RAIN AND REFLECTIONS

heidi08 Beavers September 10, 2021

Thunder this morning. Did you year it? And a brief smattering of rain. Lets hope the lighting doesn’t start California’s next wave of fires, but it is wonderful to briefly smell the freshness. Auspicious because today is Friday the week-iversary. And time to reflect, which always works better with rain.

On November 18th about a million years ago I posted that Kenzie had come into our lives. I said

“Did you ever have one of these? I believe they are also called “time-eaters”, “furniture destroyers”and “finger-biters”. They have all the charm of a new born baby with agile long legs and very sharp teeth. We are in the early stages of acceptance a la Kubler-Ross. First there’s denial that your life has forever changed and nothing will be the same again. I briefly touched the Anger stage this morning when my foot stepped in something unmentionable on the carpet.”

Well a million years goes by faster than it used to and last friday morning Kenzie went on ahead without us. She was lying on her peacefully bed in the living room surrounded by her people who were stroking and praising her and it was mercifully without pain, but somehow still hurt us terribly.

There are now too many spaces in our homes without her now. We are surrounded by her absence.

Separation

By W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

FIREPROOF

Looks like Dr, Emily Fairfax had a wonderful summer vacation. She just posted this:

The 2020 Cameron Peak Fire was Colorado’s biggest fire. And yet, a bunch of the beaver complexes in it didn’t burn. This past week I went & saw one of the untouched beaver wetlands surrounded by burned trees & hills in person. You can see it (in 360 view) too! Click the link below to view an interactive 360 photo in Google Maps.

Click on the photo to explore a truly wonderful beaver pond. If you honestly aren’t curious to see for yourself there is little hope I can persuade you. Just do it.

BEAVER AND MOOSE ARE FRIENDS…

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beaver ecological impact September 8, 2021

You know beavers must be like those kids that everyone knows and everyone counts among their their closest friends. I’m sure they get invited to all the birthday parties. But whether any of us will be on their guest list remains to be seen.

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Wyoming Beaver and Moose Chow Down Together in Grand Teton

It’s not exactly breaking news that wildlife in Wyoming has to compete for food sources. However, a recent video share proves that at least moose and beaver can peacefully coexist as that’s exactly what happened in Grand Teton National Park.

One of the tour groups that takes visitors through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks shared this quaint moment recently.

Nice to hear a tour guide saying the right thing about beavers.

Their video share was more than just a neat wildlife moment. They added a key mention about why beavers are key to many types of animals that I didn’t realize:

Beaver dams Stop, Slow, and Spread water to the benefit of numerous plant and animal species.

In effect, beavers in Wyoming create a wetland habitat that helps with the growth of plants and other edible sources that help wildlife like moose and deer which in turn helps bears and wolves.

One YouTube comment asked if this was captured near Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park. There’s no way to tell for certain, but that is one the locations where you can get an iconic pic of Grand Teton.

If nothing else, this moose and beaver moment shows that wildlife can and do get along as one animals manipulation of the habitat helps many.

Yes, And that animal is called a BEAVER, and whenever you trap them or hunt them or depredate them you ruin the habitat for many.

Just sayin’.

THE MOOCHERS BEAVERS TOLERATE

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Book, Beavers September 7, 2021

Well this should be interesting. A new book is dropping today with some lovely illustrations. I pre-ordered my copy from amazon. Here’s the review I found from “Ms Yingling reads:”

In this beautifully illustrated picture book, the complicated relationship between beavers and their ecosystem is explored, with special emphasis on how they interact with otters. Beaver first finds a stream, then sets out to painstakingly cut down trees, dam up the stream, and create his lodge. A female beaver arrives and the work continues. The newly created pond attracts a variety of wildlife, including birds and beetles who live on the trees that the pond causes to die.

When Otter arrives, its a sign that the area is healthy, but the otters often damage the dam in order to get to other bodies of water, and are loud and rambunctious. The otters eat different foods from the beavers, so the two are able to coexist. In addition to the story, with its watercolor illustrations rich in the blues and greens of the aquatic setting, there is information at the back of the book about beavers, otters, and the building of dams.

Strengths: Collard does a great job at finding topics that are of interest to children and educators alike, and also balances stories and information nicely. I can’t say that I knew a lot about beavers and their effect on the environment, so I learned a lot from this. It would be a great book to hand to a reader who has picked up Terry Lynn Johnson’s Rescue at Lake Wild.

Weaknesses: I wouldn’t have minded a little more information about how beavers change their environments by building dams, but it’s not really necessary for this book.

What I really think: This is a great choice for readers who are a little too young for the amount of information included in books like this author’s Hopping Ahead of Climate Change or Firebirds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests and would make a great read aloud for classes studying ecology, animals, or getting along with others!

Hmm just checking but I don’t see a mention of the fact that otters mooch off all the things that beavers provide and give nothing in return. Oh except sometimes they eat the babies. I guess that would be a really upsetting children’s book huh?

