Month: February 2019

BEAVERS RECEIVE REPRIEVE

heidi08 Beavers and Scotland February 23, 2019

Great news has settled on our beaver neighbors to the Northeast today in the form of a beaver reprieve. No more killing without a permit in Scotland. If you’re anything like me you will be snorting through your coffee cup right now and saying “About frickin’ time!” and it really is, but we should still all still celebrate.

Scottish Government to give beavers protected status, outlawing their shooting without a licence

The Scottish Government has agreed to give beavers protected status, The Courier can reveal. The move will stamp out unregulated culling by making it illegal for them to be shot without a licence. It follows a plea from the Scottish Wildlife Trust after a female beaver was found shot in the chest at a Perthshire nature reserve.

The trust was among several conservation groups that signed an open letter to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in December, urging her to take action to safeguard the species and crackdown on uncontrolled shootings.

The Scottish Government will today confirm that the Eurasian or European species will be added to the list of European Protected Species of Animals, protected under Scottish law, with effect from May 1.

Come may first it won’t be open season on beavers, farmers must be SO disappointed! And it only took three and a half years. Imagine! Boy if I was a beaver I’d be lying REALLY low these next 65 days as everyone shoots as many as they can before the new rules.

Shooting will only be allowed under licence, managed by Scottish Natural Heritage.

Environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham said: “The Scottish Government believes in the highest standards of animal welfare – for both wild and domestic animals – and we felt it was high time that beavers enjoyed the same legal protection as other species like bats, dolphins, wildcats and otters.”

She said: “There are few species that have such significant and, largely positive, influence on the health and function of our ecosystems. The importance of beavers to Scotland’s biodiversity is huge.

As a woman who has waited breathlessly for this moment, allow me totell you now with all sincerity:

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to celebrate with this video.

FESTIVAL XII IS ON ITS WAY!

heidi08 Beaver Art February 22, 2019

Amelia says it’s her favorite cover ever, I saw it’s pretty dam wonderful, doesn’t it make you want to start searching for the key right now? Now it goes off to Bay Nature so that it can appear as an ad in their April issue and tell all those nature folks to JOIN US!

This morning there’s pleasant beaver news from Washington State, which is trying hard not to be too alarmed about beavers in their city parks. They do better than most, I can tell you!

Beavers are active in Mercer Island’s Luther Burbank Park

Before snow blanketed the city’s parks, visitors to Luther Burbank on Mercer Island noticed some other phenomena of nature, including fallen tree branches and gnawed-on trunks near the shore and wetlands.

The 77-acre park on the shores of Lake Washington is a rest stop for many species of migratory birds, and is home to at least one family of beavers. Islanders have recently noticed their handiwork on some of the Poplar trees near the shoreline.

Kim Frappier, the city’s natural resources specialist, said that she and the park’s urban forestry specialist “are monitoring the beaver activity within the park and working to both protect the beaver’s habitat as well as take measures to protect high value trees along the shoreline.”

Isn’t that just Washington all over! They’re trying to protect the trees AND the beavers. Except of course how can you be “Trying”? The trees aren’t wrapped or painted with sand. Are you trying to protect them with warding spells or something? With positive energy? Maybe thoughts and prayers?

Much of Luther Burbank Park has been left undeveloped to foster a variety of wildlife, including 135 species of birds, 50 species of waterfowl, raccoons, beaver, muskrats, tree frogs and rabbits. Many of these animals live in the wetlands that occupy the north and south ends of the park.

“Please help us protect our long-toothed furry neighbors by staying on established trails, protecting and respecting their habitat, and observing them from a distance,” Frappier wrote.

Hmm. I guess all those are good things, although I don’t suppose a beaver much cares if you stay on established trails or pick your soda bottle for that matter. I assume you knew this was coming or that it happened before? That tree on the right loos like a delicious aspen or alder so I’m sure this happened before.

Since Luther park about 10 miles from NOAA fisheries and Michael Pollock I’m thinking those beavers have a better than average chance of survival. But I’ve been wrong before.

LINDSEY BEAVER UPDATE

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation February 21, 2019

It looks like bad news from Lindsey about the rescued beaver from Martinez. She isn’t getting better and staff and the vet are meeting at the end of the week to discuss her lack of progress. In all likelihood they will euthanize, she is still looking ‘neuro’ – which is very sad but to be honest I would have expected this decision much earlier.

There is a part of me that is outraged on her behalf, I’m sure I have brain damage too, does that mean I should be euthanized?

And a part of me is grateful they tried so long, which I’m sure is partly because of the ‘fame’ and partly because there’s a new vet and partly because there weren’t a million other baby birds demanding their care yet.

