Month: August 2022

ALL POLITICS IS BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers August 16, 2022

The plan to save America by reintroducing more wolves and beavers has gotten plenty of attention. There are places where that’s just about the same thing as saying you can approve school attendance by releasing more child molesters onto the streets. Some people really really really don’t like it.

This Is the Perfect Plan to Rewild the American West. There’s Just One Problem: Politics.

A new paper written by 20 wildlife biologists and ecologists and published in the journal BioScience this month offers a simple, cost-effective solution to many of the problems plaguing the West: climate change, a loss of biodiversity, and even mega-fires. The authors suggest we replace livestock grazing across large swaths of federal public lands with protected habitat for two controversial and seemingly unrelated species—wolves and beavers.

Dubbed the Western Rewilding Network, the plan is remarkable in both its simplicity and the studied effectiveness of its proposed solution. Cows produce greenhouse gases and harm ecosystems. Grazing them on public lands doesn’t offer much economic benefit to anyone outside of a handful of ranchers. Wolves and beavers restore those ecosystems to health from top to bottom, altering the presence, behavior, and overall well-being of plants and animals—without much input from or cost to humans.

There’s just one problem: politics. The authors nod to this briefly: “Although our proposal may at first blush appear controversial or even quixotic,” they write, “we believe that ultra ambitious action is required.”

They cite the converging crisis of “extended drought and water scarcity, extreme heat waves, massive fires triggered at least partly by climate change, and biodiversity loss” as being indicative of a need for urgent adoption of the plan. They don’t, however, acknowledge the political reality that many Republican politicians don’t even agree that climate change is real and are actively trying to dismantle the Endangered Species Act.

Well sure, isn’t that always the case? This entire plan could work if it just weren’t for Idaho. And Montana. And Wyoming. And every place that has more hunters than huggers. Did I leave anything out?

The Republican Party controls all branches of state government in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Montana, and Wyoming—about half of the states in the Rewilding Network. The paper says that “successful rewilding will depend on the reversal of state policies that severely limit wolf and beaver abundances.” But this would require more than a simple policy change. Rather, it would depend on a fundamental shift in the right’s belief systems, dogma, and relationship with voters.

The Republican politicians who run Idaho, Montana, and Utah have been conducting a war on wolves in recent decades. Montana’s governor received a warning from the state’s fish and wildlife department in 2021 after trapping a wolf without the required permits, and signed an order dramatically expanding wolf hunting right up to the border with Yellowstone National Park. Idaho legislators signed a new law last year that is aimed at reducing the state’s wolf population by 90 percent. The law is riddled with lies. Across the West, Republican politicians have successfully turned wolves into a culture war issue in which the species and its defenders are cast as monsters trying to destroy the livelihoods of Republican voters. Beavers are less scary than wolves, but frequently run into conflict with homeowners.

Yep. That about says it all.

“We’re just scientists trying to put forward the best possible science,” Ripple tells me. He says he hopes that by advancing knowledge of realistic and cost-effective means for addressing the converging natural crisis in the West, he’s giving conservation organizations and policymakers the tools they need to achieve political consensus.

I asked Ripple if the Rewilding Network could produce significant results, even if the plan is only implemented in a single, Democrat-leaning state like California or Colorado. It turns out, that’s exactly his hope. Citing the example of legalized marijuana, Ripple contends that, even if only a single state implements the Rewilding Network plan, it will be so successful that other states would feel significant pressure to do the same.

“Ultimately, the climate disaster is going to make this a necessity everywhere,” he says.

I personally volunteer. Can my state start first?

NATIONAL PARKS ADMIT THEY NEED BEAVERS

It isn’t every day that a beaver article I am alerted to makes me burst into tears. Jon could hear it in my voice and came rushing in from outside. In a canoe sometimes you paddle and paddle against the wind and feel you are barely standing still. Your arms ache and you know you can’t stop for one minute or things will get even worse. It’s horrifying but familiar, like a bad dream you’ve had over and over again.

And I guess sometimes this happens instead.

Beavers are being summoned to help national parks restore wetlands/NPS file

Under The Willows: Beavers Partner With National Parks For Landscape Restoration

For centuries beavers have been seen as nothing but pests. They inundate fields, plug culverts, flood roads, and chew down forests. They’ve stood in the way of progress. These rodents were hunted for their fur, their meat, and just generally extirpated from North America as Europeans terraformed the country for agriculture and settlement. In 1929, naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton guesstimated that there were at least 60 million beaver in North America, but by the end of the 19th century there were only about 100,000 remaining.

