Category: Beaver Art

The Madness of Manitoba

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now? June 23, 2017

Sometimes there is so much good news about beavers you almost forget what a horrible, stacked deck they face in egregious and uninformed parts of the world. It can feel like beavers have ‘turned a corner’ and no one can legitimately challenge their value again. And then you see articles like this. Manitoba is the Canadian Province right next to Sascatchewan and has obviously learned all their least impressive alarms and tricks over the years.

Dam those beavers

Infestation causes destruction in Interlake.

ASHERN — A certain buck-toothed, flat-tailed national symbol with a waddling gait is wreaking havoc in parts of Manitoba on a scale not seen in a lifetime. Armies of beaver are penetrating deeper and deeper inland in the Interlake and some other parts of Manitoba, flooding farm fields with their dams and destroying municipal infrastructure such as roads.

“It’s just beaver country like stupid,” said Dan Meisner, a councillor with the RM of Grahamdale who is in charge of beaver control. Meisner, who is also a trapper, took out 400 nuisance beavers in one recent spring-summer period alone.

Beaver country like stupid? I really, really believe that, Dan. Exactly like stupid. Because the entire province is surrounded by solutions and you can only see problems. It’s like you’ve been given a vast carpentry set with complex engineering tools thrown in and you’re stumbling around looking for the hammers.

People in the area say there haven’t been beaver in this part of the province since before their grandparents’ day. Meisner remembers finding a stick stripped bare by a beaver and taking it to show-and-tell at school because it was so rare.

The province said it has not received an increase in beaver complaints, but could provide no other data on the beaver population.The province started offering a $15 bounty per beaver three years ago, but RMs regard it as a drop in the bucket. The RM of Grahamdale has tacked on an additional $35 per beaver.

Manitoba also provides up to $750 for removal of a beaver dam, but recommends getting rid of the beaver first or the dam will just be rebuilt.

The problem in the Interlake has been brewing since at least 2003 and progressively getting out of control, landowners said. As the beaver move inland, it’s imperative they build more dams to survive because they need water — they are almost completely defenceless on land. So they block culverts, causing ditch water to backup and flood land.

“They’re like rats and they keep populating,” he said.

“Whenever you go to get a beaver, it never lives in a nice place. You’re either going through thick ice or in heavy bush with mosquitoes and bulldogs (horseflies),” Meisner said.

Because honestly, there is nothing in the world less pleasant than spending time at a beaver pond. They are wetland slumlords, you know. With all those fish and dragonflies getting in your way. It’s startling to me that not one person has noticed that the reason they haven’t seen an ‘infestation’ of beavers before in their grandfather’s lifetime is because the very clever fur trade had KILLED THEM ALL!

I’m sure they remember that as the good ol’ days.

Let’s have a nice palate cleanser after that bitter beaver pill. Deborah Hocking is the talented artist who did the illustrations for the successful book “Build Beaver Build“. She was one of the artists I implored to donate to our silent auction. As it happened she liked our story SO much she offered to design us a bookmark for the event, which we can give out at the festival. We figure kids can use them with their journals and they’ll be a perfect match.

I talked to her yesterday and sitting down at her desk busy designing right now. Wish her muses of castor, okay? I can’t wait to see the finished product. Here’s the lodge image she included in the book just to get you interested.

Beaver teeth carving: Shigir Idol

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Art, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, History, What's killing beavers now? June 17, 2017

Three times older than the pyramids and twice as old as Stonehenge, the statue was originally dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in the Ural Mountains in 1890. The remarkable seven-faced Idol was carved with a beaver jaw and is now on display in a glass sarcophagus in a museum in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Beaver’s teeth ‘used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world’

New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact. Two years ago German scientists dated the Idolas being 11,000 years old.

At a conference involving international experts held in the city this week, Professor Mikhail Zhilin said the wooden statue, originally 5.3 metres tall, was made of larch, with the basement and head carved using silicon faceted tools. ‘The surface was polished with a fine-grained abrasive, after which the ornament was carved with a chisel,’ said the expert.

‘At least three [sets of teeth] were used, and they had different blade widths.

The faces were ‘the last to be carved because apart from chisels, some very interesting tools – made of halves of beaver lower jaws – were used’.

Zhilin, leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology, has spoken previously of his ‘feeling of awe’ when studying the Idol, more than twice as old as the Stonehenge monuments in England.

‘This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force,’ he said. ‘It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this. It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time.

‘The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.’ Only one of the seven faces is three dimensional.

While the messages remain ‘an utter mystery to modern man’, it was clear that its creators ‘lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world’, he said.

The professor has found such a ‘tool’ made from beaver jaw at another archeological site – Beregovaya 2, dating to the same period.

Studying the Idol, he believed the tool is consistent with its markings, ‘for example when making holes more circular’, said Svetlana Panina, head of the archaeology department at Sverdlovsk Regional Local History Museum.

The idol was put on a stone basement, not dug in the ground, said Zhilin. It stood lik

e this for around 50 years before falling into a pond, and was later covered in turf. The peat preserved it as if in a time capsule.

