Do I look like a hat to you?

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? August 26, 2015

Yesterday I received an excellent surprise. An early copy of Frances Backhouse newest book “Once they were hats”. If her name sounds vaguely familiar it’s because she was the journalist responsible for that excellent article in the Canadian Geographic a couple years ago, “Rethinking beaver“.

I wrote about that article in December of 2012 and said she did a stellar job of recounting the benefits but noted that since people were very lazy she needed to spend time focusing on how problems were solvable – because it didn’t matter how good they were if people thought their challenges couldn’t be fixed. She must have listened, because we crossed paths again at the Beaver Management Forum, and that’s how I received the early copy of this book.

Grey Owl would be happy to note that Canada’s beaver journey has taken a leap forward in the past 5 years, starting with Glynnis Hood’s Beaver Manifesto in 2011, then the Canadian Geographic article in 2012, Jari Osborne’s “Beaver Whisperer” on the CBC 2013, and its American version on PBS in 2014. This year saw Michael Runtz book and now Frances’ arrival. It’s all been pretty exciting for a beaver-phile like me.

Here’s how the publisher describes her book, I will tell you my thoughts just as soon as I turn every page.

Discover deeper truths and quirky facts that cast new light on this keystone species

Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent’s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the northern tundra. Wherever there was wood and water, there were beavers — 60 million (or more) — and wherever there were beavers, there were intricate natural communities that depended on their activities. Then the European fur traders arrived.

In Once They Were Hats, Frances Backhouse examines humanity’s 15,000-year relationship with Castor canadensis, and the beaver’s even older relationship with North American landscapes and ecosystems. From the waterlogged environs of the Beaver Capital of Canada to the wilderness cabin that controversial conservationist Grey Owl shared with pet beavers; from a bustling workshop where craftsmen make beaver-felt cowboy hats using century-old tools to a tidal marsh where an almost-lost link between beavers and salmon was recently found, Backhouse goes on a journey of discovery to find out what happened after we nearly wiped this essential animal off the map, and how we can learn to live with beavers now that they’re returning.

If you have as little patience for all things beaver as I do, you can preorder your copy here or here. I found a nice interview with Frances concerning one of the heroines from her previous book “Women of the Klondike” I think you’ll enjoy.

Now, you’re on your own because I have some important reading to do.

Excellent Forum for ’em!

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? August 25, 2015

15th Annual Fish and Wildlife Committee Fall Forum

The CCCFWC is who gave the grant this year for our wildlife button activity (The K.E.Y.S.T.O.N.E. Project –Kids Explore! Youth Science Training on Natural Ecosystems). Because I’m never happier than when I think up a good acronym. We haven’t actually received the check yet, I had to send in receipts and a summary after the festival, but I’m sure it’s coming because they just invited me to do a poster session for their Fall Festival, to show off to fish and game and other folks how cool the event was.

It’s on a night I have to be at the office so I can’t attend, Cheryl says she’ll see if she can go. In the meantime I’ve been working on the poster and thought I’d share it with you. I’m attaching the summary too. I can’t decide between this and an actual 3D collage with our beaver tail and buttons, but I’m thinking an actual graphic that shows them all would be easier for them to manage.

A little bit about the day….

120 Children completed the tail activity, and 60 finished all buttons and the post test. 98% of completed tests show they learned how beavers help other species and parents verbally reported they had a wonderful time doing it. All exhibitors completed the post test too and reports were very positive, with 98% reporting they also learned something by doing it .

I’m attaching some photos of the children with their finished tails and taking the post test with their parents so you can see it was enjoyed!

Thank you again for your support of this wonderful day of learning!

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress

The children’s post tests were my very favorite part of the day. I loved them standing thoughtfully and circling the right answers at my booth. Most of the exhibitors were also very positive about the activity, but one charmer actually wrote in a comment that we should provide the exhibitors water because it was hot that day. The feedback was anonymous which worked in their favor because otherwise it would have been too much to resist grabbing them by their lapels and saying, “Let me make sure I understand. So in addition to our organizing the event, paying for the insurance, the park, the restrooms, the music, the solar panel, the brochures, the advertising, and renting a U-haul to set everything up for you at 6 am this morning, you’d like us to bring you waters for you because you can’t plan possibly ahead?”.

Don’t worry. I left that part off the poster.

