Category: Dispersal

Starved for information

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Dispersal, Environmental, Mike Callahan, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? June 14, 2017

Why is it that folks in the county library complain about having nothing to read? I guess for the same reason your teenager opens the fridge and says there’s nothing to eat. Certainly the state of New York has blinders on when it comes to solving beaver problems, other wise they would have called on Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife years ago. The answer to their question is a whopping 130 miles away.

Spencer Trying to Fix Nuisance Beaver Problem in Nichols Pond

As the Spencer Village Board of Trustees continues to ponder the beaver problem that has been plaguing Nichols Pond, they sought input from expert Scott MacDonald, who has had to deal with the industrious critters in his capacity as executive director of the Waterman Conservation Education Center in Appalachin.

For years MacDonald has been trying to figure out the best way to curb damage by the beaver population at Brick Pond in Owego. He found an effective method, though it involved installing two bulkheads that control the water level at a cost of $80,000 taxpayers’ dollars. The Spencer Village Board is seeking a more cost-effective way to prevent damage in and around the village-owned pond.

MacDonald agreed that it was also probably a beaver that chewed through the underwater electrical line that powers the fountain in the center of the pond. Goodrich said he’s not sure whether or not the fountain will be repaired in time to turn it on this summer.

I want to meet the man who sold them the 80,000 dollar solution, because he’s a genius and should work for the federal government. Clearly no kind of flow device or beaver deceiver was ever installed because they have a crew of volunteers pulling out debris on a daily basis.

The handful of volunteers who clean the debris out of the pond’s culverts are becoming fed up, according to Goodrich. “They want to move onto other stuff,” he said of the volunteers, “but they’re so busy with the beavers they can’t do anything else.”

“I don’t blame them,” he added,” because they’re out there every day.” He said that most if not all of the volunteers are older and that the physical labor of clearing out sticks and packed mud can be hard on them.

Therefore, Goodrich said, the board needs to come up with a solution sooner rather than later. The beavers cannot be trapped and relocated because they are considered a “nuisance” species in New York State, the logic being that it’s not fair for people to release beavers elsewhere and pass on the burden to other landowners.

Goodrich said that he is not opposed to having the beavers killed, a resolution that none of the other trustees were very enthusiastic about supporting.

Most of the trustees said they believe that if the beavers are killed another family of beavers will move in. Goodrich argued that trapping the beavers that live in the pond currently would at least give the village time to come up with an adequate solution before new ones decide to make the pond their home.

MacDonald said he considers having the family beavers killed the one “black mark” on his record as caretaker for the pond, even though it was necessary to secure the state funding necessary to save the pond after the flood.

“It was very bad,” he said. “The public got very upset about it.”

We learned so much from that incident. We still don’t have a clue how to solve beaver beaver problems.

Since that time, he has learned how to raise and lower water levels at certain parts of the pond. If he pays attention to what the beavers are up to, he can often dissuade them from building in problematic places because beavers won’t build dams where the water is not deep enough for them to float the big logs they need to start their shelter. Beavers, he told the board, do not like to drag heavy logs.

Even with the bulkheads, MacDonald said there is some manual labor involved. There’s one culvert he has to dig out himself every once in a while or it becomes a major project — over the last winter he let it go too long, he said, and a few weeks ago he had to go out in a wetsuit with a backhoe to clear the stopped-up water flow.

Some level of manual labor seems inevitable if the beavers are to stay, but Spencer Village Trustee Nicole O’Connell-Avery said that she disapproves of setting kill traps.

She said the traps would likely be set underwater and would catch the beavers by the leg, holding them until they drown. She said it sounds like an awful way to die, and questioned whether or not the traps could endanger swimmers, pets or boaters who fall overboard.

O’Connell-Avery was enthusiastic about the idea of installing heavy-duty fencing in strategic areas that would prevent the beavers from building at the pond’s intakes and outtakes. Mayor Christine Lester said she thought this was worth a try.

O’Connell-Avery also offered up the unique but untested idea of population control: catching, neutering and releasing the pond’s male beavers. O’Connell-Avery works at Cornell University, and she said she would ask around to see if her colleagues would be interested in using the pond as a case study.

