Month: February 2016

And the results are in…

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? February 9, 2016

A natural ally in the fight against floods – the beaver

The experiment which has been running for five years in West Devon has been both a world-first and a profound surprise for the scientific community. The results of the experiment are startling. During the five years the two beavers have lived a wild and natural existence in their seven-acre enclosure they have built 13 dams using the kind of scrub willow and hazel that tend to line Westcountry streams and these have had a profound effect on both water flows and on pollution.

The scientists have been looking at three different areas in the changing hydrology – the amount of flow which goes into the beaver-zone and then comes out; the increase in the area’s water storage capacity; and the effect on pollutants.

He explained how the 13 beaver dams are slowing the water flow. “The water comes in at the top and fills up behind the first dam, overflows and fills the next. It is like a staircase. There is a constant release of water – each pond draws down and is replenished before the next rainfall.”

The professor showed us a graph on which a blue line showed flows measured at the input to the site, and a red line showed the outflow. As you’d expect, the blue line zig-zagged up and down as heavy rains were followed by dry periods – but the red line measuring output remained more-or-less straight across the middle of the graph.

And there was another reading. “From this landscape here we are seeing an average of 150 mg per litre of sediment coming off farmland in storms. But what we see leaving the site here is just 15mg per litre. Behind every one of these dams the water slows until it’s practically not moving – the sediment settles and fills the pond.

“If you are water company and a river has high sediment, it costs a lot of money to treat. Nitrogen and phosphorus both enter this site at reasonably high levels especially in storms – but at the bottom end we see so little in nitrogen and phosphate, the university’s equipment cannot actually detect the minute amount.

They’re doing a great job of showing why beaver belong on the landscape in Devon. I’m so pleased by their effort to document the changes. I take with many grains of salt the idea that this has never been studied before – but certainly the effect of two beavers on a habitat that’s been without them for 500 years has never been studied before. So that’s excellent!

Love this remark from the retired farmer who was willing to tolerate beavers on his land.

“This water is all going down to Roadford reservoir; it eventually becomes drinking water,” said Mr Morgan. “So if you can make the water cleaner, that is a good thing. “If they took the fences away, I’d be perfectly happy for the beavers to stay – they can be managed like everything else.”

Managed like everything else! Did I read that correctly? What man of steel is this that faces the beaver threat with actual pragmatic courage? I think I’m in love.

They’re even proposing incentives for farmers who allow beavers on their land. Be STILL my heart.

Mark Elliott, who is in charge of the beaver product for the Devon Wildlife Trust, has been spending a lot of time considering how farmers and landowners might get on with beavers if they were re-introduced to British landscapes after centuries.

“The key challenge is ensuring there is some mechanism by which landowners who store water on their land in the headwaters get some sort of payment for the wider benefits that they are providing for society,” he told the WMN, adding that he was not just talking about beaver-created wetlands.

“There are already Countryside Stewardship schemes that recognise the wildlife benefits, and pay a landowner for changing the way they farm – but if a landowner allows beavers to flood some low-lying pasture, for example, maybe they should receive some sort of payment for the reduction in flooding downstream.”

Can I get an amen?

Here’s a little something I put together yesterday to celebrate urban beavers.

Hopes are never false

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? February 8, 2016

I was hopeful this week when someone told me that on Martinez Rants and Raves an ‘otter’ had been seen at Ward street. Obviously I went to look it up thinking that otter are mistaken for beaver quite often and maybe I’d have good news. I was even more excited to read that the sighting took place at 8 am.

Unfortunately for us, however upon skillful cross-examinationm, the witness was certain it was an otter. She explained she knows the difference and enjoyed watching its slender tail for sometime. Sigh. Obviously the lucky otter was chasing the steelhead run which had been noticed a little before. I can’t regret the near miss though – because having renewed hope was fun and it made me look up something about steelhead I hadn’t known before.

Apparently steelhead can spawn several times! Who knew? And they need and flat gravel bed to do it above a pond, Igor Skaredoff told me where there was a riffle once with gravel, I will have to ask him again where these sea-going fish return to. I know that steelhead start out their lives as rainbow trout, and literally undergo a SEA CHANGE (smoltification) when they pass through open water and get to saltwater. They come all the way home to spawn. Which is amazing. Around here spawning usually happens November to April, or in the “Winter Run”.

I also know that beaver dams help them a lot by giving them deep pools to grow up and rich food to fatten up. But there is nothing on youtube about this I can share, because if you search for beavers and steelhead you only get many, many images of bulldozers ripping out beaver dams to “Protect” steelhead.

Which is, as I’ve said many times before, like protecting banks from money.

