Category: Dispersal

IN FEBRUARY A YOUNG BEAVER HITS THE ROAD

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Dispersal February 7, 2020

Guess what month it is? February. And what is it that happens in February from a strictly beaver point of view? Oh that’s right. Ten years of living with beavers teaches us what happens in the west: DISPERSAL!

Beaver holds up traffic for ten minutes on Princeton bridge

Groundhog Day was February 2.

However, for at least one local man, the first day of the month was The Day of The Beaver.

Jim Dixon, and several other motorists, were held up at Princeton’s Brown Bridge for approximately ten minutes Saturday morning by a beaver who was taking its sweet time crossing the river.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dixon.

Well. maybe not Dixon, but we have. Thank goodness folks were content to slow down and snap photos. Beavers and roadways are a notoriously bad combination. Think about how annoyed that poor beaver will be when he realizes all this effort just brought him right back to the same dam river he thought he left behind.

You will recognize the presenter in this fine video from our Scottish friends.

All I can say is they have some DAM fine trees in Scotland! That is Louise Ramsay and her daughter, Sophie, singing at the end. I think this is on their estate in Bamff. What a beautiful slice of nature they steward!

A friend re-posted this recently and I thought I had died and went to heaven.

ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Dispersal October 24, 2019

This article appeared at the beginning of the month but I liked it so much I always planned to get to it. I am going to call that photo the “Winsome” beaver. I’ve never seen credit for it and I don’t think that photo is castor fiber but Isn’t s/he adorable?

Awww, gnaw! Plucky the beaver dammed to a lonely life on the loch after epic trek

A beaver has been filmed living on Loch Lomond for the first time after embarking on a cross-country trek. But the animal’s solo relocation, hailed by experts as a big step in the development of Scotland’s wild beaver population, could mean a lonely life.

Ben Ross, beaver project manager for the wildlife agency Scottish Natural Heritage, says the animal is thought to be a singleton and probably made its way 14 miles across country. Beavers, which last lived in Scotland more than 400 years ago, were reintroduced to the Tay illegally in the early 2000s, and by the last count in 2017 were thought to number more than 400.

Now don’t you just love how the article automatically assumes that this pioneer beaver is a male looking for his honey? Dietland Muller-Swarze pointed out that the research shows female young beaver dispersers are likely to GO FARTHER looking for a mate than their male counterparts. In fact the only other species known where that irony happens is with porcupines! (And yes I have a weird brain that can remember I was on an airplane flying back from a shrink conference in San Diego when I read that fact and it stuck me so dramatically I remembered it.) The conference is over, the shrink days are over, but of course I’m not forgetting that fact of odd beaver feminism any time soon.

Workers at Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve near the mouth of the Endrick were first alerted when they saw beaver-gnawed willow branches. As a result, they set up a night-vision camera trap and captured the beaver on film.

He said: “It is quite a big deal that it has crossed to the west but it is what we expected What we want is good robust populations that are spreading and spreading away from those areas where there is greater conflict.”

He pointed out there were still many potential territories to fill around the Forth and Tay, saying: “It could very well be many years until another male or female comes over, then they’ve got to pair up.

“This is well within the range which these animals might be expected to travel. The hop-over from the Tay to the Forth was significant, and this is the start of another significant step.”

“I think it’s just a waiting game for this animal, he or she might be twiddling their thumbs for a while.”

If she had thumbs, that is. What will she twiddle instead? Beavers are fairly practical. They don’t do a lot of thinking about the future. They live in a room full of “right-nows”. So they fix the dam “right-now” and they chew a branch “right-now” and they look for a mate “right-now”. But the unlike humans, the ‘nows’ don’t seem to add up to any dissatisfaction or frustration. There are no beaver tally marks on the trunks of chewed trees or lonely beaver journals saying

“Day 170, The nights are getting cooler and there was frost on the dam this morning. I haven’t yet seen or scented any sign of chewing. I’m giving up hope of ever meeting another beaver on this godforsaken landscape. This is Ripley. Signing off.”

Which is good, because waiting through a series of “right-nows” is by far the best way of all to wait for anything. You should try it sometime.

The Lomond beaver is thought to have come from a group on the Forth at Kippen, 14 miles away. It may have been forced out when its parents had new kits. While beavers will cross open country in search of a territory, tributaries of the Forth run up to Balfron, potentially giving a beaver watery cover to take it to within six miles of Loch Lomond.

A few hundred yards of open country at Balfron Station separate one small tributary of the Forth from another burn that flows into the Endrick Water, which enters Loch Lomond just south of Balmaha. This could be the route the Lomond beaver took.

I’m sure she’s coping just fine. There’s lots to eat and no competition for the best places and she’s just making scent mounds and dams to her hearts content.

