Month: September 2017

My father ’tis of thee

heidi08 Beaver Art, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, Who's saving beavers now? September 5, 2017

As most of you know, this wonderful creation was the painstaking product of then 12 year old Ian Timothy [Boone] and finished in 2008. The joyful banjo music in the background was written and performed by his father an accomplished musician, Joel Timothy. Ian went on to win 6 scholastic medals and graduate with honors. We became friends for obvious reasons and when he applied to the Disney school of animation I wrote him a letter of recommendation. He was one of only 15 students to be accepted.

I met them all in Martinez when the family made a stop on their way to a film festival. Both parents seemed happy and appropriately proud of their son. But you never really know what the inside of people’s lives are like. After Ian went to college his parents divorced and his mother, Karen Boone (a gifted graphic artist in her own right) wrote to tell me that Joel was a struggling alcoholic who she couldn’t stay with anymore. She thought maybe it had been hard on her son who had focused on the stop motion filmaking as a way to cope.

(I was shocked, and remember that I couldn’t help thinking like a therapist that maybe his father hadn’t been able to sustain sobriety by taking things one day at a time, so Ian took things one moment at a time.)

After the divorce, Ian cut ties with his father and took his mother’s name, so he’s now Ian Boone. Ian never spoke about the divorce or the drinking with me. But we remained friends. He came to our festival last year and told me that he had left college early and started working for Bix Pix in Hollywood, working on the Tumble leaf series. He had not resumed contact with his father. And he had been learning to play the banjo.

Yesterday he posted on Facebook that his father had died over the weekend. I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m sharing it here. It really touched me and I thought it should be shared.

I just wanted to let everyone know, especially people in Louisville, that my dad, Joel Timothy died early Saturday morning, in Chestertown, Maryland. He had been sick for a while and in June was diagnosed with colon cancer that was expected to be treatable. But between the chemo, radiation, and already being very weak, he took a turn for the worse last week. He was hospitalized in intensive care. By the time I got there he was on oxygen and mostly unresponsive.

Our relationship for the last several years was not good. There were a lot of different sides to him, he struggled with alcoholism and he did and said a lot of horrible things. But there are still a lot of good memories, he was an immensely talented musician and creative mind, as a storyteller and performer. He had a short stature but big personality and always a way to make people laugh. I wouldn’t have had the same start in animation without his help with Beaver Creek, and I think he tried to support me in the best ways that he knew how.

Fathers are complicated and somehow keep being so even after they die. My heart goes out to Ian who was emotionally courageous to speak of this publicly and revisit the man who had given him his childhood and at the same time partly taken it away. In reading the countless comments by his fellow musicians it is clear that Joel was a gifted, fulsome, troubled soul. Even though his life is over, I’m sure Ian’s journey with him is just beginning. I am constantly surprised by how much my own father has continued changing after his death, at least in my own heart where it matters most to me.

R.I.P. Beaver Creek.

Salmon stories and a surprise

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now?, Why We Care September 4, 2017

Today is day of revealing salmon mysteries, which is handy because saving salmon is motivating for far more people than saving beavers, (present company excepted). We start with this fine article from the North Delta in British Columbia where a volunteer group spent the weekend making little dams for salmon, because ‘beavers can’t be allowed to do it anymore”.

Delta’s Cougar Creek to get five weirs for spawning salmon

The Cougar Creek Streamkeepers have spent a week doing construction down at Lower Cougar Creek to make it a better place for spawning salmon.

The streamkeepers have constructed five weirs, horizontal barriers across a waterway, along Lower Cougar Creek to increase depth of the pools behind the weirs and oxygenate the water passing over them.

“Back in the old days, it was the beavers who often made impoundments in the water,” streamkeeper Deborah Jones said. “But now we don’t have enough trees to allow beavers to just be cutting everything down.”

