Artist Ray Cirino offers this recent creation I thought you’d want to see.He’s the muralist and chalk artist that has worked with the beaver brigade in the past.
I was happy to see this meeting got attention, especially in the Bay Area. This is from the Bay City News, which has always been a good friend to our beavers in Martinez.
California state agencies are taking a new approach to beaver management in the state to prioritize conservation of the ecologically important species as they call upon Californians to be “beaver believers.”
To support beaver conservation and enable California’s ecosystem to benefit from their activity, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is partnering with native tribes, non-governmental organizations, private landowners and other state and federal agencies.
At a panel discussion Wednesday, beaver researchers and members of the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spoke about the history of beavers in California and their beaver restoration project.
Hurray! Now lets all fold are arms and carefully observe what happens because I’ve seen more than one agency get undeserved credit for major rebranding that didn’t produce any major changes whatsoever.
At the center of the state’s approach is helping public and private landowners meet their resource management goals through implementing beaver coexistence measures, mimicking habitats in places where beavers had not yet returned and relocating in cases where coexistence failed, said Occidental Arts and Ecology Center WATER Institute director Kate Lundquist, who works on the project.
Although beavers play a key role in the health of watersheds, as they provide erosion control and maintenance of stream flows during a dry summer period by building dams, they were not always appreciated in California.
The industrial fur trade saw beavers as a commodity and contributed to them being wiped out of California waters at high rates, according to Ben Goldfarb, conservation journalist and author of “Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers.”
This caused ecological damage that “permanently shaped North American landscapes” as streams suffered catastrophic erosion, wetlands dried up and rivers disconnected from their floodplains, Goldfarb said.
Go Ben! Do you ever stop an and about how crazy lucky beavers are to have had a writer like Ben tell their story? Lottery lucky, that;’s how. Do you know he has an article in the Atlantic this month?
“Few states need beavers more than California,” Goldfarb said.
The Tule River Indian Tribe of California is one tribe that is striving to get its beavers back. They are hoping to revive the watershed on their reservation that has suffered since the drought in 2014.
“Our beaver culture and history go back a long way,” said Kenneth McDarment, a member of the Tule River Indian Tribe of California who added that the tribe’s pictographs featuring beavers date back to 500 to 1,000 years.
“Elders that we still have on the reservation talk about beavers that were on different locations of the reservation when they were kids,” McDarment said.
Well the wheels are in motion now. Let’s all watch what happens from here.
You know there used to be a recurring skit on the Muppet show about a Star Trek-type crew of an unexpected species and their adventures. You might remember it was called “PIGS IN SPACE”
Of course beavers are so important hey would be welcomed at NASA. Why the hell not?
Ecologists and ranchers alike know that rivers and streams with healthy beaver populations support more biodiversity, are more drought resilient, and keep water available on the land for more days of the year. But witnessing the impact of nature’s engineers on a single stream is easier than measuring it across a region, or choosing which of a hundred streams is an ideal site to reintroduce beavers.
Now a NASA-supported effort in Idaho adds remote sensing data to the suite of tools used to predict which streams can support beavers and to monitor how water and vegetation change once they return.
OOOH I can guess where this is going from here. Straight up!
NASA Collaborates with Conservationists
While working on water monitoring for ranchers, scientists Jodi Brandt and Nick Kolarik heard about “beaver fever.” Ranchers had gone from seeing beavers as a nuisance to recruiting them onto their land. Brandt is now an associate professor of human-environment systems at Boise State University, and Nick Kolarik is her Ph.D. student. Brandt leads a team using NASA’s Earth observation data to help quantify how beavers can have an outsized and positive impact on local ecosystems. She works with Wally Macfarlane and Joe Wheaton, both at Utah State University, who developed the Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT).
The team is focusing on Idaho and nearby regions because, while wet ecosystems comprise only 5% of the landscape, those areas are critical for more than 90% of species living in the area during the dry season. Brandt’s team collaborates with dozens of local fish and wildlife organizations, watershed managers, land trusts, conservation and restoration NGOs, and individual ranchers.
Adding water and vegetation data from NASA missions to their process addresses two major challenges: how to quantify change over time and how to consistently monitor large areas.
The whole thing is visible on this lovely video, which I must insist you watch all the way through.
NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing missions collect data across large areas of the world and pass over the same areas regularly and across seasons. Researchers can observe an area in real time and also look back to previous weeks, months, or even years. In the case of Brandt’s team, the scientists are turning data from Earth science missions like Landsat and Sentinel into information that more people can understand and use.
Cory Mosby of Idaho Fish and Game is excited about how satellite data can expand his crew’s ability to the monitor miles of waterways across his state. What they’re looking to establish, he says, is more vegetation. Or, as he puts it, “more green groceries” to support wildlife and livestock.
