Category: Beaver Behavior

YEARLINGS WILL BE YEARLINGS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior September 17, 2019

The Daily Mail is a middle market UK tabloid read by an older generation. It is affectionately known as what we in the beaver reporting business call a “rag” and prints gossip and bad medical advice. It also loves to print beaver stories for some odd reason. In June of 2016 they ran the video of our father beaver raising kids on his own. You can imagine how surprising it was to get the phone call verifying it was mine.

Martinez beavers in the UK? Sure, why not?

Well today they’re running a fun story about yearlings wresting because a local man caught the whole thing on camera. Remember beavers were missing from Scotland for 5oo years so they have some catching up to do.

Dam you! Beavers battle to get the upper hand as they wrestle each other in hilarious footage

A pair of boisterous beavers have been captured on film locked in a rare game of fisticuffs.

The extraordinary footage was captured near a river bank on the River Tay, Scotland, by amateur photographer Colin Black.

It shows the two beavers tussling with each other and wrestling in the water by grabbing each other’s fur.

Of course we’ve been around the beaver block often enough to know that these are two yearlings ‘wrestling’, not beaver battling over territory. Anybody who’s tried to dunk their bossy cousin in the swimming pool will recognize the maneuvers almost instantly. But its fun to see that even castor fiber tries to sink its brother once in a while.

Mr Black said, ‘It was like watching two humans wrestling.

‘It’s very rare to even see that behaviour in the first place, let alone catch it on camera.’

Not that rare, it turns out. Anyone watching teenage beavers will see it. We in Martinez sure did.

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TOTO, I THINK WE’LL BE IN KANSAS FOREVER

What a fun night in Rossmoor last evening. A lovely theater, two smart techs to help me and a great supportive crowd. A sizeable speakers fee for Worth A Dam and both my mom and Cheryl’s mom in the audience! The questions were intriguing and the feedback glowing – only one gentleman asked afterwards if it was possible to EAT beaver, bless his heart. I smiled and said they weren’t poisonous but people tended to think of the meat as greasy: case in point when the mountain men were starving they at their horses, and ate their dogs, but they didn’t tend to eat the animal they were all busy hunting after.

I barely got home and sat down with my glass if chardonnay when the power went out, and stayed out for a good three hours afterwards. Thank goodness the candles still worked!

This morning we can only pity poor Kansas who is obviously very, very confused about beavers. They keep hearing all those nice things about them but they obviously still hate them very much. I will say this beaver article from Adaven Scronce Diversified Agriculture and Natural Resource agent, is as CLOSE to being positive as any I’ve read from the state, but good lord its still pretty dire.

Busy beavers

Kansas State University Research and Extension

In Kansas, bobcats and coyotes are the only predators that will prey on adult beavers. Because of this, the beaver population can become over abundant at times. Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. While beavers and the dams they build can benefit the land and conservation efforts, the dams can have negative impacts on the environment around them. Some of those include, flooded crop fields and roads. Flooding from a beaver dam can result in the flooding of large areas where only shallow and slow-moving water existed before. While some plants and animals are able to adapt to pond life and wetlands, depending on the location and size, beaver ponds can cause significant damage to human interests. The damages from flooding caused by beaver-dams can include removing pastures and crop land from production and drowning stands of trees. Beaver dens can also potentially decrease the stability of the banks of streams and ponds and increase the chance of these banks collapsing under the weight of vehicles and farm equipment.

Okay, we’ll get to the part about all the flooding and damage beavers cause, but first I have to ask Adaven about this sentence, Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. Talk to me about the use of the word vertebrate?

Are you implying they are also invertebrate animals that modify the habitat to suit their needs? Or are you just using the word randomly to show off that you know these kinds of scientific terms and can use them at will? I guess maybe orb spiders are an invertebrate animal that modifies the habitat to suit their needs but I wouldn’t call them a keystone species.

Damaged caused by beavers can be managed by installing a beaver pond leveler, fencing off valuable trees and crops, and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization. Even though beavers and their dams have the potential to cause damage it is also possible to live with beavers if preventative measures are put in place to prevent beavers from damaging valuable resources. The Kansas Department of Wildlife notes the best way to prevent damage from beavers is through sustained population control and that pond owners should not wait until beavers become overabundant, because, at that point, damage has already been done. Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

The mind reels. The jaw drops.

Lets start at the beginning. Kansas is advocating using a pond lever! And wrapping trees! This is a very very momentous day. Congratulations Mike Callahan, you finally broke through the fourth wall! I keep pinching myself because I think I’m dreaming. But the very next sentence wakes me up to the bucket of cold water.

and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization

Not either try these things OR remove the local population. But AND. Install the pond leveler AND kill the beavers also. Because you can never be sure. And the most important thing is to keep beaver from populating the area because by then its too LATE.