Yes it’s true. Mother beaver used to be allowed to do her job, but now the are so worried she will eat one of the few remaining trees we left after building that parking lot that the Streamkeepers have trapped her away and agreed to do the work for her. No word yet on whether they’ll also be putting out willow shoots for bird nesting, small pools for amphibian rearing, filtering the water for toxins and laying out feeding tables for waterfowl. Mother beaver really did a lot for nature, so the job replacing her is a big one.

There’s more about it on KTNA’s next installment of Glacial Rivers.

The Ecology of Glacial Rivers–Su River runs of humpback, sockeye, and coho

The seventh in a series from the Susitna Salmon Center. This segment by Jeff Davis deviates from the ecology theme to tell about the runs of the other four species of salmon in the Susitna River drainage. From tagging studies, Department of Fish and Game biologists have information about when the runs are, where most of the salmon spawn, how long they spend in freshwater habitats, and other details of the spawning season. Chinook salmon were covered in the previous episode.

So be kind to beavers fishermen or ELSE that salmon gets it, I think this means.

Speaking of kindness, I found this yesterday and thought it was the most truly adorable creation I had ever seen. It the brilliant work of Polish illustrator Emilia Dziubak for the children’s book “Hug me, please“. I believe it fully captures the oafish delight I feel upon having our beavers finally returned, don’t you? I especially like the beavers eyes because I’m pretty sure that is the very same enduring expression I have made nearly every time I was unexpectedly hugged. The timing of this couldn’t be better, so I adopted it for our beaver announcement too.

bear hug — Illustration by Emilia Dziubak

Fail faster! Fail harder!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? September 3, 2017

This is a great photo from Kentucky. You know why it’s great? Not because of that cool dam or the fact that you can see it’s leaky because water flows through it. No. Because that culvert is SO damaged anyway, with road collapse and erosion. Look at those dents! It looks about ready to flatten, but the county isn’t worried about that. They are worried about ONE thing. And we all know what that is.

Beavers costing county, landowners Animals threaten roads, crops, timber

They’ve cost the county nearly $100,000 since 2015. They damage cropland and timber. They cause flooding and threaten roads. They are beavers, and they are a growing problem in Hopkins County. Now, a working group under the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources that includes state and federal agencies as well as state and local elected officials is studying the problem.

“They stop culverts up. They stop drainage areas up with sticks and mud,” said Jeff Browning, Hopkins County public works director. “The water backs up and causes damage to roads, crops and woods.” “We start trapping every day, for eight hours a day, in December,” he said. This season, which ended in early spring, county trappers caught 168 beavers, significantly more than the 125-130 they usually get.

“We’re not gaining on it,” Browning said. “And I think it’s getting worse.”

He said his staff is researching multiple approaches, including looking at what other counties and states do, the possibility of setting up conservation-type districts to fund beaver eradication and working with the Corps of Engineers and Division of Water on the legalities involved.

“What I pledged to the group is that I can facilitate finding a solution and working with the counties and Legislature,” Johnson said, adding he expects to have initial information in about 60 days.

Prunty, R-Belton, said she reached out to Johnson after getting multiple letters from constituents in her home county of Muhlenberg. Damage to roads and cropland are not the biggest issue there. Instead, she said, it’s more of a case where former landowners liked the beavers because they created wetlands that attracted waterfowl, which was good for hunters. Now, some landowners want to harvest timber, but can’t because of the flooded land.

“It’s an economic issue for my constituents,” she said. It used to be profitable to trap beavers for their pelts.”There’s no end to it,” Wedding said.”We’ll never eradicate them,” said Browning, the public work director. “I just want some funding help.”

That’s not likely, said Prunty and Embry, R-Morgantown, given the state of the commonwealth’s budget.”I personally don’t see us allocating funds for that,” Prunty said.Embry agreed. Getting new funding “is always difficult,” he said.

Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Johnson said finding funding help is part of his group’s mandate.”We’ll look for other sources of funding that may or may not exist,” he said, indicating some federal help may be available through the USDA. But money won’t solve the problem, which is “how do you keep them under control for the long-term,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to fight those little suckers.“

And as we all know, if something isn’t working or showing signs of success, what you need to do is do it more frequently and faster. Hire more people to kill more beavers because eventually you know it will work right? I mean it’s not like there are these PROVEN tools that will let them protect the roads and culverts and allow the beavers to remain so that they can keep away other beavers right? It’s certainly not like we did it our selves in Martinez for a decade. Better to keep setting the mousetraps over and over and bill the citizens for it. Forget all those disappointed duck hunters.

More complaints from the city of Bristol in Wisconsin where those crazy beavers are just tiring them out.

Beavers causing DAMage in Bristol

Dam(n) it: The phrase describes the beavers’ instincts to build, and with the added ‘n,’ area residents’ reaction to the problems that the large rodents’ work causes in the Dutch Gap Canal.

The dams, removed for decades by residents, were identified at the Bristol Village Board meeting this week as a factor contributing to flooding in the Lake George area.

“We’ve got to get someone out here to trap them,” resident Scott Shannon, said. “It’s a friggin’ nightmare. I’ve taken probably 100 dams out with my (backhoe).”

“Tenfold,” Shannon said. “This is just wearing me out.”

Gosh darn those wicked beavers and their sneaky ways. Why doesn’t killing them work anymore? Don’t tell me there’s another way to solve this problem, because my back hoe is so much fun!

Marty Johnson, wildlife biologist with the State Department of Natural Resources, confirmed that the beaver population is increasing.

“There are more beavers out there,” Johnson said. “The trapping presence over time has lessened, so the population is on the uptick. We have been getting more complaints.”

Johnson said the DNR recently hired the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to blow up dams in the public hunting grounds in Wheatland. He said beaver activity at Richard Bong State Recreation Area has increased as well.

Paddock Lake administrator Tim Popanda said beaver were causing problems in the canal that leads to the lake a couple of years ago. There, the village obtained permission from the DNR to trap beaver on DNR property out of season.

The DNR website also offers suggestions, such as putting culvert pipes through the dams, to help mitigate the problems. One such system, called the Clemson Beaver Pond Leveler, was developed at Clemson University in South Carolina. Made mostly from PVC pipe, it allows water to flow through a beaver dam or plugged culvert.

“We are trying to figure out if there is something we can do to minimize it,” Kerkman said.

To that end, the Village Board approved spending $17,600 for an engineering study by Strand Associates to determine how water flows in the neighborhood and identify possible solutions. The study will assume beavers will continue to occupy the Dutch Gap Canal.

I have an idea. Give ME the 17,000 dollars and I’ll tell you how to solve this problem. And it isn’t with a 30 year old invention that will get clogged in a minute. Hire Mike Callahan or Skip Lisle or Amy Chadwick to install a flow device and have them teach you how to do it so you can handle the next 30 yourself. Them sit back and watch your water levels safely maintained and your roads clear and your fish and wildlife population thrive as your beaver population stabilizes.

I’m glad we’ve had this little chat.

Schemes and Dreams of a beaver advocate

heidi08 Beaver Art September 2, 2017

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”

If that whirring noise bothered you yesterday we apologize. It was the sound of Mark Twain rolling over and over in his grave because San Francisco and the Bay Area was HOT yesterday. 110 in Martinez hot. Even though Mr. Train never actually wrote that, I’m sure he would have been shocked. I’m still shocked.

But hot days are good for sitting inside and planning. At our Kiwanis appearance yesterday Worth A Dam was given a donation and asked to do a presentation for the Boys and Girls Club in Martinez again. That’s a boisterous fun arena that usually requires a fairly short lesson followed by a very fun activity. When I was trying to imagine what we should do I thought of our old wildlife buttons from Mark Poulin. There’s no way to do the keystone activity but why not let every child pick ONE to keep and have them draw that animal?

Maybe the post card could say something about saving beavers…hmmm. Don’t kill the beavers is too heavy handed. How about just thanking them for saving them? Better yet, why not draw the animal on the button they selected on the back of an irresistably adorable postcard and deliver them to the mayor?

