Month: September 2019

BEAVERS AREN’T DOING ALL THIS FOR THE TROUT

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers and trout, Friends of Martinez Beavers September 15, 2019

Ben Goldfarb & Sarah Koenigsberg toasting beaver success.

Which is excellent because last night was part one of the not-a-festival beaver event in Methow, Here are some late-breaking photos of last nights gathering (thanks Sarah!). Looks like they had an excellent turn out! Although the critics are withholding comment on Ben’s late-summer man-bun.

This morning there is more good news for anglers with a glowing beaver report from New Hampshire. I think the Chris Wood’s article set many things in motion and I hope we see more like this soon!

Adventures Afield with Andy Schafermeyer: Beavers help create brook trout habitat

A SUCCESSFUL angler often understands the relationship between fish and the world they live in. This complex system, often referred to as ecology, is crucial to catching fish.

Over the years, I have observed a direct relationship between Brook Trout and beavers that warrants further explanation. My favorite trout fishing is often small streams where beautiful brookies swim in pools and undercut banks. It is no secret that beavers create aquatic habitat where it might not otherwise exist and their role in expanding fishing opportunities seem clear.

To investigate further, it must be noted that beaver ponds/impoundments trap not only water, but many of the nutrients necessary for fish to grow larger than they would otherwise.

Why yes they do, Andy, So good of you to notice. Just wait, it gets better.

In short, I feel like beavers and I are working together to make the world a better place for Brook Trout. They set ‘em up and I knock ‘em out –- metaphorically speaking, of course. I don’t exactly knock them out but, rather, release them gingerly into the water I found them in. More accurately, I enjoy the experience of exploring a system perforated with small streams and still beaver ponds. I can catch fish in the fast moving current on a heavy nymph, and cast a dry fly on the still water of the pond. I find this type of fishing irresistible.

Well yes. Beavers are doing it just for you. And for trout. And for frogs and woodducks and otters. Why not be totally anthropormorphic about this?

The final selling point of these beaver ponds and connecting streams is that they are constantly changing — so frequently, in fact, that you will never see them on a map. I may fish a system for two or three summers only to find it gone the next. Beavers die, they move on, and dams break.

In contrast, these busy creatures are always moving into new areas. They are looking for water and unknowingly create awesome fishing experiences for a simple guy like me with an admittedly average understanding of the ecology that surrounds me.

I really hate to break it to you, Andy, but the truth is beavers are doing it for themselves.

Beavers have a lot in common with the women’s movement really, because when they are allowed to take care of their own needs society as a whole benefits.

Funny how that works.

WISCONSIN TROUT JUST HAD A VERY GOOD MORNING

heidi08 Beavers and trout September 14, 2019

Everyone knows that beavers are good for trout. Everyone, that is except to stubborn states that have insisted for years that beaver dams can be removed so that precious trout can survive. They’ve even gone so far as to say there are MORE beavers now than before the trappers came, and that’s why the trout population is so badly damaged.

Well look what just got published in the LaCrosse Tribune. As in LaCrosse Wisconsin!!!

Jay Thurston: Beavers provide for better trout fishing

Recently I finished reading the book titled, “Eager Beavers Matter,” written by Ben Goldfarb, in 2018. Many years ago I caught a 17-nch brook trout behind a beaver dam. Years later I caught a 25 inch brown trout behind another beaver dam. I was aware of the good food for trout behind beaver dams that was mentioned in Trout, publication from Trout Unlimited, about two year ago. If you have a beaver dam that is there for at least three years you could find big trout behind the dam.

WOW! Hear that, Wisconsin? And if you rip out that beaver dam its very likely that you won’t have a big trout behind it. Jay! You are doing the heroes work of preaching beaver gospel where it is needed most.

Considering fish food as the writer of “Eager Beavers Matter,” wrote, “Beavers make fish food. Beaver ponds containing up to five times more invertebrates than open channels, an almost unfathomable seventy three thousand bugs per square meter. And while fish folks sometimes complain that silty pond floors make lousy breeding habitat for salmon and trout, which prefer rocky bottoms, every particle that gets trapped by a beaver is a particle that won’t smother spawning gravel downstream.”

