Beavers and Birds

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 6, 2015

So after yesterday’s unplacid Placer research I started to think about how I could do more outreach there and start educating the people about the reasons not to kill beavers. (Because obviously CDFW was going to be zero help). I presented on fish twice last year in the area (trout and salmon) and thought there might be another toehold we were overlooking. What about Audubon? The regional chapter is the Sierra Foothill Audubon Society which includes Placer, Nevada and Yuba counties. What if I could talk to them directly about the relationship between birds and beavers? They publish a newsletter every other month, what if there was a beaver and bird column as well? That would be a good way to at least start the conversation. And get folks thinking that every time they remove a beaver they are harming a bird.

So I went hunting for their website and read up about their leadership. It started me looking for a quote by John James Audubon about beavers, because I thought that would be a good way to fashion an approach. I was more than a little mortified to find that Mr. Audubon actually went out beaver trapping in preparation for his Viparious Quadrapeds volume. But I guess I shouldn’t have been. Everybody was doing it. (I suppose the only reason John Muir didn’t trap beavers when he grew up in Scotland was because they had been extinct 300 years, and by the time he got to Wisconsin they were already trapped out.) In 1843 John James Audubon went on a Missouri river trek with an old trapper looking to look for beaver. He was lucky enough to see footprints and hear a tail slap. But the beaver population had already been decimated by then and I was delighted to learn he caught nothing. The journal entries read like a post-apocalypse sci fi novel. Just look.

May 12 – We passed the river called the Sioux Pictout,[ a small stream formerly abounding with Beavers, Otters, Muskrats, etc., but now quite destitute of any of these creatures.

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June 3rd – We passed four rivers to-day; the Little Chayenne, the Moroe, the Grand, and the Rampart. The Moroe is a handsome stream and, I am told, has been formerly a good one for Beaver.

Beaver guru Bob Arnebeck has a charming column about it here that I was delighted to find. It concludes with this fitting failure.

Audubon closed the day’s Journal with a wish: “I hope I may have a large Beaver tomorrow.”

He didn’t. People back in the boat down river saw the beaver swim by them and away. Audubon had to be content with just taking apart the lodge. Three men climbed inside it. Audubon and Provost were too plump to even try that. Audubon “secured some large specimens of the cuttings used to build the lodge and a pocketful of chips.” He gave no report on Provost’s feelings. The Mountain Man hurried off to hunt an elk. Audubon headed back to St. Louis a few days later.

Good Riddance! I thought the whole shocking story needed a graphic.

Well okay, Mr. Audubon was going to be of no help in my quest for nice things to say about beavers and birds. But I already wrote one article for an audubon newsletter about beaver building bird habitat. Maybe that would help me establish first contact.

So I wrote the president and vice president and politely asked to start a conversation about beavers and their importance to birds. And William Hall wrote back and said he was very interested in my doing both, he’s a wildlife management graduate from Humboldt and loves beavers. He also happens to be their program chair and their grant chair. He suggested a possible June 2016 date with an article in the November issue of the Phoebe newsletter. He noted there were beavers near his home in Grass Valley and they had effectively plugged a culvert to make a pond that attracted Virginia Rail and Wood Duck. The dam was constantly being ripped out by the road manager, but he kept gamely rebuilding.

Ahh. Silly me. Sometimes in my effort to function as beaver publicist I forget that they already do a great deal of work on their own to spread the word. Good for them.

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Hank posted this lovely photo of the napatopia kits yesterday, but I noticed a notch in the tail that I hadn’t seen before. I asked about it and now Robin, Hank and Rusty are fiercely going back through prior photos to see when it appeared. It’s possible some beaver or otter took a nip, like they did all those years ago to our old mom. But it’s possible that there’s just a weird leaf or photo anomaly going on. I’ll let you know what they decide.

Here’s video of the three kits in June very kindly offering us their tails for comparison. (Warning: if your zip code is 94553 you might need a kleenex after viewing.)

