Month: August 2019

WE KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN SOONER [STATE] OR LATER

Give it up for Oklahoma, where a nature writer David John enjoyed the beavers on his property for a record thirty days notes. Noting, without any touch of shame, ”

“I tried doing the right thing, But it was hard. So I stopped”

Move over Thomas Aquinas!

Nature Note: Bye, bye beavers

In early June, a dam was built at the outlet to the pond, next to a little bridge, probably with the help of an older female that appeared on the pond. Flowing water is a magnet for beavers to build a dam, to keep the water as deep as possible. The dam raised the water level nearly 2 feet, a good thing, but it also flooded trails around the north end of the pond.

In July I decided I needed to relocate the beavers, so I live-trapped both and released them on Bird Creek, the stream from which they came. My hope was to be able to live with them, but they caused too much damage; chewed down trees and produced flooding. Not their fault, that’s what beavers do. They need a large area in which to work. We just didn’t have enough room for them.

Although beaver dams can cause flooding, they are amazing engineers at flood control. No high tech stuff for them, just sticks and mud.

A whole month? You tried to do the right thing for an entire month? My god. By sooner state standards you’re practically a saint. Nice of you to let the kits be born before you stuffed them in a cage, or more likely, made them orphans.

That’s the classic pro-life position isn’t it? Make the kids be born and then forget about them.

Pardon me if I’m feeling a song coming on.

Oklahoma where a beaver cannot be sustained
And the drought deserved must be preserved
so the dustbowl state’s again regained!

Oklahoma, where the birds and fish will never rest
In ponds deep and cool, they’re no one’s fool
So the frogs and turtles travel west.

We know climate change is a scheme
And fondly of dry creeks we dream

So when we say…YA!
I’ll try my best todayyyy….HA!
I’m only saying I’ll live with beavers a whole month
For a whole month, O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a
Oklahoma!

Gosh that was fun. I feel better now.

Time for the second fun start to your day, Ben Golfarb was on Montana public radio yesterday with a great interview and a very nice interview-er. They both do a great job. Enjoy!

‘The Surprising, Secret Lives Of Beavers’ With Ben GoldFarb

By Sarah Aronson • Aug 22, 2019

RELOCATING BEAVERS WITH THE BEST

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver relocation August 25, 2019

I am pretty particular when it comes to a beaver relocation story. In order for me to feel truly positive about a moving-beaver article it has to have a few key points. First off, it has to make clear why beavers matter. Next, it has to mention that there are easy solutions that might have been done to keep those beavers where they were in the first place. And lastly and most importantly, it has to involve Sherri Tippie.

This one meets all the criteria.

Nature’s Engineers Help Defenders Prevent, Protect and Restore

Beaver are natures engineers, changing the world around them. They are safest from predators when swimming in water, so they build dams to make ponds that they can swim in. These ponds allow them to safely enter their lodge from underwater, and access more trees and herbaceous plants without leaving the water. They modify their habitat for themselves, but their actions have huge impacts on other species. Fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, aquatic insects, trees and plants all benefit from the changes that beaver create on the landscape.

Sometimes, beaver cause trouble for landowners because they change their habitat so much. There are simple solutions which often allow landowners to live with beaver, such as fencing trees to protect them, but on some occasions, this is not possible. In those instances, Defenders tries to relocate the entire beaver family to lands where they are wanted.

Two down, one to go.

This August, Defenders, along with local live-trapper Sherri Tippie from Wildlife2000, relocated a beaver family north of Denver, Colorado. Relocating a beaver family is a lot of work. Beavers live in extended families, often with four generations living in the same lodge. A mated pair, this year’s kits, and juveniles from the past one or two summers all live together. We set live-traps in the evening and check them first thing in the morning. The traps work like a giant suitcase, folding up when a beaver steps in the middle. We moved nine individuals, including five kits born this spring, to new habitat in the mountains. Their new home used to have beaver, but they have been absent for several years. The old beaver ponds are still there but have not been maintained. The new family will likely repair these ponds, and hopefully create new ones of their own, creating and improving habitat for at-risk native species such as cutthroat trout, leopard frogs, and boreal toads.