I know I have very specific tastes in news, but that is sooo cool. Of course if there were ready made carving tools all around you would use them, rather than make your own. I’m assuming the fact that there were three sizes of tools means that they were three ages of beaver harvested?

Regular readers of this blog will know right away why it was the bottom mandible and not the top used for carving. I used to think this tusk-beaver from a bavarian crest was so silly -but it actually makes more sense than our modern bucktoothed cartoon.

Despite what the funny-papers tell us, lower teeth are much larger (which is why it’s so rare to get photos of the upper ones). One fine exception to that rule of castor is this wonderful photo taken by my facebook beaver buddy Sylvie Biber. That may not be her real name, considering, but I believe she’s eastern European, living in Scotland, where she took this wonderful photo.

Top Teeth Sylvie — *Beaver teeth: Sylvie Biber*

You can bet I’d chose the bottom ones for my carving!
This also made me remember the research I did of the bay area tribes that lived near Brentwood and Antioch. In their burial grounds archeologists found beaver mandibles buried with the bodies and all their posessions. The paper I read said that no one knew why. Psychologist that I am, I always assumed it was because beaver teeth changed things and what do folks want to change more than death? But maybe they were precious tools, just being tucked away with the owner?

Too many good things for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Chewing, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 16, 2017

Some days I just can’t keep up with the hot number of good news stories reported about beavers. I’m already over the moon because Jon picked up the generous puppet donation from Folkmanis yesterday and we received our posters back from the printer. Didn’t this illustration of Alex Riley’s quote, my design and Coyote Brush Studios‘ beautiful artwork turn out extraordinary?

The plan is to sell these at the festival and by mail, although we haven’t settled on a price yet and technically they’ll be thank you gifts for donations, not sales! They are 18 x 24 and would make a wonderful classroom or visitor’s center poster!

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, this morning there’s a fantastic story out of Alberta about the always inspiring Cows and Fish teaming up with the Miistakis institute to undertake a massive survey an beaver education project, to learn how best approach the landowners.

Is Canada’s national animal a boon or a pest?

Beavers: love them, hate them or ambivalent?

A recently launched survey seeks to learn Alberta landowners’ attitudes about one of Canada’s national symbols. Alberta’s Cows and Fish society has partnered with the Miistakis Institute, a non-profit research group associated with Mount Royal University, on a survey to assess landowners’ knowledge and perception about beavers, their habitat and their management.

There are benefits and drawbacks to having beavers on the property, and survey results will be used to further develop education and outreach on the role of beavers in the ecosystem.

“Beavers are a really important keystone species in our ecosystems and they provide some really critical function within our watersheds, and people don’t know a lot of that,”said Miistakis executive director Danah Duke. “We recognize that beavers cause a lot of damage. They take down trees, they flood areas. We recognize that and we recognize that in order for people to be able to coexist with beavers, we need to be able to manage beavers.”

Duke said she suspects many people don’t realize all the benefits beavers provide, such as raising the water table, slowing stream flow, creating habitat for biological diversity and making stopgaps against drought.

“Beaver ponds retain water 50 percent longer than stream sections with no beaver activity, so in times when water is scarce, we find places that have beavers and beaver ponds, water stays on the landscape longer.”

Anyone in Alberta is welcome to take the survey, but the project is aimed at southern Alberta for the moment, said Duke. Organizers are hoping to receive at least 400 responses so that they have statistically significant results.

I am so beyond impressed with the good work Cows and Fish is doing and has been doing since long before Martinez started to play. You can check out the great survey here, I was already their outlier this morning. It’s well done and obviously sneaks in a little education at the same time as it asks questions. Just check out this question which must come as close as a beaver survey can to being a push-poll.

I sure hope during their data analysis they recognize me and wave hello!

A final burst of good news just came from author Ben Goldfarb who is writing the newest book on beavers. He just found out he is the winner of the Aldo Leopold Mi Casita fellowship which means he gets to write his book at Leopold’s home in Taos. It’s a huge honor and beavers and Ben couldn’t deserve it more.

Leopold’s ‘Mi Casita’ residents focus on environment projects

Wolves, beavers and the land ethic are the areas of interest for this year’s participants in the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program, which is now in its fifth year. The residents will spend a month in late summer at the Leopolds’ first home located on U.S. Forest Service land in Tres Piedras.

Ben Goldfarb, a science and environment writer from New Haven, Connecticut, will continue working on a book project about the ecological and hydrological benefits of North American beaver restoration.

In fall 1912, Aldo Leopold, then the newly appointed supervisor of the Carson National Forest, married Estella Luna Otero Bergere, a prominent daughter of Santa Fe. They moved into their new house, called “Mi Casita.”

It was at Mi Casita that Aldo Leopold found his footing as a leader in forestry and conservation. He once described conservation as “the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.”

The U.S. Forest Service restored the Leopold house in 2007 and has joined with other residency partners to make it available for the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program.

The sponsors of the residency program aimed to promote a transformative “unfolding” by inviting conservation-minded writers, artists, teachers, professionals and practitioners to Mi Casita. Each resident receives a stipend of $500 to help defray travel and living expenses.

