There has been an interesting  response to this second punch from the Center for Biological Diversity threat to sue Wildlife Services over trapping beaver in Salmon habitat. It trails a similar suit from EPIC and the Western Environmental Law association by almost 6 months, but its making the right kind of waves at the moment.

Environmental group threatens to sue over beaver killings in California

Noting that nearly 7,000 beaver were killed in California from 2010 to 2017, the Center for Biological Diversity has asked the department to consult with other federal agencies about how beaver killing affects endangered species.

The center sent a letter to the agriculture department telling the agency it plans to sue if it doesn’t consult with other federal agencies.

When beavers build dams and create ponds, the rodents create rearing habitat for young salmon that in some cases are endangered species, said Collette L. Adkins, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Okay, we knew that much. So what’s new?

Tanya Espinosa, a department of agriculture spokeswoman, said her agency already consults with federal agencies before killing beavers.

If that sentence is true I will eat a bug. What does “consult with agencies” even mean?” What agency? How do you consult? With whom? Is there any record of this alleged consultation? Do you send an email to Bob in Fish and Wildlife?

Adkins acknowledged Wildlife Services has begun consulting with other federal, but she said they had not yet completed a biological assessment of the effect beaver killing has on endangered species.

Elsewhere, the counties that had the highest number of beaver killings were Sacramento, Placer and Yolo. The three counties combined had 3,092, the center’s table of figures shows.

Now THIS I believe.

The Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted last year to terminate a contract with Wildlife Services after it received a letter from Animal Legal Defense Fund in Cotati objecting to the agency killing the animals without first doing an environmental study into the effects of its work.

Wow. This is news to me. Is it news to you? Of course this is the argument Mitch Wagner used in his lawsuit about trapping beavers in Lake Skinner lo these many moons ago, but it never really “caught on” so to speak. How did I miss this news? Oh right, the day before the festival last year that’s how. I looked up the case and found this:

On June 29, the Animal Legal Defense Fund sent a letter to Siskiyou County Agriculture Commission Jim Smith and the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, which states, “Under [the California Environmental Quality Act], Siskiyou County has a duty to review the impacts of activities that affect California’s environment, including wildlife. Through repeated renewal of its contract with Wildlife Services without adequate environmental analysis, the County has failed to follow the legal procedure mandated by CEQA.”

WS also alleges on its web page that it “conducts environmental review processes to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.”

So basically ADL scared the county board of supervisors enough that they dropped their WS contract rather than risk being involved in a lawsuit. Okay. Of course the article doesn’t mention that they still continued to kill beavers – just by not using APHIS. But I guess its a kind of chipping away at the problem I guess. You have to start somewhere.

A “First they came for Wildlife Services” kinda thing.

Shhh this is my favorite part.

A California Department of Fish and Wildlife website says people can take steps to protect trees and reduce flooding from beavers.

Fencing material can be placed around individual trees or groups of trees can be fenced off to keep out beavers, the state said.

There also are devices that can be placed in beaver dams that allow some water to pass through dams and reduce the amount of flooding, Adkins said.

While some want beavers removed in some areas, a group of federal biologists recently re-introduced beavers to Sugar Creek in Siskiyou County’s Scott Valley.

The project, which included building a beaver dam, was completed by officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries officials. Officials said bringing beavers back to the stream would improve habitat for coho salmon and other fish.

You see? When the beaver revolution finally comes to California it will begin in the North, because Scotts Valley is just about the smartest beaver region we have to offer. Hmm but even with that I not believe beavers were introduced though. I think the reporter misread the article about building BDA’s to encourage beavers to introduce themselves. Unless there’s some tribal land we aren’t hearing about, moving beavers is still illegal in the golden state. Here’s what fish and wildlife wrote about the project they undertook last month.

‘We became beavers’

Partnering with the Scott River Watershed Council, the Service designed a project to simulate what beavers had not been around to do for decades. In essence, the biologists became the beavers by implementing an innovative technique called beaver dam analogs, developed by Michael Pollock, an ecosystems analyst with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Analogs are rows of wood posts pounded upright across a creek with willow branches woven between them to simulate a natural beaver dam. These analogs are low cost because heavy equipment use is minimal and they are ecologically beneficial since the design allows for beavers to improve on or abandon them over time as they would a dam of their own design.

A series of analogs were constructed at the Sugar Creek location, since beavers had once occupied the area. Remarkably, in the fall of 2018, as if answering an advertisement in beaver realty world, a family of beavers moved in and started expanding the analog.

If you build it, they will come: A little over a year after the Sugar Creek analogs were completed, a beaver family moved in and began improving on the structures. Credit: Charnna Gilmore/Scott River Watershed Council

I wish it were true, but even if it’s not I’m still glad this reporter from Redding has moved the story forward.