Category: Beaver Behavior

BEAVERS ON THE LANDSCAPE

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver ecological impact March 8, 2021

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.

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.

THEY FORGOT ONE OF THE “B’s”

heidi08 BDA's, Beavers March 6, 2021

This is almost a very nice story about a bay area couple moving to Oregon and buying some land to do the right thing. You see that picture and think maybe they’re putting in fascines of willow to encourage beavers! See if you can spot where they went wrong.

Western Innovator: Couple restores wetland prairie, improving fire resiliency

As a couple of self-described “tree hugging dirt worshippers,” Jolliff and Peterman were loathe to cut down any trees on their small woodland property near Scio, Ore., which they have affectionately named “Bogwood.”

But to enhance and restore Bogwood’s namesake wet prairie, Peterman said they had no choice except to remove all invasive species such as English hawthorn, Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom.

Then they would need to thin the overstocked groves of hardwoods and conifers, allowing native plants to thrive while opening habitat for a rich diversity of wildlife including owls, hawks, bald eagles, coyotes, deer and possibly even a prowling bobcat.

“Our goal, we call it the five B’s: birds, bats, bees, butterflies and Bambi,” Peterman said. “There is so little native habitat for critters … we can’t save the world, but we can do a little bit in this little part, and do what we can.”

Yup. If you want those five you should really be working towards the sixth. Well not even the sixth. Let’s call it “Species A” Since you really need it before everything else falls into place. They almost got there by putting in some BDA’s but since the article never mentions beavers I’m pretty sure that when they show up they’ll be unwelcome.

Before they arrived, however, the property had been extensively logged, altering its natural character. Peterman said they knew they wanted to restore the ecosystem, but admitted they had no idea where to start.

They joined the Oregon Small Woodlands Association in 2014, which Peterman said unlocked a wealth of information. “It was like opening a book for the first time,” he said.

The couple also built a series of beaver dam analogs along a seasonal creek to hold back water, allowing it to remain on the property a little longer for the benefit of plants and animals.

The couple have reused branches and limbs to build the beaver dam analogs, as well as “bio-dens” scattered around the property, offering refuge to birds and deer. EQIP grants also paid for essential equipment, including a 5-horsepower electric sawmill and electric chainsaw, which Peterman has used to fashion wooden fencing and bird boxes.

So close you can almost taste it. Since they’re in Oregon and interested in fire resilience and restoring the land I can’t believe the subject of beavers hasn’t come up.

For several years, Jolliff and Peterman have also provided sturdy hardwood branches to an artisan in Eugene, Ore. who makes 19th-century style brooms. The broomsticks are especially popular with people who play Quidditch, a fictional-turned-real sport from the Harry Potter universe.

You love books so much? I have a great one you should read.

BEAVERS: FREAKS OF NATURE

heidi08 Beaver Chewing March 5, 2021

Once in a while it’s fun to visit an article about beavers written by someone who is surprised to find themselves writing about beavers. Kind of like “Oh I missed the moose this morning so I might as well write about beavers.. It’s not how they expected to spend their day, but it’s nothing new to us. Joan Herrmann is so surprised by their adaptions she never gets around to their true gifts.

Where I Wander – Extraordinary Rodent

Whereiwander – perhaps when you hear the word rodent the mammal which may come to mind first might be mouse or rat or even squirrel. Today’s column is about one of my favorite rodents which is one of the largest too. A memorable encounter with one was first hearing then seeing, the flat-tailed rodent (Castor canadensis) known as an American Beaver.

I have learned that the beaver’s body is ideal for both underwater and land maneuvering. Beavers have very dense, soft, waterproof “under fur” that traps air, insulates, and also keeps them buoyant. Their broad scaly tail in addition to sounding alarms; works as a rudder in the water and as a prop, for balancing them on their hind legs, when cutting down a tree or standing. In the summer heat, their tail works as a heat exchanger allowing them to eliminate as much as twenty-five percent of their body heat. Their hind feet are webbed helping them to swim. They have a split toenail which aids in grooming their fur acting like a comb. The split toenail also assists them when they apply waterproofing oil from their oil gland and when they need to remove parasites and other debris from their fur. The forefeet are not webbed and are kept “balled up” against their chest when they swim. The forefeet are able to carry mud and sticks and are also used to dig, handle food, and for grooming. Beavers have an excellent sense of smell and can easily identify their favorite food tree just by its smell.

I can identify a favorite food by smell too. Not such a big deal.

Beaver are engineers extraordinaire; they dam up streams that are too shallow to hide them from predators and to make their lodges and routes of travel safe as they move to and from feeding areas. Most active from dusk to dawn a beaver is able to take down a three-inch diameter tree in less than ten minutes and a five-inch tree in about a half-hour. One beaver will fell the tree and the rest of the family will help with the removal of twigs and branches. In climates like ours where the water freezes, caching food begins in the fall. Tree branches of their favorite foods are secured in the mud below the water near their lodge entrance. The caches may be extremely large since a family of seven can consume about one ton of food over the winter.

