October is the month I said I’d work on my booklet about urban beavers for BeaverCon 2020. Some pages are going better than others. But I finished Skip Lisle’s piece on culverts yesterday and am very happy with how it looks. He very kindly wrote something up and said it was okay to share on the website too. If the print is too small to read in this image double click on it and it should popup as an insert.
I especially like the idea of culverts being the most ideal damming site EVER made. It certainly explains their popularity. And don ‘t you just love the phrase “Beaver Magnets”? I had to try my hand at making a graphic for that. Skip has a talent for naming things, I’ll say that much.
I’ve been working the back cover too, using images from friends we met over the years. What do you think? I want it to seem like they’re getting beavers whether they like it or not and encourage them to start thinking of long-term solutions.
I have a few other states I want to add to the mix but I think that gets things started. I’ve also been working on the community education and response pages, maybe ultimately as a centerfold with Amy chalking beavers as the background. These took a while to make but I’m quite fond of them. Today I’m working on something Mike Callahan wrote about using levelers to control pond height. I was thinking I’d like an urbanish friend to write something about protecting trees. know Sierra Wildlife Coalition has done a lit but I’d love to show off beaver-mindedness in another state. Maybe Jakob Shockey or one of the groups he’s worked with? Any ideas spring to mind?
Every now and then you run into a city that has dealt with some beaver-killing pushback in the past. A bunch of residents circulated a petition or picketed and don’t want beavers killed. The city officials calm down the rabid press saying ‘there there’ as loudly as they can and someone puts in a garden rake and calls it a beaver deceiver and promises get made not to trap the beavers again unless they really really have to.
Last may we took a visit to Cumberland Rhode Island where the exact scene was played out, only instead of a rake they used a giant metal cage which I said looked like it was leftover from shark week. Remember? Oh you know what they say. We tried being humane and it didn’t work. Now we have NO choice. It’s like your mother picking up the pieces of the broken flintstones glass and saying “I guess we just can’t have NICE THINGS!”
CUMBERLAND – Walking along the Old Road Trail at the Cumberland Monastery, a path of straw now covers the muddy ground where a wooden footbridge used to stand.
Residents wondering when the bridge, previously located at a spot near the town’s highway garage, will be restored may be out of luck, as town officials told The Breeze that there are no current plans to put the bridge back.
“That trail is going to have to be abandoned,” said Frank Stowik, head of the town’s Highway Department, According to Stowik, the trail is currently wet and unusable, and while the water table is at its lowest right now, after a couple of good rainstorms, it will be under water again.
The town had added the “beaver deceivers,” gravel, and bridge after a family of beavers moved into the area in 2014 and caused the trail to routinely wash out, Stevens explained.
We tried it your way. Now you have lots of beavers, a bigger pod and no bridge. See how that worked out? I guess the Monastery trail is just going to have to be closed. Get a stairmaster. The city can’t do anything about it.
You’ve seen these kind of kabuki dares before. Yesterday for example when Pacific Gas and Electric said, okay if you’re determined to sue us for fires started by our power lines then we’ll turn the power off when there’s fire danger and make you remember how important we are in the first place. Gosh we might have to close the caldecott tunnel. That will be hard on your economy won’t it? Get a stair master.
Because of the time and expense related to the wetlands permitting process, Stevens said that the Rhode Island Land Trust Council is trying to ask the RIDEM for a waiver for beaver-related public trail management, hoping the agency will be more flexible when it comes to these specific scenarios.
To ask for the bridge back, the permitting process will require a survey, engineering drawings, wetlands delineation, and consultants, which takes time, Stevens said.
“Ultimately whether we did it right away or down the line, it was clear it had to be removed,” he said.
Wait, I know this one! There are specific rules and costs for fixing a trail in wetlands that you’ve dragged your heels on for years. And now you’re hoping that maybe you can use the beavers to waive some of those requirements! Just like Martinez did when it pretended the sheetpile along a certain mogul’s property like was a beaver project so they could use restricted funds to pay for it. Gosh there really is NOTHING new under the sun.
That video ends somber because during that work was the first time we ever saw mom’s eye condition and even though I don’t think it had anything to do with why she died 16 months later I am sure the stress of having your home destroyed had something to do with her health. Ancient history. I guess that’s all blood under the bridge now, as Edward Albee once said.
I bet you didn’t even know that the when Ben Goldfarb first sent me his manuscript for review it had a section on the monstrous Martinez sheetpile story and as much as I wanted to shame the city for their fraud and expose it all I ultimately begged him to take it out because I thought it would make too many powerful voices too angry and harm the chances of whatever beavers we had left.
I figured at the time I got one get one coupon for change and Ben who was basically finished with the book and had his editor’s blessing to everything he had written, would maybe consider the change out of the goodness of his heart. Believe me when I say there were other places I wanted to use that coupon, in the description of my home as full of beaver tchotchkees for example, or to make me sound slightly smarter and less kooky than I did. But I nobly used the coupon for the beavers. And thankfully, he agreed to change it. So the sheetpile story will remained untold- except by me on this website which we all know perfectly well nobody reads.
Hey maybe that manuscript will be worth something on ebay one day. He’s getting pretty famous. Hmm too bad its not handwritten.
