Category: Beaver Behavior

THE END OF SALMON IN CALIFORNIA?

heidi08 BDA's, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon March 5, 2020

“Before I will see the worst of you all
To come into danger of death or a thrall,
This hand and this life I will venture so free”:
Was not this a brave bonny lass, Mary Ambree?

Well, sure I didn’t exactly storm the castle but I did okay and told the story well enough to earn some praise.It’s odd presenting remotely because I couldn’t hear the audience, although I am told there was one. Usually I hear laughter or ‘ahs’ in the right places and know how things are going, but with this I heard nothing until the questions at the end!

The fun part was being on the phone with Michael Pollock who, in addition to being friendly and brilliant, is also at GROUND ZERO for Covid-19 and dealing with a pretty unbelievable work environment at the moment. I guess if you work for the federal government right now your job is to NOT get the disease and also, ironically, not appear to be concerned about it either.

His presentation started on the evolving history of rivers and how much beavers were a part of that and how plants/trees depended on their work for nutrient regeneration etc – and had basically ‘trained them‘ with evolution to do what they do. (What an interesting thought!) Then he transitioned to talk about the work they are currently doing in the Scott’s Valley with BDA’s.

He also talked about how he hears over and over and over and over about beaver dams blocking salmon (which he knows they don’t) and they constructed a study to address this directly using a pit tags to track the moments of salmon they released specifically in a controlled dam to monitor the movements. They repeated it for steelhead and the paper found everyone could negotiate the dam. It is still in review but is going to be published soon and everyone was happy about that.

Anyway, he also said, alarmingly, that the California salmon population is “Tanking” and that the numbers are down to a few thousands. This was really shocking to hear, and made me think about all the obstacles we are giving them and all the beavers we are taking away. It also means it’s as good a time as any to talk about this which was published recently in Earth Island.

How Much Longer Will Wild Coho Hang on in the Golden State?

“Usually between here and the road there’s a half dozen redds or more,” says Todd Steiner, pointing 100 feet or so downstream to where Sir Francis Drake Boulevard passes over the confluence of Lagunitas Creek and San Geronimo Creek, near the town of Lagunitas. But only two ribbons hang from the trees. That’s been the typical story for this year’s coho salmon run throughout the Lagunitas Creek Watershed. Even for a wild salmon population that’s been listed as endangered since 1996, this year’s spawning survey came up with significantly low numbers.

“This current year is one of the lowest numbers we’ve seen,” says Steiner, who is the executive director of the conservation group Turtle Island Restoration Network.

Marin has been talking about this issue for a while and arguing among itself about whether to reintroduce beavers. Are we going to keep arguing until the entire salmon population is gone?

Historically, anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 adult coho created more than 2,600 redds in this watershed each year. According to NOAA’s recovery plan for the federally endangered Central California Coast population of coho salmon, Lagunitas Creek and its tributaries now have the capacity to hold 1,300 redds. This takes into account that half of the salmon habitat in this river system has been blocked or submerged by reservoirs that hold the water supply for the quarter-million people who live in Marin.

On average, Steiner and his team count 250 redds annually, but that number has been steadily decreasing. This year, there were less than 50 redds.

Fewer salmon eggs mean fewer salmon period. Or no salmon. Has California even considered that? We are still planning on a salmon season this year. But our time is running out. Its long past time for drastic measures.

For the past few years, SPAWN has worked closely with the National Park Service to rewild these two communities on federal land. In what was once Tocaloma, where SPAWN has made its headquarters, Brown points out where creekside retaining walls and structures have been replaced by restored floodplain. With help from volunteers, SPAWN placed fallen logs in the creek and built overhanging banks with straw logs to encourage logjams and side channels with slower water. Native grasses and willows from an onsite plant nursery have taken root in the riparian area, their shoots poking through a biodegradable erosion control fabric.

“It’s like a beaver pond,” Brown says. “It’s backwater habitat that’s quiet, complex, and deep.”

Of course, emulating beavers on just a few sections of the watershed goes only so far and, as Steiner says, won’t be enough to restore endangered salmon to NOAA’s goal of 1,300 redds. “At the same time that we’re repairing the land-use mistakes of the past, we’re repeating them,” he says.

Hey you know what ELSE IS LIKE A BEAVER POND????? A frickin’ BEAVER POND!!!

What on earth are we doing allowing any beavers in California to be killed when we know full well what an important role they play for salmon and how dire the situation is? Our salmon population is beyond dwindled and its like we’re killing off the few heroes that can help it.

Imagine if we were preventing firemen from moving in to a community because they took up too much space and blocked development. Do we need them any less? Our bad decisions are going to make us go up in flames and the only ones who could have helped we made sure were gone.

Hmm, that’s depressing. Have a nice beaver video as comfort, Courtesy of the Norwegian Beaver Project.

