Month: January 2021

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H… I GOT A BEAVER IN KALAMAZOO

Well you have a happy little Heidi this morning, Yesterday Georgia covered America in blue paint, the beaver summit conference found out Michael Pollock will be the keynote speaker and the schedule of both days fell into place. Let’s celebrate with some fucking great beaver news shall we?

At Asylum Lake Preserve in Kalamazoo, humans work to outsmart beavers — a welcome nuisance

Across Parkview Avenue from Western Michigan University’s college of engineering, a group of industrious engineers is hard at work in the university’s Asylum Lake Preserve. Their ingenious creations have left some observers in awe. Others cringe at the litter of felled trees the workers already have created around the pristine lake.

But Tom Sauber, WMU Natural Areas Manager, says he’s supportive of the work of the family of beavers who have decided to move in, even as he works to outsmart them and limit the conflict between the animals and people who enjoy the quiet beauty of the preserve.

Oh I can already tell I’m going to LOVE this story, let me just settle in and appreciate it.

But Sauber says the family of beavers on a small bay along the lake’s south shore has left a small footprint — a few trees down, and their lodge hasn’t created any flooding damage, often associated with their dam-building habits.

“They are the most amazing ecosystem engineers,” Sauber says, “and I marvel at their building skills. We need to live in harmony with them and understand that this is their home.”

Lauri Holmes, co-chair of the Asylum Lake Preservation Association, agrees.

She recently walked the Preserve with Bill Schneider, owner of Wildtypes, the company out of Lansing that has been working to remove invasive plant species in the preserve.

“Bill is really an expert about plant ecology, and he was especially interested in the relationship of the downed trees, the work of the beavers, and the eliminating of the invasives that Wildtypes had been doing for so long,” Holmes says. “Bill was very pleased that the beavers have elected to live here. It means that the environment is healthy. He said that we should ‘revere’ them.”

Oh believe me Bill, I do! And now that we’re on the subject, you’re not so bad yourself.

“In order to alter their behavior of wanting to build dams, we have placed a beaver deceiver at the culvert that connects Asylum Lake with little Asylum Lake, the area they would most likely pick to build a dam,” Sauber explains.

The rectangular device allows water to easily flow through but its presence at the juncture tricks the beaver into thinking there is already a dam in place, so they refrain from building there.

Okay, well it’s not a rectangle and that’s not how it works but hey. Points for effort. And if it means beavers get to stick around a little longer you have won my vote.

To learn more about these amazing animals, Sauber recommends reading “Eager Beavers Matter” by Ben Goldfarb.

“If we don’t educate ourselves on the beavers we will never understand their rightful place in the environment.”

Oh I agree. Michigan beaver summit soon? Well done Kalamazoo. You have brightened an already translucent day. In fact, I feel a song coming on.

ODFW IS EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS A ‘FUR DESERT’, I AGREE!

heidi08 Beavers January 5, 2021

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.

I was noticing that we had talked about so many good beaver articles lately and fantasizing that we could maybe have only good news through all of January. Like picking your way across a pond by stepping only on firm dry stones so that you never get wet.

But then I saw this and I just couldn’t resist.

Wildlife management in the Beaver State

I think about my grandfathers quite a bit these days. It’s because I am the same age they were in my earliest memories. Both of them lived in what used to be called Oregon Territory. Both of them lived in and worked in the woods.

My grandpa on the Lewis side of the family had 100 acres of good river bottom and timber and much of it he kept like a park.

Beavers too were safe on his place. It was funny because he was a logger for part of his life and the beaver was sometimes competition. But there was a day Grandpa said he was calling in a trapper. The beavers, he said, were destroying the salmon and steelhead spawning areas along the creek, and he could not allow that. I didn’t think about any of that until recently.

Oh my goodness. Not only do we get to read the pained article of a trapper complaining about beaver policy but we get to read about the concerns of a pained GRANDFATHER to the trapper. Who was also wrong, by the way. Now you see why I couldn’t resist.

Gary was born in 1967. So that means his father was probably born just after the war, and his grandfather was born somewhere after the first pandemic. So he would have acquired this land after the beaver population had been decimated for around 50 years. Surely he had no idea what it was supposed to look like. Or how his land might have functioned normally if it didn’t have a beaver-sized hole in it.

Today there is no shortage of beavers in what used to be called Oregon Territory. There are not too many and there are not too few, because our Department of Fish and Wildlife use the science-based North American model of game management. Hunters, fishermen and trappers are licensed and their fees pay the salaries of our wildlife managers. It is a system that has been working on behalf of fish and wildlife for more than a century in the state of Oregon, keeping fish, fur and game animals in balance. Why is beaver management important?

