Month: September 2020

BEAVERS IN SANTA BARBARA: AN ORIGIN STORY

Okay, there is a sweet local article this morning about the little baby beaver at Suisun Wildlife Rescue but we are indulging me because I’m doing the typing. This article from Edible is actually in the perfect location to care enough to report this right. And I just have to share it.

Dammed If They Don’t

Could a creature left out of Southern California history revive its waterways?

This piece was supported by a Society of Environmental Journalists funding award, underwritten by The Hewlett Foundation, The Wilderness Society, The Pew Charitable Trusts and others.

And Leslie’s article is worth EVERY PENNY. I tell you.

Parts of Ventura County’s Sespe Creek are nearly as wild today as they were in the early 1900s, when Joseph Grinnell first caught wind of the “unexpected find” there. It’s hard not to wonder what might still lay hidden among its rugged terrain.

If you know what to look for, you can still make unexpected finds of your own: old chewed up sticks or, via satellite, structures bearing the characteristic signature of the creatures’ engineering feats.

Where did the beaver come from, are they still here, and do they belong here? “It’s like a Sherlock Holmes mystery,” said Rick Bisaccia, Ojai Valley Land Conservancy’s former stewardship director, of the 100-year-old hunt for answers. And the answers could point the way out of many of Southern California’s ecological quandaries.

Oooh ooh call on me! I know!

In 1937, Joseph Grinnell, the first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley, answered that question in a hefty treatise on California’s fur-bearing mammals: no. Or rather: no, but…. On his California beaver range map stood a lone question mark far south and west of any other native population. Grinnell was apparently unconvinced of what had been found there. The mark was right atop Sespe Creek.

Fifty years later, Rick Lanman looked behind his Bay Area home and wondered why a stream that used to flow year-round until the 1950s was now dry half the year.

Oh I know this story! YOU know this story. We like this story.

“One of my theories was maybe beaver perennialized it,” said Lanman, who is a physician, researcher, self-proclaimed serial biotech entrepreneur and founder of The Institute for Historical Ecology. Beavers’ heavy ponds push water into the ground during wet times. Then, in dry times, the replenished groundwater feeds the stream.

But according to the ghost of Grinnell, who continued to haunt official beaver range maps, the Bay Area was also a beaver desert. “Which doesn’t make any sense,” Lanman said. The animal thrives in both the Canadian tundra and the deserts of northern Mexico. Why not coastal California? Lanman and his colleagues went digging for answers.

Oh I’m I feel like I’m back in kindergarten sitting criss-cross applesauce on the teachers rug and listening to my favorite story told over again. Aren’t you?

Luckily, history is written all around us and in 2013 Lanman and his co-authors published their results. All over California, they found beaver evidence in old newspapers, ships’ logs, fur trapper journals and place names. Local Chumash references included words for beaver, a beaver dance, a shaman’s beaver-skin rainmaking kit and perhaps even a beaver pictograph. It appeared the once-widespread creature had been hunted—in some places to near extinction—by the time Grinnell examined their range.

These were clues, but in science direct physical evidence outweighs words. A skull specimen and carbon-dated dam remains settled the case in the Bay Area and the Sierras respectively. What about Southern California?

What Grinnell had symbolized on the map with his Sespe question mark was, in life, the origin of a beaver skull specimen. And when Lanman uncovered letters between Grinnell and the skull’s collector, zoologist John Hornung, the Sespe question finally got its answer:

On May 19, 1906, Hornung chanced upon the dying beaver near Hartman Cold Springs Ranch in the Sespe. An “unexpected find,” he called it. Perhaps, though not too unexpected. “There are still quite a few beaver in Southern California,” he added.

“What Grinnell… had failed to account for,” wrote Goldfarb, “was history.”

How Lucky can you get. A reporter who contacts Rick Lanman, and Emily Fairfax, AND reads Ben Goldfarb’s book. Now I’m not stupid. I knew this day would come. But I truly never thought it would come from Edible magazine in Ventura County!

