Month: February 2020

A CORNUCOPIA OF BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior February 29, 2020

There has been way too much beaver news lately. Usually I keep a file with a few relevant articles just in case I run out of things to say that day, but now the file is overflowing. I’m marching through and randomly deleting to lighten the load. Let’s try to get through five things today, okay? Starting with this fun short from New York.

I’m so old I remember when New York boasted about its first returned beaver and named it Jose Serrano after the congressman who cleaned up that particular waterway. It was 2010. Remember?

This lovely image was posted by Penny Meyers

Last Frame: Another Day At The Lodge

“Winter in Minnesota often has us spending a lot of time indoors, so on a nice January day, I took a walk at Dunton Locks County Park in Becker County, about a half-hour from my home,” recalls photographer Penny Meyers. “I came upon this beaver sitting on the snow-covered ice near the edge of a pond. I watched for about an hour as it occasionally dove through a hole in the ice to retrieve twigs and roots and then sit in the snow to enjoy the fruits of its labor.

Brr that’s one chilly photographer AND beaver! We had things much easier in Martinez, I can tell you. Thanks Penny!

There are a couple ‘firsts’ I’ve been putting off. The beaver emoji and the worlds largest beaver statue to name a few.

The world’s largest beaver statue, a giant smurf and a kissing couple sculpture: These landmarks will be lit up for the ‘Global Greening’

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, the National Theatre in London and the Smurf Statue in Brussels will all go green this year for the first time to mark St Patrick’s Day.

New additions include the Giant Beaver Sculpture in Beaverlodge, Canada – the largest beaver sculpture in the world – and the National Museum of Qatar.

The national museum of QATAR will have a giant green beaver sculpture for St Patrick’s Day? I mean a country that never had beavers making a giant statue of a beaver for the national holiday of another country that never had beavers? I almost don’t know where to begin. But sure, okay. Here’s the Emoji by the way.

New Emojis Coming in 2020 Include Polar Bear, Bubble Tea, Teapot, Seal, Feather, Dodo, Black Cat, Magic Wand and More

Apple will adopt the new Unicode 13 emoji characters at some point in 2020, likely in the fall as an update to iOS 14. Apple last year introduced Unicode 12 emojis in the iOS 13.2 update that was released in October.

Thank goodness this gaping hole in virtual communication will be repaired, I’m sure you’re thinking. Me too!

Now onto the most important news. Remember that the proposed rule change for beaver depredation was going to be considered last friday? Well they did the same thing as Cinderella in ‘Into the woods” which is they decided not to decide. They didn’t rule to accept the recommendation and send it to Fish and Wildlife, and they didn’t turn it down either, they decided to let their boss decide.

So the rule change is on Chuck Bonham’s desk as we speak.

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TRAPPERS WHO KNEW TRUTHS ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, History February 28, 2020

There is never a simple single note when it comes to beavers. Either its a good scientist saying some bad things about them, or its a bad trapper saying good things. You never know. But it’s never simple.

Connelly: Henry Jemmett and the waterway engineers

Henry Jemmett had a variety of interests; fishing, hunting, baseball, and music among them, but the interest that seemed to best define Henry and drive his awareness of the natural world was beaver trapping.

Long before that, Henry developed a deep appreciation for nature’s waterway engineer. He believed the beaver formed a nucleus within the landscape that attracted many species of wildlife including deer, waterfowl, mink, muskrats, coyotes, and bobcats, and enthusiastically described the excellent fishing found at beaver dams.

Up until Henry was 14 or 15, in the early 1930s, beaver were very scarce in the Blackfoot River country. Henry wrote that his dad remembered two trappers that almost wiped out the beaver in this area. Henry said that by the early ‘30s beaver started to again appear, slowly at first and then he and his brother George began to see more and more signs while exploring the area’s streams. Eventually beaver became so numerous that a caretaker trapper was assigned to this part of the state to control beaver numbers.

Idaho Fish and Game must have been an interesting place in those days. Trappers like Henry and Elmo Heter who you know because of them famous parachuting story. These were wardens who believed furbearers should be trapped but also that beavers made a pretty big damn difference where ever they landed. Now it seems people believe either A or B. You’re either PETA or you’re a Trophy Hunter. But there was a time people believed both.

Henry became the caretaker trapper in 1946. Caretakers were given a percentage of the selling price of the pelts. The pelt allotment to the caretaker was 68 for the stretch of the Blackfoot River that extended from Government Dam to the mouth of Wolverine Creek, including all of the river tributaries. This allotment was increased in 1949. Henry said that besides the living that his job provided “the fringe benefits were wonderful” because they included a life in the outdoors. From the 1946-47 winter through the 1956-57 winter Henry reported trapping 1,717 beaver along the Blackfoot River and its tributaries.

Henry didn’t just trap beaver for their pelts. In summer, he live-trapped beaver for restocking other areas of the state. As an example, he live-trapped 14 beaver in 1958 for restocking the Salmon River watershed.

