They say no good deed ever goes unpunished. I agree, Last night MY OPED was posted in some stupid news site WITHOUT MY NAME and with a photo of a NUTRIA and a fricken OTTER. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. The lying thieves don’t deserve a link but I’ll post a photo so you believe me.
Of course I complained and contacted who I could but these aggregate news-nappers are about as responsible as the people who scrape your vehicle ID off before resale. I guess the compensating factor for the crime is that more people read about this.
Even if they are left thinking that nutrias prevent fires.
In the meantime this headline made me laugh yesterday, especially considering the video they ran with it.
Wildlife crews find a solution to flooding caused by beaver dams in Bear Swamp area
here’s the video that runs right below the headline.
I guess that would stop beavers in their tracks alright.
Once again the fault of aggregate news where unrelated stories are tossed together for resale, But the actual story goes like this.
HAMPTON — Beavers build dams. That’s just what they do.
While the ponds created by the dams are vital to their livelihood by providing transportation routes to and from their food supply and safety from their enemies, they occasionally cause problems for humans.
In early spring, members of the Wildlife Services Section, a part of the Division of Fish and Wildlife, were called to Bear Swamp Wildlife Management Area because one of the beaver ponds in the 1,000-acre preserve was flooding private property, causing problems with a septic system.
Hmm it starts out like the same old story but it gets better. Look at this.
Anthony McBride, the supervising biologist for Wildlife Services Section and his crew solved the problem Bear Swamp, located along the eastern slope of the Kittatinny Ridge in Hampton Township, in Sussex County by installing a baffle in the pond near the beaver dam. The baffle, or pipe system, does not hurt the semiaquatic rodents or their habitat.
Beaver dams, McBride said, and the ponds/wetlands they create, are important to creating habitat for other wildlife such as waterflowl, songbirds, frogs, turtles, and otters and muskrats who need the water bodies for their lifestyles The ponds also absorb extra water during rainstorms, allowing the slow release of water into the streams which flow out of the pond. They also help clean pollutants from water.
Well well well. Some acknowedgement that beavers matter and an adorable bonus mention of frog lifestyles. hahahaha
Decades ago, remediation efforts took a couple of routes — trap out all the beavers in the colony or engage in a circuitous battle — tear down the dam, beavers rebuild; tear down, rebuild; put up fencing to hamper dam-building compensated by a bigger, longer dam.
The problem is that to beavers, the sound of running water means repairs need to be made to the dam. It is, after all, a “simple” structure of branches and shrubs held together with mud. Most often repairs are done by the night shift.
‘Made from a long piece of flexible plastic pipe, both ends are capped by a cage made from gnaw-proof wire mesh. A cut is made through the top of the dam and the pipe is laid in the trench.
The length of pipe is enough to bridge the dam and extend about 10 feet into the pond and another 10 feet downstream of the dam. The human engineers then loosely throw some brush and what was dug out of the dam back over the pipe.
Huh, I always wondered what a ‘beaver baffle’ looked like,,= Now I wonder how often those cages get covered in mud and dammed around. Even round filters on flow devices get covered when the beavers figure out why their dam is losing water. Mike Callahan sent me this photo. years ago.
You know that’s not going to work don’t you? Oh yes, he does.
McBride said the cage on each end keeps the water flowing and any sound it makes is far enough away from the dam that the beavers generally don’t attempt to block the ends of the pipe.
At the same time, the biologists trapped and euthanized several beavers to control the size of the colony, usually made up of generations of the same beaver family.
Clearly a man who gets paid by the hour. First he installs a solution that will solve nothing AND THEN he kills family members to keep the COLONY size small. Because you know how colonies get so large.
Maybe that’s where the shark comes in handy?
