Rusty of Napa reminds us on this special mother’s day that beavers aren’t the only ones busy providing for their families this time of year.
Here’s a few other examples. Muskrats gather fresh green grasses for the family meal, and the family bed.
Gathering the grass
Assembling his boquet
Bringing it home
If you’re curious to learn more about this hardy little beaver neighbor, you can always rely on Bob Arnebeck from New York. He as been my mentor since the dawn of beavers in Martinez, and I’m always eager to listen to what he has to say.
So, yes, muskrats are relatively small, not much bigger than a cat, and they are avid eaters of green grass, not meat, but they are tough little animals just as likely to stand their ground and even attack than run and hide. I’ve spent a lot of time with muskrats, and the curious thing is, I never quite get a photo of them that I think captures the real muskrat. The Indians called them muskquoshes which, I think makes more sense because muskrat gets you thinking about rats, and muskrats are more than big swimming rats with long tails even though that is what they look like.
He describes their homes and habits, talks about their being tolerated in beaver lodges, and goes on to note that muskrats are even adept at using their tails to indicate alarm and has this stunning video to prove it:
Jon and I were so excited by Moses footage last night we braved the drizzle at 5:30 and went to see for ourselves. Low tide isn’t until ten, so we were rewarded with a raccoon, three ducks, many birds, fewer insects, but no beavers. Sigh.
They say patience is a virtue.
Just to cheer us though I will tell you that I accepted a speaking arrangement yesterday for the Placer County Fish and Game Commission in July. If that isn’t speaking truth to power in the belly of the beast I don’t know what is. OUTLIER COUNTY! The Portland folks also arranged a second speaking venue, this one at the Clean Water Services building in Beaverton, where I can meet other people and swap ideas about using beavers to improve creeks in urban areas. It is the morning after my big talk which won’t allow much sleeping time, but I’m pretty happy because it gives us an excuse to take a loop around the city and drive back through Forest park, under this bridge:
Also, Mario got a little more work done yesterday in the rain, and was happy that some stranger even brought him a coffee! I can’t wait to see how awesome this is going to look.
And just in case you missed yesterday’s rare second post, I’m offering a rerun:
Late Breaking footage from Moses Silva last night. Not only does Martinez have a pair of beavers, but it looks here like we have a mated bonded pair. Special thanks to Moses who shared and Linda who sent it our way.
Oh and pay special attention to that head shake at .29 because in my years of filming there is only one beaver who did that regularly. And that was our last mom.
Late Breaking footage from Moses Silva last night. Not only does Martinez have a pair of beavers, but it looks here like we have a mated bonded pair. Special thanks to Moses who shared and Linda who sent it our way.
Oh and pay special attention to that head shake at .29 because in my years of filming there is only one beaver who did that regularly. And that was our last mom.
Kent is a county in Southern England below London. It is 200 miles down the Thames away from Devon. So you can imagine that this came as quite a surprise to them. It shouldn’t be a surprise to us, but it does make me irrationally happy. While Scotland debates whether it can protect beavers, and England hasn’t even officially started asking whether it wants them, they’re quite happily re-introducing themselves, thank you very much.
Isn’t Peter Smith amazing on camera? Honestly, he talks about what beavers do as if it was soooooo fascinating even if I knew nothing about them I couldn’t wait to learn more. Beavers are so good at bouncing back it is staggering to consider that the degree to which they must have been hunted to be so completely extinguished.
This article appeared a couple days ago, but there was so much going on I set it aside, like a treat to enjoy later. It is from Mother Nature Network, and it’s good to the last drop.
“Beavers’ ability to change the landscape is second only to humans,” according to the Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife website. Indeed the scope and long-lasting changes that a beaver family can bring to an ecosystem is incredible.
“Beavers have a tremendous impact on ecosystems,” writes Live Science. “Dams alter the flow of rivers and can flood hundreds of acres… As sediment and debris build up, carbon increases and nitrogen decreases. The chemical changes alter the type of invertebrates, and the new water source attracts new species of birds, fish and amphibians. Flooded timber dies off and a forest becomes an open water ecosystem.”
Despite the controversy they can inspire, beaver dams are helpful in many ways. A recent study by scientists from the University of Rhode Island measured just one of the positive benefits of dams: They can help remove up to 45 percent of harmful nitrogen from streams and creeks.
