Month: May 2018

HOW ABOUT CHANNELING ACTUAL BEAVERS?

I know it’s only-good-news Sunday, but the world is mostly devoid of unreservedly positive beaver news at the moment so we get two stories that come very close to being good news. Let’s call them good-beaver-news-adjacent. The first is from Alberta Canada and does a pretty awesome job of talking about how beaver impoundments save water – it’s just missing the actual – you know – beavers.

Producer channels inner beaver to keep water on his farm

As a keystone species in North America, the beaver is so much more than just a hat with legs.

It is indisputably one of the most important and influential species, responsible not only for biodiverse ecosystems, but also for drought prevention. Takota Coen, a fourth-generation farmer, educator, and carpenter, has been channelling his inner beaver since he was a child.

“Every spring, all I did was throw sticks in creeks and try to build dams with weeds and mud,” the 25-year-old says. “Children have an innate sense of trying to slow water down.”

And all that play has made him a pro.

Now if I were in charge this realization that beavers save water and it makes a huge difference to available groundwater on a farm would lead Takota to tolerate the actual beavers on his farm and work with them to allow them to help his work. But sadly, I’m not in charge. So he doesn’t have any.

In the spring of 2014, Coen harvested enough water to meet their farm’s water needs for 40 years — 10 million gallons — in just 10 days.

A couple years earlier, when Coen decided to move to his parent’s farm, Grass Roots Family Farm near Ferintosh, Alta., the farm had a water problem: they’d already had two wells dry up on the property, a third that was dry right from the beginning, and a fourth that only pumped two gallons per minute.

“We had no choice but to look for water elsewhere,” he says.

Using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) maps of the property, Coen found the longest and highest valley on the farm, rented a Caterpillar D3 for a day and dug a 1.5 kilometre long, 1.2 metre wide, 0.3 metre swale — which he calls a “wetland on contour.”

That swale enabled Coen to catch all that runoff, and eventually, more.

Ahh so you made yourself a beaver pond and the rain filled it up! Great idea. I wonder how much that LIDAR and caterpillar rental coast you? Gosh, I know something that would have done that for free! Suddenly this graph springs to mind.

Onto Maine where we’re very happy they’ve decided to live trap a beaver rather than kill it. But honestly.

Catch & Release: Stalking the Wild Beaver

As state-certified Maine Animal Damage Control Cooperators, Maynard Stanley Jr. (pictured) and his wife Norma catch and release wild animals and help solve problems and conflicts between people and animals. This beaver (pictured) was building a dam in a culvert with sticks and mud, which, if left unattended, can cause a road to wash out, sometimes just overnight. So, Rockland Public Works Department called “Critter Catcher” Maynard Stanley Jr. on Tuesday to trap the beaver. The beaver is about four years old, Stanley said, and, after trapping it, he relocated it to a Maine Wildlife Management Area far away from people.

Oh okay.

You sent Mr. Critter catcher out to get ‘a beaver’ because obviously there was only ONE right? And he determined this bachelor is 4 years old by reading his kinder page? Something tells me this story is going to get more provoking. Just wait.

Before releasing the beaver, he and his wife stopped by Owls Head Central School for a quick Show and Tell. “The kids had lots of great questions,” Stanley said. “They love to see wild critters up close, smell the different trapping lures, and I enjoy sharing my experience and helping others understand wildlife and how to coexist. I give wildlife talks and have shown critters at other schools and never pass up a chance to talk with kids.”

Never mind that the poor beaver is confused frightened and isolated from his family. This morning we’re going to a brightly lit schoolroom full of noisy children who will poke at you and ask questions. Do you think that beaver was still in the clamshell trap? I’m going to guess he was because I doubt critter control moved him to something more comfortable. So five hours in that trap and then another five to drive him to his destination and then released without family or safety into some strange stream somewhere.

Poor little beaver.

The good news is that at least that culvert will NEVER get blocked again, right? I mean no other beaver is going to plug it tonight, or next month, because this story has a happy ending rof course?