Now to be totally fair to the attractive moochers I thought long and hard about this yesterday and determined that it’s possible that the way they poop all those delicious nutrients onto the shore after devouring all the salmon and crayfish that beaver ponds nurture it’s possible that those otter recyclings provide nutrients for then new willow that coppices in the area. Which ultimately feed the beavers.

So I guess, on reflection, otters DO give something back to the friendship. Their shit. Beavers give their time and their effort and their homes and sometimes their lives. And otter give their shit.

Haven’t we all had ‘friends’ like that?

The illustrations by Meg Sodano are really lovely. If you’d like to pick up a copy of your very own they go on sale today at Amazon.

Beaver and Otter Get Along…Sort of: A Story of Grit and Patience between Neighbors Hardcover – Picture Book, September 7, 2021

by Sneed Collard (Author), Meg Sodano (Illustrator)

NYT SHOCKED TO LEARN THAT BEAVERS CHEW TREES

heidi08 Beavers and Scotland September 6, 2021

The New York Times is the paper that never quite believed all those good things about beavers. They are always eager for a story where crazy conservationists are pitted against the pragmatic and hard-working farmer. Honestly, you’d never know beavers were ever anything but trouble in the state. But at least our friends Paul and Louise Ramsay get to be in the story.

Beavers Re-emerge in Scotland, Drawing Ire of Farmers

Building dams that flood land, the beavers have infuriated farmers. Some have obtained permits to kill the animals — setting off outrage among conservationists.

You mean just like America and Canada? That is so not surprising.

Gnawing and felling trees, building dams that flood fields or wreck drainage systems and burrowing into river banks — sometimes causing them to collapse — beavers have incurred the wrath of a farming community, which won the right to request permits allowing them to kill the animals legally.

But the sanctioned killing of an otherwise protected species has enraged conservationists, prompting a legal challenge and igniting a polarizing debate about farming, biodiversity and the future of Scotland’s countryside.

Say it isn’t so! You mean beavers actually chew trees? Get out! I guess the NYT never got the memo about all the trees that are expanded and multiplied because of their ponds. No willow farmers for the NYT that’s for certain.

This is the paragraph that got me riled the most.

Animal rights advocates say that the once-native species is valuable for creating wildlife habitats and helping to preserve biodiversity, and they view the culling as a symbol of misplaced priorities imposed by intensive agriculture. But to their enemies, beavers are vermin whose mostly unplanned reintroduction to Scotland is causing needless damage and financial loss to food producers.

Call me picky but I’m pretty sure the phrases “ONCE-NATIVE” and “NATIVE” mean exactly the same thing. Especially now that beavers have taken over and are reintroducing their own population. I’m pretty sure it’s a binary thing. You’re either native or your not.

You either belong there or you don’t.

“It’s quite a sad story and one that reflects how difficult it is to have grown-up discussions about these kind of land issues,” said Alan McDonnell, the conservation manager at Trees for Life.

In Tayside, some farmers blame the rising beaver population on escapes from Bamff estate in Perthshire, where Paul and Louise Ramsay run an eco-tourism operation. The Ramsays brought Scotland’s first recent-era beavers to the site in 2002, when there were fewer restrictions, as part of their own beaver rewilding project.

The idea was to restore natural habitats on their land after centuries of drainage designed to maximize farm yields. A significant transformation can be seen in a wild, scenic stretch of the 1,300-acre estate, which has been in the family since 1232.

Paul and Louise! My goodness how far your beaver life has taken you. I bet you can’t remember what your life used to be like before beavers, either.

Though the entrances to burrows are submerged, beavers dig upward into river banks to create chambers above water level. The dams they build regulate the water level of their aquatic habitats.

The 20 or so beavers living here have killed many trees, a point of contention for the Ramsays’ critics. But they have attracted otters, allowed water pools to fill with trout, frogs and toads, and given a nesting place in dead trees to woodpeckers, Ms. Ramsay said.

She said the problem was not the beavers, but farmers who think that any land that does not produce a crop is wasted.

“Their motivation is to drain, drain, drain, so a beaver comes along and wants to make a wet bit here or there — which might be a brilliant habitat — that’s against the farmer’s interest,” she said.

MORE LOUISE!!! That’s what this article needs! MORE LOUISE!!!

Ms. Campbell-Palmer said she found beavers fascinating and admired their dam-building skills, tenacity and single-mindedness. That said, she understands the complaints of farmers and admits that, having seen some particularly destructive tree-felling, has occasionally said to herself, “‘Of all the trees to cut down, why did you do that one?’”

As she inspected a trap filled with carrots, turnips and apples, Ms. Campbell-Palmer reflected on the ferocious debate and concluded that beavers had undeniably achieved one thing in Scotland.

“I think what they are doing,” she said, “is making us ask wider questions about how we are using the landscape.”

Goodness gracious. You had to send photographers and reporters all the way to Scotland to write a story that said exactly the same thing as what you might have written about just a few blocks down. I know the beaver story in Scotland is dramatic, but honestly, the concerns, the outraged farmers, the caring environmentalists, their lines are pretty much the same where ever the beaver appears. They were the same in Martinez. But maybe the outrage gets louder after 400 years.

I believe it was Tolstoy who wisely observed