Go ahead. Isolate Ben Goldfarb for a couple weeks. I dare you. This is what you get. You can’t keep a good beaver-man down, I always say.
Ben created this for teachers and students to educate during the hiatus. I’d guess highschool or middle school. The primary grades seem a little beyond its reach, But I’m sure he’ll do a liter version soon. The shots of him with his beatnik uncut locks make me smile.
Stay tuned to the end because the part about using google maps to find beaver dams is my favorite!
This blew me away this morning. Sometimes the enormity of all this hits me. Multiply it times India and Cairo and London and it takes your breath. For anyone in the Bay Area who has ever commuted to work, this will have a special meaning.
The Lands Council in Washington State was one of the first real sources of beaver ecology. They got to the right answer a lot faster than all of us, and I remember being so happy I cried a little when their water PSA came out. It seems like a million years go now.
The Lands Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Spokane, Washington. We are dedicated to the preservation and protection of forests, water and wildlife in the Inland Northwest.
Since 1984, The Lands Council has been a community leader, promoting responsible recreation in wild places inherently valuable to the region. We are inspired to preserve nature’s legacy for future generations.
As part of our restoration ecology program we actively relocate nuisance beavers. To date, The Lands Council has relocated over 140 beavers in the Inland Northwest. Throughout the American West, beavers are increasingly recognized and utilized as a solution to various natural resource concerns. Science and traditional knowledge conclusively demonstrate that beaver ponds and wetlands create fish and wildlife habitat, thereby improving recreational opportunities; capture nitrogen, heavy metals, and other forms of runoff; mitigate destructive flood and fire events; sequester carbon; and perform other crucial services. Beaver populations, though growing in some places, are dramatically reduced compared to pre-trapping levels.
Pretty good letter huh? Ben is listed as one of the authors. which should surprise no one. Not sure how they got involved with the Montana case, but I bet someone who cared about the issue wrote them and asked.
We acknowledge that beaver impacts to human property need to be managed in certain circumstances. However, we caution that lethal beaver trapping is only a temporary fix: Because beavers reproduce readily and disperse widely, they quickly recolonize vacated territories, forcing trappers to remove beavers in perpetuity. Many communities around the country have therefore turned to a non-lethal solution known as a flow device, a pipeand-fence system that drains beaver ponds to an acceptable level. Flow devices have been shown to resolve flooding concerns up to 97 percent of the time. Furthermore, because they are one-time installations that require little maintenance, they are extremely cost-effective compared to annual trapping (see, e.g., Boyles & Savitzky, 2008).
We are heartened to learn that the Hill County Park Board has been in contact with noted experts David Pauli of the Humane Society of the United States and Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers International. We strongly encourage the Park Board to attempt non-lethal beaver coexistence efforts at Beaver Creek Park, and offer our technical input should you deem it helpful.
Chris Bachman, The Lands Council, Wildlife Program Director Board of Directors
Ben Goldfarb, The Lands Council, Author, “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beaver and Why They Matter”
Hurray for beaver nonprofits that stick their two cents in! Hurray for concerned citizens that ask experts for their opinion! We are so glad to have cousins in the beaver world, doing such great things, why yesterday our beaver cousin Derek Gow in Devon shared this fine piece of art he’s been working on.
When should you stop ‘trying’ to live with your neighbor and commit to violence instead. The first time his cat defecates on your lawn? The tenth? When his teenage sun drives the truck over your marigolds? When his son brings your daughter home drunk?
I mean there’s a time for reasonable people to meet and hash things out. And there’s a time for war. And who knows when one becomes the other?
Spring is supposed to be the season of change, not just cold and snowy. The wildlife in the area are also showing signs of spring.
Geese on the lake are swimming around in pairs, looking for a good place to nest. Bluebirds are checking hollow trees and the houses we have put out for them. In the evening, we can hear the call of the wood ducks in the timber near the far end of the lake. We have also noticed an increase activity from our resident beavers.
Beavers are fascinating creatures. When we first built our lake, I thought it would be fun to have a pair of beavers to watch. At the time, Iowa State University had a pair of beavers move into a small pond in the center of campus. They were becoming destructive by removing the ornamental trees in the area, so the Department of Natural Resources was asked to re-locate them.
I contacted the DNR and offered a home for them, but never heard back. They must have found a home closer to Ames. A few years passed and one day I noticed some trees near the lake being felled by beavers. I excitedly told my wife we had new residents. A week or two later, I noticed the lake level had increased by more than a foot.
This starts out so promising. Walter actually WANTED beavers on his lake. He volunteered for the job. And he likes watching the birds and wildlife they bring. What could possibly go wrong? Oh. you know. The usual.
Our lake is fed by three creeks and the outflow is through a 36-inch concrete tube through the dam. I checked the tube to find dozens of pieces of wood neatly arranged and packed with mud almost totally blocking the outflow of water.
