Month: December 2022

NO TAIL? NO PROBLEM!

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beavers December 11, 2022

Do you remember that beaver from a while ago Patti wrote about with no tail? Well she has learned more about them and its worth sharing.

Patti Smith | View from Heifer Hill: Beaver chronicles, part two

This month, I take you, once again, to my wild brook for the next installment of the beaver chronicles. To recap: counter to all expectations, in this large, vacant watershed, two half-sisters have moved in next door to each other. Ten-year-old Dew has a kit or two from the spring. Four-year-old Gentian is living on her own, or is she? Also residing on this stretch of stream is a large, stealthy fellow who is missing that most iconic beaver appendage, his tail. Is he the father of Dew’s kits? Does he also have a relationship with Gentian?

When I introduced this male last month, I had only had a few glimpses of him. The trauma that took his tail left him a very cautious beast. This month, I had reason to hope for better data; West Coast beaver friends had visited and left me with trail cams. I positioned one by each of the lodges under construction in the complex. The cameras have created a record of a most mercurial month, literally and figuratively. Certain facts have been revealed. Mysteries remain.

My friend Suzanne Husky came up with a name for the abbreviated male. I knew she would; she is a collector of beaver place names and mythology, especially in her native France. She is engaged there in reconnecting people with their beavery past and, she hopes, their beavery future. She proposed Bebryx (Proto-Celtic ‘beaver’) after a king from Greek mythology.

The cameras have captured Here’ often, always upstream at Dew’s lodge. One evening, the camera showed him dining and grooming on a shelf of ice streamside. One of the kits swam over, climbed up next to him, and began to groom him. It’s confirmed. He’s the papa. When he got up and dove into the water, I got a good look at the place where his tail should have been. A beaver’s backside tapers in a muscular wedge. The flat, leathery tail attaches at ground level. All that remained of this fellow’s tail was the furry part gathered into a scar at the site of the injury.

Nice job Suzanne, And nice job mystery beaver! I never even knew about that name! Here;’s what wikipedia has to say about it, “ultimately stemming from Proto-Celtic*brebu (‘beaver’; see Gaulishbebros, bebrus, Old IrishBibar, ‘beaver’).^[2]^[5]Ivan Duridanov also suggested that the ethnonym was related to Indo-European words meaning “beaver”. I guess if you have no tail you deserve a really special name.

On Nov. 15, an early freeze-up began with a snowstorm. By that point, the beavers had finished the structural work on their lodges and were moving on to plastering. A camera recorded Bebryx working from midnight until 2 a.m. He triggered the camera each time he clambered from the stream with an armload of mud. He would then rear up to balance on his hind legs and stagger upward; the load pressed between his chin and chest. The beaver’s lurching progress up the side of the lodge would not earn style points in the competition, but beavers are adapted for grace in the water. That they also manage bipedal locomotion while carrying a load of roofing materials is quite a feat.

Bebryx made 13 trips that night. The first nine loads were delivered in rapid succession. He then took a lunch break, followed by a more leisurely second shift. Dew began her shift at 2 a.m., delivering eight loads over the course of two hours. All the while, the snow came down, and ice crystals snapped together.

You don’t think a little thing like having no tail is going to stop me from working do you? Of course not. I’m a beaver. Not a quitter.

Snow and ice reigned through mid-November. Then came the thaw and rains. One night, I was greeted at the brook by a sweet fog of castoreum. This beaver perfume is among the information-rich secretions that beavers use to communicate. Sometimes the message is “come-hither.” More often, it is “this place is taken.” These beavers had not been actively scent marking since the spring. Before I had time to look for the source, Dew swam up. Blood trickled from a wound above her eye. A large gash had been torn on her hip, and a couple of chunks had been nipped from her hide. I had just missed a beaver battle. Someone had reported seeing beaver tracks crossing a ridge trail into this drainage a few days earlier. Trail cameras showed Gentian continuing her work, oblivious, so it seems the interloper was forced to flee upstream. This is not a good season for a beaver to be on the move. Winter survival depends upon having a lodge and an underwater supply of food before freeze-up. I hope the poor vagrant is situated now.

