Month: July 2018

MARTINEZ BEAVERS GO TO CHICAGO

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers July 11, 2018

The center for Humans and Nature is a nonprofit operating out of Chicago that uses research, events, writers and thinkers to encourage ethical decision making in dealings with the natural world. It was formed in 2003 by Stachan Donnelley and has earned widespread support and stature. In addition to its publications and community events it also runs the city creatures blog edited by Gavin Van Horn, author of “The way of the Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds”. Gavin happened to meet up with our friend Forest Service Steve Dunsky a few months back and the two started talking about the Martinez beavers and their unique story. Steve later introduced me to Gavin who asked for an article.

The city creatures blog does not resemble this blog in any way. It is published once a week, and the articles are carefully chosen, crafted and solicited from the brightest authors, thinkers and unpublished voices in the field. Go look at a few of the articles and you will see. It also pays for content.

Gavin thought a beaver article would be a perfect addition but at the time I was literally surrounded with festival details so I said maybe after its over? He cheerfully gave me a deadline of July 10th. Last weekend, after the final silent auction item was collected, the hum of the festival mostly died down, and the flutter of community still in my veins I decided to give it a try.

I have, of course, told the story many, many times before. The hardest part wasn’t knowing what to say. It was knowing what not to say. I was asked for a brief succinct 2000 words that told our story in an engaging and unforgettable way. There were so many things I had to leave out and so many things I could barely mention.

Never mind. Yesterday I found out that the story is going to be published next week. I dare say you’ll read about it here. The contract allows republication, and I like to think that everyone that reads it will learn how beavers can help cities.

Not bad for a weekend’s work.

AMBASSADORS TO ALBERTA

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere July 10, 2018

One of the many things I like about the new website is that I can switch out the banners and margin whenever I want. Yesterday I thought we needed some coolunderwater shots. For the first time I”m not using our photos because we didn’t do any underwater photography with our beavers, but I like them anyway. I’m sure that’s how they would have looked if we had!

Another example of sudden praise for beavers came from this article, which is full of the kind of ‘almost nice’ things you say about a cousin that really gets on your nerves, bless her heart,

Industrious, creative beavers a perfect Alberta ambassador

Fort Saskatchewan’s beaver families are keeping busy this summer doing what comes naturally – raising their young, chewing trees and generally trying to keep out of everyone’s way.

Signs of beaver activity, including felled trees and gnawed stumps, are a common sight in riverside towns and cities across Alberta. The large rodents—at up to 77 pounds, the largest in Canada—make themselves at home anywhere there is suitable water and food.

“There are beautiful tall trees along the river that would be very attractive for dam and lodge building material and food supplies for beavers,” Mark Heckbert, provincial wildlife conflict specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks, said of the local river valley.

“And so like many river communities in Alberta, you can expect beavers to be found throughout the open water periods in the community, probably coming up into the areas that are closest to the river foraging for food and bringing those building materials back into the river.”

Ahh beaver ambassadors! That’s a nice thought. Our beavers were Martinez ambassadors for years. Of course people don’t usually kill their own ambassadors, but I’m sure it sometimes happens.

Beavers also have a reputation for making a pest of themselves, sometimes taking down significant numbers of trees and damming up waterways.

“For the most part, beavers go about living their life and don’t cause too much grief. Although on occasion their actions of creating their habitat of deeper water by damming up streams causes localized flooding,” Heckbert said.

“Beavers are quite fascinating creatures,” Heckbert added. “They really are a perfect Alberta ambassador. They are industrious, creative, and persistent. And those are all qualities that Albertans are known for.”

Hrmph. “Dammed with feint praise” I’d say: Although the article does finish with a nice tail slap. Take that, Heckbert.

SOBERING FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This is Carmen Sosa.

She is the president of the Farm and Food Coalition in Tyler Texas which is east of Dallas. She is responsible for the wonderful farmers market in Rose city and works to connect sustainable growers with restaurants and their community.

Carmen contacted me a few weeks ago regarding the beavers near her home on Placid lake. In the past the corporate association who handles their properties has regularly trapped out beavers and otters. (Otters because they’ll eat up all the fish, and beavers just because.) In addition to trapping she says they destroy lodges using the common in Texas ‘kerosene in a mason jar’ method.

(!)

Carmen wanted something different for these beavers and asked if we could help.

I introduced her to a fairly well connected beaver friend near by, and gave her lots of information. She was able to read up, confer and even consult some GIS water table maps. We were both hopeful that this could make a difference and that these beavers would have the chance that so few beavers in Texas have.

Yesterday was the big meeting. And even though she came armed with cheerful information and intention they voted to do the same thing they always do. This morning they would call the trapper out and the home owner nearest the lodge would burn it out.

Carmen wrote me in despair last night. She had kayaked out to see the beavers and was desperate to do something rather than let them be killed in their sleep. I didn’t really know what to tell her, but I shared her sorrow and alarm.

Mostly I thought about our beavers. And how lucky it was that things turned out differently for them. We don’t like to think it but it was a razor thin path to victory and for such a long time it could easily have gone either way.

For Carmen, who surrounds herself with green and growing things, this calamity of death is more than a hardship. What comfort I can offer is that she can use this lost effort to form a coalition of like minds for the future, so that the next beavers, or maybe the ones after that, are luckier than these,

The arc of ecology is long indeed, but it bends towards beavers.

