A team led by Ducks Unlimited is currently assessing areas in B.C. where beavers — which were historically over-trapped to make room for engineered dams — could wind up replacing them. (Submitted by Robert Perkins)
Members of a Canadian conservation organization are working on a project to increase biodiversity and healthy wetlands in British Columbia with the help of beavers. Ducks Unlimited Canada is mapping areas in the province where beavers can replace artificial dams once they’ve been decommissioned.
“Beavers are a keystone species,” said Jen Rogers, a master’s student at Simon Fraser University working with Ducks Unlimited Canada. “They’re considered ecosystem engineers.”
“The team is currently assessing areas across the province where beavers were historically over-trapped to make room for engineered dams.”
Many of those artificial structures are now decades old and due to be replaced. The team hopes to restore the beaver population, not only to replace the dams but to provide the added value of restoring biological diversity to the landscape.
Roger Dunlop, a biologist and the manager of lands and natural resources for the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation, says bringing the beavers back would have a positive domino effect on other parts of the ecosystem.
He has been monitoring Gold River water levels since the 1950s and is concerned about the increasingly low levels. He blames the change on reforestation.
“We’ve replaced [old-growth forests] with young, rapidly growing super tree plantations that require much more water,” said Dunlop. The water loss has, in turn, caused a decline in freshwater species, and as warmer months approach, the risk of drought increases.
He says that reintroducing beavers can “rehydrate the landscape,” giving it a break from overuse. Beaver ponds help surrounding land absorb water, allowing it to resist droughts and floods.
“If you think about it, forestry in B.C. is really overgrazing, just at a larger scale,” said Dunlop. “The blades of grass are just trees, right?”
Dunlop says his expertise as a biologist informs his work, as does his identity as a member of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation. He says First Nations communities involving themselves in biodiversity work is important.
“They’re exercising their right to take better management control of this particular landscape that’s really been over-harvested,” he said.
Staff Photo by Olivia Ross / Painted trees are seen along Rosss Landing on Tuesday. The trees were painted with nontoxic latex paint with sand added to deter beavers from chewing on the trees.
Chattanooga beavers are especially eager this year to acquire building materials for their dams from Ross’s Landing, where the city’s Parks and Outdoors Department is taking unusual measures to manage the damage to the trees along the riverfront.
The parks team recently planted new trees along the riverfront at Ross’s Landing, and team members chose to plant bald cypress trees because beavers usually leave those alone. But the trees repeatedly were being damaged or taken down completely, sometimes within 24 hours of planting, city of Chattanooga Parks and Outdoors Communications and Marketing Director Brian Smith said in an email.
The beavers’ chewing can damage or kill the trees and cause them to fall onto the nearby playground and path, making them a safety hazard, he said.
The parks team tried several methods to deter the beavers from gnawing on the trees. Team members put fences around them, but the beavers climbed the fences and continued to chew. Then they put hot sauce on the trees, which kept the beavers from chewing them, but the sauce washed off in the rain.
Park staff cannot trap and relocate the beavers, because according to state law, beavers must be euthanized if trapped, Smith said.
Staff Photo by Olivia Ross / Painted trees are seen along Rosss Landing on Tuesday. The trees were painted with nontoxic latex paint with sand added to deter beavers from chewing on the trees.
The best solution they settled on — which is recommended by the Humane Society of the United States — was to paint the trees using nontoxic interior latex paint diluted with water and mixed with sand, which irritates the beavers’ teeth enough to encourage them to look elsewhere for a snack.
Check out the color of the front of the teeth. Iron makes them strong.
Notice the back of the teeth are white. Not as hard as the front teeth and help maintain a chisel shape
On the left side of the dam is a pond leveler pipe which was put in to bring the pond level down for bank repair work before a large 90 unit hotel was built
Bank work being done
Not the easiest place for wildlife anymore with 4 story hotel being built close to creek/Beaver Pond
It’s not clear yet whether this is one beaver who escaped from elsewhere or a pair who were released by rewilders, but it sounds like a good dam move to me!
A couple whose garden was being vandalised in the night has uncovered a surprising culprit in Wales’ first wild beaver for 400 years.
The dam-building rodent was discovered by a husband and wife who noticed trees going missing and machete-like damage in a field next to their house in Pembrokeshire, west Wales.
Curious about the cause of the damage, the homeowners bought a ‘stealth camera’ which captured footage of the creature swimming in their pond and felling their trees.
The origins of the beaver are unexplained, but the landowners believe it may have come from an unsanctioned release by rewilding enthusiasts.
The rodent has been found living near a rural property where it has started to build itself a lodge under the family’s pond deck.
Nicknamed Anthony by the family – after military historian Antony Beevor – the herbivore has become as ‘fat as a pig’ spending as much as six hours a night chewing tree trunks and dragging branches around.
The discovery is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.
Beavers – which can grow to be the size of a large spaniel – were hunted to extinction in Britain 400 years ago, but have been slowly reintroduced in recent years.
The landowners, who wished to remain anonymous to protect the location of the animal, were ‘astonished’ to discover the herbivore was living behind their house.
They said: ‘Some of our trees began to go missing overnight and others were simply being mauled. It looked like someone was hitting them with a machete.
‘There are no deer in Pembrokeshire, so we couldn’t work out what was causing the damage.
‘The only clue were some teeth marks left in the bark.’
