Month: January 2019

SAVING BEAVERS IS CONTAGIOUS

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? January 31, 2019

There are lots of reasons to do the right thing.

Because it’s better for the world. or better for the people in it. Because it makes you feel better, Because you made a promise. Because it would hurt someone if you didn’t. Sometimes because its easier or cheaper in the long run than doing the wrong thing.

But one of my VERY favorite reasons to do the right thing is because you saw someone else do it first and it seemed good, and possible and you liked the way it made you feel.

Meet the new beaver peer pressure.

Resident wants beaver traps out of Katzie Slough

Little by little, the Katzie Slough clean-up continues.

Now, a Pitt Meadows resident wants the city to take another step and try to find a friendlier way of dealing with an animal that’s been part of the nation for centuries.

Instead of trapping the beavers, who can dam up water flow in the slough, leading to flooding of nearby land, Jackie Campbell is asking the city to consider another option and pointing to a nearby neighbour as an example.

Port Moody is trying out a flow device or a pipe that will lower the water level near a beaver dam in Suter Brook Creek, by city hall.

I’m convinced that one of the reasons cities are so reluctant to do the right thing is that all the mayors have lunch and swap stories and are afraid it will catch on – next thing you know Concord will want beavers, and then Walnut creek. Doing the right thing is contagious and our friends Jim and Judy Atkison have started a movement.

Campbell acknowledges that such a device will take more time and effort.

“But this is where we want to go to be more wildlife friendly and safer,” Campbell said previously in a letter to the City of Pitt Meadows.

“Many groups and the Katzie [First Nation] are working hard to attract the public to the slough to appreciate and understand all it can be.”

Apart from the cost to beavers, which drown when a trap holds them underwater, Campbell is concerned about the safety of people and their pets along the slough.

“Wake up,” she said.

“The city will suffer the embarrassment of causing this danger to the public for using this tortuous method of stopping beavers. There are new ways to allow the dams to flow. We must learn to live with the wildlife around us.”

Jack Emberly, a local environmentalist, said modern technology is “finding ways to live with them … trying to find a better way, a more progressive way to work with wildlife.”

Hurray for people wanting to work with beavers because its more humane! That’s a great starting place that appeals to many people. But my favorite reason to work with beavers is because its good for us and our creeks and our wildlife. Because humans need clean water. Because it can lead to such important long-term benefits for our water and our planet.

Pitt Meadows operations superintendent Randy Evans said that the city’s flat terrain makes it easy for flooding to occur.

He has asked if engineers would sign off on such flow devices or pipes, but none so far is willing to do so and risk liability from possible flooding.

Such pipes could easily clog up, which could lead to flooding, he added.

“The device, when I looked at them, they’re very specific for certain locations.”

He added that the city tries to discourage beavers by wrapping trees trunks in protective material and by demolishing beaver dams, often several times, in the hope that beavers will move on.

“Trapping is the last alternative that we use.”

Well okay Randy Evans – we expected this kind of quote from you. And I’m glad trapping is your last option. We just need to refine your definition of LAST. How about you try a well-installed flow device first and then if it doesn’t work you can bring in the traps.

It can be your new ‘last’. First try it the right way.

You know, like Chelan sherriff yesterday in Washington state which posted these photos of their work saving the beaver that crossed the road which he wisely guided with a snow shovel instead of his fingers.

Well done officer!

BEAVER GOSSIP

heidi08 Educational January 30, 2019

Yesterday’s Facebook was SO exciting for beavers. First I posted Ben’s “salty” article in the beaver management forum and OSU researcher Vanessa Petro wrote that it was misleading because they had been including tidal beavers in their research for years. And i tried to mollify by saying maybe you’ve been working on this issue for years but its very important that articles like Ben’s get written because its definitely not widely known. And then Ben stood up for himself and said it wasn’t fair to call it misleading but that he wished he could have interviewed her. And then they got more polite and back and forthed and Ben said they could hash it out at the beaver conference and Vanessa said it was too bad she wouldn’t be there this year because she’s still on maternity leave!

And I said that was disappointing because I had been looking forward to the video of them arm-wrestling! Sarah Koenisberg said she would have filmed it. And Ben laughed and said his money was on Vanessa!

Conversations don’t usually get that hot on the beaver management page but it was fun to observe – especially because I loved that article SO much and can vividly remember the chief pathologist at CDFG saying that our kits probably died because they were in salt water.

!!!!!!

Anyway them the Norwegian beaver project posted a photo of a beaver living in an old Alaskan mining machine and asked where was the oddest place the group had seen beaver living.

Which prompted one member to post this:

Gordon Fjeld The most surprising place I have observed beaver and filming beaver, was in 2007 in the center of town the Gjøvik. They had actually built a house inside Hunton Fiber, in an old basement that the factory did not use any more. The beavers used the old pipes that lead into the river, as a safe and easy track to eat and collect food and branches for construction. This was shown at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Company) the same year. Great experience!!