“SURE I KNOW WHAT BEAVERS ARE. I LOVE EM'”

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact July 8, 2018

One of the most psychologically fascinating things about the weighty publication of Ben’s book is that suddenly a whole host of players are suddenly talking about how good beavers are – only they’re acting like THEY thought it up all by themselves.”Beavers? Oh yes, Beavers! We love em!” They seem to be clamoring to be the first to say, without actually crediting the book that made them say so in the first place,

It just can’t be a coincidence.

I guess it’s like when you’re best friend suddenly falls in love with that guy you always thought was a little insipid. You never really gave him credit before, but now that SHE loves him, well you have to admit he’s actually okay-looking and clever in his way.

The Busy, Beneficial Beaver

North America used to be crawling with beavers. Over the first few hundred years of European settlement, beavers were decimated, in part as result of the fur trade and in part because their trademark dams caused inconvenient floods. But in recent decades, beavers have been making a comeback, in some cases aided by deliberate reintroduction efforts. Good thing, too: beaver dams may play an important role in water management, helping to store and even recharge depleted groundwater.

Omit mention of Ben’s book: here.

A beaver throws some twigs on top of his dam as his partner eats some grass near the shore. Taken in Grand Teton Natinal Park, Wyoming.

Beavers are called ecosystem engineers, as their dams can completely alter the water flow of small streams. Beavers build their homes, called lodges, in the slow-moving ponds that result. An area with a high beaver population will be covered with these ponds and slow-moving streams. According to biologist Justin P. Wright and colleagues, these habitat modifications have far-reaching benefits. Fish and waterbirds utilize beaver ponds as well. More importantly, when spread across the landscape, the beaver ponds create entirely new habitats. What might be continuous forest without beavers becomes a patchwork of forests and wetlands with them.

Beavers? We love those beavers! I was just going to write about them all out of my own timing honestly, You know how it is being a scientific publication. There are so gosh darn many things that demand your attention – like pathogens, inventions and ocean currents. I just never got around to writing about them until something jarred my memory. I forget what it was exactly,

Some book that starts with an ‘E’.

The effect persists after the beavers move on. Behind the dams, nutritious sediments accumulate. The typical dam lasts around ten years, but after that, without the beavers around to maintain it, the dam will collapse and the pond will dry up. The areas formerly covered by water become lush meadows, supporting additional species of plants. Beavers can do significant local damage through feeding and chopping trees for building materials, but the overall landscape of forest, wetland, and meadows supports much higher plant biodiversity than without beavers.

This ‘mighty white of you‘ article even mentions flow devices, (although rather oddly because it makes it sound like you can just buy them at Home Depot off the shelves or something.) He hits all the right notes. I guess I really shouldn’t give author James MacDonald a hard time, because at least he’s saying the right things.

But you know I will because that’s just who I am.

BEAVER LEGACIES

heidi08 Festival July 7, 2018

There was a nice article about the festival in its new location in the Martinez News Gazette Thursday. I vaguely remember chatting with the reporter, Donna Beth during the day before a sea of children commanded my attention.

New site works for Beaver Festival

Amy G. Hall, the Napa street painter, paints a beaver dam during the Beaver Festival in Susana Park

“It’s perfect for artwork, perfect for the stage, and people love it,” Perryman said from her own both, where she distributed sheets on which children could affix stickers they obtained from other groups after learning how important beavers are to their surroundings.

Those sheets, once decorated, resembled the chalk mural by Amy G. Hall, the Napa street painter. Hall wasn’t the only one to apply chalk to sidewalk during the festival. Anyone with a yen to do so was invited to create their own illustrations to the walkways

It’s nice to see how inviting the event looked from the sidewalk, like a real community festival, irresistibly inviting you in.

(I’m almost wish I could have been there myself, but of course, we were rather busy that day,)

Meanwhile the beaver world continues with its steady list of accomplishments that have nothing whatsoever to do with Martinez.

Like the Methow project, for instance.

CTFW utilize beavers in Methow salmon recovery work

Project relocates nuisance beavers into tributary streams along Methow River

Winthrop – Colville Tribes’ Fish and Wildlife is continuing its salmon recovery efforts in the Methow River basin with the help of some furry friends. The department is in its fifth year relocating beavers to key parts of the river as part of the Methow Salmon Recovery project to improve habitat for “threatened” Upper Columbia River steelhead and “endangered” spring Chinook, as well as coho, and summer Chinook.

According to Wagner, project goals are to improve fish habitat by: reducing summer water temperatures, increasing late summer stream flows, increasing juvenile salmonid rearing habitat, improving stream habitat complexity, trapping stream sediment, and in some cases reconnecting floodplains.

The question really is how will Kent Woodruff’s brainchild and project survive after Kent himself has retired? Will there be a lasting legacy that carries itself forward without his watchful eye?

I’m guessing yes. This is such a beloved project with so many partners that I’m betting it will carry on in Kent’s name long after he is smoking a pipe comfortably on the porch, Suzanne Fouty was asking me the same question about the beaver festival when she was here and that future I’m less sure of.

I’m not sure anyone else would be dam fool enough to take it on.

BY THE old Moulmein Pagoda