Month: November 2016

This hasn’t worked at all, so we need to do it MORE…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? November 20, 2016

Mississippi is doing an outstanding job at not solving problems. It’s working so well for them that they have decided to do it more. I was going to question their intelligence but the 2010 census assures me that fully 78% have high school degrees so things are going better than we might have guessed for the region. Apparently the curriculum doesn’t include any information on beaver management though.

(Or evolution)

Program controls damaging critter

There’s a buck-toothed villain with a bounty on his tail in Alcorn County.

In an effort to help local landowners conserve timber and crops, the Alcorn County Soil and Water Conservation District is encouraging landowners to sign up for this year’s beaver control program.

Organizers say last year’s program was a success, with over 100 participating landowners and 260 beavers eliminated on over 3,500 acres throughout Alcorn County. Since the beginning of the program, over 9,000 beavers have been trapped in the county.

“It’s amazing what those little workers can do,” said Sandy Mitchell, district clerk at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service office. “Even though we’ve been doing the program for 12 years now, they’re still producing, there are still plenty of beavers out there.”

That’s incredible! You’ve killed 9000 and the ones you missed keep reproducing? Instead of just giving up and moving to the next county or committing suicide by alligator? It’s like they’re MACHINES with no appreciation for all your effort! Considering that you’ve been doing this for more than a decade and it hasn’t worked yet, a lesser county would have started to rethink their strategy – you know, try something new, do some research or talk to other areas. But not you. You gamely keep trying the same failed plan over and over regardless of minor distractions like success. You have to admire that kind of determination.

Alcorn County resident Ozzy Hendrix has trapped beavers for half of his life. He has trapped for the City of Corinth as well as Alcorn County. In the last 15 years Hendrix has trapped over 100 beavers in the area around the train tracks on Harper Road. Hendrix said the most humane beaver traps are the ones that kill the animals instantly.

Anyone looking to trap beavers should first look for the telltale “runs” in shallow water, Hendrix explained.

“It makes a small indention in the ground where they travel in the water,” he said. “It looks like a little ditch. You put the trap down there, and they fit perfectly most of the time in these runs. We catch most of them that way.” Hendrix said there will be occasionally be a smarter class of beaver that will require a snare to trap.

A smarter class of beaver? Now that’s interesting. Hey I wonder if you happen to notice whether there are any more of them than their used to be when you started? Almost like the smarter survivors are breeding more smart survivors? It’s just a curious notion based on something I picked up in yankee school. Don’t trouble yourself about it.

Landowners may trap the beavers themselves or enlist the services of a trapper. They are asked to wrap each beaver’s tail and left back foot in clear plastic wrap or a freezer bag and keep them frozen until collection day. Landowners will receive $10 for each tail up to the maximum amount set.

Do let us know if this year’s beaver popsicle fest solves your problem, won’t you? I’m sure the 13th year will be the charm. I’m wracking my brain to figure out why you need a tail and a left foot too, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m pretty sure the tail would cover it?

Do you sometimes get two-tailed beavers in Alcorn county?

Another Origin Story…

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, Who's saving beavers now? November 19, 2016

I am hard at work on the newsletter for our tenth anniversary, and I spent most of yesterday writing the origin story of Worth A Dam. As nothing else seems to be happening in the beaver world at the moment, I thought you might enjoy it.

It was certainly unusual to have beavers in the middle of town, as our city suddenly did in 2007. Maybe if nothing else had happened that’s all it would have been; a passing interest that eventually – passed. But when the city announced that flat-tailed residents would have to be eliminated people started talking: to their neighbors, to each other, to their representatives, and to the media.

Eventually the city was forced to hold a meeting to discuss the beavers’ fate. There were too many people interested to fit into city hall and the forum was moved to the High School Auditorium. Some 200 people showed up – coming from uptown, downtown, and out-of-town. There were representatives from the Sierra Club, the Human Society, local news and a documentary filmmaker. The vast majority overwhelmingly demanded that the city solve the flooding risk without harming the beavers.

Faced with such vocal public support, the city council agreed to form a subcommittee to study the issue further. I was thrilled to be invited aboard the task force which consisted of council members, creek professionals, beaver supporters and concerned property owners. We had 90 days to address the pros and cons of possibly living with beavers in an urban stream. We quickly recommended hiring Skip Lisle to install a flow device that would prevent possible flooding.

The success of that first big meeting originally left me with euphoric hopes for a positive outcome. I was surprised to learn that even after we succeeded in persuading the city to hire Skip and even though his device worked entirely as promised, there was still uncertainty about the beavers fate. Addressing the real (and imagined) concerns in the subcommittee soon made me realize that the fight was a long way from over. It was Skip Lisle who initially suggested that a nonprofit might be necessary to advocate for the beavers and direct funding over time. After watching the acrimony of those meetings even after flooding was averted with his help, I could see he was right.

In choosing a name for the organization I remember thinking that the struggle was too bitter for something benign like “Friends of Martinez Beavers” or “Wildlife Protectors”. It seemed the name needed to be something snappy with a little feisty backbone to get us thru the long struggle that lie ahead.