A CORNUCOPIA OF BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior February 29, 2020

There has been way too much beaver news lately. Usually I keep a file with a few relevant articles just in case I run out of things to say that day, but now the file is overflowing. I’m marching through and randomly deleting to lighten the load. Let’s try to get through five things today, okay? Starting with this fun short from New York.

I’m so old I remember when New York boasted about its first returned beaver and named it Jose Serrano after the congressman who cleaned up that particular waterway. It was 2010. Remember?

This lovely image was posted by Penny Meyers

Last Frame: Another Day At The Lodge

“Winter in Minnesota often has us spending a lot of time indoors, so on a nice January day, I took a walk at Dunton Locks County Park in Becker County, about a half-hour from my home,” recalls photographer Penny Meyers. “I came upon this beaver sitting on the snow-covered ice near the edge of a pond. I watched for about an hour as it occasionally dove through a hole in the ice to retrieve twigs and roots and then sit in the snow to enjoy the fruits of its labor.

Brr that’s one chilly photographer AND beaver! We had things much easier in Martinez, I can tell you. Thanks Penny!

There are a couple ‘firsts’ I’ve been putting off. The beaver emoji and the worlds largest beaver statue to name a few.

The world’s largest beaver statue, a giant smurf and a kissing couple sculpture: These landmarks will be lit up for the ‘Global Greening’

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, the National Theatre in London and the Smurf Statue in Brussels will all go green this year for the first time to mark St Patrick’s Day.

New additions include the Giant Beaver Sculpture in Beaverlodge, Canada – the largest beaver sculpture in the world – and the National Museum of Qatar.

The national museum of QATAR will have a giant green beaver sculpture for St Patrick’s Day? I mean a country that never had beavers making a giant statue of a beaver for the national holiday of another country that never had beavers? I almost don’t know where to begin. But sure, okay. Here’s the Emoji by the way.

New Emojis Coming in 2020 Include Polar Bear, Bubble Tea, Teapot, Seal, Feather, Dodo, Black Cat, Magic Wand and More

Apple will adopt the new Unicode 13 emoji characters at some point in 2020, likely in the fall as an update to iOS 14. Apple last year introduced Unicode 12 emojis in the iOS 13.2 update that was released in October.

Thank goodness this gaping hole in virtual communication will be repaired, I’m sure you’re thinking. Me too!

Now onto the most important news. Remember that the proposed rule change for beaver depredation was going to be considered last friday? Well they did the same thing as Cinderella in ‘Into the woods” which is they decided not to decide. They didn’t rule to accept the recommendation and send it to Fish and Wildlife, and they didn’t turn it down either, they decided to let their boss decide.

So the rule change is on Chuck Bonham’s desk as we speak.

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BEEF: IT’S WHAT’S FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 BDA's, Beavers and water February 21, 2020

Why live with beavers? I can think of plenty of good reasons, and so, apparently, can BEEF magazine in Idaho. Yes you read that right.

Beaver power provides year-long water to Idaho ranch

Beavers? You read that right. Here’s how four-legged engineers helped restore an Idaho ranch.

Jay Wilde summarizes ranching simply: “Cows need two things—something to eat and something to drink.”

He speaks from experience. In 1995, when Wilde started ranching his family’s high-elevation property in Idaho’s Rocky Mountains, both food and water were hard to come by for livestock. Today this ranch is wealthy in forage and flowing streams, thanks to Wilde’s determination, many helpful partners … and beavers.

Oh yeah you know when an article starts off like this it’s gonna be good. Get your coffee and settle in. Remember it was the former director of Beef producer in Oklahoma that gave us one of our finest articles by Alex Newport: “Beavers: The cure we don’t want to take”

Today this ranch is wealthy in forage and flowing streams, thanks to Wilde’s determination, many helpful partners … and beavers.

Wilde was raised on the property with his siblings, where his parents grew grains. Jay had always dreamed of running a cattle operation and began putting in place conservation projects that would provide his livestock with reliable sources of forage and water.

Wilde remembers fishing and swimming in Birch Creek all summer long as a kid, and tried all sorts of tactics to restore year-round flow. Nothing worked. Then one morning over his pre-dawn coffee, it struck him: “Beavers! That’s what’s missing!”

Big grin. Just about nothing is better than a beaver AHA moment. We here at Worth A Dam collect them.

Beavers are some of nature’s best engineers. They gnaw down trees to create intricate dams and lodges as their shelter. In turn, their dams act to slow the flow of a stream, creating ponds that recharge the floodplain and raise the groundwater level. This allows water to trickle downstream long after snowmelt and rain taper off.

At one time, there were enough beaver ponds in the U.S. to submerge California, Oregon and Washington. But decades of trapping and hunting beavers decimated their populations. Thousands of streams deepened and straightened, and many wet meadows, small creeks, and floodplains disappeared across the country.