Her last meal should be apples. She deserves that much.

The banquet at the state of the beaver conference was last night, there aren’t many rumors to report yet, but it seems like everyone is learning and having fun. Janet said she is on her 5th page of notes and I told her that next year she should be the one to present on beavers to SARSAS and she said she just might. So that’s excellent.

The festival is approved by parks and rec and they will wave our fee again. I heard from Amelia that she is in the final painting stages of the beaver poster, which I’m thrilled about. Everyone I’ve shown it to wants to color it in too. I truly love how the wildlife is dotted along the path and how everything ends at “Biodivers City”. X marks the spot!

Just imagine how cool it will be in color! We are so lucky Amelia has donated such a body of work to our beavers, and I’m of course a terrible taskmaster wishing for the impossible and imaging so many things that she can add and incorporate. Well. just know it’s appreciated!

Now on to a lovely article from the UK about saving our creeks from flooding. Guess what they recommend? Go on, guess!

Re-wilding Streams: Letting Nature Control Flooding

Government flood management investment, often reacting to events rather than in anticipation of them, has tended to focus on hard flood defences – channelling water faster elsewhere. But long term, is this just making things worse? Is there a more natural alternative to slow the flow as nature originally intended?

There now seems to be a consensus across communities, water and insurance companies, engineers and conservationists that we need to put back complexity into our river systems – helping creatures move from one place to another, creating natural barriers and ecosystems that can soak up surface water higher up in the river catchment.

Elsewhere in southern Britain, Beavers, known as “nature’s architects”, are being used to re-wild our rivers and streams.

In 2012, the villages of Lydbrook and Upper Lydbrook in the Forest of Dean were badly flooded. Some £290,000 was spent by the Council to replace just one section of culvert, as funding was limited. Seeing that this hasn’t been enough to reduce flood risk, last summer beavers were released into a large penned-off section to build dams and create ponds on Greathough Brook, which feeds into the River Wye, and slow the flow of water through the steep-sided, wooded valley at times of torrential rainfall.

The Government gave the backing to the scheme and launched guidance for assessing applications for further trial releases across England to hold back the waters in a more natural way and improve biodiversity.

And it’s free. (Well, it will be once your population establishes.) Don’t forget that! Beavers will do all this work for you and they won’t ask for a dime, although they will take your willow as payment. Seems a fair trade?

EXPERTS DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING

heidi08 Beaver Art February 20, 2019

Yesterday I was giddy with excitement thinking about the start of the State of the Beaver Conference, I got snippets of news from friends Janet Thew, Molly Folly and Judy Atkinson about how the day was going. I heard that around 35 federal employees who were signed up to be there cancelled because of the government shutdown had already devoured their vacation days. I heard that Ben Goldfarb and Sarah Koenisberg’s talk on the most effective ways to persuade others about beavers mentioned Martinez in glowing terms and that was nice. I heard that Derek Gow received his Worth A Dam t-shirt and he gave me back a carved beaver he made that I will surely treasure. I was nice to be mentioned and remembered, even if I couldn’t be there in person.

But now it’s been a whole day that they get to talk about beavers and I can’t listen, so I’m done living vicariously and plan to just bitter, Yes,there is inspiration I am missing out on and yes, there are experts there that I desperately need to learn from, but inspiration is overrated and experts don’t know everything.

Let’s tell secrets and be bitter together.

For example. let me tell you a well-kept secret about one of the smartest countries in the entire frickin’ world – the country that passes out nobel prizes for pete’s sake – and show how truly stupid they really are.

Are you sitting down?

This is the coat of arms of the municipality of Härnösand, Sweden. Painted by Vladimir A. Sagerlund when he was the heraldic artist at the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet). It Harnosand is just across the Baltic sea from Finland and close enough to Duncan Haley in Norway to know better. When I first saw it I thought it must be an ancient relic from back before we knew better than to say beavers eat fish. (Pike?) But alas, no. It is the current image by the modern artist recapturing an image that has been represented since at least the 1500’s.

Wiki says :The arms were officially granted in 1931. The arms were first granted in 1586 by King Johan III. The arms probably indicated the importance of fur trading and fishing for the new town.

Heidi says: the arms probably indicate that everyone who has ever lived in this town in this town is an idiot and should never, never be taken seriously. Honestly, was the flying pig heraldry already taken?

Experts don’t know everything.

I SEE BEAVER PEOPLE

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Fire Prevention February 19, 2019

Guess who’s whose stop motion made it on the Verge?

‘Dam good’ video shows how beavers could fight fires

An adorable video that shows how beavers can fight wildfires is making the rounds on Twitter, and it’s everything science communication should be: short, compelling, clear, and about beavers.