But now beavers are recognized as key to helping restore wetlands, replenish aquifers, and provide habitats in the National Park System. With a little help, nurturing and money, they’ve been successfully combating climate change, one twig at a time, across the nation.

Properly managed, these large rodents are coming back, from Acadia to Yellowstone, Voyageurs to Rocky Mountain, and in many other national parks. Beavers are opportunistic and resilient, reshaping the landscape from the tropics to the subarctic to the high mountains. Left to themselves, they can repair deep gullies cut by overgrazing, flood meadows to encourage willow growth, and provide habitats to dozens of other species. Their ponds not only hold back the spring snowmelt during an era of drought and climate change, but also act as firebreaks and, in general, repair an ecosystem back to its original state. From scientists to ranchers to anglers to hunters, beavers are now seen as beneficial in many areas. It’s thought they might save the West Coast salmon as well, as the fish easily bypass dams.

In some respects the Beaver is the most notable animal in the West. It was the search for Beaver skins that led adventurers to explore the Rocky Mountains, and to open up the whole northwest of the United States and Canada. It is the Beaver to-day that is the chief incentive to poachers in the Park, but above all the Beaver is the animal that most manifests its intelligence by its works, forestalls man in much of his best construction, and amazes us by the well-considered labour of its hands. — Ernest Thompson Seton, Wild Animals At Home

That whooshing sound you hear is the noise the wind makes when it finally starts turning in the other direction. Once we canoed out schooner landing from oyster point to the ocean. It was a tough but beautiful paddle. Tiger sharks on full display below the surface. Just when we turned the boat around around the tide came in and it seemed like we soared effortlessly back to our car on a floating finger of ocean. At a certain point the truth about beavers becomes self-evident. Maybe we are at that point?

Elsewhere in the park system scientists are encouraging beavers to homestead on their creeks by building what are known as “beaver dam analogs” (BDAs). These structures mimic beaver dams, holding back water, flooding terrain and nurturing trees and willows as a food source. A few of these were just installed along Strawberry Creek on the north side of Great Basin National Park in Nevada. Similar actions are being taken along the Mancos River in Mesa Verde National Park.

Beavers are incredibly adapted, and don’t ask for much, just a food source, perennial stream and wood to build dams. They live in twig lodges with underwater entries, for protection from predators, where they’ll produce one to two kits per year. Their brown-stained teeth absorb iron to make them hard enough to chew through wood. They do what they do, and they do it well. With proper management in a warming climate, they just might be the answer to rewater the parks’ landscape

You know some grumpy old NPS superintendent is shaking his head as he reads this article and vowing that it won’t happen on HIS land any time soon. But this is where we are. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Our climate is so messed up that we are officially ready to try anything. And Beavers are finally getting a real chance.

No wonder I felt like crying. I still do.

BEAVER WORKS IMITATED IN UTAH: SOURCES SAY BEAVERS MAY FOLLOW

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and water August 14, 2022

I’d just like to pause a moment here and point out that this article is not from Washington or my mother. It is from UTAH. The home of many contrasts from Jebediah Smith to Mary Obrien. At the moment I’m thinking the scales are tipping in beavers favor.

Can mimicking beavers help save the Great Salt Lake?

SALT LAKE CITY — About five years ago, Willy Stockman’s home on the bank of Emigration Creek became a wildlife hotspot.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, elk, coyotes and turkeys started showing up in her backyard where she’d never seen them before. Huge elk herds came down the canyon and started occupying her and her neighbors’ yards.

Though the creatures were a sight to see, it was a symptom of a big problem in the canyon: A severe drought meant upper parts of the canyon had no water, so wildlife were venturing further down-canyon in search of a drink.

“Parts of Emigration Canyon went dry and had never been dry before,” Stockman said. “People were putting out big bins of water, because there was no water. … And it’s all part of the big problem.”

Stockman, along with other residents of Emigration Canyon, formed the Emigration Canyon Sustainability Alliance in 2019 to improve water quality, increase stream flows and protect wildlife through groundwater studies, septic system planning and other actions.