It is no small job to dislodge the carefully constructed plug in the tube. When all their building materials are freed up and sent through the tube and downstream, the beavers must cut all new building materials and start over. This takes them about a week.
After several times of fighting to remove their plug in my tube, I decided beavers were not as interesting as I first thought. They were cutting down every oak and hickory tree near the lake, leaving behind any Osage orange or thorny locusts. I finally gave up and had them trapped and removed.
When is it time to commit violence against your neighbor? When they chop down your hickory tree I guess, Then its time to bring in the big guns. Er traps. Problem is sometimes violence doesn’t work.
Things went along smoothly, even when I noticed new beavers moved in last fall. They were mostly cutting down willow trees, which was fine with me. They built a den at one end of the island and moved tons of willow trees to their site to use for winter food and building materials. They left the outlet tube alone and all was well.
You are a very foolish man if you think it will stay well. They didn’t bother plugging the tube in the winter because there was plenty of water. Now that we are seeing some sunny days they are going to want to keep all that flow. I predict they will start plugging that pipe. But hey, what do I know?
After a week or so, the water had not gone down and may have even risen more than when the snow first melted. I stopped by and checked the tube one day on our journeys and discovered the tube was plugged. Many small logs, sharpened on both ends, were lodged in the tube and the neat framework was sealed with mud.
I realize it is spring and the beavers are afraid all their water is going to go out of that tube if they do not plug it up, but I am getting tired of undoing their work. They need to get about their other springtime activities and leave the lake level where it is, or they will be forced to find a new home.
Or they will be killed. Isn’t that what you mean? I spent an hour looking for how to contact Walter and came up empty. He is a free lance columnist so the paper doesn’t provide contact info. He lives in the very bottom right hand of the state of Iowa, but I couldn’t find his name in any city records or Gun club. I posted it on the facebook management page in desperation and Mike Callahan wrote Chris Sorflaten who lives in Iowa and just did a beaver institute training in flow devices saying he should contact him and Beaver Institute might pay materials.
Fingers crossed good neighbors can get this right.
The Copper River is in Alaska proper not far too far out of Anchorage. It got it’s name from the many copper deposits along it’s upper sections. The copper was used by everyone from the natives to the Russians to the settlers that came later. Now the river is most famous for its salmon, which is considered among the best in the world. The long river is the 10th largest in the nation, so salmon have to work hard to travel its length and stock up on extra fat reserves to survive the journey. That makes them a prime catch for any sportsman who travel to the Yukon region specifically for the chance.
Of course you know any great river with that many salmon must also have a very healthy beaver population.
The Copper River Delta is dominated by a coastal marine climate, making both the summer and winter seasons mild and wet. The climate is maintained by the Alaska Current, which delivers warm ocean air and low-pressure systems to Alaska’s Gulf. The climate, mixed with the natural history of the Copper River Delta, provides an ecosystem that is dynamic and thriving. Whether it is summer, or winter, you will be sure to find a furry animal, scurrying off on a mission. One of these furry animals, has picked a luxurious career as a landscape architect. Due to their ability to cut large trees and turn streams into ponds, they have rightfully received the title of ecosystem engineers.
Okay, you got our attention. What will you have to say about these architects?
On the Copper River Delta alone, they have left a noticeable signature that can be seen when driving the Copper River Highway. Since the 1964 earthquake and geologic uplift, they have expanded their range southward, to new areas of uplifted marsh on the delta. After many years, the dams created by these furry engineers have created new habitats for other plants and animals.
Of course they have. It’s what beavers do. But its interesting you can track changes since the earthquake.
When the spring ice melts, the search for the perfect “home” is on. Beavers will examine the landscape, honing in on steady sources of water and mapping out potential areas to construct a dam. The dams they build are strong enough to hold back the force of a stream that will flood to become a pond. Once the area is flooded, they begin floating larger branches to the construction site. Once the dam is satisfactory, the beavers switch their attention to building their huts.
A hut is an essential part of a beaver’s life, like a house for us humans. Their huts provide shelter from predators and severe weather (e.g., the wintry delta). When building a hut, beavers must gather tons of branches, debris, and aquatic vegetation. Once the materials are gathered, they form them into a cone-shape. Most of the structure is then coated with mud, leaving the “peak” open for ventilation. This peak is the equivalent of a chimney. Within the hut is a chamber that has been dug out. This chamber typically has two underwater tunnels with openings
above the water level. These openings are the entrance and exit to the hut. The main chamber is divided into two levels. The first level is a platform just above water level that is used for feeding and drying off. The second is a higher, drier platform cushioned with shredded wood fibers and grasses, used for sleeping. The chamber walls are thick (2-3 feet at the bottom) keeping the beavers warm. The snow that covers the hut in the winter also acts as insulation, keeping the temperature, inside the hut, relatively stable. This makes for a rather warm and cozy living area, compared to the cold, stark, windy conditions of Mother Nature, just outside the hut.
