Month: December 2019

2019 IN REVIEW FOR BEAVERS AND WORTH A DAM

It’s been a year hasn’t it? I can’t believe we get to live through the 20’s again!!! I’m sure my house is happy. The story goes it had a flapper daughter at one time who could drive her own fliver! There’s a nice letter from Tom Russert about the Sonoma beavers and I pulled together some annual highlights in case you wonder what happened to us and beavers in 2019. Have fun tonight! Kiss someone at midnight and don’t make any promises you can’t keep.

What to do about beavers and otters in Sonoma Creek

Advice to Sonoma City and CO government officials and agencies by local “citizen scientists”: beavers build dams. Otters live in Sonoma Creek as well but do not build dams.

Cutting a notch, will simply engage the beaver to repair the damage in no time. Putting in a “pond leveler,” also known as a beaver deceiver, will allow water flow management and the beavers with their dam can stay in the channel/creek and be enjoyed by all. This simple inexpensive device has been employed in nearby cities since 2008, inexpensive to build, and requires little, if any, maintenance over time. CDFW, agencies, and government officials are clearly in catch up mode on this subject.

These devices have been successfully employed on Alhambra Creek and throughout the country where urban beaver habitats occur. At least our government didn’t explode the dam and exterminate as many cities typically do. Beaver habitats, managed properly, enhance habitat for a wide variety of species including birdlife, fish populations, and humans. Beaver can help in groundwater recharge. We need to co-exist with them and it is easy when we work smart with a little planning and effort. There have been several expert panel discussions and nature lectures in Sonoma on these very subjects over the past decade. Beavers, like mountain lions, bears, badgers, otters and birds are often misunderstood. As for beavers, there are several youtube videos of pond levelers if you want to see how they can make an appreciable difference.

Fire, ready aim…. Experts? Biologists? Mitigations? OK? Permission to notch a beaver dam? Misidentifying with great authority the animals and wildlife impact and not employing the obvious well know beaver damn habitat solutions long ago? A solution successfully employed across the west coast for years. An informed citizen pretty much hit the nail on the head. Why would Sonoma County officials not turn to the City of Martinez, a major beaver city success story in America since 2008 on this challenging subject of managing urban beaver habitats?

Responsible stewardship of beaver habitats has been known to educate and bring communities together. John Muir once said, “when we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Sonoma is a community of informed citizens known to “Celebrates Our Good Nature”. Thank you Mother Nature for reminding us of our responsibility. This will be a good community test in the months to come.

Tom Rusert is the co-founder of Sonomanature.org

Aww, thanks Tom! Happy New Year to you and Darren, and remember to think about beavers in the twenties!

December:
FIGHTING FIRE WITH EMILY AND BEAVERS

MARTINEZ SHOWS OXFORD A DAM GOOD TIME

November:

LAWSUIT PROPOSES E.P.I.C. CHANGES IN BEAVER TRAPPING

MARTINEZ BEAVERS CELEBRATE THEIR 12th ANNIVERSARY

October:

B.C. HERO FEEL-GOOD BEAVER TAIL

THE MARTINEZ BEAVERS INSPIRE THESIS AT HUMBOLDT STATE

September:

MARTINEZ BEAVERS LOSE HEROIC WILDLIFE VOICE

B.R.A.V.O. BEAVER RELOCATION EFFORT IN CALIFORNIA

MARTINEZ BEAVERS GO TO ROSSMOOR

August:

BEAVERS AND SOLUTIONS ON NPR

BEAVER BENEFITS IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

July:

IN WHICH WE DISCOVER LASSIE LOVES BEAVERS

MARTINEZ BEAVERS ON MUSE ECOLOGY PODCAST

June:

12th BEAVER FESTIVAL IS A HUGE SUCCESS!

EXCITING ADVOCACY FOR BEAVERS IN THE UK

May:

NAPA CONTINUES TO POUR GOOD NEWS FOR BEAVERS

BEAVER EMOJI COMING SOON!