When spring snow melts in Idaho, if there’s no interruption, the water flows straight over the land, down the rivers, and into the ocean. When beaver build dams across streams, they naturally disperse and hold water on the land longer, which supports more plants and creates habitats like ponds and meadows. Mosby said that restored ecosystems provide better places to live for aquatic species—like salmon and trout—and land creatures—like sage grouse and mule deer. The dams also create more fresh drinking water and better grazing land for cattle, and they make the landscape more resilient to fire and drought.
According to Mosby, remote sensing data helps them monitor more areas and quantify those positive changes. “We’re going to see a wider green vein later into the year and we will see more water later in the season.”
You know, its crazy how beavers do that. Once I knew a girl who watched every day when they moved right into her grubby little urban stream and the place turned into a lush green wildlife park. It was wild.
Data Supports People on the Ground
“The real value of using satellite data for monitoring is that there are people on the ground working hard and implementing things like increasing water availability, increasing fish and species habitat,” Brandt said. “The more support we can give them, the more broadly these practices can proliferate.”
The current project runs through 2025 and aims to make the tools easy to use for a variety of decision makers. Beyond that, the team has their sights set on expanding to nearby states that have similar terrain and water management strategies.
Just add some beavers here and here and here and everything will be fine. Or better yet, instead of ADDING them, you could just let them stick around in the first place!
I’m not a scientist at NASA or anything, but it seems to make sense to me!
House Bill 3464, affectionately known as the Beaver Believer Bill, is on Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk and will take effect upon her signature. Watchers of the bill say that action by the governor is expected soon.
The bill, passed by the Legislature in June, provides increased protections for beavers on private property by shifting their management from agricultural regulators to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Opponents of the bill, however, say beaver dams are destructive to agricultural areas and that removing them from private property protects valuable crops.
Whooo hoo! Waiting for the beaver bill! You might remember that in Oregon beavers are classified both as a fur bearer, and as a “predator”. Which means on private lands they can be killed without even a permit,
A critical component of HB 3464 is that it requires landowners to get a permit from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife before killing a beaver or beaver family under certain conditions.
“In doing so it opens the door to a possible conversation between landowners and ODFW staff on possible non-lethal coexistence methods before resorting to lethal measures,” said Sristi Kamal, deputy director for the Western Environmental Law Center.
To say this has been a long time a coming is to vastly underrate how long people have been working towards this goal. The very first State of the Beaver Conference I attended folks were frustrated by the compromise of allowing dual status and felt that it been cop-out by ODFW. That was 2009. The issue has been through several rounds of negotiation since then with them always being a hair away from protecting our heroes at the last minute. Now the bill will make it real.
Across the state, beavers can play an important role in maintaining ecosystem health, scientists say. Their dams create wetlands and improve the health of riparian habitats, they also mitigate the impacts of drought and make ecosystems more resilient in the face of wildfire.
“Beavers create and maintain wetlands, wet meadows, and ponds which are natural fire breaks. These areas provide refuge for livestock and wildlife during fires and habitat post-fire,” said Kamal.
According to Kamal, beaver habitats are more stable and less sensitive to short-term climate variability because they contain reservoirs of surface and groundwater that buffer habitats from drought. They also create conditions for groundwater recharge to occur during flooding.
“Central Oregon is rich in streams and rivers,” said Kamal. “When these rivers and streams are connected to their floodplains it improves their water quality and quantity, supports species conservation such as salmon, and bolsters carbon sequestration.”
Beavers mainly exist in areas of broadleaf riparian vegetation, including places where willow, alder and aspen trees are found.
The Ochoco National Forest is one area historically occupied by beaver populations. The animals were removed in the late 1800s and once they disappeared, wet meadows dried up, according to Kassidy Kern, a spokesperson for the Ochoco National Forest.
Kern said her agency is encouraging dispersal and new occupancy of beavers in the Ochocos. She expects beavers will move into new areas and improve wetland habitat in parts of the national forest.
“We have been encouraging beavers to re-colonize wet meadows over the decades through habitat improvement projects. When our wet meadows function appropriately, they act as giant cold water sponges holding water on the landscape year-round,” she said.
It’s not rocket science. Beavers do good things for Oregon. So we have this crazy idea that we should keep them around and use a thimbleful of caution when we decide to kill them. Makes sense to me.
Reese Mercer, the founder of Western Beavers Cooperative, a group that supports beaver recovery, said private landowners in Crook County already work with state wildlife management agencies when managing wildlife so the new rules won’t be a big change when it comes to dealing with beavers. But Mercer worries how beavers will be treated under the new rules and she discourages relocation of beavers as a solution.
“Beaver relocation has low, long-term success and is stressful and often deadly to the beavers,” she said, adding that changes habitat improvements on private lands can help mitigate conflict between people and beavers.
“Infrastructure adaptation and mitigation solutions as the best way to address beaver conflicts,” she said.
Well well well I like everything about this article. And I LOVE what Reese has to say on the subject. Fingers crossed the governor will sign it soon.
House Bill 3464, affectionately known as the Beaver Believer Bill, is on Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk and will take effect upon her signature. Watchers of the bill say that action by the governor is expected soon.
