Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Beaver Behavior


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It must be spring. I woke up with a tick crawling down my arm.

Jon of course brought her back on the dog with his daily tick collecting-walk on the Franklin ridge trail. but it does worry me to find want walking about in the morning. Was I so unappetizing all night? Do i have some rare blood disorder that ticks find repulsive? Was it that second shot of Moderna? Or am I just lucky?

There are plenty of unlucky beavers out there that’s for darn sure. Like these in Idaho where they can’t possibly be bothered to ‘wrap’ the trees.

Pullman, beavers not getting along

The city of Pullman is planning to work with trappers to prevent beavers from causing more damage to trees at a local park.

The city received calls from residents about trees being chewed up and damaged at the City Playfield next to the South Fork Palouse River in early spring, said Pullman Parks and Facilities Director Alan Davis.

The damage presents a safety issue at the park as damaged trees hang near a walking path and hover over the river.

However, Davis said the signs of beaver damage are not always obvious.

No. They are. Really they are. First the tree is upright. An then it’s knocked over. You’ll notice right away I’m pretty sure. If that little bark damage is what’s making you think you have beavers then I’d think again.

To prevent further destruction, Pullman Parks and Recreation staff and code enforcement officers from the Pullman Police Department plan to enter into a service agreement with licensed trappers to set live traps for the beavers.

In order to keep costs down, Pullman staff will monitor those traps so the trappers do not have to do so regularly.

It’s too much of a burden for them to actually FINISH their job. It’s enough that they just start it I guess. Never mind any harm to that otter or labrador who was caught by mistake. Staff will just give you a call if we see a body. If we remember.

Unlike Washington, where they have slightly more of a clue.

Longview parks, recreation officials plan to trap beavers damaging trees at Lake Sacajawea

People walking, biking, boating or fishing at Lake Sacajawea recently may have noticed more trees missing bark, sporting bite marks or fallen into the water.

It’s unlikely folks will spot the culprits — beavers — but the Longview Parks and Recreation Department has received several reports about the damage, said Parks and Urban Forestry Manager Joanna Martin.

“There’s always wildlife at the lake. It’s not abnormal to have beavers,” she said.

Well yes. It is normal to have beavers. Nice lake, Tasty trees. Quiet park setting. I think you should expect beavers. In fact I think you should PLAN on them.

Beavers begin to cause problems when they damage too many trees and when the trees could fall onto the heavily trafficked path, Martin said.

“If a tree is looking like it’s going to fall into the lake, we will leave that alone and let the beaver do that,” she said. “But if it’s going to fall into the park or onto the pathway, we will cut it down and remove it.”

Okay. That’s generally good. But the ‘remove it’ philosophy only gets you so far.

The department has managed the beavers by trapping and relocating them outside the park, Martin said. In the last few months, the department hasn’t been able to trap beavers because the staff member with the license to do so did not want to renew it, she said.

Martin said she began looking into the potential beaver problem when the department started receiving reports about damaged trees in February.

So it’s washington and you have the ability to MOVE the offending beaver. Of course its are coming soon so you probably can’t do it now anyway. Hey you know what happens when you move tenants out of a nice apartment and leave the door open? YOU GET MORE TENANTS.

Why not fix the problem by protecting those trees an let the beavers stay? Maybe get some help from the local high school planting willow along the edges of the lake that beavers can harvest?

The state department issues relocation permits when efforts to limit beaver damage are unsuccessful, when beavers pose a health and safety risk or other “irresolvable factors” exist, according to the state website.

Some how this does not strike me as UNRESOLVABLE.

Let’s watch something fun to get the stupid taste out of our mouths. This shows the wildlife crossing a beaver dam. From Voyageurs national park.

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If ever there were a video I wanted to embed on this site! I wish I could post this one because the story is so scary you were going to worry when I tell you and I want to let you know all’s well that ends well. Be like my friends daughter watching the scary disney movie and just whispering over and over to herself, “Dalmatians get home safe. Dalmatians get home safe!”. It really does help. Try it the next time you’re feeling worried.

Volunteers rescue beaver in downtown Putney

PUTNEY — It takes a village to rescue a beaver.

A group of Putney volunteers mobilized this week to rescue the errant beaver, which had slipped down into a pool below the Sackett’s Brook Dam, in back of the Putney General Store, and was unable to get out.

But Thursday morning, thanks to the practical know-how and experience of Westminster stone mason Paul Bemis, the beaver was back doing what beavers do in a matter of minutes: paddling upstream to its home in the Wilson Wetland Preserve, which is located between downtown Putney and Sand Hill Road.

