Vote Beaver Vote!

heidi08 Educational, Environmental January 24, 2017

There are some things we try to do to help beavers that take a great deal of work. Throwing a festival that celebrates them, or convincing a city to save them are both examples that spring to mind. But sometimes simple things can help a lot and require very little effort on our part. Case in point?

Devon Wildlife Trust beavers up for BBC Countryfile award

The Trust has been jointly nominated with a project in Scotland in the ‘Wildlife Success of the Year’ category of the BBC Countryfile Magazine Awards. Public voting for the winner is now open.

The nomination is in recognition of DWT’s work with beavers living on the River Otter in East Devon. The beavers are thought to be the first wild population in England for more than 400 years.

Steve Hussey, of DWT, said: ‘We’re delighted to hear the good news of the nomination. Now public voting has opened we’re urging all beaver supporters to get their votes in either on-line or via a copy of BBC Countryfile magazine. If we can win it will show public support for these important and fascinating animals.’

Other nominated projects in the ‘Wildlife Success of the Year’ category include conservation work with dormice, cirl buntings, bumblebees and bitterns.

‘All the projects nominated would be worthy winners,’ said Steve. ‘But there is something about beavers, the fact they’ve been lost for so long and now are back which we feel gives them the edge.

‘Being involved in the project, seeing the animals swimming in a Devon river has been such a thrill – it has meant being a part of an amazing chapter in our country’s natural history. Surely that must be worth peoples’ votes.’

Vote for the beavers online at “Wildlife Success of the year”.

Countryfile is a kind of walking shoe-wearing, scrubbed and healthy TV show and magazine that follows all the best foot travel destinations in the UK. It won’t mean automatic nobels if beavers win, but it will help convince folks that they are being watched and supported. So your vote matters.

If you click on THIS LINK it will take you to the wildlife entries and from there you can cast your very important vote. You do not need to register or live in the UK. The only thing asked of you is an email address, and they promise not to send you things. The letter (ABCD or E) assigned to the beaver vote changes, so don’t automatically just press C. Look for the photo!

It is truly the simplest of elections. The hardest part is averting your eyes from that little dormouse which is damned cute – like a muskrat dressed in an elf costume. But remember your civic duty and support our flat tailed friends. The dormouse can win some other year.

EURASIAN BEAVER

These riparian architects were hunted to extinction in Britain 400-500 years ago. Now, thanks to the success of a trial on the Knapdale Estate in Argyll, they’ve been given leave to stay and Government protection, making them the first mammals to be officially reintroduced to the UK landscape. In Devon, a wild breeding population is living on the River Otter and is being monitored by the Devon Wildlife Trust.

heidi08 Beavers January 23, 2017

North American Beaver Castor canadensis Eating willow Martinez, CA — North American Beaver
Castor canadensis
Eating willow
Martinez, CA

How does the beaver Tale end?

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports January 23, 2017

I realized I was floundering around on the end of my presentation for Oregon. I’ve done the beginning of the many millions of times, but the end of the story keeps changing and I haven’t really wrapped my head around all the moving parts yet. I thought that when the kits died and the parents left it was the end. And the story of the mural helped soften the end. I thought when the new dam got built and Moses filmed them mating that was the end. Or maybe even the beginning of new story. But then the pile driver drove them upstream and mom disappeared on her due date and we didn’t know where they were. That sure seemed like the end. I was so relieved when the neighbor started seeing them from her deck on Arreba street with a little mysterious animal beside them. I thought that was where they would be for a while. But then they went farther upstream from her and we haven’t seen them since. I imagined maybe when the hard rains stopped they would stop going upstream and come BACK.

But obviously the hard rains are never going to stop.

So does that mean Martinez has no beavers? Or does that mean we can’t see the beavers we do have? How can I know? We haven’t seen sign of the beavers downstream. No chewing or damming or sightings at the marina. So what does it all mean? Is it the end?

North American Beaver Castor canadensis On dam Martinez, CA — *Suzi Eszterhas*

Here’s what I have decided. Beaver stories don’t have ‘ends’. They have ‘CHAPTERS’. And our particular chapter has been a helluva read. No one knows what will happen next, or if anything will happen at all. But we softened the soil in Martinez so if they turn up they will have better odds than most beavers because of it. We also showed a heck of a lot of people in Northern California how to coexist, and along the way we changed the population of beavers in the entire Bay Area for years and years to come.

Anything is possible.

Be[aver] of good Cheer

heidi08 Beavers January 22, 2017

More good press for beavers in the UK, with just a little bit of whinging from the farmers.