One method the group is exploring to help improve the health of the Emigration Creek watershed involves mimicking another wildland creature — the North American beaver.

Well well well. The chickens come home to roost. Now lets just HOPE that when you immitate beavers well enough to actually GET BEAVERS to take over you don’t kill them when they arrive. Okay?

For many ecosystems, beavers are a keystone species, meaning other animals and plants in the ecosystem couldn’t survive without them. The industrious rodents’ dams create crucial wetland habitat for other species and help raise the water table so plant roots get a steady supply of water.

Beavers have been reintroduced for decades to restore riparian areas adjacent to waterways, improve stream health and create wetland habitat for birds and insects, according to the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. But some of these areas are too degraded or damaged, with steep, eroded stream banks and a lack of vegetation, to support beavers’ livelihoods.

Beaver dam analogs, essentially human-made replicas of natural beaver dams, provide benefits to ecosystems and waterways that the buck-toothed burrowers would add in areas that beavers can no longer inhabit. Humans install wooden posts in the stream channels and then weave willows to fill in the gaps.

Well of course they don’t do it as long or as well as ACTUAL beaver dams but sure, if you can get folks to think they’re a good idea, and then notice how much work they are to maintain, and then agree to subcontract to actual beavers. well then it’s okay. Alls well that ends well.

Completed analogs are designed to kickstart the natural processes of preserving floodplains, restoring wetlands, supporting native vegetation, reducing downstream sedimentation, improving water quality and reducing erosion. Analogs can also improve streams enough to once again make them habitable for real beavers.

In Oregon, one study found that analogs increased the amount of groundwater near streams where they were installed, and that they helped restore riparian areas by stimulating willow growth.

A study in California found that analogs added complexity to streams that had previously been lost. The study also found that the analogs helped connect streams to other waterways through floodplains.

Another Oregon study, commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service, found that analogs improved habitat for fish and other wildlife, and that they can muster the return of real beaver populations on agricultural lands.

An unfunded study in California by Perryman et al found that if biologists like playing in the mud so dam much they should be learning to install actual flow devices to all beavers to stick around and do this work themselves.

The loss of beaver dams in areas where they’ve historically been present are tied to some of the same issues of suburban sprawl and agriculture expansion that affect the Great Salt Lake’s dwindling water level, according to Hafen. Urban areas on the Wasatch Front probably had more beaver dams before they were developed for human habitation. And agriculture often uses land that might otherwise be suitable for beaver habitat, he added.

“I think there are a lot of situations where installing (analogs) or encouraging beavers to build dams could be helpful, ecologically or ideologically,” Hafen said. “But I think you also have to take that on a case-by-case basis, consider what the goals are for restoration, what the restoration needs are and how those things are going to impact the surrounding landscape.”

Even though beaver dam analogs might not directly raise the water level of the Great Salt Lake, Stockman believes they can be one part of the process of improving the health of the lake’s watershed — and helping those elk, coyotes and turkeys avoid her backyard for greener pastures up-canyon.

“Sometimes I’m thinking of Utah as … a dry orange. It’s not as if you don’t have water anymore — you can stick a straw in it, suck it out, put the water in a reservoir. But in order to get a better fruit, you have to take care of a tree, and a tree is a watershed. That’s where our water is coming from,” Stockman said. “I sometimes think that there is too much focus on seeing the water and not realizing that it’s all of it. We need to address the actual health of the watershed. And so the (beaver dam analogs) are one way to do that.”

Well sure. The salt needs beavers as much as everywhere else. We all know that.

WE RUIN THINGS AND BEAVERS FIX THEM

heidi08 Beavers August 13, 2022

Hardly a day goes by anymore when I don’t casually stop and muse, thank goodness for Ben, When I saw the title of this living on earth I flinched reflectively. More stories about beavers causing climate change. Then I read who the interview was with and everything relaxed. Say it with me now, Thank goodness for Ben.

Beavers Move Into the Arctic

The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as much of the globe and some species are already moving toward the poles in search of new habitat. And as beavers move north into the Arctic these big rodents known as “ecosystem engineers” are bringing big changes to the landscape. Ben Goldfarb is the author of Eager: the Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter and joins Living on Earth’s Jenni Doering to discuss the concerns and benefits of beavers in the Arctic.

