Month: March 2018

BEAVER SCHADENDREUNDE

heidi08 Beavers March 11, 2018

Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth,
and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth:

Proverbs 24:17

Schadenfreude is a german word that has no english equivalent. It is a combination of two words “Schaden” meaning harm or damage, and freunde meaning friend. The kindest interpretation of the term ascribes it is the relief you feel when someone else gets blamed instead of you. Although there are plenty of less kind translations, we’ll go with that for now.

‘Cute’ otter leaps onto kayak, lunges at Florida woman’s face

Sue Spector was kayaking with her husband down the pristine Braden River in western Florida when she spotted an otter. Spector, 77, from Sarasota, turned around in her boat early Sunday morning and, catching a glimpse of the small river dweller, thought to herself, “Oh, this is a cute otter,” she told the Tampa Bay Times.

The animal, usually known for its curiosity and playful demeanor, leaped onto the kayak and lunged at Spector.

“Then we had this little tug of war,” she told the Tampa Bay Times. “I tried to get him off of my kayak and I screamed extremely loud so I could try and scare him off but that didn’t work. It took some time, but I fought with him, my husband jumped in and other people came by to help.”

The kayak rolled.

The couple were thrown into the water – half-swimming, half-flailing their paddles to try to fend off the animal.

“I took my paddle and I tried to get him off of me and he wouldn’t let go and I kept screaming, I kept beating him with a paddle,” Spector told Fox affiliate WTVT. “When you’re [in the middle of] it you don’t have a lot of thought except you hope you survive.”

Spector and her husband climbed on their guide’s kayak and began paddling “as fast as we could,” she told the Times. “The otter followed us but didn’t attack again.”

Wow, I remember reading an account like this years ago from Shasta. Of course otters can get rabies just like any other mammal. And that must have been terrifying for the woman involved. But I can’t help feeling just a little squeak of joy that for once it wasn’t a BEAVER behaving badly.

You just watch though, I’m sure this story won’t hang around the news cycle like the murderous Belarus beaver.

Nicole Duplaix, who chairs the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Otter Specialist Group, said otters are known for being friendly animals but, like most other creatures, keep their distance from humans.

She said that otter attacks involving humans are “extremely rare” but that when they do occur, there is usually a reason.

“An unprovoked attack is very un-otter-like, unless there’s a cause you can’t see,” Duplaix, who teaches conservation biology at Oregon State University, said Thursday in a phone interview with The Washington Post.

She said that in instances in which otters have attacked, people had gotten too close to mothers with cubs or to their dens.

That’s right. Otters never attack unprovoked, They’re friendly animals. FRIENDLY all the scientists say so. I mean, after all, they’re so CUTE!

Unless you’re a fish. Or a baby duck. Or a beaver kit.

We received a very generous donation from our good friend Sara Aycock yesterday. Sara took time out from publishing her SECOND mystery to donate some more wonderful victorian animals illustrations. They were so popular last year that I can’t wait to see the excitement the bring this year. Sara is an enormously talented mother who uses precious hours while her children sleep to create an entire wonder-world. In fact, her paintings were so intriguing they inspired her sister-in-law to co author an entire mystery series about them!

Of course I had to write Sara initially after I saw this painting of Mr. Beaverton, the detective in the mystery story. About her art she says

“Most of my paintings start with a finger painted background. From there, I see where the painting takes me. Some of my art is pre-planned while other pieces evolve in the process. I love to see what comes about in the process, it’s always a surprise.”

I originally hoped Sara would share a single print. I had no idea that she’d provide a lovingly framed collection of them! These delightful portraits look so appropriate in my victorian home that I told Sara I was tempted to take down all the ancestor pictures in the hallway and replace them with the characters of Knotty pine!

You can visit Sara’s shop here and enjoy free shipping while her good nature lasts! She just finished painting these new bear characters and said they might well be her favorites. I can certainly understand why! Do yourself a favor and go buy the book too!

THROWING MONEY AT THE PROBLEM WHEN YOU SHOULD BE THROWING BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and salmon March 10, 2018

Let’s talk about fish for today. And those high-powered lawsuits that get folk willing to spend millions of dollars to save them but not spare the lives of the beavers who would do it for free, Yesterday our favorite news agency who writes about beavers all the time without actually realizing it wrote this:

California salmon will have places to chill with dam removal

A $100 million project removing dams and helping fish route around others is returning a badly endangered salmon to spring-fed waters in northernmost California, giving cold-loving native fish a life-saving place to chill as scientists say climate change, drought and human diversions warm the waters.</em >

State and federal officials, in a years-long project with dam-owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co., plan to release 200,000 young, endangered winter-run Chinook salmon over the next two months into the north fork of Battle Creek, where melted snow percolating through volcanic rock provides ideal habitat for native salmon and steelhead that thrive in cold mountain water.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks winter-run Chinook as one of eight marine species most at risk of extinction.

Because of Battle Creek’s spring-fed cold water, and the difficulty of keeping the Sacramento River cool enough for the winter-run Chinook, state and federal agencies made a priority of making Battle Creek accessible to winter-run Chinook again.

“Battle Creek has long been recognized as an ideal resource for cold water from snow melt,” said Doug Killam, a senior environmental scientist with the state wildlife agency. “It’s kind of a jewel of the system

That’s right. Just shoot the chinook in at top dollar and hope for the best. I’m sure you’re doing everything you can. It’s not like there was this resource that made cooler waters in CA that was just getting ignored and thrown away. Right?

