Month: March 2019

NICE THINGS TO SAY

Some days there are only nice things to say about beavers. Like today for instance, when the news is all glowing and charitable about their beavery pursuits. Like the very nice promo the beaver believer’s documentary this week.

Walla Walla premiere of ‘The Beaver Believers’ set Wednesday

Sometimes the best solutions to the biggest problems can be found in the most unlikely of places, according to a release.

Five scientists and a sassy, spicy hairdresser, tackle climate change one stick at a time in the film “The Beaver Believers,” which will see its Walla Walla premiere at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Power House. The whimsical story is about an unlikely cadre of activists who share a common vision: restoring the industrious, ingenious, bucktoothed North American beaver/engineer to the watersheds of the arid West.

Sarah’s film has definately been making wonderful waves around the country, and I’m sure it was an extra special treat to have it showing in her home town of Walla Walla. Congratulations on a job well done!

,The believers encourage viewers to embrace a new paradigm for managing western lands, one that partners with the natural world rather than overpowers it.

Amen.

Just reading this headline from the Chewalah Independent in Washington state made happy. I’m sure you’ll understand why.

Known for their elaborate dams, they create habitat for more than just themselves…

According to scientists, giant beavers that could have been as large as seven feet existed until 10,000 years ago. Their smaller modern day version is still a marvel to behold. Beavers can create dams that cause creeks to flood surrounding wetlands.

While this is bad if you’re a farmer, it’s a good thing for some aquatic species which rely on the dam’s created habitat.

Meadows created by beaver dams can also feed deer and other animals. Their dams can also provide protection for young salmon and trout.

Beavers make their dams out of wood, mud and rocks. They’ll chew down small trees and may even dig a canal to float trees back to their pond. Their webbed feet make them excellent at swimming. They warn each other by slapping their wide tails on the water. You may have remembered doing this with a canoe paddle at Browns Lake, only to get the same reaction from a beaver’s tail in response.

And hey you know what? It turns out those dams can recharge the water table which is great news for those farmers after all. So everyone wins! Welcome to beaver thunder-dome. An infinite number of species enter and every single one is better off for it.

I was amused to see this bright headline from Connecticut, because after watching beavers closely for many many years of mornings I never ever saw a single ‘dispute over a branch’.

Beaver video shows the cutest dispute over a stick

Matthew Male, who describes himself as ”a biologist sort of” — he has a degree in biology and works for the American Museum of Natural History, as well as for the Audubon Shop in Madison — managed to catch some beaver video Tuesday, and it’s right out of Animal Planet.

The video shows one beaver munching on what must be a particularly tasty stick. Then another, presumably more important beaver comes along, ousts the first beaver and takes ownership of the stick.

“I just happened upon them,” Male said. “The video was through a spotting scope. The beavers were maybe 20 feet away.”

The video was taken in Male’s hometown of Chester, but he’s seen them all over the area.

For example, on the way to the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. “There’s a big lodge there,” Male said. “At least in this part of Connecticut there’s beaver dams everywhere.”

What I will say to Matthew is that beavers, while not being pacifists, are certainly pragmatists. Arguing over a stick takes a great deal of effort and most of the time beavers would just prefer to get a different one. Even in this instance where a kit makes a point of stealing mom’s apple, she makes sure the actual confrontation is never head-on.

BEAVER SCATTER PLOT

heidi08 beavers and otters, Beavers and saltwater, Beavers and Scotland March 21, 2019

I generally did poorly at algebra and dreaded math as the bane of all existence. I avoided or dropped such classes with alarming regularity, and when a professor announced that I could never succeed in her course without at least algebra II I admit I burst into tears. But somehow I eventually found my way to a champion statistics instructor who wanted students to be able to do all calculations by hand and I instead of faiiing . I strangely excelled. Unlike every other class I had ever been in for my entire life I did every scrap of homework and even did some of it twice. I got every answer correct on every final and went on to became the friendly research assistant of the teacher. When I graduated I even received an award. Statistics just made sense to me.

Add this to the mysterious fact that when Jon, who all his life had excelled at math and science, took stats in college he received his lowest grade ever. Go figure, Math and statistics: I honestly think the fields tap into different parts of the brain. They are as different as water-skiing and carpentry.

Which is why it’s time to talk about scatterplots.

A scatterplot consists of an X axis (the up and down axis), a Y axis (the side to side axis), and a series of dots. Each dot on the scatterplot represents one observation from a data set. Sometimes the two variables aren’t related at all, (like height and IQ), and then the scatterplot looks like an amorphous jelly fish-like blob. But sometimes they’re VERY related, so that when one goes up the other follows, like smoking and cancer, and then the scatterplot looks like almost like a straight line or an arrow pointing to obvious conclusions.