Beavers are back and thriving but not everyone is happy

They are an unusual, characterful species, and far from liked by all. Humans aside, beavers are the best loggers on the planet. Their dams, which they build to protectively raise water levels around their lodges upstream, enliven local ecology by coaxing in species which prefer slow-moving water, like dragonflies and frogs; in doing so, they can also alter the flow of rivers – always a contentious issue in land management.

So when, 10 years ago, a small group of beavers either escaped captivity or were illegally released, the colony they set up on western Scotland’s River Tay swiftly attracted the attention of naturalists and landowners alike. A few years later, in 2009, another set of beavers appeared, this time in the Knapdale Forest, Argyll, where Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) oversaw a government-sanctioned trial reintroduction, prompted by EU legislation supporting native species. Both colonies thrived.

At the heart of the problem is the beavers’ habit of damming drainage channels and burrowing into flood banks – actions that can lead to the destruction of crops in waterlogged fields. Some members of the National Union of Farmers Scotland have also argued that the rodents spread disease and negatively impact upon other species’ wellbeing. As a result, 21 Tayside beavers were shot in the years following their arrival – a legal act in the eyes of the law, as beavers are not a protected species, but one that led the SNH to bemoan the decision to reach for a gun rather than attempt to deter the creatures by other means.

One of those is “beaver deceivers” – pipes which, when thrust through a dam, change the depth of the water surrounding the lodge. It is a rudimentary technique, but it is sometimes enough to send the beavers packing. “They’re not the brightest of animals,” chuckles Dr Martin Gaywood of SNH.

And the scheme’s success is spurring others on: the Welsh Beaver Project recently announced a proposal that will support a repopulation in parts of Wales.

“A landscape with wild beavers re-established is wonderful to experience,” says the project’s coordinator, Adrian Lloyd Jones. Whether local farmers will share his enthusiasm remains to be seen.

Yes the farmers like to complain about beavers, though they love to plant things on that really rich soil beaver dams made for them. Too bad articles like these can’t also interview the dragonflies, or the salmon, or the river otters to see how they feel about the animals. It’s important to get every opinion, you know.

I was glum on Friday, but Saturday was beyond heartening. I had friends that marched in Florida, Atlanta, DC, Missouri, Austin, Wyoming and Colorado. Not to mention all over our own state blooming like pink flowers, including a local march in Walnut Creek that was really well attended. The next time you need cheering up you should really put on a pink pussy hat and should watch this a couple of times.

Here’s my adorable great niece and her awesome mother in Washington D.C where the crowd was estimated at half a million.

Oh and bonus points? Daniel Handler was the guest on Wait Wait don’t tell me and there was a beaver in Lemony Snicket. Need I say more?

Your favorite Faded Genes

heidi08 Beavers January 21, 2017

Engineers say that Benny’s amazing
Building dams of incredible strength
And his front teeth are worthy of praising
Growing to an incredible length

Sung to “Red River Valley“

If you’ll remember way back to 2015 (when we all still had health care and social security), you might recall that Oregon State did a crowd funding to raise funds for sequencing a beaver genome. In January. Canada bragged that it was doing one for its 150th anniversary, but when I sent the top researcher news of this, she replied to me, too late! We already did!

Beavers fill big genes, and OSU wins bragging rights

The North American beaver, Oregon State University’s mascot animal, has 26,200 genes in its genetic code — about 33 percent more inheritable information than humans have, OSU researchers say.

The scientists know this because a fall 2015 crowd-funding drive brought in a total of $20,001 from 103 donors that OSU used to pay for a gene sequencing study on the beaver.

The project took a blood sample from Filbert, a 5-year-old North American beaver that lives at the Portland Zoo, as a proxy for Benny the Beaver, the human-stuffed mascot that represents the university at football games and other events.

About 60 percent of beaver genes correspond with like human genes, OSU’s Pankaj Jaiswal said in a news release.

So in the age old argument about beaver nature versus beaver nurture can finally be laid to rest. The answer to the question “How much of dam building is learned and how much is instinctive?” is about ‘a third more than humans’. Which is about what I’d suspect after watching different beavers tackle the job for the past decade.

Some dam-makers are better than others, and all improve with practice. This fits with what we saw over the years. I’m glad they were able to complete the sequencing, although I still don’t know why beavers seem more human the other animals do or what gene is responsible for making humans so intolerant of them.

I comforted myself yesterday with some Bach combined with a favorite Ellen Wohl quote. It’s short and amazing music so please enjoy!