Like my grandpa realized he had to do, beavers should be trapped to ensure that spawning habitat is not blocked. Trapping efforts in Oregon have helped to keep waterways open for spawning cutthroat trout, chinook salmon and steelhead. Yet beaver are also important to fish. Beaver dams protect juvenile coho and cutthroats with deeper water, and dams also stabilize stream flows.

It is interesting that a tiny bit of new information has been able to penetrate Mr. Lewis air water-tight understanding of ecological balance. Beavers are mostly bad and we should kill them is his central theme, but he has been hit over and over with enough information that he has conceeded that yes, okay. beavers are SLIGHTLY useful for the baby salmon that nobody wants to catch. I admit it. You got me.

We keep the beaver in balance to protect urban areas and wild places, too. Beaver dams can block drainage channels that prevent water from draining out of farmland. Water into farmland is also important and that’s why beaver management has been protected to preserve irrigation rights. Girdling of trees causes other types of habitat damage. Flooding caused by beaver dams can also kill stands of trees and destroy the habitat of other animals.

Don’t you just hate it when beavers move in and start DESTROYING THE HABITAT of other animals. Gosh I hate that. I mean one beaver moves in and the whole ecosystem just falls apart.

You know. Like the way a keystone knocks down an entire arch way.

Oregon Territory was formed because of the importance of beaver harvest. That symbol on the flag was put there in celebration of people working together.

Trappers are a small minority in the hunting and fishing community, yet they provide an important function in wildlife management. It would be easy to legislate them out of existence, but if we allow that to happen, we lose an important tool in wildlife management and we allow politics to win over science-based management.

Science based beaver management? What is the science exactly involved? I think Gary is playing a pure numbers game here. See the beaver population is growing not shrinking. So that proves trapping isn’t bad. And in fact it’s necessary because otherwise they would take over the whole state. Never mind that the population is still a tenth of what it was. Or that science might recommend saving beavers to save water, or save salmon, fight fires, stabelize streams or reduce nitrogen in the soil.

Gary’s position can be summed up fairly simply. Beavers: there are enough of them. Get over it. Shhh. This my favorite part.

It’s fashionable right now to advise the ODFW Commission on how to do their job, but I would like to point out that wildlife management works and has been working for 150 years. The science-based North American model of wildlife management works on behalf of all wildlife and for the people of Oregon. It’s why we call this the Beaver State. It’s why the beaver is on the flag.

Gary believes that wildlife management has been working since 1830. Since the days when Hudson Bay Company moved in and made it their policy to create a “fur desert” to discouragepeople from moving in – the ecologial equivalent of licking all your desert so that your cousins won’t try to steal it.

In 1830 the beaver, otter, fisher, mink, muskrat, entire population was wiped OUT. Destroyed. Kaput. Gary did you really mean to say that ODFW current beaver policy is working exactly as well as when all the fur bearing animals near any stream were decimated? You did say 150 years. And that was 150 years ago. I’m sure you’re understanding of history is as good as your understanding of ecology.

Well, sure. If that’s your point. I have to agree with you. Their current policy is exactly that good.

THE CHANGING CLIMATE NEEDS BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon January 4, 2021

Sigh. Time for some more jealousy fodder from Washington state, this time from Everett and the Herald.

For tribes, climate change fight is about saving culture

If salmon can’t survive, what will happen to a Native culture based on a plentiful supply?

That question is one that drives the Tulalip Tribes’ intense interest in adapting to and slowing climate change. Williams, 72, helped lead the fight for four decades until his retirement in July as head of the Tulalips’ Treaty Rights Office, which he founded. He passed the torch to Ryan Miller, 33.

“If we lose these species that are so intrinsically connected to who we are, we lose part of ourselves,” said Miller, who as a teenager worked at the tribal fish hatchery where his father, Richard, ran the water quality lab. “It’s already difficult to pass on these traditions in modern societies. As these resources get more scarce, it becomes more and more difficult.”

So we are very concerned about our salmon. That means we are going to care a great deal about anything that can help sustain them. Any ideas?

Off-reservation forests include millions of acres of wildlife habitat, salmon-bearing streams and plant resources that are at risk from a changing global environment. This is where tribal rights afforded under the 1855 Treaty of Port Elliott come into play.