And he shared this video which I am going to share with you and if you’re like me your mind will be totally blown. Forget the cockroaches taking over the world after we burn it up, my money is on the beavers. At least watch until that little kit comes out of the pipe. So sweet.

You’re welcome.

BEAVERS AND SALTWATER

heidi08 Beavers and saltwater January 29, 2019

How wonderful to wake up and see author Ben Goldfarb writing about coastal beavers. Beavers in salty tidal marshes happens to be more than a little relevant to our story, and even though we think of them more as ‘urban beavers’ our beavers had to contend with tides and saltwater and it’s nice to see them written about.

Better yet, the article for the VERY FIRST TIME uses Suzi Eszterhas wonderful photos of OUR VERY BEAVERS.

It’s interesting to hear how much isn’t know about beavers in this ecosystem. And I found it fascinating to hear the vet mention maybe some beavers can just tolerate salt water more than others. Certainly it felt, when our kits died in 2015 that the very high tides that summer just carried a secret weapon that ended them.

But i am relieved to learn that no one really knows.

The Gnawing Question of Saltwater Beavers

Scientists have long overlooked beavers in the intertidal zone. Now they’re counting on the freshwater rodents to restore Washington’s coastal ecosystems.

Authored by by Ben Goldfarb

Yet beavers aren’t just coastal wanderers, they’re also residents—potential health consequences be damned. Greg Hood, senior research scientist at the Skagit River System Cooperative in Washington, says biologists have overlooked beavers in the state’s tidal shrublands, a liminal zone washed twice daily by the ocean. Until recently, Hood adds, estuarine beavers were considered bizarre anomalies, when they were considered at all. “You don’t find what you don’t look for,” he says.

In freshwater environs, the dam builders are the ultimate keystone species, their ponds and wetlands furnishing habitat for creatures from mink frogs to wood ducks to moose. Hood’s research suggests beavers are equally indispensable along the coast, engineering deep pools for fish, including juvenile salmon, in estuaries plagued by habitat loss. Acknowledging the importance—indeed the existence—of coastal beavers might just be vital to re-creating a lost intertidal world: an ecosystem sculpted by rodent teeth, undone by human hands.

True, our beavers never made it as far as the ocean but they had to contend with plenty of salt water and plenty of tides. Find 15 minutes and listen to this whole important story, intricately written by Ben and eloquently read by Heather Walter.

What this dam lacks in aesthetics, however, it makes up for in hydraulic brilliance. With the tide out, Bailey explains, this dam holds back water that would otherwise run to the sea, forming a deep bathtub in which beavers shelter from black bears and coyotes. Come back six hours later, and the returning tide will have filled this channel, completely submerging the dam. “You could kayak right over the top of it and not even know it was there,” Bailey says.

In other words, the estuary’s beavers seem to anticipate tidal fluctuations, erecting their dams in places that ensure water remains even when the tide reaches its ebb. The US Army Corps of Engineers could hardly have done it better.

Beavers’ diets consist of the inner bark of trees such as willow (above), as well as cottonwood, aspen, alder, and other deciduous species. Photo by Suzi Eszterhas/Minden Pictures

Tadaa! Recognize that handsome face? That’s our second mother carrying willow (notice the reddish tinge and visible teats?) branches lovingly chopped by the always helpful treasurer of Worth A Dam in our humble Alhambra Creek. Notice that this is a rare photo that shows upper teeth. And isn’t it fitting that this loving article about beavers doing the impossible should feature a photo of our beavers doing the impossible?

In a sense, then, our coastal beaver blind spot is an artifact of history—a form of “ecological amnesia,” as Frances Backhouse put it in her book Once They Were Hats. Just as sun-blotting flocks of passenger pigeons and earth-shaking herds of bison vanished from our skies and prairies, the combination of marsh drainage and trapping wiped beavers from our coastlines and, eventually, our memories.

We will remember. Don’t worry. Go listen to the whole thing. It’s really worth it.

THE TOAD NOT TAKEN

heidi08 Beavers and toads January 28, 2019

It’s time to talk about toads.

Not just any toad. mind you. One special, Californian and very, very endangered toad. He happens to be poisonous to the touch and there is no known anti-venom.

This handsome blunt-nosed guy is the arroyo toad. Like that boyfriend you had in college, he only lives in parts of southern california and baja because he thrives on dry creek beds called washes that only fill with water part of the year. In 1994 he was placed on the endangered species list by USFWS. A decade later they discovered a breeding population in Monterey and toyed with bumping him down to “threatened’ but ultimately decided against it.

Factors contributing to the toad’s decline include urban development, agricultural conversion, mining and prospecting activities, operation of dams and changes in water flow, alteration of the natural fire regime, and road development and maintenance. Additionally, the introduction of non-native predator species, like the bullfrog, and limited water resources due to drought, led the species to be at risk of extinction.

Now i know what you’re thinking. You’re remembering all the times we discussed articles about beaver habitat being important for frogs and toads. FWS must be thrilled about having beavers discovered in San Diego!

A035
Not so fast. Here is the 2009 species report.

Did you catch that? ‘Beavers, which are not native to this area” .