So yesterday I made the graphic and ordered a bunch of 5 x 7 postcards of these with funds from that donation. The hands in the corner are the emblem of the boys and girls club, and should work in our favor. We can also bring a poster and have kids sign their name over ‘their animal’ based on the button they drew. Then leave it with the facility but the postcards will be delivered to city council. Adorable kid drawn images on the back of beavers or the animals assist will help.

Fun fact. This photo was taken of children drawing beavers on our very first Earth Day event in 2008. We had no idea an activity like this would be so popular and just bought pens and paper on the way at the drug store. The two little red heads at the back are the daughters of one of our current council members. I was the daycare teacher of the sons of another. And that doesn’t even count Mark and Lara who saved our beavers the first time around.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing. But I feel that the odds are good it will be at least difficult to quickly dispatch these beavers.

More treats include this fine letter from Charlotte Burns in Palmer, Massachusetts, which clearly needs all the beaver defenders it can get.

Letter: Beavers were only reclaiming their wetlands

It saddens me that residents of the Guelphwood Road area on the Charlton/Dudley line are so adamant about killing beavers that have flooded this road. They built their houses on the edge of a wetland but will not accept that wetlands are homes to critters like beavers.

Beavers play an important role in our environment, creating ponds, slowing sediments which provide food for other critters, and increasing biodiversity of flora and fauna. Their ponds improve local water quality by neutralizing acidic runoff and acting as a sink for pollutants. Dams improve the quality of water by filtering it. Modern Americans seem to prefer sterile, groomed, critter-less environments: chemlawns which kill butterflies and bees, and clean ponds with only stocked fish. They fear buggy, sloggy wetlands which are our greatest flood prevention. This neighborhood needs to get its priorities straight. Killing off nature is having disastrous consequences. Houston was built on swamps; Maine’s blueberries are not getting pollinated; and we’re creating daily crises with global warming. We need to work with nature, not destroy it. Change must start in our own backyards.

Charlotte Burns : Palmer

Beautifully written and well said, Charlotte! We need more writers like you in every state. And speaking of the wisdom to accept beavers, here’s the audio from the Blue Heron Nature Preserve on Altanta NPR yesterday.

The Beavers of Better Days

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 1, 2017

As you will notice by the bold sign in the left margin, the metaphorical cat is ‘officially’ out of the bag. Yesterday we were invited to Kiwanis and went public in the most possible way about our returning beavers. City mogul’s were in attendance, including Leanne Peterson and Cathy Ivers so we know the mayor will know soon, if he doesn’t already. Something else that will likely get his attention is that two not-beaver-friends at the meeting stood up and said publicly how negatively they had felt about the beavers originally, and how surprised they were how much I helped them learn with my patient, positive attitude (ha!) that taught them so much. And how they were truly GRATEFUL for my help in changing their minds and understanding why beavers mattered. No, really.

Jon and I were kind of stunned by that, which was way better than we hoped for.

I came home and boldly announced on FB that the beavers were back, and there are 63 likes this morning, with lots of folks sharing the news. I am counting on the fact that word will spread all through the town because last night I was called by the Gazette about the return. I know its impossible to be sure about their safety, and everything will get harder before it gets easier, but I feel I’ve given it a good initial shot. Even though my instinct is to hide them forever and keep them safe, I know that beavers themselves don’t keep secrets. They’ll make their presence known soon enough to the folks living along the creek. So the best chance we have is to enlist the public support and see what happens.

Cross your fingers.

I saved from yesterday’s glut of good beaver news. We wish there was a little more method to their madness, but we’re very happy they’re catching on, or giving the appearance of it.

‘Beaver deceivers’ a promising solution to Cumberland’s dam problems

CUMBERLAND – Town officials and wildlife advocates say they’ve uncovered a potential long-term solution in fighting destruction from beavers: a wire mesh system that keeps water flowing in local waterways.