Many ranchers still think of beavers as ditch-clogging nuisances. But others—like Wilde—now realize that getting rid of beavers also reduces the amount of water available for livestock operations.

“Do we want to eliminate beavers and eliminate the water coming out of the canyons, or do we want to live with the beavers?” asks Wilde. “Keeping beavers around makes good common sense when you get down to the science of it.”

And a rousing chorus of HUZZAH broke out around the land! YES! Let’s listen to a rancher because no one like to listen to the scientists. I mean if the message is the same that works for me.

In 2014, Wilde came across an article about people using Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) to create habitat for the rodents before re-introducing them to a watershed. BDAs are simple, low-tech structures that mimic real beaver dams to provide the initial building blocks that help beavers recolonize a stream. BDAs are easily built by hand using mud, cobble, and root wads, or by weaving small branches through posts pounded into the stream bed.

Wilde promptly called up the two professionals mentioned in the article, who worked at Utah State University and Anabranch Solutions. They helped Wilde build 19 BDAs in 2015. Wilde then partnered with the USFS and Idaho Fish & Game to relocate five beavers into Birch Creek—who happily set up shop using the BDAs as home base.

The next year, Wilde hosted a training workshop on beaver-assisted restoration for over 40 natural resource professionals from across the West. Sponsored by the NRCS-led Sage Grouse Initiative, his ranch was a model for why it’s worth investing in low-cost, low-tech methods for restoring streams on private agricultural lands. Workshop participants helped build

First the BDA’s then the beavers then the water then fish. You see how it work.

“When you see the results, it’s almost like magic. It makes the effort worthwhile,” says Wilde.

Re-beavering this Idaho ranch created more water for livestock. And it also resulted in more water for fish—Birch Creek’s Bonneville cutthroat trout populations are 10 to 50 times higher in the ponded sections of the creek than before beavers returned.

By restoring these natural engineers, Wilde’s ranch and its surrounding public lands now boast luscious wet meadows with nutritious forage, healthy riparian habitat for wildlife, and floodplains that are more resilient to fire, drought, and erosion.

Now, Wilde is spreading the word about the benefits to livestock producers of using beavers to fix streams. He’s presented at dozens of workshops and talked to hundreds of other ranchers about what’s possible when you “get onboard with beavers.”

Perfect Jay. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. What a great way to spread the word. I wish you could come to the beaver festival and talk to folks about what you’ve done. Come to think of it I wish there could be huge displays at the festival about all the good things folks are understanding beavers can do.

SALMON SAYS “CA NEEDS BEAVERS!”

heidi08 BDA's, Beavers and salmon February 15, 2020

This world is getting spurts of beaver good news at a steady clip. In 10 days the first East Coast Beaver conference gets underway a mere few weeks later Santa Cruz will get it’s own beaver-heavy version of the 38th ever salmonid conference with some superstars of its own. Don’t believe me?

Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration with Beaver and Wood: Jump-Starting Structurally Starved Streams

Eli Asarian, Riverbend Sciences
Elijah Portugal, California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Joseph Wheaton, Utah State University

The scale and severity of river impairment globally cannot be meaningfully addressed solely using traditional hard-engineering restoration approaches. This workshop will be an opportunity to share recent developments in the evolving science and practice of low-tech process-based restoration (LT-PBR) of riverscapes. LT-PBR is the practice of adding low unit-cost wood and beaver dams to riverscapes to mimic functions and initiate specific processes that improve river habitats. Dr. Joseph Wheaton (Utah State University) will lead the morning portion of the workshop, providing an introduction to the LT-PBR restoration approach and case-study examples from recent and ongoing LT-PBR projects primarily from outside of California.

How’s that for impressive! Just a few counties away and all the best minds gathered to discuss.

Introduction to the Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes Design Manual
Joe Wheaton, Utah State University

Temperature, Hydrological and Fish-Passage Impacts of beaver-based stream restoration: Hypotheses, Models and Data and the Way Forward with Low Tech Process Based Restoration
Chris Jordan, NOAA/NMFS/Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Riparian Vegetation and Stream Channel Response to Meadow Restoration using Synthetic Beaver Dams in Childs Meadow, California
Kristen Wilson, The Nature Conservancy

California’s First Beaver Dam Analogues (BDAs) – What Half a Decade Has Taught Us
Charnna Gilmore, Scott River Watershed Council

Four Years of Process-based Restoration at Doty Ravine
Damion Ciotti, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Shinn Ranch: PBR the hard way
Kevin Swift, Swift Water Design

Beaver Dam Analog Design, Construction, and Performance on the Trinity River California
John Bair, McBain Associates

Beaver Restoration Planning and Implementation in California: Tools and Case Studies
Kate Lundquist, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center WATER Institute

Beaver (Castor Canadensis) of the Salinas River: A Human Dimensions-Inclusive Overview for Assessing Landscape-Scale Beaver-Assisted Restoration Opportunities
Stuart Suplik, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo – Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Dept.