Stewardship includes rebuilding landscapes so they will bounce back from fires and floods. Resiliency is a goal of many Tulalip projects. The tribes work with farmers to keep manure out of waterways, creating clean energy in the process. Staff have relocated nuisance beavers that would build salmon-friendly, water-storing forest ponds. Last summer they helped remove a Pilchuck River diversion dam that has blocked salmon migration for 118 years.

“We have complicated Western water law, and we’re seeing the drought season get longer and longer,” he said. “The population is growing. How are we going to sustain that development with a reduction in water? We already don’t have enough water in the rivers, enough water for salmon.”

Oooh I don’t know. You don’t want to be TOO wise and ecologically minded all at once. I mean it’s one thing to understand salmon. And then how beavers help baby salmon by making these deep pools that don’t freeze or dry up. And then to recognize that the safer and fatter a baby is when it finally swims to sea the better it’s chances of growing up and coming back for people to catch. But do have have to understand climate change too?

That just seems like showing off.

MISTAKEN IDENTITIES FOR SALE

heidi08 Beavers, pictures January 3, 2021

Well this is ironic.

I am working with Bruce Mushrush the designer who has been kind enough to agree to set up the website for the CA beaver summit. He is the man who started this very website of his own accord lo these any years ago and happens to be the husband of Georgette Howington of the bluebird recovery program that brightens our every festival every year. After agreeing on the domain name and some other details he sent me some stock photos he has access too and wondered whether they’d work. Guess how many were Nutria.

Go ahead guess.

Not his fault in any way of course. They were clearly labeled as photos of beavers. And most people aren’t freaks of nature that spend hours looking at images of actual beavers so they know the difference. Nutria, groundhog, muskrat, even a capybara. And these are photos you PAY FOR. Now we know why all the media outlets use the wrong photos all the dam time. I said no no no. We have the very best photos and we don’t need to use anyone else’s. Suzi very nicely offered for us to use hers and Cheryl’s are perfect. Hopefully Rusty will help too.

Stock footage of wanna beavers. Sheesh!

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WASHINGTON IS A BIG DAM SHOW-OFF

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout January 2, 2021

Okay Washington, now you’re just showing off.

I mean everyone already knows that you are the shining western state on the hill when it comes to beavers, and that you have all the smartest people and the best understanding why they matter You have Michael Pollock, the Methow Project, The Lands Council, Ben Goldfarb. But this? Now you have this too? That’s just too much.

Cowlitz Tribe project will inventory beaver habitat

CENTRALIA — The Cowlitz Indian Tribe plans to inventory existing beaver habitat in Southwest Washington on private and public timberlands that are located on the aboriginal lands of the tribe. The project will include field surveys to gather data on beaver habitat sites, evaluate the habitat on the ground, determine the quality of the habitat and map the resulting classification of it.

Beavers are a keystone species in Southwest Washington. Their presence in nature affects watershed functions and all other wildlife species around them. Releasing beavers has great potential for ecological improvements. Construction of dams and ponds by beavers improves habitat for various aquatic and wetland-dependent species.

Cowlitz Indian Tribe Chairman Phillip Harju said beavers are important to the Cowlitz peoples.

“Our culture and members depend upon a healthy ecosystem,” Harju said. “Beaver are a key species that enable the ecosystem to function properly. This project will lay foundational work for strategic beaver relocation to suitable habitat within the aboriginal lands of the tribe.”

Waa! California sucks. I’m so jealous I could spit. Why does Washington get all the wisdom? And the rotten part is they just keep making more, with articles like this just going around persuading more people to think like them. It’s not fair. WA is the 2 percent crowd when it comes to beaver knowledge.

We are the peasants.

Beaver dams also help raise the surrounding water table, reducing water temperature and helping maintain flows during dry periods in the summer.

Fish species, namely salmon and trout, benefit when beavers create dams, and there are a number of other organisms, such as the threatened Oregon spotted frog, that rely on wetland and slow water for various stages of their life cycle.

Beavers have historically played a significant role in maintaining the health of watersheds in the Pacific Northwest, and act as key cogs in the functioning of riparian ecology. Live trapping and relocating of nuisance beavers has long been recognized as a beneficial wildlife management practice, and has been successfully utilized to restore and maintain stream ecosystems.

It’s just so dam unfair. California is the frickin home of John Muir and Yosemite. Why don’t we get nice attitudes about beavers! Why can’t all those protestors at Berkeley or SF city hall start demanding we let them do their jobs? Save OUR salmon. Put out our fires. Ohhh noo, We’re too busy demanding marriage equality and civil rights. We have no time left over for beavers.

Well the California Beaver Summit is going to change that. Or try anyway.

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