A kind of ‘Isle of the blue dolphins for beavers’ if you will
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LET’S TALK ABOUT “BEAVER MAGNETS”

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers and Culvert Protection, Dispersal October 11, 2019

October is the month I said I’d work on my booklet about urban beavers for BeaverCon 2020. Some pages are going better than others. But I finished Skip Lisle’s piece on culverts yesterday and am very happy with how it looks. He very kindly wrote something up and said it was okay to share on the website too. If the print is too small to read in this image double click on it and it should popup as an insert.

I especially like the idea of culverts being the most ideal damming site EVER made. It certainly explains their popularity. And don ‘t you just love the phrase “Beaver Magnets”? I had to try my hand at making a graphic for that. Skip has a talent for naming things, I’ll say that much.

I’ve been working the back cover too, using images from friends we met over the years. What do you think? I want it to seem like they’re getting beavers whether they like it or not and encourage them to start thinking of long-term solutions.

I have a few other states I want to add to the mix but I think that gets things started. I’ve also been working on the community education and response pages, maybe ultimately as a centerfold with Amy chalking beavers as the background. These took a while to make but I’m quite fond of them.
Today I’m working on something Mike Callahan wrote about using levelers to control pond height. I was thinking I’d like an urbanish friend to write something about protecting trees. know Sierra Wildlife Coalition has done a lit but I’d love to show off beaver-mindedness in another state. Maybe Jakob Shockey or one of the groups he’s worked with? Any ideas spring to mind?

TOTO, I THINK WE’LL BE IN KANSAS FOREVER

heidi08 Dispersal, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? September 12, 2019

What a fun night in Rossmoor last evening. A lovely theater, two smart techs to help me and a great supportive crowd. A sizeable speakers fee for Worth A Dam and both my mom and Cheryl’s mom in the audience! The questions were intriguing and the feedback glowing – only one gentleman asked afterwards if it was possible to EAT beaver, bless his heart. I smiled and said they weren’t poisonous but people tended to think of the meat as greasy: case in point when the mountain men were starving they at their horses, and ate their dogs, but they didn’t tend to eat the animal they were all busy hunting after.

I barely got home and sat down with my glass if chardonnay when the power went out, and stayed out for a good three hours afterwards. Thank goodness the candles still worked!

This morning we can only pity poor Kansas who is obviously very, very confused about beavers. They keep hearing all those nice things about them but they obviously still hate them very much. I will say this beaver article from Adaven Scronce Diversified Agriculture and Natural Resource agent, is as CLOSE to being positive as any I’ve read from the state, but good lord its still pretty dire.

Busy beavers

Kansas State University Research and Extension

In Kansas, bobcats and coyotes are the only predators that will prey on adult beavers. Because of this, the beaver population can become over abundant at times. Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. While beavers and the dams they build can benefit the land and conservation efforts, the dams can have negative impacts on the environment around them. Some of those include, flooded crop fields and roads. Flooding from a beaver dam can result in the flooding of large areas where only shallow and slow-moving water existed before. While some plants and animals are able to adapt to pond life and wetlands, depending on the location and size, beaver ponds can cause significant damage to human interests. The damages from flooding caused by beaver-dams can include removing pastures and crop land from production and drowning stands of trees. Beaver dens can also potentially decrease the stability of the banks of streams and ponds and increase the chance of these banks collapsing under the weight of vehicles and farm equipment.

Okay, we’ll get to the part about all the flooding and damage beavers cause, but first I have to ask Adaven about this sentence, Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. Talk to me about the use of the word vertebrate?

Are you implying they are also invertebrate animals that modify the habitat to suit their needs? Or are you just using the word randomly to show off that you know these kinds of scientific terms and can use them at will? I guess maybe orb spiders are an invertebrate animal that modifies the habitat to suit their needs but I wouldn’t call them a keystone species.

Damaged caused by beavers can be managed by installing a beaver pond leveler, fencing off valuable trees and crops, and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization. Even though beavers and their dams have the potential to cause damage it is also possible to live with beavers if preventative measures are put in place to prevent beavers from damaging valuable resources. The Kansas Department of Wildlife notes the best way to prevent damage from beavers is through sustained population control and that pond owners should not wait until beavers become overabundant, because, at that point, damage has already been done. Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

The mind reels. The jaw drops.

Lets start at the beginning. Kansas is advocating using a pond lever! And wrapping trees! This is a very very momentous day. Congratulations Mike Callahan, you finally broke through the fourth wall! I keep pinching myself because I think I’m dreaming. But the very next sentence wakes me up to the bucket of cold water.

and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization

Not either try these things OR remove the local population. But AND. Install the pond leveler AND kill the beavers also. Because you can never be sure. And the most important thing is to keep beaver from populating the area because by then its too LATE.

