Month: December 2020

A BEAVER ON TIK TOK IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation December 21, 2020

Happy Solstice!

It’s a fine winter Monday with a not so fine no-burn warning, but I have the christmas cheer you’ll need today. How about a famous beaver on Tik Tok reported by NPR? There is almost nothing about this story I don’t like. Enjoy.

Meet Beave, The Internet’s Most Famous Beaver

Leave it to a beaver to find new ways to build dams.

That much was revealed by Nancy Coyne, who’s rehabilitating a beaver in her home in New York’s Hudson Valley. Coyne’s videos of Beave the beaver on TikTok have quickly racked up millions of views.

Beave has taken to building dams out of whatever’s available around the house.

@beaverbabyfurryloveBeaves not damming in his pond yet. He’s to young. He does this in the house because it’s his safe place. Not yet with sticks either. ##fyp ♬ original sound – Beave

What I find fascinating about this story, and there’s a lot to love, is that Beave’s favorite place to dam is open doorways. When you think of it the doorway is the narrowest part of passage in your home. And beavers like to dam the narrowest part of the stream. So I guess it’s instinctive.

What do you think instinct feels like when you’re having it? Does it just seem like a really good idea you just thought of?

Coyne, who is a wildlife rehabilitator with Raising the Wild, makes clear that Beave is not a pet. She’s raising him for about two years because she suspects he was orphaned.

“I received a call, as I normally do for a lot of rehabs, and the woman said that she had found a baby beaver on the side of the road,” Coyne says. “So I said, ‘Of course you can bring it to me.’ “

When the woman arrived, “she was carrying this little box. So I opened up the box. And sure enough, there was a little baby beaver, no bigger than the size of a russet potato.”

Coyne’s task now is to help Beave learn what he needs to know so he can reenter the wild when he’s ready.

Things like swimming under the ice:

@beaverbabyfurryloveBeave was doing really good swimming under the ice. He was a little skeptical at first but figured out how to navigate. ##VivaCleanHacks ##fyp ♬ original sound – Beave

Look at how good he’s managing his life skills? She’s doing a pretty great job as surrogate. The one thing I disagree with is her thought on what it means when the kit whines. Being around children all my life I of course started out assuming that whining means the kit in question wanted something. Then when I actually watched our kits sampling tasting treats I learned otherwise.

When one kit has a branch and the other kit wants it, it’s not the one who wants it that makes that noise. It’s the one who HAS it. I don’t think it means “I want this”.

It means “I really like this. It’s delicious. And please don’t ask me to share!!!”

@beaverbabyfurryloveFor the followers that requested Beave just eating Kale. Enjoy! ##CancelTheNoise ##Catchphrases ##TheWildsChallenge ##OOTD ##fyp ##wildanimals ##wildlife ♬ original sound – Beave

If you want to thank Nancy for her help and donate to support other patients, you can make your donation here: Her account is being followed by millions and it’s a pretty great way to promote interest in our favorite animal. It seems like a pretty good place to share a little christmas spirit.

@beaverbabyfurryloveWhat makes Beaver Rehab so different than our other rehabs is the requirement for contact and nurturing. ##DiceRoll ##OPIObsessed ##SmallBusiness ##fyp

♬ original sound – Beave

Go look at her account for more fun videos and have yourself a merry little start to Christmas week,

THE KILLING FIELDS FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? December 20, 2020

Zane Eddy is the Master’s student at Humboldt State doing his thesis on the Martinez Beaver conundrum. Every now and then I am reminded he is hard at work and it officially blows my mind to be part of the subject of anyone’s thesis. He needed to do a GIS project for one class and wanted to use the depredation data we put together over the years. This is just one block in his final thesis but it’s pretty amazing to see.

Abstract

Beavers can cause disruptions and damage to human dominated areas, but they also provide many ecological benefits that are causing researchers and regulators to reexamine the existing lethal management paradigm. We examined and mapped the issuance of depredation permits to better understand the geographic patterns within the data. We found that beaver depredations were not evenly distributed, with a single county accounting for 20% of allowed depredations while 10 other counties had none. There was a drop in the issuance of Unlimited depredation permits in 2015 and counties in California Department of Fish and Wildlife Management Region 2 account for a disproportionate amount of the total allowed take. More geographically precise data would improve this study and further qualitative research could further aid efforts to further beaver coexistence.

Now that is something to see in person. Look at that GIF closer. Even if you never even saw a map of the Sacramento delta you could probably guess where it was by that dark blue region from which all beavers seem to spring. He didn’t include 2018 because they gave us weird data without numbers that year.

