Month: January 2023

BEAVERS IN THE LANDSCAPE NEED YOU!

Raining cats and dogs? Raining goats and elephants more likely. Yesterday was a deluge in every way possible with exciting thunder to boot. Martinez has been relatively lucky compared to some. And all that water overfilling our reservoirs and rushing down rivers to the ocean makes drills in the point again and again: We need more beavers!

Yesterday’s heart breaking story of the little boy washed away in San Miguel creek in San Luis Obispo county made me remember the sad heroism of our own beaver dams, who stopped the floating body of an old man who had died and slipped into the creek, washing down stream lost to his home and family. I wish there were more beaver dams to help that poor little one who was on his way to school in Paso Robles or at least to bring comfort to his family by letting know where he ended up.

Maybe Martinez and San Luis Obispo have more in common than we think. Because this great upcoming event of the Santa Barbara Perma Culture Network bore an unexpected drop of our name. I only hope things settle enough for it to happen, because yesterday lots of the city was told to shelter in place or prepare to evacuate due to truly unbelievable 6 inches of rainfall on top of already wet soil.

Beavers On the Landscape

Saturday, January 21, 2023 – 18:30 to 20:30

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network

Dr. Emily Fairfax & Cooper Lienhart
Saturday, January 21, 2023
6:30 – 8:30pm FREE

Santa Barbara Community Arts Center
631 Garden St, Santa Barbara CA 93101

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low-tech, low-cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. Emily Fairfax

Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network for an evening with Dr. Emily Fairfax, PhD and Cooper Lienhart as they share their work & passion for beaver, a keystone species that until very recently was vastly underrated as the ecosystem restoration hero it is.

With extended droughts and catastrophic fires plaguing California and the West, in recent years Dr. Fairfax began focusing her research on the impact of beaver on wildfires. Where beaver and their dams and pond complexes are allowed to flourish, water tables naturally rise, and keep the surrounding vegetation and soils hydrated. Dr. Fairfax’s observations on the positive aspects beavers have in controlling wildfires with the wetlands they create, prompted her to coin the phrase “Smokey the Beaver.

Well this seems like a good time to focus on their benefits to FLOODING because it’s going to be foremost on everyone’s mind for a while.

As a part of the evening, Cooper Lienheart, a recent environmental engineering grad of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, will share how as a student he became interested in beaver. Like many young people Lienhart became increasingly concerned about climate change, and learned about wetlands and their ability to act as carbon sinks sequestering carbon, and the role of beaver in creating these wetlands.

Of course beavers and human settlements are often at odds. But in communities like Martinez, CA, where a popular Beaver Festival takes place every year, they have demonstrated these conflicts can be managed with clever strategies, good for the beaver and the community. And with these kind of beaver management strategies come new jobs, especially good for the next generation, many who yearn for positive livelihoods.

Let that be our legacy. We were a testcase for beaver management in the west. And we excelled at our job thanks to Skip Lisle and every one in town who made it a MAJOR news story. To tell a really new story to an unbelieving audience you need to be wildly compelling and shout it from the roof tops over and over.

Dr. Emily Fairfax is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Resource Management at California State University Channel Islands. Dr. Fairfax double majored in Chemistry and Physics as an undergraduate at Carleton College, later earning a PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder. She uses a combination of remote sensing and field work to research how beaver activity can create drought and fire resistant patches in the landscape under a changing climate.

Go tell it on the mountain! We will all be there in spirit!

BEAVER BEREAVEMENT

What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears…

This was a touching article to come across on a rainy morning. The couple who found the dead beaver are so upset and worried he was poisoned. I sympathize but can’t help but wonder what they would have done in Martinez where all our kits and our yearling were found dead within a matter of days.

Beloved beaver that took up residence in Cambridge park found dead

A beaver that has been making its home in Churchill Park this winter, and was beloved by regular park goers, was found dead by a couple who was trying to catch a glimpse of the country’s national animal over the weekend.

Caroline Young and her husband were on a mission to see the Churchill Park beaver in its natural habitat after reading a previous CambridgeToday story.

On Jan. 8, the couple got packed up and hit the trails in an attempt to see one of Canada’s most revered animals in action.

When they got to the pond, they first saw the massive willow tree the beaver had nearly chewed through, then they made a horrible discovery; the beaver was lying dead in the stream.

“We walked around for about 15 minutes and couldn’t find him,” said Young. “We were just about to leave and we saw what we thought was a muskrat laying under some sticks.”