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

heidi08 Beavers August 24, 2015

This morning I learned that the kit brought to Lindsay was 2.25 grams (just under 5 lbs). Not even as heavy as a sack of flour. The yearling was too decomposed to weigh but both beavers brought for necropsy were female.

Which shouldn’t be newly heartbreaking to me but strangely is, so I’m posting this video to give us some perspective. We’ve in the beaver business for a long time. I have to think we aren’t finished yet.

Friends in USDA places

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? August 23, 2015

Learn about beaver at watershed meeting

COQUILLE — The Coquille Watershed Association will host Dr. Jimmy Taylor and Vanessa Petro from Oregon State University, who will present “Understanding Beaver in the Beaver State.”

The presentation will start at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 24 in the Owen Building at 201 North Adams in Coquille.

Taylor is a project leader for the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center and a faculty member in OSU’s College of Forestry. His presentation will include an overview of past and active beaver research studies in Oregon, as well as recommendations for managing landscapes that include beavers.

Petro is a faculty research assistant at Oregon State University and conducts field research with the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center. She will present the preliminary results for the Oregon Coast Range American Beaver Genetics Study.

USDA has a pretty bad rap when it comes to beavers, or any living creature whatsoever really, but Jimmy Taylor is an exception, who has worked from the inside to promote and research flow devices, and who a million years ago helped me in fine tuning what to say to our city to let our beavers stay. (I’m not sure he would appreciate being called an exception, but this is my website and I can say it if I want to.) I did an interview with him a while back, which you can listen to here.

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If Coquille is a little far off your beaten path, here’s a similar presentation from 2 years ago.

Nature’s Architect

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, New Species August 22, 2015

What’s the best way to re-wild Scotland? Just leave it to beaver.

by Jim Crumley

Today’s conservationists are by no means the first people to wonder if it might be a good idea to bring beavers back to these shores. In the course of investigating Scotland’s colourful beaver history, nature writer Jim Crumley travelled to Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, where, in the 1870s, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, apparently conducted an early beaver experiment. Delving into the Mount Stuart archives, Crumley found that in 1874 the Marquess had a walled, four-acre beaver enclosure built on his property with a stream running through it and plenty of trees to serve as raw material for dams and lodges. This he proceeded to populate with Canadian beavers, which he purchased at £10 a pop from one Charles Jamrach, a naturalist based in London.

After a brief period in which they appeared to flourish, by 1889 the Bute beavers were no more.

This book, then, is a passionate argument for letting beavers carry out their ancient role in our landscape, as creators of wetland habitat that will benefit other animals and promote biodiversity for centuries to come. As Crumley puts it, the beaver is “an architect that designs, redesigns, restores, and recreates wildness. For nothing. Forever.” Counter arguments will no doubt be made, but not as eloquently.

This sounds like a fascinating read, and I just bought my copy. I love the history of beavers being introduced by the Marquess. And love the urgency which which he advocates reintroduction now. I also haven’t ever read a book about castor fiber, as all big guns are about our canadian beavers. This should be fun!

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Yesterday I read they were fogging for west nile virus at the marina. Something they had already done in July. Were the chemicals they used possibly impactful for beavers? For that matter, could beavers die from West Nile Virus? Horses, dogs and cats apparently do.

The vet at fish and game asked a colleague about the chemicals. She wrote back that It was Pyrocide, active ingredient pyrethrins. It has a very low toxicity to mammals. So probably not. Hmmm. it was worth considering though.

No new deaths, and we’re still walking the creek every day to just in case there are bodies. Let me know if you can help.

California’s first modern-day wolf pack sighted in Siskiyou County

On Thursday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released photos of five wolf pups with a pair of adults, one of them thought to be the wolf seen in the spring. It is the first confirmed sighting of a gray wolf pack in modern California history.

California should be very happy to have wolves! 5 pups documented from our very own golden state pack. Which brings our resident wolf population to 7. (For those following along at home, California hasn’t had wolves since 1924.) Now I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, this is a beaver website, why should I care?” But wolves are the single most important helper that beavers have in restoring streams. See, the beavers chew the willow, to make their dams, and the trees coppice, but before the beavers can get back to eat them, ungulates like deer and elk and cows come chomp the shoots. And that’s not good for creek restoration.

But when we have a healthy wolf pack in residence, it forces the deer and elk (and cows) to stay away from the open creeks and they browse more cautiously, meaning that the willow gets a chance to grow up and the beavers get to fell and feed and build more dams and save more water.