CANADA IS KILLING BEAVERS TO SAVE WATER

heidi08 Beavers August 12, 2022

It’s amazing how often we kill beavers because they’re getting in the way of our effort to store water which beaver could do better anyway. Yesterday Gavin announced a shiny new plan to fix water in California and I bet you can guess how many of it’s 16 pages mentioned beavers. I’ll give you a hint; it was a round number. All these new tools for storing water above and below ground when you just know we will be quickly killing them if they have the gall to show up.

Now Canada is announcing a plan to kill lots of beavers before some hydro work begins. That’s like starting a few additional fires before you call 911.

Beavers to be culled from Site C wetland before BC Hydro crews ramp up work

Work is expected to ramp up this fall on logging the Watson Slough to make way for the Site C dam reservoir, but BC Hydro says it will first need to breach beaver dams and cull the animals from the wetland before crews can begin.

The slough was given a reprieve from logging in 2017 after pressure from the regional district to preserve it for as long as possible. With reservoir filling slated to begin as early as next year, BC Hydro says it will begin lowering water levels in the slough this fall so that standing trees can be safely cleared over the winter.

Spokesman Greg Alexis says work is being timed to “minimize the risk to amphibians and migratory birds” but that the beavers first need to be removed from the wetland so they don’t repair the breaches of their dams.

He says euthanizing the beavers was determined to be the most humane way to remove them from the slough as the animals are known to be aggressive and territorial, and “very susceptible to predation” without a lodge.

Oh puleeze…. Spare me your castorphobia… honestly….are you seriously going to pretend like you’re doing this for their OWN GOOD??? Not even Canadians are going to fall for that one.

“The likelihood of a beaver surviving relocation is quite low, while the stress of trapping and relocation will be quite high,” Alexis said. “Additionally, suitable locations for release that are absent of established beavers are rare. This is problematic because beavers are very territorial and will fight to defend their territory.”

An estimated 90 hectares will be cleared at Watson Slough, though there is no estimate on the number of beavers to be removed. Alexis says meat from the beavers will be shared with local First Nations.

“The trapper doing the work will be making use of the fur pelts and sharing the meat with local Indigenous groups,” he said.

Hey do you remember when you were a kid and you used to catch to bees in a jar to see if you could make them fight? That’s what Canada is doing with its conservationists, hoping to get the indigenous team to square off against the ‘save em’ team. Hopefully they’ll be so busy fighting each other that there will be no one left to challenge their idiotic plan.

Alexis says the slough needs to be cleared of standing trees this winter so they won’t pose a safety hazard once the reservoir is filled.

“Lowering the water level at Watson Slough is necessary so that most of the standing trees can be cleared safely over the winter,” he said. “Prior to lowering the water level, we’ll need to breach the beaver dams. To make sure beavers don’t repair the breaches, we have to remove them.”

Despite the loss of wetland and the impending elimination of the beavers, Alexis says BC Hydro has partnered with Ducks Unlimited to replace what’s being lost and targeting 500 hectares for wetland compensation projects. The goal is no net loss of wetland functions.

Yeah GREAT IDEA. Add Dicks Unlimited to the fray and then you get the hunters to help fight it out too. Wow what a fully thought out plan. I get the feeling they know they are in for a battle with this one. I just read this story posted again on Yahoo news!

Alexis says the slough needs to be cleared of standing trees this winter so they won’t pose a safety hazard once the reservoir is filled.

In 2019, 50 hectares of new wetland area was added by Ducks Unlimited by Clayhurst. Alexis says 135 hectares of wetland is being worked on this summer 50 kilometres south of Dawson Creek, with another 40 hectares being worked on 30 kilometres northeast of Fort St. John.

“The compensation opportunities identified so far are a combination of building new wetlands, saving established wetlands that were already under threat of being lost in the region, and incorporating wetland construction in areas that can be reclaimed once project construction is complete,” Alexis said.

Ducks Unlimited says its mandate remains wetland conservation and is working with BC Hydro to compensate for Site C impacts, including Watson Slough. However, a spokesperson said the organization is not directly involved in the decommissioning of Watson Slough and was unable to comment further.

“The best way to conserve wetlands is to avoid impacts wherever possible. Where this is not possible, we establish partnerships to deliver wetland restoration and compensation projects,” said Sarah Nathan, the organization’s provincial operations manager for B.C.