Results

We found that over six years studied, CDFW issued a total of 934 beaver depredation permits. Of these permits, 225 allowed for an unlimited take of beaver (Figure 1) and the remaining 701 allowed for 12,331 beavers to be depredated (Figure 2). There were 10 counties that issued no permits during the period and Yolo County issued the most permits with a total of 103 permits. Excluding unlimited depredation permits, Yuba County allowed the most depredations with an allowable take of 2,541, accounting for more than 20% of all allowed depredations.

Ugh. Now let’s be absolutely honest. It’s all an unlimited take of beaver really. You just have to ask for. If you’re a teenager that’s allowed to do everything you want as long as you ask for it first, there really are no rules.

Just once I would like to see a request for depredation where CDFW said, no. You can’t kill beavers here. Sorry

.When we looked at the depredation permits and CDFW Management regions (Figure 2), we found that counties in region 2 sought significantly more depredations than counties in other management regions.igure 1 Shows the distribution of the 225 permits which allowed for unlimited beaver beaver depredations for

There was a drop in the number of depredation permits being issued during 2015, which was because in 2015 WAD used depredation data from previous years to convince CDFW to reduce the issuance of unlimited permits. The decline in unlimited permits resulted in an uptick in the allowable take by permit as unlimited permits turned into permits allowing for 99 beavers to be trapped. This shows that it is important not only to change the base policy, but to instill an understanding of why a policy is changing, otherwise people will find workarounds to return to familiar practices.

Ahhh memories. Remember when we met with the head of Placer CDFW and talked to him about how they issued the most unlimiteds and then we found out that they had magically been told to stop but just started mysteriously handing out permits good for “99 beavers”. That was so funny. It’s nice to see that Zane pointed out that there actually was no actually policy change.

Conclusions:

The change in issuance of unlimited permits was a result of those advocating for beavers and shows that agencies will react to public input, however the increase in high take permits shows the difficulties of attempting to implement policy change without also change perceptions and attitudes of those that institute policy. It is important that there is public oversight to ensure that agencies continue to work in the best interests of those that they serve.

Well sure. All we wanted to know was where were they being killed. Was Martinez unique? Was it the only city where beavers showed up and tempted fate? But of course it wasn’t. It was and is happening all over. And will continue to happen until people get the idea that the problems beavers bring with them are slightly less bothersome than the problems they solve.

We’re working on it.

Oh speaking of the unexpected effects of saving beavers in Martinez in 2007, here’s an interesting new downtown venue that’s about to open at the old Bank of America building. They are issuing a call to help name the mascot for the intended indoor market.I don’t know. Do those toes look webbed to you?

TROUT UNLIMITED REMINDS US WHY BEAVERS MATTER

heidi08 Beavers and trout December 19, 2020

As if we needed to be reminded, TU has lept onto the beaver stage to get involved in the mostly one-sided beaver debate.

New mapping tool puts beavers to work for Upper Columbia fisheriesCrysta

Beavers and trout anglers are not strangers. Many of us have been startled while standing knee-deep in a trout stream when something big and brown and way larger than the fish we are targeting suddenly slips past.

Beavers can cause headaches for land managers as they engineer streams and ponds to their purposes without even a cursory nod toward collaboration with other interested parties. Then again, these same ponds can be great places to catch decent-sized trout.

Increasingly though, Trout Unlimited and other like-minded groups are turning to beavers — and certainly taking inspiration from them — to help restore resiliency to degraded public lands and waters.

Well obviously. You’d look to the expert to teach you how to solve watershed problems. Why should we be surprised beavers are at the head of the class?

That means adapting to climate change, creating habitat and maintaining water supply.

Focused in the right places, beaver-powered restoration can be a priceless tool. In Washington’s Upper Columbia River Basin, TU restoration and science staff have partnered with local agencies, universities, tribes and, well, beavers to develop a tool to help plan this kind of work at a landscape level.

In the aftermath of Washington’s recent mega-fires, TU realized the critical need to scale up beaver-powered restoration work to re-establish climate change resilience in the Upper Columbia.

While fire is an important component of natural ecosystem process in the Upper Columbia, the combination of uncharacteristically severe wildfires in recent years and watershed modifications (e.g., logging, roads, etc.) often results in higher degrees of sedimentation and other impacts to aquatic systems than would naturally occur. Beaver dams and their resulting wetland complexes buffer these effects, enhancing water availability both for humans and for fish species.

