Month: November 2019

GUEST POST FROM MICHIGAN

heidi08 Beavers November 15, 2019

Beaver friend Nancy May of Michigan was kind enough to provide a beaver account for my soon to be finished urban booklet. It’s such a nice read that I thought I’d share it here, while I’m busy impeaching. Enjoy!

Mackinac’s Beaver Family

About 7 years ago, an amazing thing happened on Mackinac Island: A beaver pair built a lodge near the shoreline on the edge of town. Beavers were trapped to near-extinction here a 100 years ago. The local community was excited and I was ecstatic! A chance to photograph them close-up! They soon got used to my presence and went about their business uninterrupted.

I started to post my pictures on a local blog and much to my surprise, I soon had a large following. I tried to learn as much about this creature as possible so I might interpret the behaviors I was witness to. In turn, I told their story as it unfolded over the following years.

It was an incredible learning experience for so many! Tourists were able to see them in their natural habitat and they soon became a “point of interest” on the Island, competing with many natural wonders. Their lodge was just a few feet from the shoreline on a path that 100’s of people took daily on their bike ride around the Island.

It was clear that beaver parents are wonderful at caring for their young and that they are second only to man as architects!! Their lodge was destroyed by storms 3 times and the locals brought branches for them to re-build; And they did- in just 2 or 3 days.

To this day, I get notes from people thanking me for their story. I am hopeful that attitudes will change towards this amazing animal and people will see them for the eco-engineers that they are and welcome their presence.

Nancy May

Mackinac Island, Michigan

RAISING A COMMUNITY TO CHERISH BEAVER

Yesterday was a weird day. In the afternoon we were called out to Mountain View Sanitation where a local group had seen a beaver sleeping on a small island earlier in the day. They worried he looked disoriented. Jon went by to check it out and didn’t see a beaver but did spot the hole where he’s been sleeping, so we’ll try later and see what we find. It could be a lost beaver, a late disperser looking for new digs. or it could be a sick fellow, We don’t know. I will keep you posted.

Then in the evening Jon had to go receive the citizen of the year award on my behalf at the Thousand Friends of Martinez meeting, which turned out to be kind of surprising. Mark Thompson wrote this big speech about my contributions, There was heartfelt applause and appreciation and we were both left feeling a little overwhelmed.

Mind you, I am not a woman with a wall of bowling trophies or sports medals, So it’s a little surprising to find your name on a plaque before your death. But I guess that’s the way it should be, right?

Anyway, I’ll share the speech later because its good news for beavers. but I really fee likel slipping away to Mongolia now, don’t you?

Drones and Beavers: A Watershed Moment for Mongolia’s Park Rangers

Mr. Chingel prepares a drone using a handheld control unit. The drone rises straight up, hovers a moment above us, then speeds off over the trees. This is a conservation drone, used to monitor the area for illegal activity.

The Watershed and the City

The rangers are employing a natural method to help restore the watershed – beavers. Reintroduction projects haved gained popularity as beaver dams improve watersheds and help restore the natural ecosystem.

We visit the Beaver Education Center outside Gachuurt, UB’s rural suburb, where about 48 Eurasian beavers live and breed in pairs. They were brought from Russia and Germany in 2012 to help restore the Tuul river watershed.

Mongolia is famous for its snow leopards, eagles, and the Takhi wild horse, but there seems to be little known about its population of 300 rare, indigenous beavers (Castor fiber birulai), a subspecies of the European beaver living in the Bulgan river in western Mongolia. Given their endangered status, the project is introducing Eurasian beavers. About nine babies were born in 2019, with 80-100 born since 2012. The beavers are released into the area after they are old enough as part of the introduction project.

So this is the moment when I remember hearing the story about Michael Pollock going back to Mongolia as a research fellow trying to find some of the beavers that had been released to help the watershed. They talk to everyone an no one can remember them until finally an old villager said,

“YES! I remember them! They were DELICIOUS! Can you please bring some more?”

So it was very nice to keep reading this.

Beavers have been released in the Khan Khentii protected area, adjacent to the area the beavers are raised in. “This protection area extends far east — the urban ranger jurisdiction ends at some areas that belong to other rangers,” Chingel explains.

But Michael Pollock, a watershed and beaver expert, thinks monitoring is less important than educating the community about their importance to the ecosystem.

Pollock traveled to western Mongolia to research a failed reintroduction project and did not see a single beaver, but met a local who recalled hunting the flat-tailed creatures, saying they “had much better fur than muskrats.”

“Getting the local population to understand and cherish the species and take ownership and protection of it, is in my mind going to have to be essential to get them back on the landscape,” Pollock explained by email.