THE END OF A BEAVER TALE

heidi08 Beavers May 5, 2018

For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

W. S. Merwin

One of the first beaver stories that caught my eye was written by then editor of the Martinez Gazette Richard Parks in 2007. He was reporting on the life cycle of beavers and what Martinez could expect after his consultation with “beaver expert” Mary Tappel who was the original consultant the city turned to. His article quoted her warning that beaver populations explode because beavers can “Breed for 50 years”.

Novice that I was at the time this statement nevertheless caught my eye. Because it sounded unlikely that beavers could reproduce longer than humans. So I called the editor and asked “Is that a typo?” He was an earnest fellow and remembered specifically writing that down so he called her back to verify. She was so affronted to have her “facts” questioned that she decided to never appear before the beaver subcommittee and just whisper her vile opinions directly to staff but that is all blood under the bridge.

Of course we now know that a beaver is very, very lucky if it gets to breed for 10 years, and live to 15. There are reports of beavers in captivity living until 19 or 20, but in the wild we would think 12 years makes a beaver a senior citizen of his particular curious nation. I always try to calculate how old our beavers were. Dad was definitely the oldest. We know from research that the majority of beavers cannot reproduce before age 3, recently I remembered that when we first learned about the beavers the woman who told us about them said there were actually three and one was smaller – like what we now understand is a yearling. I never saw three beavers – but I believe her. That implies that mom and Dad moved here with a yearling in tow who later dispersed shortly after the new kits were born that summer when I started paying close attention. 3+1+1 – that means dad was at least 5 in 2007, which means he lived in Martinez until he was at least 13.

Not a bad run for a beaver. Certainly better than either of these stories this morning.

First wild beaver killed by car in England ‘was forced out of river by flash flood’

The first wild beaver reported to be run over and killed by a car in England may have been forced on to the roads by flash flooding. Experts believe the four year-old female ventured out of its natural habitat when water levels rose on the River Otter in East Devon last week.

She was part of a community of wild beavers which was first spotted in 2013 – at a time when they were thought to have been extinct for 400 years. The mammals are touted as a secret weapon in the battle against climate change because their dams can act as a natural flood defence.

Being hit by a car is certainly a very common way for a beaver to end its life. There is almost nothing I feel more hopeless about than a beaver on the road trying to reach a body of water on the other side. They lack the eyesight, speed and logic they need to become ‘streetwise’. They always loose.

This story this morning was worse though. West Kelwona is in British Columbia about 200 miles east of Vancouver.

Conservation Officers still hoping to locate suffering beaver

Okanagan residents are still waiting for a conclusion behind a potential case of animal cruelty. A $2,500 reward has been offered for any information that leads to the conviction of the person(s) responsible for shooting a beaver with multiple arrows.

The animal was found suffering near the shore adjacent to the West Kelowna Yacht club last week. Local Conservation Officers say they have heard no reports as to whether the animal is dead or alive and are encouraging the public to keep an eye out.

Of course there are multiple photos of the unlucky beaver stuck with an arrow which I at least have the decency not to show you. A beaver with a 12 inch arrow sticking out of his side cannot even go back home to heal, since the passage hole into the lodge is much too small for that. I am writing the psychological profile in my head of the young sociopath who did this (white male under 25 using own bow and his father’s boat) .

Never ever leave me alone in a room with him.

Which just goes to say that when people feel sorry for our beavers dealing with all the trash or the homeless or such a small urban creek, they are ignoring the fact that a great many beavers have it much, much worse.

Martinez was the lap of luxury.

ATTENTION SHOPPERS

heidi08 Urban beavers May 4, 2018

If I didn’t know better I would be asking myself “Why Walmart?” Beavers in Utah have been found at walmart, in Michigan, in Maine, it’s almost as if they prefer the store which can’t possibly be true, because no one really does.

Cortland is in the lower third of New York and recently had it’s own walmart beaver encounter. Of course it’s just because – acre per acre – there are more walmarts across the country than any other chain so randomly these encounters happen there. Not that beavers were a fan of the Waltons.

Still. I have to say that’s one tiny beaver in the film below.. Not a disperser. A kit that got lost?

