Month: September 2021

SPEAKING UP FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers September 20, 2021

And a very happy birthday to you too. I woke up with a cgi cancellation to this site for some god known reason and they wanted 500 dollars to bring it back. For the record my site renews in NOVEMBER so I have zero idea what this was all about. I will spend the day in bluehost purgatory trying to find out. But let’s distract ourselves with a nice letter, shall we?

Letter: Time to enlist the beavers’ help

[A prior letter recommended solutions to save our salmon population] Another helpful solution is to encourage the repopulation of our public-land watersheds by beaver — and it wouldn’t need any federal appropriations. It would cost nothing.

Halting commercial and recreational beaver hunting and trapping on federal public lands would free these industrious hydraulic engineers to increase their numbers and reoccupy former habitat throughout vital watersheds, thus cooling water, reducing sediment, alleviating rapid runoff, storing water and raising water levels, and providing shelter and refuges for immature salmon, steelhead and other aquatic species. The positive changes in riparian habitats would increase biodiversity and the food base for birds, fish and other wildlife and would be fire resistant.

And all these benefits would come at no cost to the taxpayer.

It’s obvious the climate changes in the West are dire. It’s time to wise up and take drastic action — or else.

Wally Sykes, Joseph OR

Well done Wally! Of course you are absolutely right. And we need beavers to do all the things we can’t afford to do. Here’s another letter from Illinois that strikes the right chord also,

Letter to the Editor | Was killing beavers necessary?

Was killing beavers necessary?

Living in Ironwood since 2009, I have enjoyed regular walks around the two drainage ponds that lie south of the Copper Slough and just north of Windsor Road, east of the dog park. About six years ago, I saw the construction of a large beaver lodge on the east pond. Over the years, I have enjoyed walking about the ponds looking for the beavers, seeing up to three or four at a time.

Then I spoke to a neighbor who had witnessed the trapping and killing of the beavers by trappers who explained that someone had complained about the risk of tree damage. Lawyer friends tell me Illinois law allows only killing of trapped wild animals rather than relocation.

Now that the beavers are gone, the lake will fill up with water lilies and the beaver lodge perch used by great blue herons will gradually disappear. I may never again enjoy this viewing of wild natural life. Is it always necessary for us to prioritize our human “welfare” over wildlife?

CURTIS KROCK

So well said, Curtis. No it isn’t a matter of putting humans over beavers. Or beavers over humans for that matter, BOTH can survive if a little long term planning will let both survive quite nicely.

DO BEAVERS RESENT US?

The late summer rabid beaver story. We get them every year, and it’s truly impossible to know whether they arise from a truly rabid beaver OR a beaver protecting it’s young that are born in the summer, Surely we never ever hear about rabid beavers in the winter or spring. But then no one usually wants to swim then either.

Lucky to be alive: 73-year-old Greenfield man mauled by beaver

GREENFIELD — A 73-year-old Greenfield man is recovering from injuries suffered when his leisurely swim in a remote Franklin County pond turned into a life-or-death fight with an enraged, and likely rabid, beaver.

Mark “Pres” Pieraccini suffered extensive injuries in the Sept. 6 attack, and came close to drowning. He had multiple puncture wounds, flesh torn from an arm and a leg, scratches and lacerations over his body and scalp, and a torn tendon on one of his fingers. He also has a fractured knuckle on one hand, mostly likely from punching the beaver as it repeatedly attacked him.

He is also undergoing treatment for rabies.

In an interview with The Republican, Pieraccini said fighting a prolonged battle with an enraged 50-pound wild animal while trying to stay afloat left him exhausted. While the fight continued in the deep water — he estimated it lasted five minutes — it occurred to him that he was in deep trouble.

They man doesn’t want to say which beaver pond because he likes beavers and doesn’t want Mass Wildlife to kill them. So he’s clearly not a threat. But I myself spent 10 years of lazy mornings and evenings in very close quarters with beavers and their young and never felt in the least in danger.

Still when you think of what a tree looks like after beavers chew on it his leg doesn’t look that bad.

He said the doctors and nurses at the emergency room didn’t really grasp what he was saying when he told them he had been attack by a beaver. And then he took off his clothes to reveal the full extent of his injuries.

“No one had any clue what I was dealing with until I took my clothes off,” he said.”

Based on his research, Woodard said there have been just 11 attacks by beavers on people in North America over the last 10 years. In comparison, there have been 445 shark attacks, seven of them fatal, in the U.S. over the same period.

