Search Results for: Lewiston

TEAM BEAVER LINE-UP RELEASED: BEAVERCON 2020

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beaver Conference November 2, 2019

The Idaho Lewiston Tribune is boasting proudly that Ben Goldfarb will be speaking soon at the Fly-casters club about his book on beavers. Good for Idaho. Good for Ben and good for our friend Patricia Heekin from the Latah Soil and Water Conservation District for arranging it after I told her Ben was speaking on the other side of the state.

Writer to give talk on benefits of beavers

MOSCOW — Environmental journalist and author Ben Goldfarb will speak Nov. 13 at the Clearwater Fly Casters meeting here.

Goldfarb, of Spokane, the author of “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter,” will present a talk called “Beavers: Their Landscapes, Our Future.” The talk will highlight how landscapes have changed over the centuries and how beavers can help fight drought, flooding, wildfire, biodiversity loss and even climate change.

The meeting will be held at the Best Western Plus University Inn at 1516 Pullman Road, in Moscow. A no- host bar social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., followed by a $16 buffet dinner at 6:30. Goldfarb will speak at 7:30.

That sounds excellent. Come on, can’t the beavers themselves buy the first round of drinks? These folks really need the motivation to come. There isn’t enough beer beer and scotch in the entire world to motivate the right people to hear a lecture on beavers.

Yesterday the Beaver Institute released the speakers list from the upcoming conference and WOWZA everyone of import will be there. Apparently Pollock and myself will be the only virtual presentations, everyone else will be there in person. And what a monumental line up founding fathers and mothers it will be!

Speakers for BeaverCon 2020

Dr. Alan Puttock University of Exeter Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom	Quantifying the Hydrological Impacts of Eurasian Beaver Reintroduction across Great Britain
Alexa Whipple and Kent Woodruff The Methow Beaver Project Washington, United States	The Methow Beaver Project – Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going in 2 Acts
Bob Boucher Milwaukee RiverKeeper Wisconsin, United States	Creating the “Superior Bio-Preserve” Modeling the Milwaukee River watershed to measure the potential flood mitigation benefits of beaver created wetlands to restore the natural hydrology and reduce flooding during high water events.
Chris Jordan NOAA/NMFS/Northwest Fisheries Science Center c/o US EPA Oregon, United States Carol Volk South Fork Research Inc. Washington, United States Joe Wheaton Utah State University Utah, United States Nick Bouwes Eco Logical Research Inc. Utah, United States	Temperature and hydrological impacts of beaver-based stream restoration: hypotheses, models and data and the way forward with low tech process based restoration.
Duncan Halley Norwegian Institute Research Trondheim, Norway	History of Beavers in Europe
Glynnis A. Hood University of Alberta Alberta, Canada	Plumbing for ecology: Can flow devices on beaver ponds reduce conflicts and costs?
Heidi Perryman Worth A Dam – Martinez Beavers California, United States	A Space for Beavers
Leonard Houston South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership – Beaver Advocacy Committee Oregon, United States	When the Beaver Calls Your Name: Managing Beaver in the Umpqua Basin
Rob Walton NOAA Fisheries, retired Oregon, United States	Beavers, Salmon, and the Beaver State
Roger Auster University of Exeter Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom	Unraveling Perceptions of Eurasian Beaver Reintroduction in Great Britain
Skip Lisle, M.S. Beaver Deceivers International Vermont, United States	The History of the Beaver Deceiver™
Alicia Leow-Dyke Wildlife Trusts Wales Powys, United Kingdom	The Story of Beavers in Wales
Frances Backhouse Frances Backhouse Maryland, United States	37 Million Years and Counting: A Brief History of Beavers
Grace Brush Johns Hopkins University Maryland, United States	A LAND TRANSFORMED: FROM BEAVERS TO DITCHES
Stanley Petrowski South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership Oregon, United States	The Case of the Missing Beaver
John Egan Beaver Solutions, LLC Massachusetts, United States	Managing Beaver Flooding Problems with Flow Devices

Unbeliveable. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet you better do it right away. This conference is going to knock folks socks off. Glynnis AND Frances Backhouse And Alan Puttock? Hand me some smelling salts and a handkerchief because I just became a beaver groupie. Don’t miss out on this first ever dynamic conference.