Two weeks after first noticing the damage, the couple decided to buy a £100 stealth camera and leave it out overnight to try and catch the vandal in action.
When they reviewed the footage a week later, they spotted the creature.
‘To our astonishment, the camera showed a beaver swimming around our pond and eating our trees. We couldn’t believe it.
‘Since then, it has cleared quite a few trees and branches.
‘There is nothing subtle about a beaver. They are very easy to spot.’
The closest official colony of beavers to Pembrokeshire is in the Dyfi Estuary over 50 miles away in Mid Wales, where no escapes have been reported.
‘It’s much more likely the beaver has been released in Pembrokeshire by a determined rewilder’, the landowners added.
Since their reintroduction to the country in Argyll in 2009, beaver numbers have been increasing across the UK through enclosed colonies set up by various wildlife trusts.
But this is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.
Other wild populations were discovered in Scotland’s Tay-Forth catchment area, in East Devon’s River Otter and on the Avon near Bristol.
A similar beaver discovery was made in East Devon in 2014, despite there being no reintroduction trials in the area.
Initially, DEFRA planned to remove the beavers, but the Devon Wildlife Trust persuaded them to allow England’s first wild beaver trial.
The trial was successful and in 2020 DEFRA announced the beavers could stay. In October 2022, beavers were protected by law in England.
But in Wales, where environmental law-making is devolved, no such protection exists, and the discovery of a wild beaver could now force the Welsh Government to legislate on the issue.
The Pembrokeshire landowners continued: ‘It looks like the Welsh Government need to legislate or they’ll be in danger of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
‘With so many enclosed beavers around Britain, you wonder how long it will be before there are more escapees.’
The animals, which can live for as long as ten years and weigh up to 30kg, are not universally popular.
In Scotland, where beavers have been so successful many farmers feel their livelihoods are being threatened because beaver dams can flood valuable farmland.
The Scottish Government has even begun issuing licenses to cull them.
But rewilders call this ‘ecosystem engineering’ and highlight the positive effects of wetland creation, providing habitat for animals like otters, water voles, toads, frogs and wildfowl.
This is what makes beavers a ‘keystone species’, in other words, they are the glue that holds a habitat together.
One of Kelowna’s urban beavers is back splish-splashing after being rescued with an injured tail.
The beaver was captured from the Rotary Park Marsh on April 5, after a pedestrian noticed the sick-looking critter and contacted the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (IWRS).
The volunteers jumped into action and took the beaver to a vet to have the abscess drained. While waking up from the sedation, the beaver was given carrots and sweet potato, but she is now back on her regular diet of ‘browse’ such as twigs and other high-growing vegetation, said Eva Hartmann, founder of IWRS and registered veterinarian technician.
Everyday volunteers head out to the bush and pick twigs for the beaver to snack on.
Beavers munch on the tissue layer found just under the bark. Hartmann said the downtown girl in the IWRS’ care only likes to snack on poplar trees. The beaver spat out the Saskatoon berry bush and pine tree twigs that were collected for her. Hartmann laughed and said that she knew beavers preferred poplar and willow trees, but didn’t realize how picky they could be.
A new video was released from the Beaver Institute that is fantastic but they are going to tweak it and re-release it at a later date for now. Just know good things are afoot. Sneak preview my favorite line is that your local beaver pond is your rainforest, and your coral reef. How smart is that? This is a special edit from heidi who came home yesterday and is trying to figure things out.
An interview with Suzanne Fouty and Adam Bronstein
Suzanne Fouty has been exploring the issues of water and the return of wolves in the West for over 30 years, the contributions made by beaver to ecosystems for over 25 years, and the synergy between beavers and wolves in restoring stream systems for over 10 years.
Her work on wolves began in 1990 at Yosemite Institute where she gave weekly presentations to students on the pending return of wolves to the West and some of the social questions in play related to livestock grazing and ranching on public lands and wolves.
She worked for the Forest Service in eastern Oregon as a hydrologist and soils specialist for almost 16 years before retiring in 2018. Since retiring she has been deeply involved in five recent efforts to close federally-managed public lands in Oregon to beaver trapping and hunting as a proactive response to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Suzanne was included in the PBS Nature episode “Leave it to Beavers” and featured in the film “The Beaver Believers.” Her writing and presentations have been primarily for the general public to share how beavers and wolves contribute to preparing communities for climate change via stream and wetland restoration, and the social and political obstacles getting in the way of those contributions.
Adam Bronstein is the director for Oregon and Nevada with Western Watersheds Project, a non-profit conservation organization working to protect and restore public lands and wildlife throughout the West. He is the host of Wilderness Podcast and also serves as board president of the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance in Bozeman, Montana, working to protect the remaining wilderness-quality lands of the Custer-Gallatin National Forest.
Topics
History of Beaver trapping and hunting on public lands
The requested executive order to close federally managed lands to beaver hunting and trapping
Drought and flood management with Beavers on the landscape
Below are some posters that you can post on your favorite social media sites to let more people know about the petition and why it’s important to treat us as a partner and not as a product or problem!
Take a look at the whole article. There’s a recent interview with Ducks Unlimited Canada‘s Jen Rogers and Roger Dunlop from the Mowachat/Muchalaht First Nation by CBC’s Gregor Craigie that you can listen to, plus a couple of links to past posts about how dam important and brilliant we beaver folks are!
Bank work being done
