Tonight’s the night! If you’re anywhere in the vicinity you should come lend support to beavers. because Audubon isn’t used to dealing with riff raff like me and they may revolt. I of course will do my best to explain why beavers matter to birds. Pray to the old Mac gods that my very special laptop friend will survive keep at least one more commitment.And just to demonstrate that beaver education is still needed. I will share one precious and shocking moment from a google search yesterday. You have my word that this was not photo-shopped in anyway and was captured on screen exactly the way it looked. Always remember, as foolish and inadequate as we all are, we’re at least better than this.
Young beavers need to stay with their parents for around 2 years before they ‘disperse’ or go off to seek their fortune. That’s about a fifth of their life, which if we’re lucky enough to live to 90 and stay home only until we’re 18 is about equivalent. Maybe that’s why they seem so familiar to us. We know what its like to stick around the same place day after day.
Of course every so often we lose our family or one of our family, like Beatrice here. Robin sent me this video from a Kentucky rehab last night. Brace yourself because you’re about to say awwww very loudly. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
So fuzzy and such a tiny bent nose! Oh my stars and whiskers! “She will more than likely become an ambassador animal” Is about the worst fate anyone could imagine, but god knows they need a lot of beaver education in Kentucky. I suppose she’ll visit classrooms until she’s too big to lug in a pet carrier and then she’ll live in an outdoor cage maybe like Chompa at a kiddie zoo.
Ugh.
But maybe, we can persuade them that beavers matter enough to use her as an spokesperson for better fish and wildlife, fewer droughts and more birds. Hmm Kentucky? That’s where Ian’s from. Maybe they’d be interested in his why beavers matter stopmotion about beavers that won the science fair?
For some reason we’re back again to Oklahoma where that little beaver in Skiatook. I guess he wasn’t as young as he looked because he really would be dead by now if he was.
Beavers are fairly common in the Skiatook area and can be found along Bird Creek and on smaller streams and ponds.
The beaver is the largest rodent in North America. Rodents are gnawing mammals and all of them have continuously growing pairs of upper and lower teeth. The beaver’s teeth are large and are orange or chestnut-colored. Beavers are found in nearly all of Canada and the United States.
However, they were nearly trapped to extinction by the fur trade during the early 19th century when beaver pelts were the most valuable commodity in much of North America. Beavers that live along rivers and large streams make burrows in the bank whereas those living on ponds and lakes build lodges of sticks, grasses and mud.
Since the writer clearly uses the word lodges I have zero idea why the description in the photo says the beaver is “Building a nest”. He’s not a bird. And its impossible to imagine how building a cozy platform beneath him would provide any protection or safe exit back to the water. Still, it’s Oklahoma and the beaver is not yet trapped and that’s pretty amazing all by itself.
Beavers pair for life and the young stay with the parents for two years before leaving to establish territories of their own, usually in February or March.
Recently a young beaver showed-up on our pond. It made a winding, nearly two-mile trek from Bird Creek, following a draining system that passed through a small pond and three forks along the way.
Good luck Beatrice and Sooner state beaver! There’s a lot to learn and teach others on your way ahead.
Folks were apparently surprised by yesterday’s post. It got shared by our friends in the Netherlands and commented on by our buddies in Idaho. I guess it’s surprising to see it laid out in black and white, which explains why CDFW doesn’t do it themselves. Easier to keep granting permission for endless killing one at a time. I thought you might all need comforting this morning, which works out because everything Patti Smith writes comforts me. This especially so.
I know of no tribe who have called the February full moon the Porcupine Moon, but I think that from now on I will. Last week, when the full moon rose, I set out on skis to visit the ancient beaver, Willow. On the way, I would stop to see if the ridgetop porcupine den had an occupant.
The fresh snow muffled my approach to the den on the ridge, a cavity created when a red maple toppled, pulling its roots away from a vertical ledge. A roof of roots, soil and snow sheltered a spacious cave, just right for remodeling by a hobbit or a porcupine. I found it while tracking a porcupine I have known for several years, part of my winter census of local porcupines. Intriguingly, I had seen the tracks of a very small porcupine along with the tracks of the large porcupine on my last stop at the den. When I leaned down and shined my light in, I heard a whiny “Wah! Wah-wa-WAH!” I thought it possible that this complaint was directed at me, but given my previous interactions with porcupines, it seemed more likely that the wee track-maker objected to the movements of the adult porcupine. I left a couple of apples to make up for my intrusion and headed home.