Reserve your space today.

WRITING ABOUT WRITING ABOUT BEAVERS

Time for more good news. This article by Eli Frankovich from the Idaho based Lewiston Tribune does what few others attempt: offer a sense of context for the current and past response to beavers, and recognizes the dramatic impact of Ben Golfarb’s book.

Leave it to beavers: Relocation effort paying dividends

More than a decade ago, before a water-loving rodent with a penchant for gnawing on trees became the animal du jour — its ecological powers heralded as a climate salve, ecosystem restorative and all around tonic of hope — the seemingly humble beaver brought two unlikely allies together.

“Animal du jour” I LOVE that phrase. Remember all of you were loving beavers before it was the cool thing to do.

Joel Kretz, a rancher-politician with a penchant for theatrics and dislike of predators (cougars and wolves, in particular); and Mike Peterson, the executive director of the Lands Council, an environmentalist with the gentle mannerisms of an aged hippie and the resolve of a veteran of the Timber Wars, found themselves on the same side of an issue: beaver relocation.

In 2006, Kretz first co-sponsored a bill in the Legislature legalizing the nonlethal relocation of “nuisance” beavers in Washington. It was a progressive bill, one that acknowledged the oft-ignored importance of the world’s second-largest rodent.

While that so-called “Beaver Bill” didn’t become law until 2012, it set the stage for Washington to become the beaver leader in the United States.

I love an article that starts off with a good beaver history lesson and mentions that puns get overused in beaver stories. I’m not certain Washington, however, that Washington was the first to rethink beavers, even though it might be the first now. I would say Utah was the first first but Washington has become the new first. Does that make sense?.

Streams slowed by beaver dams and lodges create better habitat for animals and insects, collect silt, and store and cool water, among other things. In videos taken by the Lands Council in the Colville National Forest bear, moose, herons, cougars and more flock to beaver complexes.

Those successes have increased the social and political tolerance and love for the furred builders. Fueled in part by Goldfarb’s book, beavers are having a moment, their positive impact on everything from animals, to plants, to climate change being recognized.

I don’t think there has been another article discussing the impact of Ben’s book or the fate of beavers in general. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever read a reporter visiting the archives of his own newspaper to see how coverage has changed.

A trip through The Spokesman-Review’s “beaver” file in the morgue (the place where old newspaper stories are kept) is a grisly affair with more than a few bad puns and awful alliterations.

“Beaver meets end under car wheels,” reads one headline from 1956. “A beastly beaver terrorizing the Mississippi River city …” states an Associated Press story from 1994. “California firms fined for starving beavers,” goes another.

Now it’s not uncommon to walk the river bank and see those trees wrapped in a fine wire mesh, another sign of increasing respect and willingness to coexist with the industrious rodents.

Can I just pause here and say how much I LOVE this article and journalist? Eli Francovich is a true kindred spirit if beavers, I can tell you. And of this website in particular.

That isn’t to say it’s all peeled cambiums and roses. While Washington may have model beaver legislation and nonlethal removal permitting, WDFW still kills more beavers than it relocates. In 2018, 28 beavers were relocated, 1,251 were killed due to human-beaver conflict, and 730 were killed by trappers, according to WDFW.

Wow, A reporter that not only looks up the past stories on beaver trapping but visits the current information as well. If you were very naive you would think this happens all the time, but I can assure it doesn’t. Be still my heart.

That aside, the story of beavers in Washington is mostly one of cooperation and collaboration. While it may have been enshrined in law in 2012 with Kretz’s Beaver Bill, evidence of Washingtonians affinity for beavers goes back further.

Amongst the blood and gore in the beaver newspaper archives rests one 1968 article that seems to predict a more beaver-friendly future.