April:

BEAVERS AND SALMON AT JOHN MUIR BIRTHDAY

AMAZING FOOTAGE UNCOVERED OR OUR BEAVERS

March:

A NEW BEAVER FRIEND WELCOMES BEN WITH A RAP FOR BEAVERS

MARTINEZ BEAVERS GO TO AUDUBON

February:

WORTH A DAM RECEIVES A DONATION FROM OUR INSPIRATION

BEAVERS GET FAMOUS FIGHTING FIRES

January:

BEAVER DETECTIVES IN SAN DIEGO

HEIDI PERRYWEATHER FROM MARIN?

Martinez Gazette on KPFA last night, in the seattle times and the LA times. End of an era.

PRETENDING TO HELP

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? December 30, 2019

Oh alright. Vanesso Petro whose boss is Jimmy Taylor at USDA says that as far as she knows the position is specific to predators and will not include any beaver work. Never mind that in Oregon beavers are categorized as predators!!! The positions are to stop predators that threaten live stock. Which, last time I checked, no one accuses beavers of doing. But I guess theoretically if beavers flooded some ranchers field that might be perceived as threatening live stock, and a smart supervisor might say that installing a flow device would provide a long-term solution to protect them? Hmm….

It’s been two good years of beaver news ever since Ben published his book. But we should remember that not everything is rosy. We should all be grateful for articles like THIS that remind us how truly grim things can get when you leave the warm circles of beaver academics. Take this article from upstate New York for example.

Nate Kennedy: Give trapping a try this year

Last fall when I ventured off to a local rod and gun club to take the New York State Trapper Education Course, I wondered what the day would have in store. I considered the various motivations that would bring one to fur trapping, and I thought of my own motivations for taking the course. The “reasons” to trap are varied, and all positive if you ask me. Personally, I connect with the tradition of it all. Much of this country was discovered and built by fur trappers, and that history and lifestyle lives on today.

If you hunt or fish much at all, you can understand the allure of a new outdoor pursuit or hobby. Another season. Another adventure.

An adventure! You know, like joy-riding or serial killing. Why not try trapping? And, as this article specifically recommends, trapping BEAVER. Because you can!

Here are some reasons why you should give trapping a try:

Outdoor recreation and exercise
Conservation and wildlife management
Tradition and history
Economic benefit
Wild game and wild fur

Nate makes sure to embellish each snappy heading with a little paragraph explaining what he means but I’ll spare you most of the effusive prattle. Let’s just zero in on number 2, shall we?

He notes that buying a trapping license or gun folds back funds into the conservation programs themselves, And then adds pointedly:

Wildlife management is one of the largest motivations for trapping. Managing certain species like beaver, muskrat and coyotes can be a great service to landowners, farmers and others who may experience the negative impacts of overabundance. A healthier population can benefit the species, the ecosystem, the landowner and the trapper alike.

Now now. Any advocate worth her salt could have written those exact lines for him. We know the three lies trappers repeat better than they do. This keeps the population healthy! This maintains a balance! This helps farmers!

There is a powerful scene in Never Cry Wolf where some old inuit leaders stop over and sit at the fire for a night. The old woman tells him a creation myth and the young grandson translates. She says long ago there were no predators and so many caribou that the people called them ‘lice’. They reproduced so much that the young ones got sick and the land got trampled. The spirit of the old woman returned to a hole in the ice and asked the creator for a tool to cut the sickness from the herd.

And the amaguk was born. Amaguk: wolf.

It’s way way better when she tells it, with her thick slow native speech and the firelight showing her glowing timeless face. But this will do for our purposes. It does well enough that you will understand when I say that little Nate with his conibear, and all the little Nates he encourages are still no amaguk,

Trapping for sport is very akin to Fantasy Football. You don’t actually do the work, or the training, or learn a skill. You just capitalize on the work of others and pat yourself on the back for doing so by saying you’re HELPING. Which, of course, you aren’t.

When you trap beaver out of an area, and their pond falls into disrepair because there are no little engineers left to tend it – that means there is no deep water for the trout, no meals for the otter or blue heron, and no breeding pools for the frogs and dragonflies. You didn’t help conservation.

You defeated it.

Nate is a rifle instructor at the Cornell school of 4-H in Seneca. He holds a master’s degree in environmental communication from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Which means he attended the very school where Dietland Mueller-Schwarze taught and did research for years. If the name rings a bell its because he’s the author of the FIRST beaver book that changed everyone thinking.