They’re still number one!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, What's killing beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 5, 2015

Yesterday Robin got a clump of depredation permit records from her PRA for Placer County 2015. (Fridays are always document dump days.) I went through and spread-sheeted their gory details. 14 permits good for the death of 307 beavers. Not much improvement after our meeting with them last November. Property owners still excused their behavior saying useless things like they tried ripping out dams or “hazing” first but since that surprisingly didn’t work they needed to trap.

But there was one big difference.

One of the most unique things about Placer County that struck us in our initial review was the number of permits they issued for an “unlimited number of beavers”. They were the only place in the state that did it. In our 2 year review there were 51 permits issued for unlimited beaver. Meaning however many you kill that’s fine with us. One of things we talked about at the powow meeting was how unique this was, and how unnecessary. I also wrote it in my letter to the head of fish and wildlife and tried to rattle as many cages as I could.

Flash forward to spring and the discovery of the piebald beaver in Winters. I contacted the folks we had talked to in Placer and they directed me to the representative for Winters. Jason Holley, who was a nice guy and willing to chat by phone. Fresh from the horrors I mentioned something about unlimited trapping and he corrected me and said they weren’t allowed to do that. Since I had just reviewed 51 times where they had done just that I challenged his assertion and he defended by saying that there had JUST BEEN A BIG MEETING and they weren’t allowed to do that anymore.

Then he stopped for a moment and seemed to calculate things. “Maybe it was you?” he wondered.

Which of course was a lovely thought but not one I believed for a moment until yesterday when I saw this. I spoke to Jason in early April so their big meeting would have happened late March.March 19 was the last permit issued for an unlimited number of beavers all the way through last month. Which I have to think is a kind of victory, however small. It means that sometimes when you poke hard enough you make a dent. Something about my yammering must have at least drawn attention to their time-saving procedure of issuing permits without borders. Someone said just ‘stop it’ and they apparently did.

They are still authorizing the kill of many more beavers than they could possibly have, though. With two permits good for 50 beavers and one for a staggering 99. 99? Is placer county a beaver factory? To explain, the 99 was issued to all county parks in Placer, of which there are 66. I went through and checked how many were had water. Around 27 contained a lake, a stream or a river. Remember, the upper left half of Lake Tahoe is in Placer county.

Griff Creek, the death camp featured in yesterday’s article where pointless beaver slaughter near a daycare started the Sierra Wildlife Coalition, is a Placer county park. Small world.

So all the county parks were issue a single permit good for any problem that might arise over the coming year, with authorization to kill 99 beavers or around 3.8 per water-containing park. That sure seems like a sneaky time-saving device to me. This kind of mass issue didn’t show up in our last review, I wonder if it’s a new invention? It’s sort of like getting a depredation permit for Contra Costa County, and any beaver that shows up from Antioch to San Ramon can be dispatched without the burden of paperwork.

One thing it made me realize is that all those little aspen-lined clear mountain streams pouring into Tahoe are actually a death trap for beavers, I mean people assume Martinez is a terrible place for a beaver to be, and think the beavers in the sierras are lucky- but that just isn’t true. Any beaver showing in any county park in the entire green section of this map can now be reliably dispatched without even the minor inconvenience of getting a permit – because a kill-beaver wildlcard has already been issued and can be used everywhere it’s needed.

The California Beaver Coalition

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? September 4, 2015

Great news from our beaver friends! I love opening the paper to read an article about beaver advocacy that isn’t in Martinez. We just need 100’s more of these. It’s a big state.

Sherri Hasenfas — Sheri Hartstein Sierra Wildlife Coalition

Beaver population thriving at Lake Tahoe thanks to local volunteers

TAHOE-TRUCKEE, Calif. — Beavers at Lake Tahoe are faring better than they were just a few years ago, thanks to the efforts of Sherry Guzzi and her posse of volunteers, collectively known as the Sierra Wildlife Coalition.

As is the case with many people who become passionate defenders of wildlife, Sherry’s involvement began with the death of a beaver family that had become dear to her and countless other residents and visitors to Kings Beach during the fall of 2010.