“Approximately 30 beavers each year are moved from one area to another throughout Stevens County,” the article states. “The beaver is important because of his contribution to conservation. By constructing his dams and ponds, the beaver provides homes and food for all forms of wildlife such as fish ducks, mink, muskrats, etc.

That’s a fantastic article. I just love thinking of Lewiston, which is right on the border of Washington, peering over the state line at its neighbors and thinking “We should be more like them!” Let’s all copy Washington and Ben’s Book, okay?

‘Pond’ Beavers, ‘Carnivous Doves’ and other lies.

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 6, 2013

About this time every year, (usually a little bit earlier) so many stories of beaver problems clutter the newswires that I begin to despair of ever catching up to report on them. I start to wonder if it all really matters, if there’s any hope of changing hearts and minds, if a wishful girl with a beaver mission can possibly make a whit of difference is this crazy beaver-killing world. Well, I’ll let you know the answer to that question when we get farther along in the story, but for now we’ve got lots to talk about.

Beavers causing problems at Turner pond

Seaman attributed the change in water level to changes in the dam and beavers. Selectman Kurt Youland, who also owns property on Pleasant Pond, said many of the historical beaches around the pond have disappeared. He said there are about six active beaver lodges on the pond, which equates to nearly 40 animals.

Seaman said she has done all she can legally do and has hired a state biologist to trap beavers, raccoons and seagulls. She said it cost $70 to $100 per animal.

You kill seagulls? This is Maine, mind you. And you think you have six active lodges with 40 beavers in a single lake? Well, it looks like the pond’s about a mile across so that seems pretty unlikely. You know what a great way is to tell how many beavers are in an area? To get up early or stay up late and actually watch them for a few days! See who’s living where and who has young. You might even hear them, talking to each other and asking for favors. It could happen. But if you did that you would realize these are very social families who work hard and really care about each other. And then you wouldn’t be so excited to trap them, would you?

You know, I met a very reasonable-looking man from Maine on the footbridge yesterday. He was not very enthused about our beavers and said cautiously, “I’ve seen beavers before back in my home state. But they were smaller. Those were POND BEAVERS not these huge RIVER BEAVERS.”

I tried explaining politely that what he saw in Maine were kits, and that full grown beavers are much larger. I even tried to allow that our beavers do not have to fast during the winter freeze so they might carry a few more pounds. But he would have none of it, what he saw in Maine were POND beavers, a completely different animal.

So I have been muttering this to myself for three days now and wondering that we let people who think these outrageous things drive and vote and own firearms. My mom had a neighbor the other day tell her that “Doves were the most vicious birds, they attack other birds for no reason. You have to get rid of them.”

I guess that’s why we release them at peace ceremonies? To scare are enemies into keeping the truce?

My point (and I do have one) is that half the time (or more than half) people who sound very sure of themselves don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And they don’t WANT to know, because their mind is made up, and like a double bed in a sleeper car, they don’t want to have to make it again. Reporters do not appear to know this. And they constantly confuse “sounding certain” with “being right”.

Here’s another example.

Beavers a dam nuisance to Hopkinton homeowners

HOPKINTON – MA

A group of neighbors in the South and North Mill streets area have hired a professional beaver trapper to combat what they call out-of-control flooding on their land created by beaver dams.

Speicher has applied to the town for an emergency permit to trap beavers using a kind of “quick kill” trap only allowed with special permission. He met Tuesday with town officials.

Meanwhile, a bill is making its way through the Legislature to permit wider use of quick-kill traps and streamline permitting by putting the state in charge instead of municipalities.

Of course a bill is making it’s way through the legislature. It always is. The one thing that we can be sure of in this world, besides death and taxes, is that a bill is always winding it’s way through the state house to overturn the will of the voters and remove the beaver scourge. Of course, even if it passed handily, it will do no such thing. Because the beaver population is growing whether you use kill traps, suitcase traps, or electric chairs to control it. It’s growing because that’s what successful populations do. Do you think Connecticut or New Hampshire never complain about beavers because they weren’t “tricked” into outlawing crush traps?