So he should know better and might get a letter.

Speaking of long term solutions to beaver issues, I made this for Mike yesterday to remind folks to enroll in the first-ever East coast beaver conference.

10 MORE STATES GET NON-LETHAL MANAGEMENT

heidi08 Flow Device Installed December 29, 2019

It’s been a rough year for wildlife. Anteaters and sloths burned in the Amazon and Koalas dying in the flaming forests of Australia. Not to mention all the wild spaces set aside by Obama and turned in to drilling fields by his successor. There are easier things to be than wildlife at the moment. But even though its been a crappy decade and some folks aren’t happy that democrats negotiated with the terrorist and made a funding bill to keep the government from shutting down, this is a sweet little tidbit that came out of the deal.

Congress Funds New Nonlethal Conflict-Prevention Positions

Congress and the President approved a spending package last week to keep the government running through the rest of the 2020 fiscal year. Contained within the legislation is a provision that NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife worked to secure: an appropriation of $1.38 million for the federal agency Wildlife Services to hire new employees dedicated to using nonlethal measures to reduce livestock-carnivore conflicts in up to 12 states.

The new employees will be modeled after three “wildlife conflict-prevention specialist” positions we’ve already worked with Wildlife Services to create—two in Montana and one in Oregon. In Montana, one of the specialists is a year-round fencing technician who works with landowners to install electric fencing around livestock pastures, bee yards, chicken coops, and other “attractants” across western and central Montana. The other is a seasonal “range rider” who has spent the last two summers protecting several herds of cattle on grazing allotments in wolf and grizzly bear country in the state’s northwestern corner.

The third specialist works in seven different counties in southwestern Oregon, using fencing, scare devices, her own human presence, and other deterrents to reduce conflicts with wolves, black bears, mountain lions, coyotes, and other wildlife.

Okay. so the article doesn’t SPECIFICALLY say that they’ll be teaching these specialists how to to install flow devices but good lord you can’t put up fences and chase grizzly bears ALL the time. I’m sure that the right pressure could be applied in the right places and make this more likely to happen.

Because of the effectiveness of these positions and the strategies they employ, over the last year NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife advocated for federal funding to create similar positions in additional states (including Washington, California, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan). After months of uncertainty, we were thrilled when, late last week, the spending bills containing our requested appropriation were signed into law.

We’re in the club! Now we just have to find out who the non-lethal officer is for our state and ply him or her with information about flow devices! Surely one of us knows someone who knows someone….hmmm…

But working together despite those disagreements is part of what makes our collaboration so compelling. Even with serious differences, we have found a way to join forces to provide meaningful, durable solutions for the landowners and rural communities most impacted by predators—while keeping carnivores out of trouble and alive on the landscape to fulfill their critical ecological roles. And perhaps as importantly, by cooperating in the face of our differences, we are also proving that even in such politically divisive times, it is still possible to find and work toward common goals—for the benefit of people, wildlife, and the country.

So beavers aren’t carnivores, I know. But non-lethal management of beavers in California could be good for salmon and steelhead and wildlife prevention. I cannot imagine that this won’t come up. All that remains is for us to find out who’s doing the actual work and slip some beaver deceivers into their calendar.

Just because its unlikely doesn’t mean it should be impossible?

Last issue released this morning. Say goodnight Gracie. When my very old house was built the gazette had already been running 40 years. It’s been a helluva run.

BEAVERS KNOW BETTER

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 28, 2019

It’s a beaver day brimming with news. Starting with the Denver bike-path that knows it needs beaver help. Something tells me contact has already been made but I wrote them how to reach Sherri Tippie and here’s hoping things will be easily resolved soon. It’s her home town, so they should know the right things to do already.

Denver bike commuters can blame beavers for trouble on the Cherry Creek trail

Yesterday I touched base with the beaver watcher who alerted everyone in Sonoma, Robert Burkart. I remembered how upset and helpless we felt when our city did similar things to our beaver dam and I thought he’d want to hear from a supporter. Like I expected, he was really concerned by the what he saw happen to the habitat that he had come to care about. He passed along this video of part of the destruction.