Beavers live in families of eight to 10, and usually only one family will live in a body of water as small as Nichols Pond. When the family has about eight offspring, the parents kick out the two oldest, who then seek new habitats at neighboring ponds, according to MacDonald. O”Connell-Avery said that this structured family setup might make for an ideal situation in which researchers could trap the males and keep track of the results.

When the family has about EIGHT OFF SPRING THEY KICK OUT THE TWO OLDEST? Really? And you work at Cornell? Are you the frickin’ janitor?

Good lord this riles me. I’m too old for this sort of nonsense. Considering that Cornell already HIRED Mike Callahan to install a flow device, every one of these folks should know better. That was just over an entire year ago, I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t be up on such ancient history.

I guarantee you Mike didn’t charge the university 80,000 dollars for his installation, by the way. Heck even when we brought Skip Lisle 3000 miles out from VERMONT to solve our problem it didn’t cost us 80,000.

ACK! Someone get me a paper bag to breathe into. The Cornell website tells me that Nicole is a supervising vet Tech at the wildlife animal hospital at the university. She could really make this happen. We can only hope that before she picks up the scapel to neuter these beavers she cracks open a book and reads that beavers enter estrus once a year and young disperse at two years regardless of the family size. Surely she will listen to a reasonable argument?

Given Spencer’s track record so far, I’m not counting on it.

I need to calm myself by sharing the beautiful new sign that arrived yesterday for my beaver booth. Isn’t this lovely? It will hang out from my booth like one of those Ye Olde Shoppe signs!

Be Careful Out There

heidi08 Dispersal May 17, 2017

Beavers are notoriously vulnerable on roadways. They are low to the ground and usually crossing in the dark which makes them a prime target for roadkill. Do they ever use wildlife crossings? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Some fine investigative beaver reporting comes from Robin Ellison of Napa. She was interested in whether beavers ever use the crossings trans Canada offers. You know the ones I mean.

Turns out they have an extensive system to document the wildlife crossings with trail cam footage, and trackpads keep records to monitor use. They were only too happy to share the info with Robin and wrote back:

Thank you for your inquiry and interest in the wildlife crossing structures as they relate to beaver species movements. I’ve had our database specialist look through the history of wildlife crossing documentation and have found some results for you. We’ve not been able to find documentation on whether or not road mortality numbers for beavers were affected. However, we did find information on beavers using the Trans-Canada highway wildlife crossing structures. There are only 5 incidences that have been documented on all of Banff National Park’s highway wildlife crossing structures (we currently monitor 44 of these structures). As you mentioned, all the beavers that have been documented on wildlife crossing structures were associated with waterway travel–in these cases the beavers were on a flat pathway in an underpass that has a creek running through it.

Below I’ve listed the information we have on beavers using the Trans-Canada highway wildlife crossing structures. I’ve also found a photo of a beaver using a wildlife crossing structure (you can see the creek in the background).

Not a ton of observations, beavers are probably less likely than others to venture out of the water. But there are more observations than I might have expected. You can see three identifications came from trackpads which I had to look up. Here’s a nice description from some research they did trying to find which tool worked better. They found that trackpads had their place but cameras were better if there was a lot of wildlife traffic.

Field Data Collection

All 24 CS in the study area were continuously monitored forlarge mammal use since 1996 using track-pads (Clevengerand Waltho 2000, 2005). At least one track-pad (range 2–7pads/CS) was constructed at each end of every underpass,and each track-pad spanned the width of the underpass and was approximately 2 m long in the axis of animalmovement. Track-pads on the overpasses consisted of onetrack-pad located at the center, spanning the width, and were approximately 4 m long in the axis of animalmovement. Tracking material consisted of a dry, loamy mixture of sand, silt, and clay, 1–4 cm deep. We visited eachCS every other day, and at each visit we classified thetracking medium as Good, Fair, Poor, or Too many,depending on our ability to detect tracks. A track-padcondition of Good occurred when our ability to detect tracks

Here’s what one of the cameras documented. That lucky beaver made it safely across and back into the water. (The darker area is the creek).