Nitrogen is one of the most problematic pollutants in the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay. Nitrates, nitrogen-based chemicals found in fertilizers and other chemical compounds, wash off agricultural and urban areas after rain in the form of polluted runoff. Wastewater treatment plants also contribute to the problem. These chemicals cause algae blooms, which in turn result in dead zones, underwater areas devoid of oxygen where fish and other aquatic life struggle to survive.
The ponds that build up behind beaver dams encourage aquatic plants to grow, and their decomposition at the bottom of the pond encourages bacteria growth, the study found. The bacteria breaks down these nitrates, releasing nitrogen as a gas. The result is cleaner water, all thanks to beavers.
“I think what was impressive to us was that the rates were so high,” Arthur Gold, lead researcher of the study, told Nature World News. “They were high enough and beavers are becoming common enough, so that when we started to scale up we realized that the ponds can make a notable difference in the amount of nitrate that flows from our streams to our estuaries.”
How can we reverse the effects of ruined waterways, prevent worldwide water shortages and revitalize drought-stricken areas with fresh water? The answer may be in part in this well-known rodent. Teaming up with nature’s best waterway engineers could make a difference for water-parched places.
As mentioned in a previous beaver fact, the activity of beavers damming up creeks and rivers raises the water table. A recent three-year study by Cherie Westbrook of Colorado State University and colleagues there and at the U.S. Geological Survey in Fort Collins, Colorado looked at the impacts of beaver dams in Rocky Mountain National Park. They found several interesting results that change our understanding of how beavers contribute to the groundwater system.
Within the valley, the dams cause water to spread toward the sides of the valley, rather than rushing through the valley with the river, which not only raises the water table but keeps more of the valley moist, even in dry seasons. According to Science Daily, “The researchers suggest that the elevated moisture levels found in soil surrounding the dams would otherwise require water from a very large natural flood, which they estimate as the 200-year flood, to achieve the same expansive water availability to the valley bottom.”
“This study broadens the view of the importance of beaver in the valley bottoms beyond the upstream ponds,” Westbrook told Science Daily. “We found that upstream ponds were not the main hydrologic effect of the dams in the Colorado River valley. Instead, the beaver dams greatly enhanced hydrologic processes during the peak flow and low flow periods, suggesting that beaver can create and maintain environments suitable for the formation and persistence of wetlands.”
While many people understandably complain about the impact that can have on man-made infrastructure, it also has an impact that we’ll soon come to deeply appreciate: Beaver dams can help reduce the impact of droughts. With longer and more severe droughts occurring due to climate change, that ability is one that is heartily welcomed by those looking for solutions to water shortages. A report from WildEarth Guardians discusses an entire strategy to utilizing beavers in climate change adaptation, including encouraging beavers back into national forests where they once lived.
Now that beavers are returning to areas they were once trapped out of, whether actively encouraged or not, we may see an impact on a larger scale in protecting drought-prone areas from suffering through the worst of droughts.
I love an article were beaver benefits are touted! Yes, there are a few rubbishy things in it to, like the part were they say castor fiber is larger and lighter colored than ours (?) and where they say that the castoreum used in recipes is hard to get because you have to ‘milk’ the beavers in captivity (???) but mostly I’m liking this article very much.
Yesterday Mario made a brave go of things with a pink canopy and sandbags to start drawing the bridge. Of course it rained for hours and Jon soon came down and used is leaf blower to dry off the surface and loaned him our other canopy and some locks to secure things. He’ll try again today.
I was busy working on trying to get the insured period stretched to cover a few more days because of the rain. We’ll see if we’re successful, or if the city just orders to cease and desist with half a mural. But I was very excited to see the first drawings laid down. Mario sketches with oil charcoal so at least its waterproof.
It’s been a surreal pair of days. Yesterday I saw beavers in Alhambra Creek for the first time in 8 months. I spoke with Suzi Eszterhas who said the Ranger Rick wants to go ahead with the beaver story and might want to include my paper bag puppet design as an activity. Today I opened my email to find an invitation to speak at the Placer Fish and Game Commission. (Yes, PLACER) And now this from Michigan. I can’t embed the news clip here. But you MUST go watch it, it’s that good.
