Month: June 2017

Beaver credit where credit is due

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere June 30, 2017

Ask and ye shall receive, that’s the way it works here at Beaver Central. Yesterday I posted the confusing photo of what appeared to be a beaver with two colors of teeth and friend Lisa Hodge, a wildlife rehabber who has raised beavers, commented that the white wasn’t teeth but a tongue (as Jon believed). She notes if you zoom in you can see a faint hint of orange upper teeth above that.

So mystery solved I guess, although why that particular beaver was sticking out his tongue will remain a question!

Maybe calling ourselves beaver central gives the wrong impression. On Wednesday I got an email from a magazine author in Canada bemoaning the allegations of beaver population explosion the region of Manitoba and wondering if I might I know any local experts to consult? So I spent an hour introducing her to the major players in her home country. And then I received a query from the Quebec Zoo saying they had just received an orphan beaver and how should they care for it?

Do you people do ANY of your own work, I thought?

Of course I sent our orphan care page with plenty of links. And made sure to mention that if they didn’t want more orphans they should stop killing the parents. But my words are a drop in the bucket, I’m sure.

Meanwhile we’ve been busily getting ready for all things festival. I finally have the map in place and I updated the festival page so it links to every exhibitor. Youcan check it out by clicking on the flyer on either margin.

We’ve also been finalizing the magnetic beaver pond, which kids can arrange however they like. We got the idea from the fun board at an International Bird Rescue display where we saw many children happily rearranging the magnets again and again. IBR used a flat metal display but I thought, hey we have that extra metal beaver made for us by Paul Craig when mom beaver died, why not use her? Hopefully it will work as a fun activity for kids to learn about the inhabitants of a beaver pond.

Speaking of inhabitants, there’s a nice little article about beaver and wood ducks from Seaside Oregon where the beaver tales very successful art exhibit has concluded.

Just in from Neal Maine. Lucky 13.

Wood Ducks live in wooded swamps, where they nest in holes in trees or in nest boxes put up near or over water. They are equipped with strong claws that can grip bark and perch on branches. These cavities are typically places where a branch has broken off and the tree’s heartwood has subsequently rotted. Wood Ducks cannot make their own cavities. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wood_Duck/lifehistory

Beavers are responsible for creating the wetlands that the wood ducks call home. Beavers and wood ducks go hand in hand. Woodies are fond of waters with plenty of wooded cover — hence the name — and a new-built beaver pond offers habitat that attracts and keeps wood ducks in the vicinity.

Nice job giving credit where credit is due. I wish someone had filmed Neal’s talk on beavers because I would have liked to see it. Our local friend Brian Murphy has been watching over wood ducks and putting up boxes in walnut creek for a decade. After 10 years of labor he finally got a photo of the babies emerging and sent it excitedly last night. Sometimes good works take time. And sometimes very good works takes a lot of time.

Thanks Brian for your hard work and great photo!

_06294147 — Wood Ducklings emerge from box in Walnut Creek: Brian Murphy

I didn’t find Neal Maine on youtube, but I did find this recently uploaded. It’s a fun watch with lots of pointed credit for beavers.

I question his veracity, your honor.

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Chewing, Beavers elsewhere, Mike Callahan, Who's blaming beavers now? June 29, 2017

After 10 years on the beaver beat you think you’ve seen it all. You get a little jaded. There’s nothing new under the sun you say to yourself. But sometimes you have to admit that it’s time to admit the truth. It’s time to quote Lily Tomlin again.

“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

Take this article from Massachusetts for example, where a forest manager has been explaining his continual removal of beaver dams because the property should be classified as agriculture. You know, I grow trees! The headline says it all. It means I’m going to keep looking for information until someone tells me what I want to hear.

More research needed to control beaver

A request by John Mirick to continue to work to maintain existing water levels and flow on his Chapter 61 property, and clean, clear and restore existing manmade and natural management system for ongoing agricultural commodities, raised lengthy discussion among conservation commission members at their June 20 meeting.

The DEP advised the commission of a beaver dam breaching on the property. Commissioners visited the site in April and learned that sticks had been taken out of the spillway and were piled up in a field and eventually burned to maintain the natural flow of the brook. Beavers have constructed two additional dams on the brook.

“We have to come to a determination about what activities are permissible in the stream within the Wetlands Act,” said commission chairman Brian Keevan.

The property has been in the Forestry Program since the 1970s. The beavers moved into the stream in 2008 and property owner John Mirick has kept the spillway open since then by removing some of the sticks. An enforcement action was issued to put a time frame on the project and give Mirick time to file a notice of intent to manage the water levels or ask for a request for determination.