Most of those 11 beaver attacks involved beavers that were rabid. Woodard said he has no doubts, based on Pieraccini’s description and on the extent of his injuries, that his beaver was also rabid. The beaver has not been recovered, so there is no way to verify it.

The sad thing for the beaver of course is that every beaver in it’s family will soon be rabid too. Unless a rabid beaver is too crazed to swim home in the morning. In which case one or two might escape.

There’s more this morning, from Canada,

Not-so-docile animals: Angry beavers

Having lived an outdoor lifestyle for most of my life, I have come across a wide assortment of animals in distress. I once saved a baby pronghorn that misjudged the height of a barbwire fence, and a similar situation with a doe mule deer that had both hind legs tangles in the wire.

Lately, I have been seeing some very disturbing reports about beavers. My relationship with the beaver goes way back to my childhood and ranch days with my grandparents.

We had several creeks that flowed through our little ground. The water was very important to us, but for different reasons. My grandfather wanted the water to flow, free of obstructions, and irrigate his hay fields, so he could make money to keep us in daily gruel. I wanted the creeks for fishing.

The beavers dammed up the creeks, making wonderful ponds that held many trout. I would wade these ponds amongst the many beavers, and they basically ignored me. They never attacked me or threatened me for that matter. We maintained a very equitable relationship. They made ponds for me to fish in, and I kept the information from my grandfather, lest he blow the ponds, much to the dismay of the beavers and me.

So far so good, Some fond memories of swimming with beavers on the farm and fishing in their ponds. We like this story so far,

Science tells us that beavers can be very aggressive when defending their territory against interlopers. They might also attack humans when infected with rabies, although it is rare for a beaver to become rabid. There is also some thinking that beavers can become disoriented during the daylight hours and attack out of fear.

I have never found a beaver to be aggressive. I have walked up next to them, fished alongside of them, and watched them work on a pond for hours, never having one display any type of aggressiveness towards me. Perhaps that is about to change.

A 60-year-old fisherman in Belarus (a landlocked country in Europe) died when he was attacked by a beaver. The beaver tore open an artery and the man bled to death.

The media described the incident as “the latest in a series of beaver attacks on humans in the country.” Authorities claim the beaver was rabid, while others stated the man grabbed the beaver in an attempt to take a picture with it, hence the marshmallow and bison outcome.

Here the author does a fair job of walking through the famous beaver stories in the past few years, all cases of rabies or very very poor judgement. Or both.

Then he says something I truly enjoyed, Make sure you read this closely.

I am not sure if the beavers are seeking reparations for the years of trapping, they endured or if they hate kayaks. In either event, I am going to start keeping a closer eye on them when I am fishing a beaver pond. They may still be angry about the way my grandfather used to blow their ponds with dynamite.

Yes, Yes they are, I am too. Watch yourself around us buddy.

STARTING FIRES AND DROPPING FROM THE SKY: BEAVERS?

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Chewing, Beaver ecological impact September 18, 2021

I’ve been on the beaver beat so long I already have the perfect graphics for these reports. I guess there really IS nothing new under the sun.

Busy beaver believed to be behind brief blaze by Benson Lake

Corbett firefighters were surprised Thursday night to find the arsonist behind a small blaze near Multnomah Falls: a beaver. A camp host at Wahkeena Falls Park near the Historic Columbia River Highway called the fire department around 10 p.m. to report a fire near Benson Lake, a half-mile west of Multnomah Falls. The fire was less than two acres.

Firefighters quickly put out the flames and determined “early on” that the fire began when a tree knocked down a power line. Firefighters were mopping up the fire when they found the tree had been chewed up. The suspect beaver was nowhere to be found at the scene, said Rick Wunsch, assistant Corbett fire chief.

“He must have got out of there real quick,” Wunsch said Friday.

Isn’t that just like a beaver to EAT and RUN.

Could you maybe dedicate an inch of this column to ALL the fires the beaver has averted by making the terrain lush and green and maintaining water for the area with his dams? Of course not. There’s never time for that. There’s only time for another round of “blame the rodent”, we never get tired of that.

It’s not like the media never says nice things about beavers though. Every few years they go out of their way to remember when we threw them out of airplanes in Idaho. Oh look, now it’s in National Geographic.

Why beavers were parachuted into the Idaho wilderness 73 years ago

The Fish and Game Department recognized the animals’ value as important ecosystem engineers. Beavers establish and maintain wetlands, improve water quality, reduce erosion, and create habitat for game, fish, waterfowl, and plants. They also help stabilize the water supply for humans. Rather than exterminate them, the department decided to move them—all 76 of them.