The scatterplot of learning about beavers based on your geographic location is generally consistent by region. If you are in the midwest, for example, you likely know very very little. But if you are in Washington state you know a whole bunch. There are pockets of various arrows and pockets of jellyfish. Recently certain areas of the world have started to get much, much smarter indeed and that brings us to the beaver scatterplot.

Take Scotland for instance.

Beavers to ‘spread naturally’ across Scotland after Tory bid to prevent legal protection fails

Beavers will be allowed to “spread naturally” across Scotland, the SNP’s Environment Minister has said after a Tory bid to prevent them being given legal protection was rejected.

Roseanna Cunningham dismissed as “somewhat apocalyptic” warnings that the move would cost farmers thousands of pounds and hit some of Scotland’s best salmon rivers.

She told MSPs that there would be no attempt to “formally contain them in certain areas”, although she said “pop-up populations in completely separate” parts would not be tolerated.

Now it’s good that beavers will be tolerated across the country and that granted protected species status, but a nation that has lived 400 years without beavers doesn’t exactly know what “Spreading naturally” looks like, so the odds of beaver showing up and being considered “unnatural” are fairly high. It’s already been happening for the last 10 years in fact. Add to this the fact that there are some regions that are so geographically inaccessible or so blocked off with motorways that beavers will never get back unless they’re introduced. Don’t they deserve beavers? Our beaver friends in Scotland aren’t thrilled with this pronouncement, but as I always say:

Baby steps for babies.

She told MSPs: “What we anticipate now is that beavers will simply be allowed to spread naturally…Now they are here they must be left simply to spread into a natural range.

Meanwhile, for an army of young conservationists in America, their future looks bright with beavers, that is if the famed ‘green new deal’ has anything to say about it.

National service for the environment – what an army of young conservationists could achieve

A modern volunteer army of conservationists could get to work in every country, adjusting their efforts according to the environmental needs of each setting. The first task set could be in environmental monitoring – collecting data on pollution and wildlife abundance. These surveys would provide invaluable information about the health of ecosystems and how they are changing.

Ecosystems could then benefit from projects which reintroduce species and restore habitats. Mass tree planting could absorb atmospheric carbon and provide new habitat for returning wildlife. Wetlands – coastal ecosystems which protect against sea level rise – could be expanded with vegetation which would also create sanctuaries for migratory birds. Reintroduced beavers and other ecosystem engineers could act as animal recruits who create new habitats, such as dams and lakes, which allow even more species to thrive.

How would you like to be a new college graduate working for a summer reintroducing beavers! Fixing drought one beaver at a time. I can’t think of anything better – for the planet OR for a young ecologist.

Finally, I read this morning that our own Morro Bay in California is about to get a lot smarter, thanks to Kate Lundquist of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

Morro Bay Science Explorations with the Estuary Program

Join the Morro Bay National Estuary Program for our Morro Bay Science Explorations talk!

Title of talk: Wildlife Conservation and Restoration in Our Creeks.

Kate Lundquist, Director of WATER Institute, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center.
Topic: The history of beaver in California and the importance of beaver to watershed restoration.

- March 21, 2019
- 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
- Free

WONDERFUL! The estuary is always getting a great deal of press for cute baby sea otters, its about time they saw some beavers coming their direction! Good luck Kate, and don’t forget to mention the most famous estuary beavers, ahem.

SHERRI AND TELL(I) ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver relocation March 20, 2019

How did this ever slip by me? I am sure I read the title about “70 years of trapping” and it went into the recycle folder. I’ve just about had it with the glorious recollections of an aging trapper, but I will NEVER NEVER get tired of articles like this.

LEAVE IT TO TIPPIE: Nationally-renowned beaver trapper recalls decades of tales

Sherri Tippie sits at a table in her home that is filled with stuffed beavers, which she collects.
Portrait by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado

Tippie — a Denver local who has been called North America’s best beaver trapper — is featured in “The Beaver Believers”, a documentary underscoring the role that beavers, and their dams, play in preserving scarce water as climate change and drought intensifies.

Early this month the film was screened at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in Denver, and it’s picked up awards on a cross-country tour.

Tippie features prominently in the full-length documentary alongside five scientists introducing beavers into habitats as a means of preserving increasingly scarce water. Although Tippie is not a scientist — in fact, she’s a hairdresser by trade — she’s become an authority on beavers and their ecosystems through more than 30 years of trapping the aquatic rodents in Colorado.