“The beavers are doing really good habitat work,” said DNR Wildlife Biologist Mark Mills. “It just happens that they’re flooding a neighbor’s yard.”
Instead of trapping the beavers and endangering the unique wetland in which they share with many other species, Kalamazoo Christian High School students volunteered to help the DNR install a beaver pond leveler. The structure, made with pipe and fence, allows humans to control the level of water even after the beavers rebuild the dam.
DNR says a lot of rare species depend on the higher water. If they removed the beavers, the water level would drop too much, and important wildlife would be lost.
“It’s about finding an equilibrium,” said Mills.
The supplies for the beaver pond leveler cost about 100 bucks. That’s less than the cost of pest control, and only a small price to pay for protecting a popular environment.
Michigan is having a kind of beaver revival. Once regarded merely for their self-destructive habit of ripping out beaver dams to help fish, in the past year we’ve seen their beaver IQ take a hearty surge. I’m particularly impressed that DNR (which is like their fish and game) would encourage this. It makes me very curious how, for example, they adopted Mike Callahan’s design name (Pond Leveler) but not his exact design. He wrote on the beaver management forum that he was a little nervous about the look of what they built, so I doubt they used his DVD. But I’d love to track down the trickle of influence and see how it made its way to Michigan DNR. At least, they have a helpful group of curious and interested students. So if anything goes wrong, they can make the necessary adjustments.
Jon is helping Mario this morning set up to get started on the mural, and we turned in our application for the festival yesterday. It turns out the invitation for Placer is for exact hour I’m presenting in Portland, so hopefully we get find another time. This morning Moses’ beaver discovery is (sort of) in the Martinez Tribune. And I was grateful that Amelia made a few changes to our final festival poster. I figure, if we have to pay for the Bay Nature ad, why not use it to educate as well as promote?
Moses Silva came back with his camera. And this is what he filmed in the morning yesterday.
Did you ever have someone you loved with all your heart, maybe someone you rescued or saved after rehab, that suddenly left or disappeared without explanation, just dropped off the face of the planet and broke your heart without even saying good bye? And maybe you struggled along, trying to keep it together and finish school or whatever, but feeling this hollow place inside you all the time, as if what was most important was suddenly lost?
And then, 8 months later, this once-loved missing piece suddenly turns up. And says he was in Tibet or Africa ‘getting his head together’ but that he still loves you and realized that his life wasn’t complete without you. And part of you is like, YEAH! You’re back! And part of you is like “WTF?” And part of you is like “Why now?” Because you were just starting to get used to life without them, and maybe feel a little bit normal – or at least, a little bit numb. And now that he’s back you suddenly feel the pain of losing him and this terror that he might leave again.
I just ask because last night, Moses filmed this
Yesterday was so confusing in so many ways: Joyful and heartbreaking and exciting and wary. This morning, here I am again awake at the crack of dawn, and heading down to see whether beavers and Martinez can work it out. Whether after all this time, there is still a spark? It feels so surreal – it’s like visiting a loved one who just recovered at the coroner’s. I am nervous and filled with dread. And enormously happy.
As if yesterday wasn’t emotional enough, Mario stated working and gave us the very bad news that he has mis-measured the bridge and the square footage (thus the price) was going to be higher. We scrambled to readjust, got him to lower the price a little and figured out how to make it work. Then he primed the bridge, and our extremely talented artist Amelia Hunter sent me this;
Which completed my emotional sine wave pattern. I don’t think I can remember having a stranger day but maybe I have. I have always commented that I can’t be described as having ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’. My life has always had ‘Greek luck’. By which I mean, greek tragedy luck with very bad and very good news slung together in completely unbelievable ways.
And we have two beavers. At least. TWO. You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve had this song in my head all day.
UPDATE:
Heidi & Jon saw two beavers and a million mosquitoes who had obviously missed us. Also Moses in a Gilly suit who noted that these beavers seemed very skittish. New comers? Or new behavior in the old family? We wonders…aye we wonders.
Here’s a few other examples. Muskrats gather fresh green grasses for the family meal, and the family bed.
Yesterday Mario made a brave go of things with a pink canopy and sandbags to start drawing the bridge. Of course it rained for hours and Jon soon came down and used is leaf blower to dry off the surface and loaned him our other canopy and some locks to secure things. He’ll try again today.
