A WIN, WIN, WIN FOR CALGARY

heidi08 Beavers June 10, 2024

Our friends at Cows and Fish in Alberta have done it again, this time along a popular road in Bragg.

Bragg Creek beaver problem be damned! Groups turn flood risk into coexistence opportunity

‘We want to be able to live alongside of the beavers,’ says head of Elbow River Watershed Partnership

From the gravel on Mountain Road you can see the beaver’s work. There’s pools of water held back by stacks of twigs and branches. And headed into the thick of the woods, more of these animal-made dams.

It’s a pretty sight cast against the West Bragg Creek scenery.

The beavers really settled into the region after the 2013 flood. When these well-meaning engineers move in, they start working. Beavers are a bit compulsive: they hear flowing water, and have to block it up.

And while it’s great for wildlife and fish — fire, flood and drought resilience — it can be a bit of a headache.

“They created one dam which really threatened to flood our Mountain Road,” said Bragg Creek Trails crew lead Michele White.

I’m starting to get a very good feeling about this story. Are you getting a very good feeling about this story?

Bragg Creek Trails has worked hard to carve and keep up trails in the West Bragg Creek Day Use Area. And one of the key roads through, Mountain Road, is kind of like the collector road for all the loops and trails around it.

Quickly, a company was hired to bring loads of gravel and build the road up enough to keep it out of harm’s way. But that fix wasn’t going to be a permanent one. White said it was pretty clear the beavers would eventually dam again.

“The beavers were really industrious. Their families were growing so they were creating more dams,” she said.

At this point, typically the beavers would be relocated, their dams destroyed. It’s a common practice for land owners who see them as pests, easy to remove and difficult to live with.

Um. no that never happens in Alberta. They don’t go to live on the farm, Timmy.

But White said Bragg Creek Trails wanted to find another way.

Meetings between Alberta Parks, The Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society, also known as “Cows and Fish”, and the Elbow River Watershed Partnership started. Together these experts had ideas about how to coexist with the beavers.

They settled on a pond-leveller: a pipe that’s installed upstream, shrouded with metal grate fencing, and wedged into the top of the dam.

Hurray for clever people that solve problems instead of just killing them!

“We want to be able to live alongside of the beavers, let them continue with their good work and then we can still enjoy the landscape from whatever perspective it is,” said the Elbow River Watershed Partnership’s executive director, Flora Giesbrecht.

“From this lens, it’s for recreation and then access for some of the infrastructure and especially in the winter, this road is very popular.”

Giesbrecht has seen some land owners embrace coexistence. Something she and all the groups helping today want to see more of.

Approvals for this kind of thing take time, several years in this case.

Grant money helped buy supplies, but the labour — that’s all volunteer work.

Riparian specialist Kerri O’Shaughnessy with Cows and Fish used the opportunity to teach the volunteers how it’s done.

Letting beavers stick around and do their good work for creeks and biodjversjty. I’m loving this.

As an added bonus, her crash-course will help get the Bragg Creek pond-leveller installed

“We’re doing it as a workshop and a learning opportunity for some interested like-minded organizations that are looking to do similar things in coexisting with beavers wherever they’re working,” she said.

They bend the fence into shape, cut sharp ends off, more bending. Once all the pieces are ready, the contraption is walked to the water, and waded into place.

“So once it’s in, if all goes well, we’re not going to see it at all, it’s gonna be underwater and it’ll be sort of like a permanent leak through the dam,” she said. “That is going to be good for beaver habitat, fish habitat as well as help mitigate the road issue.”

Keeping the beavers. Keeping the road. AND teaching others while you do it

I call that a Win, Win, Win.

“LET IT BEAVER’

heidi08 Beavers June 9, 2024

Here at last is the mural Amy will be chalking at the festival. Expect to be impressed.

STAIRWAY TO BEAVER HEAVEN

heidi08 Beaver Chewing June 8, 2024

These photos were shared by Peter Pappas in Vermont yesterday and then re-posted on the New England Wildlife page. He had this to say about them:

Vermont. Beavers hard at work. Changing water levels encouraged beavers to do their chewing along length of fallen log I believe:

or the

For the record, we’ve talked about it and think he might be right. The differe t heights or “Stairs” might be because of water level changes. We have watched young kits practice chewing by all gnawing on a different part of the trunk at once in the water, bit this seems different.

Let me just take this moment to exclaim how MUCH I love beavers.

OREGON NEEDS TO SAVE THE WATER-SAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact June 7, 2024

We are just in time for the very best op ed about beavers that I have ever seen, and that includes mine in the SF Chronicle! Read every word of this, by Adam Bronstein of the Western Watersheds Project.

