Month: December 2015

Beaver elements: water and fire?

Hopkinton residents blame beavers for flooding woes

HOPKINTON — Several residents of Huckleberry Road are pushing town officials to help find solutions for beaver dams on Whitehall Brook they say are flooding their properties. “The water is less than 40 feet from my house,” Jim Sullivan, of 18 Huckleberry Road, told selectmen last week.

Don MacAdam, conservation administrator, said Thursday several town officials inspected several properties on Huckleberry Road earlier this week to see the flooding. He said he has also seen a beaver dam and evidence of the animals at Pratt Farm, a nearby property on Fruit Street that the town recently bought. Along for the walk were the animal control officer, health administrator and principal planner.

“I’m assuming (the flooding) has to do with beaver dams further down the brook,” MacAdam said.

Sullivan said at Board of Health meeting they also brought up beaver problems. “They agreed there is a situation there,” he said.

Jennifer Belesi, of 24 Huckleberry Road and also a member of the Board of Health, said the problem will take a well-coordinated effort of the residents, town and state. The flood water could threaten wells and septic tanks, which makes it a health problem, she said.

“This is not just one beaver,” she said. “This is an enormous issue.”

Call the WAAmbulance. Between November 2013 and January 2015 this website has reported on no fewer than 7 articles about the DIRE beaverness in Hopkinton, which warranted trapping on every single count. Even though we got them to talk to Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions somewhere along the way, many many beavers were killed. Apparently the problem is still DIRE.

Honestly, even more so than most of beaver-phobic Massachusetts, Hopkinton appears to be on permanent red alert.

More reasons to fear beaver from the Swedes. Actually this might be my very favorite beaver headline ever. Maybe I should be keeping a file.

Did a beaver burn down a Swedish family home?

Police have revealed that a list of usual suspects has been narrowed down to one main culprit believed to be responsible for a fire which gutted a Swedish family home: a beaver.
The house burned to the ground after a blaze in Heby municipality near Uppsala, north of Stockholm, on Monday.

Police launched a probe into suspected arson, but revealed late on Wednesday that a forensic examination of the site had identified a potential suspect, who is yet to be traced.

“Our technicians have reached that conclusion. The beaver left behind forensic evidence which led us to it,” Uppsala police press spokesperson Christer Nordström told public broadcaster SVT.

No one was injured in the blaze, which is believed to have been caused by an electrical fault after a tree toppled by the four-legged rodent fell on to a power transmission line.

“I heard the evidence was trees that had been gnawed on and such like. I don’t know anything about the forensic team’s beaver expertise, but that’s the information I have received,” said Nordström.

The animal, thought to have his hideout in a nearby river, was understood to still be at large on Thursday.

“The beavers themselves would probably not claim they destroy society functions. But they often fell trees that fall on electricity wires. If I may offer a theory, without having any insight into the case, I think it’s a tree that has fallen and caused sparks,” beaver expert Lars Plahn at the county council’s environmental department told SVT.

I LOVE LARS. Don’t you love Lars? He’s brave enough not to play another round of Blame the Rodent, and we have to respect that. I’m sorry for the fire, but at least when the Swedes write a silly article like this they have the decency to realize they’re being ridiculous.

Which is obviously more than we can say for Hopkinton.

Castor Transport

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? December 10, 2015

Sick beaver chauffeured 400 km to new lodgings

A volunteer driver from Stittsville, Ont., has successfully chauffeured a sick beaver to its new home in Rosseau, Ont., nearly 400 kilometres west of Ottawa — a dam long road trip.

The beaver, whose plight caught the attention of many Canadians on social media, was found dehydrated, underweight and lethargic in an Ottawa-area backyard.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary tweeted an urgent plea for a driver to pick up the 11-kilogram beaver and take it to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, which is better equipped to treat the animal.

It took only 30 minutes for Mary Herbert — a self-confessed “beaver fan” — to respond to the request.

“Where I live we have beaver ponds close by. It’s just nice when I’m out walking with my dog seeingthe beavers,” said Herbert. “When an animal needed aid I figured I could step up to the plate and do it.”

Kudos for Mary, Rideau Valley Wildlife workers and Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, for helping out this little beaver in distress. And congratulations to the CBC for recognizing this as cheerfully Canadian story. It’s a fun listen and you will enjoy it.

mayorweasel — **Mayor shakes hands with protestor at beaver rally**

In case the name Stittsville sounds familiar it should, because its where artist Anita Utas was trying to save urban beavers a few years back. Remember her? She was watching over a family who lived in a housing pond. The city insisted it wasn’t a family, the father wasn’t killed, there weren’t kits, and that they wouldn’t be harmed, that they had listened to resident outcry. They then waited until a national holiday weekend in Canada to rip the beavers out and later told Anita that the mother and two kits were “RELOCATED”. Two months later they sent her footage of grown beavers that couldn’t POSSIBLY be the kits, saying they had all matured handily and not to worry about it. Remember?