This family of four beavers, two adults and two young, had built themselves a lodge in Griff Creek, which runs near Highway 267 in Kings Beach, before flowing beneath the road and into Lake Tahoe.

Obviously, we can’t allow homes, roads or businesses to be flooded so what is to be done? Sadly, in this instance, authorities decided to remove the lodge and kill the beavers.

Even more sadly, this particular dam did not threaten any structures, as the dam was only one foot high and any resulting overflow would have gone into the nearby culvert.

The killing of the beavers did not sit well with the humans who had become enamored with the animals from watching their daily activities.

Sherry, along with co-founder Mary Long, created the Sierra Wildlife Coalition with the purpose of serving as champions of wildlife, and particularly beavers.

Ooooh I love a good creation story! I remember the Griff creek beavers especially because Worth A Dam donated our first beaver management scholarship towards fixing the problem and our own Lory went to Tahoe to educate support. Ahh memories. Seems like yesterday.

sherryandted — Sherry and Ted Guzzi in their native habitat.

Go read the whole thing which ends with a touching poem by Mary’s daughter. SWC under Sherry’s leadership has done outstanding beaver work, with Ted installing flow devices, teams exhibiting and educating at events, and all making sure beaver decisions are made with the right information. Sherry just gave her first beaver presentation for the public at Taylor Creek the day before the beaver festival! It was extremely well received and she still managed to drive down and exhibit in Martinez the next morning. Now that’s dedication!

It’s not only in Tahoe where beaver friends are at work. Nearby in Napa they’re busy too.

‘Wild Napa’ lecture series to focus on beavers

The “Wild Napa” lecture series continues this month with a special presentation on beavers. Hosted by the Napa County Resource Conservation District, the event will be held next Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Covered will be the history and ecology of beavers and how they are helping urban and rural communities across the state to restore watersheds, recover endangered species, and increase climate change resiliency. Brock Doman and Kate Lundquist of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center will share their research to re-evaluate the historic range of beaver in California, and discuss how you can contribute to the Bring Back the Beaver campaign.

Optional guided tour of the active beaver dams on Napa Creek. To join this tour, meet behind the Firefighter’s Museum at 1201 Main St.

Following the tour, the talk will start at 7 p.m. at The Black and White Collective (enter through Napa Bookmine at 964 Pearl St.). Attendance is free and no registration is needed.

Napa is in for a treat. And Napa beavers should get ready to have their virtues extolled. I think Rusty and Robin will be there for sure. And Cheryl said she was planning to try and attend. It’s a great opportunity to spread the word and learn about beavers from the folks that are working closely with Fish and Wildlife to nudge our beaver policies forward. Just in case you can’t make it, here’s a nice introduction to Brock, who has a dynamic, biologic and stream oriented speaking style that you just can’t mistake.

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More Theories

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? September 3, 2015

We received the toxicology report on the yearling yesterday, and it was equally as unhelpful as everything else we’ve learned so far. No disease, no toxins, no pesticides. No clues that might point us in the right direction at all.

We have run extended organophosphorous and carbamate compound screens. We have tried the GC/MS and LC/MS screens to see if we could pick up drugs or other possible compounds. All were negative. We tested for the metabolite of bromethalin and for strychnine, both of which were negative. There was no obvious inflammation or necrosis to indicate an infectious etiology. We have exhausted most of our tests. If you can think of anything else you would like to test for, let us know.

But there was a sentence that got me thinking.

We cannot rule out toxic plants that may have been ingested

Toxic plants? Toxic plants? What’s toxic to beavers? Only one plant that I can think of. And it’s been historically called ‘beaver poison’. It’s Cicuta douglasii or water hemlock. It’s the relative of the plant that killed socrates and is so lethal for mammals that wikipedia says

this plant has an enormous impact on animals. It is one of the first plants to come out in springtime, and has a very appealing odor.[3] As little as 0.2%-0.5% body weight for sheep, 0.1% body weight for cattle, 0.5% body weight for horses, and 0.3% body weight for swine can be lethal. Death can occur within fifteen minutes of ingesting this toxin. These characteristics, along with the fact that it grows in moist areas make it a very desirable, yet deadly, plant for grazing animals.