I haven’t been doing this beaver work for very long, but I’ve already come across several beavers and otters struck by vehicles. We could learn a lot from our Canadian friends. Thanks to the helper who shared this information

J. Kimo Rogala, M.Sc.
a Resource Management Officer II
Ecological Integrity Monitoring, Banff National Park
Parks Canada Agency | Government of Canada
Box 900, 216 Hawk Ave, Banff, AB, T1L 1K2

for keeping track of this information. And thanks Robin for doing the legwork! This is a wonderful insight into something we understand very little about. I’m just glad these beavers never had to go through this:

(For the record I spoke years ago with the fellow who filmed this beaver. Not the news site that made his footage into a comedy. And the witness swears he made it across safely. Although one foot did appear injured in the photos I saw.)

Beaver Fireside Chats

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Chewing, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? May 2, 2017

Three beaver stories you don’t see every day…from places you truly expect to know better. The first is from Maine where a man believes he saw castoroides in person. Yes, really. He doesn’t want to give the location to make sure no people want go hunting for him.

Maine Man Claims to Have Witnessed Giant Beaver

A man from Maine claims to have seen a gigantic beaver. His estimations of size were about 14 feet long and weighing over 350 pounds. The man didn’t want to give away the exact location, for fear someone would try to harm the giant rodent.

“It was about 30 years ago,” he told Crypto Crew researcher Thomas Marcum. “It was a very general geographic area,” he added.

The anonymous eyewitness says he doesn’t want to give too much information about the area of the alleged sighting in order to protect this “rare animal” from “unwanted” human activity.

The man believes the rodent was about 14 feet long with an estimated weight of 350 pounds. It is believed that giant beavers, also known as Castoroides, went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

You saw a giant beaver 30 years ago? That’s nothing, a mere 47 years ago I could fly down stairs! I carefully explained to my disbelieving sister that I could only do it when no one was watching, because mysteries must be protected you know. Which I think makes my story more believable. To be fair, people were certain the ivory billed woodpecker was extinct until someone found one lurking in the back woods. I guess it’s theoretically possible castorides could be hiding in Maine.

Well, maybe not Maine.

Onto Montana where a wastewater staffer who has been told to protect the precious levys by killing beavers. A lot of beavers.

Pat Brook has nothing against beavers, but Hurricane Katrina forced his hand

Up until six years ago, though, Brook says, he’d never given beaver a second thought.

“Why would I?”

The answer is Hurricane Katrina. After New Orleans’ levees failed in 2005, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began reevaluating other levees across the country, identifying deficiencies and tasking local officials with fixing them. When Missoula’s time came in 2011, the feds found that beavers were burrowing into a portion of the levee stretching from California Street to Russell. Their directive: Get rid of the beavers. And so, over the past six years, Brook has trapped 21 beavers near the California Street footbridge with the help of Dave Wallace, a Kila-based private contractor who specializes in wildlife control and removal.

“Let’s face it, you’re right on a primary corridor there,” Wallace says. “Basically, trapping is just preventative maintenance.”

Even so, Brook hates to call what they do trapping. It’s a practice he doesn’t support. “I mean, what’s the word I’m looking for? Barbaric?” From day one, he’s bucked the advice he says he received from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to simply kill the critters. Instead, he’s insisted on releasing the captured beavers at either Kelly Island or Fort Missoula, the two sites that FWP, which issues his permits, instructed him to use for relocation. Keeping the beavers alive carries an additional $50-per-beaver charge, and Wallace says Missoula is “the only place [in the state] where that’s carried out.” Brook sees it as money well spent.

“It sucks, but I gotta do it,” he says. “There’s a reason I’m here doing it, but I’d rather leave them alone.” According to Brook, the city’s bill for beaver relocation since 2011 totals $15,023.03.

City officials haven’t exactly been keen to discuss their approach to the beaver problem, fearful of how the trapping might play with the public. In fact, Brook found himself at the center of a dust-up in early April after two women confronted Wallace while he was setting cages. Brook says the situation escalated rapidly, drawing in both Missoula police and FWP.

The April incident has made increased public awareness inevitable. So Brook is now crafting a new plan, one that calls for installing large beaver-resistant rocks, or rip-rap, along the threatened stretch of levee. The project will have “a hefty price-tag,” he says, and would have to get the OK not just from city administrators, but from the feds as well.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still scratching my head about this article even though there not a word I disagree with. The waterway would be full of beavers using it as a freeway on their way to disperse, and killing every single one and throwing away the skin isn’t ‘trapping’ by any stretch of the word.

