Month: September 2021

MONEY TO MOVE BEAVERS BY

heidi08 Beavers and salmon September 25, 2021

Hey I’ve got an idea! How about we stop spending money to relocate beavers and building our own BDAs to help salmon and just let beavers do it all themselves? You know, HELP SALMON. And maybe use those funds to pay the landowners that are whining about beaver on their property, You know. actually solve problems instead of playing musical chairs with them.

How about that?

Chelan, Douglas counties receive $2 million for salmon restoration

WENATCHEE — Eleven salmon recovery projects across Chelan and Douglas counties have received a combined $2 million in grants from the Washington State Salmon Recovery Funding Board.

The money is a part of $21 million in grant funding the board gave to 105 projects in 29 Washington counties. Okanogan County received the fourth-most funding.

The funded project will repair river habitats, remove barriers blocking salmon and conserve habitat.

In Chelan County, these six projects will receive a total of $813,000:

The purposes of these projects range from creating spawning habitat for steelhead salmon in Peshastin Creek to helping up to 20 landowners relocate 20 to 30 beavers and install up to 100 beaver dam analogs in waterways.err

How about we try my idea first, eh? I’m sure these landowners also drink water and would like their homes not to burn down, right?

EMILY FAIRFAX AND BEAVER FIRESENSE

heidi08 Beavers and Fire Prevention September 24, 2021

A couple of weeks ago Emily Fairfax posted some photos on FB showing her trip to Colorado and saying she had shown a reporter from NPR around the sight of the largest fire which happened to have some amazing beaver habitat that survived. You’ll remember I shared her google map of the visit which is very cool and if you haven’t seen it you still should.

Well that story dropped this morning on the local KUNC station and its definitely worth a listen. After which I am sure you will join me in a hearty chorus of “Go Emily!” as we raise our glasses and click our coffee mugs together.

Enjoy!

Even Colorado’s Largest Wildfire Was No Match For Beavers

Deep in the Cameron Peak burn scar, nestled among charred hills, there’s an oasis of green — an idyllic patch of trickling streams that wind through a lush grass field. Apart from a few scorched branches on the periphery, it’s hard to tell that this particular spot was in the middle of Colorado’s largest-ever wildfire just a year ago.

his wetland was spared thanks to the work of beavers.

The mammals, quite famously, dam up streams to make ponds and a sprawling network of channels. Beavers are clumsy on land, but talented swimmers; so the web of pools and canals lets them find safety anywhere within the meadow.

On a recent visit to that patch of preserved land in Poudre Canyon, ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax emphasized the size of the beavers’ canal network.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even count them,” she said. “It’s a lot. There’s at least 10 ponds up here that are large enough to see in satellite images. And then between all those ponds is just an absolute spiderweb of canals, many of which are too small for me to see until I’m here on the ground.”

Do see the charred brush there? The fire burned right to the waters edge. Everything went in flames. Except what the beaver had made and flooded and maintained. Maybe their lodge even burned. But no matter, they dumped the seared logs and made it anew.

Fairfax researches how beavers re-shape the landscapes where they live. Across the West, she’s seen beaver-created wetlands survive wildfires.

“When you’re at this beaver complex,” she said, “it never stops being green. Everything else in the landscape – the hill slopes on either side, they both charred. They lost all their vegetation during this fire. But this spot, it did not. These plants were here last year and they’re still here today.”

The Cameron Peak Fire left some hints that it had burned nearby, like these blackened branches poking out of an otherwise verdant meadow.

Fairfax stands in the middle of a vibrant meadow, with golden-green grass up to her knees. She points to a row of trees about 100 feet away, where the trunks have clearly been singed, but brown needles still cling to branches – a sign of “moderately intense” burning. Just another 100 feet past that, another row of trees has been scorched completely black and free of needles – a telltale indicator of “high intensity” burning.

Isn’t it amazing to think that Emily was inspired to change direction in her own life and leave engineering to go study beavers after she watched Jari Osbourne’s awesome documentary? Who knows who is right now getting inspired by Emily’s work and going to make the next transformation?