Huzzah! We have a trifecta! Nothing but good news in this beaver relocation. Wonderful to read about, Well, except for the line about beavers living in the lodge with four generations. i know what they mean but that’s not accurately phrased. That would be like kits living with their great grandparents, right? Technically there are two generations (parents and children) and two batches (kits and yearlings).

In light of the new Endangered Species Act regulations released last week, it’s as important as ever that we prevent species from needing to be listed. The habitat that we allow beaver to create on the landscape are critical for some of these imperiled species, and the presence of indicator species like amphibians help to show that the habitats are healthy. Defenders works to prevent, protect, and restore: prevent species from becoming endangered, protect already imperiled species, and restore species to the landscape. Beaver are one of the many natural tools that fit in our arsenal for wildlife conservation!

Lovely to see. Thanks Aaron Hall for this excellent article. I had cued it up for yesterday’s post but the local headline of “otters teaching beavers” pushed it back a day. It’s great to see Sherri at work, doing what she does better than anyone in all the world.

Speaking of sticking with what you know, I got an inspiration yesterday to do a booklet specifically about urban beavers and have it available for Beaver Con 202o. I wrote folks asking for their contributions and I’m going to need your help too. If you were lucky enough to watch beavers in your city, maybe you could send me a line or two about what it was like? Send it to mtzbeavers@gmail.com. I’d love to put together something that captures not only how to manage beavers without trapping and why its good for wildlife, but how it enriches communities of humans too.

Here’s the possible first page. What do you think?

ON SECOND THOUGHT

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers, beavers and otters August 24, 2019

Sometimes it’s hard to get past that negative initial impression and accept all the good things a person (or article) has to offer. Sometimes that first jarring meeting is so irksome or inappropriate that you can’t calm down and discover all the special treats a messenger brings to the table because they’ve already rubbed you the wrong way. But it’s our job as humans, as consumers of beaver news, to give people a chance, to take a very deep breath and read past the initial headline, no matter HOW provoking it may be.

How a local young, orphan beaver learned life skills from a bunch of otters

An orphaned young kit, little more than a year old, is there for care and rehab before release to back to the wild.

Scouts honor that’s the headline and lead photo of this article about an orphaned beaver being raised at Sonoma Wildlife rescue. No word yet on what exactly the magical otters are actually teaching said beaver – surely not how to swim because beavers can swim from birth – and not how to fish, because beavers don’t eat fish.

How to mug for the camera and steal all the attention?

I swear to god I sometimes think otters are just trolling me now, They know they get more credit for being cute than beavers do for saving the entire frickin’ planet. Did you know National Geographic just bought our friends at River Otter Ecology Project a submarine? So they could film underwater of course. Because otters lead charmed lives.

And beavers, well, you know.

The orphan at the rescue center isn’t a local. She was found in central California, near Madera. A backhoe operator clearing a drainage ditch there apparently swiped the bank where the beaver were denning, killing the parents and siblings, leaving one survivor.

A few months old, she was delivered to a local veterinarian, then volunteers from the Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation Service picked her up, and she came into the care of Cathy Gardner, the wildlife center’s director.

“Normally”, Gardner says, “baby beaver are cross, cranky, temperamental. They will throw their bottle away, make noises. This one was sweet, very different.” Unfortunately, she was also ill. Beaver urine is caustic. In water, where beaver normally live, it’s rapidly diluted. But penned up, the baby beaver’s tail and feet were badly burned. Gardner nursed her through the resulting infection, changing pads around the clock.

Those rotten beavers. Snarly and temperamental with caustic urine. Never mind that the noises a baby beaver make are endearing. And that a healthy unfrightened kit is so adorable that they certain tribes would give them as a consolation to a squaw that lost her child so she could raise the snuggling bundle.

Boy this article is making itself hard to love. Deep breath. Another deep breath. It will get better. It has to.

Human efforts are focused on moving water efficiently down narrow, well-defined channels, steering it to orchards, vineyards, farms and towns, or draining it rapidly away to prevent flooding, opening land for cultivation or construction.