Anyway, the actions of this monumental weasel was once Stittsville’s biggest claim to beaver fame. But now Mary’s heroic rescue is. Making headlines all over including the Huffington Post this morning.

Congratulations!

You were promised a good story from the ECOLOGIST yesterday, and I do not disappoint. How’s this from Oliver Tickle?

Carlisle floods: bring back the trees, and the beavers!

The key to reducing the risk of more floods like those in Carlisle is to realise that conventional ‘flood defence’ can never provide security against the ever more extreme weather events that global warming will bring. We must embrace natural solutions to holding back flood waters: more trees; and bring back the beavers!

Trees are important for another reason too. They are food for beavers, and beavers use them to build their dams. And beavers will do all the work of damming up the streams and gullies for us, free of charge. And that’s absolutely key to restoring landcapes and making them water retentive.

We should therefore select water-loving species that are palatable to beavers – like poplars, willows, sallows and alders – and establish them along watercourses, ditches, streams, ponds and eroded upland gullies.

There”s no doubt that beavers would make an even better job of it, and at much lower cost, so long as we provide them with the trees they need to eat and build their dams with, and give them the freedom to reproduce and spread across the uplands and valleys to recreate truly living landscapes.

The dams would not just reduce flood risk: they would also prevent the summer droughts to which the area is also prone as a result of the rapid water drainage, and restore healthy river flows throughout the year.

I, of course, couldn’t agree more. Great work! People need reminding that beavers have managed water for a long time and understand their job better than we do. England is really helping with that message.

Yesterday’s conference call had the added weight of Dr. Michael Pollock and Dr. Ellen Wohl, which made it a slightly more breathless look at the urban beaver chapter. Ellen is being asked to consider tweaking her very smart tool for evaluating risk of wood in streams versus the benefit, to include beaver dams, which was really exciting. But my favorite moment was when Pollock said that cities needed to think about Education first, then Mitigation, when encountering beaver problems. Then use Relocation before employing trapping.

Which sounded PERFECT to my beaver-lovin’ ears, but needed a little tweaking. What do you think?

SO MUCH LEARNING!

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? December 9, 2015

The bright sparks of dimly lit Nevada are continuing to process ground-breaking research and expert advice using their intricate circular filing method. They have received consultation from the Sierra Wildlife Coalition, the Human Society, the Sierra Club, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and Worth A Dam, so of course they are paying the most careful attention.

Sparks changes tactics with nuisance beavers

Nuisance beavers have been gnawing their way through trees and building dams along the North Truckee Drain in Sparks, causing damage and increasing the risk of residential flooding.

After spending city resources focusing on the dams to little long-term effect, the city of Sparks recently tried to shift its focus to the beaver population itself. In order to mitigate the problems caused by the dam-building beavers, the city was advised by the Nevada Department of Wildlife to seek a special permit last month to catch and kill the animals. As of last week, however, the city decided to put that strategy on hold, concerned about the inhumane nature of the process.

The permit, which was issued Nov. 10 and is good for a full year, gave the city permission to remove the animals through trapping and/or shooting them, which they decided to do through a third party contractor. Captured animals are not allowed to be moved or relocated due to the potential spread of disease, such as the infectious bacterial illness tularemia, and the territoriality that occurs between beaver populations.

The beavers in Sparks were being trapped underwater to avoid potentially capturing domestic animals, or even small children, above ground. The beavers were drowning to death, which the city now feels is not the most humane way to take care of the problem. Five beavers were killed in total.

Well at least they finally got the beaver deaths reported, even if they didn’t admit that it was an entire family. Sherry and Ted Guzzi have been hard at work offering solutions to problems at hand, and we had a long discussion about how to wriggle maximum support out of their lying, opportunistic mouths. But obviously there has been little real change. Just look at what Mr. Healy is saying even after I specifically sent him three research articles on beavers and birds.

“This is part of the ongoing drought,” said Chris Healy, spokesman for NDOW. “When we have troubles with drought, water sources are limited, and so instead of the beavers taking out willows and creating dams, they go up drains and start taking out trees.”

Nevada law allows for the aggressive removal of beavers that are obstructing the free flow of water. Beavers can also cause significant damage to a river’s ecosystem, Healy said, in that they remove the limited number of trees that provide nesting for local birds and contribute to healthy fish habitats.

“Trees take decades to grow, whereas beavers only take a season to grow,” Healy said. “Nobody wants to kill an animal, but in some circumstances we have to do that. There are logical reasons for why we do what we do.”

Apparently trees in Nevada don’t coppice and Mr. Healy has never heard of the work beavers are doing to restore streams just up the road in his very own state. His is also unaware that beavers don’t respond to drought by moving into city drains. He feels no need to trouble himself with the research saying that beavers help birds, because he obviously knows better. Five years ago I’m sure he’d be saying beavers don’t belong because they’re not native. So that progress of a kind. And hey, beavers DO take less time to grow than trees. He’s got me there.

