Month: April 2017

Beaver Heroes

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers April 4, 2017

Lots more headlines this morning about the Wisconsin Beaver-trapping bruhaha. One of them titled “Beaver-drowning traps removed” which is the greatest indication I know that someone from PETA is pushing the story forward. I am a very picky advocate, so I want to demand “so if the beavers were instantly crushed and not drowned, that would be okay?” But I guess there are a lot of right ways to be a beaver advocate. And not wanting animals to suffer is certainly one of them. I of course want them to live, right where they are, and do good things for our waterways and wildlife.

Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see this headline from the Times-Telegraph in Herkimer, NY.

Local Beaver experts present at Oregon conference

DOLGEVILLE, N.Y. — Owen Brown, president of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife, and Sharon Brown, BWW biologist, presented “Forty Years Working for Beavers” at the　State of the Beaver 2017 conference in Canyonville, Oregon, in February.

They represented Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife, an educational non-profit based in Dolgeville, that was inspired by Beaver Woman Dorothy Richards, who studied the species for 50 years.

This, the fifth State of the Beaver conference, attracted 200 participants from many states as well as from Canada, Germany, Wales, England and Scotland. It was sponsored by the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe, and held at their Seven Feathers Casino.

“It was a special place,” said Owen Brown, “and a special gathering of people who are interested in the animal that can help solve our most serious environmental problems.”

By building dams, beavers restore wetlands that increase biodiversity, decrease damage from flash floods and greatly reduce water pollution.

Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife solves conflicts between people and beavers so that the beavers and their beneficial wetlands are saved.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Beaver — Agent of Regeneration.” After the event, the Browns accompanied Mike Callahan, of Massachusetts-based Beaver Solutions, and Vanessa Petro, an Oregon State University biologist, to see a beaver flow device at a forested　wetland near Corvallis, Oregon.

Whooohoo! Great job Sharon and Owen! If only every presenter at the conference showed up in their local paper after coming back from the conference. There would be such a glut of good beaver news I wouldn’t know where to start first! I’m sorry I missed their presentation and am lucky I was able to get the meticulous notes Sherry Guzzi took there and hear all about it. I went looking for the summary of their presentation this morning and found that the website had already been updated for the 2019 conference. Way to plan ahead guys. Reserve your spot today!

Yesterday I got to have one of my favorite conversations of the year, when I talked with Amelia Hunter about the beaver brochure for this year’s festival. I usually have a few ideas that I ping off her like a cheerful artistic cell tower. This time I was interested in showing beaver work, water, and some background. In fact I thought the MIT class ring was a perfect place to start.

We got talking about the skyline in the background and Amelia suggested wouldn’t it be cool to replace it with Martinez landmarks instead? Since it was our tenth bea-versary. What an awesome idea! I suggested the John Muir House and the arch/rainbow bridge down at the wharf. She was intrigued and said she’d start playing. We are so lucky that she still wants to help us after SO many years.

I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

It seems to me, I heard that beaver song before.

heidi08 City Reports, Educational, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? April 3, 2017

Late last night, when we were all in bed
Mrs. O’Leary left the lantern on the shed
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said
They’ll be a hot time, in the old town tonight!

Do you remember singing this in a round at camp? I do, and for obvious reasons it sprung to mind when I opened this story this morning.

City removes beaver traps from Warner Park

The Madison parks division has abruptly removed all beaver traps from Warner Park after outraged residents began yanking the traps without city authorization late last week.

“This type of action presents significant safety risks to the person removing the traps,” wrote parks superintendent Eric Knepp in an email to city officials. “As always, we consider the totality of the circumstances in our decision-making related to wildlife management in our parks, and in this case the potential safety risks outweigh the benefit.”

While she doesn’t condone residents “taking matters into their own hands,” retired Madison police detective Sara Petzold is relieved the beaver traps have been removed from Warner Park. Petzold lives near Warner and visits it frequently with her giant schnauzer, Milo. On a recent walk, she spotted a truck with the license plate “ITRAP.”