Of course you wanna be there. We all wanna be there. Mostly I want the head of CDFG to be there. And the Governor. But okay. I settle for several really smart people.

And this photo, which was reported on the Colorado news last night. Because its February. And we know what happens in February.

Police in Colorado block traffic to protect a beaver

Tell me that policeman will ever pose with anything that makes him look cuter. I dare you.

“PARDON OUR DISARRAY WHILE WE TRANSFORM THE ECOSYSTEM”

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beaver ecological impact February 10, 2020

Speaking of trees, Judy Atkinson of Port Moody wrote yesterday about an idea she was trying to finalize for how to talk to people about the trees beavers felled. She noted the people seemed to get anxious about beavers ‘killing’ everything and was working to replace the concept with language emphasizing transformation instead.

The trees aren’t being hauled off by a contractor or the municipality, they are still there in the wetland, but either laying at an angle, laying on the ground or sitting in the water. Each one of those places is important for the wetland and the wildlife.

If a beaver felled tree falls in the pond it adds nutrient to the water, raising the complexity. These trees make shaded, safe spots for fish to hide. If the tree falls at an angle and becomes a snag, mother ducks and their ducklings roost on the trunk at night for safety. Trees are vital to wildlife even when they are dead or dying. If tree that doesn’t like wet feet drowns, it becomes a nature tree for cavity dwellers.

I could see what she was getting and why it was important. I reminded her to educate the city workers too and make sure they LEFT the fallen trees in the first place. I suggested she might want to introduce some kind of interpretive sign to help observers understand what they were seeing. Something like

“Pardon our disarray while we rebuild the ecosystem”

She like the idea very much and we were both surprised to find that with no input from us, the Rugged Individualist dropped a third post, dedicated to that very topic.

The Paradox of A Rotting Forest

Dead trees are essential in more ways than this brief article can cover. They are in many regards the lifeblood of the forest, just as important as their living brethren. They are a natural part of a dynamic environment in which all trees age and eventually die….We need to reconsider these integral and indispensable parts of the forest for what they are.

Let us start with dead trees as the irreplaceable substrate for woodpeckers to perform their role as an integral keystone species. Woodpeckers, like beavers, perform functions that have a disproportionate effect on the ecosystem they live within and the species that reside there. When a dead or dying tree is left to the forces of natural processes, it attracts bug life that utilizes the weakened internal structure. This is the impetus for woodpeckers to hammer into the tree, seeking out the cloistered invertebrates. What is left over after the woodpecker’s persistent chiseling are cavities that serve as homes, both permanent and temporary, for an astonishing array of wildlife. Small mammals, like squirrels, raccoons, opossums, martens, fishers, and bats, take advantage of the woodpecker’s hard work. This hard work is just as cherished by the 40 or so (probably more) different bird species in North America that cannot excavate their own cavities and rely exclusively on woodpecker borings for suitable homes. These birds range in variety from songbirds to wood ducks to raptors.

I’m sure you get the idea, and AJB describes it very well. Too often people look at beaver activity as destruction, when what it really is is TRANSFORMATION. Remember, that which a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the creator calls a butterfly.

It’s hard in today’s supremely flammable world to convince people to leave dead wood anyway on a property. My parents home in the sierras was told they would lose their insurance carrier if they did not removal all wood, trees and leaves within 500 feet of the dwelling. I can imagine well that one of the unintended effects of climate change is that as people get more afraid of fire their is less dead or decaying wood left around which induces a trickle down of negative effects for insects, cavity nesters and hungry wildlife.

Dead trees don’t just need the expert craft of a woodpecker to provide refuge, though. Depending on the size, trees produce large, natural cavities capable of supporting creatures from rodents to bears. Not only are they directly beneficial to certain species as shelter, many of these species are prey creatures that support predators. Unfortunately, there are a very limited number of trees remaining that are of a size to produce large cavities caused from internal decay. In fact, this is so drastically true that according to a study by Frontiers in Ecology and The Environment, 99% of the cavities in North America used by birds and small mammals are created by woodpeckers.

And what about the trees beaver fell?

Downed trees lying prostrate on the ground provide plenty of moist, decomposing detritus. This is where severely imperiled amphibians like salamanders, frogs, etc. can find protection and sanctuary. The stumps that may remain if a dead tree snaps usually retain an intact root system that provide lodging/hibernacula for many species. Downed trees in and around water sources serve as crucial basking sites for turtles, snakes, and more. Dead trees, standing or fallen, are a treasure to our herpetofauna that can be the difference between preservation or total collapse of populations.

So the next time you start complaining about all that ‘destruction’ beavers are doing on your land, try thinking about it as transformation. Beavers change things. It’s what they do.