Month: October 2019

A LETTER ABOUT LIVING WITH BEAVERS

heidi08 Flow Device Installed October 16, 2019

There are lots of things beaver advocates have to remember. In fact standing up for beavers means you have your hands full at all times. You have to remember all about flow devices and the ways not to kill them. And you have to remember how to protect trees and culverts. And. don’t forget, you have to remember WHY you shouldn’t kill them too.

This is a great letter to the editor but Kellie Nichiporik forgot about the why.

Beavers elicit very extreme emotions from people; they either love them or hate them. Especially on wet years such as this, they can cause issues with landowners due mostly to flooding. However there are more than two options for dealing with Canada’s iconic rodent, other than hunting/trapping and blowing up the dams. Several co-existence tools can be utilized to help mitigate the issues that they can cause on the landscape such as flooding and the removal of valued trees.

To protect our property’s higher valued trees, mixing paint with sand and painting the bottom few feet of the tree will prevent them from taking a bite out of your tree. Or else, placing chicken wire to create a barrier around the trees can also work. For short term discouragement you can make your own deterrent using different spices such as cayenne and spread it around, which would prevent the beaver from chewing on your trees.

Now Kellie is the chair of the Moose Lake Watershed Society which is in Alberta. This means she lives in the land of the smart work of Glynnis Hood and Cows and Fish. I’m sure she knows WHY to coexist with beavers. She just forgot to say it in this excellent letter.

Beavers are attracted to the sound of running water and are compelled to stop the flow of water, which is why they frequently plug culverts. Building an exclusion fence with angles that are not natural for the beaver to be able to create a dam can protect the culvert and ensure the continual flow of water. For the beaver dams themselves, the installation of a pond leveller device can lower the water levels, while maintaining enough water for the beavers to survive the winters in their lodges and be able to preserve their food caches. Pond levellers are a simple device which involves placing a large diameter pipe (the size is dependent on the type and size of the water body) through the beaver dam at a depth that will lower the water to an appropriate level. The pipe extends about 30 feet in front of the dam and is secured below the water level and is caged with hog panels that allow for fish passage. The beavers are unable to find the “leak” in their dam, and the water level will be maintained. These devices have been successfully used in this area. For more information on these devices, please contact the Lakeland Agricultural Research Association. Funding and resources are available for landowners wishing to install these devices on their lands.

Kellie that is really great advice, although I’m not sure about the “unnatural angles” part. I’m sure lucky beavers have grown up around trapezoids for years. Better to focus on the confounding properties that particular shape has for beaver dams. And add something like this next time, okay?

MAKING ROOM FOR BEAVERS IN URBAN SPACES

heidi08 Flow Device Installed, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Mike Callahan October 15, 2019

Oooh if Martinez had beavers they surely would have felt that! 4,7 Earthquake last night centered practically under my mother’s apartment in pleasant hill. Things rolled and fell off the shelves and just in time for something we’ve ALL been waiting for.

Can’t We All Just Get A-Log? More In Mass. Seek Coexistence With Beavers

Mike Callahan begins to move the pipe into position to during the installation of the flow device on Causeway St. in Millis. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Mike Callahan is thigh-deep in scummy pond water, yanking loads of mud-covered sticks, mossy rocks and leaves from a blocked pipe in Millis.

“Welcome to the glamorous world of beaver control,” he says, holding up a branch that’s been gnawed to a sharp point. After pulling out a few more armloads of muck, he picks up a rake and begins dragging away bigger loads of debris.

We knew this was coming since the instagram photo a while back, but I didn’t expect it to be THIS good or this long! Ben even gets a short statement! It’s funny because I’ve just been working on my urban beaver benefits quote page so I’m wishing he had mentioned microclimates and impermeable surface but this is plenty to enjoy.

Beaver control is big business. Since starting Beaver Solutions in 2000, Callahan says he’s installed close to 1,600 of these devices — almost all in Massachusetts — and still, the calls from prospective clients keep coming in. That’s because beavers are a constant headache for many Massachusetts homeowners, chewing down trees and building dams that flood basements and roadways. But beavers also do a lot of good things for the environment, like creating habitats and purifying water. So instead of the traditional method of dealing with beavers — trapping and killing them — a growing number of people are trying for peaceful coexistence.