On a few occasions, the trail cams have recorded the local mink making his rounds. Voles have been captured emerging from chinks in the roof of Gentian’s lodge. One night recently, two pointy ears loomed in front of the camera by Dew’s lodge. The next video showed Dew on the lodge, sniffing nervously. Minutes later, the owner of the ears stepped into the frame — a bobcat. I could only watch in horror as the cat lowered into a stalk and crept toward the sound of a beaver chewing offscreen. The adults and one kit have been observed since. Am I cruel to hope the bobcat left hungry?

Good lord. There are so many dangers in a beavers life, must I always be on edge during your columns?

I am writing this, pondside, on a night in early December. The light of a half-moon has found its way through high, thin clouds. The temperature is dropping. In a new development, Bebryx is allowing himself to be seen. He is floating nearby, chewing on a branch, perfectly relaxed. Dew’s wounds are healing, but she is on edge. I wonder if the bobcat has been back.

When I stopped to check the camera by Gentian’s lodge, she swam over to the shore and then off to her food cache. Who is that second beaver who shows up in the shadows of her beaver cam?

By the time I write my next column, winter will be here in earnest. The beavers will be sealed into their wintry world, safe from predators. I hope it will be a cozy, companionable season and that they will have plenty to eat. I hope the same for you.

Ohh Patti. Your writing is so sweet and entirely human. I could follow you to the ends of the earth. You are the mother Theresa of beavers. Without all the complicated parts of course. Anyway yes, we are cozy and have enough food, thank you. And god bless us ever one!

NO TREE-WRAP RAP FOR PENNSYLVANIA

Isn’t that sweet! Beavers in Clearfield Pennsylvania get a housing makeover! Of course the temperature this morning is 25 so they’ll probably die alone separated from their food cache and family members but still, isn’t that sweet?

Bye bye beavers: Clearfield’s beavers to be re-homed

Beavers destroying expensive trees in downtown Clearfield are getting a new home, Street Commissioner Todd Kling reported at Thursday night’s committee meetings of the Clearfield Borough Council.

Beavers have moved into downtown Clearfield and are reportedly living in the West Branch of the Susquehanna River near the Market Street Bridge.

The beavers have removed several recently planted saplings and significantly damaged several fully grown trees on both sides of the riverbank near the bridge. The recently planted saplings cost roughly $150 a piece.

That’s right. The trees cost us MONEY. And we couldn’t possibly spend more money affording wire to wrap them in to protect our investment from these beavers or the NEXT beavers that come along. Instead we had to pay a trapper to pretend to move them. We hired “Wildlife Deceivers: We pretend so you don’t have to” just for this.

At first the beavers were destroying the trees near the Joseph and Elizabeth Shaw Public Library, so the borough put up fencing to protect the remaining trees. The beavers then started cutting trees on the west side of the river.

We tried doing the right thing, but it was hard and we decided to give up and do the other thing instead which was a lot easier.

Kling said the state Game Commission has stepped in and begun trapping the beavers alive and relocating them to a safe location. The beavers won’t be harmed.

He said the Game Commission has already caught one beaver, but it is believed there are more beavers left. Kling said now that they have professionals involved, he hopes private citizens don’t try to trap the beavers.

Borough Operations Manager Leslie Stott said residents have reported seeing three beavers.

We only saw three that one time so we know that’s how many there are every other time. I’m sure we won’t leave any orphans alone to die. As long as those pesky citizens don’t but in and start messing things up. They always get in the way.

Kling said the borough is planning to remove the dead trees and replant new trees using grant funds next year.

That’s my favorite part. Obviously next year there won’t be any more beavers because they only come ever other year or during el nino or whatever magical reason you want to make up. We have decided as a county it’s too hard to fix the problem, so we’re just going to move it.

Year after year.

TREE WRAP RAP

When the beaver starts a’chewing

There’s a thing you should be doing

If you want to save your treeline

Better go and make a beeline

For the wire

Get a plier

It’s not dire

I’m no liar

Do the tree-wrap, rap

In the yard and in the garden

Wrap it up and beg their pardon

Not too tight, the tree will widen

And it the wire it will tighten

Wire thicken

Not for chicken

Paint with sandy

Comes in handy

Do the tree-wrap, rap

Save your maple and your aspen

Here’s the point that needed graspen’

Come protect the plants that need you

And the fruit trees that will feed you

I’m not crazy

Don’t be lazy

Stop your trappin’

And start wrappin

Do the tree-wrap, rap

Do the tree-wrap, rap!