To relocate beavers, trappers would capture them, load them into a truck, and deliver them to a conservation officer. After an overnight stay, the animals would be loaded onto another truck, then hauled to the end of the road nearest the site selected for translocation. Next, the boxed-up beavers would be strapped onto horses or mules for the last leg of their journey.

Intolerant of the sun’s heat, the beavers needed to be constantly cooled and watered; they were often so stressed they refused to eat. “Older individuals often become dangerously belligerent,” Heter noted in his article. “Rough trips on pack animals are very hard on them. Horses and mules become spooky and quarrelsome when loaded with a struggling,

Yayaya, We know the story. Why is it no one wants to write nice things about beavers unless they get to throw them out of an airplane first? Lucy Sherriff is the author of this article and she is wayyy to beaver informed to waste on a beaver hurling snack. I wrote and told her so and she was as fond of my thoughts as you might imagine.

Idaho’s Department of Fish and Game considered the beaver project a success. Each drop cost taxpayers just seven dollars per beaver, and backpackers, ranchers, and forest rangers returned most of the parachutes for reuse. Within months of their arrival, the beavers were completing dams and on track to establish colonies.

Asked if the project would ever be repeated, Roger Phillips, a department spokesperson, says it could but likely wouldn’t: “We still use aircraft extensively in the backcountry, but helicopters are [now] the preferred aircraft for this type of work and would not require parachuting.”

There are also new ways to prevent beaver dams from causing floods, PETA’s Bell says, so that the animals wouldn’t need to be relocated as often in the first place. “Today, efforts to control beaver populations include flood-preventing pipe devices called ‘beaver bafflers’ that allow water to flow and beavers to call a body of water their home,” she says. “We’ve come some way since the 1940s.”

You can build a lot of flow devices for 7000 dollars a beaver. Sheesh. And why on earth would you mask PETA??? Why not the beaver institute?

Lucy kindly informed me it wasn’t up to her.

The nice thing about running this story yet again is that it gives me a full blown excuse to post this once more.

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BEAVER REGISTRATION SEASON

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Beaver ecological impact September 17, 2021

It’s registration season! That special time of year when a believers young heart burns for inspiration and guidance. First things first the Colorado Beaver Summit is just a month away and accepting registrations now for the virtual event. Yours truly will be one of the state roundup presenters for an overview of what’s happening in the western states before a deep dive into Colorado. Register here:

8:40 a.m. – KEYNOTE SESSION – Western States Beaver Regulations and Challenges
Moderator – Jackie Corday, Corday Natural Resources Consulting
Speakers from 8 Western states will briefly address their state regulations for beaver hunting, nuisance situations, and relocation in addition to the biggest challenges they are working to address along with recent success stories. Utah State University Professor Joe Wheaton, who has worked in almost all Western states, will provide a brief overview of progress being made and the biggest challenges to restoring beaver to watersheds.

Emily will be next up and then a speaker about beavers on ranching land. The whole thing is coming together nicely and you should check it out.

And if you’re hungry for some IN PERSON beavering you’re in luck, because registration just opened for Beaver Con 2. If you’re looking to save some cash early registration starts today.

I’m stunned they’re taking this on again already, because I thought the idea was for it to be every other year the opposite of the state of the beaver but I guess since they lead the charmed life of starting the week before covid hit they are counting on continued good luck in 2022.

And just to keep the good will momentum i offer this news clip from last night. Nearly three years ago I got an email from Roy Chaney who was then parks superintendent and is now the deputy city administrator. He was worried about some beavers on their land and wanted to coexist. I gave what guidance I could and hooked him up with some resources in his area. One of his charming qualities is that he always referred to the beavers as one beaver named “Manny”.

Ahem. Just so you know that little muskrat ain’t manny.

DEREK GOW IN THE NEW YORKER!

heidi08 In the News September 16, 2021

There are a few magazines that fall into my catagory of lofty rags that I would read regularly if I were smarter and had more time. They are the ones I had delivered to the office to increase the odds of my actually getting smarter and using my lunch hour to do so. The most holy of those is the New York where I usually managed to keep up with only the humor and the poem. But I still revere it, Like a kind of lost temple that you never get enough time to explore.

Imagine my surprise this morning then to see this.

An Ark for Vanished Wildlife

Derek Gow’s maverick efforts to breed and reintroduce rare animals to Britain’s countryside.

Derek Gow decided to abandon conventional farming about ten years ago, not long after the curlews left. At the time, Gow, who is thickset and white of beard, had a flock of fifteen hundred breeding ewes and a hundred and twenty cows, which he kept on a three-hundred-acre farm of heavy clay close to the border between Devon and Cornwall, in southwest England. He was renting an extra field from a neighbor, and a pair of curlews had come to forage for a few days. A farm worker spotted the distinctive brown birds; they have long beaks that slope downward, like violin bows. “He didn’t even recognize what they were,” Gow told me.

