Month: February 2021

BEAVER STATE BEAVERS

In the past few days we’ve seen some good beaver support from the beaver state. Their decision to UNprotect beavers on public lands really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And I’m glad to see the protest.

Readers respond: Provide protections for beavers

Devastating wildfires are becoming more frequent, and there is something our Legislature can do at little or no cost. Beavers are not protected on private land by state law because they’re considered predatory animals. Beavers create wetlands, store groundwater, provide salmon habitat and build effective firebreaks. By passing House Bill 2844, the Legislature can give the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife the tools to manage beavers more effectively. Beavers need us and we need beavers.

Melinda McCoy, Portland

Nicely said Melissa! You will want to bring all your friends and nonbelievers to the High Desert Museum down South in Bend where they are having an excellent exhibit.

How did I know about this ahead of time? Because Louise Shirley contacted me about using some of Cheryl’s photos and our ecosystem poster in the exhibit. That’s how!

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High Desert Museum to reopen interior exhibits, with timed tickets

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — With Deschutes County moving into the High Risk category for COVID-19 precautions, the High Desert Museum will welcome visitors into its indoor exhibits starting on Friday.

Timed tickets are highly encouraged, as capacity is limited. Tickets may be reserved at highdesertmuseum.org/tickets.

The Museum’s outdoor exhibitions reopened after a statewide freeze on activities in early December. The change means the public will get its first chance to view the new, original Museum exhibition Dam It! Beavers and Us, which had been slated to open January 30.

The High Desert Museum in Bend Oregon was my father’s favorite. I fondly remember him talking about the exhibits, and especially being moved by the young porcupine in the outside habitat. My Dad had been in every state and 65 countries so he’d seen plenty of museums. And this one impressed him. It makes me proud to think that our images are part of an exhibit in his favorite museum.

An estimated 60 million to 400 million beavers once lived in North America, fulfilling a vital ecological role by creating valuable wetlands and ponds. The dams built by these “ecosystem engineers” slow streamflow, raise the water table and reduce downstream flooding and erosion. Plants and sediment in a beaver pond improve water quality.

Beavers help birds, fish and other wildlife and native plants to thrive. Their habitats serve as emerald refuges during wildfire and also store carbon. Aside from humans, no other animal exerts such a far-reaching impact on the landscape.

Humans and beavers have lived side by side for thousands of years. This exhibition examines our coexistence with this herbivorous rodent throughout history.

Now that’s a great topic for an exhibit. How do we get every city to host an exhibit like that?

Central Oregon residents and visitors will find the presence of the exhibit throughout the community. Four beaver sculptures, each 4 1/2-feet tall, have been transformed by High Desert artists and placed in community spaces around the region. Participants in the project are artist and educator Andries Fourie, mixed-media artist Sweet Pea Cole, Indigenous artist Ellen Taylor and artist and ceramicist Jess Volk.

Dam It! Beavers and Us features immersive scenes to delight all ages, inspiring new appreciation for this resourceful animal. Grownups and kids alike can marvel at how beavers were once parachuted from the sky in wooden crates in an attempt to relocate them in an Idaho wilderness. They will also be able to view a riparian scene, experiencing how a beaver colony can transform the landscape.

“This exhibit tells an inspiring story of turning around our relationship with the beaver,” said Louise Shirley, High Desert Museum Donald M. Kerr curator of natural history and curator of Dam It! Beavers and Us. “It explores the surprising power of the humble beaver to help us combat some of the impacts of climate change, such as drought, wildfires and biodiversity loss.”

Now why doesn’t this article have a photo of the exhibit or the artwork? I’m dying to see the four foot high sculptures! I will look around the internet and hope someone shared an image. And in the meantime, this is for my Dad.

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CONSERVATIONISTS WHO MATE?