Does this look like a ‘notch’ to you?

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Of course not. It never does.

Good news. Beavers fix things when we break them. Robin Ellison of Napa went by yesterday and took this photo of the cleanup.

And harking back to our story-telling conversation, this POWERFUL video spoke to me yesterday. It was shared by Dr. Travis Longcore who is a professor at UCLA and author of the Management by Assertion paper. I could NOT watch this video and fail to think how amazing it would be to have a similar short piece using a child’s voice to explain why beavers matter. I have already spoken to some film making friends about just that, fingers crossed…

PART TWO OF THE SONOMA CHAIN-SAW MASSACRE

heidi08 Beavers December 27, 2019

Sonoma follows up on its chain-saw massacre. You knew it would. You knew this was coming right? So people can chat about it over the breakfast table and garden gate. Good. Let’s hope it becomes another Martinez.

River otters and beavers are coexisting in a Sonoma creek

Sometimes it’s a case of mistaken identity, a river otter misidentified as a beaver – or the other way around – but both are here in Sonoma and living in close proximity to one another.

“If I had a dime for every time an otter was misidentified as a beaver I would not have to raise funds for my project,” said Megan Isadore, co-founder and executive director of the River Otter Ecology Project.

Photos of North American River otter provided to the Index-Tribune for a story about a beaver dam in Sonoma misidentified the animal as beaver. Isadore and others correctly identified the critter in the photo.

Nice work Megan. I appreciate the value of going to the experts. And I’m really glad the reporter contacted Megan and myself. But is it me, or does she get more of a respectful introduction?

“It’s a very common mistake,” said Heidi Perryman, beaver advocate of Worth a Dam, a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining beavers in Martinez.

She said the two animals are found in similar habitat, but it’s not because they seek one another’s company.

“They are not best friends,” Perryman said. “They are like neighbors; neighbors who don’t really get along.”

Otters are carnivores, she explained, and will take a beaver’s baby (called “kit”) so beavers will protect their young and chase away otters.

Worth a Dam provides identification help on its website. Otters have long, sleek bodies compared to a beaver’s rounder frame. Beavers can weigh about twice as much as an otter. Otters are white in color around their muzzle with a lot of whiskers. Their tales are quite different, too. Where an otter tail starts wide at the back end it tapers into a point, whereas a beaver tail is flat, like a paddle.

Megan’s the executive director and I’m an advocate? ROEP gets a hyperlink and a funding plea and we get a mention? Did I bring this on myself? Did I speak too informally and not give my title?Sheesh. Always a bridesmaid and never a bride. I got some email the other day asking if I was still the founder and director of Worth A Dam. I couldn’t help it. I had to snork.

Yes, I’m still the director but not the founder anymore..

Perryman is upset that the agency referred to the hole as a “notch.”

“You don’t ‘notch’ with a chainsaw,” she said. “You notch a dam with a rake or a pair of clippers.”

She said it’s difficult to get agreement on what “notch” really means. “Ripping out the dam, even if that’s what they did, it’s not a problem for the beavers. They’re not looking for retirement.”

Well that sounds like me at least. The onery advocate. There should be a movie.

“In terms of the long-term plan, we will discuss it with our biologist, and develop a long-term plan,” which could include a pond leveler.

Cutting holes in the dam will not solve the problem of bypassing water, experts said. Beavers will just continue to fix whatever hole is cut in the dam.

Dugan said the agency installed a wildlife camera near the dam last week. They will monitor the dam, creek and beaver activity to help them plan for a long-term solution.

On the Sonoma Ecology Center Facebook page is a video, taken in July, of a beaver at work on a tree:

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Ooh I guess the water level has changed a little bit up that way! It sure makes you realize how handy it is for beavers when ponds flood. They can reach up much higher and get all kinds of access to things they never reached before.

Well, faintly wounded egos aside we are VERY happy that the reporter Anne Ernst followed up on this Christmas story, and that beavers may benefit from better attention being paid to their existence. We are glad too, that my video came in handy. And lived up to its name. This website is so cavernous now its been a while since I visited it although years ago the forest service said this was so helpful they wanted to post it on their site.

Post away, I said. We’re all about the sharing information here at beaver central.