“The beaver complex and the beaver wetland is so much more than the dam,” Fairfax said. “It’s the channels, it’s the digging, it’s the chewing, it’s the constantly changing the landscape, the dynamics, the flexibility.”

Beavers have millions of years of practice repairing dams and shaping rivers, and that makes them capable water managers.

Fairfax did see a beaver complex serve as a fire break one time in Colorado, but she said it’ll take far more research before we can figure out how effective they are when it comes to slowing down wildfires on a large scale. But for now, these areas are surviving as oases of green in big fires all across the West.

I will say Joe Wheaton sounds like a little bit of a killjoy in the quote alex chose to use from him. Lots of little bits of water add up. And he knows that better than anyone.

BEAVERS ARE GOD’S ENGINEERS

Their are very few things that put me in a better mood than a headline and article like this. I’m sure you understand my ebullience. Get ready to feel it too.

‘God’s engineers’: How beavers can repair an ecosystem

Faithful readers know that I have become a beaver believer. For most of the time that the Chesapeake Bay has existed, beavers by the millions inhabited every nook and cranny of the six-state watershed (and most of North America).

By damming, digging and ponding, the rodents controlled the continent’s hydrology and shaped the landscape in ways that delivered profoundly cleaner, clearer water to streams and rivers and estuaries. Their work also created rich habitats for a host of other denizens of the air and swamps.

So the premise of a forthcoming Bay Journal film, Water’s Way: Thinking Like A Watershed, is that more beavers — virtually trapped out by the 1750s — could significantly and cost-effectively boost Bay restoration.

I am starting to think that Chesapeake bay is the Washington State of the East, Beaver Brilliance seems to shine from there and hopefully will beam across the land, The author of this article is Tom Horton who I think attended Beaver Con last year and is a good buddy of one of it’s founders. Beavers are finally getting something to be grateful for.

Still, there is immense potential. Beavers are adapting to even highly developed locales; we have filmed wonderful wetlands complexes they have built behind a Royal Farms in the pavement-clad heart of Baltimore’s White Marsh-Middle River urbanization.

And they are relentless, bundles of instinct and compulsion, constantly expanding their projects up and down every stream, always exploring around the next bend, and the next, and the next (kind of like humans).

So what ecologists term “carrying capacity” — physical habitat — for beavers to return abounds. The real question is “cultural carrying capacity”: the willingness of landowners and governments to accommodate a critter who chews trees and plugs drainageways and floods landscapes for a living.

The Bay Journal film I’m working on with Dave Harp and Sandy Cannon-Brown aims to expand that cultural carrying capacity, to show why we must champion beavers (and emulate them) and to show that there are relatively simple, cheap ways for humans and beavers to coexist. (If you can’t wait for the film, search the web for “Beaver Institute for beaver conflict resolution.”)

Here the author does a very good job of showing how people can have a hard time accepting the saviors on their land. We know that pretty dam well in Martinez, but it’s good to write about it.

Being our salvation doesn’t mean being our buddies.

When beavers move in, their flooding and chewing can initially degrade forests, creating a more open, sunny complex of braided stream channels and weedy vegetation — which to many people looks messy.

More ecologically sophisticated folks than I (The Nature Conservancy) have trapped out beavers that were ruining nesting trees for great blue herons. Post-trapping, the herons moved anyhow, for reasons known only to herons.

The beavers that Ken Staver, an ag research scientist and farmer, initially welcomed on his farm undermined a dirt roadway, causing a hauler to flip over and spill several tons of corn into the water. Ken still likes beavers, but now more guardedly and with some trapping to keep them in check.

Allie Tyler, with a large property near Easton, has made a game of it in retirement, letting his beavers plug a pond outlet every night, then during the day removing it with his backhoe.

GRRRRRRRR. The nature conservancy trapping out beavers because they ruin blue heron nesting sites? Beavers are FAMOUS for making great nesting sites for blue heron. Did they put that on a calendar and send it to your mom? Famous animals we kill to make room for better animals?

There’s a lot of evidence with salmon and beavers in the West that such fears may be largely misplaced, but no such research has been done in the eastern U.S.

