Category: Beaver Art

The case of the missing beaver dams!

I saw this yesterday and right away wanted to author a film noir children’s book beaver dam detective series. Can’t you see it now?

Investigation continues into loss of Mill Creek beaver dams

If you ask Sara Melnicoff of Moab Solutions, part of the Mill Creek Partnership, Mill Creek had 11 or more beaver dams this spring. Then in July every dam was gone.

Melnicoff first noticed the damage mid-July, before the heavy rains of July 24 and 25 caused flooding in the creek. She contacted Mary O’Brien of the Grand Canyon Trust, who had previously participated in writing Utah’s beaver management plan. O’Brien took photographs of the dams, some of which had been notched or had sticks pulled out of them.

“The dams had been compromised a few days before the flooding,” O’Brien said. “I have a whole series of photos that I documented for BLM of all 11 dams and each one has a notch cut out of the center. That’s all that it takes [to compromise the dam].”

11 dams suddenly gone! This sounds like a job for inspector beaver! (sorry, couldn’t resist.) Are there any suspects?

Eyewitness accounts support the claim that vandalism was involved. Maria Roberts, a Forest Service employee, was hiking with friends in mid-July when she saw a man pulling sticks out of the dams.

“I saw a guy, looked like he was pulling branches apart from the beaver dam. I figured he was supposed to be there, like he was working,” Roberts said. Another witness took photos of the man.

The day before the dams were compromised, Melnicoff said, she received an email from an unknown address concerned that the beavers were causing E. coli bacteria in town. O’Brien said that in her experience, beavers are not known to cause E. coli but do benefit the ecosystems they inhabit.

Oh ho! So we have a suspect AND a motive! Call in the expert witness…

“When they come up streams and have to build dams to get two and a half feet [of water to build their lodges], there is then a whole cascade of effects that happen,” O’Brien said. “Streams are often incised from grazing, from long-ago blow-outs of cattle ponds, from floods and so on and really the only thing that can restore that stream is basically woody debris … beaver are the chief engineers that do that.”

O’Brien said that beaver dams create habitat for other animals as well.

“When a beaver comes in and starts making a pond, that opens that up and now ducks come and shorebirds come and they drown the trees, which makes them perfect for cavity nesting birds, which makes it perfect for secondary cavity nesters who use the holes of cavity nesters,” O’Brien said. “[The] water behind the pond is a great nursery for fish. And then of course otter can come into the system because there’s fish. And muskrats are there. And water voles are there, so one thing that the beavers do is make the system far more complex. Without beaver, in a lot of, say, your mountains here, it’s a just strip of water coming through and there’s trees on either side.”

Thank you, Dr. Obrien. Excellent and relevant testimony. Call the next witness!

Arne Hultquist, director of the Moab Area Watershed Partnership, agreed that beavers are not the cause of E. coli in Mill Creek. “If I was having problems with beavers and E. coli, I would be seeing it at that site [above the Power Dam] and I don’t see it at that site. I see it down in town,” said Hulquist, who conducts water quality tests at various points around Moab.

Ah HA! So the beavers were blamed for something they didn’t even do! Their dams were destroyed and then all the wildlife they supported suffered the results. Thank goodness our crack team is on the case!

The DWR is still actively investigating the incident, according to Wolford. The DWR is looking into the incident based on the legal definition of wildlife crime, Wolford told The Times-Independent.

“We are still investigating [and] we have one final loose end to tie up, but it does not look as if charges will be filed,” Wolford said.

“There’s not really a crime for breaching a dam,” Wolford said. “The crime comes after, if it’s either displaced beaver or killed beaver. If there’s an actual beaver that’s dead in the area, that’s where the actual crime starts to come into play.”

Wolford added that the dams might have already been abandoned. “It’s possible that they were [abandoned to start with] because if the beaver were there, those dams would be built back up really fast,” Wolford said. “[It] usually only takes them a night to do it, especially the ones that tend to look like they were more man-made breached. They were small enough breaches that the beaver would have been back in immediately. The ones that are bigger breaches, those ones definitely look like flooding issues. As wildlife, we like beaver. They do a lot of good to the ecosystem and help out things quite a bit.”

The jewels might have stolen themselves, officer. It happens all the time in the real world. No fingers to point, nobody to blame, nothing to see here. Besides they’re just BEAVERS for god sake. How much should we really care?

I don’t know about you but that does not sound like they’re actively looking into it to me.

It’s nice to see beaver dramas happen in other towns. This so reminds me of the early days in Martinez. There was one day when someone left oleander branches on the dam and people were worried it was a plot to poison the beavers and the whole town was in an uproar. It turned out it was a well meaning ET who loved them and just thought she was doing something nice.

Ahh memories.

The clincher on this case is that the actual date on this story from Moab is 2013. I don’t know why it’s running again, but I guess they aren’t still ‘working on it’? Maybe they’re doing this instead.

