Category: food cache

FAIRFIELD BEAVERS IN THE NEWS

heidi08 food cache September 22, 2020

Well, well, well. The Fairfield beavers had a fine news day yesterday – akin to one of the many enjoyed in Martinez. The first was the local paper which launched into the story directly on their front page. Click the photo for a link to the online version.

It’s a nice article with of course plenty of airtime for city officials to say how they only did it to SAVE the city and would never kill beavers. Of course we know that isn’t true. Because we have the depredation permit obtained for city hall in 2015. But you know how they are. The dust they throw is magical and makes reporters obedient.

Less easily intimated was the report in the SF Gate by Jeremy Hay. He’s the reporter who was sent the story by a friend of mine in Martinez. I’m super impressed with the thorough job he did talking to Virginia, the city, me, and the Sonoma Water District about the flow device they just installed,

Something tells me Fairfield might be discussing this right now.

Removal Of Beaver Dam In Laurel Creek Draws Criticism From Residents

What happened, said Bill Way, a Fairfield city spokesman, is that the dam was removed last Wednesday as part of “routine preventative maintenance work ahead of the rainy season.”

The city “has experienced numerous instances of flooding due to debris blocking the culverts, which run beneath our roadways,” Way said. He acknowledged that the dam location had not been a flooding problem “in recent years,” though the dam is believed to have been only 10 months old.

Way said the beavers swam away unharmed.

Now, because this is my website and not at all my first rodeo, I get to play the cross examining beaver lawyer and comment that last sentence was odd. Go read it again. Obviously the dam wasn’t destroyed in the middle of the night and most likely the beavers didn’t rush out of their safe-hole when the water level dropped. So they could not have bee seen swimming away unharmed. It’s a pat on the head, and we are being told not to worry. In my considered opinion Bill Way said that because he is lacks basic knowledge and thinks that beaver live IN the dam. Which if he doesn’t know that simple fact how can we believe anything he says? And my god if you thought the dam was full of beavers how could you possibly hack it apart with tools?

Neighbors and others who have enjoyed the beavers and the wildlife that gravitated to the pool created by the dam say the city decided to take action without considering the ecological value of the dam and the beavers that created it.

“It just seems like it would be a very simple thing for the city to say, ‘Hey, we have a problem, we think this is the way to solve it. And have a discussion about alternatives,” said Noah Tilghman, who lives about 150 feet from the site of the former dam.

“It’s my hope that they (the beavers) will reestablish the dam. There are some real benefits to having it there,” Tilghman said.

Outstanding. Man on the street stuff and neighbors watching and wanting the best thing for the creek. I could barely have cast a better screenplay for real change. Fingers crossed.

Beavers are fast in water but, because they are heavy with short legs, they are slow on land. So they build dams to create a safe space for themselves where they can raise families, said Heidi Perryman, founder of Worth a Dam, a Martinez-based nonprofit that advocates for beavers.

The dams raise the level of the water — in this case, Laurel Creek — above the entrance to the beaver home, keeping predators at bay.

When a dam is destroyed, “the first thing that happens is that habitat is lost, their protected space,” said Perryman.

The second thing that happens is that the pond created by the dam washes away and with it the ecosystem that developed around it. In Laurel Creek that included tule reeds that the beavers ate, which now, Perryman said, will die because their roots are exposed, plus otters, turtles, cormorants, muskrats, and herons.

The problem with getting rid of beavers is you get rid of a ton of habitat,” Perryman said. “Beavers build kind of a neighborhood and everyone moves in. So it’s not just that you’re losing beavers, you’re losing a ton of species that are benefiting from beavers’ habitat.”

My my my. What a great quote if I do say so myself. I’m really pleased with how our interview came out. It was one of those perfect clarity moments where it feels like you have infinite time to get things right. And Jeremy was a great listener.

Way, the Fairfield city spokesman, said, “We agree that beaver dams do create ecosystems. However, when taking into account the damage caused when neglected within an urban setting, the responsible decision is to remove them.”

Ahhh that’s fantastic. He’s already on the ropes. Yes what you’re saying is true but we HAD to! Our job is to protect the city and the infrastructure. We had no choice.

Now it’s time to give him a choice.

Holsworth, Perryman and others say that there are viable alternatives that the city could pursue instead of dam destruction — essentially channeling water around, under or over the dam, thereby preventing it from backing up on one side of the dam and reducing the likelihood of flooding.

Way said the city has looked into such alternatives.

“We have considered multiple devices which have been brought to our attention, and in all cases, they require routine maintenance,” he said.

The “unnecessary risk” to city workers outweighs the other options.

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If it please the court could you clarify some of the multiple devices you looked into? I’ll wait while you pretend to look through papers. Hmm…The Clemson Pond Leveler? Yes that was a big invention back in the when Reagan was president. I’m curious, did you look at anything more modern? I mean did you for example pick up the fricken phone and talk to public works in Sonoma which just installed or your across-the-strait neighbor Martinez where one worked for 10 years? Did you ask them how much maintenance it took?