Oooh, I’m sure that part of California doesn’t even have any of those fish saving beavers. They probably never got that far north. I’m sure if they had we’d be in having a different conversation now.

Well sure, some of those beavers were killed in Tehama and Shasta Counties, but look, In 2015 fewer beavers were killed in Shasta county and no beavers at all were killed in Tehama were. That’s good news right?

In 2014 and 2015, nearly entire generations of the winter-run Chinook died in the too-warm Sacramento, as humans competed with the fish for water releases from behind Shasta Dam during a five-year drought.

You don’t maybe think there were no beavers left to kill do you?

WHERE THERE’S A WILLOW THERE’S A WAY

heidi08 Environmental March 9, 2018

Sometimes news stories just make me jealous. So many people doing so many smart things to benefit beavers because they realize the good things that beavers bring – it just makes me wish and wish that California had the same qualities of smart stewardship. At least they put it in the paper so everyone can learn from it, That’s something, right?

Join Land Conservancy’s willow-planting stewardship day March 10

SEASIDE — Thompson Creek and Stanley Marsh Habitat Reserve in Seaside is one of the North Coast Land Conservancy’s most visible success stories, with coho salmon migrating up Thompson Creek to spawn every winter and beavers returning to create more salmon habitat.

You can help the Conservancy keep that success going by joining a willow-planting stewardship day at Thompson Creek 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, March 10.

Willow planting is one of the conservancy’s easiest and most popular stewardship activities. Willows provide food and building materials to beavers. The dams those beavers build result in broader wetlands, enhancing habitat for a wide variety of wildlife, from salmon to waterfowl.

HURRAY for people who realize that planting willow for beavers is a good way to help fish and birds. Hurray for the North Coast Land Trust who helps these things happen year after year. Hurray for the lucky beavers that will find their way to these tender shoots and make their start of with new dam.

And then there’s Martinez.

Where volunteers work with the frickin’ waterboard, conservation core and city engineer to plant willow for beavers and city staff pulls them up anyway.

THREE YEARS IN A ROW!

BEAVER IMAGES

heidi08 Beaver Art March 8, 2018

I know every single person reading this blog has done a Google search, but have you ever done a google Image search? You go look up the thing you’re curious about but instead of looking at the pages that come up you click on the tab that says “images” about three choices over.

It’s actually a nice way to look for exactly what you want and not be bothered by all those WORDS folk like me clutter the internet with. It’s how I’ve found some really great beaver images over the years, and even how I find artists to approach for a donation to the silent auction.

Obviously there aren’t as many classified images as there are words on the internet. So it’s faster. (Especially if you are specific with your search terms.) It was about 2009 when I started to notice that our photos were showing up in every google image search for beavers. And now I see the photos of our friends (Hi Rusty!) or particular artists we featured over the years. I was approached last week by a Pennsylvania text book company asking about the beaver pond Amy Hall designed for the street art project at the festival and wondering whether it could be included in their secondary school printed materials.

It’s always a little terrifying to find an image I made on image search. But terrifying in a good way most of the time, I guess. Sometimes I will make a graphic just to be sarcastic and there it remains, hallowed in the halls of Google images until someone boots it out. Accuracy is not required. I can’t tell you how many capybara or nutria images are missclassified as beaver. I don’t even try to count any more.

Lately I’ve been looking especially for images that show an “over/under” look at a beaver pond, to help our artists get ideas and to work on the kids activity for our festival. Nothing is really perfectly beaver-centric of course, which I guess is why the publisher contacted me about Amy’s image. But this is very nice.

Maybe you have a favorite?

SALMON SAYS “STOP KILLING BEAVER”

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact March 7, 2018

We are apparently in a strange beaverless news cycle because the only articles that have come my way the past few days are trapper stories not even worth a mention. This of course doesn’t mean there’s nothing to talk about. I spent yesterday working on the fish summary from my beaver talk at SARSAS this month, and thought I’d share some of the slides. I plan on using the lawsuit as a framework for talking about why beavers matter to the good salmon and steelhead lovers at SARSAS. Since they’re in Placer county, (the one with the horrific honor of killing the most beavers in the state), that seems a great place to start, I’m using the summary of reasons why beavers matter to salmon from letter of intent to Wildlife Services, which was very well done.

I was quite struck by the point that beaver dams attenuate flow and mitigate flooding so that the lucky fish can spend less energy swimming against the current and can spend that energy EATING instead. It was Michael Pollock himself who told me that the fatter a salmon is before it swims to the ocean the safer it is. (IE more things will fit in its mouth and there are fewer mouths it will fit into!)

So beaver ponds are better places to eat and also have more to eat in them!

More food mean more juveniles survive. And more babies live to become more adults.

Beaver ponds also contain the most water and the coolest water throughout the summer. And even recharge the ground water so that ponds are sustained through drought events as well.

So, to sum up, beaver dams create more and better behaved water to support salmonids and more food to sustain them while they’re there. I’m using the summary of reasons why beavers matter to salmon from letter of intent to Wildlife Services, which was very well done.Several of the fish that benefit are on the endangered species list, so every time you trap beaver you’re technically breaking the law.

It’s a pretty compelling argument, and I actually can’t decide if I’m surprised Wildlife Services is just laying low hoping it goes away before it hurts them.

Hopefully I can talk the good folks at SARSAS into starting a parallel action in their area. We just want folks to consider the fact that removing a beaver dam has friendly fire casualties associated with it.