Never mind that beavers are territorial and the population will never grow because offspring will disperse. Nature acts differently in Kansas. Our text books told us so. Beavers are like house mice in Kansas. They breed and breed and breed and by the time you notice droppings on your kitchen counter its TOO LATE. They are already ruining the place.

You have to love this smarmy falsely-compassionate last line.

Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

Hear that? I’m doing this for your own good. Killing your mother or your children for your own good.I know beaver chapter said something about population density and that weird word ‘dispersal’ but there was a kegger at billybob’s house that friday and I never read that far,

Because. Kansas,

ABOUT DAM TIME!

heidi08 Dispersal May 3, 2019

There have been so many slow beaver new days that I’m delighted to say today is BURSTING with beaver stories. Finally! And they hit all the right notes, from serious, to endearing to comical. Have I told you lately that I love you Google? Let’s start with this great piece about Torrey Ritter’s work.

Eager beavers: Biologists study what drives big rodents to colonize

It was looking for answers to the questions of how beavers select habitat, and what humans might do to encourage them to colonize, that earned Torrey Ritter his master’s degree from Montana State University last year. Now a nongame biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Ritter and others radio-tagged 55 beavers in southwest Montana to track their movements and learn more about what appeals to the animals when they search for new habitat.

“There were two main components: following them through the dispersal process, looking at new habitats they want, but also the trials and tribulations it takes to start a new colony,” he said. “There’s significant interest in using beavers in (wetland) restoration, establishing them in areas they’ve not been in, and we wanted to figure out how they select new sites in the wild.”

How do they pick a homeland? I’m curious! I mean how did our beavers decide to settle in brackish water next to a train, traffic and garbage trucks. I’d love to know.

While beavers removing trees and causing flooding may damage infrastructure in some cases, they play the role of habitat creators for a variety of wildlife while also altering streams to provide water storage and recharge groundwater.

“We were doing beaver surveys … and I started to realize there’s a huge number of species we were only seeing in beaver habitat,” Ritter said, which included varieties of waterfowl, songbirds, shore birds and amphibians. “They really create a diverse habitat and (create) all those little ecological niches.”

You’re kidding! You mean beavers make habitat for species that only congregate in beaver habitat? And so killing beavers is like killing all those other species too? It’s almost like you’re saying beaver lives matter. That’s incredible!

“There’s a lot of interest, and people’s first reaction is to start moving beaver everywhere, and that’s not the solution,” Inman said. “If the willows aren’t there, they’re going to move, and if the structures aren’t there to prevent flooding they’re likely to get removed. So the benefits that beaver can provide is not a matter of moving beaver, it’s a matter of preparing the habitat to have beaver come naturally.”

Ritter and others found through the research that when beavers do migrate from their home range they prefer to take up residence in areas already modified by beavers. In areas beavers have not previously occupied, building artificial structures such as lodges or dams can keep beavers from quickly leaving the area.

So they want to settle in suitable habitat. That’s a shocker! And when they see some other beaver has settled there they decide its suitable. Another shocker. Hmmm that gives me an idea, maybe we should build a beaver dam in Alhambra Creek right by a nice bridge. Do you think the mayor would mind?

The longest dispersal in the southwest Montana study was 27 miles while one of the tracked beavers made nearly 15-mile nightly journeys.

“The main takeaways are that beavers are really good at dispersing and finding habitat to occupy, and areas without beavers may not indicate there are not enough beavers but that habitat may not be readily available,” Ritter said

Which is why they move into Martinez. Excellent. Remind me to go hang an ‘occupant wanted sign” downtown, will you?

And now, at LONG LAST, you all knew this was coming.

The hilarious, extremely convincing proposal to make a beaver emoji.

You might not realize it, but there is a whole host of texting scenarios in which you might require a beaver emoji. A text to your friends in Canada, for example, to express your mutual admiration for their national animal. Or an invite to a fellow enthusiast of nocturnal semi-aquatic mammals to rendezvous at the nearest state park. (Alas, there is no dam emoji.) Or—why not?—a euphemistic missive to a consenting fellow sexter. Beaver emojis: probably very useful!

You’re kidding. There’s been NO beaver emoji all this time? What on earth do all you people text about?

If any of those examples apply to you, you’re in luck. Come October, the beaver emoji will be among this year’s class of new emojis, though it may take a whole year after that for the bucktoothed rodent to hit your phone. The proposal to include the beaver emoji comes thanks to a cadre of Canadians, lesbians, semi-aquatic mammal enthusiasts, and emoji specialists who wrote an extremely convincing and rather hilarious proposal, which in March was submitted to the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit responsible for standardizing text and emoji across devices.

Just how much would you like to read that convincing and rather hilarious proposal? I dare say rather a lot. The important thing is that the beaver emoji is on its way. Coming soon to a phone near you.