Beavers treat water very differently. Their waterworks do pretty much the opposite. Their ponds spread water out, slow it down, blocking narrow channels. Their dams traps silt and encourage the growth of trees and plants. The result is widened and overgrown water channels, broad shallow wetlands and meandering streams.

That sounds better, Oh good they have more photos buried in the article.

Not surprisingly, beavers’ unique engineering talents have also made them very popular with modern conservationists and resource managers. Beaver ponds, for example, are essential shelter for juvenile salmon, trout and other fish, providing pools of upstream water even in drought years.

The ponds stop snowmelt and heavy rains from rushing downstream too swiftly, allowing it to recharge and replenish groundwater along the way. Where beaver live, they’re a keystone species, altering the environment in ways that provide habitat for a rich and diverse network of plants, insects and other animals. Beaver wetlands are also proving to be a bulwark against wildfires in western states, where they’re being managed.

Hmm lots of groundwater talk. I’m guessing the author interviewed some watery friends of ours.

At the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman, co-Directors of the OAEC Water Institute, have been active for more than ten years in efforts to Bring Back the Beaver to their historic range in California, in places they can provide maximum benefit.

According to Lundquist, beaver fall into the public’s blind spot and restoring their legacy in the state has been challenging, since for many decades they’ve been cast as vermin, or mistakenly, as non-native.

Dolman says other states are amazed at just how hard and complicated it is to try and restore beaver to California. Across the west, in Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and other states, managed beaver re-introductions have been occurring for years, demonstrating multiple benefits to watersheds, to the delight of ranchers and conservationists alike.

It can be frustrating, Dolman notes. “We spend tens of millions in efforts to save Pacific salmon as they continue to disappear, trying to restore degraded habit and drought-proof pools, and repair erosion-cut streambeds, when the beaver will work for free.”

Well that’s better. Recognition of their importance and some argument about what a resource beavers are.

Solutions range from simply painting tree trunks or vines with sand and paint (the beaver hate it), to using pond leveler devices, and other beaver-proof systems. One vineyard installed an electric fence four inches off the ground to keep the beaver out — it works because they can’t jump.

“What we need now is an endowment or bill to fund a Beaver Management Plan for the state that will ensure all interests are protected, while providing suitable habitat,” Lundquist says.

Engaging wildlife to protect declining fisheries, restore water resources and defend against wildfires may be the most sensible and cost-effective approach to problems that widely impact human populations.

Endowment? Good luck with that. How about a tax credit for individual taking steps to live with beavers on their land? How about a fire safety credit for active dams? Just this week we were in the foothills working towards fire-safety for my parents land. Some firemen came to do an inspection of defensible space so we can hopefully renew her insurance another year. What if having beavers in your steam was acknowledged as a step towards that?

Well, all in all this article ended up in a much better place than where it started. I’m counting my blessings as we speak. I know that the person who writes the headline is not usually the person who writes the article. So I’m not blaming Stephen Nett for saying that otters teach beavers. He is a naturalist and science writer so he knows better and seemed to get the environmental benefit of beavers down pat. And good for Kate and Brock for steering him in the right direction.

I guess you really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – or an article by its headline.

IDAHO EMBRACES THE GATEWAY DRUG TO BEAVERS

heidi08 BDA's, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers August 23, 2019

Good news this morning from Idaho where folks are slowly catching on about the benefits beaver dams can bring to their land.

Beaver dam analogs catching on in Idaho

Beaver swimming above a recently built BDA; Eric Winford

GRANDVIEW — Landowners and conservation professionals are excited about a new type of woody structure that mimics beaver dams. The benefits are similar — they store water, slow down runoff in streams, and enhance fish and wildlife habitat.

They’re called Beaver Dam Analogs or BDA’s for short.

Bruneau Rancher Chris Black worked together with a number of conservation professionals to install some BDA’s on his private land on Hurry Up Creek, a tributary of Deep Creek.

I think of BDA’s as the gateway drug to actual beavers. A lot of people get excited about them that might raise an eyebrow when an actual dam appeared of its own accord. The BDA softens them up. Gives them the illusion of control. “I started this” they can say comfortingly to themselves.

