Month: January 2016

Damming Gets Faint Praise

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? January 11, 2016

Do you remember that grumpy english teacher who never said anything nice, always brought a thermos to work and marked your papers down on purpose so you wouldn’t feel cocky. Except for that ONE moment in time he complimented your Dostoyevsky essay with a single muttered adjective?

Well I guess Mr. Reid is the Beaver’s english teacher.

Exploring The Last GreenValley: Beavers are nature’s engineer

I have to admit to a love-hate relationship with Castor canadensis, the largest rodent in the United States, and the unparalleled builder of dams.

Too often, however, my amazement at this industrious animal turns to frustration when I have to haul my canoe or kayak out of a river and around or over yet another tree felled by the busy beaver.

Over time and through personal experience, I have come to appreciate beavers not only for their industrious, wood-gnawing construction abilities, but also for the positive impact they can have on our natural world and habitat. This understanding and appreciation took time.

About 15 years ago, my father returned from a walk in the woods to declare that he had found a beaver pond right smack in the middle of the forest. The beavers had built a dam across a small stream, were busy felling valuable trees and had flooded trails and logging roads. In all, they had created two separate ponds covering several acres of land.

Trapping and removal of the beavers was recommended by our consulting forester, so we filed applications with the State of New Hampshire and hired a local trapper to remove the animals.

The trees were spared, but not for long. Two years later, the beavers were back. Since then, we have kept an irregular schedule of trapping and removing the beavers depending on their numbers and amount of tree damage.

The result of having beavers on our property is the same as what has occurred throughout history in North America – beavers play an important role in the ecology of the land by creating enhanced wetlands that benefit a variety of wildlife species.

When I walk in our forest, my first stop is always at the beaver pond to check for damage to valuable trees as well as to look for salamanders, turtles and frogs. Our pond attracts all sorts of wildlife and on its muddy banks I have found tracks from deer, fisher, coyote, black bear and moose.

It took a while, but I have found a greater appreciation for what the beavers brought to our land. We try to keep a happy medium by maintaining the pond, but keeping their numbers in check to minimize their damage to our important tree crop.

Hmm. It is so tempting to be heartened by this article, from the wilds of New Hampshire where beaver activity is never beloved. He looked up the phrase ecosystem engineer and has noticed positive changes on his land. You have to admire that. But I can’t help but resent his grudging appreciation. I think a beaver would say ‘that’s mighty white of you to value my work while you insist on controlling my pond and killing my relatives’.

But maybe that’s just me.

Let’s have something adorable to brighten our horizons. H/T to Robin from Napa.

Ingredients for success valiantly overlooked

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, Who's saving beavers now? January 10, 2016

What if you could stand on this platform, overlooking the historic Allegheny River in Pennslyvania, and watch beaver. How happy would you be?

Beaver makes home in Harrison Hills pond

Park officials in Harrison Township plan to let the beavers be so visitors can glimpse into the lives of these secretive mammals.

Allegheny County Parks is hosting two other beavers in North Park in McCandless, according to Allegheny County Parks Director Andrew Baechle.

“It’s a tremendous educational opportunity,” he said. “And with the bird blind at Harrison Hills, it’s a great place for people to easily view the animals.”

But there hasn’t always been such enthusiasm for beavers.

In the past, Harrison Hills park management removed the occasional beaver setting up shop at the pond because they build their dams and lodges at vital drainage points — potentially wreaking havoc on water levels, according to Patrick Kopnicky, a member of the volunteer group, the Friends of Harrison Hills.

But now, the animal is actually doing the park a service, he said.

“I’m so happy he is taking out those Russian olive trees,” Kopnicky said surveying the pond and pesky invasives that have crowded out its banks.

“It’s going to make fishing easier,” he said.

It isn’t every day you open your paper and read that Pennsylvania is appreciating beavers. Especially urban beavers. I kept reading this article with my fingers over my eyes, like watching a horror film, ready to cover them at any moment. But it’s good and has many of the key ingredients of success. Photographers, people watching, news reporters, and a temporary lull in the beaver trapping routine. So far so good. This is the river where he grew up, before hiking up to the pond.

A volunteer at the park, Dennis Johns, 64, of Harrison has been photographing the new visitor. “I hope it stays because you don’t get to see them every day,” he said.

The park plans to monitor the animals’ handiwork to make sure it doesn’t damage the earthen dam at the pond and cause flooding. Johns believes that the beaver is likely a youngster from last year’s litter.

“Mama probably kicked him out and he came up the creek to here.”

The animal made a long climb — about 2,200 lineal feet — up the steep bluff from the Allegheny River, according to Kopnicky. Tom Fazi, information and education supervisor in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s southwest region office in Bolivar, said, “It’s one of the coolest mammals we have in the state.