California beaver work remains complicated by its history. For example, policy remnants prohibit beaver relocation, says Fairfax. And, according to 2016 WATER Institute report, Beaver in California, no CDFW codes promote beaver stewardship or restoration.

Public perception can also complicate the matter. Though Fairfax’s work details how beaver activity can act as a fire break and drought buffer, beavers have their own agenda.

“Beavers are absolutely an agent for good in the environment, but…sometimes they will conflict with humans,” she says. A dam-induced flood enriches soil and improves water quality and availability in the future, but it’s hard to stomach a flooded farm crop to get there.

Luckily, beaver experts are also innovators. Inventions such as “beaver deceivers” give humans influence over pond levels or dam locations and simple trunk treatments can discourage the gnawing of a prized tree. Beavers and humans won’t be able to coexist in every situation, Fairfax cautions, but she encourages “taking that extra minute to stop and think: If there is a beaver, how can I interact with it in the neutral way, instead of trying to control it?

And perhaps, in the end, relinquishing a bit of control is the moral of the California beaver story. In an increasingly dynamic climate, we humans still think and build statically, encasing our rivers in concrete. Beavers, however, build for flux, for generations and for an interspecies community.

“The beaver is the story of someone who is working hard and they’re trying to make the environment a better place… for their families and for the future,” says Fairfax.

Yes, beavers belong here because they benefit us and other creatures. But mostly, one might point out, they belong here because they always have.

Oh my goodness. I could read hear this story over and over. Thank you so much Leslie for this retelling. It is the best one I can ever remember.

Leslie Baehr is a science writer and content strategist who works with media outlets, research institutions, not-for-profits, and companies. An alumna of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science writing, she enjoys exploring the interplay between science and ideas.

JUST BETWEEN US AND THE GOLDEN STATE

When Emily Fairfax became assistant professor at Cal State Channel Islands, I knew the beaver world was in for a treat. But I couldn’t have possibly guessed how much of one. Emily and beavers are the subject of a glossy new pair of articles in Ojai & Ventura Co Edible, and she just published her fire research in the journal of Ecological Applications. I can’t decide which one to write about first, but I’ll just give a preview.

Smokey the Beaver: beaver‐dammed riparian corridors stay green during wildfire throughout the western USA

The articleS in Edible are a two fold, one is a slam dunk look at whether beavers belong in Ventura county (they do) with a fantastic discussion with Rick Lanman and look at our research lovingly written by Leslie Baehr. The other is a walk and talk with Emily about the good things beaver dams bring. Well save the first one for another day.

Tour a Stream with a Beaver Expert

Emily Fairfax, PhD., is an ecohydrologist and assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at CSU Channel Islands. Emily researches how beavers, which are native to California, change waterways and riparian ecosystems. In particular, she studies how beaver damming makes drought and fire resistant patches in the landscape. Her students and colleagues can affirm that when Emily says she can talk about beavers for hours, she’s not kidding.

Click twice on the image to see it larger.

STREAMS WITHOUT BEAVER are mostly characterized by what you don’t see. They tend to be a single straight and deep channel that doesn’t meander much through the landscape. As a result, the water does not spread throughout the landscape and the vegetation tends to be a lot smaller, scrubbier, and drier. There is also a lack of wildlife.

Oh my goodness Emily, who do I thank at the Channel Islands for hiring you? You could have ended up in Wisconsin or Colorado and we are soooo grateful for you being in California!

Contrary to popular depiction, a healthy riparian ecosystem often looks less like a stream and more like a wetland. One of the first things you will notice about STREAMS WITH BEAVER is how green they are. Vegetation tends to be healthier, bigger, and more abundant. Vegetation also stays greener further into the dry season. In fact, vegetation in some of the local beaver areas I study has become even greener into the dry season.

The heavy ponds also push water into the ground, recharging our aquifers. This groundwater is then released to the surface when pond-levels are low, buffering drought and creating year-round stream flow.

Locally, in the Los Padres where I study, we see dams between one and three feet tall and maybe 20 to 50 yards long, which is not that big for a beaver dam.

Lucky, lucky beavers in Los Padres. And lucky, lucky people that get a chance to learn from her.