Holsworth thinks the city is just stuck in its ways.

“I think it’s just the process that has been going on for a long time, just like someone who has some behavioral routine, they don’t see anything wrong with it,” Holsworth said. “They’re not being open to solutions that can maintain our ecosystem and keep our infrastructure safe.”

Communities from Martinez — home to an annual Beaver Festival — to Diablo to Sonoma County have installed alternatives to destroying dams.

“It was a successful project,” said Barry Dugan, a spokesman for the Sonoma County Water Agency, which installed three levelers at dams on Fryer Creek, south of the city of Sonoma.

You were saying Mr. Way? Speak up the court can’t hear you.

In Fairfield, the issue of the Laurel Creek beaver dam has quickly acquired a political tone. Holsworth is leading a petition drive to get the city to install a flow device, and urging residents to contact Mayor Harry Price who, she said, hasn’t yet responded to repeated calls and messages.

And Kam Holzendorf, a City Council candidate in District 4, which includes the stretch of Laurel Creek in question, has adopted the dam’s removal as a campaign cause.

“I’m very concerned about the actions taken by our city and I’m going to go ahead and look for answers for the constituents to ease their frustration or find solutions to keep our ecosystem safe,” said Holzendorf, a Fairfield High School English teacher who recalled playing in the creek as a kid. “I don’t appreciate the fact that there was no heads up about this or no warning.

There is almost nothing I like better than politicians looking over their shoulder and seeing looming beaver support. It is the very definition of the old saying “Let the people lead and the leaders will follow“.

Another neighbor to the former dam, Linda Elkins, said once she saw it she expected it would be removed.

“I understand the necessity of it,” she said, “I’m not happy about it.”

But she said she would like to know about — and would like the city to explore — different strategies for the future.

“It would be interesting to hear about other alternatives,” she said.

In the meantime, Elkins said, “I think if nothing else, this brings awareness to people that right in our backyard we have nature that we should appreciate, and I’m glad to see that so many people are concerned. Maybe this will ultimately help our neighborhood.”

Oh man. This article has ALL the voices. The reasonable neighbor who understand the city but wants to consider options. The devoted neighbor who wants the wildlife in their creek to thrive. The weasily city official who is made to answer to these charges because HE will never have to be elected and the cowering mayor who is not available for comment until he figures out which way the scales will tip.

Now they just need a documentary filmmaker. And the scene is set for beaver resilience 2.0!

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THE BEAVER IN OCTOBER

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, food cache October 16, 2018

Orillia is just north of Toronto in Canada so of course there a plenty of beaver observations to make as the season changes. I liked this column by David Hawke, although its on par for us with a story headlined “The sun came up and then went down again!”

Beavers busy preparing for another ‘dam’ winter

Autumn is not so much a time to pause and reflect on summer, as it is a time to prepare for winter.

Food for wildlife is plentiful, the weather is acceptable for foraging, and the young of the year are either gone or at least old enough not to be a constant concern. It is a time to be busy, “busy as a beaver” as some would say.

Why pick on the beaver? Why not “busy as a red squirrel” or “busy as a white-tailed deer?” One reason is the alliteration, the words just roll off the tongue in a pleasing manner; another reason, perhaps, is that when beavers get working you will notice them: trees are removed, water is dammed… things are obviously happening!

The more one studies beavers, the more one realizes how complex is their relationship with water, terrain, and trees.

As one who has spent a decade studying beavers, I completely agree!

The dam is a constant concern as it has to hold enough water to keep a pond flooded yet allow some leakage to ensure the dam isn’t completely over-run each night. Ideally, there will be a restricted flow, with just enough resistance to keep the pond as a pond.

In areas of deep soil a dam can last many years as the base structure of large sticks is held fast into the soft soil. Looking at beaver dams built across the streams that flow on the Canadian Shield, the longevity of a dam is sometime only from one storm to the next, as the drainage force of a sudden downburst of rain can actually push the poorly anchored dam right out of the way.

When a dam breaks and the water level drops, beavers are in big trouble. Not only are they vulnerable as they waddle about the mud flats, their entrance holes to the lodge are now exposed. The high water level ensures that the normally underwater entrance tunnel is sealed from the wind, thus creating an insulated interior.

Assuming that the dam is intact, the beaver’s next worry is to stockpile enough food to get through the winter months. Not only do they need enough food daily in October to sustain themselves and add a bit of a fat layer, but they must also forage for and store extra food for several months to come. Hence the “busy-ness” of a beaver.

What was that old saying? “A beavers work is never done”.

This stockpile of branches is kept underwater, deep enough to be accessible under the winter ice. Poplar, alder and maple are the preferred tree species, as the bark is soft and fairly moist with sap. Keep in mind that the beaver does not eat the wood, only the inner bark has nutrients.

After a snack the remaining wood is like the centre of an after-dinner corn cob (in human-folk parlance) and is either discarded or used as building material.

If all goes well, by the time the temperatures drop enough to freeze up the shallow waters, the beavers will have patched the dam, strengthened the lodge walls, stored a huge pile of succulent branches, and gained a few pounds of insulating body fat.