Ohhh my my my, a retired police officer worried about the trapping and a media story that didn’t go away with the setting sun. Time for me to get the popcorn and settle in for a front row seat. Is it just me or did someone else here Barbara Streisand start singing ‘memories’ in the background?

The retired detective then learned the truck belonged to a trapper contracted with the city to remove beavers. He told her that he was placing traps near the underwater entryways to the beavers’ lodge.

The animal rights group PETA has also contacted the city about its beaver trapping policy. Kent Stein, a member of the group’s “emergency response team,” sent an email to Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, Common Council members and Knepp urging them to forgo trapping in favor of other methods to mitigate potential damage caused by beavers.

“Please understand that death by drowning is a terrifying and exceptionally painful ordeal (beavers can take up to 15 minutes simply to lose consciousness),” Stein wrote to officials. “Successful long-term wildlife control requires targeting the environment (vs. the animal) by making it unappealing and/or inaccessible to unwanted species. Examples of this for beavers include curtailing access to food sources by spraying tree trunks with [repellents], coating trunks with latex paint, or ‘caging’ trunks with three foot high wire mesh/hardware cloth offset by at least 10 inches to prevent gnawing.”

So now you have PETA telling you to wrap trees and a whole lot more folks calling your office I bet. I know I spent my first hour of the day writing the editor, the parks and the mayor. Stories like this never fail to delight me. It’s like playing the same waltz grandma danced to when she was a girl.

I know this song.

Ann Shea, public information officer for the parks division, also declined on March 30 to answer questions. But in an emailed “response,” Shea explains that a resident recently alerted the city to beaver activity “in and around the Warner lagoon.” She says staff inspected the area and noticed that more than a dozen trees had “irreparable damage or had recently fallen due to damage.” She confirms a licensed trapper with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was brought in “only to the extent necessary to mitigate the hazards of tree death, shoreline damage, and flooding.”

“In assessing the trees and shoreline, staff determined that the damage was recent and caused by beavers. Staff also determined that a number of trees that had not fallen would need to be removed as they were in a hazardous condition and location for dogs and people using the park,” Shea writes. “In addition to the tree damage, beavers often build dams near the outlet structure to Lake Mendota from the lagoon. This will create flooding across the park, especially during large rain events, and could alter the land use over the intermediate term by raising the water level of the lagoon.”

Shea says the raised water level may also contribute to the anoxic conditions of the lagoon by limiting the flow to the lake which increases the likelihood of a large scale fish die off. In response to inquiries about “drowning traps,” Shea responds: “The Wisconsin DNR does not recommend live trapping and relocating of beavers. If a live trap was used, the beaver would still likely be euthanized.”

However, Petzold says the parks division has yet to provide evidence to justify its “covert trapping policy.”

“I think we need to look at the benefits of having beavers at Warner Park, the negatives and, as a city, find the right balance,” says Petzold. “I have not seen any indication that parks has really undertaken any of those analyses. That’s what concerns me the most. This could have easily flown under the radar and we’d have no idea why the beavers were gone.”

What? You mean there might be BENEFITS to having beavers in the area? You don’t say! Tell me more! This retired officer knows her stuff. I just wish I were a young student in Madison that could be hopping aboard this particular train and bringing some friends. Don’t you?

But in his email to city officials, Knepp defends his division’s efforts to trap beavers at Warner Park.“Our wildlife management practices are rooted in years of knowledge and experience from professional staff of the specific locations and issues involved. Trapping is a very limited method that is only authorized in specific situations and within Wisconsin DNR guidelines and regulations,” says Knepp. “We do not pursue this as an option without consideration of alternatives. Parks is willing to have any or all of our wildlife management practices reviewed should that be the desire of our policymakers.”

Ahh isn’t it adorable when exectives puff up and defend their staff’s decision to trap beavers? They get so red in the face when they realize somethings being scrutinized that everyone took for granted before. I’m thinking fondly of our mayor recognizing the freight train headed his way. He was just clever enough able to pull his dignity almost completely off the tracks before the inevitable impact.

