Month: February 2021

AS IF WASHINGTON DC DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS ALREADY

heidi08 Beaver Chewing February 28, 2021

Beavers nibble on cherry tree at Tidal Basin

A cherry tree became a meal for a local beaver along the Tidal Basin in D.C.
The National Park Service said staff found a Yoshino cherry tree that had been chewed on in October, and quickly narrowed down the list of suspects to a North American Beaver.

Beavers are active in the Potomac year-round, but are most often spotted in the area in the spring and fall. “Sometimes beavers chew on branches and trees to get material for building a dam, but most of the time, they’re just eating wood and bark; the majority of their diet,” the National Park Service said on Friday.

To prevent another tree from getting chowed down, park staff made the area “as uninviting as possible to beavers.”

The National Park Service put up fencing around the base of the healthy trees and around the nearby sea wall on the Tidal Basin that not only stops debris from washing ashore, but deters beavers from getting up on the bank.

Well I was happy to see that last paragraph anyway. Apparently they have some idea how to handles these things besides trapping.

The park service natural resource team and arborists decided to leave the tall stump in place as habitat for woodpeckers, sapsuckers and other wildlife.They removed the top of the tree and the branches so the tree wouldn’t be a falling hazard.

Okay then,

Out friend Virginia of Fairfield is keeping watch over her beavers there and posted this fun video on FB a couple days ago. Apparently the beaver is startled by something, It looks like a cobra but maybe is a frog with a shadow. What do you think?

Isn’t that a hoot? Here is the thing that made me feel even better.

377 total enrolled
42 USDA
36 CDFW
10 RCD
6 DOT
5 BLM
3 NOAA
3 FWS
3 NPS+Ca state parks

Total Agency 109

Total California 181

3 AK
4 AL
2 AZ
10 CO
1 FL
1 ID
2 MA
1 MD
1 MN
1 NC
2 NV
1 NY
10 OR
1 PA
1 TX
2 Utah
1 VA
5 WA
1 WY

1 Spain
6 UK
2 Canada

Never say we’re hiding our light under a bushel!

BEAVER SUMMIT CARRIED BY THE FOUR WINDS

heidi08 Beaver Conference February 27, 2021

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Yesterday was a day for the ages, I can’t even tell you the weirdest part yet but trust me it’s weird. I was exhausted by 11:30. And then I thought to myself maybe the best way to lure more CDFW folk to the summit was to ask someone on the inside how its done. So I wrote such a person and was told to contact the scientist in charge of their list-serve, which I did and voila!

Invitations to the conference went all across CDFW emails. And now we within 20 minutes we had 50 scientists registered instead of 11. Plus 400 registrants overall. And I thought WOW. This could make a real difference. It’s a little bit wonderful they leapt on board and also a little bit horrible.

It means that these state scientists have been WAITING for beaver education hungrily. And with all their resources and brain power at their disposal the state thought “Nyahh, It’s not worth it. Let’s wait for some crazy nonprofit to do it. instead”

Thank goodness we did.

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ANOTHER THING TO BLAME BEAVERS FOR?

heidi08 Beavers February 26, 2021

There’s a new thing to blame beavers for and the medical community is leaping to judgement. The flooding,blocked culverts, chewed trees and beaver fever were getting tired and run of the mill. Something new was needed. How about pneumonia and fungal infections?

Fungal Diseases Unique to Certain Areas of the United States

A father and son go on a Boy Scout trip to North Wisconsin that includes several nights at a camp near the Eagle River. The camp has 40 acres of pine and hemlock forest. The camp sees more than 6,000 visitors annually, who participate in all kinds of outdoor activities, including lectures and ecology projects.

After about six or eight weeks of their stay, the son gets fever, a dry cough, and chest pain. It is found that several of the boy’s friends, who are also scouts, are all ill with similar symptoms. On the other hand, a health officer at the Wisconsin Public Health Department is getting an unusual number of case reports of elementary school students visiting their primary care physicians with fever, severe cough, chest pain, and this diagnosis of “walking pneumonia”. Chest x-rays reveal multiple nodular-appearing spots in the lungs.

Eventually, several children were diagnosed with blastomycosis that is commonly found in the drainage area of the Mississippi River valley.

Okay, so your basic boy scout trip turns bad. How does this relate to beavers? Stay tuned for the money paragraph.

Several scout groups were interviewed to locate the source of the blastomycosis, and it was deduced that the most likely exposure was the beaver pond where the ecology was taught.

The closer the children were to the beaver pond, the more likely they were to catch the illness. The relationship of beavers to an outbreak of blastomycosis had not previously been described. Environmental features, such as the chemistry of the soil, air humidity conditions, and the presence of beaver excrement, likely combined in the right formula to allow blastomycosis to flourish.

Really?

REALLY?

So the ecology lesson was taught near the beaver pond. FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. And the kids had so much fun catching frogs or fishing that they stayed NEAR the beaver pond. FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. And some kid caught something and passed it onto the group.

And you just assume its because its of the beaver droppings and moist pond? I asked our friendly physician Rick Lanman about this and he said that

Well that’s an association but does not prove causality. I generally think of blastomycosis as endemic to the Northeast, histoplasmosis to the Midwest, and coccidio mycosis to the Southwest, including the CA Central Valley. Their theory is beaver excrement is rich in nutrients like bird and bat excrement. I think that’s unlikely since beavers are herbivores.

Now just how rich are beaver droppings you ask? That depends. Would you consider saw dust rich?