Uh huh. What’s surprising about articles like this is that they spend so much time marveling at beaver attributes “ooh orange teeth! Oooh third eyelid” but they never get around too the frigging most impressive things about beavers. “ooh climate change! “Ooh waterstorage” “Ooh biodiversity!”

They just like writing about the part where they’re freaks of nature,

I hope that this column may have sparked an interest in learning more about these intriguing rodents.

I hope when they do they actually find out the truth.

HOW MANY BEAVERS ARE IN YOUR STATE?

heidi08 Beaver population, Dispersal March 1, 2021

How many beavers are in your state?

No one knows because no one counts them anymore. We just know there are ‘enough’ for the population to carry on if we allow trapping, And that’s about as far as the calculations go. And that’s pretty much true for every state.

Think about how crazy it is we don’t count populations.. It’s like a mother saying she doesn’t know how many children she actually has,, but arguing that even if a kidnapper tooka few it would still be more than she wanted. It’s like a bank saying, “We don’t need to count how much money we have. We just know that even if we were robbed we’d still be rich”.

Rhode Island is going to change all that.

URI scientists investigate distribution of muskrats, beavers, otters in R.I.

Traveling via kayak, John Crockett will search for evidence of muskrats, beavers and river otters in waterways of southwestern Rhode Island this winter before expanding his search to other areas of the state in the coming years.

“The main goal of the study is to get a good sense of the distribution of each species across the state,” said Crockett, a native of Fort Collins, Colorado, who is collaborating on the study with URI Assistant Professor Brian Gerber. “To do that, we’re conducting an occupancy analysis, which means we’re going out looking for signs of tracks, scat, chewed sticks, lodges and sightings of the animals.”

All three species have been the target of trappers in Rhode Island for many years — though the state legislature banned the trapping of river otters in the 1970s — and most of what state wildlife officials know about the animals is derived from trapping data. But since trapping has been decreasing in popularity in recent years, less and less data about the animals is being collected.

Hmm. That’s pretty interesting and pretty much a dream job for some recent graduate. No hiding at the bottom of the swimming pool in scuba gear needed for him to avoid the standard “what are you planning to do with your life now” questions.

“We want to make sure we have a good assessment of where these mammals are found,” Gerber said. “It’s been 10 or 15 years since anyone has spent much time looking for them, and we want to see if we find any changes in their distribution since those earlier surveys.”

Beavers are believed to have recovered well after being extirpated from the area due to unregulated trapping and forest clearing in the 1800s.

“Now they are creating conflicts with their dams causing flooding in some places,” Gerber said. “We’d like to be able to identify the habitat features where beavers are doing well and those areas where they are likely to cause conflict. To do that, we need distribution data.”

Crockett expects to conduct his surveys from December through March for the next three years, as well as periodic summer surveys. He eventually hopes to be able to estimate the probability that any of the three species will be found in a given habitat.

Well I can tell you right now that if beavers are in one area the other two will be seen there. Does R.I. Want to hire me now? And every place without beavers will be less likely to have the other two.

Hey it’s almost like trappers should leave beavers on the landscape so there’s more to for them to trap! I guess that’s just considered crazy talk.

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AS IF WASHINGTON DC DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS ALREADY

heidi08 Beaver Chewing February 28, 2021

Beavers nibble on cherry tree at Tidal Basin

A cherry tree became a meal for a local beaver along the Tidal Basin in D.C.
The National Park Service said staff found a Yoshino cherry tree that had been chewed on in October, and quickly narrowed down the list of suspects to a North American Beaver.

Beavers are active in the Potomac year-round, but are most often spotted in the area in the spring and fall. “Sometimes beavers chew on branches and trees to get material for building a dam, but most of the time, they’re just eating wood and bark; the majority of their diet,” the National Park Service said on Friday.

To prevent another tree from getting chowed down, park staff made the area “as uninviting as possible to beavers.”

The National Park Service put up fencing around the base of the healthy trees and around the nearby sea wall on the Tidal Basin that not only stops debris from washing ashore, but deters beavers from getting up on the bank.

Well I was happy to see that last paragraph anyway. Apparently they have some idea how to handles these things besides trapping.

The park service natural resource team and arborists decided to leave the tall stump in place as habitat for woodpeckers, sapsuckers and other wildlife.They removed the top of the tree and the branches so the tree wouldn’t be a falling hazard.

Okay then,

Out friend Virginia of Fairfield is keeping watch over her beavers there and posted this fun video on FB a couple days ago. Apparently the beaver is startled by something, It looks like a cobra but maybe is a frog with a shadow. What do you think?