Ben says the residence committee was certain Aldo would approve, and we of course agree. He notes that Aldo’s son Luna who wrote so much about fluvial geomorpology never mentioned beavers. But here’s a secret fun fact. Luna was the dissertation chair of Ann Riley who’s recent book on restoring neighborhood streams has a chapter on the Martinez Beavers.

So I think this was all meant to be, don’t you?

Remember the Neal Maine!

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? May 27, 2017

Meanwhile in Oregon, they had another beaver event Thursday Night based on the Beaver Tales Art show. They have been slowly drawing such important folks out of the woodwork to talk about beaver benefits. Thursday it was the turn of retired biology teacher turned wildlife photographer Neil Maine.

NEAL MAINE, SCIENTIST AND WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER TO PRESENT A LECTURE ON BEAVER ECOLOGY MAY 25TH 7-8PM

To celebrate beavers and their contribution to the ecology of the North Coast, the nonprofit organizations have teamed up with local businesses to host the Beaver Tales Art Exhibit and Sale in Seaside. The purpose of the exhibit is to highlight the importance of beavers in creating wetlands and other aquatic habitat.

Neal Maine will explain how beavers engineer wetlands on the North Coast, and how people can learn to take advantage of their environmental benefits while protecting property from flooding and other damage. Maine’s vast experience in studying and photographing wildlife enables him to tell fascinating stories about these industrious little rodents that most people never se

*This is probably a relative of the beavers currently working Stanley Marsh; Neal Maine caught this beaver in action at Thompson Creek a couple of years ago.*

Here I was thinking what a negligent lapse it was that I didn’t already know who Neil Maine was until I saw I had already written about him way back in 2015 when the North Coast Land Conservancy used this photo for their great restoration project letting beavers do the restoration at Stanley Marsh.

(And just in case you’re wondering yes, that actually looks like a muskrat to me too.)

Anyway Neil has definitely photographed real beavers as well, and I’m sure he had an awesome presentation that evening. The articles I saw offered a couple amazing photos of his that were definitely not muskrat-y. The art show Beaver Tales has really put together a fantastic beaver ad-campaign whose benefits will be felt for years. Kudos to the Wetland Conservancy and the North Coast Land Trust for pulling it off.

When you think of it, it’s pretty darned generous of beavers to groom every day just so that we get a nice chance to photograph them.

Artfully done

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Mike Callahan May 21, 2017

It’s Sunday, and there’s so much good news to share I’ll be choosy and just show you the very best for now. First there is a nice article following Mike Callahan’s beaver presentation Smyrski Farm owned by the Weatinoge Land Trust.

Robert Miller: The return of beavers to Connecticut

Maybe the fierce-eyed bald eagle is the national symbo, but beavers — those social, endlessly industrious homebodies — fired the exploration of North America more than any other creature. To get their pelts, traders and trappers moved across the continent years ahead of any settlers.

“They make drastic changes to the landscape,” said Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, a Massachusetts-based company dedicated to helping beavers and humans peacefully coexist. “Usually for the better.”

As with the other large mammals that have found the state to their liking — white-tailed deer, black bear, coyote — humans now have to learn to live with beaver. Gone from Connecticut for at least a century and a half, they’re back in force, slapping tails, damming streams, sometimes flooding back yards.

“Native Americans called them ‘little people’ because other than humans, no other animal changes the environment so much,” Callahan said.

When beavers build a dam, that makes a pond. That makes an open habitat in the middle of the woods, where aquatic plants, fish, waterfowl, muskrat and mink can all thrive.

“They’re really great at creating an awesome heterogeneous landscape with lots of biodiversity,” said Mike Jastremski, watershed conservation director for the Housatonic Valley Association.

Beaver ponds help regulate downstream flooding with the newly created wetlands soaking up rain water like a giant sponge.

After a time, when the beavers vacate the premises, the dam deteriorates, the pond flows away, and you’ve got a new habitat — a woodland meadow. A new set of species adapts to that. Eventually, when that meadows grows back to woods, beavers can return.

Callahan now makes his living installing systems to let people and beavers coexist. The only other option is trapping and killing them. There are too many beavers in the state to relocate them.

“They used to move them to somewhere else,” Josephson of the Naromi Land Trust said. “Now, there is nowhere else.”

“They’re sort of like mice,” said Marge Josephson, president of the Naromi Land Trust in Sherman. “If you see one mouse in your house, it means you’ve got a lot of mice. If you see one beaver, you’ve got more than one.”

Hurray for Mike, traveling between states to spread the beaver gospel with other land trusts. Clearly Mr. Jamstremski did his homework on the topic and understands why all this all matters. We’re not so sure about Marge (who needs politely reminding that its not generally a good idea to remind listeners that beavers are like mice in their house!)

Sheesh!

My mailbox has been ringing with donations all week for our silent auction at the beaver festival, but I’m going to start with the watercolor prints by Robert Mancini of Melbourne Australia.

He is a truly talented artist that works to capture the natural world with his prodigious gift. I still can’t believe how generous he was with us. Obviously his beaver painting got my attention first, but I was thrilled to see the many others he included, of which these are just a sample., all signed and on quality paper. Go look at his website to see how talented he truly is. Thank you Rob, for your generous support of beavers!