You know what I find works really good for preventing fires? Water and wetlands. You know what makes those more plentiful, right?

In order to maximize impact, we needed to create these ecological benefits at a watershed level. We wanted to think beyond individual projects and look at a landscape perspective in terms of prioritizing sites for, 1) improving habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed salmon, steelhead and bull trout, 2) increasing water storage capacity, and 3) buffering fire effects.

Utah State University’s Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT) is currently the best model restoration practitioners have for digging into the feasibility question, but we needed a more broadly-focused tool to drill down to where beaver-powered restoration could do the most good in the Upper Columbia’s post-mega fire landscape where critical fish populations are struggling to survive.

Hot off the press, TU’s Upper Columbia Beaver-Powered Restoration Decision Support System (DSS) tool helps aid conservation specialists and agency staff in the identification of beaver-powered restoration opportunities across the Upper Columbia, including BDA installation, beaver relocation, and low-tech wood placement, such as post-assisted log structures (PALS).

In a nutshell, this tool provides a powerful landscape-level analysis to serve as a first-order filter for identifying the most impactful, high priority areas for beaver-powered restoration work in a critical basin for salmon and agriculture. The region is also on the front lines of mega fire impacts and climate change – making it a place where beaver-powered restoration is needed most.

They used the BRAT to find out where BDA’s could do the most good, and they worked to bring them about. Now its up to the beavers themselves to do the rest.

Simply put, we have learned a lot from beavers in ways we can help protect our most important fisheries from the ravages of climate change. We know how to utilize their skillsets to restore resiliency to our home waters. Our Upper Columbia Beaver-Powered Restoration DSS and field data collection tools help us to make smarter and more efficient decisions in where we apply these tools. We’ll spend some time in the lab with the DSS this winter and by spring we will be ready to take the field data collector to potential sites and get started with more beaver-powered restoration.

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Gosh I think Trout Unlimited in the west is doing some outstanding beaver advocacy. Remind me to invite them to speak at the California Beaver Summit will you?

THE CALIFORNIA BEAVER SUMMIT: IT’S ABOUT DAM TIME

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Conference, Beavers and Nitrogen removal December 18, 2020

It’s the friday before Christmas and I have some excellent news. The beaver summit steering commission met yesterday and arrived at two wonderful dates for our upcoming conference. Sonoma State will host our virtual conference beginning April 7th, International Beaver Day from 1-5. With the second session offered two days later, April 9th from 1-5. The opening day will be a beaver issues 101 course, including nativity, ecology and management. The second day will focus on new research and policy. It really is going to happen. Plan your wednesday and friday after Easter accordingly!

I was so excited to have an actual date I couldn’t resist playing with some graphics. I’m sure the real artwork will be much much better.Of course you and I know a million reasons California should care about beavers, but of course the people who most need to be there and learn why they matter are people who don’t yet think they matter, so we have to be pretty careful about not appearing to preach to the choir.

Although we definitely will. The choir is awesome. And getting larger all the time.

There are all kinds of issues we face that beavers can help with. Not just salmon and water storage. Some are topics most folks don’t even recognize as being relevant to beavers. Just ask our friends at Phys.Org.

Restoring wetlands near farms would dramatically reduce water pollution

Runoff from fertilizer and manure application in agricultural regions has led to high levels of nitrate in groundwater, rivers, and coastal areas. These high nitrate levels can threaten drinking water safety and also lead to problems with algal blooms and degradation of aquatic ecosystems.

Previous research has shown that wetlands improve water quality, but how much of an impact are wetlands having on nitrate removal now, and what improvements could wetland restoration deliver in the future?

Gee that’s interesting. Do wetlands really make a difference?

Researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Waterloo sought to evaluate these details at the U.S. scale and publish their findings in a new paper featured in the journal Nature.

Their study examines the positive effects of wetlands on water quality and the potential for using wetland restoration as a key strategy for improving water quality, particularly in the Mississippi River Basin and Gulf of Mexico regions.

The wetland essentially has a purifying effect when nitrate-laden water enters its boundaries. Chemical reactions take place that removes the harmful nitrate from the water, allowing for harmless nitrogen gas to be released into the atmosphere and cleaner water to flow downstream.

“Unfortunately, most wetlands that originally existed in the U.S. have been drained or destroyed to make way for agriculture or urban development. Ironically, areas with the biggest nitrate problems, due to agriculture and intensive use of nitrogen fertilizers, are also usually areas with the fewest numbers of remaining wetlands,” said Kimberly Van Meter, UIC assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences and co-lead author of the paper.