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers, Beavers and Flooding February 12, 2021

Yesterday I did a practice run through of my Oakmont Symposium presentation Sunday. I learned that the organizers Gabriel Campbell and Judie Coleman are both powerhouses and Bob Boucher’s talk about flooding in Milwaukee is going to knock your socks off. I had to laugh initially when I saw that the website had accidentally shortened the title of the talk to “Spend valentine’s day with the conservationists who mate”. HAHA. As in we are the only ones who get to, Other conservationists can only dream about mating. Smile. I was also encouraged to share the link to the talk with friends and family so consider yourselves all invited. Click on the image to go to the talk at 10:30 Valentine’s morning. And if you’re busy sipping champagne and oysters with your beloved that morning I’m told that it will be recorded and made available for viewing later.

This morning we get treated to an excellent letter from Renee Espenel from Portland. It is lovingly tited

Letter: Beavers are essential

I am writing today to thank state Rep. Pam Marsh and Rep. Rob Nosse, and state Sen. Chris Gorsek, for representing the Beaver State and sponsoring House Bill 2844, which would remove the predatory animal designation from beavers in Oregon.

HB 2844 would allow ODFW to issue permits, regulate management and give the state an opportunity to collect valuable data on beaver populations and their impact on a healthy environment and ecosystem.

Beavers are essential in creating wetlands and habitat for salmon, and we are just now realizing their potential effect in improving fire resiliency, capturing carbon and improving the quality of our drinking water.

Can I get an Amen? Well said Renee! We are happy that lots of Oregonians are noticing that beavers matter to more than trapping interests.

Changing how we manage this species, would benefit Oregonians and ensure a sustainable and healthy ecosystem for generations to come. Please reach out to your legislatures and ask that they support HB 2844.

Just remember. We’re not Gods. We don’t need to change everyone’s mind. Just the minds of the people that drink water and don’t want their homes to burn,

That should do it.

THIS JUST IN: RESEARCH CONFIRMS WHAT YOU ALREADY KNEW

heidi08 Beaver Behavior February 11, 2021

More research from the beaver-eating National Park. Apparently they just can’t get enough information about how wolves stalk and hunt beavers. It’s soooooooooooooooo fascinating. Recently they were started lo find out what any single human who has watched beavers in person for more than three nights figured out all on their ownsome.

Beavers can’t see very well! They mostly spot you by scent and hearing! Wow that’s surprising to everyone that isn’t us!

First Proper Analysis Of Wolf Ambush Behavior Reveals Beavers Are Really Quite Blind

New research published in the journal Behavioral Ecology has carried out the first-ever systematic analysis of wolf ambushing behavior, and the results have revealed new insights into these intelligent predators and the total lack of hazard perception skills among beavers. As part of a growing body of work from the Voyageurs Wolf Project, this new study continues to overturn long-held ideas as to how wolves hunt, showing that they’ve got more tricks in their arsenal than simply outrunning and exhausting their prey.

While pack hunting for large animals like moose and bison is common in winter, wolves in the dense boreal forests in North America and Eurasia capitalize on food availability in summer by hunting beavers on their own. As the video below demonstrates, beavers don’t have the best eyesight when it comes to spotting wolves-in-waiting, but an animal that spends so little time on land is still not an easy kill. So, how do the wolves do it?

Gee don’t tell me. Do wait up wind and get really really quiet? Even children visiting the beaver pond figured that one out.

Over 15,000 hours of field research and 962 attempted predation events later, the team had their answer. Of the total number of successful beaver hunts (214), 89-94 percent of the ambushing sites were downwind meaning the beavers had a very slim chance of picking up the wolf’s scent. What beavers lack in vision they make up for with their noses and ears, and previous studies have shown they use scent to keep a (figurative) eye out for predators. While most of the observations didn’t put beavers on the menu, this isn’t to say that most wolves were terrible at hunting them.

“We suspect that at most of these ambushing attempts, wolves never even encountered a beaver,” said lead author on the paper Dr Thomas Gable in an email to IFLScience. “Predicting where beavers will be on land at any given time is challenging and we suspect that wolves often waited in areas and never had a beaver come near.”

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Well now that’s a kind of sweet video actually, I suspect the reason they didn’t leave the ‘decoy wolves’ out longer was that beavers would have hauled them away and used them it to stuff a hole in their dam.