Unusual for Utah

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Do beavers live in the dam?, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 6, 2017

This is footage of the hard working Utah DWR group installing BDA’s in the higher elevations of Utah. They make little beaver dams to save water and hope it will help out the wildlife and lure beavers to move in. Up until this VERY moment I always thought Utah was smarter than us about beavers. Not anymore.

Updates from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

At first glance, it appears the wrong species has been building dams in Miller Creek. DWR habitat crews have taken on the beaver’s usual role, dropping in support poles, weaving in tree branches and packing mud on the structures they’re building. The goal of this unusual project is to re-flood the floodplain and create pools for the river’s sensitive and endangered fish. Having more water in the area will also benefit the mammals and birds that use the stream corridor.

So far so good. But now comes the CRASH! Feet of clay indeed!

Biologists hope that beavers will eventually move into the structures and continue the effort.

For just a moment I’m going to amuse myself with the absurd thought that all the biologists of Utah (and not a few confused reports) really believe that beavers live in dams. In my fantasy they are truly standing by with clipboards and befuddled looks on their faces wondering why the animals don’t move IN to these lovely solid walls they built. Heh heh. Do they also wonder why bird nests have those ridiculous holes in them, and aren’t just solid twig bricks too?

Okay, I’m done. I do not for a moment believe this comment is the work of a biologist. Once again Heidi will explain kindly to reporters that beavers don’t live IN the dam. The dam is solid. Like a wall built to hold back water. It doesn’t have an inside. Think of it like a mattress. You don’t sleep inside your mattress do you? Beavers live in the lodge. I realize this requires you to learn two words instead of one, but I truly think you’re up to it. (Most of you.)

Honestly, Utah is too good for rookie mistakes like this.

Projects like these help raise the water table and restore natural floodplains, improving habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife. A special thanks to ConocoPhillips and Trout Unlimited, who have been great partners on this and many other projects!

I received the grant application for 2018 from the Fish and Wildlife Commission and have been thinking a little about possible projects when I came across this lovely drawing by Jane Grant Tentas of New Hampshire. I love the inviting curiosity of the girl, the crisp vibrancy of the colors and the rich duality of the world. My goodness if this were only a freshwater habitat it would be so valuable to teach kids about ecosystems above and below water.

ca663334f7be916f5b55533b0bcd908e — *Beneath: Jane Grant Tentas*

As it happens, Jane teaches high school art about 20 minutes away from our beaver friend Art Wolinsky. So I’m hoping he puts in a good word for beavers, and maybe we can persuade her to go fresh?

My father ’tis of thee

heidi08 Beaver Art, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, Who's saving beavers now? September 5, 2017

As most of you know, this wonderful creation was the painstaking product of then 12 year old Ian Timothy [Boone] and finished in 2008. The joyful banjo music in the background was written and performed by his father an accomplished musician, Joel Timothy. Ian went on to win 6 scholastic medals and graduate with honors. We became friends for obvious reasons and when he applied to the Disney school of animation I wrote him a letter of recommendation. He was one of only 15 students to be accepted.

I met them all in Martinez when the family made a stop on their way to a film festival. Both parents seemed happy and appropriately proud of their son. But you never really know what the inside of people’s lives are like. After Ian went to college his parents divorced and his mother, Karen Boone (a gifted graphic artist in her own right) wrote to tell me that Joel was a struggling alcoholic who she couldn’t stay with anymore. She thought maybe it had been hard on her son who had focused on the stop motion filmaking as a way to cope.

(I was shocked, and remember that I couldn’t help thinking like a therapist that maybe his father hadn’t been able to sustain sobriety by taking things one day at a time, so Ian took things one moment at a time.)

After the divorce, Ian cut ties with his father and took his mother’s name, so he’s now Ian Boone. Ian never spoke about the divorce or the drinking with me. But we remained friends. He came to our festival last year and told me that he had left college early and started working for Bix Pix in Hollywood, working on the Tumble leaf series. He had not resumed contact with his father. And he had been learning to play the banjo.

Yesterday he posted on Facebook that his father had died over the weekend. I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m sharing it here. It really touched me and I thought it should be shared.

I just wanted to let everyone know, especially people in Louisville, that my dad, Joel Timothy died early Saturday morning, in Chestertown, Maryland. He had been sick for a while and in June was diagnosed with colon cancer that was expected to be treatable. But between the chemo, radiation, and already being very weak, he took a turn for the worse last week. He was hospitalized in intensive care. By the time I got there he was on oxygen and mostly unresponsive.

Our relationship for the last several years was not good. There were a lot of different sides to him, he struggled with alcoholism and he did and said a lot of horrible things. But there are still a lot of good memories, he was an immensely talented musician and creative mind, as a storyteller and performer. He had a short stature but big personality and always a way to make people laugh. I wouldn’t have had the same start in animation without his help with Beaver Creek, and I think he tried to support me in the best ways that he knew how.