“There are a lot of people out there who don’t necessarily view beavers as being beneficial. They think of them as pests and nuisances and destructive animals,” says Ben Goldfarb, author of “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

But as more people recognize the benefits of having beavers around, he says, “The idea of nonlethal control is catching on across the country.”

Whooo hoo! Big business! It’s a beaver pallooza!

Mike Callahan, owner of Beaver Solutions, LLC, pulls out debris from a culvert beavers dammed up on Causeway St in Millis. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Beavers are what biologists call a “keystone species.” The term comes from architecture, where the keystone is the apex piece of an arch. It’s what gives the structure strength and holds it together. Remove it, and the arch crumbles.

In nature, keystone species are essential to ecosystem health. And when it comes to beavers, their contribution begins with what they’re most famous for: chewing wood. After they gnaw logs and branches with their self-sharpening front teeth, they use the material to build their homes — called lodges — and dams, to create wetlands.

Mike Callahan and Edward Beattie submerge the pipe as John Egan watchers as the cage sinks to the bottom of the marsh during the installation of the flow device on Causeway St. in Millis. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

On land, beavers are slow, clumsy and vulnerable to predators. But they’re fast swimmers, so in the water, they’re much safer from coyotes, bears or anything else trying to eat them. (Fun facts: Beavers can hold their breath underwater for up to 15 minutes. They also have a second pair of lips that they can close behind their teeth, allowing them to chew or carry wood underwater without drowning.)

Beavers engineer wetlands for their own protection, but these watery landscapes have big benefits for everything else living nearby, even humans.

Go look at the site an enjoy this great work for your very own. It even mentions the upcoming beaverCon 2020! Great job Mike Callahan and host Miriam Wasser! Beavers are happy to hear it!

READY OR NOT, HERE WE COME!

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beaver ecological impact October 14, 2019

The setting Hunter’s Moon is brightly outside my window as I type, so if you missed here’s a recap. Even though it is apparently as far away as it can possibly be it still manages to pack a wallop

In the beaver world there are two wonderful things to discuss. First and foremost this photo which was posted by our european friends and shows a fateful street in the capital of Latvia.

Allow me to contend this is one of the single finest photos in the known world. It does a far better job than any of us could hope achieve to say that the beaver population is rebounding and urban beavers are coming to a city near you soon whether you like it or not. Notice, if you will, the cobblestones and micro bus nearby. As well as the busy city streets and office buildings. There are even electrical wires for a crossing cablecar,

The beaver in question walked all around that tree to chew, in a dark city street for hours, but stopped just sort of the prize. Did the street cleaner interrupt? Or an approaching car of workers ready to start their day? Or was it left on purpose for a young beaver to take down easily tomorrow night and feel proud? I will never get tired of wondering, and never tire of looking at this wonderful photograph. Nor should you, Enjoy.

Which leaves is time for this fine article from Colorado by Dave Hallock of the Eldora Mountain Ear. Somethng tells me that having Sherri Tippie as a neighbor for a few years has rubbed off.

A look at nature: Leave it to beaver

Beavers are the engineers of the animal world. They build dams, lodges and canals to regulate water levels that provide shelter and access to food. Their dams raise the water table and increase the size of wetlands, benefiting the many animal species that depend on them, such as waterfowl and neotropical migratory birds that nest in willows (Wilson’s warblers, yellow warblers and dusky flycatchers to name a few).

Beavers can have profound effects on the stretches of stream they inhabit, as well as areas downstream. By raising the water table, they expand the size of wetlands. Beaver enhanced wetlands, with their mosaic of willow and birch shrublands, ponds and emergent vegetation, are some of the richest breeding bird habitats in Colorado. They are nodes of high biodiversity. Beaver dam complexes help catch and retain flood waters and sediment. In essence, they help manage watersheds. They help retain more water on our local landscape. During these times of global warming, that is a significant benefit to having them around.

Think of beaver as a legal way to keep more water on our landscape. And for this one factor alone, besides all the other benefits, try to see them more as helping to maintain a healthy ecosystem and less as a nuisance.

Isn’t that a fine sentiment? Good work, Sherri. We here at Worth A Dam couldn’t agree more, Dave.

