THERE’S A REASON THEY CALL IT A ‘KEYSTONE’

heidi08 Beavers September 30, 2024

Some articles are so good they do not need me to cover them or clarify points at all.

Beaver Moves Into Family’s Creek and Brings Entire Ecosystem to Canadian Backyard

Beavers are often called a “keystone” species, which in environmental terms means a species that is vital to the health and sustainability of a particular ecosystem, and without which, the health and nature of a given ecosystem will change drastically. (Of course, the more understanding we have of our natural environment, the more we realize that nearly everything works in harmony.)

One of the most widely-understood and studied keystone species is the beaver, whose extinction in many places of the world due to over-hunting for its fur as well as human development vastly changed the landscape. Beavers have been reintroduced in various places in the world today and its numbers in North America have rebounded to a healthy number, though it’s still only a fraction of the hundreds of millions originally thought to inhabit the continent.

Are you paying attention yet?

In this video, a Canadian family discovers the enormous difference that even a single beaver can have on their backyard stream. For after the beaver moves in and begins building its damn, much larger creatures come to take advantage of the watering hole the beaver has created.

Ok. Here is the best video of one of the young moose and its weird bird friend.

Every video over the last three days this bird has been lurking or interacting with this moose.

What do we think??? https://t.co/ekskX03z4M pic.twitter.com/qMgzNmMi7D

— Bunsen, BEAKER, and Bernoulli (@bunsenbernerbmd) September 25, 2024

How a Keystone Species Works

As everyone knows, beavers build damns and lodges in stream beds. This is in order to create deeper pools, which provide them with a habitat to swim in as well as protect them from predation by large species. The entrances to their lodges are usually submerged and hidden, which keeps them safe from predators and provides a place to store food.

Their activity has a great cascading effect on the entire environment around them. The foraging they do as well as cutting down small saplings helps small bird and rodent species with their own foraging and feeding opportunities. The deadwood they leave behind becomes a host to many beneficial insects, which also form a food supply for birds and rodents. Many smaller mammals will make their homes in beaver lodges or in wood left behind by beavers. Additionally, the deeper pools become homes to a remarkable away of aquatic and amphibian life, as well as attracting larger animals to the watering holes.

That’s what you see in this video—a juvenile moose attracted to the pool area above the damn. In drought conditions, beaver dams like this are vital to creating sources of drinking waters for larger animals like moose.

And the moose, in turn, is helping another animal find a meal—but don’t worry, you’ll be happy about this one.

I believe its something like this:

A whole moose family regularly visits this family’s backyard now, a move the woman who owns the property calls “an absolute Canadian stereotype.” Furthermore, when the juvenile moose comes to cool off in the water, he is often accompanied by a. Persistent magpie, who flits around his head and shoulders. But why?

Well, it’s another example of an entire ecosystem. See, magpies eat ticks, and moose often have them. It’s very common for insect-eating birds to follow around large ungulates like moose, elk, and deer, because they see them as a bug buffet.

All of these lives, big and small, are being made possible by what one little beaver is doing in a Canadian backyard.

Just imagine what a beaver will do in YOUR backyard. Or your city!

THE GOLDEN STATE SIGNS WITH BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers September 29, 2024

Great news. On Friday California Gavin Newsom signed the Beaver Bill which means that the beaver restoration changes to CDFW a couple years ago are going to become policy and stick around, regardless of who happens to be in charge.

I imagine the signing ceremony looked something like this:

You can read more about it here:

Assembly Bill 2196 codifies the state’s new Beaver Restoration Program.

SACRAMENTO – Unanimous votes of both the California State Assembly and Senate propelled Assembly Bill 2196 to the Governor’s desk, and last night Gavin Newsom signed the legislation. This successful effort follows more than a year of strategic advocacy by Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, the bill’s sponsor, dozens of organizational and tribal partners, and, importantly, the bill’s author, Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael).

I guess we’re not totally surprised he signed it because it was his idea in the first place and got unanimous support in both houses but YEAH beavers!

Now we just need to see the depredation numbers for this years PRA and find out if anything is changing at the ground level!

MORE BEAVERS NEEDED

heidi08 Beavers September 28, 2024

Things in South Dakota are looking better and better for beaver. They are putting more BDAS in the Black Hills but the original report said they mimic “”Beaver lodges” (Which I guess would make them BLAS?)

Of course I helpfully wrote the producer and he wrote back and changed the copy! How nice when people are actually learning and doing new things!

Beaver dams, drinking water, and conservation in the Black Hills

On a perfect September day, a few dozen passionate conservationists are installing beaver dam analogues, or BDAs. In a secluded corner of the Black Hills, it’s a mission in water security, habitat maintenance, and environmental care.

Beavers are a crucial part of the Black Hills ecosystem, but it hasn’t always been an easy path for North America’s largest rodent. Seen by some as a pest, beavers are ecological regulators and water professionals.

The group of volunteers cut sod and wood to build structures that effectively function as a beaver dam in an area that desperately needs them. Imagine shingling your roof, but with blocks of mud and pine.

It’s work that was once done by beavers, which are now rare in the Black Hills.

Steve Kozel is the Northern Hills District Ranger. He explained exactly what this effort will accomplish.

“If you come back a month from now, two months from now, you’re going to see a difference in terms of the water table,” Kozel said. “The grasses, the sedges are starting to expand, so you’ll really see some immediate results. Coming back next year, you’re going to see changes in plant composition. Where it has been dry, you’re going to see more water loving plants such as your sedges.”

Letting beavers behave like beavers and not trapping them is of course the very best way to save water. I’ll tune in for that show next Saturday, right?

“Water quality, quantity, and security,” Stover said. “The more water we can retain on the landscape, the more water will continue to flow into Pactola (reservoir) every year, and that’s water security, man. The amount of water (beavers) can hold back on the landscape is immeasurable. It really comes down to water security, for Rapid City and the Black Hills.”

BEAVER RELIEF NEEDED

heidi08 Beavers September 27, 2024

A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO TACKLE

heidi08 Beavers September 26, 2024

This week I was contacted by Andrea from Sacramento, an MD who spends her free time collecting used fishing tackle from the American River by where she lives.. Seems she had found a dead beaver that had been killed by swallowing a rusty hook. On the very same day another rehab reported the same thing with a different beaver.

She was looking for help getting the word out and general attention to the problem.

Waterbird Habitat Project

Sad to report I found one of the beavers dead in the pond this morning. There was necrosis of the cheek and tongue and a large hook in the water nearby. I last saw her Friday morning. Can’t know what caused the injury, but I will rake out the pond this week.

Another beaver died upstream today with fishhook in the tail tethered to a large weight near Sunrise access.

The most dangerous hooks are the ones in the water tethered to logs. Join in and help clean out the hooks and line in the American River.

In addition to cleaning the creek and bank regularly she has gotten permission from the parks department to hang this sign in several places.

She is doing the lord’s work and it’s a massive problem. Not just for beavers and birds but for otters and bobcats and every living thing that passes on the shore or dives in the water.

i commended her herculean efforts and suggest she think about doing some school children presentations and enlisting some childrens artwork on the problem. People don’t always see what makes the feel hopeless.

But they see things like this: