Month: September 2022

IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL LIE IF I WANT TO

heidi08 Beavers September 21, 2022

Good morning beaver nation. This morning just happens to be my birthday so I thought, in addition to all the stupid and terrible fall news about beavers out there I would do something I never never do. Which is tell lies about beavers. I’m not sure I’ll be as good at is as the media but I’m going to try. After 15 exhausting years of trying to set the record straight it seems like a nice change of pace for me.

Beavers are poisonous rodents that live in the dams they create to catch fish. They have gills beneath their tails so they can breath underwater while they work The males are easily told from the females because they’re the only ones that build dams. They find their food using echolocation which they emit from a special gland in their foreheads. They are extremely aggressive and the adult males fight for the right to mate with the herd by hitting each other with those tails, The battle lasts for several days and thwacking can be heard for miles but has never been filmed.

Beavers are excellent diggers and tunnel for miles under the soil, especially under the foundations of buildings which they dislike. They are clumsy swimmers but the young learn from their mothers who dress them in water wings. Males are too dangerous to be with the young and will kill them on sight so the mothers care for the young briefly in polyandrous colonies. A colony can have several hundred beavers. It is very dangerous to approach or photograph them because of the poison, which during the wind has been known to waft like spores.

Beavers have several rows of large teeth like their cousin the shark which fall out and regrow constantly throughout their life span. They use those teeth to chew down trees which they use to build the dams they live in, giving rise to their nickname “tree sharks”. All the chewing gives them terrible toothaches which they have to constantly treat by eating willow bark which contains acetylsalicylic acid, the property which occurs naturally in aspirin. This dulls the pain and allows them to continue their assault.

Beavers are highly destructive, in addition to burrowing under foundations and killing trees beavers spend their time emiting giardia, causing climate change by ruining the Tundra and releasing methane in large quantities. They breed several times a year and a single female can have as many as 100 beaver kits every spring. Fortunately most of them starve or are eaten because beavers are terrible parents and rarely attend to their young.

Beavers are often referred to as what is known as a “Keystone Species”. This means that they use their dexterous fore paws to hurl small rocks at other animals often “Keystoning” them to death. It is a very bloody thing to watch because all the beavers gather round to help. They change the ecosystem with these grim attacks and thin the herd.

Castor Canadensis is a well known shapeshifters and can change its appearance when photographed: sometimes looking like a nutria, an otter, or a groundhog. There is an incident this very morning where they appear to be a marmot. No one knows why they change their appearance so rapidly but scientists assume it has to do with their noxious personalities which must be carefully disguised. I would tell you more about beavers but they really aren’t very interesting to study and scientists have given up watching their dull. cruel lives.

~~I recommend you learn more about otters. Which are adorable.~~

Now that was fun.

I WONDER HOW WE CAN MAKE MORE WETLANDS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver ponds, Beavers, Beavers and Wetlands September 19, 2022

Gosh marshes and wetlands are useful and valuable for biodiversity, but they’re really really hard to make. Whatever can we do?

The Outside Story: Freshwater marshes are biodiversity hotspots

In addition to providing outstanding wildlife habitat, freshwater marshes perform several vital ecological functions. Marsh plants capture sediments running off the land from roads, development, and farm fields and filter out excess nutrients that would otherwise degrade water quality. These wetlands store floodwaters, control erosion, and recharge groundwater supplies. Marshes also offer recreational value and are popular places for paddling, birdwatching, hunting, and fishing.

Unfortunately, only in recent decades have people recognized the value of marshes and other wetlands and, to some extent, given them legal protection. Since European settlement, many marshes have been filled for agriculture or development, polluted by industrial run-off, or converted to ponds or lakes by dams. In some locales, there have been restoration efforts, but it is challenging to replicate a natural marsh, although beaver activity can create new marshes or change them to create other forms of wetlands.

Hey I remember spending hours next to beaver created wetlands. Watching herons and egrets and merganser and wood duck and mink and otter and frog. I remember counting how many species I saw in a single morning. And that was in the middle of a town.

Tell me more about how hard wetlands are to create?

Marsh plants have special adaptations that enable them to survive the wet conditions. For example, cattails and arrowhead can exchange gases between their emergent leaves and submerged roots. The type of vegetation that grows in a particular marsh depends on hydrology and soil. In shallow marshes, the water level varies from just a few inches to a foot deep. The soil may be always saturated, or it may be flooded periodically. Deeper marshes are permanently flooded, with large areas of open water. Marsh soils range from decomposed muck to high- organic mineral soil.

Along the edges of lakes, ponds, and rivers, marsh vegetation often grows in distinct bands, influenced by water depth and exposure. Sedges, for example, will grow in moist to saturated soil. Cattails and pickerelweed, with its distinctive stems of purple flowers, prefer standing water through most of the growing season. Aquatic bulrush and wild rice are found in deeper water.