After turning over some of the foliage covering the animal, it was revealed to be the beaver. Having not seen any obvious signs of injury, they were questioning how it could have died.

“There were no bite marks in it or any signs of damage,” said Young. “We’re just hoping some crazy person didn’t get it into their mind that these animals were destroying anything and poisoned it.”

Well I understand the instinct. But it’s given all the time we spend obviously planning to kill beavers its unlikely that folks would bother with a stealth attack.

“It was just so sad to see it laying there,” she said. “When I discovered it my heart just sank.”

The City of Cambridge has confirmed to CambridgeToday that their team did go to the creek at Churchill Park on Monday and a deceased beaver was recovered.

“We have called animal services to remove the beaver,” said Micheal Hausser, director of infrastructure for the city. “From our observations, there is no obvious cause for the beaver’s death.”

The city had implemented measures to prevent the beaver from continuing to cut down the trees by wrapping the trunks of the larger trees in a wire mesh. Hausser said the animal did not pass away due to any act by the city or city staff.

When Young was recalling the situation she did notice that there were some carrots scattered on the banks of the creek, making her think the animal could have died of something other than natural causes.

“It almost looked like someone was trying to get them to eat the carrots, but I can’t be sure if that is what killed them,” she added.

Young feels for the people who have made it a habit to come and watch the beaver and the progress they make. She is hoping that if there was foul play involved that those who committed the act will be brought to justice.

Beaver do eat carrots. And it’s winter. Someone could also have wanted him to have an easier food source. If the beaver was really alone he was hanging on by a thread anyway. A lone beaver is a precarious beaver.

I’m glad you cared for him and felt something when he died. But honestly. Beavers die. Out of 29 in 10 years we had yearlings die from round worm parasite. We had a beaver that was blind. Over the years our first mother beaver broke a tooth and starved to death. It’s a terrible suspenseful thing watching over wild animals.

It’s a precious gift with many sharp edges.

Now because great sadness requires great cheer I am sharing this from our friend Kathy Rothman in Florida. Otters are obviously very cute. Everyone thinks so. Well, maybe not everyone.

BEAVERS AND THE SERENITY PRAYER

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact January 9, 2023

I guess things are wrapping up all over, because this recent article on the beavers in Yellowstone is the final from the glorious beaver serious in the National Park Traveler. I’m going to miss them.

Yellowstone’s Resilient Beavers

While Yellowstone continues to be good beaver habitat, it’s not as robust as the Adirondacks. Through the decades the population has varied greatly. In recent years, the park’s beaver population probably has hovered around 1,000 spread out across roughly 140 colonies. But that number took a blow last summer, as the historic flooding that swept through the northern reaches of Yellowstone likely took out many of those colonies.

Doug Smith, until recently the park’s wildlife biologist, flew over the park in October to see how many colonies he could spot and came away with a tally of 65 park-wide, which was down from 108 in 2021. With each colony home to 6-8 individuals, there might be about 500 beavers left in Yellowstone.

Whether those colonies impacted by the flooding return remains to be seen.

“It seems like what they do — and we don’t have any radioed to know — but I think these big water events, they just find a place to hide out, whether it’s in a burrow they’ve dug on the side of the river or they just find above-ground places,” said Smith prior to his aerial surveillance. “Or they just get blown down river and they hang out. They seem to casually just infiltrate back. They’re pretty resilient to these natural disasters. That’s why I think they’re good for what you’re writing about. I think they’re a good form of ecological restoration because they’re so damn resilient.”

And they benefit so many other species.

“A beaver pond is going to be an oasis. And it’s going to be a biodiversity hub,” said Smith. “They always are biodiversity hubs. I mean, it’s just amazing. When you add water to any mix, what they do, it’s truly amazing.”

That’s right. The Beavers are the inherent masters of the serenity prayer. They wisely accept thing things they cannot change and get the hell out of the way when the water is raging. And change the things they cannot accept building dams and making channels so that streams flourish even in a drought. And despite those studies arguing that they are not very bright seem to have the wisdom to know the difference,

Way better than us.

Though Yellowstone is roughly 10 times the size of both Voyageurs and Isle Royale national, it can’t boast as many beavers as those two do, said Smith, who retired in December. Apparently holding back the park’s beaver population, the biologist explained, is that they don’t like swift currents or coniferous trees for food, and Yellowstone has lots of both.