Mirick said he’d talked with Peter Mirick from Mass Fish & Wildlife and was told that forestry is agriculture and he could maintain the water channel to keep it open. About once a week we pull out sticks and once a year burn them, he said. It seems to me it falls under the regulations to maintain the area for agricultural use, to restore or maintain a man-made water system, and to maintain the flow on existing waterways, he said. “So it appeared to me to be exempt under the regulations. We’re just trying to maintain the water level, not lower it,” said Mirick. “If the water backs up it saturates the soil and kills the trees.”

“Breaching a beaver dam isn’t allowed,” said Commissioner John Vieira. He said there are devices that can be used to control water level when beavers are present. “We’ve been asked to look into this and render a decision,” said Vieira. When beaver activity has created a public safety problem there is a process you have to go through, he added. They can be trapped and the board of health is usually contacted and they work with the commission, said Vieira. Breaching a dam changes the hydrology of the surrounding area so it’s considered an alteration, he said.

I didn’t destroy the building your honor, I just took out some of the concrete and a few of the girders, the rest fell down on it’s own! At least Commissioner Vieira has hear of flow devices before and knows this problem has a solution. I believe this particular forest is a whopping 2 hour drive from Mike Callahan and beaver solutions. You would think the word had trickled down by now. Apparently Mirick will keep right on searching for answers until he finds the one that tells him to keep doing exactly the same thing over and over.

I realize I’m not being very patient here. But this man is arguably in the best place for solving beaver problems in the entire country, if not the world. And not only has he not gone to see Mike or bought the DVD or talked to a neighbor, he hasn’t even cracked open a website to read about it. Just a reminder the the city of Martinez brought in an expert from Vermont because everyone in our town 3000 miles away had done their homework and read about the solutions in 2007.

And we’re not exactly a university town, if you take my meaning.

More confusion from this article posted yesterday about famed photographer Rick Price of Canada. It’s quite a nice article about how he captures wildlife in their element, but it has one photo of a beaver I cannot comprehend. Maybe you can help me?

Hungry bears and busy beavers: Alberta photographer captures animals in their elements

This is a busy time of year for Alberta’s wild animals as they emerge after the long winter — even if we don’t get to see most of the action. But with skill, patience and some long lenses, nature photographer Rick Price recently snapped these great shots of beavers in Hinton and bears in the mountain parks.

“The trick to beaver sightings is that they are only out at extreme dawn and dusk, and the other 95 per cent of the day you won’t see them,” he said.

Okay, there are lots of photos like the one above that we totally recognize and understand but then there’s the one I can’t get my head around. It honestly doesn’t even really look real. The caption says “don’t be fooled by this the fuzzy appearance, this is a ferocious rodent”. But honestly what puzzles me isn’t the ferocious part, or the larger bottom teeth, it’s the fact that those sets of teeth are two different colors.

Now we are taught that beaver teeth turn orange from the iron in their diet, and kit teeth are white until they eat enough solid food. But does this mean that all beavers only eat with their bottom teeth? Or that this particular beaver only eats with his bottom teeth? Jon doesn’t think the top incisors even look like teeth.

Has the evil hand of photoshop has played a part?

You, tell me. I don’t know. I just am well aware that it’s not what anyone would expect. Remember we have one shot of upper and lower teeth from our good friend Sylvie, and I believe they were all the same color. So is this a fake? Or a freak?

Top Teeth Sylvie — Upper and Lower teeth: Sylvie Biber

It’s up to us now, let’s create a new Hope for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History June 28, 2017

One of the things I’ve learned over the years about trying to change folk’s minds about beavers is that people don’t change their minds about beavers. All the science data from Michael Pollock or all the facts from Dietland Muller-Swarze doesn’t actually translate into policy changes regarding beavers unless another important organ is altered as well.

Hearts.

That’s why the intelligent, heartfelt, observant, tear-inducing writing of Hope Ryden’s Lily Pond was so powerful. She told a story as a compelling, factual and feeling woman who read her history and was gradually was touched by beavers. And I defy anyone who read through her book to ever disdainfully call them ‘rodents’ again.

Hope Ryden, Wildlife Protector and Photographer, Dies at 87

Hope Ryden, whose lifelike photographs of North American beavers, coyotes, mustangs and other wildlife helped elevate them into poster animals for conservation campaigns, died on June 18 in Hyannis, Mass. She was 87.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, her brother, Ernest E. Ryden, said.

An English major who later developed a passion for photography during breaks abroad as a Pan Am flight attendant, Ms. Ryden, in 1961, joined Robert Drew & Associates, a noted documentary production company, where she and her colleagues were in the vanguard of cinéma vérité filmmaking.

By the early 1970s, she had become a full-time naturalist and animal-rights advocate, publishing books for adults and children lushly illustrated with her own photographs.

Her advocacy was credited with encouraging Congress to pass legislation in 1971 protecting the populations of wild horses and burros in the West; their numbers had dwindled to an estimated 17,000 in 1970 from a peak of two million. She also helped persuade New York’s Legislature to name the beaver the official state mammal in 1975.

Ms. Ryden wrote two dozen books on wildlife, including “America’s Last Wild Horses” (1970), “God’s Dog: A Celebration of the North American Coyote” (1975), “Bobcat Year” (1981) and “Wild Animals of America ABC” (1988).

In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.

Hope changed minds. True to her name. She gave beavers the best chance they ever had to survive in an indifferent and inconvenient world. Grey Owl may have softened things a little, Enos Mills got folks to listen, but Hope made people love them. And that was a game changer.

She was a naturalist of the highest order and wrote many wonderful books on many wonderful topics, but to my mind this was her crowing achievement. The introduction was written by Dr. Jane Goodall. For years Hope was an email buddy and would donate signed copies to the Silent Auction. She always said that the Martinez beaver story made her happy and made her feel as if new options were possible. She was friends with Sherri Tippie and knew the good folks at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife. She never stopped caring about beavers even after her amazing 4 years.

I put off reading Lily Pond because I didn’t want to save the Martinez beavers with sympathy in the beginning. I had the crazy idea that just explaining the science would make everyone understand. Silly me! I read it in the winter the year after mom’s illness, and the passage when her matriarch died literally made me erupt in tears. We were driving back from the mountains and I could literally only read a 10 words at a time before I had to put the book down and weep. Her beautiful words were carved across my aching heart; “Oh, Lily! Is this how you leave us?” And I will thank her forever for saying how it felt to watch the beaver heroine you have sat with in the dark for years, suddenly leave the world where she brought so much life.

Hope told stories. And taught me that stories Save Beavers.

It was the best of beaver times, and it was the worst of beaver times

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, In the News, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 27, 2017

Traveling to Placer county and preaching the beaver gospel used to be like going to the lions to recommend vegetarianism. But yesterday was more like preaching to the choir. It was a positive, beaver affirmed or beaver-curious group, and our good friends Janet, Jeanette and Damion Ciotti of FWS showed up. They each had wonderful comments and questions, and I made sure Damion connected with the tribal liaison who might just need to be reintroducing some beavers soon and get the federal government to foot the bill for the flow device. I was also excited that Jeanette was interested in an Auburn test site and especially interested when I told her that PGE (where she works) in Auburn had received on of the depredation permits in 2013. Wouldn’t it be good for beavers, and correspondingly good for PGE to be all environmental and generate some press for installing a flow device instead and saving wildlife?

I felt great when we left but I came home to news that our opening band for the festival had dropped out, so I scrambled at a great rate to recover territory I had secured in March. Then before I went to sleep I had the great news that soon-to-be-beaver author Ben Goldfarb will be coming to the festival after all. Which is a relief because I would have been so sad if he missed it. He’s also coming next week to get the story and lay of the land. It should all work out well, fingers crossed.

I see that our good friend Rusty Cohn has his photos proudly displayed in the Napa register today. It’s a great photo essay that you will enjoy on every level – meaning the level where it’s just cool to see beavers and the wildlife they encourage, AND the other more important level where our lovely Napatopia is inches away from screwing with the habitat but good and needs to be reminded that save beaver streams matter.

Photos: Life at Napa’s Beaver Lodge at Tulocay Creek

The Tulocay Creek beaver pond is located next to the Hawthorne Suites Hotel, 314 Soscol Ave., Napa. At the creek, you’ll find river otters, mink, muskrats and herons as well as beavers. Here are some photos of the critters taken by local photographer Rusty Cohn.

I can’t figure out how to embed the entire album here, but you’re just going to have to go see it yourself. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.

Now, in the middle of all this there’s a wonderful article about urban wildlife published in the SF Gate and all over this morning. The original was published on The Conversation and it is written by Christopher Swan who’s a Professor of Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland. I’m sure ever single reader of this website will have some flat-tailed suggestions for Chris.

Urban nature: What kinds of plants and wildlife flourish in cities?

Biodiversity refers to the variety of all living things on Earth, but people often have very specific ideas of what it means. If you run an online search for images of biodiversity, you are likely to find lots of photos of tropical rainforests and coral reefs.

Those ecosystems are invaluable, but biodiversity also exists in many other places. More than half of the people on Earth live in cities, and that number is growing, so it is especially important to understand how biodiversity patterns occur in our man-made environments.