Beaver habitat is characterized by abundant wildlife. Birds, insects, and frogs all thrive here and larger mammals may use the ponds as a watering hole.

Many researchers are particularly interested in the habitat’s effect on fish like salmon and our endangered steelhead who are born in streams, live their lives in the sea, and migrate back to the stream to reproduce. The beaver ponds provide slow-water rest areas for fish swimming upstream, abundant food for the young swimming downstream, and deep water protection from predators for both. This results in increased fish numbers and size.

Oh my goodness. I’m officially hiring you as the new beaver publicist of the golden state. It’s so nice to think someone will take over for me when I retire.

It’s not just wildlife that benefit. Beaver make for great ranching buddies since they create watering holes for cattle and healthier grazing pasture. An ecosystem that captures water can act as a natural fire break with fires fizzling out when they encounter the wetlands.

You might also find humans in this verdant ecosystem. In many areas, such as wine country, beavers attract tourism.

Okay I’m sold. Where do I sign up? Check out Emily’s new article complete with some very good reasons for California to befriend beaver.

Abstract

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low‐tech, low‐cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. They slow and store water that can be accessed by riparian vegetation during dry periods, effectively protecting riparian ecosystems from droughts. Whether or not this protection extends to wildfire has been discussed anecdotally but has not been examined in a scientific context. We used remotely sensed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to compare riparian vegetation greenness in areas with and without beaver damming during wildfire. We include data from five large wildfires of varying burn severity and dominant landcover settings in the western USA in our analysis. We found that beaver‐dammed riparian corridors are relatively unaffected by wildfire when compared to similar riparian corridors without beaver damming. On average, the decrease in NDVI during fire in areas without beaver is 3.05 times as large as it is in areas with beaver. However, plant greenness rebounded in the year after wildfire regardless of beaver activity. Thus, we conclude that while beaver activity does not necessarily play a role in riparian vegetation post‐fire resilience, it does play a significant role in riparian vegetation fire resistance and refugia creation.

I’ll post the full article or your perusal but here’s the whopping conclusion and my favorite part:

As it stands today, wetland habitat is very limited and beavers can create and
maintain wetland habitat that persists through flood, drought, and as we have shown in this study – fire. This has immediate relevance to scientists and practitioners across the North America and Eurasia – particularly in places with increasing wildfire risk and existing or planned beaver populations. Perhaps instead of relying solely on human engineering and management to create and maintain fire-resistant landscape patches, we could benefit from beaver’s ecosystem engineering to achieve the same goals at a lower cost.

And scene! Emily is our hero. I believe she can do anything. Here’s the famed researcher gamely trying out Bob Rust’s junior beavercycle at a certain beaver festival.

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Go read the whole thing. And share if you share any friends with the Governor.

FairfaxWhittle_2020_SmokeyTheBeaver

WILL DYNAMITE SALES PLUMMET IN WISCONSIN?

heidi08 Beavers and trout September 3, 2020

It’s been a very strange couple of beaver days. At the end of August I posted that I had carefully gone through my hoard of “good beaver news” and that it was time to expect some bad beaver news as more folks got worried about flooding. Then I started getting deluged with good beaver news. In 24 hours my holding bin is once again filled to the brim. I don’t pretend to understand it.

And not just ‘any’ good beaver news, either. But the most hoped for and argued against all reasonable hope for. The spots where my beaver sensibilities were the most chafed and sore. Suddenly feeling lighter. I don’t understand it at all.

Yesterday I told you about the new research in South America, well later on phys.org AND the Science blog reported it. It’s already made its way to the desks of every scientist, Let’s hope it sparks a flurry of new research as Pantagonia considers whether lemons can, indeed, make lemonade.

And yesterday this report dropped from the VERY same reporter in the VERY same state we bemoaned a week ago. Someone is clearly playing with me.

DNR Researching Effectiveness Of Beaver Dam Management On Trout Population

For years, many wildlife managers have assumed removing beaver dams on streams helps trout populations. It allows the streams to run colder and more free, conditions trout generally like. In an episode of The Stream last month, we showed you how wildlife managers often use explosives to remove dams.