Through the decades Yellowstone’s beaver populations have varied greatly. A 1921 survey turned up only 25 colonies, although that was a limited survey. Thirty-two years later, 21 colonies were identified, but none in the areas surveyed in 1921. In a bid to help the rodents, 129 beavers from the Gallatin National Forest north of Yellowstone were set free in the park between 1986 and 1999. While that helped boost the numbers, the beaver population continued to fluctuate, ranging between 112 and 127, according to the park staff.

Steadily driving beaver numbers upward in Yellowstone has been willow recovery, said Smith, as it gave the rodents a reliable food source. In the 1990s, the effort to return wolves to the park led to a drop in elk numbers, and that allowed willow stands to rebound, and beaver numbers began to climb, he explained. Also impacting the elk population was the presence of other predators — cougars and bears — and even elk management by the state of Montana outside the park, explained Smith.

Along with overall lower elk numbers, the predators caused the remaining ungulates to alter their movements and that, too, played a part in allowing willow recovery, said Smith.

“The key was a reduction in the elk population allowed willow to come back, which gave beavers a food source,” the biologist said.

From Aspen To Willow

An interesting aspect of Yellowstone’s beaver history is that the animals shifted their diet over the decades, from aspen to willow. When Edward Warren conducted his survey in the 1920s, he saw that the rodents’ preferred forage was aspen. Today, “virtually all the beavers in northern Yellowstone are eating willow,” said Smith.

“So, the story is kind of an abundant population, using willow, a population crash, a long period of time with very few beavers, and then a recovery based on an interaction with elk and predators, but the recovery is entirely dependent upon willow,” he explained.

Willow Willow Willow. I’m curious what the difference is between the range of Aspen and Willow now. If beavers have equal access to flourishing populations of both or if one grows father from the waterline or is less affected by Caribou browse.

Those years when the species’ population crashed also created hurdles for beaver recovery.

“Decades with very few beavers changed stream geomorphology. So watching a few of the sites that beavers are reoccupying, they’re having a hard time because of stream rescission,” said Smith. “The streams have straightened and deepened,” making it tough for beaver colonies to get established.

“I’ve watched one colony bounce around in different locations. They’ve got good forage, but they can’t seem to find a good pond site,” he said. In their search for a suitable site the beavers in 2021 moved further upstream on Crystal Creek and were able to dam the stream and create a pond, added Smith.

Whether they survived the flooding remains to be seen.

While some other national parks are looking to beavers to help with restoration or areas impacted by wildfires or overgrazing, at Yellowstone the beavers are just being beavers.

“We probably have beavers at capacity,” said Smith. “They’re doing the job on their own.”

Yes well when you trap out all the beavers and the streams run wild and incise into crazy chutes and them bring a couple of beavers back and notice that all the dams keep washing out its NOT because these new beavers are lazy. Any more than if your entire engine was allow to rust and you finally got around to replacing the carburator and you’re surprised the car doesn’t run as well as it used to.

It all works together. Beavers. Wolves, Rivers. It doesn’t work as well when you start taking things away. And beavers need beavers making dams upstreams of their their dams so that the water has a chance keeping manageable.

It’s a fascinating job, as Warren pointed out in 1922 in a booket he wrote on Yellowstone’s beavers.

“The value of the beaver to the Park visitor is something rather difficult to put into words, but the creature has a real fascination for the intelligent tourist. Here is an animal of most interesting habits which was once to be found over the greater part of the United States but has since been exterminated from large areas, yet has left traces of its former presence in such place names as Beaver Brook, Creek, Kill, River, Lake, Falls, Hil], Dam and Meadow,” wrote Warren. “It can still be found in abundance in many parts of Yellowstone Park and the surrounding National Forests, affording opportunity for observing its habits and studying: its works. Surely this is a valuable privilege for all who can visit the great Park.”

Well yes. The public does like seeing beavers. But that’s just the icing. Biodiversity. Stream restoration. Climate change and pollution mitigation. The wisdom to know what to accept and what to fix?

That’s the cake.

COMBATING BEAVER MYTHS WITH LIVE SCIENCE

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers January 8, 2023

Nice article this morning setting the record straight on beaver dams. Could we please all make sure that the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and Phys,org and Discovery and Scientific American READ IT? Maybe post it on the refrigerator in the lunch room?

Why do beavers build dams?

And do the rodents live in these wooden structures?

