Month: March 2024

BEAVERS AND BIRDS AND BALDWIN

heidi08 Beavers March 16, 2024

I first met Jeff Baldwin in 2010 at a California Beaver meeting in OAEC where Brock Dolman called on all beaver leaning buddies to gather together and discuss a team plan. The Sierra California paper had just been accepted by the journal of fish and game and was being edited for publication. There was general thought of working on the next one. Kate Lundquist had just started at the water institute on the beaver campaign. It was so long ago there were no beaver books, not Leila’s nor Ben’s nor Frances.

Although there was this website of course.

California Working Beaver Group Meeting at OAEC

Jeff is in the middle of the photo to Brock’s right. He was a student of Suzanne Fouty’s back in the day and the first one I approached about the idea of a California Beaver Summit that really seemed to take it seriously. Because he was the head of the department at Sonoma state he had a certain amount of pull and I remembered being thrilled when he asked for permission for the college to host the conference.

It took a long time for them to decide about the crazy idea of a virtual beaver summit. I tried not to be a pest but for a long time Jeff started every email with an apology for their not being a decision yet. But then there was.

Sonoma State announced that it would host the first California beaver Summit which mean we would have access to their reputation, technology and know how and a zoom account that could host 1000 attendees.

All because of Jeff. Which I offer as a background for saying that Dr Baldwin retired last year and moved back to Oregon. But apparently he has decided not to get off the beaver bandwagon.

AUDUBON SOCIETY/LIBRARY TO HOST BEAVER PRESENTATION

The Umpqua Valley Audubon Society and the Roseburg Public Library will have a presentation on how beavers impact landscapes and improve habitats on Wednesday March 27th at 6:30 p.m.

A City release said the presenter Dr. Jeff Baldwin is an emeritus professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Planning at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. Baldwin will discuss how the beaver changes land and waterscapes, stream suitability for the rodent and their recolonization. He will end with an introduction to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s three-year action plan for beaver-modified landscapes.

I am so glad for Oregon that it has won another team beaver player back, but I am still sorry for California!

The program will be held at the library on NE Diamond Lake Boulevard. It is free and open to the public. For more information, contact library staff at 492-7050 or at: library@cityofroseburg.org

I’m sure it’s going to be an excellent program. If you’re in the area you should definitely seek it out.

SPRING MEANS WE ARE CLOSER TO BABY BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers March 15, 2024

Okay. If it’s going to get warmer and stay light later because it insists on being Spring, then I expect plenty of mornings like this soon.

How many mornings did I spend watching this? Too many to count. Thanks Pam Adams for the reminder,
If you have ever stood there and listened to those plaintive little bleats you know.

That is worth way more than 2 million dollars.
;

BEAVERS WIN IN CALIFORNIA HAIL MARY-SALMON PASS

When we were getting ready for the Beaver Summit I was surprised to hear how glum Michael Pollock felt about the California Salmon population. Something he said about them suggested that whatever we did to help it was probably too late for these fish, IN 2022 they counted only 500,000 crossing back from the ocean.

Historically, an estimated 5.5 million salmon returned to California rivers. Since the 1950s, less than 500,000 fish, on average, are counted.

Last night word dropped that the new grant program will spend 100 a fish. And 4 of every 100 on beavers. I can only wish we spent this money 40 years ago…

California Distributes $50 Million to Boost Salmon Population

SACRAMENTO — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has awarded $50 million in grants for 15 projects to support a diverse array of habitat restoration projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, McCloud River, and wetland and meadow projects statewide.

Several projects will directly support Governor Newsom’s recently released California’s Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future, which outlines six priorities and 71 actions to build healthier, thriving salmon populations in California.

Guess who is one of the biggest winners in this distribution> Go ahead, guess.

$2 Million for CDFW Beaver Restoration Program.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center was awarded $2 million for the California Beaver Coexistence Training and Support Program, a first ever project supporting beaver coexistence for landowners. The project will provide financial and technical support to landowners through a new block grant program and California Beaver Help Desk.

“We are excited that our proposal to create a new California Beaver Coexistence Training and Support Program Proposal was awarded by CDFW,” said Brock Dolman, Co-Director, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute. “Our program will allow landowners and tenants to share in the climate-smart and nature-based benefits of living with beavers. This is an exciting win-win for people, beavers and habitats across California.”