Thus “Worth A Dam” was born.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

A Capital News Letter About Beavers

heidi08 Beavers November 18, 2016

Ottawa is the capital of Canada and just a few miles over the border from Vermont. The Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre is a major defender of wildlife in the region and has been one for 25 years. The co-founder and president is Donna Dubreuil, who I first friended during some nasty beaver operations in 2011. Since then I have worked to funnel beaver information their way, and Worth A Dam was the subject of an earlier newsletter. She understands that saving beavers saves many species and is a great supporter of our ecosystem engineer. Recently she was kind enough to give a really beautiful endorsement for the upcoming newsletter I’m trying to put together for our 10th anniversary.

Now the center is wrapping trees and installing flow devices. They recently worked with a private land owner, the city of Ottawa and Mike Callahan to install three flow devices on some 31 acres if flooded property.

The story is a MUST READ for its sheer tenacity and unbridled success in the face of fairly daunting odds, septic tanks, stubborn officials, and busy beavers. The Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre is a VERY wonderful education and rehab facility and you should really think about supporting their work before you settle down with your morning coffee and enjoy great story. It might take a second to load but be patient! It’s worth it.

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Beaver Assisted Water Management

heidi08 Beavers November 17, 2016

Bob Kobres from Georgia is the retired UGA librarian who keeps a special watch on science news and research published that may be relevant to beavers. He generally sends me two kinds of articles: reports that draw attention to the role that beavers play in biodiversity and water management, and reports that should include a discussion of beavers, but don’t.

Guess which kind this is?

How to stop human-made droughts and floods before they start

Alberta’s rivers are the main source of water for agriculture in Canada’s Prairie provinces. But climate change and increased human interference mean that the flow of these headwaters is under threat. This could have major implications for Canadian gross domestic product, and even global food security.

A new study published in Hydrological Processes sheds light on sources of streamflow variability and change in Alberta’s headwaters that can affect irrigated agriculture in the Prairies. This provides the knowledge base to develop improved water resource management to effectively adapt to evolving river flow conditions.

“This study is a call for better understanding of the complex interactions between natural and human-made change in river systems” says the study’s lead author, Ali Nazemi, assistant professor in Concordia’s Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Nazemi and his co-authors developed a mathematical process to examine streamflow and climate data and carry out a case study on eight streams within the Oldman River Basin in Southern Alberta. They discovered various forms of change in the annual average streamflow and timing of the yearly peak in Alberta’s headwater streams throughout the 20th century.

“We saw that change in streamflow can be mainly linked to temperature variance, as well as to human regulations through water resource management,” says Nazemi.

Obviously creek flow has a lot to do with river flow. And how we treat our smaller systems affects the bigger ones. When we drain our our creeks, incise them so they produce flashy water, or fill them with concrete we affect the water rivers get to work with. And when healthy beaver dams are stepped gradually through our creeks they gradually release water over time and regulate outflow into rivers in way that helps human needs and agriculture.

We apparently don’t have the cajones to tackle climate change any time soon, but beavers have all the skill they need to alter runoff right now.

If we just let them.

Nazemi hopes that this study will lead to the development of effective regional water resource management in the Prairies and beyond.

“The major river systems around the world are now highly regulated by human activity—and the natural streamflow regime is perturbed by climate change. This study can provide a scientific methodology to understand the effects of different natural and anthropogenic drivers on river flows. This is the first step towards development of effective management strategies that can face the ever-increasing threats to our precious freshwater resources in Canada and globally.”

Exporting beavers

heidi08 Beavers November 16, 2016

Now that the Russians have all finished with the American election and got what they wanted they are apparently turning their sites towards Russian Beavers. You see? I knew that Russian charity misprint wasn’t a “typo”.

Beavers face deportation to Kazakhstan and Mongolia

Tomsk region overrun with beavers and aims for a cull by hunters, or sending them abroad.

Beaver numbers have reached 6,000-plus, when a population of 4,000 is seen as avoiding harm to nature.

They damage trees and turn agricultural land into swamps by damming rivers.

The head of the Department of Hunting and Fishing in Tomsk Region, Viktor Sirotin, said: ‘The population has increased due to the absence of wolves.’

Hunters should be allowed to kill beavers during the spring hunt for water fowl, he said.

But scientists propose deporting the beavers instead, claiming they can be useful to the environment in Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

Researcher of the All-Russian Research Institute of Hunting and Fur Farming, Alexander Saveliev, said: ‘Where small rivers dry up, the beavers create dams, and part of the water flow is stopped.

Near as I can tell, the Tomsk region is part of Siberia that is most uninhabitable because of thick forests and marshland. Even before the beavers got there. Where on earth they got the idea that the region can safely support only 4000 beavers but now has 6000 is anyone’s guess. You know they didn’t send a team of scientists on a beaver census.

Someone wanted to shoot beavers and just made up the numbers accordingly. You can’t really blame the Russians. It happens all the time in America too. The article bemoans the fact that there are no predators left to eat them, and you can bet hunters are feeling restless. Give it up for the pragmatic scientists that suggest beavers might be useful at storing water in other places.

Although I’m going to wager they won’t be hiring Sherri Tippie to relocate family units together safely. I’m thinking they’ll put them in empty oil barrels and load them onto a train en masse.