Everything is beginning to look a lot like festival time. This week is a smorgisbord of commitments. some of them exciting and some just necessary. I sent the designs for the brochure off to designer Terre Dunivant  last week, god willing she can make sense of it and still is willing to help us. I also heard for sure from the children’s chorus that they are up for the big event and on their way t0 help us. They asked UnConcord to loan their keyboard and offered for children as some excellent bodhran players should the Irish group want them. It felt very communal.

Let’s hope it  all stitches together seamlessly.

I was a young girl I think the first time I read about the evil Patagonian Beavers that were killing all the trees and ruining everything, I even remember some lawyers from Canada saying they had gotten larger and were eating fish,  Apparently the Nazi-get-rich scheme of the 40’s had wreaked holy havoc on the landscape because in South America beavers have no natural predators.

Um…7 kinds of cayman? Maned Wolf? Oh well there was a problem because beaver chewed trees don;t coppice in South America. Or something.

This article made me laugh and laugh.

Beavers mean bigger trout

As it turns out, when both beavers and trout are exported halfway across the world, the beneficial relationship continues. The American beaver and the European brown trout have both been introduced in South America, and where beavers and trout occur together at the southern tip of that continent, the trout turn out to be bigger. In southern Chile’s Tierra del Fuego region, biologists have proven that introduced brown trout are direct beneficiaries of the construction activities of the introduced beavers.

According to a study put forth by Oregon State University researcher Ivan Arismendi, non-native brown trout living in Tierra del Fuego waters grow 14 percent faster when they live in watersheds where introduced beavers are present and active. Arismendi is originally from Chile but has been based in Corvallis since 2007.

“We show that beavers indirectly help with the growth of trout, potentially improving their survival,” said Arismendi, an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

Well well well. those darn beavers are making things nicer for the trout which also shouldn’t be there!

As it turns out, when both beavers and trout are exported halfway across the world, the beneficial relationship continues. The American beaver and the European brown trout have both been introduced in South America, and where beavers and trout occur together at the southern tip of that continent, the trout turn out to be bigger. In southern Chile’s Tierra del Fuego region, biologists have proven that introduced brown trout are direct beneficiaries of the construction activities of the introduced beavers.

According to a study put forth by Oregon State University researcher Ivan Arismendi, non-native brown trout living in Tierra del Fuego waters grow 14 percent faster when they live in watersheds where introduced beavers are present and active. Arismendi is originally from Chile but has been based in Corvallis since 2007.

The outcomes, even in a locale where neither animal is native, are similar to those where both trout and beavers occur naturally. Beaver activity, according to the study, helps create better habitat for more energy-rich food sources that trout are known to eat. With more food, naturally, comes more growth for the trout. Even in remote Tierra del Fuego, where both the brown trout and the beavers are introduced from disparate parts of the world, this is a thriving relationship.

According to the study, which was published this month in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution, trout living in waters where beavers had constructed dams are more likely to have larger sources of food available to them — amphibians like frogs, toads and salamanders also thrive in the slower waters of beaver-altered streams, and they provide a source of food that’s much more rare in naturally free-flowing streams in the region.

But wait, I thought they were very very bad. Are you sure they’re helping trout?

Beaver dams create profound changes in streams enhancing the input and retention of organic matter, nutrients, and other elements,” the study reads. “The greater availability of food resources and suitable habitat for trout in sympatry is most likely related to the physical modifications caused by beavers. The higher macroinvertebrate production in sympatry is supported by evidence from sites where beaver are native and introduced. Higher macroinvertebrate production provides a key food source that is used by introduced trout and native fishes and it may influence their observed higher growth rates, as is also seen in North America.”

 

 

 

Well would you  look at that! The beaver restoration team is holding a public meeting in 12 days! And you are ALL invited!

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) invites the public to attend its Beaver Restoration Informational Meeting via webinar on Thursday, May 25, from 2 to 3 p.m. This meeting marks the first in a series of informational meetings and workshops intended to inform stakeholders and the public about CDFW’s beaver management efforts and activities.

Meeting details, agenda and instructions for attendance will be published in advance of the event on CDFW’s beaver web page. Please check the beaver web page about a week prior to the event.

What do you know! Only 15 years and 6 months after Martinez held it’s first beaver meeting the California Deparment of beavers might be native and might not be just a nuisance is leaping to the fray. I can’t help sounding sarcastic but I’m REALLY REALLY pleased!

The meeting will provide a broad overview of CDFW’s Beaver Restoration Program, including its purpose, objectives, tasks and timelines. Additionally, the meeting will address the implementation of pilot and future beaver translocation projects, development of a beaver co-existence toolkit and policy updates. The meeting will conclude with a public question and answer session. Future public workshops will be scheduled to discuss human-beaver coexistence strategies and the process for developing and requesting beaver translocation projects.

Wow that’s a pretty big agenda for one hour. But you can bet I’ll be there taking notes. I don’t know what we’re in for in this brave new beaver world, but it can’t be worse than where we’ve been the last 150 years.  so I’m looking forward to it.

To sign up for the meeting you have to check the beaver page on CDFW in the next week or so. I will make sure to share the sign up as soon as I see it.

Have you been hearing the stories about the Mercury at the train station? Apparently it was discovered in a box dumped at the garbage and the garbage truck picked it up and spread it all over town and on the bridges that cross Alhambra Creek right where the beavers used to live. Oh, I am personally having a moment of relief that they aren’t living there right now

What I am impressed by is that the new mayor of Martinez wrote me personally and asked me about dangerous conditions for the creek, and if I would contact the other creek people so we could possibly get them on the agenda to discuss the Mercury. If the last mayor and the beavers were still here, he would be rubbing his hands together in delight to get rid of them but Brianne Zorn takes this very seriously so that is very good news.

Igor has some great suggestions about what we should do to test for mercury near the storm drains the fall into the creek. He also said that Mercury isn’t truly hazardous until it becomes methyl mercury and we should deal with it before that stage.

Stay tuned.

Garbage truck spread waste from Martinez mercury spill, residents advised to avoid walking parts of downtown

Health officials warn people against walking on these Martinez streets due to mercury contamination