2 Million dollars for a beaver program designed to help landowners coexist and keep their streams open for salmon. Thats a heck of a lot of money. That works out to be something like 30000 per county. I guess more because not every county has salmon.

For context the entire budget of CDFW’s beaver restoration was only 2.7 million. They were supposed to use that to educate as well.

I’m guessing they decided to subcontract.

CDFW Awards OAEC Grant to Create Beaver Coexistence Program

The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute is humbled and excited to announce that we have been awarded a $2 million block grant to develop a program to build California’s capacity for successful beaver coexistence implementation.

WATER Institute Co-Director Kate Lundquist said, “This is an immense honor to have been selected by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to receive this award. We are grateful for this opportunity to work with trusted partners at the Beaver Institute to create a comprehensive education and block grant program. A first in the state, this program will provide accessible coexistence information, trainings for installers, and technical and financial assistance to landowners to facilitate the best possible outcome for beavers and humans alike.”

WATER Institute Co-Director Brock Dolman noted, “The development of this program couldn’t come at a better time for California. With the implementation of CDFW’s 2023 Beaver Depredation Policy requiring landowners to implement feasible nonlethal corrective actions to prevent future beaver damage, the program will provide resources to those seeking to mitigate damage while still receiving the ecological benefits from beaver activity.”

Congratulations to our Beaver Buddies at OAEC which I imagine are going to have a very busy time pulling this helpdesk together,

CO-EXISTENCE IS KEY

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Who's saving beavers now? March 13, 2024

Thank Goodness! The dry spell is over and we finally have good beaver news to report, This time from West Virginia!

As Beavers Return To W.Va. Wetlands, Conservationists Promote Coexistence

Donning rain boots and gloves, volunteers trudged across a Charles Town wetland Tuesday to prepare the habitat for a pair of unexpected residents.

Jefferson County’s Cool Spring Preserve is currently home to at least two beavers, possibly mates, according to local conservationists. If trail camera photos did not offer proof enough, their presence is made clear through bite marks on trees and a growing number of dams in Bullskin Run, the local stream.

Beavers are native to wetlands across North America, including those in West Virginia. But they were hunted to near-extinction during the 18th century fur trade. With fewer people hunting them for their pelts, beavers are growing in population across the continent. According to many conservationists, that’s a good thing.

Alison Zak serves as founder and executive director of the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund. The group develops nonlethal strategies to manage beaver populations across the mid-Atlantic.

Zak said that beavers play a key role in bolstering biodiversity, storing groundwater and filtering pollutants in wetland ecosystems. But they also bring what she describes as “beaver problems,” which fall into two main categories: flooding and tree damage.

When beavers build dams, they can redirect the flow of water and prompt flooding. This can disturb roadways and personal property, so conservationists often fence off culverts so beavers cannot disrupt the flow of water with their dams.

Hurray for the Human Coexistence fund. I can’t believe Joe Manchin’s state is wrapping trees for beavers. That tickles my nose like champagne.

Beavers can also chew trees that protect rivers from erosion, as well as saplings planted as part of reforestation efforts. In response, conservationists build wire fences around the bases of trees that need to be protected from local beavers.

That is what brought a team of volunteers onto the preserve Tuesday: to help build fences that ensure trees and beavers can coexist in West Virginia and to strengthen wetland ecosystems.

“A lot of people aren’t aware beavers are around unless, all of a sudden, they come across very obvious signs of beavers, maybe even causing problems on their property,” Zak said. “But also, we’re seeing an increase in tolerance toward beavers, and people wanting to use nonlethal management and wanting to coexist.”

Tuesday’s volunteers placed new wire frames around the bases of trees with overly tight fences or no fences at all. They took particular care to cover saplings, and to give trees enough space to grow freely.

KC Walters, associate director of conservation at Potomac Valley Audubon Society, organized Tuesday’s event. She said that coexistence strategies like these help people come together to solve environmental problems.

“It’s not just conservation, and not just about the relationship with wildlife,” she said. “It’s also about the relationships of the human organizations that exist in keeping us all working together for a common goal.”

Zak said she hopes volunteers left Tuesday’s event with a better understanding of how conservation works.