The stop-motion video is the work of Emily Fairfax, a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder. It shows a beaver building a dam and transforming the forest upstream into a marshy wetland filled with splotches of vegetation in shades of green. When a fire rages through the forest, the ponds of water and healthy plants protect the area above the beaver dam from the flames. That includes the beaver, which holds up a little flag that says “I’m okay!”

So far, the video has more than ~~180,000~~ 292000 views on Twitter, and it’s getting the delighted reactions it deserves. Conservation experts, teachers, and beaver advocates have all asked Fairfax for her permission to share the video. Others want to know how she made it, and, as it turns out, it’s pretty low-tech: Fairfax set up a beaver dam in her kitchen, snapped photos on her iPhone, and used an app to turn them into a stop-motion video.

Ohhh it makes me so happy that Emily gets a fitting rollout for her efforts! Think of ALL those people delightfully forced to make the connection between beavers and fire prevention! Think of how powerful broadcast this is while you’re basically looking for a job, to do a little wonderful thing that makes headlines in a field your ground-breaking research pretty much invented!

The whole thing started because Fairfax is wrapping up her PhD and is studying the ways that beavers can help their habitat withstand hazards like fire and drought. Now that she’s applying to jobs, she’s spending a lot of time trying to explain her research, and she realized she kept reaching for a visual aid. “I’m trying to talk with my hands, and I want to pull up all these pictures on my phone,” she tells The Verge. So she made a video instead.

She set the scene on a cork board at her kitchen table with construction paper, rocks from her garden, and leftover fake plants from her wedding. She made the stream, beaver dam, pond, wetland, vegetation, and the fire out of felt. The beaver was the easy part. “I already had a bunch of little beaver toys because people give me beaver stuff for the holidays every year,” she says.

HAHAHAHAHA when Jon and I read that article aloud we laughed and laughed. Ohh little phd beaver girl just starting out, there’s such a decorated road ahead of you! I still resent a little Ben’s description of our home in the book Eager, but it’s a fair cop. See what your house looks after doing this work for a decade,

To my knowledge, the world’s largest collection of beaver-themed tchotchkes, knickknacks, and memorabilia is housed in an oak-shaded street in Martinez, California. To enter, you must pass beneath the mural that hangs over the front porch — a reddish beaver, stick grasped in forepaws, tail raised in salutation. The dim interior has the feel of a shrine. Beaver magnets cling to the refrigerator; plush beavers perch atop the bureaus; a gallery’s worth of beaver paintings, prints, and posters stare down from every wall. Gnawed stumps rest next to the fireplace. Embroidered beaver napkins hang in the kitchen. In the backyard, a clay beaver crouches in the birdbath. If I’d come during Christmas, I would have seen a cardboard beaver cut-out, roughly the size of a black bear, strung with lights on the front lawn.

Ben Goldfarb, Eager: The surprising secret lives of beavers and why they Matter.

Don’t feel bad, Emily. You’re off to an AWESOME start! I just know that someday soon National Geographic will describe you too as “Colorful”!

It took her a few tries to snap about 300 photos on her phone, which she stitched together with the Stop Motion Pro app. Then she added sound effects in iMovie — including a banjo soundtrack. The music is a nod to documentaries about beavers, Fairfax told The Verge. “There’s always banjo music playing when they’re building, and I don’t know why,” she says. “I can’t break tradition!”

She tweeted the video on Sunday, not expecting it to have much reach beyond what Fairfax calls her “beaver people” — a small community of people interested in beaver science. She went on a hike, and when she came back, the tweet had blown up. “I’m getting comments from K-12 educators, I’m getting comments from land managers,” she says. “Ultimately that’s the goal of something like this, to make people interested who wouldn’t otherwise read my papers, or come to my conference presentations.”

I love being called “beaver people”. In fact I love it with a fiery passion. Thank you Emily for naming the fantastic club I worked so hard to join.

Fairfax thinks part of the video’s appeal is its brevity. “Scientists have great tendency to ramble on — myself included — when we’re talking about things we really like,” she says. This video, by contrast, is less than a minute long. And the best part is that it doesn’t use any of the jargon that can make science so impenetrable because it doesn’t have any words.

Ahh what a sweet way to graduate into beaver life. Emily I an SO happy for you and all the exciting beaver places you’re going to go and all the exciting beaver people you’re going to meet and inspire. In the meantime I’m going to believe that that some cousin or college roomate of some kind of lower aid to Gavin Newsome is going to see this and the conversation about California’s monster fire season is being helped by beavers is going to come up!

Maybe as soon as tomorrow. What a perfect way to start beaver conference week. Even though we can’t be there we get to celebrate your wonderful addition to the conversation. Congratulations Emily!