PSST…BEAVERS MATTER. PASS IT ON!

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Chewing, Tree-Wrap Rap February 25, 2021

Oh lets read an article about someone who enjoins seeing beavers coming back to their city for a change. Anyone?

Natural Selections: News flash: Beavers in Roxborough!

One of the feel-good stories on the environmental scene is the rewilding of large cities like Philadelphia, where suddenly peregrine falcons nest in church steeples and on Delaware River bridges, bald eagles pull large fish out of the Schuylkill River, and coyotes amble down Domino Lane.

In that vein, members of the Roxborough-Manayunk Conservancy were somewhat startled to discover that the restoration plantings they’ve doggedly placed along the Schuylkill River have been devoured by… beavers! Wait, beavers in Roxborough?

Once extirpated– a fancy word meaning locally extinct – across Pennsylvania, hunted because their fur was remarkably valuable and because we did not appreciate their ability to rearrange landscapes to their own ends. But beavers have been returning to our state over the last century, and have been seen along Tacony and Pennypack Creeks since about 2008. And now they have taken up residence in the Schuylkill River and Manayunk Canal around Flat Rock Dam.

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Beaver perserverance and recovery where nobody would have suspected.And here they are, washing up on the Schuylkill River. Just in case you didn’t know lots of East Coast river names end in ‘kill’ because Kille is middle dutch for river. Got that?

“I first noticed beavers and their lodge in the winter of 2018,” observed Suzanne Hagner, Roxborough resident and member of the Roxborough-Manayunk Conservancy, “as I rode out the Schuylkill River Trail towards Shawmont. I could see where they had worn down a path into the woods on the far side of the trail and I guessed that was where they were going for food.” The lodge was near Flat Rock Dam, and they have been spotted– and photographed – as far down as Lock Street and as far up as past Shawmont Avenue, both in the canal and along the river.

Suzanne has become a regular reader and poster on this very blog. She recently met up with our other PA beaver friend to learn about protecting those trees the group is replanting. Because all roads lead to Rome.

They famously cut down saplings and trees with their chisel-like teeth, building dams and lodges with the branches, chewing the inner bark of trees as their favored food source. That tree-cutting, of course, can sometimes interfere with our own good work.

“Beavers have good taste in trees,” Tom added, tongue in cheek. “They ate over 60 trees we planted along the canal last year. But we adjusted. Last spring, we painted the uneaten trees with latex paint mixed with a lot of sand,” the grit distasteful to the large rodents. “Many of the damaged trees grew out again this summer,” he continued. “We wrapped those trees in cages this fall. We installed 130 cages along the canal near both sides of Fountain Street.”

Yup. That’s what happens. Someone who cares about the trees plants trees and someone who tends the creek eats them. It’s the way of the world.

The Conservancy recently hosted a walk-through of the area with a self-described “beaver believer” they brought in from central PA, and their takeaway was similar. “The other approach which I believe we will have to do,” continued Kay, “is to rethink our plantings. We need to put in more herbaceous plants on the impacted banks and see if we can add things like willows to the upper wetland areas to keep them in that area, which is better suited for them and for us.”

Yes please. Bring in willow. Because they are used to regrowing after beaver nibbles. And have done so for centuries.

Suzanne Hagner has been reading up on beaver, passing books along to Conservancy members. “They are amazingly skilled at creating waterways and irrigation systems that lead to ecological health,” she said. “Our consultant offered that the return of the beavers was a very good sign in our area, as the beaver is an ecological system in itself. I had lived in Washington state, and had heard that beavers were being reintroduced in eastern Washington to help curb the arid areas that are prone to wildfires.”

Anything else you’re reading, ahem, Suzanne? That helps you learn why beavers matter? I’m happy that there are more believers in Mayayunk and am looking forward to the people they persuade and educate in tern.

Pass it on.

NATICK MA IS DECEIVING BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Flow Device Installed February 24, 2021

312 people have signed up for the beaver summit so far. It has made the BWWW newsletter and is going in the Montana Wildlife Federation newsletter soon. I have an interview with Estuary magazine about it tomorrow. That’s kind of amazing. Registrants come from USDA, CDFW, NOAA and FWS. California state parks and National Parks are there. There are even attendees from the out of the country. I’ve been scanning email addresses with very wide eyes. Noticing one registrant from the power company and another from NPR.

Wow. We’re in it now. The conference that started as Stone Soup is going to feed a lot of people.

I can’t even really believe California will get any smarter but it’s about dam time they did, don’t you think? Meanwhile a township in Massachusetts called New Natick is about to get a whole lot smarter as well.

New Natick Group Revamping Town Trails (And Deceiving Beavers)

Over the past few months, the committee has come up with a list of projects to tackle this spring. The group has received funding for new trailhead signs, trail markings and kiosks at trail heads. Interpretive signs will also be installed near Pickerel Pond to describe beaver habitat and a device installed by the town known as a “beaver deceiver” — it keeps water flowing under dams so the critters don’t flood trails.

The committee also plans to launch a trail steward program: a team of volunteers that would identify and help fix problems on local trails, whether it’s a downed tree or a guerilla BMX bike obstacle. Drenick said the committee may begin looking for volunteers as soon as April.

I assume they’re hiring Mike to do this? He’s about an a hour and a half away so its not impossible. I’m glad they have decided to do the right thing and am sure it will reap rewards many times over the cost to install. Good for them and good for those beavers.

Today it has been eight years since my fathers death. My mom is getting her second vaccine shot and I like to think he is making sure she is taken care of once again.