These and several other plants, such as floating duckweed and arrow arum, form the foundation of the marsh food web. Waterfowl and other birds feed on the plants’ seeds, fruit, and vegetation, and the plants’ decomposed remains nourish a host of invertebrates such as snails, worms, crayfish, and insects. The invertebrates in turn provide food for frogs, fish, turtles, and songbirds, which feed water snakes, raccoons, herons, osprey, and bald eagles, among others. Muskrats are common marsh residents, eating the rhizomes (roots) of cattails and water lilies and building their dome-shaped winter lodges with cattail leaves. Mink slide through the lodges’ underwater entrances to prey on muskrats. Many birds, including hard-to-see bitterns, nest in marshes, and red-winged blackbirds often attach their nests to old cattail stalks.

Gosh that sounds beautiful! And familiar. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine…I’m guessing he can help.

LE CASTOR EN FRANCE’

heidi08 Beavers September 18, 2022

French=American Suzanne Husky has really been bitten by the beaver bug. She has taken it as HER personal mission to explain the returning beaver population to the French and she’s doing an amazing job. Here’s some amazing artwork from her recent show.

BEAVERS KEEP TRYING TO DRIVE THE NARRATIVE

heidi08 Beavers September 17, 2022

Well I tried to work the words pond leveler and depredation into the beaver conversation, You heard me try I even gave the reporter Glynnis Hood’s flow device paper, thinking it might hold the attention of a Ct anadian, But I guess editors only want relocation fairy stories, At least I succeeded In getting the reporter to talk to Rick. That’s something right?

Beavers are superhero rodents in California’s fight against climate change

The landscape is missing the redwoods that towered into the sky before loggers arrived. And it’s missing the beavers that flourished before trappers nearly extinguished them from what is now California.

The lack of beavers is not for lack of trying. Ms. Beesley is a fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, whose ancestral territory lies in the coastal waters and redwood forests of northwestern California. Pioneers in environmental restoration in the state, the Yurok have built artificial beaver dams and installed logjams to slow the destructive energy of waterways like McGarvey Creek, all in hopes of restoring past flows, bringing back beavers and, with their help, improving habitat for salmon.

Now, the rest of California is trying to do the same, elevating the lowly beaver into a much-wanted global warming warrior.

Research has shown that watersheds inhabited by beavers are wetter and greener, more resistant to wildfires and more productive for agriculture. That has made them newly coveted agents of environmental healing as tinder-dry forests burn in great masses and vast parts of the continent go parched from a worsening drought.he

I’m all for seeing beavers as the heroes they are, Now if we could just stop killing them every time they show up for work.

Beavers are remarkable rodents, capable of surviving in environments far from the boreal rivers and lakes where they are familiar to Canadians. “They thrive in desert,” said Emily Fairfax, a scholar at California State University Channel Islands. Her research has shown beavers’ value as firefighters, their dams sustaining greening oases less likely to burn in forest blazes.

As California looks for new ways to confront worsening drought, Prof. Fairfax thinks beavers “have an absolutely enormous potential” to help. The current North American beaver population is likely a tenth of what it was before the arrival of the European fur trade. Restoring even part of that could result in “a lot of water” stored on the landscape, she said.

The effort to bring back the beaver in California began with rewriting history. For decades, the state relied on habitat maps informed by research completed after trappers had largely exterminated beavers. It took years of studying ancient dam remains, scouring old newspaper accounts and documenting terms for beaver in Indigenous languages to prove that beavers actually once lived across most of the state.

That was “what we needed to get the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to stop treating them as a pest, but as a potential ecosystem engineer,” said Rick Lanman, an oncologist who led the effort.

Hurray Rick!!! And that reference to scouring newspaper articles. That was ME. So I guess I did make it in there indirectly.

Nonetheless, California authorities issued permits to get rid of 3,000 beavers last year, often by killing them – although there are no statistics on successful exterminations.

And that was me. That’s something, right?

Beaver advocates are pushing for a three-strikes rule, where beavers are only killed after attempts first to live with them – by protecting valuable trees and installing devices to prevent flooding from dams – and, if that fails, to relocate them.

“The beaver is basically a stormtrooper to come in and support our living lifeboats, the watersheds,” said Brock Dolman, a researcher who has helped co-ordinate a Bring Back the Beaver campaign. (He gives Canadian nickels as gifts.).

“We think our watersheds need thousands and thousands of new dams. We want them to be maybe three to four feet tall, made of sticks and wood,” he said. “And we want a whole crew of mammals with sharp teeth who are managing them for free.”

Beavers can, however, provide at best a partial solution to the enormous task of securing sufficient water to sate the thirst of the state’s industry, agriculture and human residents. “Is L.A. going to swap over to beaver water for their supply any time soon?” Mr. Dolman said.

“Don’t think so.”

Neither do I. I don’t even expect them to go to THREE STRIKES. I mean if it even required ONE strike to kill a beaver that would be monumental progress. Baby steps people.