Henry trapped beaver, transplanted beaver, and even explored the culinary qualities of beaver. Henry had heard tales of how old-time trappers relished beaver tail, or as Henry put it “the part of the beaver that entered the water last.” He wondered, though, why these old mountain men didn’t sing the praises of the rest of the beaver as table fare, meat Henry described as fine-tasting, juicy, and edible. Henry set out to investigate this mystery of the mountains. He concluded that anyone taking the time to prepare beaver tail for the pot would “surely starve to death” because the tail only offered a piece of bone and gristle covered by a scaly hide.

You see what I mean. These were men that were as comfortable skinning a beaver as sauteing a beaver or releasing it into the upper watershed to do some good. It’s what I was most impressed about in the epic novel “Three against the wilderness”. Sometimes trappers have more notes in them than you’d expect, and its best to listen to the full song before you come to judgement.

Most of Henry’s work took place during winter, hiking and snowshoeing throughout his area. This meant Henry had to carry a heavy backpack. After his trapping allotment was enlarged, Henry reported that it was usual for him to make a 35-mile trip carrying a backpack weighing 90 pounds. One of his regular trips was walking from Chesterfield Cow Camp (about 4 miles upstream from the Blackfoot River along Corral Creek) to Rawlins Creek and then downriver to his home at the mouth of Cedar Creek.

Henry was clearly a skilled outdoorsman with a deep understanding and appreciation of nature. I wonder what he would think of today’s outdoors people that are so heavily dependent on ATVs and all kinds of technological gizmos?

I honestly don’t know whether trappers today carry the same kind of ecological truths in their rusty conibares, but I’m willing to at least entertain the idea that a few might. Any one who spends time around beaver is going to eventually notice that lots of other wildlife do too, right?

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BRING CLIPBOARDS TO THE BEAVER POND

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers, Beavers and Birds February 27, 2020

Well good news for our chalk artist Amy Gallaher Hall. She hates to be penned in by barricade while she works but doesn’t love when her masterpiece is walked into either. I’m been scratching my head to try and find someone we can borrow a rope line and stanchions from but I found out yesterday that we can rent them pretty cheaply from Chairs for Affairs because people use them for crowd control at events or whatever. So Voila! Problem solved.

Also this ad featuring her art will be appearing in the Spring Bay Nature Issue:

Amelia who does our brochure is back from Mexico fully tanned and rested and working on our new cover now. All is right with the world!

And things are looking pretty good for beaver world too. After the stellar report on beavers on the River Otter, and lots and lots of talk from the media, its seeming like pretty much a done deal. There’s a nice summary this morning from Associate Professor of Ecology at North Umbria University.

EXPERT COMMENT: Beavers are set to recolonise the UK – here’s how people and the environment could benefit

The results of the five-year trial are striking. The beavers built dams, creating wetland and ponds that slowed down peak river flows that might have caused flooding. Their engineering holds back water in the catchment area, stopping it from running off the land quickly and overloading the river, creating a bottle neck in towns downstream.

This glowing report on the flood prevention skills of beavers couldn’t be better timed. Two winter storms, Ciara and Denis, have recently brought flooding to thousands of homes in the UK. In November 2019, the National Trust, a charity more associated with stately homes, released beavers on Exmoor, also in Devon, with much of the publicity at the time touting the likely benefits they’ll bring to flood-prone homes nearby.

Wildlife has benefited from the beavers too. The small pools created by the dams had 37% more fish than comparable stretches of the river. That’s helped local birds that eat fish, while rare water voles have been able to find refuge from invasive mink in newly wetted channels. Young trout prefer the faster water of washed out dams and have been spotted leaping over intact dams during high river flows.

The River Otter backs up data from shorter term studies set over smaller areas that show beaver dams benefit the diversity of freshwater invertebrates, reduce nutrient levels in outflow, filter pollution and allow sediment to settle out and bury carbon.

Beavers look to be on the way back, all over the UK. Quite how they will get around isn’t entirely clear yet, but there seems to be widespread public and political support, and it may be that they will spread by themselves.

People, landscapes and animals who need water need beavers. Period. Any other questions?

MOMMA TOLD ME ABOUT THE BUTTERFLIES AND THE BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact February 26, 2020

You know, salmon, birds, wolves, wolverines, moose, frogs, trout, bats, salamanders, toads eels and newts just aren’t enough. Can’t beavers help ONE more species? Maybe that would tip the enormously over tipped scale in their favor? What about butterflies?

Mourning cloak butterflies, Nymphalis antiopa, have an immense geographic range that circles the globe in the northern hemisphere. They are native to North America, Europe and Asia, and in some areas they migrate with the seasons.

For example, mourning cloaks occupy the central valleys of California in spring, move to the high Sierra in summer, and return in fall. In Europe, they migrate between Germany and Greece. But mourning cloaks are also notable for their diets, feeding behavior, coloration, defenses and overwintering.

While most butterflies overwinter as eggs, larva or pupae, mourning cloak adults overwinter in crevices of bark or in leaf litter. They occasionally fly about on warm days in mid winter, and so they are frequently the first butterflies seen in spring and the last in fall. They seem to thrive in the colder environments at high latitudes and elevations.

