Month: September 2020

HOLLYWOOD SAVES BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers September 30, 2020

It occurs to me that most of being a beaver advocate is very similar to chewing down a tree, S-L-O-W monotonous repetition, doing the same hard thing over and over and over with very little movement and then POW sudden movement and getting the hell out of the way.

Mike Digout caught this last night just in case you aren’t sure what I mean.

You can clearly see that this is why humans aren’t assigned the job of chopping down trees with their teeth. I mean besides the dental reasons. And the muscular reasons. It is mindnumbingly dull most of the time. You start to zone out from all the repetition. And then ALL OF A SUDDEN you better be on your toes and get the hell out of way or you’re flattened.

I can’t even take notes at a board meeting before slipping into a partial coma. How do beavers manage it?

Back when the beaver fiasco happened in Brenwood and that great article by Judith Prieve ran in the East Bay Times I was contacted by Larry Laverty who is one of those moderately famous actors you’ve probably seen in lots of things but now is a big time author, wildlife photographer and advocate. His says his life was shaped and reshaped by his passion for Wildlife and now he’s dedicated to making a difference for them. He lives in Oakland and read about the beaver and felt a I guess a kind of kinship for beaver girl because he introduced me to a friend who runs the COEXIST podcast in San Diego and now we are scheduled to do a beaver interview in October 23 with Coe Lewis of co founder of Nsefu on IQ podcasts.

It will be beavers big hollywood debut. So wish me luck. Timber!

“SOME SAY THE WORLD WILL END IN FIRE”

The horrible glass fire is threatening our friends at Safari West AGAIN, so if you have any leftover space in your thoughts and prayers please after praying for our constitution. our supreme court and asking to spare members of your family from Covid, please send some metta and loving kindness their way. Fire is very much on our minds in California. Like mercy it droppeth as the gentle rains from heaven. Ash is covering our decks and our gardens and the smell of smoke woke me up.

I’m so glad Rick Lanman updated his wikipedia page.

Beaver ponds as wildlife refugia and firebreaks in wildfires

Beaver and their associated ponds and wetlands may be overlooked as effective wildfire-fighting tools.^[145] Eric Collier’s 1959 book, Three Against the Wilderness, provides an early description of a string of beaver ponds serving as a firebreak, saving the home of his pioneer family from a wildfire in interior British Columbia.^[146] Reduction of fuel loads by beaver removal of riparian trees, increased moisture content in riparian vegetation by beaver-raised water tables, and water held in beaver ponds all act as barriers to wildfires. In a study of vegetation after five large wildfires in the western United States, riparian corridors within 100 meters of beaver ponds were buffered from wildfires when compared to similar riparian corridors without beaver dams. ^[147] Professor Joe Wheaton of Utah State University studied the barren landscape left one month after the Sharps Fire burned 65,000 acres (260 km²) in Idaho’s Blaine County in 2018. He found a lone surviving green ribbon of riparian vegetation along Baugh Creek,^[148] (see image) illustrating how a string of beaver ponds resists wildfires, creating an “emerald refuge” for wildlife.^[145] Lastly, two studies of the Methow River watershed, after the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire burned 256,000 acres (1,040 km²) in north central Washington State, have shown that beaver dams reduced the negative impacts of wildfire on sediment runoff, reduced post-wildfire sediment and nutrient loads, and preserved both plant and macroinvertebrate communities.^[149]^[150]

In addition to citing Emily and Alexis fantastic paper he also came across an outstanding thesis by Edin Stewart entitled: Beavers Buffering Blazes: The Potential Role of Castor canadensis in Mitigating Wildfire Impacts on Stream Ecosystems. I will add the whole paper to our library but suffice it to say it concludes whoppingly with the following sentence: “our study provides support for the hypothesis that beaver dams reduce the negative impacts of wildfire on stream habitats and communities.”

Yup.

Speaking of fire, one of the evacuations I heard on the news yesterday was the Oakmont region of Sonoma. This has been on my mind lately because of the famed Oakmont Symposium which is a dynamic and coveted and widely attended lecture series. I think we met a fellow from the group years ago at the dam watching beavers in Martinez.

Well, recently one of their influencers was vacationing out of state and wound up running into Bob Boucher of beaver fame in Wisconsin and they concocted the idea of a beaver talk for Valentine’s day. Zoom friendly, of course. Thinking it would be excellent to add a California beaver voice Bob asked me to ‘co-present’ with him. And the host recently asked for a thread that would tie it all to theme of the day.

So I spent yesterday working on this. Fire notwithstanding, I assume this will happen?

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

BETTER THAN BEING DROPPED OUTTA AN AIRPLANE?

heidi08 Beaver relocation September 28, 2020

It’s Monday and I’m running out of September’s bounty of beaver articles to chose from. I spent yesterday trying to compress my virtual talk for the wildlife festival. And was supremely annoyed that one slide turns into gibberish every time, no matter how many different ways I tried it. In the end I was only able to get this file uploaded gibberish-free, which you can see does not have a fast enough frame rate and the beaver footage looks blurry. I will probably try two more times. It takes hours. Then I will call this good enough.

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I wish the beaver footage looked as lovely as it does on my camera But you know how it is. You can’t have everything you want. Sometimes you find out the president of the united states only paid 750$ in taxes the year he was elected. That’s about enough for the fuel it takes to drive a lone secret service vehicle to a single rally. Or buy milk for a Texas elementary school lunch program for a week. Or pay for a single box of bullets ofan Iraqi soldier.

It’s about twice what he paid Stormy Daniels. Just in case anyone wondered,

This is from Idaho which has only just begun to consider that a life beaver might be more useful to mamkind than a dead one. They haven’t spent any time at all on the finer details of successful reintroduction, like moving family members or giving temporary shelter to avoid predation.