“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

Hamlet

When hunting beavers, it seems that the wolves appreciated that patience is a virtue as many would lay in wait for anywhere from four to 12 hours for a beaver to appear, with one determined wolf waiting for an incredible 30 hours. But when it comes to this particular breed of prey, success isn’t as simple as the element of surprise.

“While beavers might seem like easy prey to catch and kill, that is far from the truth,” Gable said. “Killing a beaver once it is on land is no easy feat. Beavers are basically football-shaped hunks of muscle with an incredibly powerful bite and sharp teeth. Not to mention, beavers rarely go far from water. All beavers need to do to evade a wolf is reach the water.” This, Gable explained, is a likely second contributor to the large number of failed ambush attempts.

Yeah well, you don’t bring down a TREE with a week jaw. Sheesh.

THE CALIFORNIA BEAVER SUMMIT

heidi08 Beavers February 10, 2021

Climate change is making California hotter, drier, and harder for people and wildlife.

Beaver can help.

Please join us on April 7 (International Beaver Day) and April 9 for the California Beaver Summit. During two online half-day sessions the summit will explore the many benefits that beavers offer to the ecosystems they occupy.

IT’S ALL FOR THE BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Book February 10, 2021

Now this is a sweet read. I don’t know what the term is for eye candy that you read, but this is pretty darned close. I guess if you’re going to be famous for doing something, writing about beavers isn’t too shabby. Just look at what it’s brought Mr. Goldfarb.

How local environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb turned his love of beavers into a surprisingly successful book

Even before Goldfarb moved to Spokane, accompanying his wife when she took a nurse-midwife job shortly before his book was released, he was a fan of the bucktoothed creature.

“I was fishing in upstate New York,” he recalls, “and had one swim between my legs.” At first, it was startling. But then the sense of wonder hit. “It was spectacular,” he says, “watching this animal glide past you in this beautiful, translucent water.”

Still, Spokane, he says, is a near-perfect location for a journalist on the nature beat.

And there are, of course, plenty of beavers. They chomp at trees at the city’s central Riverfront Park, diving into the Spokane River into the lodge next to the DoubleTree Hotel. One waddles up to the Auntie’s Bookstore downtown, practically serving as a living advertisement for the Goldfarb books inside. Goldfarb recalls watching a couple lounging on the beach at Bowl and Pitcher campground of Riverside State Park when a beaver suddenly hauled itself out of the water and plopped itself down about 15 feet away from them.

Oh Ben! We are so happy that you set your eye on beavers. I mean you might have been writing about bugs or coyotes and this is SO much better.

Writing for High Country News in Seattle in 2015, Goldfarb found himself at a beaver restoration workshop, full of biologists, activists and tribal members who thought the animal was just as incredible as he did. His articles showcasing his “proud love of the beaver” caught the eye of some folks at Chelsea Green Publishing, who pitched him on the idea of writing a book about beavers.

“They basically said ‘Beavers: Go,'” Goldfarb says. “‘Whatever you want to write about beavers, knock yourself out.'”

What a dream job! If I weren’t such a big fan I might be jealous!

In fact, Goldfarb says, he’d raised the exact same objection while on his book tour in Britain. And, in a quintessentially British development, that comment got transformed into a culture-war story in the Daily Mail, the right-wing British tabloid. Their lengthy and sensationalized headline proclaimed: “Environmentalist blasts Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis for ‘mis-educating’ the public with Mr and Mrs Beaver’s fish suppers because the animals actually only eat plants.”

And yet, that trip also gave him one of his favorite experiences, when he gathered with a bunch of beaver fans in the Cornwall region of England to witness a sighting of the once nearly extinct European beaver.

“It was twilight. And we’re all sitting around being silent … And then the beavers emerged and were gliding across this pond,” Goldfarb says. “It was incredible. People had tears in their eyes. Here was this part of their biological heritage that had been absent for so long and is now finally back.”

You can get so familiar with an animal, that, at times you lose sight of their majesty. But a moment like that brings it all back.

“They’re these enormous rodents with these bizarre paddle tails that, you know, cut down trees and build walls out of them,” Goldfarb says. “For them, it was like seeing the Loch Ness Monster.”

This is how I felt every fucking time I saw a beaver, And I live in California.