On one of our filming sites, Bear Cabin Branch in Harford County, MD, neighbors were horrified at the look of a restored stream where beavers have moved in and prospered. Then their kids began playing in the pond and catching bass, and folks mostly got used to the shaggier look of the beaver landscape.

Similarly, some farmers have become aware of the superb duck hunting where beavers move in, and they see potential for their own acreage for sport and income from waterfowlers.

Sometimes I have been surprised at the tolerance for beavers. I was stopped by a farmer as I snooped around his creek looking for evidence of beavers. He had a bolt action rifle lying on the front seat of his pickup.

When I told him what I was doing, he chuckled, “Oh, yeah, they’re in here. Some people say get rid of ’em, but you’ll never do it … those animals are God’s own engineers.”

Yes they are, I cannot wait to see the film. I’m sure there’s going to be beautiful footage of canoing through beaver swamps. Here’s the last film he made with Dave and Sandy. You can see beavers fit right into the cannon.

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“BEAVERS ARE THE SHIVA OF THE ANIMAL WORLD”

heidi08 Beaver Book September 22, 2021

I was introduced last night by Mike Callahan to author Leila Philip author of “Water Rising” who is publishing a book next year about beavers. So you know I went straight to google and looked her up. I was surprised to see her work had evaded me this long, since I usually hear of all things beavers in most parts of the world.

From The Hill News at St, Lawrence University

The title piece in her recent book, “Water Rising,” inspired Philip’s current project, “Beaverland.” The title piece is about an encounter with a beaver, but also explores the concept of change. “It’s about transformation,” said Philips, “and the beaver is the vehicle for exploring those things.”

Philip fell in love with beavers and possessed a desire to learn more, which soon led to five years of research and the creation of “Beaverland.” “Through destruction beavers create, and that’s a really profound and complicated thought the more you think about it.” The mystery of the beaver had to be engaged before researching the facts, she further explained.

For those of you following along at home, you may be amused to learn that “Beaverland” was the working title of Ben Goldfarb’s book before his editors had their way with it and launched EAGER. Her writing sounds like this is more about the symbol of beavers than the beavers themselves, but I am all for talking about all their meanings.

In addition to its metaphorical use, Philip also utilizes the beaver to trace the historical nature of American imperialism. The fur trade founded the first American economy and, according to Philip, the beaver also offers a story for the ways in which humans can alter their exploitative relationship to nature. “I had never thought about it as a lens through which to look at American history,” she said. “But in storytelling you’re often looking for a lens or a way into a more complicated story.”

For Philip, asking questions is an important aspect of the writing process. “It’s about asking questions, and just pushing at the paradoxes and contradictions of what it means to be human,” she said. And what started as a poem in “Water Rising,” soon led to five years of extensive research. Philip delved into documentation of the fur trade, and in addition, immersed herself in all things beavers by going out in the field with trappers, wildlife biologists, environmental vigilantes and Native American Environmentalists.

Hmm she’s been working on this book for five years and this is the first I’m hearing of her? That is actually surprising since Worth A Dam pops up in mostly any google search about beavers. Maybe it’s an east coast thing. Or a literary thing, Maybe I’ve lost my touch.

She discovered that environmental projects in western parts of the US, and somewhat in eastern regions, are focused on returning beavers to their habitats. So she “began to think this was also a really interesting way to think about environmentalism, climate change and the environmental challenges we face today.”

“Beaverland” is currently in the writing stage and will consist of 14 chapters. Philip has completed four and chose to share a chapter with the St. Lawrence community. “It’s an exciting stage to read from,” she stated.

Beaverland will be coming to you next year. Let’s hope 2022 is a transformational year for us all.

EVEN WASHINGTON ISN’T BEAVERY ENOUGH

heidi08 Beavers September 21, 2021

You’d think the king of all the states for beaver management would be puffed out and proud of itself and resting on its laurels, But you’d be wrong. Even in Washington friends are still working hard to do this better, It’s a journey.

Beaver Believers Say Rochester Property Paragon of Human-Beaver Coexistence

Beavers Get a Bad Rap: Why the Large Rodents Are Critical to the Chehalis Watershed

A representative from Ducks Unlimited walk along a waterway running through a Rochester property.

