This article is so nearly everything I ever hoped it would be. The author Carolina Cuellar did a great news piece for KQED about Emily and contacted me back in April. I introduced her to Virginia and Fairfield and she visited in May. She attended the California Beaver Summit and was fairly convinced that they matter, I later gave her the depredation reviews we have been working on with Robin.
Beavers Can Help California’s Environment, But State Policy Doesn’t Help Them
One month into 2020’s shelter in place order, Virginia Holsworth and her family decided to change things up by walking in the opposite direction of their usual daily stroll through suburban Fairfield. That’s when she first encountered the amassment of sticks blocking the path’s adjacent creek, Laurel Creek.For the next few months she watched cormorants and blue herons among the cattails and tules. Supposedly the creek even contained so many rainbow trout, a member of the community — illegally — caught 40 of them. The way the beavers and their dam had changed the landscape and reinvigorated the habitat enthralled Holsworth, and she became devoted to preserving them in her community.
Holsworth soon connected with Heidi Perryman, the Bay Area’s most ardent beaver activist and founder of the Martinez-based nonprofit Worth a Dam. Perryman warned Holsworth that the ecological wonder she’d found might be in jeopardy. The city of Fairfield had a permit to remove dams and had already, in 2015, obtained a permit to kill beaver.
Just a few months later, in fall 2020, the city public works department removed the beaver dam, citing the potential for flooding in the rainy season. Holsworth watched as the cattails wilted and birds quickly devoured the newly exposed crawfish.
Excellent introduction! Virginia did a fantastic job with this interview. Curious, informed, and community minded. And tying the whole article in with the pandemic was a smart twist. What about that whacky Heidi Perryman? Why is she such a famed advocate for beavers? Oh what’s that you say?: Because her city lived with them for a frickin decade proving that it can be done and should be done everywhere?
Oh no. Don’t mention that. Why bother
The beaver in Holsworth’s neighborhood created a habitat that’s in critical demand in drought-stricken California. Over the last couple of decades, researchers have amassed evidence of beaver’ benefits in ecological restoration and of their native role in the state’s natural landscape. But the California Department of Fish and Wildlife still operates under beaver legislation that hasn’t substantially changed since 1981. Under these regulations, property owners can only remove the dams or kill the beaver. Now, as the state wrestles with drought and climate change, researchers are fighting for the state to allow beaver relocation.
The same behaviors that make beaver essential habitat creators in the wild pose threats to public infrastructure and safety in human-populated areas. Many cities and property owners, as in the Fairfield removal that Holsworth watched, see the environmental benefits of beaver dams as secondary to the potential property and infrastructure damage they might cause.
“There’s a problem to resolve there, so a lot of my research is focused on trying to maximize the benefits of beaver and reduce their negative impacts,” says Jimmy Taylor, a wildlife biologist for the USDA APHIS National Wildlife Research Center.
Gee can flow devices work? Can trees be wrapped? Can willow be planted? I don’t know from this article. But I hear the CITY OF MARTINEZ DID IT FOR A DECADE.
But why mention it. Pffft.
Ryan Carrothers, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), is one of the people charged with verifying property damage in the depredation permit process for the Bay-Delta region, which includes agriculturally dominant areas in San Joaquin and Napa counties.
“A lot of times people don’t want to kill the beaver, but they feel like that’s their only option, and they’ve got a crop to grow,” Carrothers said.
Sure they could install a flow device or wrap their crops and trees, like the city of MARTINEZ did but that would take work and they might break a nail.
Why mention it? Why bother. And no, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?
Beaver policy, from depredation permits to dam removal, doesn’t often consider ecological benefits. Yet when beavers settle and build their homes, they create complex, nutrient-rich habitats that nurture various animals, including endangered ones.
Endangered Coho and Chinook salmon lay their eggs in slow, freshwater streams, a now rare natural habitat that beaver ponds can still provide. When beaver are killed, the species their habitats foster may suffer.
“The beaver dams and ponds that may be providing habitat for juvenile fish or that sort of thing can still be issued a depredation permit if damage can be proven,” Carrothers said.
In 2019, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) threatened to sue the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services section for not evaluating the effects of removing beaver in counties that contained endangered species – such as the Coho salmon in Carrothers’ region – before trapping, which CBD says violates the Endangered Species Act.
CBD lawyers argued that Wildlife Services risked multiple species’ survival by killing the beaver that create and maintain endangered species’ habitats. The threatened lawsuit resulted in Wildlife Services declaring it would stop providing killing services in endangered species-inhabited counties until the agency assessed whether it was violating federal law.
Species like frogs and fishers and dragonflies too. Isn’t CDFW specifically doing work to increase their numbers and don’t beavers make them better? I mean didn’t they change the entire environment and species list in MARTINEZ CALIFORNIA when they lived their for a decade?
But why mention it, Why bother.
Killing beavers is cruel, but advocates like Adkins argue it’s also ineffective. If one beaver family leaves, the infrastructure is there for another to replace it. If just the dam is removed and the beavers are not, the beavers will rebuild.
Adkins says the best option is coexistence: using non-lethal methods to mitigate a beaver’s destructive behaviors. These might include levelers on dams to help prevent floods, or wrapping trees in wire to keep beaver from chewing on them.
“One of the things that we’re frustrated about is [current beaver management practices] just create this vicious cycle of killing,” Adkins said. “Unless you actually change the practices on those farms or ranches, you’ll just keep on having the same problem.”
Now that I like. Thanks Collette.
Advocates like Perryman say that beavers have reached a turning point in popular culture, and that policy changes should follow. As more and more people like Virgina Holsworth discover and learn to enjoy beavers in their neighborhoods, they use their platform to share their passion and the research behind their cause, changing perspectives and gathering support.
I swear to god on my ancestors graves that I never said anything about popular culture OR turning point. I’ve been doing this so long that I no longer believe that a turning point is just around the corner; But I do whole heartedly believe in using platforms to “share passion and research changing perspectives and gathering support.”
In April 2021, a group of California beaver experts including Perryman inaugurated a Beaver Summit and welcomed people from 31 states and seven countries to learn about beavers and their ecological value. For beaver researcher, beaver advocacy pioneer, and California Beaver Summit co-chair Brock Dolman, the summit served an additional purpose.
INCLUDING PERRYMAN??? INCLUDING??? LIKE THEY LET ME TAG ALONG???
Never mind that I worked for tirelessly for six months to make that conference happen and when I initially asked everyone if they wanted to do it they all “Little RED Hen’d me” in reply. (Go read for yourself)
But really, The important thing was that it happened. Beavers don’t give credit, right?
These beavers don’t cower from the crowd of admirers or act skittish when someone speaks at a normal volume. Rather, they coexist as members of the community and garner respect for bringing natural diversity and richness into Farifield’s suburbia.
This is the future Holsworth is fighting for. And she’s reached one early success. In fall 2021, the city chose not to remove the beaver dam on Laurel Creek.
“I just want to shout from the top of the mountain about how important they are. Like, hey, people pay attention,” said Holsworth. “These guys are really cool!”
Zero complaints. Perfect. Virginia is spot on in her commentary. A final mention that the only reason the beavers photos in this article were from Cheryl Reynolds and taken in MARTINEZ is because we lived with them for a decade. And the only reason the artwork of Amelia Hunter was featured in that cute logo is because she lives in Martinez where the beavers were allowed to coexist for ten years.
Really.