Well, good luck boys and girls in Madison. We definitely will help you any way we can. And let us know if you take any videos, because this stuff is great to watch on the TeeVee.

Beaver Schemes and Strategies

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? April 2, 2017

Did you read beaver April fool’s yesterday? (If you didn’t drop down one post and give yourself a treat). In addition to wistfully panging all day with what ‘might have been’, it also made me extremely happy. Yellow Springs (where the story was from) was the beaver case we got involved in Ohio where the community NEARLY forced the council to make a U-turn on some beaver-killing plans, but was overturned at the last moment. As you can see the meme still survived as a punchline in the April Fool’s article which means it’s still on everyone’s mind. In the words attributed to Ghandi:

First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight with you
Then you win.

Clearly Ohio is at Stage Two on a grand scale, which is pretty amazing this early in the game. Expect some big beaver news from them soon. And thank you Lauren Shows for my favorite April Fool’s story EVER.

Meanwhile, Joe Wheaton writes that he has zero idea who was behind that article yesterday because no reporter ever talked to him about it. He was surprised that the webinar was so well attended, which is wonderful in every way you can think of. I wonder if more articles will come creeping across our paths?

Yesterday I received two lovely copies of the new children’s book “The Skydiving Beavers” by Susan Wood. It’s going to be released on “International Beaver Day” April 7. I agreed to do a short interview with Susan for the release but I can proudly include them for our silent auction now.

Regular readers of this website know I braced myself for the story because Idaho’s great beaver fling is not my favorite beaver tale. But this book does an excellent job of introducing the thoughtful fish and game official, Elmo Heter, who came up with that crazy scheme. He remembered all that left over parachute silk from WWII and invented the box that would open on impact. Then ran several trials with a plucky beaver named ‘Geranimo” to make sure it worked.

2017-04-01-12-53-page-2

What a pleasant surprise to flip to the ‘author’s notes’ at the back and find this: I’m going to imagine it winds up in every school library around the country, and some child or parent who wants to learn more will read it and save their local beavers as well.

Thanks, Susan and Sleeping Bear Press for the donation and including our grounded famous beavers in Martinez.

LATE BREAKING: Look at your calendar then look at THIS!

heidi08 Beavers April 1, 2017

Council to move ahead with CBE construction

Village Council announced this week that it would move ahead with construction on the western edge of town for the new Center for Beaver Enthusiasm, or CBE.

Council members say the CBE will be a boon to the community, attracting beaver-minded tourists from all over the Miami Valley. According to a press release, the new structure will be built to resemble a giant beaver lodge.

The building’s middle floor will house a state-of-the-art, interactive facility dedicated to educating the public on beaver issues and current events. Potential exhibits include a living history presentation, “When A Beaver Ran For President”; showings of the acclaimed IMAX film “A Series of Unfortunate Beavers”; a collaborative art project entitled “Tell a Beaver,” in which visitors write their best-kept secrets for beavers to read; and another art project, “Ask a Beaver,” in which visitors write to beavers, asking them to reveal their best-kept secrets.

As in an actual beaver lodge, the CBE’s bottom and top floors will be reserved for eating and for nesting, with a food court downstairs, and a bed and breakfast upstairs.

Aside from its obvious educational benefits and possible employment opportunities for villagers, the CBE will be a visual paean to the village’s favorite new population: the families of beavers who have slowly begun moving into the wetland at the former Glass Farm property. Despite the beavers’ ubiquitous lovableness, not everyone in town supports the building of the CBE.

“I’ve been a part of this community for 37 years; these beavers just sashay into town a few years ago, and now they’re taking over the western end of town. They’re worse than tourists,” said villager Bill Bevington.

“And I guess it’s also not really a reasonable use of public funds,” he added.

The CBE is set to open in 2018. No actual beavers will be allowed inside.