But the odds of him getting approval for the rip rap plan are pretty slim. Just like the odds of relocated beavers dumped in a neighboring lake surviving are also pretty slim. The army corps of Engineers were always crazy about their levies, and since Katrina they’ve become downright levy nazi’s. Remember a couple years back when they told California that if vegetation was left standing on a levy it wouldn’t be treated as their responsibility in a flood?

Sure, more erosion. That’s what levy’s need.

Well I wish Mr. Brooks all the luck in the world on his quest, and wrote him some advice about cost saving arguments to wield. In the meantime we should just all appreciate the fact that there is at least ONE wastewater operator in Montana that thinks endless depredation of beavers is cruel and pointless, and that’s something.

Finally, CBC radio is fondly remembering one of their most famous stories today. Apparently this story was listened to and shared more than any other. The narrator is a mild-mannered canadian man who apparently wished the beaver no harm, and holds no grudges. I found the whole thing grizzly in the extreme, but I was somewhat touched by his comments at the end. Listen if you dare.

Insert stuck beaver joke here

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Dispersal, Environmental, stupid solutions April 27, 2017

What I want to know is Who decides these things? What all-powerful overseeing force determines how every reporter is going to talk about beavers in every region and every country with the flick of a finger? Is there some giant war room where multiple screens determine the headlines on every news source in the hemisphere? I guess it could be something as simple as a press release, but maybe it’s a whole underground beaver cabal string-puller we don’t even suspect. Case in point:

Fat Beaver Stuck In Hamilton Fence Rescued By Animal Services Officer

Animal services rescues chubby beaver trapped in fence

Fat beaver stuck in fence freed by Hamilton city worker

This chunky national symbol has Hamilton Animal Services to thank for seeing him through to Canada’s 150th birthday.

The service responded to a call on Tuesday reporting a beaver wedged in a wrought iron fence. In their news release, the agency said they suspected the animal tumbled part-way through, but then found itself unable to wriggle its winter-heavy posterior between the bars.

Animal services officer Sarah Mombourquette freed the portly beast with the help of fast thinking and a common household ingredient – a little bit soap slicked him up enough to slip the rest of the way through

While beavers don’t hibernate, this adult male was clearly carrying a bit of extra weight after a less-active winter season. Slightly above-average temperatures across southern Ontario this past winter may have helped him along in packing on the pounds; the winter of 2015/2016 saw an epidemic of fat squirrelsthanks to milder weather giving them more access than usual to food through the winter months.

After the rescue, animal services transferred the beaver to Hobbitstee Wildlife Refuge in Jarvis, where he’ll spend some time recovering from his injuries before being rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

“Conservation efforts have led to a healthy beaver population and in honour of Canada 150, Hamilton Animal Services is thrilled to give this beaver a happy ending,” said Paoila Pianegonda, the city’s Manager of Animal Services. “We believe that no beaver should be left behind.”

Even if his behind is what got him in trouble in the first place.

Ha ha ha! Get it? Because he’s a pudgy beaver! Right? We all know beavers are skinny and fluffy little rabbit sized rodents with long tails. Because the warm winter meant that the beaver was awake and eating all winter. Like YOU you lazy couch potato. Because under normal conditions a beaver would easily pass through a wrought iron fence.

Sheesh.

First of all, I hate to break it to you, and forgive me for interrupting your little castor fat-shaming session, that isn’t a fat beaver. It’s a grown up beaver. Maybe not even grown up. Maybe a disperser. You forgot how big an adult beaver is because we killed them all. Second of all, beavers get THINNER in the winter not fatter. The winter freeze means they have to live off the food they stored, so as the winter drags on the is less and less to eat. Third of all, even if there was a very, very warm winter and the lucky beaver could go get fresh food all the time because the water was never frozen, there is still no reason he would put on more weight in the winter because he would be doing the same things he normally did.

Instead, of accusing that beaver of sloth, I wonder, if you could for a moment, just remember back to the days of your childhood where you were certain that your head would easily fit through the stair banister railing, or your brother’s headboard, or the fence slats in the garden. Do you remember what a shock it was to find that not only could you not get through, which you had been certain you could do, you could even not get back out? Your friend Whitey tried to pull you out and failed, then your brother and finally your dad. Do you remember how lonely and cold it got waiting for the fire department to come and set you free?