The plant closely resembles the water parsnip, a harmless common flower that I’ve observed over the years in our Alhambra Creek. (In fact when we picked up our original mom she was on the little spit by starbucks surrounded by what I assumed was parsnip. But I also vaguely wondered if it was hemlock, and if she knew she was going to die and sought it out on purpose.)

Water hemlock is NOT harmless. It is the most lethal plant we have in America. The plant is indigenious to North America and common in California streams. So it wouldn’t be unusual for it to be in our stream. Or for a hungry beaver kit to feed opportunistically on this easy sweet smelling plant. I’m sure adults would get more cautious and know to avoid it.

I also thought yesterday about the change in our habitat which has meant less ‘kit friendly’ food sources. (Over the years we have seen kits eat mostly blackberry branches, (easy to reach) which have gotten fewer and far between in the current habitat. Maybe from beaver browsing or deliberate city-laden pesticides or who knows?) The creek bank used to be draped in vines and now it isn’t.

What if our sweet kits turned towards another easy sweet smelling food source?

Here’s the flower, which you’ve all seen because it looks the same as so many others. And here’s the leaves which are uniquely serrated. This plant is lethal to humans to touch. So if you see it do NOT do anything other than let me know.

It would be a fairly reasonable theory if it showed up in our midst and the kits partook. that could explain what happened and why nothing else has been found. I talked with the pathologist and they’re interested.

The seeds are the most poisonous part, and apparently it goes to seed in late June early July. When happened to be when our kits died.

I guess it makes sense that young might eat it. But harder to explain about junior who should have known better. Still our habitat or the drought could have made it more available than before, and there’s no proof that he died of the same thing as the kits anyway, I guess.We just don’t know.

I’ve spoken with some plant experts to see if we can get this diagnosed for sure. In the mean time I know what I’ll be keeping an eye out for. You too. Look but DON’T TOUCH.

Thereupon Crito nodded to the boy who was standing near. The boy went out and stayed a long time, then came back with the man who was to administer the poison, which he brought with him in a cup ready for use. And when Socrates saw him, he said: “Well, my good man, you know about these things; what must I do?” “Nothing” he replied, “except drink the poison and walk about till your legs feel heavy; then lie down, and the poison will take effect of itself.”

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, who was, as we may say, of all those of his time whom we have known, the best and wisest and most righteous man.

The Phaedro (Death of Socates)

Beaver Dam Jam returns!

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's saving beavers now? September 2, 2015

Don’t know what’s happening with the Utah beaver festival this year, but we’re on for Idaho again. The Watershed Guardians are proud to present their second annual Beaver Dam Jam.

Beaver Dam Jam is Sept. 26 at Scout Mountain, Pocatello

The Beaver Dam Jam, a music event to support beaver conservation, will feature the bands Cure for the Common and Wire Mama on Sept. 26 at Camp Taylor on Scout Mountain.Pocatello Regional Transit bus rides from Holt Arena near Bonneville Park at 5 p.m., and Old Town Pavilion at 5:30 p.m.; the music starts at 6 p.m. Suggested donations for attending the event are $30 for singles, $50 for couples and $20 for Idaho State University students with valid Bengal ID cards and seniors age 65 and older Camping options are available, on a first-come, first-served basis at Justice Park on Scout Mountain (make reservations at recreation.gov), by renting a cabin at Camp Taylor or staying at the Mink Creek Pavilion. For complete event information, including purchasing tickets, finding more information on camping and transportation options, visit www.watershedguardians.org. More information on the event is also available by contacting Mike Settell at 208-220-3336 or mr.settell@gmail.com

I’m so excited for them and proud of what they’ve accomplished I thought they deserved a graphic.