Sheriff’s deputy rescues beaver from Walmart parking lot in Cortland

CORTLAND, N.Y. – Law enforcement officers never know what they may encounter on their shift. That was true recently for Cortland County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Kemp who responded to a report of a beaver in the Walmart parking lot near the store entrance.

Kemp’s rescue of the beaver was announced today on the office’s Facebook page. “…no matter what you face, you come up with a plan and solve the problem with whatever you can find,” the Facebook post stated.

Kemp used a shopping cart tipped on its side to scoop up the beaver and was able to turn the cart upright with beaver safely inside, according to the post.

The deputy transported the beaver and released it to a nearby pond.

Note that the brave New York policeman picked up the beaver with a metal cart. For comparison, here is how one unarmed woman from Colorado does it:

Sherri Tippie with kit: Wearing Worth A Dam shirt

MORE FRIENDS FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? May 3, 2018

I received another email yesterday concerning what I’m going to call the luckiest beavers in the entire state of North Carolina. This time it was from a professor who was making those lucky beavers a website to share photos and information about them.

The email was asking me about a document found in some dusty corner of the website describing the bogus reasons cities say they have to kill beavers. Honestly, if you held a gun to my head I wouldn’t recognize it or remember writing it, but it had my name boldly on the cover so at one pint I must have – I made sure he had some more relevant resources and offered our support.

I’m very impressed with the way the site uses the photographs of supporters to document how the beaver habitat creates a vital ecosystem. I’m also happy that it names the creek where they live instead of just referring to it as property of the Home Owners Association of Briar Chapel. This might be my favorite photo. It’s a cardinal sitting on the beaver dam, which I have never seen before.

The website has the latest news about the beavers and a call for volunteers and donations. It also has a relevant links page (on which we’re number one) and a collection of videos and information.

Now one of those videos I hadn’t seen before and was produced at Cornell University for their 4H naturalist program. It is engaging and well done with a glowing review of beavers. There were just a few minor problems.

Can you guess the first one?

Okay, woodchucks aside, the other giant problem around 5:45 where it describes the dams beavers build to manage water. They go on to say that this is packed with mud to make a wall – so far so good – which the beaver then tunnels into to make a home!!!

Et tu brute? Cornell University is advertising that beavers live INSIDE the dam? Complete with graphics? Cornell University got a grant from USDA to say that? You know the smartest person from my entire high school got a scholarship to Cornell and it has always been kind of a hallowed place in my eyes. I remember how admiringl I received his letters from Ithaca College. How could they be wrong? Heck, maybe there’s new research I don’t know about and I’m the one whose wrong. Maybe the fact that our beavers didn’t live in the dam was just a fluke. And all the others do.

Okay, well I wrote Linda last night with the polite question about where she got that interesting point. (She’s a professor of Ent0mology by the way.) And mentioned to the website creator that he might want to switch videos to one that was more accurate. He obviously decided not to because who are you going to listen to, some crazy woman who saves beavers or CORNELL university for gods sake.

Here’s the entire video if you want to investigate for yourself.

BEAVERS FEELING FESTIVE

heidi08 Festival May 2, 2018

Has there ever been better timing for a magazine article to come out in the history of the world? The Orinda Library just posted about our Ranger Rick article AND the Library invited us to come do a ‘beaver story’ reading at their lunchtime children’s hour before the festival. Sometimes things just fall into place and I’m left wondering how on earth we ever get this lucky.

Then I sent the article to all the fence-sitter exhibits who haven’t gotten back to us yet about the festival and received five new confirmations! One is Ranger Rick himself who will be tabling with Beth Pratt-Bergstrom as the California representative of the National wildlife federation, another is the forest service who will bring their mobile ranger station, and a third is a man who used to exhibit for ‘save the frogs’ but now has started his own nonprofit and wants to table for them. “Save the Snakes!” it’s called!

We’re getting such a nice crowd for the event and I’m starting to need help visualizing it all so I worked on this yesterday, Jon says I’m insane but I just wish I had little tin soldiers to go with it.