It’s nice to read some explaining this like we were hearing it for the first time. I love the idea of beavers keeping warm inside their ‘hut’. Obviously lots of other people do too.
To make the icy water more comfortable, beavers have thick fur. Beaver fur is so thick that a stamp-sized patch of skin is carpeted with over 125,000 individual hairs — this is more than the average human has on their entire head! This thick, fuzzy coat helps insulate them from the cold. To give their coat extra waterproofing, beavers will groom themselves with natural oil. The oil is produced from glands beneath their tails. When grooming, a beaver will use a modified toenail on each hind foot, to coat themselves in the waterproof oil. Once coated, they can comfortably swim beneath the frozen surface. Grooming also creates a thin layer of air near the skin. This air pocket acts as another insulating layer while underwater. Historically, however, having this beautiful, thick fur coat was not always very advantageous. When Europeans arrived in North America, as many as 400 million beavers swam the continent’s rivers and ponds. Between the 1700s and 1800s, most beaver populations were decimated by fur trappers, primarily to support the European fashion for felt hats. Because of this, beaver populations in the eastern United States were largely removed and the continent’s population was estimated at only about 100,000. Fortunately, these declines caught public attention. Concern for the beaver eventually led to regulations that controlled harvest and methods of take, generating a continent-wide recovery of beaver populations. Although pristine beaver habitat has been heavily reduced in the lower 48 states via human land-use practices, beaver have proven to be a highly adaptable animal, able to occupy a variety of human-made habitats.
Hmm if I didn’t know better I’d say that someone has been reading Ben’s book. Stamp-sized? That metaphor just randomly sprang to mind? I wonder how.
Beavers now occupy much of their former range in North America, although habitat loss has severely restricted population growth. Since the 1830s, about 195,000-260,000
square kilometers of wetlands have been converted to agricultural or other use areas in the United States. Many of these wetlands were most likely beaver habitat. Beaver are adaptable, being marginally able to subsist above timberlines in mountainous areas and occupy very cold regions. Beaver have yet to colonize Alaskan or Canadian arctic tundra, possibly due to the lack of essential woody plants for winter food and lodge construction, or because thick ice limits surface access in the winter. However, in milder areas of Alaska, beavers thrive. The Copper River Delta supports a healthy population of beavers due to their low natural mortality and an abundance of suitable habitat. Because of their large size and limited amount of time away from the protection of water, adult beavers have relatively few natural predators! Young beavers, also known as kits or yearlings, on the other hand may be eaten by black bears, coyotes, bobcats, and even great horned owls.
Come on, sir. You’re in ALASKA There are plenty of predators that would enjoy a nice juicy beaver. Like bear or wolf or mountain lion. For goodness sake we’ve seen footage of it.
Next time you are out on the Delta, look for signs of beaver including newly cut alders or a hut on the edge of a pond or slough. Take note of the area, see if you can find aquatic plants and insects in the water, look for waterfowl and fish. Take a minute to count how many different species you find and think about the natural relationships that might be happening. You might not have to ask scientific questions or consider the ecological richness that beavers create in order to enjoy them! Maybe sitting and soaking in the serene area, while beavers motor across the pond is enough. But while enjoying the vast, lush landscape, be sure to thank the furry ecological engineer that is the North American Beaver.
The Lands Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Spokane, Washington. We are dedicated to the preservation and protection of forests, water and wildlife in the Inland Northwest.
Beavers are fascinating creatures. When we first built our lake, I thought it would be fun to have a pair of beavers to watch. At the time, Iowa State University had a pair of beavers move into a small pond in the center of campus. They were becoming destructive by removing the ornamental trees in the area, so the Department of Natural Resources was asked to re-locate them.
When the spring ice melts, the search for the perfect “home” is on. Beavers will examine the landscape, honing in on steady sources of water and mapping out potential areas to construct a dam. The dams they build are strong enough to hold back the force of a stream that will flood to become a pond. Once the area is flooded, they begin floating larger branches to the construction site. Once the dam is satisfactory, the beavers switch their attention to building their huts.
A hut is an essential part of a beaver’s life, like a house for us humans. Their huts provide shelter from predators and severe weather (e.g., the wintry delta). When building a hut, beavers must gather tons of branches, debris, and aquatic vegetation. Once the materials are gathered, they form them into a cone-shape. Most of the structure is then coated with mud, leaving the “peak” open for ventilation. This peak is the equivalent of a chimney. Within the hut is a chamber that has been dug out. This chamber typically has two underwater tunnels with openings 