“I hope they got a little taste of how complex it can be, but how also doable it is,” she said.

Getting audubon involved is smart work. They want those trees for nesting grounds and are motivated to learn about anything that increases the bird population. Good work Alison!

WORSE THAN WILDFIRES

heidi08 Beavers March 12, 2024

Lets say, and why not, that long ago there was a vicious cabal loose in a New York city that as part of a get-rich-quick scheme released a megaton of noxious gasses into central park that was strong enough to kill every living thing in the area plus most of the state. And after a terrifying task force meeting the attending swat team, struggling to find a solution, came up with a magical freeze ray that would suspend the toxic gas in fumes over the tree line and there by allow people to be safe forever. Or almost forever.

In fact folks were so safe from the toxins that as years passed they forgot about them and no one even remembered how important the freeze ray was to their safety.

So no one was watching when the three year old came toddling in that for some reason turned off the freeze ray thus melting the toxins and releasting a cataclysm threatening everything in the area for miles around.

Do you think there would be news articles saying that the three year old had destroyed humanity and was more devastating than forest fires?

Beaver expansion into Alaska’s Arctic tundra presents problems for people, but also opportunities

Satellite images that have tracked beaver expansion over time clearly show not just the number of dams but their drastic impacts, said Ken Tape, the UAF ecology professor who is leading the A-BON program. He pointed to one site as an example. “It basically changes from a little stream into a sprawling wetlands,” he said.

The proliferation of beavers is attributed to the northward spread of woody plants that they eat and use for their dams and lodges.

While climate change has enabled beavers to live farther north, the animals are exacerbating the effects of Arctic climate change. Through their dam and lodge engineering, they are inundating some areas with water, speeding up permafrost thaw. Elsewhere, they are drying out areas.

Beavers can be as disruptive to the tundra ecosystem as wildfires are, Tape and his colleagues have concluded.

Worse than wildfires I bet, Because fires go out eventually and beavers just keep spreading north. Brace your self. It gets worse.

We’re surrounded by beaver lodges,” said Ralph Ramoth of Selawik, an Inupiat village about 90 miles east of Kotzebue.

Beaver structures have blocked access to traditional areas for duck hunting and berry-picking, and they’ve created barriers on creeks where fish used to spawn, Ramoth said. They have affected water quality as well, he said.

“When I was young, you used to be able to drink the water out of the river. Nowadays you don’t,” he said. Those who try, he said, get stomach distress. “People call it ‘beaver fever,’” he said, referring to the unpleasant intestinal infection caused by the parasite giardia.

ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!! The beaver fever myth made even more credible by the fact that it is retold by a Native American! The misunderstanding that beaver live in the dams! That dams block fish!

Good Lord.

There is evidence that such pulses are already underway. Work led by UAF researcher Jason Clark detected hotspots of methane emissions from Northwest Alaska beaver ponds. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and is known to be produced from permafrost thaw. The discovery of “is an example of a new disturbance regime, wrought by an ecosystem engineer, accelerating the effects of climate change in the Arctic,” said the 2023 study, which was coauthored by Tape, Jones and others at UAF, along with scientists from the National Park Service and the California Institute of Technology.

There are related effects. Though studies are preliminary, there is evidence that beavers are contributing to higher mercury levels in the water systems — and thus in fish populations. Permafrost thaw releases natural elemental mercury that is stored in frozen peat, and beavers stimulate that thaw. Additionally, the beavers may be inadvertently helping to convert that elemental mercury into methylmercury, the form that is most dangerous to people and animals.

Got that? Beavers are releasing METHANE and METHYL MERCURY into the air and water. They will make us sick and make our fish sick and speed up global warming.

Never mind that psychotic cabal all those years ago who put the shit into the air in the first place. Its the beavers fault!!!

Evidence, mostly from outside of Alaska, shows that beaver lodges and dams can create habitat for other species, from insects to birds to predators. Research into that is continuing through the A-BON program; one project, explained by UAF graduate student Sebastian Zavoico, is using sound recorders to track bird diversity at recently established Alaska beaver sites.

Never mind that false research or that very INTERSTING bird study about beaver pond. Beavers are BAD BAD BAD. They cause climate change and giardia.