“THE KEYSTONE THAT WAS REJECTED HAS BECOME THE CORNER STONE”

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, pictures April 20, 2020

Well, you know the old story. Famous nature group wants to do a piece on beavers and talk to our ‘biologist’ but settles for me, and then this famous nature group scurries off to talk to the real players and then crawls back and asks for some photos. Because they come to the stunning conclusion that ours are better than anyone else’s and document the dramatic changes the beavers make!

Ya ya ya, of course they do. Because in our non-biologist ways we actually watched things and observed the changes. Because scientists are more focused on data and we were more focused on SEEING. Surprised?

Anyway, it looks like we can expect a fun beaver article from the big wigs soon, so I’m happy. Until then we can make do with this nice report from the New York Adirondack.

Beavers: Nature’s Architects and Engineers

Beavers are the great architects of American ponds and streams. The North American beaver competes with the Eurasian beaver to be the 2nd largest rodent in the world, after another semi-aquatic mammal, the South American Capybara.

More than any other mammal, the industrious and hard working beavers have the greatest impact on water bodies, with their tree harvesting, manipulation and dam building. The purpose of dam building is to create lakes or ponds of sufficient depth to allow beavers underwater access to their lodges if and when the water surface freezes in winter, as well as to keep predators like wolves, coyotes, cougars or bears from approaching or breaking into the lodge for access to the beavers.

Beaver ponds naturally produce a huge and beneficial support habitat for everything from invertebrates, fish, crayfish, frogs, newts, snakes and turtles to predators like otters, minks, weasels and bears, as well as osprey, eagles, ducks, geese, etc. so the same factors which seem to make beavers a headache for farmers and land owners, provide a rich biodiversity for the flourishing of a wide range of plants, crustaceans and animals. Beaver ponds act as one of nature’s best filters, removing sediments and pollutants from water, including total suspended solids, total nitrogen, phosphates, carbon and silicates.

Why yes they do! Nice of you to notice. Someday this message will catch on I keep thinking.

They also provide game for hunters and fishermen, and a place to drink for deer and other mammals like moose, who browse the sodium rich water plants, often diving beneath the water surface to access the plants. Car accidents with moose are usually caused by moose coming up onto the road to lick the salt we spray around to melt the ice.

If the aim of trapping beavers is to eliminate them, trapping backfires because the same habitat which attracted the beavers in the first place, will attract other beavers, who will rebuild the dams and infrastructure. This is why beaver deceivers are such a useful invention, as they preserve the beaver’s habitat, and all of its benefits, while preventing too many acres from being absorbed into the beaver’s habitat. Working with the beavers is generally a win-win for all parties.

Yup! And this is the way I wish all beaver stories would end!

BEAVER DAMS AS BLOCKADES

heidi08 beavers and community April 19, 2020

I hope you listened to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson reading. I’m am still gobsmacked by her brilliance and by the notion of a beaver dam as a ‘blockade’ and a communally constructed blockade that benefits countless communities. Wow.

A beaver dam: A blockade
Life-giving, generative, affirmative
A world-giving place governed by deep relationality and expansive, fantastical sharing of space
A network of life generating blockades that built and maintained the ecosystems that the Anashabic lived as part of for thousands and thousands of years.

Because when you really think about it, what WAS the community response to our beavers but a blockade? A shoulder-to-shoulder stand against the bad decision of by the city to trap the beavers and take them away from us. What was the November 7th meeting but a huge and noisy blockade that changed the course of history?

We became the blockade to protect the beavers blockade. That blows my mind. And rings so true. I cannot thank her enough or the imagery. I already listened three times and might again. So powerful.

One member of that brilliant blockade was Marlene Haws, who spoke up at the meeting, visited our beavers many time, and helped at our events and silent auction. I just read this morning in the JMA newsletter that she died in March. I am so sorry. She was the very definition of a community voice. Whether it was the historic society, the John Muir Association, the Kiwanis club, the sea scouts, almost no civic group in Martinez was untouched by her good humored pluck.

To say she will be missed is an understatement.

BEAVERS TELL STORIES

heidi08 History April 18, 2020

An amazing listen. I am still immersed.