I must say I could not agree more. Getting locals to cherish the species is the goal. And I only know one way for that to happen. Beaver festival Mongolia, anyone? I see they already have an eagle festival. It would be an easy fix.

BEAVER MOON SAYS HI

heidi08 Beavers November 13, 2019

Did you see it?

Last nights beaver moon was truly a wonder to behold and I would write more about the change of energy we can expect under its spell but it’s almost impeachment-O-Clock so I have to make coffee and popcorn and settle in for a morning of coughing. Let me just say that the above photo was made with a new tool called “”Traces” stickermule released yesterday which is free for the moment and will allow you to strip the background from any photo and is the most fun you will ever have without breaking the law. I put our wedding photo in a shark tank which was hilarious! I couldn’t stop with just the moon and had to add this:

Just be happy I haven’t figured out how to put the mayor in his mouth yet,Isn’t that wonderful? Now before I dash, you will enjoy this new video from the Mendocino RCD newsletter in Willits.

Week #46 Beavers Help With Biodiversity

by Robert Kunicki | Nov 12, 2019 | Uncategorized

The dams that beavers build contribute to the biodiversity of the Little Lake Valley ecosystem by providing lasting aquatic habitat on the landscape. Watch as a diverse range of animals visit this beaver dam site. River otters, Cedar Waxwings, a bobcat, and a Screech Owl are just a few species that benefit from the beaver’s presence.

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SNOWY SNOWY BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Ice November 12, 2019

I’ve reviewed a handful of articles bemoaning the return of the beavers to the Tundra that worry they will destroy all the melting permafrost. Mostly people are worried about the WRONG thing, as we’ve noted many times. So it was a delight to finally read something positive about the change-makers.

‘Tundra be dammed’: Beavers head north, leaving their mark on the Arctic

Animals the size of Labrador retrievers are changing the face of Alaska, creating new ponds visible from space.

“These guys leave a mark,” UAF ecologist Ken Tape said of North America‘s largest rodents, beavers. He has observed the recent work of beavers north of Arctic Circle using satellite images. He and a group of Arctic researchers have found the creatures have somehow colonized the tundra of northwestern Alaska, damming more than 50 streams there since 1999.

Beavers live in every province of Canada, every U.S. state and into northern Mexico. Range maps now need to be redrawn to include areas north of treeline in Alaska and Canada

It’s nice when people get a whole host of beaver facts correct. Not common, but nice.

With their dams and new lakes that hold warmish water, beavers of the tundra ecosystem are thawing permafrost soils through their actions. Beavers could be “priming arctic streams for the establishment of salmon runs” that now don‘t exist, maybe because extreme northern waters are too cold for egg development.

Tape and co-authors Ben Jones, Chris Arp, Ingmar Nitze, Guido Grosse and Christian Zimmerman are writing about those changes in a paper with the working title, “Tundra be dammed: Beaver colonization of the Arctic.”

They used Landsat satellite images from 1999 to 2014 to show a good deal of beaver activity in the basins of the lower Noatak River and the Wulik and Kivalina rivers in Northwest Alaska. Because there was little or no beaver activity visible in the 1999 images, they conclude that beavers have migrated into those areas since then. They wrote that beavers there are moving in at an average rate of about 5 miles each year.

That’s right. Beavers could be clearing a path for salmon! They could make an uninhabitable area habitable just like they did in Cherynobyl and on Mt, Saint Helens. And you’re welcome!

“We do not know how beavers reached the Beaufort Coastal Plain, but they would have had to cross a mountain range or swim in the sea,” wrote Yukon biologist Tom Jung, who recently saw a beaver dam and winter store of food just 15 miles south of the Arctic Ocean in northern Yukon Territory.

Beavers are not great walkers, and their feet may not be adapted to cold. Beavers do not avoid winter by hibernating. To survive, they need a store of willow branches for food and water a few feet deep that doesn‘t freeze. They mate in deepest winter, January or February. The females have two to four kits from late April to June.

Seriously Beavers are not great walkers in the cold? Seriously? Do you really think castor fiber of siberia has such magic different feet? You might want to check out the data on how beavers normally live and walk where its very very cold.

Their presence north of arctic treeline since the late 1990s may be a population rebound from the late 1800s, Tape said, when the Hudson Bay Co. sold almost 3 million far-north beaver pelts to English buyers. But he wonders if beavers were ever present on arctic tundra landscapes. The northern expansion of the American beaver might be a phenomenon people have not yet seen.

At least he wonders. No one else even wonders. They just say Eek! beavers bad! And reporters write it down. I’m curious whether this means good things for salmon. And I’m curious what your research will find. Look at some historical trapping journals will ya?