“It’s really important to have these free-flowing from the very top, the cold-water sources, in many cases, all the way through to the larger systems,” said Jeremy Irish, who works with the USDA Wildlife Services program, as part of that story.

But now, a DNR researcher is testing just how true the management theory is.

What what? Wisconsin is doing actual RESEARCH on their dearly held little theory? And Ben Meyer is reporting on it? Someone pinch me, I might be dreaming.

“We’re trying to fill in the gaps in the understanding of how beaver are affecting these streams and trout populations in them,” said DNR fisheries research scientist Matt Mitro. “The trout population itself, if you have a beaver interrupting flow in a stream and creating different types of habitat, are you increasing trout population? Decreasing trout population? Changing the size structure?”

The assumption about positive impacts for trout is based on decades-old data from one part of the state. Mitro is now studying 15 streams statewide, manipulating some to allow for beaver dam-building and having dams removed on others.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt Mitro is a fisheries biologist with the DNR. Apparently he didn’t grow up in the state, so he didn’t drink the koolaide. The Wisconsin Center for Wildlife describe him this way:

Matthew Mitro is a fisheries research scientist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Based in Madison, Matt has been working with the DNR since 2003 on statewide fisheries issues with a focus on trout in Wisconsin’s inland streams. Matt has also worked for the EPA’s Atlantic Ecology Division and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. He earned his Ph.D. in fisheries at Montana State University studying Rainbow Trout recruitment.

Now this is exciting. Ladies and Gentlemen we finally have ourselves a real horse race. I wouldn’t claim to know how the story is going to end before its written but its hard to imagine that if you compare beaver streams to non beaver streams you won’t find something positive.

He said his research could change how the state manages its beaver dams and trout streams.

“Wisconsin DNR fisheries management expends a certain portion of their budget for maintaining this program. Are we wisely spending that money? Or are there ways that we could improve how we’re doing it?” he said.

Mitro hopes to release data as he gets it.

Matt, you are our new HERO. Someone willing to actually do the unthinkable and LOOK at the data for a change. I’m so glad you bumped onto the scene and will share your findings with us. I, for one, cannot wait.

NON NATIVE BEAVER HELP NON NATIVE TROUT

heidi08 Beavers and trout September 2, 2020

I’m so old I can remember writing about when two barristers from Canada said that the beaver in South America had grown abnormally large and (with no natural predators) had evolved to eat fish. I’ve been hearing people lie about the kidnapped beaver devastating the land by eating all the trees for more years than I can count on both my hands. Surely we all know they should never have been there to begin with. But I’ve been a little outraged to read over and over how entirely awful and difficult to eliminate they are.

So there is only one video that truly expresses how I felt when I read this particular headline.

Beavers appear to help the growth of brown trout in South America, study finds

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In the early 1900s, brown trout and rainbow trout were introduced to southern South America for recreational fishing and early aquaculture initiatives. About 40 years later, American beaver were introduced in the same region to develop a felt industry.

That history intrigued Ivan Arismendi, an aquatic ecologist at Oregon State University. He is originally from Chile but since 2007 has lived in Oregon, where the beaver is the official state animal and the mascot of the university that employs him. He wondered what impact the introduced beaver in Chile had on the health of the introduced brown trout.

Through field work in a remote area of Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Arismendi and his team determined that dam building by the beaver modifies the aquatic environment, providing a wider range of more energy-dense food sources for brown trout. This results in improved growth of the brown trout, they concluded.

Well, of COURSE they do. Of course they do. And hey I be those invasive fish aren’t the only thing that eat all those new water bugs. And gosh I bet having more fish to eat is pretty darned good news to all those cayman and heron and penguins or whatever else eats fish in South America.

They determined growth rates by measuring the scales of the trout, which, like tree rings, can be used to determine how much the fish are growing. They determined their diets by studying the food sources that were available at the field sites, and the contents in the stomachs of the fish.

They found that the growth rate of brown trout found in streams where beaver were present was 14% higher than in streams where beaver were not present.