Protecting Oregon’s state animal would go far to help Beaver State

It is a truly sad state of affairs here in the Beaver State: Our salmon stocks are struggling mightily, biodiversity is crashing under the weight of human activities, climate change is accelerating, drought is greatly affecting regional agriculture and wildfires threaten our communities every summer.

But there is a nature-based solution that could help. Protecting our state animal could greatly assist human and wildlife communities adapt to the many challenges we face. The wetlands and habitats that beavers create work all sorts of magic for us – free of charge.

The issue is, we keep killing these beneficial animals rather than embracing their effective restoration potential as a recreational activity under the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s furbearer regulations.

Shazam! Right into the headlights. Tell it to us Adam!

The department has not budged in years past to protect beaver populations by making necessary changes to the furbearer regulations. But we have another chance this year.

In 2024, less than 200 beaver hunters and trappers are depriving 4.2 million citizens of Oregon critical-beaver benefits. Among the millions includes hundreds of thousands of hunters and anglers in the state (I am a hunter and angler myself) who would see greatly expanded fish and game populations due to habitat expansion if beavers were protected.

The mission of the department is to “protect and enhance Oregon’s fish and wildlife and their habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations.” I cannot think of a single action that the commission can take to “protect and enhance our fish and wildlife more than to close federal lands to beaver hunting and trapping and let these creatures improve wild habitats. The department is currently abdicating their responsibilities, and in the process, depriving the public of expanded ecosystem services by failing to take action in the past.

If you helped beavers beavers could help YOU do a better job.

Opponents of this change like to claim that just 3% of beavers are killed on public lands, a number so low it is not worthy of concern. But every beaver matters, particularly individuals that colonize new watersheds. The take of just one pair of beavers can impede the recovery across an entire watershed for decades. As it stands today, thousands of Oregon’s rivers and streams are unoccupied by beavers and thousands of rivers and streams are listed as “impaired” under the federal Clean Water Act.

Commission meeting

The commission will discusss the state’s furbearer regulations on June 14. To comment virtually or in-person, email ODFW.Commission@odfw.oregon.gov, noting you want to talk about furbearer regulations and include your name, email and phone number. Submit written comments to the same email, with “Furbearer regulations” in the subject line. For more information, check the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife webpage.

Beavers should not be considered as just another species to be managed for recreational purposes by the department. They are the keystone of keystone species and should be protected to assist in species recovery and expansion, and also as a matter of state and national security.

A forthcoming literature review authored by the Oregon Natural Desert Association – set for public release to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission on June 14 – demonstrates how critical beaver-created and modified habitats are to fish and wildlife. In the Oregon Conservation Strategy, 43 species of greatest conservation need – those that need action now to prevent their further decline – are listed as federally threatened or endangered. Forty-four percent of these species could benefit from expanding beaver populations. Additionally, out of 159 species of greatest conservation need identified by the department, up to 111 species, or 70%, could benefit from more beavers on the landscape.

Think of “Beaver Management” Like “Water Management”. An extremely valuable resource that we need to plan for and take into account. You are lucky to have them.

Since 2020, conservation groups and scientists have been submitting information and formal requests to close federally managed public lands to hunting and trapping. Despite our previous unsuccessful attempts, we beaver believers are not going anywhere.

In late May, over 40 conservation groups submitted this letter requesting that commissioners vote to “enact a closure to beaver trapping and hunting on federally managed public lands amending OAR 635-050-0070 with a report to the commission documenting the ecosystem effects, including to water resources and to fish and wildlife populations after 10 years.” A similar request to the commission to close beaver hunting and trapping on federally managed public lands was submitted to the commission by a coalition of Oregon scientists on the grounds of accelerating climate-driven droughts and wildfires and biodiversity losses.

Fish and wildlife staff recommend that the commission approve maintaining the status quo – allow beaver trapping and hunting to continue on federal managed public lands as a recreational activity. And yet staff also state in the information it has prepared for the commission that the “the Furbearer Program is also committed to implementing the department’s Action Plan for Beaver Modified Landscapes which outlines specific goals and actions the department is implementing over 36 months (August 2022 – 2025) to protect and restore beaver habitat and beaver-modified habitat.”

However, you cannot protect and restore beaver habitat and beaver-modified habitat if you continue to allow beavers to be killed as a recreational activity.

We need all hands on deck. As they say, democracy is not a spectator sport.

You can’t save water without the watersavers. You can’t save biodiversity without beavers.

Period.