BEAVERS AND FATHERS REMEMBERED

heidi08 Beavers November 11, 2019

One of the things I don’t get to read enough is other blogs that talk about watching beavers. Either there aren’t very many or my filters miss them, but I’m always happy when one shows on the horizon. And this was was a special treat written by Sara Wright.

Nature’s Most Industrious Builder

A wide slow moving stream meandered its way to the sea below the house on the hill and beavers had made a solid dam and erected a domed lodge in the center of the stream. Early in the summer the parents would swim up to me with their kits as I sat quietly on my bench by the water (a bench my father had built for his daughter.) Watching those furry little heads with bright beady eyes peer at me curiously as they swam next to their parents is a sight that I will never forget.

I soon learned the lodge was occupied by three generations of beavers. The beavers spent part of each summer “logging” the poplars at the edge of the stream. They created open mud slides that led to open water and every night I would sit on the little bench and watch these industrious creatures cut off the branches and swim with their small logs to the dam. Upon arrival they gnawed smaller branches off the logs divesting them of most of the leaves which they ate. They took some to the dam to shore it up and repair any leaks. As long as I sat quietly the beavers went about their work as if I wasn’t even there, but if I stood up suddenly or tried to rid myself of mosquitos by waving my hands, one beaver or another would slap his tail making a great fuss! By midsummer the little kits could be seen swimming with a slender stick or two towards the lodge imitating their parents. There was something about those bright-eyed little kits that stole my heart. Later in the summer the beavers began to disappear under water with tender poplar branches. Those tasty leaves and sticks would feed them throughout the coming winter.

Yup. We’ve all been there. Once your heart is touched by a beaver nothing is ever quite the same. Beavers change things. That’s what they do. I am remembering a certain magical morning lo these many years ago when Jon and I counted 4 kits munching willow branches,

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The first year I spent beaver -watching my father died suddenly on November 9th (the anniversary of his death is today, just three days before the full beaver moon). Just before I got the call I awakened from a dream that simply said:

“Your dad has become a beaver.”

I had to stop here and gasp. The first time I ever saw our beavers I was with my father crossing the escobar bridge. One of the profound coincidences that lurked in the PBS “Leave it to Beavers” film is that while producer Jari Osbourne was working on it her own father died. And her senior assistant’s father also died. And the morning they sent me this film to preview for my feedback I received the phone call that my father also had died.

A series of random coincidences attached profoundly to beavers.

After my father’s untimely death I thought a lot about the relationship between my father and the beavers. The one hobby that my father cultivated when he wasn’t working professionally was carpentry. He was what I would call an extraordinary builder and finish carpenter in his spare time. He and my grandfather built one of the homes we lived in and my father designed and engineered the entire enterprise.

To dream that my dad had become a beaver on the day of his death after I had spent an entire summer submerged in the beavers’ world seemed uncanny, prescient. After he died whenever I watched those beavers I also saw my dad, remembering how hard he worked, how generous he was to others in need, how loyal he was to his family. To think of my dad as a beaver brought me enormous comfort and gave me some hope that something of him lived on in a positive way.

As thanksgiving approached that first year I knew that I would be spending the weekend alone except for the beavers, who by this time, had disappeared under ice. I decided to honor my father and the beavers together by giving my friends a present. So on thanksgiving day I took my handsaw and chopped down two tender poplars after asking for permission to do so… Next I took a crowbar and bored a big hole in the ice not far from the lodge and stuffed the first poplars into icy black waters. Late that day I sat on my frozen bench and called to the beavers, telling them that I had a present for them. I stayed there until almost dusk half frozen – hoping for a sleek brown head to appear, but of course no one did. Yet, when I walked up the hill, I felt as if I had done something important that mattered.

Just this morning I sent Sara’s post to Jari who was very moved and thankful Today is Canadian remembrance day. And what a deep way to remember. One of my last carefree days with my father, before his illness, I spent making a manger in his workshop to use for the beaver family a friend had made me out of clay. I’m sure you’ve seen it before because I use it every holiday for a creche sceen and it always makes me remember our happier days with him.

The next morning I raced down the hill to the stream, and to my amazement and joy, the poplar branches had disappeared! For the next three days I repeated poplar gift giving after reopening the hole in the ice, though I never glimpsed my friends.

In a few days the cold set in for good and a light covering of snow covered the lodge. I loved the fact that the beavers were warm and toasty in their house under the ice. For some reason just knowing they were there brought me an amazing amount of comfort, and all that winter not one day ever passed when I didn’t think of my dad with love.

Me either. Beautifully written Sara Wright. And than you for a morning of remembrances.