In its way, what Gow is doing is similar to other “rewilding” projects across Britain—a term that has become faddish and covers everything from letting a few fields go to seed, for tourist purposes, to major conservation projects, such as breaching a seawall along the Lancashire coast to restore salt marsh that had been claimed for agriculture. But what is different about Gow’s farm is that he wants it to be a breeding colony, a seedbed for a denuded island. “The outreach, if we can get this right, is going to be much bigger,” he told me. Gow is a disciple of Gerald Durrell, the writer and conservationist. In 1990, when Gow was working at a country park in Scotland, he attended a summer school at Durrell’s zoo, on the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, about the captive breeding of endangered species. In the book “The Stationary Ark,” which Durrell wrote in 1976, he argued for the creation of small, specialized zoos dedicated to propagating “low-ebb species” that were vulnerable in the wild. Such “zoo banks” would be motivated by saving animal populations rather than attracting human visitors. “The whole organization would act not only as a sanctuary, but as a research station and, most important, as a training ground,” Durrell wrote.

Derek Gow sports his new Worth A Dam tshirt

Derek fucking Gow in the New Yorker! I am still blinking to think that this is someone I met, know and has our tshirt! Of course I met him in Canyonville at the State of the beaver Conference some years back. And he has been plugging away ever since at his goals and published a very well regarded book to boot.

You won’t be a bit surprised that this is my favorite paragraph,

Gow’s triumph has been the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver. He parked his car by a reed-lined pond, near the base of a small valley. A family of four beavers lives in this part of his farm (three or four families and around a dozen penned beavers live on Gow’s land over all) and they had blocked a stream and rerouted the flow of water around an old levee and flood defenses, to Gow’s obvious satisfaction. “Every single one of these medieval gutters is blocked, many, many times over,” he said. British place names are strewn with beavers: Beverston, Beaverdyke, Bevercotes, Beverbrook. John Bradshaw, the judge who presided over the trial and execution of King Charles I, in January, 1649, wore a bulletproof beaver-skin hat. But the animals were killed off by the early nineteenth century. One of the last records of their existence is a bounty of two pence paid for a beaver head in Bolton Percy, near York, in 1789.

Never let it be said that saving beavers won’t take you places, It got within spitting distance of national geographic, (Ben Goldfarb AND Emily Fairfax) the atlantic (a short beaver mention that described us as the ‘delightful couple; in 2012) and now Derek Gow in the fucking New Yorker. Because life is like that sometimes.

There are now around eight known populations of wild beavers in England. Their return delights Gow and unnerves him, too. He is sometimes known as “Beaver Man,” and landowners often call him to see if he can obtain animals for them. Gow’s farm has a quarantine facility, for imported beavers, and he has the capacity to distribute around fifty animals per year. (I watched a beaver, known as Brian, while away a few minutes of his six-month quarantine by chewing on some willow and flopping about in a steel bath.) But there is a growing resistance to their reintroduction and signs of political unease. In Scotland, farmers have been granted licenses to cull beavers that they deem a nuisance on their land. Last year, a hundred and fifteen animals—slightly more than ten per cent of the Scottish beaver population—were killed. Ill-founded rumors of the damage that beavers can cause (such as eating fish; they are herbivores) are widespread. The perfect circle of death remains. Gow senses a conflict looming in England, as well. Last month, the government proposed a “cautious approach” to reintroducing beavers, which would depend on the support of local farmers, landowners, and river users. “I think we have a bigger fight in our hands than we ever imagined possible,” Gow said. “And I don’t think any of us that began this journey—to get the animals, to bring them back to release—at least some, ever thought it would come to this. But I think that’s going to be elemental. And I think it’s going to be really brutal.”

Well I can’t say I disagree. But I would clarify that whether beavers have been gone from the landscape for 500 years or 5 minutes it’s still really hard to manage public attitudes and fears about them to let them come back,

Trust me.

Leave It to Beavers

Can they help us adapt to climate change?

By David Ferry

To see a beaver today, I drove some 30 miles from Oakland, where I live, to suburban Martinez, California, where a beaver family has moved into the creek that cuts through town. There, a delightful beaver-believer couple showed me around the colony, pointing out the subtleties of beaver construction and anatomy, as a pair of yearlings swam below us.

Ya ya ya Always a bridesmaid but never a bride.