Have you thanked Ben Golfarb lately for writing the most wonderful book in the world? I am SO grateful that his wonderful words are rolling around the hard soil of public opinion and seeping into the minds of people who thought they knew better!

Beavers add to our groundwater that is sadly missing in many parts of the nation. From, “Eager Beavers Matter,” “Farmers above the Ogallala aquifer, the formation that underlies much of the Midwest, have pumped their aquifer with such exuberance that in some spots only a few decades of water remain. In California’s Central Valley, the nation’s produce aisle, water users slurped up forty-one trillion gallons of groundwater between 1920 and 2013 – one third the volume of Lake Erie. In the 1970’s when of pumping reached its furious apex, some farmland sank 30 feet as dewatered soil subsided, costing the state a billion dollars. Aquifers are often likened to saving accounts. Withdraw more than you make in interest, and pretty soon you’re eating into your principle. Then you’re broke.”

As our planet warms beavers have followed and recently build dams where trees appeared in Alaska. The dams provide food for moose, songbirds, and other species to adapt to global warming.

Jay goes on to talk about that fantastic article from Chris Wood the CEO of Trout Unlimited.

“When Trout Unlimited evaluated the effects of this type of conservation grazing and beaver at larger scales, across several Great Basin watersheds including Susie Creek, the increased wet streamside habitat was equivalent to the effects of adding 10 inches of annual precipitation. That’s nearly double the current precipitation at some sites, a big deal in this semi-arid desert.”

Wood concludes his article with, “The more water retained in the streams, the more drought and fire resistant the land around it becomes, plain and simple.”

When beavers build dams the trout behind the dams are the largest in the stream.

What a fantastic article! From EXACTLY the place it needs to be delivered and exactly the writer it needs to deliver it. Oh can you feel it? The earth is moving under our feet and starting to catch up with beavers.

It’s a new day.

BEAVER NIBBLING PASSES THE TIME

heidi08 Beavers September 13, 2019

I saved three articles to write about today, and all of them are now behind a paywall so its their own fault we will never know about the tulalip relocation or the beaver problems in Quilcene, Washington. They have no one to blame but themselves.

For now we’ll have to content ourselves with this amazing photo from Leopold Kanzler, our Viennese friend who captures intimate beaver moments for his “Nature Highlights” series. This is a piece he calls “Nibbling”.

I believe Tolkien said the hobbits referred to the process as “filling up the corners“.

Image Details:

Location: Vienna
Date: 2019 08 22
Light: dusk
Camera: Canon 1dX MkII
Lens: EF200/2
Focal Length: 200 mm
Exposure: 1/250 Seconds
Aperture: 1:2,5
ISO: 1600

TOTO, I THINK WE’LL BE IN KANSAS FOREVER

heidi08 Dispersal, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? September 12, 2019

What a fun night in Rossmoor last evening. A lovely theater, two smart techs to help me and a great supportive crowd. A sizeable speakers fee for Worth A Dam and both my mom and Cheryl’s mom in the audience! The questions were intriguing and the feedback glowing – only one gentleman asked afterwards if it was possible to EAT beaver, bless his heart. I smiled and said they weren’t poisonous but people tended to think of the meat as greasy: case in point when the mountain men were starving they at their horses, and ate their dogs, but they didn’t tend to eat the animal they were all busy hunting after.

I barely got home and sat down with my glass if chardonnay when the power went out, and stayed out for a good three hours afterwards. Thank goodness the candles still worked!

This morning we can only pity poor Kansas who is obviously very, very confused about beavers. They keep hearing all those nice things about them but they obviously still hate them very much. I will say this beaver article from Adaven Scronce Diversified Agriculture and Natural Resource agent, is as CLOSE to being positive as any I’ve read from the state, but good lord its still pretty dire.

Busy beavers

Kansas State University Research and Extension

In Kansas, bobcats and coyotes are the only predators that will prey on adult beavers. Because of this, the beaver population can become over abundant at times. Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. While beavers and the dams they build can benefit the land and conservation efforts, the dams can have negative impacts on the environment around them. Some of those include, flooded crop fields and roads. Flooding from a beaver dam can result in the flooding of large areas where only shallow and slow-moving water existed before. While some plants and animals are able to adapt to pond life and wetlands, depending on the location and size, beaver ponds can cause significant damage to human interests. The damages from flooding caused by beaver-dams can include removing pastures and crop land from production and drowning stands of trees. Beaver dens can also potentially decrease the stability of the banks of streams and ponds and increase the chance of these banks collapsing under the weight of vehicles and farm equipment.