The Brilliance of the Beaver: Learning from an Anishnaabe World

Two hundred years of making beavers into accessories led to their near extinction. And now beavers are mostly known to us as a nuisance and an inconvenience. But this Indigenous land, this Indigenous water, these Indigenous bodies have centuries of oral literature and an embodied practice that know different… Beavers — Amikwag — represent the practice of wisdom.

I want to think about that for a moment. Out of all of the beings that make up life on this planet, to my ancestors, Amikwag embody the politics and the ethical practices of wisdom.

Amikwag build dams, dams that create deep pools and channels that don’t freeze, creating winter worlds for their fish relatives, deep pools and channels that drought proof the landscape, dams that make wetlands full of moose, deer and elk, food cooling stations, places to hide, and muck to keep the flies away. Dams that open spaces in the canopy so sunlight increases, making warm and shallow aquatic habitat around the edges of ponds for amphibians and insects. Dams that create plunge pools on the downstream side for juvenile fish, gravel for spawning, and homes and food for birds.

And who is the first back after a fire to start the regeneration makework? Amik is a world builder. Amik is the one that brings the water. Amik is the one that brings forth more life. Amik is the one that works continuously with water and land and plant and animal nations and consent and diplomacy to create worlds. To create shared worlds.

Keep listening to the 4 beaver tales. How beavers allow themselves to be killed to benefit man and to benefit themselves. I am immersed.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the U.S. She has 20 years of experience with Indigenous land based education. (Nadya Kwandibens / Red Works Photography)

GOODNESS GRACIOUS, GREAT BEAVERS OF FIRE!

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention, Beavers and water April 17, 2020

How beaver-connected am I? I’ll tell you how connected. I was sitting home minding my business yesterday when I got an excited email from the former governor’s former water advisor that there was an article about beavers in this month’s Estuary Newsletter, and THEN the author of the article, Lisa Owens Viani wrote me that her article had been published!

Because it’s not what you know about beavers, its who you know. Am I right?

Beaver dams may offer wildfire protection to western watersheds

in addition to providing better-known benefits such as groundwater recharge, wetland and habitat creation, and riparian restoration. A new study by California State University Channel Islands professor Emily Fairfax analyzed satellite-derived vegetation indices of riparian areas and beaver dams mapped via Google Earth. At the same time, Fairfax analyzed data for large (over 30,000 acre) wildfires that had occurred between 2000 and 2018 in California, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon, and compared the fate of beaver-dammed areas to areas without dams. Fairfax found that riparian corridors within 100 meters of beaver ponds were buffered from wildfires.

“In all of them, the beaver ponds made it through the fire and stayed much greener. The beaver-dammed riparian zones were functioning differently,” says Fairfax. While the riparian areas without beaver dams eventually recovered on their own, she says, vegetation in the areas with dams stayed green and did not go through the amount of habitat destruction the other areas did. Fairfax was surprised by the amount of beaver damming and wet meadow development she found in her study. “Those colonies have probably been there for hundreds of years, making it through wildfires. There’s not a chance they haven’t burned in the last 200 years.” With drought and wildfire increasing in the West, she says, this latest finding is yet another reason to welcome beavers back to Bay Area waterways.

As if we NEEDED another reason to welcome them back! Wonderful! Emily’s excellent research is leaping to the head of the pack, and not a moment too soon because at this rate by the time we’re done sheltering in place it will be another fire season. Thanks Emily and Lisa for helping beavers spread the word.

We shouldn’t be at all surprised. Only a somber and dignified researcher could produce a doctoral dissertation of this caliber.

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ELEGIAC FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors April 16, 2020

In addition to this Saturday’s earth day festivities at the John Muir site, add this to the list of things that didn’t happen yesterday because of Covid-19. Sigh. Will there be a beaver festival? I’m starting to doubt it.

In the meantime we are keeping up with the beaver story in our own way. Since I needed to scan every beaver article from 2007-2008 for the master’s student, I thought I should use those scans along the way. Feel free to skim through these. They will be featured permanently on the Our Story tab “In the Papers”.