Inside the lodge will be tired Dad beaver, pregnant Mom beaver, and one or two restless one-year old beavers. Gets kind of crowded but the combined body heat keeps the place feeling homey.

If the underwater food supply is exhausted prior to spring, or the dam leaks too much or even breaks, the situation can get pretty bad for the beavers.

There have been winters when I’ve discovered beaver tracks in the snow, usually accompanied by drag marks where a small tree has been nipped off and hauled back to the water.

This is a no-win situation, as the cold weather and awkward travel through the deep snow sucks up a huge amount of energy, and the little tree has almost no sap left up in the trunk so even if gnawed clean the energy replacement is less than the expenditure.

Along the tops of the steep banks of the nearby Black River can sometimes be found beaver stumps almost one metre high, evidence that the hungry beavers have had to climb up several meters of almost vertical river bank, waddle through very deep snow, find a poplar tree that was missed from last fall’s gathering, gnaw it down, and slide the whole thing back into the river. The will and ability to survive is strong in a beaver.

Today I will spend my energy raking fallen leaves off the lawn and then drive to the grocery store where frozen pizzas are on sale (always good to stock up for the winter).

Admittedly, that kind of pales by comparison to the activities that will be undertaken today by the busy beavers of the real world.

Agreed! We are all lazyier than beavers. But beavers celebrate plenty of slack time in their purposeful lives. I actually don’t think there’s any distinction made in a beaver mind usually between “work” and “rest”. They’re both classified under the same column of “occupations I enjoy”, and beavers will do either interchangeably.

In normal conditions I have seen beavers eat and build and build and eat and even take a moment to chew the stick they’re using to build. As if life was a huge fluid medley of purpose and pastime.

Things are different only when there is a crisis, such as the fateful night in Martinez when Skip lowered their dam by three feet to install the flow device. Every family member worked their hardest for much longer than anyone was willing to watch them, even the kits, who swam back and forth actually taking wood off the lodge to rebuild the dam with. Dad worked so hard he was noisily ripping tules out of the bank to plug the leaks, and to this day they have not regrown in the area.

Unfortunately, because of Skip’s pipe placement, they were never able to stop the leak, and the lodge entrances remained exposed forever. Remember?

Dad beaver watching from old lodge: Cheryl Reynolds

CACHE-ING IN

heidi08 food cache December 26, 2017

Happy boxing day! Supposedly if you’re lucky enough to have servants they get the day off today and you get cold roast beef sandwiches and reheated tea. That sounds like a pretty great tradition to me.

I hope you don’t need the day off because there is work to do and beaver mysteries to ponder. Starting with the mystery of the beaver food cache. Which I realized this week I know less about than I should.

Now this fine illustration by Deborah (the artist who made our bookmarks last year) shows the cache as I i basically imagine it. Leafy branches bedded into the soil, underwater where beavers will have access to it when the water surface freezes. As far as we know our beavers never made a food cache, and had no need to, because Martinez was well out of the freezing zone.

But in following the Port Moody case, where they get a dusting of snow occasionally but the water never freezes, I’ve realized things aren’t entirely clear to me. The city reported that the photo of the beaver in the drain clearly showed it’s “food cache”. But why would a beaver need a food cache where it never freezes? And how would a food cache that’s above the water line be of any use if it did freeze?

Judy says she has watched the beaver sit again next to his pile of sticks and choose which one to eat. Is this a food cache? Again, why bother if it’s not going to protect the animal from freezing?

There aren’t may photos of food caches online, which I guess means that they are usually underwater or mostly underwater. But I was able to find a few. I suppose there are beavers in ‘in-between zones’ where it sometimes freezes or has occasionally frozen.

Come to think of it, there’d be zero chance to learn your lesson if you didn’t make a cache when you needed it. Because you’d be dead of starvation and your children would be dead before they could ever learn anything for next year. Maybe since it’s such a high risk situation all beavers keep a food cache?

This is Paul Ramsay’s photo of the beavers at Bamff where it also doesn’t freeze solid. You can clearly see the sticks. Clearly above water. Where it would be absolutely no use to them to have sticks if it did freeze solid. So what’s up with that?

Apparently the cache starts with visible material, then sinks and gets filled in below as the work goes on. In fact it is even suggested that beavers put the good stuff where it won’t freeze,

Well, I can promise there was never a ‘floating raft’ of food anywhere in Martinez. Maybe freezing lightly triggers the behavior? If our beavers had been moved to the sierras would they start caching food? Research says that when beavers from big rivers are moved to little streams they automatically start building dams, even though they’ve had no practice.

How far from the snowline does a beaver need to be before it doesn’t bother with a food cache? Do beavers in Jackson make a food cache? In Ione? In Sacramento?

There may be something very specific that triggers caching behavior. It can’t be the presence of ice because by then would be too late in the season to make one. Maybe frost?

I wonder what it is? Think of this as a mystery-in-process, because I don’t have the answers and I very much doubt anybody else does.