Beavers are renowned for building dams, which the animals construct from trees and branches they cut using their strong front teeth, according to the National Park Service (opens in new tab). The rodents also use grass, rocks and mud to reinforce these structures.

But why do American beavers (Castor canadensis) build dams? Do they live in them?

Put simply, beavers build dams to stay safe, which is particularly challenging considering their awkward body shape and ungainly nature. “Beavers are 40-to-80-pound [18-to-36 kilogram] smelly bags of meat with really short legs,” Chris Jordan (opens in new tab), a fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Oregon, told Live Science in an email.

Heyyyyy accuracy! Wow that’s different, I had no idea that was still possible. And wouldn’t you know it there isn’t ONE single nutria photo with this article! Hmm I’m guessing that paragraph about ‘safety’ means that a “ChickenMcnugget” metaphor is about to be delivered…Let’s watch…

That makes these large rodents easy prey. “When beavers are on the land, they’re very awkward and vulnerable, like great big chicken nuggets waddling around that any predator would be happy to have as a meal,” Emily Fairfax (opens in new tab), an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, California, told Live Science in an email. “But when they are in the water, they’re nearly invincible. They’re outstanding swimmers and can hold their breath for 10 to 15 minutes. By building a dam, they create a pond, and that pond is their safety zone.”

These bodies of water are deep enough for beavers to hide from predators, such as mountain lions, bears, wolves and coyotes, Jordan said. Damming can also flood areas to bring beavers closer to their main source of food, he noted. This includes the bark, leaves and twigs of trees, as well as aquatic plants, such as water lilies and cattails, according to a fact sheet from King County, Washington (opens in new tab).

And to protect the kits in the lodge by making it a swimmers only doorway. Don’t forget that part of the equation.

Furthermore, “beavers dig extensive canal networks behind their dams to spread the water,” Jordan said. This can safely bring them closer to trees, but it also helps “in transporting larger pieces of food and building materials back to their lodge, dam and food cache.”

Although dams protect beavers, they do not dwell within these structures. Instead, they often live in oven-shaped lodges made of sticks, grass, moss and mud built in or on the shore of the ponds their dams created, according to the University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web online database (opens in new tab). In these lodges, they reside in family groups, known as colonies, which are made up of five beavers, on average, the King County page says.

The Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber), which lives in Europe and Asia, is slightly larger than the American beaver. It also builds dams, lodges and canals, a 2020 study in the European Journal of Wildlife Research (opens in new tab) noted

Oven shaped? That’s an odd metaphor. I can imagine the author is referring to dome-like shaped clay ovens in New Mexico but honestly that might not be what pops into the average readers mind when they see this article. I’m not really comfortable with the American people thinking beavers live in a Kitchenaid or Viking… I guess it’s better than saying they live in the dam. (But maybe it’s kind of like out of the frying pan and into the fire…Or out of the beaver dam and into the fryer?)

Beaver dams benefit not only their creators but many other species as well. “Beaver dams help slow water down and keep it on the landscape longer,” Fairfax said. “This transforms simple streams into thriving wetland ecosystems. The amount of food and water available in their wetlands makes them ideal habitat for many different species. That’s part of why beavers are what’s known as a keystone species.”

Ultimately, returning beavers to their original habitats may help reduce the impacts of climate change and benefit their ecosystems in many other ways, Fairfax and Jordan noted in an April 2022 perspectives piece in the journal WIREs Water (opens in new tab).

“When their dams slow water down, some of it gets stored in the soil, where plant roots can access it even during drought,” Fairfax said. “That helps keep vegetation lush, so that when wildfires start, the beaver complexes are uniquely resistant to burning. These fire-resistant patches help preserve intact ecosystems; provide refuge to animals that cannot outrun, fly or swim away from the fire; stabilize river banks post-fire; and help catch and settle out ash and sediment that is suspended in the streams post-fire.”

I just can’t ever get tired of that. That’s the message news organizations should be repeating over and over.

In addition, vegetation from beaver damming can draw the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air and reduce flood damage, the scientists noted. When all this beaver-linked data was examined together, “it was remarkable how well-suited beavers are to not only survive changing climates, but also to accomplish some of the climate change adaptation work we as people have been trying to get done ourselves,” Fairfax said.

“My big takeaway from that is that we are not alone in our efforts to restore ecosystems and build resilience to climate change,” she said. “Beavers, and likely other ecosystem engineers and keystone species, are doing similar things through their own innate abilities. More progress will be made if we work with them rather than against them.”