But in February, the Land Trust found luck with “pond levelers” that control waterlines behind the beaver dams. Cumberland Highway Supt. Frank Stowik told The Valley Breeze that one day’s work has changed everything in drying out local trail systems and preventing damage.

“An article out of Vermont regarding their beaver problem showed there’s a cage made out of a wire mesh,” he said, describing what he called the “beaver deceiver.” “You put a pipe in and extend it beyond the edges of the trail. The beaver doesn’t go near it.”

The cage technology keeps beavers from noticing the permanent leak through the dam and controls floods. For a couple hundred dollars, Stowik’s team purchased a roll of chicken wire, a pipe and a few pool noodles to keep the cage afloat. A backhoe pulled out 100 feet of chewed logs and forest debris, then the pipe was submerged halfway underwater with the 4-foot mesh box preventing any clogs and disguising the leak through the dam.

I’m having such a mix of feelings right now. We are THRILLED that the Cumberland Land Trust realized that killing beavers wasn’t a real solution. And very glad they learned other ways. But I’m more than a little concerned about this floating box of chicken wire. They can only have researched the issue with both hands over their eyes not to learn that their was an actual DVD to teach them how to do it correctly? My prediction is that the chicken wire is going to plastered with mud very soon, and that the floating cage is going to whip off in the first storm. There are good reasons Mike and Skip use 6 inch wire fencing and anchor it firmly to the bottom of the pond.

Cumberland Land Trust President Randy Tuomisto first examined what he believes is the first pond leveler installed in Rhode Island in North Smithfield. He emphasized the need to cohabitate with beavers rather than trap and kill them. Local licensed beaver trapper Brett Malloy lent his expertise too, noting that only a licensed professional can remove the animals.

“It will keep repeating itself once you have beavers,” said Frank Matta, of the Land Trust. “If you trap them, you have to euthanize them. Being an environmental group, that was not an option we were going to go with. We’ve been trying to do our best to accommodate them, and I think that’s what the town is trying to do with the Monastery.”

Multi-agency monitors now are studying the damage control efforts. For the Land Trust, when another dam rose just a few feet away, they installed another cage. The bog bridge boardwalk at the preserve took shape earlier this month, and has been keeping hikers dry through the first leg of the swamp.

“Right now the two pond levelers are maintaining the level we want and have been functioning as designed,” said Tuomisto. “I’m happy with the success we’ve been having.”

The Monastery’s cage has been in place for a month with the same favorable results.

“We go out every couple weeks right now because it’s new,” Stowik said, noting the hundreds of hikers who explore the area daily also share the legwork. “If there’s an issue, usually the phone rings right away.”

Stowik also hailed the cage technology’s humane alternative to extermination. And for the Land Trust, which also examines the beaver’s role in wetland maintenance and storm abatement, it seemed the only solution.

“I don’t believe the beavers are going away,” Matta added. “If you took out a family of 10 or 12, within a year they would be repopulated with their extended family. That’s why we have to learn to deal with them.”

I’m so confused. I can’t decide if they really want to solve this problem humanely and they just made several innocent rookie mistakes or if they are just pretending to want to solve it that way and waiting for it to fail so they have an excuse to trap with impunity. I was so hopeful about Cumberland’s public response when I wrote about it back in 2013. Now I’m not so sure. Obviously these tools are working in the summer because they’re not being challenged by storms. The fact that it’s floating must keep the beavers from plugging the cage for now, but it won’t matter once it gets flung by the storm.

Gentlemen, there is no need to reinvent the wheel here. It’s round for a reason. Buy a copy of Mike’s DVD and watch how this is really done. I may be an old cynic but I predict that when these fail you are going to brush your hands together and tell the conservationists “Well, we tried it your way, but I guess we have to kill them now.”

Just so you know, it’s not considered trying until you use the correct tools, correctly.

GO HERE and learn what you’re not doing.

I just wrote them a note too. I guess we’ll soon find out whether they really want to help or just want cover from those crazy beaver huggers. Poolsnake? Honestly?

Yesterday I saw this on Facebook and had to share. Great work by Methow, once again!