At least we have nearby beavers to amuse us. Rusty Cohn is sorely feeling the effects of winter visibility of his Napa beavers and has taken to using his drone photographs more creatively. Yesterday he wrote me about looking up Martinez on the b4ufly app and learning that because of concord airport the area west of amtrak (the creek is west of amtrak) is off limits for aerial photography. Sigh. But he got some fun photos of the Tulocay creek habitat.

I SO wish we could have similar photos of our beaver habitat. And of course some beavers to maintain it. Sigh.

There’s a new section on the website I don’t know if you noticed. I’ve been getting so may regional emails about ‘how do we save our beaver’ that I thought it deserved a menu item. I’ll expand it more as I think about it, but I think this is great for starters.

Yesterday I decided that if SPAWN and CLUC can use fun acronyms, why can’t we?

Friends with Cameras

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, New Species, pictures February 7, 2016

It was lovely to come across this article about the talents of someone we know. Suzi deserves every bit of attention she gets, and we’re very lucky that she lives in the area.

Award-winning Petaluma-based photographer Suzi Eszterhas lives on the wild side

Petaluma-based wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas is living her dream.

The 39-year-old animal enthusiast graduated from a childhood spent observing squirrels and birds in her backyard to photographing jaguars in Brazil and traveling around the globe documenting the lives of animals while sharing a message of conservation with future generations.

“Basically, I worked my whole life trying to make a career in wildlife photography,” the Marin County native said. “I knew as a child what I wanted to do. I’ve never really known a life with any different goals.”

Eszterhas has been published in more than 100 magazine covers and feature stories, including Time and Smithsonian magazines and BBC Wildlife and she’s earned recognitions in prestigious contests including Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Environmental Photographer of the Year competitions as well as the National Wildlife Photo Contest, but it’s not the fame that’s important to her, she said.

What a great article! I’m so happy that we got to cross paths! Suzi is smart enough to have worked her whole life to make a living doing what she loves, and she deserves this kind of article from her home town.

Though she’s done work internationally, Eszterhas, who moved to Petaluma about a year and a half ago, has also been active locally, documenting the Ninth Street Rookery in Santa Rosa, a median on a city street where birds nest, and the Tulocay Beaver Pond in Napa, where beavers established a home in a creek near a large hotel, she said.

But not a mention of US??? The original urban beavers? Your friends who told you about the beaver pond in Napa and took you there in the first place? No mention of sitting all those nights on the bank eating pad thai out of a box and enjoying the best beaver sightings you will EVER see?

Napa didn’t give you a shirt, Suzi, sheesh!

Well as it happens I was sent some other lovely Napa photos this morning, and the timing couldn’t be better to share them. These are burrowing owls at the nearby golf course, and Rusty says it’s what photographers do in the winter when beavers are hard to see. I just think it’s pretty fortuitous that we’re seeing these on SUPERB OWL SUNDAY! For reasons best understood only by me, I especially love the grumpy one.

Superb owl — *Wake me up when it’s over. Photo by Rusty Cohn*

superb Owl sunday — *Now what is he looking at? Photo by Rusty Cohn*

Nice work Rusty. I was staggered the first time I saw owls living in the ground like feathered hobbits. Rusty was even lucky enough to catch a photo of the architect and tenant side by side. So I couldn’t resist playing a little.

Would you care for some WHINE with that Mr. Quinn?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? February 6, 2016

The fine report by the Vancouver Park Commission is taking some heat. Something was printed this morning from Stephen Quinn, the host of On the Coast on CBC Radio One. Obviously the paper felt the entire airwaves wasn’t space enough for him in which to broadcast his petulant opinions, and granted him a full page to write whatever he liked. In my head I hear the voice of Niles Crane writing this over an expresso, see if you don’t agree.

Biodiversity report wildly exaggerates the alleged upside of critters in the city

I have read with interest the so-called draft Biodiversity Strategy you released earlier this week and I have to tell you, it’s not sitting well with me. Frankly, it scares me, particularly the sections outlining measures that could lead to more wildlife running around our city. I urge you to take a more cautious and measured approach.

Let’s begin with beavers. While the Park Board apparently sees the increase in the city’s beaver population as a positive signal, I assure you it is no such thing.

I had never seen an actual beaver until a few weeks ago. Have you seen one? It was huge, like a giant flat-tailed rat with hideous teeth and beady black eyes. It was swimming upstream in Still Creek right beside the Superstore parking lot. I can tell you that just a short distance away there were mothers walking with their children! No one should have to face this sort of threat at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning in a place that is supposed to be nature-free.

Day-lighting the creek was a huge mistake! Your own report says salmon have returned and are spawning and then dying and if I may quote, “provide food for otters and mink.” So attracting more wild animals?Where does it stop? Bears? Wolves?!