I guess what this all proves is that you can lead the NDOW to information about water, but you can’t make them THINK.

We need a good story to get that taste out of our mouths. This will do nicely.

New Beaver Dam in Roosevelt Forest teaches Lauralton Hall & Fairfield Prep students about beaver ecology

On November 24, Lauralton Hall students and Fairfield prep students met up with Christina Batoh, Stratford’s Conservation Officer, to learn about beaver ecology at the site of a recently constructed beaver dam in Roosevelt Forest. Students set out to answer the question, “Does the presence of the beaver dam impact stream water quality?” To do this they tested water samples from an upstream site.

Lauralton Hall students instructed their Fairfield Prep counterparts in how to conduct tests for dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, turbidity (sediment load), and pH. Students then analyzed their test results and concluded that the presence of the beaver dam does indeed impact stream water quality with water downstream having better quality than the water upstream or at the dam site.

Got that? Did the high school student go to fast for you Mr. Healy? Let me know and I can slow them down. There’s more to talk about in the Ecologist this morning, but I have a conference call for the paper this morning, and am going to have to stop for now. For some reason, I’m thinking this video might be helpful to our new BFF in his scientific quest for the ecologic advancement.

Holy Castormony

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Environmental, History December 8, 2015

Innu legend comes to life in Labrador Institute book

The book tells the story of a man and the several different animals that approach him for marriage. He agrees to each proposal but every time he finds something wrong with the prospective spouse. Finally he marries the beaver and they go on to have children. Eventually, the man’s family begin to look for him. They destroy the beaver lodge and take the man home with them. In the end he is able to rejoin his beaver family.

Author Jose Mailhot first recorded the story in the 1960s and provided LI with permission to use her recording.

“We wanted to produce books for children in the Aboriginal languages of Labrador and to use stories from their own communities,” said Dr. MacDonald. The Labrador Institute published a book a couple of years ago based on an Inuit legend.

It is important from a cultural perspective to retell a favorite legend in two languages, and what I can see of the illustrations by Cynthia Colosimo and Jolene Ashina looks amazing. But you can imagine how much I want to get my hot little hands on a copy. Maybe one for the mayor who has been ‘married to beavers’ for nearly a decade now.

In case you’re mistakenly thinking of my dog, here’s a short introduction to the Labrador Institute.

Apparently, beaver were in hot demand by both sexes in folklore. Because an Ojibwa legend tells the story of a woman who married a beaver, saying:

The woman who married a beaver: Trade patterns and gender roles in the fur trade.

This is where things really get interesting:

So the beaver continues to come back to the house with all the things used to kill them. And they get richer and richer. And even though they’re constantly killed they never really die. And remain very fond of these people who enrich them.

So after her unique experience the woman reveals that you should never speak ILL of the beaver, or you won’t be able to catch any. But if you speak well of them you will have better luck. Which isn’t so hard to understand when you think about the elaborate reciprocal contracts natives kept with the animals they ate, giving thanks and honoring them for their contribution. The article this is appears in goes on to discuss a very fascinating look at gender and female contribution in the fur trade, how women often played an intermediary role in transactions, which you might enjoy reading as much as I did.

Mostly though, I just wanted to marry a beaver. Shh, don’t tell Jon.

Beavers: too big to fail?

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 7, 2015

Thanks to our astute retired librarian friend BK from Georgia for sending this my way. You can guess what I immediately thought.

Researcher calls southwestern foundation species too big to fail

When a tree species supports more than 1,000 animals, birds, insects and microbes, the tree type can be considered too big to fail. “Cottonwoods are the General Motors of the plant world because they define a community and an ecosystem,” said Tom Whitham, Regents’ professor of biological sciences. Whitham’s genetics-based research is designed to conserve cottonwoods in the face of climate change.

Whitham and other scientists think this conservation strategy is especially important to keep foundation species in the landscape during climate change.

“Historically, there has been a very long lag time between basic research and implementation into management practice and we can no longer afford to do it that way,” Whitham said. “With the rates of climate change, there needs to be a seamless integration between the scientific findings and land management applications.”

This practice has already been achieved in agriculture, where a similar approach has changed management practices with soil scientists, plant geneticists and climatologists working together to increase crop production. Whitham said it makes sense to apply similar principals to wildlands, but with different goals of maintaining healthy ecosystems and high biodiversity.

Of course I immediately went there. Didn’t you? If sustaining many species makes something too important to lose beavers are a lock. Not to mention removing toxins, recycling nutrients, trapping sediments and storing water, which (last time I checked) EVERY species on the planet needs. Surely that must make them too big to fail. Or be failed.

I have such smart friends that I recognized Dr. Whitham’s work from the “A Thousand Invisible Cords” video a beaver supporter from Marin sent earlier. Consider this an educational website and remember one particular foundation species in the west is way too big to fail.