Hey, I recognize that butterfly! They are the first one we see in winter! We just saw one the other day in beaver festival park! They are the very reason you aren’t supposed to rake up your leaves in the fall. Hiding among the fallen.

Mourning cloak caterpillars are most commonly known as spiny elm caterpillars, a name that calls attention to their defensive spines. The caterpillars shapes and colors announce that they are defended and not to be trifled with. They grow to a length of two inches and are black with tiny white dots and a line of eight large, bright-orange dots on the back.

Rings of large, branched black spines protect the full length of the caterpillar. These can both pierce and deliver poison to a curious or threatening animal. Beneath the spines a coat of fine white hairs provides a second line of defense.

The spines are known to be urticating, or hooked in such a way that once embedded, they naturally work their way deeper. I suspect that the hairs are urticating as well. Contact with the spines and hairs creates a stinging sensation immediately and a prolonged, festering itch caused by urtication.

Urtication sounds bad, But what does it all have to do with beavers? I don’t get the connection?

I found the mourning cloak (in the accompanying photo) when I was trying to photograph the beavers living at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers in Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument.

I had been stalking the beavers for two days without success when this large, dark butterfly sipping nectar from bright yellow rabbitbrush blooms distracted me. At the time, the proximity of mourning cloaks and beavers did not occur to me, but background reading for this column has convinced me that their sympatry was more than random coincidence.

Mourning cloaks most prefer the sap of trees, but will also drink fluids from fermenting fruit and are only occasionally seen sipping nectar. Beavers at this site utilize Fremont’s cottonwoods, Populus fremontii, for food, which they cache on the riverbank. Beavers in British Columbia frequently cut aspen and cottonwoods, and numerous mourning cloaks feed on the sap flowing from them. Looking back on my encounter with the mourning cloak, the butterfly was not attracted by rabbitbrush, but by the beavers, which were inadvertently feeding it.

Oh that makes sense. Frances Backhouse sure was right when she called beavers the ‘accidental philanthopists”. We should all do half as much unintended good in our lives.

NASA STUDIES BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and water, Beavers and Wetlands February 25, 2020

You read that right. The REAL NASA is studying beaver habitat. Not that crazy rocket building flat-earther who killed himself trying to prove the earth wasn’t round. Scientists who know better.

Be on the Beaver Lookout

Mass Audubon and the Boston NASA DEVELOP National Program team are collaborating to learn more about how Massachusetts beavers impact the landscape using satellite imagery, and we need your help.

The NASA DEVELOP National Program addresses environmental and public policy issues through interdisciplinary research projects, applying NASA Earth observations to community concerns around the globe. Teams of DEVELOP participants partner with decision-makers to conduct 10-week rapid feasibility projects, highlighting relevant applications of NASA Earth observing missions, cultivating advanced skills, and increasing understanding and use of NASA Earth science data and technology. The DEVELOP Program conducts 55-65 projects annually across 11 national locations. This spring, the DEVELOP Boston team is partnering with Mass Audubon to explore how beavers influence the Massachusetts landscape.

Wow! Astrobeavers! Science thinks beavers are important enough to study from space! I’m so excited! Do you think beavers will know they’re being watched and start showing off?

Beavers are known as ecological engineers. They alter and create new habitats by building dams from sticks and mud to create still, deep ponds. These ponds provide beavers with access to food, protection from land predators, and shelter.

By building dams and creating ponds, beavers restore lost wetlands, of which about half have disappeared in the lower 48 states since European settlement. Beaver ponds are home to rich biodiversity, including amphibians, reptiles, spawning fish, muskrats, bats, various birds, and a wide variety of plants.

Altering the hydrology helps control downstream flooding, improve water quality, trap silt, and resupply groundwater. When the dam is abandoned and the pond drains, nutrient-rich silt creates highly productive meadows. However, beaver dams may cause unwanted flooding to neighboring properties, but can be mitigated through various solutions.

Whoa. So you mean NASA has this written down somewhere? A grant application or thesis statement. This is actually OFFICAL NASA DATA NOW? I need to sit down.

The spring 2020 Boston NASA DEVELOP team is using NASA satellite imagery to find and track beaver flooding events across Massachusetts to see how their populations are impacting landscapes. The team will be corroborating potential beaver flooding using iNaturalist beaver observations. iNaturalist is an online citizen science platform, where users upload and identify species observations (images or audio recordings).

How You Can Help

Help Mass Audubon and the NASA DEVELOP team by reporting beaver signs, including dams, lodges, chewed logs, or beaver themselves using iNaturalist, either in our sanctuaries or anywhere across Massachusetts.

Ahh sadly when I look up the study on NASA DEVELOP it looks more like they’re looking to find all the PROBLEMS beavers cause with their dam building flooding ways. Sigh. Someday we’ll get there. I know it.

MA: Massachusetts –Boston(Boston, MA)Western Massachusetts Water Resources: Using the Landsat Series to Assess Flood Events Resulting from North American Beaver Reintroduction to Inform Biodiversity and Infrastructure Managemen