“I don’t know if it gets the attention it deserves,” he said. “It has so many different adaptations.

The best times to see beavers are in the early morning and late evening, according to Fazi. “Sit quietly with binoculars near a pond where there are beavers, and sooner or later, they’ll show up,” he said. “You’ll see them swimming, and you might be lucky to see them on the tree.”

Ohh be still my heart. Encouraging the public to actually watch the animal they usually pay to kill. This is the beginning of something beautiful. I can almost take my fingers down entirely. Apreciative volunteers: Check. An interested media: Check. And a momentary lull in trapping by the officials: Check. This could actually work out well for that little beaver. Lots of food surrounding that little pond for this disperser, shown on google earth.

There’s just one wee little problem with this charming article, and its the very last line.

Beaver trapping season runs from Dec. 26 through March 31.

Speaking of depredation, the noble Robin Ellison of Napa has just received a big stack of permits for her PRA request of 2014. Bless her heart she already tackled the spreadsheet. But this should keep me busy for a while. 48 new permission slips to kill beaver.

Maybe you really can get everything at Walmart…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? January 9, 2016

Yesterday was the third conference call for the rapidly growing chapter on urban beavers. While the last one left me feeling like I was surrounded by nobel scientists and barely qualified to participate, this one made me realize that I actually do have a very specifically valuable skill set. During the call I would make comments that seemed fairly obvious to me – like how stream complexity isn’t anything a city engineer wants, or why dead wood is seen as a threat in city streams and quickly removed, or how flow devices require stream alteration permits in California – and they kept being surprised and grateful that I said them because they would never have thought of that.

It finally dawned on me that actually living in an actual town with actual beavers for a decade produced a pretty remarkable learning curve. And I guess it’s okay I don’t know what evapotranspiration means. Because I know other things. Useful things. And in nine years I have learned something about how to save beavers.

Not everything, but something.

Anyway, I’m grateful my coauthors who send treats like this my way. This is from a beaver management plan written for that Walmart in Logan, Utah by Elijah Portugal, Joseph Wheaton, and Nick Bouwes. I was told it was shareable as long as I gave credit, so I’m adding it to the website until someone tells me personally to take it down. It’s definitely worth reading and fills me in Martinez with a longing I think only Salieri can have felt for Mozart, but WOW is it worth it.

Take a good long look at that chart, and see how far you get down the page before you use extermination. Honestly this made me so happy I felt giddy when I saw it. Imagine a place where trapping beaver wasn’t the first or even the second solution that was thought of.

For comparison: here is the complex decision tree that most cities [and Martinez if it were left up to them] employ.

Trust me, this is just Peachy

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? January 8, 2016

Our own retired librarian friend from Georgia provides today’s guest blog. It’s from the Adopt-a-Stream news letter and it packs quite a punch. You’ll remember Bob and his wife Jane came to the beaver festival last year, and we had them over for dinner. He’s a regular reader, finds me articles and the pair are true believers in the cause. Also funny and smart to boot. Since Georgia has the dubious distinction of being the first state (outside Ca) that really riled me about beavers, I think they are doing God’s work from the belly of the beast. And i couldn’t have been prouder of this.

Beavers in Georgia

by Bob Kobres, UGA Libraries (retired) and Volunteer of Blue Heron Nature Preserve

When you see a beaver family’s dam in a Georgia stream, you may want to take a moment to think how fortunate we are that this ancient riparian maintenance crew is returning to resume the work that we ignorantly interrupted. We almost did in this incredibly important keystone species because of the utility of their fine pelts, and in many ways we are still suffering from that unfortunate episode!

Beavers have been an integral part of the riparian system in the northern hemisphere for millions of years. We know this from fossils as well as from the characteristics of trees that co-evolved along with beavers. For instance, trees like willow and cottonwood that grow along waterways will regrow after being cut down. In other words, the tree is not killed by the beaver taking the above-ground part but instead grows deeper roots and puts out shoots from its trunk. This more bush-like form of the tree serves to stabilize the banks of waterways and also provides accessible browse and nesting areas to other wildlife. The only trees killed by beaver activity are those that are flooded, and these low lying dead trees become ideal homes for several types of birds that have evolved with access to beaver created wetlands.

But what about the fish? Don’t those dams mess up their migration? Well, actually there will be more and bigger fish in a beaver-controlled stream than in a free flowing one, as the former is the ancient norm while the latter is a recent human creation. The unobstructed stream is an erosive assault on the health of the land due to several factors, but the most important loss is the groundwater recharge. It is an ample supply of cool water seeping back into a beaver-deepened pond from adjacent earth that keeps conditions ideal for fish throughout the summer. Creeks without beavers behave as drains rather than holders of rains! Actually, some of the sea level rise over the past few centuries is due to our decimating the beaver population during that time period. In general, our efforts to tame the waterways and drain the wetlands have dried the land, so water that used to soak deeply into the ground now flows quickly to the sea.