It was March 21 2015 when I wrote these lyrics. Whew, People have gotten sooo much smarter since then.

HA!

FEATHERED PREDATORS EAT SCALED PREDATORS BECAUSE OF VEGETARIANS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers and salmon December 9, 2022

So yesterday’s presentation was less than ideal. Michael called in sick with the flu and Heidi had to present all by herself to a bunch of hard core fishies who weren’t all that happy about beavers. There were one or two positive converts in the audience. The rest asked questions like “Don’t beaver dams in urban settings cause more fish predation” and “Don’t they make erosion worse?” and “How can juvenile steelhead get out of those ponds the beavers trap them in“.

I make an effort to share photos like this in my talks because I think it shows that both bird and fish species are augmented by beavers. They saw them and thought it showed the long line of feathered predators waiting along a beaver dam to pick off all those heroically trapped fish.

That’s it. A long line of feathered predators waiting to ruin the lives of those scaled predators because of those dam vegetarians.

I confess to being a little dumbfounded. I’m used to questions about flooding and salmon passage and population explosions. I never ran into a crowd of people who thought there were too dam many birds and otters.

I bet Chelsie would have handled it better. That’s the thing about having a very deep beaver bench. Stupid doesn’t get to stand around very long before it is contradicted by intelligence.

Beavers and salmon can thrive when they share a creek

In response to B. Fleming’s letter recently published in the Sun: Beavers are a friend to salmon, not a foe.

Prior to colonization, beavers and salmon coexisted for hundreds of years. Before beavers were trapped near extinction, they covered North America with salmon habitat. Salmon are adept at going over, under, around and through dams; I witnessed a handful of chum take down a beaver dam on Barker Creek via blunt force in a matter of hours a few years back.

Beavers are amazing for salmon! This was the focus of my master’s degree so I can (and did) write at length about it, but a few of the main benefits of beavers in a salmon-bearing stream include reduced stream velocity, reduced pollution and turbidity, improved stream flow during dry periods, and increased salmon habitat. Slower streams are easier for salmon to navigate, especially during heavy rain events, and reduce the potential for redds (egg nests) to wash out. Slow moving water is clearer because sediment and pollutants sink to the bottom, which is so important for our sensitive coho friends. Beaver dams create places for juveniles to hide and spawners to rest with their ponds, which also help maintain a steady flow downstream during periods of scant precipitation. There is also evidence that beaver dams contribute to cooler water temperatures (salmon thrive in brisk, low 40s temps), plus cold water holds more dissolved oxygen.

Final note: Tampering with beaver dams is illegal in Washington without a hydraulic permit from the Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Chelsie Webb, Central Kitsap

URBAN WILDLIFE PROMOTES A CITY’S GOOD NATURE

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Urban beavers December 8, 2022

I was delighted to see this article appear yesterday on phys.org. WIth all the discussion about biodiversity and Cop-15 at the moment this is just what we need to be reading.

Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in cities

Animal and plant species are dying off at an alarming rate, with up to 1 million threatened with extinction, according to a 2019 United Nations report. Their plight is stirring calls for “rewilding” places where they thrived until driven out by development, pollution and climate change.

Rewilding generally means reviving natural systems in degraded locations—sometimes with a helping hand. That might mean removing dams, building tunnels to reconnect migration pathways severed by roads, or reintroducing predators such as wolves to help balance ecosystems. But after initial assists, there’s little human involvement.

The idea might seem best suited to remote areas where nature is freer to heal without interference. But rewilding also happens in some of the world’s biggest urban centers, as people find mutually beneficial ways to coexist with nature.

Or living with beavers on main street in Martinez for a decade and seeing all the wildlife that came to their pond. Yes we were doing it long before it was cool and in Yale news.

“Climate change is coming, and we are facing an equally important biodiversity crisis,” said Nathalie Pettorelli, senior scientist with the Zoological Society of London. “There’s no better place to engage people on these matters than in cities.”