Ahhh Sherri! It is wonderful to read about you getting the press you deserve with Sarah’s documentary. I hope there was a long time of discussion about this movie and why beaver matter. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see her still fighting the good fight and getting credit for it.

For decades, Tippie has fielded requests from local governments and landowners to safely remove beavers from metro-area streams and irrigation ditches where they do what they do best: Down trees, build dams and flood waterways.

Instead of killing the industrious but irksome creatures, Tippie live-traps entire families of beavers, holds them in her Denver backyard for several days and then deposits them safe and sound where landowners or governments want them, usually in Colorado’s high country.

For Tippie, beavers are more of an obsession than an occupation.

Denver home is chock-full of beaver-themed knick-knacks: Tiny clay beavers she’d made herself, piles of beaver stuffed animals and even bath towels threaded with little beavers. Her sweater had a picture of a beaver on it.

HA! Tell me about it! I’m sure beavers just arrive on your doorstep like ours. It’s not so much of a decorative flair as a constant stream of things coming your direction. Believe me, I’m learning all about it.

As a recognized authority on trapping, she’s been featured in many newspapers during her three decades of work including Sentinel Colorado, Time and her favorite — Costco’s magazine.

For Tippie, beavers are more than just a beautiful animal: They’re a keystone species that create entire ecosystems by damming streams, creating rich conditions for plant and animal life and keeping water in dry soil for longer.

She spoke frankly about local governments and politicians who she thinks are abandoning beavers and destroying the environment. She swears like a sailor and isn’t afraid to tell people how she feels, she said.

Ahh Sherri. Speaking truth to power in every room she visits. That’s the way to change the world. You have been an inspiration to me for more years than I can count.

Tippie was a natural subject to feature in “The Beaver Believers”, said Washington-based director Sarah Koenigsberg. She originally heard Tippie speak at a beaver education event in Utah, she said.

“This woman is a firecracker. I’ve got to track her down,” Koenigsberg recalled thinking. “Obviously, she captivated everyone.”

Koenigsberg met with and filmed scientists across the West; and in Colorado, her crew camped out in Tippie’s backyard for about 10 days. They forged a deep friendship.

Lucky Sarah. Lucky beavers. When I am at the edge of endurance and sick and tired of all the negative attention beavers receive in the world, Sherri always inspires me to try a little bit longer. She remains a national treasure and we should all be grateful for her many decades long hard work.

IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST JUST BEFORE IT GOES COMPLETELY BLACK

heidi08 Beaver Behavior March 19, 2019

Why do I always forget days like yesterday? Where I found out renting a restroom for the beaver festival was going to cost 500 dollars more because of the corporate takeover and three exhibitors asked us if we could loan them tents for the event? I was too stunned to ask “Will they be made of gold or come with celebrity attendants?” Oh and the event insurance was on the wrong form and would have to be reissued for the city. Sometimes I wish Worth A Dam could just be the supply-laden money-bags that people apparently imagine we are – just stocked with tables, tents and insurance forms lying around in the attic. One exhibit asked for fifty dollars to offset their costs of providing information and getting to the events which, I admit, left me kind of open-mouthed. Last year we have 53 exhibits. If they all needed that our cost for that part of the festival would have been 2650 dollars!

It seemed for a moment that everything was going wrong. That this would be the very worst festival EVER and that we would never be able to pull it off. I had a fluttery sense of imminent doom for half the day, and then I remembered this vaguely familiar thing happening last year and every other year since 2008.

Oh, right. It is actually always like this, Before it succeeds it feels like failure and that’s just the way it is throwing a large event like a festival or a wedding.

I remembered just in time to breathe and was rewarded by news that our sound man would help again, the restroom could grandfather us in for a lower price and three of the five bands were confirmed.

Baby steps for babies. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Meanwhile there were a couple shout-outs worth sharing, first for beavers and secondly for our friend Ben Goldfarb. Lets start with credit for the architect.

Nature’s best architects

We have all heard the phrase “Home sweet home”. It is not only true for human beings, but this phrase applies to animals and birds too as they also have homes.

We love our homes, and we construct and maintain them with great care and pride. Similarly, animals and birds also make their homes. Some of these animals construct their homes with great skill and efforts to make it suitable for their requirements. They may build these amazing and unique homes and structures in groups or in their individual capacity. In other words, these animals are amazing architects due to the manner in which they build and construct structures for living, with specialised and sophisticated features that suit the particular needs of the animal.

Some of the structures are developed as a result of teamwork, such as ants’ communities and beehives, while in other cases individuals take on the solo task to construct a specialised structural design. These structures provide them a safe zone from predators and external factors, and also help them catch prey easily.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Bees and weaver birds and termite mounds. I can think of one more who deserves mention.