It has long been understood that beaver dams filter and trap sediments, clearing the water downstream; however, other lost beaver benefits that we are just realizing include carbon capture and denitrification of the water. We need beavers back in our watersheds in greater numbers to better retain rain and allow that intermittent input of fresh water to soak into the ground. This will return many now dry-most-of-the-time creek beds to year-round full streams.

The biggest barrier to fully returning the naturally evolved ecological services beavers once provided is us. We’ve occupied their former habitat and modified it with no consideration for these vital citizens of the wild. In fact, because beavers were mostly trapped out by the time most European settlers had arrived, we have no recent cultural experience of healthy beaver-controlled watersheds; rather, we are accustomed to fast flowing streams that rise and fall due to rainfall amount and frequency. So although beavers have spread throughout Georgia since the wise reintroduction of them in the 1940s, beaver families are often killed when they try to reoccupy waterways we have modified to suit ourselves.

Might we alter our status quo response to beavers that cause us problems? Currently, Georgia law classifies beavers as nuisance animals like rats and simply warns to ‘be careful’ when shooting near water. Certainly these family-oriented social critters deserve better treatment than that from us! Tools to mitigate human/beaver conflict have been developed, and in general the cost of employing them is less than the recurring expense of hiring someone to trap the beavers and destroy their dams. The current process of removal only temporarily alleviates the problem because the next beaver family will find the site just as attractive as the family that was exterminated. The best plan for beavers and us is to use these inexpensive solutions–heavy gage fence material to protect trees we don’t want them to use and drain pipe to control the level of their pond. This way the beaver family’s pond has time to mature and so provide a full suite of ecological services.

The most effective and least expensive way to ensure the health of our riparian systems in Georgia is to welcome the natural maintenance and repair crew whenever and wherever we can!

This brilliant bit of beaver gospel is followed by the following invitation to the seminar and not one but TWO short blurbs saying where beaver colonies are actively welcomed.
BOB! You have done a truly grand thing on a grand scale. Putting this article together for AAS was a true stroke of genius. I’m mentally raising a glass and having you for dinner once again and reposting this photo of your visit. It isn’t often I feel my own stubborn efforts at advocacy have been completely dwarfed, but you have dazzled and impressed me. I love this article and love beyond saying that hundreds of folks from your state will glance twice at it and start to consider what it would be like to think something totally new. Maybe they’ll even start reading and follow up with more research of their own. Beavers?

I can almost feel it, can’t you?

It isn’t often I’m tempted to post this song. But honestly you’ve earned the Hoagy Carmichael version and then some. Well done Bob!

Chasing our own Tale

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? January 7, 2016

I was doing some more research on the topic of urban beavers, and was really surprised to come across this bold sentence on a page called “What can beavers do for you?”:

TWC is collaborating with the guidebook authors to add a chapter focusing on urban beaver in the next version of the book to be released next summer.

Of course, all kinds of bells immediately sounded in my brain. Hurray! More people talking about urban beavers! And then: Exactly who ELSE was doing this topic and were they trying to release their chapter before we got around to ours and steal our thunder? Had I tipped our hand by writing about it here and been hoisted on my own petard? Then I put my speculations away and actually read a little more closely.

TWC stands for “The Wetlands Conservancy” and if that sounds vaguely familiar it should. Hmm, who’s the Urban Land Steward for the organization? Kaegan Scully-Englemeyer who just happens to be one of the co-authors of the chapter. Our chapter. That chapter I’m working on. Duh.

OHHHH, okay then.

Guess what I found next? A very lovely column from an old friend.Well not that old, but Simon Jackson of Ghostbear photography was kind enough to donate some of his remarkable images to the auction at the festival in 2014. And pleased when we noticed that his awesome photo was of a nursing female, which he hadn’t seen before. He was a great sp0rt so that makes him pretty friendly.

An Ode to Urban Beaver

The odd thing about this article featured in the Yellowstone Daily is that it allows me to copy the photos but not the text. Which is the opposite of what you’d expect for photos of this caliber. Of course I found a way to do it anyway, but still, it’s odd. It’s hard to see how Urban it is because it just looks beautifully snowy. But I trust Simon, don’t you? Here the beaver is surrounded on either side by photographers.

The amusing thing was that this cooperative beaver disliked Simon’s fiance for reasons known only by the beaver. And would get upset every time she tried to watch him. This bit of beaver quirkiness made me smile.

It’s a lovely article and a fine study of urban beavers. Go check out the whole thing here, and let’s keep our eyes peeled for when our own UB’s return, which I’m feeling right now that they will!