Urban rewilding can’t return landscapes to pre-settlement times and doesn’t try, said Marie Law Adams, a Northeastern University associate professor of architecture.

Instead, the aim is to encourage natural processes that serve people and wildlife by increasing tree cover to ease summer heat, storing carbon and hosting more animals. Or installing surface channels called bio-swales that filter rainwater runoff from parking lots instead of letting it contaminate creeks.

“We need to learn from the mistakes of the mid-20th century—paving over everything, engineering everything with gray infrastructure” such as dams and pipes, Adams said.

Take a count of the wildlife in our creek today versus the wildlife in our creek 15 years ago. I bet you’d be surprised that we aren’t seeing nearly as many otters, kingfishers, muskrats or hooded mergansers, The beavers WERE biodiversity makers.

“It used to be that you had to go to some remote location to get exposure to nature,” said Harris, a Philadelphia native who was excited as a child to glimpse an occasional squirrel or deer. “Now that’s not the case. Like it or not, rewilding will occur. The question is, how can we prepare communities and environments and societies to anticipate the presence of more and more wildlife?”

Rewilding can be a tough sell for urbanites who prefer well-manicured lawns and think ecologically rich systems look weedy and unkempt or should be used for housing.

But advocates say it isn’t just about animals and plants. Studies show time in natural spaces improves people’s physical and mental health.

“A lot of city people have lost their tolerance to live with wildlife,” said Pettorelli of Zoological Society of London. “There’s a lot of reteaching ourselves to be done. To really make a difference in tackling the biodiversity crisis, you’re going to have to have people on board.”

Ohhh we had them on board alright. Martinez could teach Yale a thing or two I’ll wager.

Speaking of urban wildlife, Rocklin just voted not to have any last night. Citizens showed up, did their homework, talked about floodplains and setbacks and housing. It didn’t matter. The council listened very politely and said firmly, “We’ve made up our minds. We like money better than wildlife or all of you.” And so paradise will actually become a parking lot.

Laurie caught this at the endangered wetlands last night under the full moon. We feel your pain, fellow beaver traveler.

NORTH CAROLINA: 1 WASHINGTON STATE: 0

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Urban beavers December 7, 2022

So tomorrow I’m presenting to the Alameda Creek Fisheries Group and hoping that everything works according to plan and a squirrel doesn’t decide to chew my internet cable again. This dropped last night and it’s very good, especially considering it’s from North Carolina. But you just have to ignore the thumbnail image of a Nutria which is sooooo obviously not a beaver you can even see its tail!!!!

But I shouldn’t be too regionalist in my appraisal of beaver IQ because this letter to the editor was just published in WASHINGTON which should remind us all that it ain’t over til it’s over.

Wasted money on salmon runs unless beavers are addressed

The Dickerson Creek salmon run (usually last 2 weeks of October or first 2 weeks of November) did not happen this year. The salmon were blocked under the Taylor Road bridge by a beaver dam. The entire Dickerson Creek watershed, one of the most productive salmon runs in Kitsap County, is sterile due to this beaver dam. Chico Creek almost shared the same fate. Persons unknown removed the dam on the golf course, allowing a run to proceed. Otherwise, the Chico Creek watershed in its entirety would also be sterile.

Beavers are not threatened or endangered in this state. Salmon are. Beaver may be taken alive in an appropriate trap and relocated. Also, any licensed trapper may take this animal for fur and meat.

Tens of millions of dollars have been spent salvaging the Chico watershed. The work on Highway 3 is an ongoing example. A beaver dam on the golf course would stop all salmon migration, possibly into the “salmon park” also. I am told by the conservation district that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife refused to do anything about the beaver problem.

So hey, don’t come crying to me about Wisconsin or Minnesota blowing up beaver dams. People in the smartest fricken state in the entire NATION about beavers and why they matter – with the likes of NOAA fisheries and the PSMFC can still be dirt stupid about beavers and salmon. Even though they should know better. Thanks Bernie for setting us straight.

So, instead of a salmon enhancement in the Chico watershed to help several thousand salmon, we seem to have a beaver enhancement saving maybe a half dozen beavers, costing taxpayers many tens of millions of dollars.

Go figure.

Bernie JMW Fleming, Bremerton