Beavers are very adaptive to the aquatic ecosystem where they dam water by blocking the river flow to live in the pooled water. They are famous for this specialty and are known as one of the best builders in the animal kingdom.

With the help of sharp incisors, they destroy trees and gather branches to stake them up as a barrier in a flowing river where water pools and they build their lodge to live there.

By blocking the river flow with twigs, branches, grasses and leaves interwoven in mud and stones, they make sure the dam is strong enough not to be washed away easily by the pressure of the water. Their cleverness can be judged from the fact that in slow moving water, they build straight dams while in fast moving water the dam is curved in shape.

Well now I don’t know if I would use the word DESTROY but I’m not a hundred percent sure English was the first language of this article’s author. Or even his second. Let’s say the word “alter” instead because beavers change things: that’s just what they do. And leave it at that.

It is kind of interesting to think for a moment about other home building species and how their architecture is geared towards feeding them (spiders) or child-rearing (birds) and how building a dam represents really neither of those things. Beavers build homes sure, but they are fairly unique in building entire neighborhoods and subdivisions I believe.

Finally some praise for author Ben Goldfarb who brought High Country News some fame with his recent Pen award. As they say, failure is an orphan but success has many parents. The article writes about some of the events changing the editorial staff and ends with:

A bittersweet goodbye

frequent contributor Ben Goldfarb scored the prestigious E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing from PEN America. Ben won for his book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, which was excerpted in HCN.

It’s nice to see Ben getting so much recognition for his herculean efforts in writing what is sure to be a game-changer, if not THE game changer. Congratulations Ben and beavers everywhere.

DISRUPTIVE BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 18, 2019

If there’s one thing your average hoosier can’t stand, it’s a DISRUPTIVE beaver. Sure they can tolerate a well-behaved beaver as long as the next man, but once it starts disturbing the peace or making rackets that’s IT, it’s time for the euthanasia machines.

Am I right?

Northwest Indiana counties target disruptive beavers

WAUKEGAN, Ind. (AP) – Beavers in Northwest Indiana are causing problems by blocking storm water drainage systems with their dams, so counties are turning to trapping and euthanizing the animals to deal with the issue.

Lake County has euthanized about 140 beavers from 2016 through 2018, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

“It is a necessary evil,” said Dan Gossman, Lake County’s senior drainage administrator.

“We have tried having a crew out there full time removing dams multiple times, thinking they would leave, but they come right back and can rebuild in a day,” Emerson said.

Disruptive AND persistent? You’re kidding me! Boy you sure got the unlucky beavers, The rebuilding of dams almost ~~NEVER~~ ALWAYS happens! I’m sure sorry you got the flukes.

State rules require beavers to be relocated within the county they’re found, but Lake County doesn’t have a beaver sanctuary, Emerson said.

You see our predicament, don’t you? We would love to just move the disruptive ones but the state won’t let us, and there isn’t a beaver SANCTUARY ya know. So what’s a fellow to do?

Porter County Surveyor Kevin Breitzke estimates that the county euthanizes about 15 beavers annually. Beavers that are relocated often run into problems in their new environment, he said.

“The poor beaver, usually a 2- or 3-year-old, who is relocated is confused by their new surroundings and attacked by the beaver who is already established in the territory,” Breitzke said.

Wait, why would you relocate a beaver to a place where another beaver already lives? That seems kinda lazy or hostile? But Mr Breitzke has done his reading (or watched one PBS special). He wants you to know he understands that beavers can do some good, when they’re not busy being disruptive.

“Beavers can provide a lot of habitat benefits. A lot of species benefit from beaver ponds. It creates wetland habitat for fish and wading birds. Beaver dams also can act as wildlife highways across flowing water,” Albers said.

The dams can cause issues when they’re found in urban areas, Emerson said.

“Their dams back up water and flood homes, and cause a lot of still water that provides habitat for mosquitoes,” he said.

Do you know what ELSE is disruptive? Mosquitoes, that what! Always barging in and ruining your quite picnic or barbecue. Of course beavers cause mosquitoes. They are both disruptive together. Beaver trapping is really just like using a giant can of OFF if you think about it. It’s not cruel or short-sighted.

I’m a great fan of the Leslie Nope character in Parks and Rec, but honestly, the entire state seems woefully ill-equipped to deal with wildlife of any kind. Which is a surprise when you think about how darn rough-and-tumble our vice-president seems. Hoosiers don’t do wildlife I guess, whether it be coyotes, o’possum or disruptive beavers.