As horrific. terrifying and humiliating that fateful day was, aren’t you glad there wasn’t an international headline the next morning saying it happened because of your pudgy head?

With me it was my right thumb. And a very inviting and mysterious hole inside the handlebar of my highchair where the tray table usually snapped in. We didn’t have enough chairs at for our big (Catholic) family for me to sit on one at the table for a while, so I stuck with the highchair longer than most. I remember my mother telling me, when I poked that inviting opening curiously, “Don’t put your finger in there!” Ah, whose life wouldn’t have been different if they had listened to that advice?

So obviously I never got my thumb stuck in the whole one night after a particularly unappetizing dinner. And I never had to tell my parents the awful truth after all the plates were cleared away. And my father didn’t have to try vasoline and finally ice to ease it out. What I can assure you, is that my 2 year old thumb was not pudgy from winter, and I certainly wasn’t happy about those long hours I waited for the swelling to go down so I could get it back.

Something tells me that beaver wasn’t either.

On to wiser things. (And pretty much anything is.)

Believe it or not, the bagpipe player who helps out at the festival found this in his Canadian nature news feed and shared it with me. Small, small world. This is the Michel LeClare workshop we talked about earlier.

May-2017-Beaver-Management-Workshop-Flyer-1-1

Beaver Wranglers!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Dispersal, Video, Who's saving beavers now? April 18, 2017

Sometimes life gives you little funny gifts that you don’t really deserve or expect. Yesterday’s call-in show about the horrible beaver-eatin’ program was vastly superior to the original. Owing in large part to the host Laura Knoy and to the first caller who said her beaver pond was essential fire protection for her home. Ahhh my hero. Art Wolinsky called in also and is wonderful of course. This is worth listening to if you have time. Skip Lisle does an excellent job of sounding way more reasonable than everyone else, and even the trapper isn’t horrific. I edited out the commercials and it’s a great listen.

Podcast host Sam Evans-Smith suddenly sounds soooo much more reasonable about beavers, and even wants some on his property. (Art thinks our letters over the weekend may have done some good, but who knows?) My favorite part is where Sam corners the fish and wildlife guy about how often flow devices fail and the man is left chattering nonsense about water depth admitting he wasn’t even talking about that. Good times.

And then, in compensation for all our suffering, the benevolent universe gave us a little present in the form of a beaver mystery. It happened, (Of all places) in Saskatchewan Canada where they had the horrific beaver kill-derby last year. I’m not surprised. Apparently even the cattle are scared of beavers up there.

Sask. ranchers stunned as beaver herds 150 cattle

Saskatchewan rancher Adrienne Ivey may have heard of a beaver, but until now, had never seen a beaver herd. Cattle, that is.

On Friday, Ivey and her husband were surprised to see 150 of their heifers crowded together in one of their pastures. Curious about the strange behaviour, they investigated further, to find the herd of cattle following a beaver that had wandered along.

“He was out and about, I think looking for a new place to build a beaver lodge, and they were following him,” Ivey said. “There was about a three-foot space around him. They didn’t want to get closer than that.”

According to Ivey, heifers, young cows that haven’t had a calf before, are more inquisitive than the average bovine, which may have led to the cows following the beaver.

“They’re a curious bunch,” she said. “They’re kind of like teenagers. And I think they were following this thing around because they couldn’t figure out what the heck it was.”

Ivey thought the odd event was even more notable considering the beaver is Canada’s national symbol.”We just thought this was so funny and so Canadian,” she said. “A Canadian beaver leading around a bunch of Canadian cattle just makes it even more funny.”

This is the kind of story that would be SO MUCH BETTER with video. But never fear, because I have a treasure that is going to make all of your pain and suffering fade away. Don’t say I never did anything for you. Behold the beaver wrangler!

I think these cows read that Belarus disperser story and are all terrified of him!

I know folks might worry, but I’m just going to assume that the cows stayed this well, cowed as long as it took for the beaver to get where he was going because we’re talking about Saskatchewan and you know if they suddenly trampled him to death the ranchers would be way too excited and posting that video everywhere online. Mostly I just love this video because it soundly demonstrates how very much smarter beavers are than cows. You can’t exactly say they look up to him.

Maybe it’s the calendar but I’m suddenly reminded me of this favorite moment from the Life of Brian.