Of course when the center for biological diversity was called onto the scene they repeated this quote VERBATIM because everyone knows beavers just cause trouble. And beavers could never have lived in these arid places right? Because beavers need water to thrive.

See if beavers were native to califoria then beavers and arroyo toads would have gotten along for thousands of years and entirely adapted to each other and the vast threats to their reproduction and survival must be caused by other things that are very expensive to fix – like development and impermeable surfaces and freeways. If FWS just continues on their daydream that beavers are invasive and don’t belong in Fallbrook for example, they can just bring in USDA to kill them and all is good.

Which they have been doing. Over and over. for the last 50 years when beavers show up in the Santa Margarita River or Camp Pendleton for example. They are trapped out. Because of threats to the Arroyo toad. And it doesn’t matter that we published a paper in the journal of fish and game that documents how beavers belong in southern california and have been there since long before they were RE-introduced..

Because beavers aren’t endangered and the arroyo toad is. So there.

There’s one final irony in all this and it has to do with the strongest most enduring population of arroyo toads in California which is Sespe creek in Santa Barbara, And if that creek sounds familiar it should because Sespe creek is the location of one of the beaver skulls documented in Grinnell’s famously wrong book about where beavers belong in California. He didn’t think they belonged there so he highlighted the map with a question mark which dangled suggestively for nearly 80 years.<
That is, until the mighty Rick Lanman tracked down the correspondence of Joseph Grinnell and ornithologist John Hornung.

Recently digitized correspondence between Grinnell and Hornung has become available and settles this longstanding question. When Grinnell wrote Hornung asking for further details regarding the specimen; Hornung (1914:1-2) wrote back: “

“…In reference to the beaver, I will say that I murdered the specimen in question 3 miles east of Cold Springs. I was on horseback and saw on the river, enormously swollen as the date which you have [19 May 1906], what appeared to me as a dead large dog surrounded by branches of a big stump. This stump was swimming in the water, but anchored in a tangled mass of some kind of a vine. After some maneuvering I could reach this animal with a stick. As soon as I touched it, it showed its teeth, and I knew then what unexpected find I had made…A shot ended the animal’s sufferings, and I secured the skull which you have…”.

Hartman Cold Springs Ranch (34° 33’ N, 119° 15’ W) is located on upper Sespe Creek in the Sierra Madre Mountains at 1,025 m elevation and the creek along this stretch is quite low gradient, i.e. suitable beaver habitat. Interestingly there is a Beaver Camp on the USGS GNIS at 1,000 m elevation about 1 km east of Hartman Cold Springs Ranch, although its toponomastic origin is not known (Figure 3). In addition to the 1906 Sespe Creek beaver specimen, Hornung (1914:2) told Grinnell:

“There are still quite a few beaver in Southern California, myself being so lucky as to get hold of one as late as Dec. 24, 1913, 3 weeks ago.”

There aren’t many slam dunks in historical scientific literature, but if you are hearing a ringing in your ears it’s because THAT was one of the most memorable. i can still hear Rick’s excited voice on the phone as he breathlessly read back the email of the researcher who tracked this down.

i know we all wrote folks involved in the perpetuation of this misunderstanding. And I know we all sent copies of our paper and asked them to rethink their findings. But I can’t say whether USFWS will be able to hear the sound of progress.

Sometimes having the wrong answer is just so much easier.

BEAVER DETECTIVES

heidi08 Beavers and water January 27, 2019

Did I mention that beavers are really, really amazing? The old saying ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way‘ must have been inspired by them. Because beavers always seem to find a way. They just do.

Eric R. contacted me thru the website a while ago. after being sold on Ben’s book and thinking beavers could make a difference in San Diego county where he lives. He was very bummed to learn that California doesn’t allow reintroduction and wanted to teach about how beavers could affect groundwater. He recently went looking for beavers at their last known location in temecula but saw nothing. So he decided to look closer to home.

Guess what he found in Fallbrook?

Fallbrook is in San Diego County at the very bottom of our state, This is in Sandia creek where it crosses the Santa Margarita trail. This makes it farther south in California than any beavers we currently know about. Just in case you aren’t sure this is a beaver dam, he took more photos just to be safe side.

Well, will you look at that! Fresh beaver chew in San Diego county! The first time he goes looking for beaver he find it! Eric R. was blessed on his first beaver-searching trek. Either there are so few creeks in the area it was easy to know where to look or he just really has a feel for these things.

Searching around on google I can see that there’s been sign of beavers on the Santa Margarita going back for decades of longer.. They show up, are trapped, and somehow show up again.

The Santa Margarita River begins at the confluence of Temecula Creek and Murietta creek which is not too far from Lake Skinner where the trapping of beavers lead to the huge appellate suit and the Management by Assertion paper.

These are likely the great great grandchildren of the beavers that our attorney friend saved all those years ago. Which is nice to think about and I sent Mitch the photos this morning.

Every so often we encounter a new voice that wants to reintroduce beaver in to Southern California. But they are already there. We just need to stop trapping them and let them do their jobs.

And now they have a new champion.