If you are a regular reader of this sight you will remember that this respected college, the Alma Mater of Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, has had beaver problems before. Many times before. So many times, in fact, that the campus earned its own beaver killing headline “Welle-SLAY-college and a rewritten anthem.
Ahh that was some mighty good spoofing. I’m partial to a nice beaver killing alma mater. Looks like times aren’t changing nearly as fast in the ivory tower as they are everywhere else.
Wellesley Department of Public Works employees could be seen Wednesday removing debris from a dam constructed by beavers at the State Street pond near the track and football field parking lot. The beavers’ project was obstructing the culvert and causing flooding concerns along the Fuller Brook Path, according to Natural Resources Commission Director Brandon Schmitt.
The town left the beavers alone. Wellesley contracts with an outside firm for beaver removal/relocation in some cases, though only between Nov. 1-April 15.
Pinocchio! Beaver relocation is illegal in your state. Are you saying the DPW commits crimes November through April 15? Or are you just euphamizing readers into a foggy non-awareness of the T-word. Lethal Trapping.
“As the beavers are still there (and busy as beavers), it’s very likely the debris will be back and have to be removed again,” according to the town. “We work very hard to find a way to coexist with the beavers.”
Until November. When we can kill them.
A contraption called a Beaver Deceiver (best animal thwarting device name since the Mosquito Deleto) has been used to prevent damming at Rosemary Brook But State Street pond doesn’t have the depth and size to allow for this technique there.
Here that Skip? Your name gets a compliment, even though the school can’t be bothered to hire your expertise. Here’s guessing they wouldn’t spring for Mike either, even though he’s an hour away.
Better just to complain and kill at regular intervals, then find a reporter who is so gullible she can lie about it with a straight face.
One of the very first things that our friends at Sierra Wildlife Coalition got involved with was the ironic situation at Taylor Creek where the forest service would rip out the beaver dams every year because the animals ‘weren’t native” and they got in the way of the Kokanee salmon which were truly introduced. They went round and round and round with the fine folks at Taylor creek, installing flow devices and wrapping trees. The publication of the history papers did a little to help convince them that beavers belonged and Sherry and Ted’s plucky persistence did the rest. Continued flow device adjustments are now tweaked by Toogee Sielsch who has valiantly stepped up to fill Ted’s shoes er, waders.
It’s good to see things have reached a kind of rapprochement.
Kokanee Salmon Spawning Creates Unique Experience at Taylor Creek
Some people are surprised to find out Pismo beach has beavers. Not me. They’ve been bemoaning and complaining about them for years. The very most beaver-friendly ranger of the bunch offers a talk entitled “Beavers: Adorable Wildlife or Destructive Pests?”
Um, can I pick neither?
Well, it looks like they have decided to make a little lemonade with their lemons.
Discover the beaver’s physical adaptations, their role in our country’s westward expansion, why they were hunted, and their local history. Search for evidence of their activities during a short walk.
Dress for wind/weather with comfortable shoes. Bring insect repellent and water: binoculars a plus. Meet at Oceano Dunes Visitor Center, Guiton Hall meeting room, Oceano Campground, 555 Pier Ave, Oceano. Moderate walk, 0.5 miles, 2 hours
Gee that sounds fascinating. Dress up in a beaver coat and put on goggles while a ranger tells you about their adaptions. Then tells you how they were all killed for their fur and not native to California anyway. Can we take a hike to see some of the damage they caused too? Look Timmy, this culvert was flooded by beavers and we had to rip the dam out with a back hoe! And look, this beautiful tree was eaten by those destructive monsters!
Sigh.
Beaver education ain’t what it used to be!
I found this lovely image on reddit the other day, it has a strange gaming community origin but I think we should just pause to enjoy its wistful beauty: posted by Demiansky. Song of the Eons is the game. The creator notes:
Ancient legends recount High Beaver civilizations damming rivers as great as the Nile or the Ganges, resulting in Beaver Lakes capable of supporting a continent’s worth of population in great beaver cities the size of the Aral Sea. These legends are known just as much for the deeds of these High Beaver cultures as they are for the inevitable, biblical catastrophes that result when the mighty dams responsible for these cultures at last rupture.
After an elder beaver lake has been destroyed, its common for other races settling the dried up beaver lake to enjoy a massive burst in population. The rich silts and clays which accumulated at the bottom of the beaver lake make for exceptional farmlands for many years.
Today I’m working on something Mike Callahan wrote about using levelers to control pond height. I was thinking I’d like an urbanish friend to write something about protecting trees. know Sierra Wildlife Coalition has done a lit but I’d love to show off beaver-mindedness in another state. Maybe Jakob Shockey or one of the groups he’s worked with? Any ideas spring to mind?
CUMBERLAND – Walking along the Old Road Trail at the Cumberland Monastery, a path of straw now covers the muddy ground where a wooden footbridge used to stand.
Wellesley Department of Public Works employees could be seen Wednesday removing debris from a dam constructed by beavers at the State Street pond near the track and football field parking lot. The beavers’ project was obstructing the culvert and causing flooding concerns along the Fuller Brook Path, according to Natural Resources Commission Director Brandon Schmitt.