The Yurok, too, have found that for beavers to transform a landscape, the landscape itself needs to be transformed first.

“We need to get in there to repair the damage and destruction from the last 100 years,” said Mr. Myers, the Yurok vice chairman. Only then “can we get to a place for beavers to move in – so they’ll actually have a place to thrive.”

Well the media has a narrative. They want to keep it, And that narrative is something like: Beavers can fight climate change if we move them. And they live in the dam. No matter

WHAT information you feed into the word processor it always comes out saying basically that, Like a magic eightball you keep shaking over and over.

MAKING WAY FOR BEAVERS STARTS IN NM

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, Beaver ecological impact September 16, 2022

Does your landscape need beavers but can’t support them yet? No willow trees or good places to hide? Every journey starts with a single step. Maybe this is how you need to make a kind of prebeaver readiness.

Beaver dam analogs bring ecosystem benefits in areas where habitat won’t support beavers

Beavers are increasingly viewed as an important part of the efforts to mitigate impacts of climate change, but in some parts of New Mexico the former beaver habitat has been destroyed.

In those situations, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish will sometimes turn to man-made structures that mimic beaver dams. These structures are known as beaver dam analogs.

Ryan Darr, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, said in an email that the department has seen the natural development of off-channel habitat as well as the expansion of riparian areas after the installation of beaver dam analogs.

Within one or two growing seasons, the riparian and aquatic habitat improvements linked to beaver dam analogs have benefited wildlife and fish.

Darr said there are several types of beaver dam analogs. Some of them are classified as post-assisted. These require using untreated wood posts that are approximately three inches in diameter and mechanically driving them into the streambed. The posts are placed about 18 to 30 inches apart and then, Darr said, locally sourced materials like leaves, branches and live materials are woven between the posts. The holes are filled with turf, mud, sod, rocks and other local materials.

Darr said other beaver dam analogs are made without posts. These use stumps and root balls as well as piles of woody debris which are placed at strategic locations in a stream.

The beaver dam analogs help restore the habitat and may pave the way for beavers to eventually return to those stretches of stream. Darr said beavers could possibly be reintroduced or they could expand upstream to the areas where the beaver dam analogs have helped to restore the habitat.

You know how it is. Before the queen’s procession can proceed down the narrow streets a row of men with brooms and dustbins must clear the path. You have to EARN beavers. Unless you’re lucky and they just come naturally.

Beavers are often referred to as ecosystem engineers thanks to their impacts on streams, which include creating ponds and excavating canals and burrows along stream banks and in riparian areas.

Prior to European settlement in North America, scientists estimate that there were between 60 and 400 million beavers, which lived in all regions of the United States except for some of the arid southwest and the Florida peninsula. That number has been reduced to about 10 million.

“If you went back a little over 100 years, it would have been difficult to find beavers in most watersheds in the state because beaver populations and habitat were depleted due to the lack of regulations on industry, hunting, and trapping,” Darr said.

He said that one of the first game laws in the state was intended to restrict beaver hunting and trapping and, thanks to modern wildlife management practices, the beaver populations have been recovering.

“What we’ve found in recent years is that there are beavers in most of our watersheds across the state if there is suitable habitat, and in many places those populations are thriving,” he said. “Places where beavers may have been historically, but we don’t find them currently, usually don’t have suitable habitat and need improvements to riparian vegetation, aquatic habitat or land management practices to become suitable. These are locations where BDAs can often be applied successfully.”

Beavers were extensively hunted and trapped for their pelts. Beavers have also been considered pests that can cause flooding and property damage.

In recent years, there’s been an increased push by states to promote beaver habitat recovery.

This week, California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife posted its first job opening for its new beaver restoration unit as the state looks to the semi-aquatic animal for help in the fight against climate change.

Beaver dams, and analog structures, can improve water quality by trapping sediment in the ponds created by their dams and by slowing water flows during spring snowmelt and monsoons, Darr said.

Even when the water is flowing at normal levels, the dams help some rivers and streams maintain consistent flows for longer during dry periods of the year, he said. This is because the dams slowly release the water.

Yes well bda’s are nice. But we all know B’s are better. They do the work themselves. Do the maintenance themselves. And have better instincts. More experience on the job. No offense.

The water in the beaver ponds tends to be colder during the summer months than flowing water in the river or stream, which benefits the fish species, Darr said.

While scientists have found numerous benefits to beavers’ activities, a recent review published this month in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation found that more work is needed. The review analyzed 267 peer-reviewed studies and found that most have been completed in temperate forest environments and that many biomes are understudied. The authors wrote that additional research is needed in some areas, such as in arid environments.

“Over the last decade, the introduction and conservation of beaver for stream restoration has become increasingly common. This study provides a reference for how specific variables may be expected to respond to beaver dams within and among biomes. It is important to note that each watershed is complex and has a unique combination of climate, underlying geology, soils, vegetation, biota, land use history, and current land use demands,” the authors wrote.