“What we see in these invaded environments is totally coherent and similar to what we see between beaver and salmonids in the Pacific Northwest,” Arismendi said.

Well of course it was. That’ what you get when a student born in Chile immigrates to Oregon for college. People who can see the forest for the trees. I think we love Ivan Arismendi with all of our collective heats now. Maybe we should send a care package?

BEAVER RESEARCH: FULLY FUNDED

heidi08 Beaver ponds, Beavers, Beavers and Flooding, Beavers and water September 1, 2020

We’re officially caught up with beaver news. For a month I have had a stack of articles waiting to tell you about because apparently August is the right time for good beaver news. Now it’s September and we’re moving into the days soon of BAD beaver news. Beavers in the fall are raising their dams and people are getting worried about flooding. Soon we’ll hear about the reasons folks in Wichita or Boise need to trap.

But there’s one last victory to celebrate.

Funding for prospective students

Dam beavers: quantifying the impacts of nature’s water engineers on the fluvial geomorphology and flood regimes of streams and rivers, Geography – PhD (Funded)

The University of Exeter’s College of Life and Environmental Sciences, in partnership with the National Trust, is inviting applications for a fully-funded PhD studentship to commence in October 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter. For eligible students the studentship will cover UK/EU tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £15,285 for 4 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. The student would be based in Geography in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the Streatham Campus in Exeter.

The Eurasian Beaver (Castor Fiber) was hunted to extinction in Great Britain and near-extinction in Europe. Over recent decades, it has made a comeback, with numbers now nearing 1 million in mainland Europe and with a number of reintroductions and licensed trials established in GB to improve understanding of the role that this ecosystem engineer might play if more widespread. Since beavers were absent from GB, landscapes have been modified extensively in support of agricultural intensification, with an emphasis upon the drainage of the land to deliver enhanced production of food. Waterways are now straightened and deepened, fields under-drained and often bare of vegetation, to maximise drainage efficiency, but with detrimental impacts downstream. Thus, there are very few, if any ‘natural’ streams or rivers in GB, which means that research is required to understand what impact beavers might deliver, as they return into densely populated, intensively-farmed ecosystems. This PhD will deliver new understanding of the ways in which streams and channels will respond to beaver activity and will therefore provide fundamental science to guide both decision and policymakers and land managers as to how to respond.

How much do you want to be THIS PhD candidate? Hired to measure streams or walk around dams for 4 years as a fully funded doctoral student? Knowing that your dissertation is guaranteed to break ground and change the country for decades to come?

The overall aim of this project is to quantify the impacts that beavers will have on the fluvial geomorphology and flood regimes of a wide range of surface waters in Great Britain. It is noted here that the PhD student will both refine and redesign this project, as their ownership of the research develops, however we have established the following hypotheses to test:
1. Beaver activity (particularly beaver dams) will force channel-planform change across a range of stream orders (at least 1st to 4th), increasing sinuosity, decreasing width:depth ratios and increasing the presence of multi-thread channels in the landscape, which engage more regularly with floodplains.
2. Within-channel bed characteristics will be significantly altered via beaver dam construction, with along-channel heterogeneity of bed material increasing; becoming finer upstream of dams and coarser downstream.
3. Channel long-profiles will be altered towards more step-formed geometry due to the presence of beaver dams and these geomorphic changes will persist, delivering changes to hydraulic behaviour along beaver-dammed reaches, when compared with non-dammed reaches.
4. Beaver dammed channels will deliver flow attenuation, reducing peak flows and increasing lag times in a comparable manner to more conventional natural flood management techniques such as woody debris dams.

The project will deploy a Multiple Before-After-Control-Impact experimental design, deploying methods including: ground-based surveys, structure-from-motion drone-based photogrammetry, hydrological monitoring, suspended sediment and bedload monitoring, numerical modelling and GIS.

Oh my goodness. Something tells me excited grad students across the country are lining up to pack their wellies and do this work themselves! Great job Richard Brazier and Alan Puttock. We can’t see to hear who you chose and what the find!

My work is entirely unfunded, but as you can see, it’s still productive. Now we just need to bring in some real artists.