The first breath of fall arrived Friday, and with it J.B. McCrummen’s Rochester property came alive.

Over a dozen raincoat-clad heads, a northern flicker let out a call, flashing its spotted belly against the foggy sky. Banana slugs made their way across the now-fragrant soil, and chunky black beetles descended from the trees.

But less visible to Friday’s hikers was what they considered the land’s keystone species — the one responsible for the ever-changing wetlands, the ponds, the visiting ducks and otters and the lush foliage: the North American beaver.

Of the 10 years McCrummen’s son, Chris, has been visiting his dad’s property — which has undergone over a decade of conservation efforts — he hasn’t seen a single beaver. Neighboring property owner Elvin Borg has, but it certainly took some work to spy on the rodents, who navigate underwater for as long as 15 minutes, aided by transparent eyelids and webbed feet.

“I used to sit and hide, and just wait for them to come out toward the evening,” Borg said.

He recalls moving onto the land about a decade ago and telling his sister about the resident beavers.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied, according to Borg.

The remark confused him. But it reflects the common and persistent distaste for the animals nationwide.

Not only is this article going to talk about how GOOD beavers are it’s going to talk intelligently about how badly people understand them; I can NOT wait! Proceed, governor.

J.B. McCrummen, a land owner, talks about a path he created to mitigate damage to the creek below in Rochester.

In 2017, trappers in Washington state alone killed at least 1,700 beavers deemed a nuisance — that’s 20 times more than were relocated alive, according to the Chehalis Lead Entity, which implements salmon recovery projects in the watershed.

But the “ecosystem engineers” are critical. And McCrummen’s property, including the 2-mile Beaver Creek, can be an example of landowners co-existing with beavers, ultimately helping the Chehalis Watershed.

Beavers’ structures create homes for muskrats, mink, otters and small fish and birds. And the wetlands they create are optimal habitats for young salmon.

In the face of climate change and increasing wildfire, those wetlands also act as natural fire breaks, recharging groundwater and raising the water table, ultimately making the land more fire-resistant.

And as major floods are projected to get more frequent and severe, beaver-engineered habitats can slow down water as it moves through the system, reducing erosion and overall impacts to humans.

“We spend tens of millions of dollars getting ecosystems to work, but these guys are like round-the-clock workers,” Lisa McCrummen said. “At the end of the day, beavers create and support wetland and riparian health. So ultimately, you create this ecosystem that’s just much more healthy and allows for a lot more creatures to come and survive.”

Following Lisa McCrummen’s Friday tour were landowners, a watershed coordinator and representatives from Ducks Unlimited and Beavers Northwest. What did the group have in common? If you ask Lisa McCrummen, they’re all “beaver believers” — those who know the power and importance of the species.

I know the power too! Count us as believers!

Elyssa Kerr, with Beavers Northwest, holds up a stick with the bark chewed off near a beaver dam location in Rochester.

Elyssa Kerr, executive director of Beavers Northwest, climbed out near one of them, picking up what she deemed a “very nice beaver stick” — a foot-long branch with teeth marks on either side, the tasty bark thoroughly chewed off.

Kerr has a collection of “beaver sticks,” taking the prizes home or shipping out mailbox-sized finds to beaver enthusiasts.

Much of her job revolves around beaver-human conflict mediation, helping frustrated landowners understand how to co-exist.

“I do sometimes feel like I’m a beaver therapist,” Kerr joked.

For landowners, there are real solutions when beavers are causing legitimate problems. Pond levelers, for example, sometimes called “beaver deceivers,” allow water to flow through dams.

Humans can also protect certain beloved trees from sharp teeth by painting trunks with a combination of sand and paint to deter gnawing. It’s also helpful to plant resprouting trees, like vine maples or willows, which can bounce back after being chewed down.

“God, what would happen if you harnessed the power of beavers? Right?” Lisa McCrummen said. “But you have to have examples for people to test out.”

Ahhh now that’s my kind of article. Apparently beavers of the south bay were on the news last night. Just right for Heidi’s bday. Which was lovely, just in case you were wondering,