Gosh that’s a big problem. The places that need these wetlands the most are the ones that drained them. And making wetlands is a huge undertaking. Who has the time or the resources? I mean farmers aren’t made out of money.

Too bad there wasn’t some kind of wetland-making rodent just swimming around and wanting to help. Of course the researchers have a plan. But it has a pretty hefty price tag.

The cost of a wetlands initiative is estimated at $3.3 billion a year, an amount researchers described as feasible given current government spending levels. While that is twice the estimated cost of a non-targeted approach, the model showed it would remove 40 times more nitrogen.

How much do beavers charge again?

WHY VERMONT CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, beaver myths, Environmental December 17, 2020

Well give it up to Williamstown Vermont, which is a whopping 90 miles from the home of Skip Lisle the inventor of the Beaver Deceiver. Not only did they show determination to look a gift horse in the mouth but they voted to refuse the horse entirely. That’s some civic planning they have going there.

Williamstown board backs housing development, balks at ‘beaver deceiver’

WILLIAMSTOWN — Fox Woods Estates got a virtual thumbs up from the Select Board Monday night. Beaver baffles? Not so much.

The latter decision involved Protect Our Wildlife Vermont’s offer to install a “beaver deceiver” designed to prevent industrious beavers from clogging three large culverts that run under Industry Street.

One of the simple structures, which typically involve a few wooden posts and some sturdy wire fencing and a stretch of plastic culvert — would cover the three side-by-side culverts on Industry Street that beavers have made an issue in the past.

Town Manager Jackie Higgins told board members representatives of Protect Our Wildlife Vermont had scouted the site and the organization was prepared to invest up to $2,500 on building the structure they contend would keep the culverts from being clogged and water flowing freely.

An added upside — particular if you’re a beaver — is there would be no need to trap the animals just because they can be a nuisance.

The Select Board wasn’t sold.

That’s right. Never mind that the Protect our Wildlife was willing to foot the bill, and never mind that they had already done the research and looked into the costs of a flow device at that particular site. never mind that they woudn’t have to fly the expert in 3000 miles and pay for him to stay at the local best western, this fine city decided it won’t allow itself to be led around by the nose and dragged into winning solutions when years of practice have proven it could fail perfectly well on its own.

Not because members objected to one of the structures being installed at no cost to the town, and not necessarily because the town would be on the hook to maintain them for the next 10 years.

The bigger concern — one expressed by Selectman Matthew Rouleau and echoed by others — involved a requirement the board sign a memorandum of understanding essentially waiving the town’s right to enlist the assistance of a trapper in the event the beavers aren’t baffled, or the baffles just don’t work.

“I don’t have any problem with them trying these baffles, I just don’t want to sign off that we can’t do anything about it if it fails,” Rouleau said.

Chairman Rodney Graham said he shared that concern.

“If we’re in a flooding situation and the baffles cause the water to back up enough so it actually floods somebody’s property, are we going to be liable for that?” he said.

So rather than pay every year for the half hour of manpower it would take to have Bob from public works clean out leaves from the fence, they decided in their infinite wisdom it was better to keep hiring trappers annually and renting that backhoe from the good folks in Brookfield.

Rouleau said he believed the answer to that question was “yes” and while he wasn’t opposed to experimenting with the ‘beaver deceiver” and was hopeful it might actually work, he wasn’t prepared to take trapping off the table.

Board members agreed to invite a representative of the nonprofit organization to its meeting next month to explore whether the memorandum of understanding could be adjusted to address their concerns about liability.

Mr. Rouleau added regally, “The beaver itself is an ugly creature, but it may kiss my ring if it likes”

My goodness these people don’t know a good thing when its handed to them on a silver platter. with a fork and several pairs of chopsticks. Well you gave it the college try, you know what they say about leading a stubborn-ass select-board horse to water. Just because you brought it right to the thing it needs most in the world, and your state is FAMOUS for the man who invented it, and you’ve researched it for years and know for a fact it would be the solution they thirst for, you can’t make them drink.

Or to use the famous quote from the Algonquin Round table:

Dorothy Parker was once asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. “You can lead a horticulture,” she replied, “but you can’t make her think.”

Assuming that article left a bad taste in your mouth as it did mine, this is the ultimate palate ceanser This is the winning trail cam video from Betsy Potter in New York, I made me happier than any single thing in 2020. For obvious reasons. Your welcome.

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