Someday I’ll get tired of making fun of Massachusetts for its ridiculously constant whining about the voters in 1996. I’ve written about it maybe 100 times in 6 years, and I received a personal letter from the governor last year regarding it. Some day I’ll give up and realize the state is on a crash course to beaver-stupid and can’t wait until it gets there and can conibear to its hearts content.

But not yet.

Beaver dams popping up in Springfield

In the mean time there’s a nice beaver story from Springfield MA, which very kindly reminds the viewer that tampering with beaver dams is illegal!

“All this time I haven’t seen any, and these beavers are really something new because they were not here three months ago…I hope they don’t touch them just leave the beavers alone. they are a good thing I think,” said Luisa Powers from Springfield.

‘Free Solutions’

heidi08 City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 22, 2010

Remember the city in Maine with the ‘pretend beaver deceiver’? Well a beaver friend writes this morning that he called to talk about a more realistic installation and was told by the deputy director of public works that the beavers were already dead. Turns out there’s a trapper on staff so killing them was a ‘free solution‘. No fancy humane interventions needed, we have everything under control.

How sad and stupid and utterly disappointing. Lets hope they got all of them, and that there aren’t some kits shivering in the lodge and slowly starving to death.

Moving right along through the Kubler-Ross stages of beaver grief lets get to anger. Free solution? Maybe. But if it was such a great free idea why didn’t you employ it earlier? The T junction of pipe was useless but not free. Moving it to the other side of the culvert was useless, but not free. Ramming the culvert with a telephone poll was useless but not free. Bringing out the back hoes time after time was useless and not free. All those hours of public works time, when they weren’t filling pot holes or cleaning drains, were paid for with taxpayer dollars and were useless but not free.

If you had a free solution all along, lurking in your back pocket, why didn’t you use it earlier? Say the moment you started to realize there was a problem?

Oh wait, I know why.

You needed cover for your enormously unpopular decision to kill the beavers. Social cover. Ass cover. The ‘we’ve tried everything’ cover. The paper gave you help in this and dutifully printed your painstaking solutions without ever reporting how patently inane they were. You were given a public opportunity to show your citizens you tried and tried and couldn’t solve these problems humanely. You made a public argument that you had no choice, and no one contested it. You had to kill them.

It’s this deception, this dedicated deceit of public opinion, that angers me even more than the actual trapping. You extirpated the public trust and made a mockery of civic involvement. You snared the good will of Lewiston and crushed it in your conibear traps. You used your residents against each other to push public opinion get exactly where you wanted it all along and your local paper faithfully carried water for you. Sure, some beavers died in the process, valuable wetlands were destroyed and countless species will suffer as a result, but that is hardly the real story. Lewiston used kabuki theatre and taxpayer dollars to pretend to solve a problem humanely they had no intention of solving at all.

Take this as a lesson, Lewiston homeowners and taxpayers. The next time your city tells you they are trying to ‘solve’ a problem – traffic congestion, sewers, crossing guards, school funding. Remember that in the back of their minds they may hide the real solution, and all their flailing efforts in the meantime are just trying to drive public opinion in its direction. The city of Martinez has learned with painful clarity that lying about beavers is just the beginning.

Maybe some letters from the public will remind them that ‘free solutions‘ aren’t always free.

Edward A. Barrett
City Administrator
E-Mail: ebarrett@lewistonmaine.gov

Megan Bates
Deputy Director
Public Works Department
(207) 513-3003 Ext. 3440
E-Mail: mbates@ci.lewiston.me.us
(207) 513-3000 Ext. 3200

A Beaver in Every Creek

heidi08 Uncategorized October 18, 2010

House Keeping and Updates from the Beaver Wars:

The new look for the site is Scott’s own design. It’s a work in progress, so let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t work on your browser – (except for the slideshow, I know that doesn’t work but I can’t bear to part with it just yet. It is the artwork of the first children’s activity we ever did.) Thanks for the repeated rescues Scott and hopefully I’m having a learning curve in there somewhere. In the meantime look at that cute little beaver symbol beside my name. Isn’t that lovely?