Now beavers can get themselves out of a lot of difficult water conditions, but they do fall off water falls. Thank goodness these scrappy volunteers were on hand to figure out how to help.

“It was ‘Save The Beaver Day,’” Bemis said Thursday afternoon, chuckling.Bemis said he learned of the beaver’s plight from social media Wednesday night, and dialogued with Cynthia Major, who along with others had tried unsuccessfully to rescue the beaver in the past few days.

Bemis said he had rescued a group of ducklings from the same predicament — in the same location — about six years ago, so he knew what he wanted to do.

He put two long planks together and nailed some kindling to it crosswise, to give the beaver something to grab onto besides the smooth plank.

Smart beaver! He wisely said I’m not walking into your clammy cage BUT I will use the ramp, thank you. Go watch the video and see him amble down that little balance beam. Thank goodness he doesn’t have the same head for heights that I do!

Thanks Vermont!

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The news world is agog with a yahoo story of a beaver at Oregon zoo trying to drag a HUGE branch into her lodge. Uh, duh? Apparently the story was such a shocker it even made the telegraph!

Oregon Zoo Beaver Tries to Drag Enormous Tree Limb Into Lodge

 

Maple the beaver, one of the Oregon Zoo’s “branch managers,” was filmed on an “aquatic woodventure” recently. The zoo released the footage on March 30.

Maple ventured through the Portland facility’s office and into a pond to collect branches, deciding to bring back a comically large one

The three-year-old North American beaver arrived at the zoo a year ago and became close friends with her fellow branch manager, Filbert, Oregon Zoo said.

I can tell you it’s plenty surprising when beavers try to bring branches to their bedrooms. Almost like they want to snack during the night! Who would have guessed?

“:Beavers are very social animals, so it’s wonderful to welcome a new member to the family,” senior North American animal keeper Julie Christie said in the statement. “Filbert and Maple are getting along really well, and it’s great for both of them to have a friend to play with.” Credit: Oregon Zoo via Storyful”

I do like seeing how they made it possible for her to climb back to bed all by herself. That’s an office space I wouldn’t mind commuting too.

Finished this yesterday, Now I’m officially ready for next week.

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You know how you have some project that you’re working on, with little success. And you try one thing. Then you try the other thing. But nothing seems to make a dent in the problem. And sometimes you feel like it’s hopeless and you might as well just give up and go do something else entirely. And then something GIVES and all of a sudden success just falls into place all around you and you feel the ground shifting between your feet in a good way?

Well, this feels a little like that.

Simple hand-built structures can help streams survive wildfires and drought

Many of the wetlands in the western United States have disappeared since the 1700s. California has lost an astonishing 90 percent of its wetlands, which includes streamsides, wet meadows and ponds. In Nevada, Idaho and Colorado, more than 50 percent of wetlands have vanished. Precious wet habitats now make up just 2 percent of the arid West — and those remaining wet places are struggling.

Nearly half of U.S. streams are in poor condition, unable to fully sustain wildlife and people, says Jeremy Maestas, a sagebrush ecosystem specialist with the NRCS who organized that workshop on Wilde’s ranch in 2016. As communities in the American West face increasing water shortages, more frequent and larger wildfires (SN: 9/26/20, p. 12) and unpredictable floods, restoring ailing waterways is becoming a necessity.

You’ll want to click on the headline and read every word over and over. This article is that good.

Landowners and conservation groups are bringing in teams of volunteers and workers, like the NRCS group, to build low-cost solutions from sticks and stones. And the work is making a difference. Streams are running longer into the summer, beavers and other animals are returning, and a study last December confirmed that landscapes irrigated by beaver activity can resist wildfires.

Bring back the beaver and let them do the work. Thanks Joe Wheaton for making this and a million other articles like this possible.

Filling the sponge

Think of a floodplain as a sponge: Each spring, floodplains in the West soak up snow melting from the mountains. The sponge is then wrung out during summer and fall, when the snow is gone and rainfall is scarce. The more water that stays in the sponge, the longer streams can flow and plants can thrive. A full sponge makes the landscape better equipped to handle natural disasters, since wet places full of green vegetation can slow floods, tolerate droughts or stall flames.

Typical modern-day stream and river restoration methods can cost about $500,000 per mile, says Joseph Wheaton, a geomorphologist at Utah State University in Logan. Projects are often complex, and involve excavators and bulldozers to shore up streambanks using giant boulders or to construct brand-new channels.