But sure. It’s slightly better than dropping them out of airplanes. So that’s a plus.

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ZOOMING FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Chewing, Beaver ecological impact September 27, 2020

So the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Havest and Wildlife Festival is doing something different this year – something we might have done if folks had been ready for it back in June. The October 24th event is going virtual.

We’re doing something different this year: Many events will be livestreamed; others will be available as short videos for you to watch at your leisure.

WHEN: We’ll be releasing all the video content at once (synchronous) on Saturday, October 24.
WHAT: Each video should be 5-10 minutes in length, submitted as .mov files.
SUBJECT: Family-friendly educational content primarily for elementary-aged children, focused on animals or environmental subjects. The message should represent or fulfill your organization’s mission statement.
INFO WE NEED: Please provide a high-resolution Logo for your organization, and your website that we can include.
DUE: Please submit your videos to us no later than October 1. If you need a little more time, let us know.

Now I had originally planned to just send off our standard short presentation but when I read that they were looking at presentations aimed at school-aged children I knew I had to create something new. I will say it was kind of fun trying to think of a kid-friendly way to tell our story. I’ll leave it to you to decide if it worked. I just about have it all finished and will share it soon. My very old mac is ‘baking’ it in the oven as we speak.

In the mean time I see Ben is getting ready for his ownvirtual beaver presentation as well, with an upcoming October 8th talk for the Lopez Island Library,

Virtual author talk by Ben Goldfarb, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

The Friends of the Lopez Island Library invite the public to their 2020 virtual annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, featuring keynote speaker Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author. Goldfarb will offer a virtual presentation on his recent book “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

“Eager” reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”— including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens— recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts.

Lopez Island is part of the San Juan Islands scattered between Washington state and Victoria, which I’m sure makes it a pretty darned interesting place to live. I’m sure they are starved for content because of Covid just like everywhere else, so I expect good turnout.

Goldfarb is the winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and Eager was named one of the best books of 2018 by the Washington Post. He is also the recipient of a 2019 Alicia Patterson Fellowship, through which he’ll be covering the global ecological impacts of roads. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Science, National Geographic, The New York Times, Audubon Magazine, and many others. He edited and coordinated the Solutions Journalism Network‘s “Small Towns, Big Change” project, an award-winning multi-newsroom collaborative that produced solutions-oriented coverage of social and environmental issues. Goldfarb is happiest with a scuba tank strapped to his back or a fly rod in his hand.

Really? Scuba tank? I guess that’s the sentence they give to introduce you on the dating game. Okay, if you say so.

The presentation will be broadcast at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, as a Zoom Webinar. watch the presentation live on October 8th at 6:30pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82975590761

See you there!

If you can’t wait you can always watch this talk, recorded at the West Linn library in Oregon and loving powtooned by yours truly.

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TIDAL WETLANDS SAVE LIVES

heidi08 Beavers and saltwater September 26, 2020

Well what do you know? It turns out wetlands are really important! Just ask Katrina. Especially the tidal zones in between salt and freshwater like where our beavers lived. Gosh who would have guessed?

A watershed study for wetland restoration

Where rivers meet oceans, each cycle of the tide moves water in and out of estuaries. The mixing and mingling of fresh and briny water, combined with seasonal weather, creates a unique environment for ecosystems in coastal estuaries and upstream tidal rivers.

The framework is described in “Ecohydrology of wetland plant communities along an estuarine to tidal river gradient,” which appeared September 18 in the Ecological Society of America’s open-access journal Ecosphere. The research is the latest in a series of regional-scale studies supported by the Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, which are implementing a program to reconnect and restore wetlands on the Columbia River floodplain.

You know where our beavers lived right? It was right on the border between the salty strait and the fresh creek. Literally right on the in between place. Are those places important?

Like giant sponges, wetlands serve key environmental functions, such as controlling flooding, storing carbon, and filtering pollution. Wetland habitats also provide protection and food for birds, fish, and mammals. For example, tiny salmon nibble along the shores of the Columbia River, growing and gaining strength on their downriver journey to the Pacific Ocean.

But Diefenderfer said that these important coastal ecosystems often go unnoticed or are viewed as wastelands.

Sure, that’s the truth. Their unsafe to build on so they don’t make people any money. Cities either ignore those spaces or bring in topsoil to make it less responsive to tides.

The long-term research effort, a focus of PNNL’s Coastal Ecosystems Research team, allowed scientists to record plant responses in low-, medium-, and high-flow years. Results showed that plant species varied across elevations within wetlands and along the river. The variations depended on the distance from salt and tides at the coast, and the volume of river flow below the head of tide.

The team also found that wetness—or inundation—largely determined plant communities and resistance to non-native species. Nearest the Pacific Ocean, salinity kept non-native species from taking hold. Just upriver, in the strongly tidal but freshwater zone, plant species diversity was highest—an indicator of resilience in the tidal wetlands.

Huh. Martinez sure has a lot of Arundo near the salty parts. But I guess the strait isn’t pure ocean, so maybe it doesn’t count. The interesting part to me is that the richest part of the wetland is where our beavers chose to live. Chicken or egg?

Farther upriver, changes in daily, seasonal, and yearly wetting and drying cycles increased invasion by non-native species. These cycles also decreased aquatic plant diversity and other vegetative cover. On average, the quality of plant communities significantly improved closer to the ocean.

Well, sure. Plants in more saline areas were less vulnerable to non-native invasion because it’s harder to thrive on the edge. And the more drought we experience the less fresh water flows into these areas and the more saline everything becomes. Hmm, Resilient plants do better I guess with climate change.

And everyone does better with more wetlands. Gosh it’s too bad there’s not some natural way to make more wetlands on a larger scale.