Hooray! Let’s work with beavers and stop working against them! Let’s hasten along that CDFW toolkit and replace 150 depredation permits a year with flow devices and wrapping trees and installing culvert fences!

Let’s get this show on the road!

“WELL, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact January 7, 2023

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife updated their science page yesterday with a brand new discovery. Brace yourselves. This is going to blow your socks right out the door. I don’t mean to be so shocking so early in the day or so early in the year.

But apparently beavers are good for things.

CDFW beaver management policies get a refresh

Thanks to funding approved in the state budget, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is now in the process of building upon its existing beaver management policies and laying the groundwork for projects that harness beavers’ natural ability to improve California’s ecosystems.

The state budget approved $1.67 million in fiscal year 2022-23 and $1.44 million in fiscal year 2023-24 and ongoing for CDFW’s beaver restoration program.

CDFW is currently hiring five dedicated scientists to work on a comprehensive approach to beaver management. Once hired, staff will work on numerous projects and collaborations including developing a toolkit to help prevent property damage due to beaver activity and to foster co-existence with the keystone species. Staff will also collaborate with partners on ongoing and future restoration projects to relocate beavers into watersheds where their dams can help restore hydrologic connectivity and promote resiliency to climate change and wildfire.

Ooh a tool kit! What do you think it will have in it? The fact that it has taken them 6 months to hire these 5 scientists doesn’t fill me with hope. I guess they were all in shock the first three. You mean these rodents you told us were’t native are USEFUL?

“We’re incredibly excited about the direction the department is going with its beaver restoration program,” said CDFW Deputy Director Chad Dibble.

Anyone paying attention to wildlife in the media recently may be seeing that beavers are having a moment. A recent article in Mother Jones posed the question: “Is it possible that beavers got a publicist?” The article concludes that beavers are finally getting the “rebrand” they deserve. While beavers have always been known for building dams and altering waterways, perhaps less publicly known is the positive impact they have on larger ecosystems surrounding their dams.

“Beaver dams raise groundwater levels and slow down water flow which allows water to seep into the soil and helps create riparian wetlands that support plant, wildlife and habitat growth,” said CDFW Director Chuck Bonham in an Op-ed written for CDFW and published in Outdoor California magazine.

By aiding healthy riparian growth, beaver dams can mitigate drought impacts and support climate change resiliency. The process of increasing fuel moisture and helping larger areas of land retain water can potentially stop or slow the spread of wildfire moving through an area. Beaver dams also improve water quality and help rejuvenate habitat for salmon and aquatic insects.

I’m sure this came as quite a surprise to the average man on the street, but was it really a surprise for YOU??? I mean this is what you do for a living. It is your Raison d’être so to speak. Someone how I expected you to know better.

I remember attending and art commission meeting and one of the commissioners commented that before he had known what a high quality mural was in his office he had asked that it be painted over. He bemoaned that he would NEVER have done such a thing if anyone had simply told him it was valuable before.

It’s not like the man had eyes and could see the art for himself. And its not like fish and game ever had cause to notice that there were way more birds and frogs and otters at beaver ponds before someone instructed them to pay attention.

What do you expect from them anyway?

Over the past several years, CDFW has spent millions of dollars partnering with tribes, NGOs, landowners, and state and federal agencies implementing beaver restoration projects. With its new beaver restoration program, the department is embracing the paradigm shift surrounding beavers and continuing its work to bring together collective knowledge and implement a comprehensive approach to beaver management.

“We’re continuing collaboration with partners and stakeholders, continuing work on restoration sites where we’ve funded beaver dam analogues and continuing to lay the groundwork for re-introduction of beavers in areas where it may have ecosystem benefits. Scientists are confident that beaver restoration has the potential to be a nature-based strategy that can aid in reducing wildfire risk, mitigating drought and combating climate change. It’s another piece of the puzzle as CDFW works to implement solutions to some of our greatest environmental concerns,” said Bonham.

Okay, I’ll grant you the fire research is NEW. And the salmon research is 30 years old so practically new to you. But the DROUGHT effect had to have been obvious all along. And the biodiversity was visible to the cave men so what on God’s green earth has taken you so long???

I guess it’s like the parable of the prodigal son. They should have known better and come around sooner but that’s not the point. Just be glad they got here eventually.