high and tight that we assume there are kits in the bank hole above the footbridge. But last night we were surprised to see four beavers come down from the old lodge, over the ruined primary and down the creek to feed near the dam. They all took branches into the bank lodge near the footbridge. Savoring a treat? Or bringing a treat to new kits or mom? I wish we knew.

nh beaver — Juvenile Night heron & Beaver – Rusty Cohn

Rusty writes this morning how remarkable it is that just when you think you have identified a pattern, beavers seem to change it. He took this great photo last night at Tulocay pond in Napa. I think it’s kind of like falling in love. You get to know a lot about the person. But if you’re lucky they still surprise you on an irregular basis.

I realized that while I think a lot about advertising beaver benefits, I never think about advertising this website. So I tried tried not to be shy and attempt a little promotional material. What do you think?