For smaller streams, hand-built restoration solutions work well, often at one-tenth the cost, Wheaton says, and can be self-sustaining once nature takes over. These low-tech approaches include building beaver dam analogs to entice beavers to stay and get to work, erecting small rock dams or strategically mounding mud and branches in a stream. The goal of these simple structures is to slow the flow of water and spread it across the floodplain to help plants grow and to fill the underground sponge.

Hey I wonder if that would work in California. What a crazy idea. We’re pretty special. Do you think it’s possible?

Fixes like these help cure a common ailment that afflicts most streams out West, including Birch Creek, Wheaton says: Human activities have altered these waterways into straightened channels largely devoid of debris. As a result, most riverscapes flow too straight and too fast.

“They should be messy and inefficient,” he says. “They need more structure, whether it’s wood, rock, roots or dirt. That’s what slows down the water.” Wheaton prefers the term “riverscape” over stream or river because he “can’t imagine a healthy river without including the land around it.”

Natural structures “feed the stream a healthy diet” of natural materials, allowing soil and water to accumulate again in the floodplain, he says.

Even in California? No wayyy…. That hardly seems possible! Hey maybe there should be a summit or something to teach people about this?

Beaver benefits

In watersheds across the West, beavers can be a big part of filling the floodplain’s sponge. The rodents gnaw down trees to create lodges and dams, and dig channels for transporting their logs to the dams. All this work slows down and spreads out the water.

On two creeks in northeastern Nevada, streamsides near beaver dams were up to 88 percent greener than undammed stream sections when measured from 2013 to 2016. Even better, beaver ponds helped maintain lush vegetation during the hottest summer months, even during a multiyear drought, Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands, and geologist Eric Small of University of Colorado Boulder reported in 2018 in Ecohydrology.

“Bringing beavers back just makes good common sense when you get down to the science of it,” Wilde says. He did it on his ranch.

Hell YA it does. Bringing back beavers makes dam good sense for all the places that need water and don’t like fires. This is such awesome news and divine timing. A person given to hyperbole might suddenly be given to exaltations.

Water doesn’t burn

The Sharps Fire that scorched south-central Idaho in July 2018 burned a wide swath of a watershed where Idaho Fish and Game had relocated beavers to restore a floodplain. A strip of wet, green vegetation stood untouched along the beavers’ ponds. Wheaton sent a drone to take photos, tweeting out an image on September 5, 2018: “Why is there an impressive patch of green in the middle of 65,000 acres of charcoal? Turns out water doesn’t burn. Thank you beaver!”

Baugh Creek from above
The green strip of vegetation along beaver-made ponds in Baugh Creek near Hailey, Idaho, resisted flames when a wildfire scorched the region in 2018, as shown in this drone image.J. Wheaton/Utah State Univ.

Fairfax, the ecohydrologist who reported that beaver dams increase streamside greenness, had been searching for evidence that beavers could help keep flames at bay. Wheaton’s tweet was a “kick in the pants to push my own research on beavers and fire forward,” she says.

With undergraduate student Andrew Whittle, now at the Colorado School of Mines, Fairfax got to work analyzing satellite imagery from recent wildfires. The two mapped thousands of beaver dams within wildfire-burned areas in several western states. Choosing five fires of varying severity in both shrubland and forested areas, the pair analyzed the data to see if creeks with beaver activity stayed greener than creeks without beavers during wildfires.

I’m breathing into a paper bag but I can’t seem to calm down at all. This is SUCH A GREAT ARTICLE and such good news for beavers. I am beside myself. What a great time to remind people that beavers matter.

Could I possibly be happier? Oh yes I could.

 Jon found this yesterday behind Susana park. So yes. It is truly the very best beaver day ever.  Oh and for those of you keeping track at home that’s a rock in the dam, a bottle of modela AND a crutch. Because beavers are the original recyclers.


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I am getting behind in beaver news stories. They have been piling up in my inbox. So let’s have a full smorgasbord today. Starting with Cedar Mill in Oregon.

Go Beavs!

This article pertains not to OSU sports teams, but instead to North America’s largest rodent, a common resident of Cedar Mill and Oregon’s state animal. The American beaver (Castor canadensis) was trapped almost to extinction across America by the 1800s, due largely to demand for beaver pelts. The undercoat of beaver fur is dense, and each hair is covered with tiny barbs that lock together – qualities that allow production of durable felt that can be formed into hats. Those top hats gentlemen doffed back in the day were made from beaver felt. However, after silk hats became fashionable in the 1840s, decreasing demand for beaver fur allowed these unique animals to make a remarkable come-back.