Fathers are complicated and somehow keep being so even after they die. My heart goes out to Ian who was emotionally courageous to speak of this publicly and revisit the man who had given him his childhood and at the same time partly taken it away. In reading the countless comments by his fellow musicians it is clear that Joel was a gifted, fulsome, troubled soul. Even though his life is over, I’m sure Ian’s journey with him is just beginning. I am constantly surprised by how much my own father has continued changing after his death, at least in my own heart where it matters most to me.

R.I.P. Beaver Creek.

Schemes and Dreams of a beaver advocate

heidi08 Beaver Art September 2, 2017

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”

If that whirring noise bothered you yesterday we apologize. It was the sound of Mark Twain rolling over and over in his grave because San Francisco and the Bay Area was HOT yesterday. 110 in Martinez hot. Even though Mr. Train never actually wrote that, I’m sure he would have been shocked. I’m still shocked.

But hot days are good for sitting inside and planning. At our Kiwanis appearance yesterday Worth A Dam was given a donation and asked to do a presentation for the Boys and Girls Club in Martinez again. That’s a boisterous fun arena that usually requires a fairly short lesson followed by a very fun activity. When I was trying to imagine what we should do I thought of our old wildlife buttons from Mark Poulin. There’s no way to do the keystone activity but why not let every child pick ONE to keep and have them draw that animal?

Maybe the post card could say something about saving beavers…hmmm. Don’t kill the beavers is too heavy handed. How about just thanking them for saving them? Better yet, why not draw the animal on the button they selected on the back of an irresistably adorable postcard and deliver them to the mayor?

So yesterday I made the graphic and ordered a bunch of 5 x 7 postcards of these with funds from that donation. The hands in the corner are the emblem of the boys and girls club, and should work in our favor. We can also bring a poster and have kids sign their name over ‘their animal’ based on the button they drew. Then leave it with the facility but the postcards will be delivered to city council. Adorable kid drawn images on the back of beavers or the animals assist will help.

Fun fact. This photo was taken of children drawing beavers on our very first Earth Day event in 2008. We had no idea an activity like this would be so popular and just bought pens and paper on the way at the drug store. The two little red heads at the back are the daughters of one of our current council members. I was the daycare teacher of the sons of another. And that doesn’t even count Mark and Lara who saved our beavers the first time around.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing. But I feel that the odds are good it will be at least difficult to quickly dispatch these beavers.

More treats include this fine letter from Charlotte Burns in Palmer, Massachusetts, which clearly needs all the beaver defenders it can get.

Letter: Beavers were only reclaiming their wetlands

It saddens me that residents of the Guelphwood Road area on the Charlton/Dudley line are so adamant about killing beavers that have flooded this road. They built their houses on the edge of a wetland but will not accept that wetlands are homes to critters like beavers.

Beavers play an important role in our environment, creating ponds, slowing sediments which provide food for other critters, and increasing biodiversity of flora and fauna. Their ponds improve local water quality by neutralizing acidic runoff and acting as a sink for pollutants. Dams improve the quality of water by filtering it. Modern Americans seem to prefer sterile, groomed, critter-less environments: chemlawns which kill butterflies and bees, and clean ponds with only stocked fish. They fear buggy, sloggy wetlands which are our greatest flood prevention. This neighborhood needs to get its priorities straight. Killing off nature is having disastrous consequences. Houston was built on swamps; Maine’s blueberries are not getting pollinated; and we’re creating daily crises with global warming. We need to work with nature, not destroy it. Change must start in our own backyards.

Charlotte Burns : Palmer

Beautifully written and well said, Charlotte! We need more writers like you in every state. And speaking of the wisdom to accept beavers, here’s the audio from the Blue Heron Nature Preserve on Altanta NPR yesterday.

Stonewalled by the Quarry

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, City Reports, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? August 29, 2017

I had an indescribably beaver day yesterday, if it pans out I’ll fill you in on the details. Let me just say that it started at dawn with a phone call from Karen Corker of Maine WildWatch, who is testifying tonight and wanted to learn what was most helpful in Martinez. We had an epic chat about how to enlist support without alienating potential allies. We also talked about how folks get numb or hostile to the animal rights message, and how to frame arguments differently for the maximum effect. I stressed the importance of pragmatic solutions and talked about the art of the possible.

We basically revisited these ideas, which is so fun to do again. Especially without the personally impending dire consequences. It was like going to your high school reunion without any snobs. Very fun. I am wishing Karen all the luck in the world today.