If you ever, in your life, get an opportunity to go wandering with Patti Smith at night, drop everything that you might have been planning instead, forget about sleeping or doing the laundry and GO. Whether it’s to carry her notebook, bring her coffee or just hold her umbrella. She is a national treasure. Ben Goldfarb is still glowing from her treasure-laced journey. The rest of us will just have to live vicariously through her translucent writing.
As I looked around for a sitting spot where I would not be intruding, I noticed the muted eye-shine of a porcupine in the main chamber of the den. This porcupine was not going to wait for me to make myself scarce, he was too interested in the smell of the apples. I sat down near the entrance to the den and talked to the little fellow. I have had many conversations with porcupines in what I like to think is their own language. They hum when greeting each other or when maintaining contact with a friend. The hum is very nasal and is modulated to express mood and interest in precisely the way we modulate our own speech. As a foster mother to several porcupettes, I can vouch for this. The same is true for their squawking vocalizations. Like human squawks, they express complaints, from mildly disgruntled to outraged.
Porcupines appeal to me. They touch a similar chord as beavers. Their vocalizations. Their chewing. The problems they bring to dog owners. Did you know that there are only two animals in the world where young females in the species disperse for longer distances than the males to start out their new lives.?
Beavers and porcupines. Of course.
I needed a little porcupine therapy that night. I had just read the New York Times article on the insect apocalypse, one of many articles that have come out in response to research in Germany, research documenting a 75 percent reduction in flying insects over the past 30 years. A reduction of flying insects might sound good if you think of insects as pests, less good if you think of them as food, as nearly all birds do when they are raising their young. Such a loss is also less good if you think of the myriad services insects provide to keep life on this planet humming. The great unraveling is underway.
There is good news too. We finally have a group of politicians who understand the magnitude and urgency of threats to our planet and are responding accordingly. Children around the world, inspired by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen, are walking out of school to protest adult inaction on climate change. Girded by the courageous young heroes of our times, we have a last chance to redeem ourselves.
For some reason, Patti feeling hopeless is comforting to me. Her writing is often so idyllic I feel our wildlife experiences are on separate planets. What does she know about depredation permits or fighting city hall? But she’s on our planet in this passage. And it’s thrilling. Buckle up.
I coasted off on the ski-anywhere snow through the dazzling night toward the beaver pond. I wish I could say I felt only hope and tranquility but there remained a sense that I moved through beloved remnants of a besieged world. Perhaps these are not times for tranquility — these are times to act — to create a civilization worthy of our beautiful planet.My ideal future will have fluffy porcupines that waddle out of hobbit holes beneath the Porcupine Moon.
Amen! Let’s ring the bells and wake the townfolk. The world is on fire and we need beavers to help put it out. We need Patti too, because she can breathe new life into the one we preserve.
Today is a mixed review of a beaver day, a triumph and a tragedy. Or rather 146 tragedies, made possible by a California Department of Fish and Wildlife that still believes that it’s a reasonable thing to report under past attempts that you had diligently tried “Hazing and debris removal” before requesting a permit. If you were asking for a permit to give up on your children you might just as easily write that you tried “loud music and making collages” as a earnest attempt at parenting. Because it would be exactly as useful.
All of the awarded permits combined add up to an allowed take of 2,626 beavers in a mere 23 counties in the state. They are generally where we’ve come to expect, surrounding the delta and wicking out from that center. The majority of permits was once again issued for Placer county, but the majority of beavers was authorized for take in Sacramento which I suppose is what we should expect.
Interesting to me in a grim kind of way is all the regions we used to see beaver permits issued and now don’t. Like Kern and Riverside and Mendocino. Places where the beaver population was starting I guess to rebound, and then they were depredated and progress stopped. Of course CDFW would say that just because 2626 beavers were permitted to be killed it doesn’t mean that many were actually killed. Except there were still 6 permits given for unlimited beaver, so for all we know it the actual tallies could even be higher. Plus there is no official with a clipboard coming to check that if your permit was good for 17 beavers you actually didn’t kill 18 by mistake. Or 118.