LEARNING ‘BEAVER WAYS’

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, beaver myths, History October 13, 2019

If you’re like me, (and who still reading this website really isn’t?) you’re constantly on the look out for beaver tidbits or historic stories what can tell you something more about them. So you can imagine how excited I was to come across this issue of “Outing Magazine” from 1903.

It is set in New Brunswick on the very eastern edge of Canada and offers a surprisingly accurate account of an old trapper talking to a young man interested in an outdoor life. The illustrations are by Tappen Adney and remarkable in their own right. Just look.

I can always tell right away if a beaver illustrator is any good by checking to see if it looks like something I saw a hundred times watching our own beavers. And this I certain did. The artist has a long and fascinating life which begins in Ohio, His parent eventually divorced (which is nearly unheard of in those times) and he entered university at 13 because he was so bright.Before he could take his exams he visited a sister in New Brunswick and met an indigenous canoe maker. He became enamored of the art and the language and tossed his career aside in favor of creating his own canoe business. You can still find images if his remarkable talent at this dying art all over the internet.

Back to the story of beaver ways, which I sure hope everyone will go read for themselves, it is an accounting of beaver behavior. Not the modern use of “ways” like where beavers hang out. One of the things I love about it is that the old trapper takes a very long view indeed of beavers. Don’t kill them all. Leave some to repopulate the race. Novel idea huh? Apparently it was. The old trapper walks through the serious of myths people have about beavers. They can’t move mud with their tails. They can’t hold their breath for an hour. They are more hard working than clever. And surprisingly for me, he gets it right.

Is it any wonder why I loved reading this?Far too often newspapers have stories of sentimental bunk saying how WISE the old trappers are and how much they can tell us about animals. But mostly they’re ridiculous. Like the trapper in Yellow-Knife who told the reporter beavers can lunge upright by bouncing on their tails. It is lovely to read someone who really has seen the things he is claiming.

He even talks about how if a beaver bit you you could bleed to death. He would never have picked one up for a photo like the man in Belarus and he certainly wouldn’t have been surprised by the outcome. I especially enjoyed what he had to say about bank beavers. Ohh what a treasure to find this account. I mean I don’t need to read about him killing kits but this is truly an enjoyable account. I guess this was like a boys life magazine for adults? It ran from the late 1800’s until 1923 and was the place Jack London’s “White Fang” was first published. I guess folks were feeling a wilderness dying off and trying to grasp what the could before it disappeared, I don’t blame them.

So here are your beaver marching orders. Some time in your busy life set aside 15 minutes to read these lovely 6 pages, made even more charming by the surprising end where he tries to keep a beaver in captivity as a kind of pet. The first one chews its way out of a barrel and the second one eats thru his fencing. But he recognizes him again on the river.

You want to know how it ends? Well just go read it yourself. Oh and about that first drawing.

BEAVER COEXISTENCE STRATEGIES

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, Urban beavers October 12, 2019

What do you know. Here I was proudly posting a single page of my urban beaver booklet yesterday when a friend let me know that The Fur-Bearers just released the finished product! This was undertaken with a grant from A seed of Change for the the British Columbia Union of Urban Municipalities Conference a couple weeks ago. Perfect timing to motivate our work don’t you think?

You can see they delve into all the nitty gritty details of keeping beaver on an urban landscape, dealing with all the problems they might cause and how to fix them. There are some excellent references at the conclusion for folks to go read more and a nice case study about our friends in Belleville Ontario,

To tell the truth, I’m a little dissatisfied by some of the effort. The discussion about beaver effects on the ecosystem is lackluster, it says their natural history is mysterious and there’s no real analysis of the cost-saving that comes with fixing the problem once. Only a single photo is sourced. But, as first strikes go, it hits a lot of the target. I especially like the last page which raises several issues I wish were discussed in more detail.

COEXISTENCE SUPPORTS YOUR COMMUNITY

Beavers are a natural part of our communities. Whether we’re in a big city, a mid-sized town, or a gathering of properties in a district, entire ecosystems are kept alive and healthy by the activities of our national animal.

The general public’s interest in environmental policy is growing alongside what will inevitably be conflict with nature as our communities continue to expand; even when one area isn’t growing, another is, causing changes that ripple out over property lines and boundaries. New solutions – ones that consider long-term consequence to ecosystems and the ethical quandaries of the past – must be found.