Accidental Advocate

Then my copy of The Knotty Pine Mystery Series arrived! I was so excited I couldn’t wait to settle down in a comfortable chair and read the adventure. On the very first page Mr. Beaverton looks up at the wall of his lodge where he sees the portrait of his grandfather who had “always walked with him along the banks of Cobble Creek and explained how the land was healthy because of their dams“.

Ha! Do you think I’m going to keep reading? Go ahead guess!

I was so interested in the origin of the tale I asked artist Sara Aycock about it. Did the illustrations come first or the story? She wrote back,

“It was actually my artwork. A little over a year ago I decided to paint animals dressed in Victorian clothes. My very first painting was Mr. Beaverton and I was in love. I saw his personality and profession. (I actually finished him on August 24, 2016 and exactly a year later on August 24, 2017 we released our book!) As I continued to paint the characters, I named them, came up with their jobs, and wrote up the personalities. I decided to feature North American animals (except our hedgehog, which book 1 explains how he got to North America). In September 2016, I approached my sister-in-law (who lives clear across the U.S.) and asked her if she would be willing to write a children’s chapter book based on my characters. She said she’d love to! She was amazing to work with and took the characters and town that I had envisioned and gave them a lovely story. We have 8 books planned and have made a list of problems that animals may experience in the wild and made a long list of things to teach about nature that we hope to sprinkle throughout the series. It’s been such a fun project and I’ve learned even more about nature as I study different animals and whatnot.”

Sara Aycock

What an adventure! And I’m so grateful that it worked out our festival got to be part of it. I love the idea of the image of Mr. Beaverton starting the whole thing. Beavers do change things, you know. Maybe you haven’t ordered your copy yet. But you REALLY SHOULD. I’m already very curious who has been stealing things around the forest and am relieved Mr. Beaverton is on the case.

Too bad the folks at Ruby Construction in Vermont didn’t have a similar appreciation for the animal’s work.

Wells quarry operators fined $9K for excavating beaver dam, cleanup required

Montpelier – The Agency of Natural Resources announced today that Ruby Construction, Inc., former owner of the hilltop property containing the Mammoth Quarry in the Town of Wells, and the company’s lessee Royal Harrison, were jointly held responsible for a massive discharge of water and sediment into Lake St. Catherine. They have been fined a minimum of $9,000 and are required to appropriately remove the deposited sediment from the lake.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in April 2014, neighboring homeowners on West Lake Road, a residential road along Lake St. Catherine and downhill from the Mammoth Quarry, were outside enjoying the weather when an enormous discharge event occurred. The homeowners described witnessing a wall of water that rumbled down the forested hill, quickly overwhelmed an intermittent streambed, blocked a culvert and overtopped West Lake Road. The Wells Fire Department and road crews responded to close the road and assist in diverting the water away from the two homes, one of which had water flowing into the basement. The water moved swiftly for several hours, ripping up and dragging slate flagstones across one homeowner’s property and gouging out new pathways into the lake on the other. Debris and sediment flowed well into Lake St. Catherine. The event temporarily cut off road access to residents of both Wells and Poultney on the northern portion of West Lake Road, which dead-ends.

One homeowner followed the water up the hill behind his property in an attempt to investigate the cause of the release. He followed the rushing water up the steep hill and identified recent excavator tracks around the area. While the excavator was no longer at the site, there was clear evidence of unnatural excavation of a beaver dam at its downstream point, which was now draining the large reservoir of water. Later that day, Town of Wells officials retraced the flow of the water, which had subsided but not stopped by the evening, and tracked the excavator marks away from the draining pond. They followed muddy tracks to a full-size excavator, parked, and with a warm engine.

Following the event and investigation, the Agency issued notices to Ruby Construction, Inc. and Royal Harrison alleging the violation of an illegal discharge into a water of the state, and outlining the process to clean up the damage. Ruby Construction, Inc. and Royal Harrison never admitted fault for the discharge, and requested a hearing in front of the Vermont Superior Court, Environmental Division. The two-day hearing was held March 2 and 3, 2017, and the Court issued a decision on the merits and judgment order on July 28, 2017 affirming the Agency’s position. The Court’s order requires Ruby Construction, Inc. and Royal Harrison pay a penalty of $9,000 and apply for a permit from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation’s Lakes and Ponds Management and Protection Program to appropriately remove the sediment from the Lake by next fall. All sediment removal and lake restoration is to be paid for by the respondents, and an additional penalty of $3,000 will be assessed if compliance is not achieved by October 31, 20

The damn dam-wreckers! I guess we shouldn’t be surprise that when they were confronted with their own wrongdoing the Quarry owners stonewalled, but I’m glad the authorities tracked them down anyway. I personally wish it was MORE money they are being fined but I’m sure the 9000 will sting a little. I love the idea of the homeowner following the excavator tracks and laying his hand on the engine to find it was still warm. I actually did that myself once in Martinez at the secondary dam. Ah, memories.

Maybe that should be the next knotty pine mystery!