Beaver Trash and Treasure

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? April 1, 2017

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down right? Let’s have something sweet and something not-so-sweet today because beavers face all kind of receptions. Here’s the response they’re getting in a park in Madison Wisconsin, because really who ever heard of wildlife in a park!

Beavers create controversy at Madison park

They say, in addition to tree damage, beavers often build dams that could create flooding across the park. With raised water levels, that could also increase the likelihood of fish dying.

People also say they’re upset the public was not notified. The city says trapping is a longstanding wildlife management practice. They says it’s not practical to have a public process prior to each instance of trapping being authorized, given the timing of a quick response.

That’s right, the mean beavers will make the water too deep and the fish might drown! And we do this all the time whenever we want to so don’t complain! We’re glad at least that people are upset about this. Because anytime people are forced to talk about their silly decisions on the nightly news there is a spark of hope the right people will think about changing.

Necessity may be the mother of invention. But discomfort is the precursor to listening.

Well, pay attention. You should take a lesson from two states (and some lakes) folks really paid attention to Joe Wheaton teaching about beaver benefits. Not clear why this article is being written in Pennsylvania but I’m sure glad it is.

To Aid Streams Simply, Think Like a Beaver

A buck-toothed rodent could teach people a thing or two about stream restoration.

Beavers have been building dams along North American streams for centuries, and their habits suggest cheap, simple ways to improve water quality, said Joseph Wheaton, an associate professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University.

Most current stream restoration practices are costly and require heavy machinery to rework small tracts of land.

“I would argue we spend that money so disproportionately on little postage-stamp restoration projects here and there, leaving millions of miles of streams neglected,” Wheaton said during a March 22 USDA webinar.

Wow, it was a webinar that inspired this article? Good work, somebody was paying attention. I wonder who. The author, Philip Gruber? He’s a staff writer, but maybe one with a eye on this? The only other name mentioned in the article is a sage brush specialist from Portland, Jeremy Maestas.Someone who works for Lancaster Farming wanted this written, and I, for one, am thrilled. Pennsylvania is one big kill-beavers state, so it’s remarkable. Dr. Wheaton must have been very convincing.

Beavers have contributed to those changes in the course of streams. To keep safe from predators, beavers like to have an underwater entrance to their above-water lodge. If the water is not deep enough to have such an entrance — often the case on headwater streams — beavers build dams to make it work.

Beavers are found across much of North America, almost anywhere there’s water and wood. They are well-established in most areas of Pennsylvania.

In places where they aren’t, such as Lancaster and Berks counties, excessive trapping and landowners’ distaste for beaver damage are the main reasons, according to a 2008 report by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

The idea of using beavers as conservation accomplices dates back at least 60 years, when Idaho parachuted beavers into a wilderness area to improve trout habitat and reduce the risk of flooding.

That turned out to be fairly cheap and effective, Wheaton said, although he isn’t necessarily prescribing a furry air drop for Kutztown or Quarryville.

Humans can build beaver-damlike structures themselves with logs and large woody debris.

These structures can slow down a “bowling alley of a stream” and turn it into a more complex, more gently flowing habitat, he said.

Dubbed beaver dam analogues, these structures can be built with hand labor. Even volunteers and children can get involved — no heavy machinery required.

A beaver dam analogue can easily be adapted to fit the location, and it’s relatively simple to build a complex of dams as beavers often do, Wheaton said.

Considering they are made of raw wood, beaver dam analogues don’t have a super long life span — one to 10 years, depending on conditions.

That’s OK, Wheaton said. “Sometimes the failure of these dams produces some of the best habitat.”

Wait for it…here comes my favorite part.

Artificial beaver dams don’t work quite as well as actual beaver dams do, so once people have laid the groundwork, it often is possible to turn the conservation work over to the critters themselves.

HERE ENDETH THE LESSON. The moral of the story is that you can get your buddies together and run around cutting up trees and pretending to be beavers every few years or you can simply stop killing the animals and let the be themselves, making repairs as needed and constantly improving their work.

Which one sounds easier to you?