Municipalities and individual landowners are also facing increasing pressure from provincial (or state) and federal governments who download responsibility for managing issues related to the environment, wildlife and social programs. While this difficult change is a challenge, it is also an opportunity: necessity is the mother of invention.

Not every community will welcome change to traditional practices of wildlife and infrastructure management; not every community will accept staying with the status quo. Ultimately, this booklet was created to illustrate that innovation of non-lethal solutions is not only possible, but ecologically and economically responsible.

Basic fencing can protect individual trees, bushes, or crops from beaver activity; exclusion fences can prevent damming from starting on sensitive culverts or properties; and, with a little education and beaver-like hard work, entire ecosystems can be rebalanced to protect wildlife and infrastructure.

The Fur-Bearers are proud of the goals accomplished by working with municipalities and landowners in the past, and look forward to supporting your community through coexistence strategies.

If you’re like me, you read all the way to the very very end, checking every reference in the bibliography put together by Janice Wong. Is kind of a free for all with Ben’s new urban paper , Hood’s flow device study as well as Longcore’s “Management by Assertion”, but there is also a USDA article about keeping beavers out of culverts (?) and sadly zero mention of Pollock’s restoration Guidebook, which as we know has a very helpful section on urban beavers and their benefits.

It has the look of a reference section where you want your thesis advisor to sign off and are trying to make her think you read a great deal of material but aren’t exactly familiar with the quality of all of it. At the very end there’s some fancy lawyer speak says “Do not try this at home” or something to that effect.

This PDF/booklet and the material covered is for informational purposes only. We take no responsibility for what you do with this knowledge. We cannot be held responsible for any property or medical damages caused by activities listed here. We would advise you to check your local laws, and work with local, provincial/state, and federal governments to ensure you are adhering to all relevant legislation.By taking any information or educational material from The Fur-Bearers and/or this document, you assume all risks. You agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend The Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals (The Fur-Bearers) from any and all claims and damages as a result of any and all the information covered. By taking and/or using any informational resources from The Fur-Bearers, you agree that you will use this information in a safe and legal manner, consistent with all applicable laws, safety rules, and good common sense.

It was just a suggestion. Don’t blame us if it doesn’t work and beavers kill your grandmother. If you agreed to read it it means you agreed to indemnify us from any responsibility if something goes wrong. My mouth would gape more at that statement but what I was mostly startled about was this one.

We strongly recommend working with a professional such as Beaver Deceivers LLC (www.beaverdeceivers.com) or The Beaver Institute (www.beaverinstitute.org.

Okay, now we like Mike and Skip too and trust them a great deal to get things right, but anyone with a ounce of history will be scratching their heads at this. You see up until very recently TFB has employed Adrien Nelson [a Canadian] to do all their beaver installations. He was trained by Mike Callahan after they met at the second State of the Beaver Conference. In 2017 Adrien did a webinar for them about installing flow devices and the area around Vancouver is filled with articles like this:

Volunteer help saves beavers and highway

Beaver dams threatened to flood a section of Highway 101 in Egmont, but thanks to two days of volunteer efforts, the road is now safe – and the beavers are, too.

Members of the Furbearer Defenders group Lesley Fox, Jim Atkinson and Adrian Nelson and Friends of Animals member Dave Shishkoff travelled to Egmont on July 31 and Aug. 7 to install two pond levellers and some exclusion fencing to appease the beavers and protect the roadway.

Adrian was the face of beaver management but no longer is. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me and do a search at the top of this page for his name which will come up 25 times doing installations for furbearer defenders all across the region. Not any more. Which is too bad because he is a friend of this website and a friend of our friends and skilled at what he does. I also liked the fact that he was a young man and could keep doing this work long after Mike and Skip had retired.

All good things come to an end. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the separation wasn’t amicable and since the parting advice of this booklet is to hire an American if you want this done right I’m going to guess that things haven’t softened.

It makes the launch of the book a little bitter sweet. Saving wildlife would of course be so much easier if people and their personalities, egos and feelings weren’t involved. I know beavers themselves are very happy it’s published, They don’t much care who works with whom as long as they’re not killed outright, and we should strive to remember their happy pragmatism.

Congratulations TFB on the excellent new resource you have made available to muncipalities and beaver supporters everywhere. I’ve made a link at the sidebar for people to go explore.