It goes on at some length, because word restrictions are only necessary for us persona non grata peons, not for celebrities like Mr. Quinn who’s afraid of beavers, wolves and bears. It all reads like those paragraphs so you can get the idea. For my money the best line is, why would anyone want to daylight a creek anyway?

My hair was on fire this morning when I read through this tripe and burned out my response, but now I can see the humor of it. It’s almost offers the best argument against itself by very quickly becoming absurd. If he didn’t have a national radio platform to beat his drum every day I could laugh this off. Hmm.

Your report also celebrates the “healthy populations” of other mammals like raccoons and skunks. Have you seen what

the mammals you love so much have done to my lawn – which already looked pretty terrible thanks to your ban on cosmetic pesticides? They have reduced it to mud, I tell you!

And then you say that 674 racoons have been killed by cars since 2001? Does that not tell you that animals like raccoons don’t belong in our city? I find it interesting that your staff can keep such an accurate count of dead raccoons but still not know how many coywolves are out there.

I had no idea that this golf course mentality existed in Canada. I thought it was uniquely American – a product of places with green lawns and clipped hedges. Thank you, Mr. Quinn for opening my eyes.

Of course I sent my letter to the editor. You should too.

There are lies, there are dam lies, and there are beaver lies!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? February 5, 2016

Sometimes life in the beaver-biz is very rewarding. And sometimes it just annoys the stuffing out of me. Take this article out of Whinging-ton Ma for starters.

Hopkinton selectmen vote to trap beavers

HOPKINTON — Selectmen have agreed to hire a beaver trapper after flooding became a problem on the recently purchased Pratt Farm and neighboring properties.The board voted 5-0 on Tuesday night to pay for a plan to eliminate the beavers.“We decided we need to protect the town’s land,” Selectmen Chairman Ben Palleiko said in an interview.

Palleiko said the plan will likely cost about $5,500 — $4,000 for the trapping and $1,500 for taking apart seven dams. The board decided on an option known as a kill trap. A live trap would be as twice as expensive and the beavers would be euthanized at a later time, not released elsewhere, officials said.

How surprising! The folk in Hopkinton seemed so darned open-minded and committed to humane solutions! (Not). They have been gunning for those beavers since day one, and they kept promoting their death in the paper until they tipped the argument just enough. I especially admire the duplicity necessary to get this quote from their ‘beaver expert’ printed in the paper.

“Due to the beaver activity, an accurate flagging of wetlands may not be possible at this time, which will stall the work of the team,” she wrote in a letter to the board.The board made its decision after hearing from Malcolm Speicher, a beaver specialist, who has done work in town, including Legacy Farms. The town needs to seek bids for the work.

Speicher said it is only a matter of time before the town’s aquifers feeding to the town’s wells will be contaminated with bacteria from beaver feces.

Palleiko said Speicher believe there could be up to 40 beavers in the area.

Now maybe you’re wondering where they found this illustrious specialist. We are talking about MA, so maybe he’s at Cambridge? Harvard? MIT??? Ohhh no he’s a trapper who happens to specialize in beaver and fisher. So of course he knows all about beaver stools causing bacteria in the water.

Grrrr.

And now this. Things just got real in Mountain House. Now its time to bring out the big guns. Folks were shown Mike’s video about how to solve problems so they tried to think of an unsolvable one. We in Martinez know erosion trumps flooding. That’s why, after Skip’s flow device worked well and no one was worried about drowning anymore, the lawyer sent a letter about the foundation slipping because of unseeable burrows and that’s how Martinez got to buy 350,000 worth of sheetpile.

Obviously, this is deja vu all over again. Officials are now saying the biggest problem is these.

You can guess how true I think this is. Coal mining beavers?

But I think it’s always good to ask smarter minds than mine. Glynnis Hood says that beavers in her research do cause tunnels that collapse and its possible that a bank lodge this big could exist if the beavers have been around for some time. And Mike Callahan says its theoretically possible if there are tunnels inside leading to the water.

But I think if in 10 years of having beavers in Martinez they ever excavated anything like that, the mayor would have personally thrown me in it. Michael Runtz says a bear could do this, but he doubts beaver.

Stay tuned, I’ll tell you when I hear from more folks.

Apparently beavers are going on Broadway now, with Alan Cummings new musical. This made me howl with laughter – especially the leaping ballet beavers at the end. Enjoy!

A few more gifts arrived yesterday, and I’m thrilled for beavers good fortune. The first was some promised plates from this adorable set at thirdhalfstudios. How fun are these?

And the second is a beyond lovely sterling silver floating necklace that arrived from Winterchild. Like this but with a beaver symbol and on a breathtakingly delicate sterling silver figaro chain. I’m not sure I can keep from bidding on this. You definitely shouldn’t.