Okay, we’ll get to the part about all the flooding and damage beavers cause, but first I have to ask Adaven about this sentence, Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. Talk to me about the use of the word vertebrate?

Are you implying they are also invertebrate animals that modify the habitat to suit their needs? Or are you just using the word randomly to show off that you know these kinds of scientific terms and can use them at will? I guess maybe orb spiders are an invertebrate animal that modifies the habitat to suit their needs but I wouldn’t call them a keystone species.

Damaged caused by beavers can be managed by installing a beaver pond leveler, fencing off valuable trees and crops, and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization. Even though beavers and their dams have the potential to cause damage it is also possible to live with beavers if preventative measures are put in place to prevent beavers from damaging valuable resources. The Kansas Department of Wildlife notes the best way to prevent damage from beavers is through sustained population control and that pond owners should not wait until beavers become overabundant, because, at that point, damage has already been done. Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

The mind reels. The jaw drops.

Lets start at the beginning. Kansas is advocating using a pond lever! And wrapping trees! This is a very very momentous day. Congratulations Mike Callahan, you finally broke through the fourth wall! I keep pinching myself because I think I’m dreaming. But the very next sentence wakes me up to the bucket of cold water.

and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization

Not either try these things OR remove the local population. But AND. Install the pond leveler AND kill the beavers also. Because you can never be sure. And the most important thing is to keep beaver from populating the area because by then its too LATE.

Never mind that beavers are territorial and the population will never grow because offspring will disperse. Nature acts differently in Kansas. Our text books told us so. Beavers are like house mice in Kansas. They breed and breed and breed and by the time you notice droppings on your kitchen counter its TOO LATE. They are already ruining the place.

You have to love this smarmy falsely-compassionate last line.

Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

Hear that? I’m doing this for your own good. Killing your mother or your children for your own good.I know beaver chapter said something about population density and that weird word ‘dispersal’ but there was a kegger at billybob’s house that friday and I never read that far,

Because. Kansas,

BELLS RINGING IN BELLEVILLE

heidi08 City Reports, Flow Device Installed, Who's saving beavers now? September 11, 2019

Remember our friend in the filmmaker in Belleville, Ontario who tried to rescue the drowning beaver and was horrified to find out they were being trapped in this day and age? We’ll he and his friends have been hard at work with some pretty great results,

City keeps fatal traps as “last resort”

Beavers in Belleville are not totally safe yet, but they are much closer to being treated humanely in the city than they ever have been.

Belleville city council passed a new policy regarding the trapping of “nuisance animals” Monday night which says lethal trapping should only be used as a “last resort.”

The “Humane Wildlife Conflict Policy” outlines several options to be used prior to lethal conibear killing traps, and stresses the city will “strive to implement proactive and preventative measures” of promoting coexistence and preventing potential conflicts.

The issue of how the city deals with “nuisance animals,” notably beavers, came to the forefront in the summer of 2018 when several East Hill residents rescued a beaver that had been caught in a drowning trap.

Yes we remember it well. Lets hear a little more about what the city is going to do instead?

That kind of trap will no longer be used by the city, which has since installed a Beaver Deceiver – a beaver control device — in the area of Haig Road where the incident occurred.

In any possible situation, the first step will be to identify potential problems and confirm there are “reasonable grounds” that property will be damaged or a threat to the community exists.

Mayor Mitch Panciuk, who praised McCaw for her efforts on this issue, said he was proud of the steps the city has taken to find innovative solutions to a very difficult problem.

“Is this policy perfect? No,” he said. “But today we have no policy. At least under this policy I know we will not be using inhumane traps except as a last resort.

I am not picky. I’ve been following beavers a long, long time, and I know that if any city commits to do ANYTHING first before reaching for trappers – whether its use an egg beater or dressing up for Halloween – any forced delay is actually better than none – and a delay involving an actual flow device or wrapping trees is the BEST of all! Because stopping to think of options and outcomes is ALL I ask for really.

Great work team Belleville. Keep the pressure on and keep your mayor careful. Your beavers will be around to thank you for it!