So I think it’s reasonable to assume that California kills at least 1500 beavers a year, maybe more like 2000.
What does that mean? It means that all the salmon those beavers would have helped, all the fires they might have prevented, all the drought they would have averted is lost in a pile of bones and fur. Some in the name of development and some just to preserve someone’s rosebush in their front yard. It continues to be a hard world out there for a beaver. And there are so many places where the light still doesn’t reach.
Thank you to Robin Ellison for obtaining the permits and to Molly Foley and Jon Ridler for helping me process them. It’s been a grueling 4 days. But there is a small comfort in that many many more permits in 2017 reported or recommended wrapping trees or painting them with sand as a defense and 11 of those permits discussed the use of a pond leveler. I guess that’s something.
Baby steps for babies.
Meanwhile Ben Goldfarb continues to fight the good fight and received a Pen award for his efforts. In case you want to see what a big deal the ceremony was (like the Oscars for writing) and hear his hopeful acceptance speech I have cued up his award and acceptance which is a fairly optimistic look at the differences we can make. Enjoy.
Time for more “Only good news Sunday” which is just right because we have a parcel of it. Yesterday our Austrian friend Leopold Kanzler posted this on FB, which I’m calling “don’t wake me” but is honestly the most adorable beaver photo I may have seen yet.
And as you know, that is saying something.
Beaver Grooming: Leopold Kanzler
Isn’t that precious? No one thinks about the poor unsung beaver who wants to sleep in right? I happen to know these things because I’m trying to change my sleep habits in view of my 8:00 pm presentation at Audubon Thursday – gradually going to sleep later each night,. I actually woke at 7 yesterday which I haven’t done since 2006 and it made me stupid all day. I think I’ll just stay on beaver-viewing time and be sleepy like this photo for my talk. It will work better.
Other fine news comes from Sarah Koenigsberg who is on her way to the Banff Film Centre Moutain film festival in Denver with a famous guest you’ll probably recognize. I thought you’d want to see their lovely selfie, That of course is the legendary Sherri Tippie to Sarah’s left, the beaver re-locator and hairdresser extraordinaire. She is prominently featured in the film and will be attending the showing.
I met Sherri at my first ever State of the Beaver Conference and was so inspired by her presentation that I just sat in the front row and wept the entire time. After such a hard won battle with Martinez to save our beavers it was glorious to listen to someone who already knew everything I was shouting over and over. I felt like a trusted adult was finally driving the vehicle and I could just fall asleep in the back seat.
Finally there have been some lovely new donations for our upcoming auction, starting with this beautiful watercolor from Marley Ungaro of Fleming Island Florida. It’s aptly titled “Beaver Moon“, and while the subject is fairly common, the original rendition definitely is not.
Isn’t that beautiful? In addition to the print Marley added some lovely tea towels with the image to the auction. Clearly she is a kindred spirit all the way across the US. Thanks Marley!
Which brings us to another fine donation from the metal artist “Spooniere”, who amazingly makes all her jewelry from vintage silver spoons. Of course you can easily see why I had to come knocking on Tami Miller’s doorstep in Aurora Colorado. In addition to being beautiful, Tam’s creation is completely one-of-a-kind. No one else you ever meet will have a beaver ring like this because none exists. Thanks Tami!
And just to demonstrate that beaver education is still needed. I will share one precious and shocking moment from a google search yesterday. You have my word that this was not photo-shopped in anyway and was captured on screen exactly the way it looked. Always remember, as foolish and inadequate as we all are, we’re at least better than this.
A roof of roots, soil and snow sheltered a spacious cave, just right for remodeling by a hobbit or a porcupine. I found it while tracking a porcupine I have known for several years, part of my winter census of local porcupines. Intriguingly, I had seen the tracks of a very small porcupine along with the tracks of the large porcupine on my last stop at the den. When I leaned down and shined my light in, I heard a whiny “Wah! Wah-wa-WAH!” I thought it possible that this complaint was directed at me, but given my previous interactions with porcupines, it seemed more likely that the wee track-maker objected to the movements of the adult porcupine. I left a couple of apples to make up for my intrusion and headed home.