LEWISTON I was contacted yesterday by some concerned folks in the Maine beaver story who say that the city has politely received all the information and contacts I sent and is still throwing up its collective hands helplessly, determined to trap because its the “ONLY SOLUTION”. I sent them proof of everything they had already been told and nudged Skip to give them a call today. Fingers Crossed.

KINGS BEACH I heard this morning from another Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care employee that Cheryl is meeting with public works and Caltrans to talk specifics for what the do the next time this happens. I had already asked Denise, (who wrote me after their protest), to guest blog about the event. I got her column yesterday and I thought I’d pass it along to you. See if it doesn’t bring back old memories for you...

The scene was like a 60’s peace rally re-created. Things were different though. It was 2010 and the ones holding the signs were children -little children! The signs read “Don’t Kill Our Beavers” and “Save the Beavers”.

The heartbreaking part was that the children didn’t realize their beloved Beavers were already dead. They had been trapped and killed just a day or so before. This took place in King’s Beach Ca. yesterday. The beavers had been killed just last year due to “possible” flooding issues from the pond they created next to Hwy 28. The Public Works Dept. sited damage to public property as the reason.

This year’s “fiasco” has been unfolding for a week or so. The Public Works Dept. started by destroying the beaver’s dam daily. Of course the poor beavers spent all night cutting down more and more trees to try to rebuild their home. Finally – everything was trucked away and the beavers sat in a mud hole-bewildered and confused. Parents of the local co-op school volunteered to keep watch but “sometime” between Tuesday and Friday the trapper came and killed the family of beavers.

The area “was” a lovely grassy area adjacent to the creek and beaver dam where people came to watch the happy family doing their daily “beaver chores”. Yesterday some of the parents swear they saw blood in the grass from the beaver’s death. So sad and unnecessary! The ironic part is that after the dam was removed we got heavy rains and sediment and material from the dam washed in to Lake Tahoe-something that would have been prevented “if” the dam was left in place-!!!

It’s all about “Keeping Tahoe Blue” here and this did not fit in well with this logo! The children adopted the Beaver as their mascot and watched them daily. What kind of a message did we send to these children?? We want to promote “eco-tourism” here. Again-what kind of a message did killing the local wildlife send? If they had just waited a few days more we could of helped them to find a way to save the family of beavers. I love the way the “responsible parties” say the beavers are “gone’ or “taken care of“, they themselves not wanting to tell the inquiring children they are already dead! Call it what it is-“they” obtained the permit to have them killed!

Moving forward-Cheryl Millham from Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care spoke with Peter Kraatz from Placer Public Works during the “rally” and he agreed to meet with her “one-on-one” and discuss alternatives such as beaver deceivers. I really believe this killing was born out of ignorance and “they” thought this was the only way! Thanks to Cheryl “they” will now be educated and hopefully set an example for other cities such as Martinez did. The sad part is that this happens all over the Lake Tahoe area. We received the video on beaver solutions from Mike Callahan at Beaver Solutions LLC today and plan to have Public Works at Kings Beach view and learn from it during the first meeting. Maybe “they” can set an example for other Public Works depts. I watched the informative video myself and was amazed at how simple and economical the solutions actually are. Some of the people at the public works dept. are engineers and if they can’t figure it out -we’re in trouble! A committee has been formed and I believe this CAN be resolved and “hopefully” not happen again-at least not in Kings Beach! Hopefully next year the children from the school who’s mascot is the Beaver will again have the privilege of studying them and watching them daily. Time will tell!

Thanks Denise for the heart-felt story telling. We wish you the best of luck. I’m going to suggest that you read The opposite of Camoflaug” over and over again for inspiration in the coming months. Beaver Festival Tahoe anyone?