Beavers provide a variety of ecological benefits. Their ponds provide habitat for fish, amphibians, waterfowl, and songbirds. Beaver dams regulate water flow, decreasing downstream flooding in the winter and helping maintain higher streamflow in the summer. The ponds also improve water quality by trapping sediment. Beaver damage to trees may look intense, but many species they favor, like willows, are well-adapted to beavers and readily sprout back with multiple branches.

Perhaps in a future article, we can discuss the water fowl that make use of beaver ponds. Go Ducks!

That’s Oregon for you. Just a quick burst of beaver praised and then back to the game. Thanks for the shot in the arm before we head off to Ohio. Where we expect their reception might be much more muted, to say the least.

At least this beaver can enjoy the riverfront right now

A beaver that washed in with the flooding Ohio River has taken up residence in Smale Riverfront Park and seems happy to be there, according to Cincinnati Parks.

The little rodent arrived overnight, a Parks spokesperson wrote on Twitter. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources advised parks workers not to attempt to remove it — “it will find the way out on its own.”

Parks workers instead put a ramp near the beaver’s new digs in case it needs help climbing over the Smale railings and back into the Ohio River.

“For now, he’s just chillin’ and enjoying the sun and water,” a parks spokesperson wrote on Twitter. “We know he will find his way out soon.”

I can’t even imagine what happened to make you think a beaver ‘washed up’ on your shores. Beavers are VERY strong swimmers and rarely wind up anywhere they didn’t intend to go. But okay, keep an eye on him and let me know what you plan to do when he doesn’t magically go “on his way” again.

From Oregon to Ohio is a pretty big spread. Anymore O’s for beavers?

How about “Overseas”. This article strangely appealed.

The story of the rabbit, the wolf and the beaver megaphone

The story of the rabbit, wolf and beaver begins in the wild Iberia of the past, still untouched by human presence. In the past, the little rabbit was so abundant that it gave its name to the “Hispania” peninsula, the “land of rabbits”. Because it was so common, it supported great biodiversity, from foxes to owls, from the beautiful Iberian lynx to the majestic imperial eagle, and even vultures depended on the little rabbit. The wolf was the supreme predator that ran over mountains, plains and plateaus in forests, meadows and swamps. He hunted old, weak and sick animals: wild horses, mountain goats, deer, roe deer and wild boars. The beaver, an ecosystem engineer, shaped the streams and rivers from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, passing through lakes and estuaries. Swampy areas were created that allowed for an abundance of amphibians, fish, and a wide variety of insects, and guaranteed that the water caused by the spring rains would outlast the peninsula’s hot and dry summers.

Today, in transformed Iberia, tamed by the present, the abundance of rabbits has given way to scarcity, the wolf is confined in small packs to northern Portugal and the beaver has disappeared from most of the peninsula and occupies only the Ebro catchment area. Both the decline in areas and the scarcity of these species have thrown the ecosystem out of balance. Today the rabbit is rare and an endangered species, it no longer plays its role as the basis of the ecosystem. The wolf has been reduced and its prey is either locally extinct (such as wild horses, mountain goats, roe deer, and deer) or a plague (wild boar). It is often dependent on pets for food and no longer plays its role. It is seen as a threat to animal husbandry and its role as a regulator of the ecosystem is being forgotten. The beaver, which was lost from Portuguese countries for a long time, is also remembered. Few know that it is an animal native to Portugal and Spain. Its absence has turned calm streams that ran year-round into wild waterways that only run for a few weeks or months.

I kind of like the idea that the rabbit was so abundant it gave the peninsula its name. And let me tell you we don’t often get articles mentioning both the Portuguese and Beaver. Just a side note, my mothers father was born in Suisun to a sheep farmer who immigrated from the Azore islands in Portugal. It never occurred to me that they might have once had beavers too.

When we learn to live in harmony with nature, when the focus is on caring and not on taming, when the basis is coexistence and not conflict, when the echo is more important than the ego, one can imagine a wilder Portugal . Where there are meadows with rabbits, lynxes and eagles. Where wolves hunt wild horses, deer, roe deer, mountain goats and wild boars. Where the beaver is free to turn the arid and arid landscape into wetlands flooded with life. There is an urgent need to restore nature. We need areas where animals can be free, where rivers can be rivers, where nature can be wild.

Amen. Here endeth the lesson.

 

 

 

 

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