As an ecologist specializing in urban systems, I spend a lot of time investigating biodiversity in parks, residential areas and abandoned zones in and around the city of Baltimore. My main interests are seeing how urban dwellers invest in biodiversity, which species persist in cities and what kinds of biodiversity can thrive in green spaces.

In spite of the substantial environmental changes that humans have caused in cities, research shows that they still contain many forms of life. And we can develop and maintain habitat to support them.

It is common to assume that few other species remain in disturbed urban environments. But in fact, there are many pockets of biodiversity in and around cities, such as frogs living in stormwater detention ponds and trees in restored streamside forests. Landscapes that people create in and around their homes support many ornamental herbaceous and woody plant species.

Our research group works to understand the relationship between people and urban biodiversity patterns. The most prominent feature of the urban environment is that it is fragmented into many small zones. Human activity creates more patches of smaller size and greater edge lengths between types of habitats than we would expect to see in undisturbed areas.

This benefits species that thrive at edges, like white-tailed deer and nuisance vines, but harms others that require larger interior habitats, such as certain birds. As human activities create a more fragmented environment, it becomes increasingly important to create linkages between natural areas, such as preserved forests, to maintain populations and their biodiversity.

Dr. Swanson! Have I got a story for you! You can bet I’ll be writing the good man just as soon as I finish finding a band to open the Urban wildlife festival that is observing its TENTH year. I love this article and love even more that folks are paying close attention to this topic, because it can only be good news for beavers and humans.

Now yesterday I got some designs from artist Deborah Hocking about our awesome bookmark she is designing very generously for the festival. Look how frickin’ cute this is going to be:

Deborah! That is sooo adorable and perfect for the occasion. I love where your design is going and can’t wait to see the finished project. I know this has been a crazy post of uneven tone. I can’t even see the line from the beginning of my day to the end, it was so full of ups and downs. On the whole I guess there are more ups.

But I still think it’s time to start calming my frazzled nerves by watching this over and over again:

You mean I have to actually read the information too?

heidi08 What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? June 26, 2017

A beaver headline appeared yesterday that was so ridiculous I couldn’t even bring myself to read the article until this morning. Now I see it is so thick with misinformation that I just wrote the author. Chalk this up to the “Beaver lies and the lying liars who tell them”, category.

Is the beaver truly nature’s architect or just a ‘dentally defective rat’? — Canadian Myths

The myth: The beaver etched on our five-cent coin can’t possibly compete with more majestic symbols, such as Britain’s lion or the U.S. bald eagle. But the rodent doesn’t just represent an idea of strength and fierceness — it played a role in the founding of Canada.

The beaver may be a buck-toothed rodent but it fuelled the fur trade, and therefore the economy here, for hundreds of years. Still, not everyone is happy with the beaver’s prominence as the only animal that is an official emblem for Canada.

In 2011, Conservative Nicole Eaton told fellow Senators the “dentally defective rat,” which wreaks havoc on her dock each summer, should be replaced with a “polar bear, with its strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity.”

Beavers have made a comeback, and there are now anywhere from six to 12 million of them in Canada, more than the estimated six million at the start of the fur trade. Many of them are living close to humans, and their ability to build a dam in days, and flood a forest, corn field or cottage creates frustration. There are now so many that an industry has grown up around removing “nuisance beavers,” which account for a fifth of the beaver pelts auctioned off at NAFA.

The entire article has an annoying fur trade focus and is generally poorly written but THIS might be the worst sentence I’ve ever seen written about beavers. The author claims we have more beaver now than we did during the fur trade! Never mind that she’s off by at least one zero at least and possibly as many as six. Never mind that there were once enough beavers to cover every head in Europe. Obviously if it was once written that the continent was in possession of two species, man and beaver, there must have been a TON of them. Never mind that even your fur trapping history books should tell you how wrong that is.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

Patty generously devotes a whole paragraph to letting a trapper discuss the more important things beavers do.

Others defend the animal as “nature’s architect,” a reference to its ability to manufacture an environment that is essential to its survival. They are “one of the fantastic species when you look at the way they modify the habitat,” says Pierre Canac-Marquis, a trapper and biologist, retired from Natural Resources Quebec. “It really takes some knowledge, some intelligence, because it’s a very complicated process,” he says of building a dam out of sticks and mud.

Yes let’s interview trappers and ask them about how fantastic beavers are, because really, consumers are the best judge of ecological value. Honestly, I can’t imagine being given such a big byline and doing SO LITTLE WORK.

But that’s just me.

On to better things, this was posted in one of the Scottish beaver forum’s yesterday. You will quickly see why this mom beaver wants plenty of food for her little ones.