BDA’s are like starter kits for beavers.

“I’ve wanted to get beaver in here for years but it is an ephemeral stream,” Black said. “There’s enough willows to make good food for them and everything, but there isn’t enough water for them to stay.”

They’ve put in about 10 structures so far, and more are planned in the future.

“They came in and put them in very successfully,” he said. “They’re backing water up, they’re creating habitat for spotted frogs, for sage grouse, for beaver.”

In fact, when the group visited the site recently, a few people got down on their hands and knees and tried to find frogs right away. Bingo! A biologist emerged with a frog in his hand.

Conservation professionals with the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Fish and Game, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are all interested in exploring the benefits of using BDA’s to improve riparian habitat and store water.

Want frogs? You need beaver. Want water? You need beaver. Say it with me now.

The emerging technology of using natural on-site woody materials to build BDAs is building popularity in Idaho and the Intermountain West. The concept was developed initially by Utah State University and Anabranch Solutions, and it’s catching on in Idaho.

“It just benefits a whole host of wildlife species and that’s why Fish and Game is really interested in this,” said Chris Yarbrough, habitat biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “It’s a low-cost way to get a lot of bang for your conservation buck.”

We needed to figure out how to put these dollars on the ground in the best way possible, and leverage what’s already being done,” said Josh Uriarte, a project manager for the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation in Boise.

“One of the things coming up is mesic meadows, and how to improve mesic habitats, working with the different partners and agencies on how to do that. We need to be strategic in that, not just putting dollars in postage stamp-type areas, but in strategic locations.

Mesic habitat is land with an adequate water source – adequate but not saturating. Beaver meadows on the other hand were described by Ellen Wohl’s new book as similar to the surface of a “waffle iron covered with water”. Patches of saturated soil and protrusions of land seeping through. That is a hydric habitat, The most sustaining and ecologically rich type of habitat we have.

From the restoration guidebook:

Beaver dams create habitat while they are impounding water, but they continue to create habitat even after colonies are abandoned,often in the form of beaver meadows, particularly in more mesic climates

So mesic meadows can become hydric climates with the right beavers in place.

The Hawley Creek project is far more complex in many respects. With about 25 BDA’s in place, it’s been turned into a perennial stream. But the objectives of the project are similar — to improve habitat for fish and wildlife, and work toward providing season-long flows for endangered salmon, steelhead and resident fish.

By holding this water higher in the drainage, we’re not only providing habitat for native fish and anadromous fish, but we’re also providing irrigation water later in the season when they need it as well,” Bertram said.

They had a great many share holders to partner with. This entire project spread across a tapestry of ranchers, BLM land and forest land. Only someone with the patience of a saint and the vision of many beavers could have taken this on.

“At first, they were like, why are you building beaver dams? Once they saw the results, they didn’t want to go build more fence, they wanted to build more beaver dams,” Lohmeyer said.

“By slowing this water down, spreading it out, you can just see the response from the vegetation, the grass growing up, I can hear the grasshoppers in the background, passerines have just exploded, all of the wildlife species and insects have just exploded,” Bertram said. “And we’re already seeing brood-rearing sage grouse coming into this area and utilizing it in the short period we’ve been here. It’s been a huge success story for them, and I’m excited to see how the leks respond over time.”

“These meadows are like a sponge,” he said. “They take that water and they hold it, and release it slowly into the system. So we don’t get that big rush in the spring, when the springs are active, they run hard and then just dry up. Then you just have a dry meadow. With water being held back in the system, it releases slowly, and that benefits downstream users, too, so it’s a benefit for everything.”

What an epic project, with such lasting positive results! When Idaho signs on to the beaver team they certainly bring all their best tools to the table. I’m so impressed.

What we need is some folks to do this work all over California.

FLOW DEVICES AND MIKE CALLAHAN ON NPR

heidi08 Beavers August 22, 2019

Well, it looks like we’re in for a treat at some undisclosed date. Mike Callahan just posted a great photo on Instagram of him doing an npr interview beside a pond where he just installed culvert protection.