Never mind that beavers are territorial and the population will never grow because offspring will disperse. Nature acts differently in Kansas. Our text books told us so. Beavers are like house mice in Kansas. They breed and breed and breed and by the time you notice droppings on your kitchen counter its TOO LATE. They are already ruining the place.

You have to love this smarmy falsely-compassionate last line.

Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

Hear that? I’m doing this for your own good. Killing your mother or your children for your own good.I know beaver chapter said something about population density and that weird word ‘dispersal’ but there was a kegger at billybob’s house that friday and I never read that far,

Because. Kansas,

THE SOUND OF BEAVERS – PAUL SIMON MISSED THIS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver relocation August 31, 2019

A friend just shared this on facebook. It’s from wildlife camerman Michael Forsberg and filmed on the Platte River in Nebraska. Make sure you turn your speakers way up for this treat.

Friday night – Movie night! Here’s a dusk to dawn video sequence of a beaver mom and her kit preparing and then repairing their lodge after an intense nighttime thunderstorm ripped through the Platte River Valley last week in central Nebraska. Watch the big storm roll through and make sure your sound is up! This footage was captured from a customized surveillance camera system that we have had in place for over three years now documenting activities on the lodge 24/7 year-round. It has been a fascinating experience with these remarkable creatures. To see more from our Live camera locations, visit the @plattebasin website www.plattebasintimelapse.com and click on LIVE in the menu.

Aren’t beavers wonderful? And don’t they work hard? It was a whine just like that which sealed my fate lo these many years ago. I remember standing at dawn next to Starbucks, watching the kits complain to each other, and thinking, “Do the people that want these beavers dead even KNOW about that sound?” And then, more somberly, “If I don’t do something to stop this myself when am I ever going to hear that sound again?”

So I figured I’d work on saving the beavers for the weekend. Maybe for the entire week. How long could it possibly take?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Famous last words, I know. This morning we have some great words from a successful beaver relocation in Wyoming. It’s good to know folks there are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Beaver relocation a win-win

CODY, WY — Three beavers are happy in their new homes after Wyoming Game & Fish relocated them this summer. They’re also doing important restoration work.

The beavers were trapped on private land south of Cody where they were causing flooding over roads. Game & Fish biologists captured and relocated them to a stream south of Meeteetse, where they will help in long-term efforts to improve riparian and stream habitat.

Habitat Biologist Jerry Altermatt said that beaver can be beneficial to both habitat and other wildlife. “As beavers build dams and pond water is created, riparian vegetation is improved along the stream, stabilizing stream banks, which creates better habitat for fish and wildlife. Beaver dams create ponds that allow beavers to escape predators, but these ponds are also productive wetlands that many birds, deer, moose, and other wildlife depend on. They also increase habitat diversity for trout, recharge groundwater, increase late-season flows and filter sediment and nutrients from water,” Altermatt said.

Oh yes they can, Jerry, And hey its nice when they get to stay where they choose and ,make that difference, but relocated is better than dead, we agree. And it sound like they work hard to relocate the entire family together.

SOMETHING FOR THE BEAVER-CURIOUS

heidi08 BDA's, Beaver ecological impact August 30, 2019

BDA’s are very popular with the beaver-curious. No commitment, no surprises, just a fake beaver dam that is totally controlled and designated by you the landowner. By the time actual flat-tailed residents move in the difficult acceptance phase is already over. All that’s left is the sitting back and reaping rewards.;

It’s got to be a little tough when that planted willow starts getting eaten though. Hopefully by then they’re already convinced.

Rancher greens arid site with beaver dam analogs

BRUNEAU, Idaho — Rancher Chris Black is using beaver dam analogs to make his property wetter and greener.

The structures, with their willow walls and intermittently spaced wooden poles, mimic beaver dams by holding back or slowing water. They’re effective and fairly cheap — important in that they can blow out occasionally, just like the real thing.

“Since ’17 when they put them in, that whole stretch now has become continuously watered,” Black said. “The meadows are starting to sponge that water up, and become greener and more alive.”

Black, with help from state and federal agencies as well as volunteers, has been using the analogs on Deep Creek tributary Hurry Up Creek, which dries up in summer heat. The structures help to keep water in the creek longer and raise the water table. About a dozen of the 30-plus analogs planned are installed.

See how good it works? It might be hard to convince a rancher that beaver are his friend, but install a dam with hydraulic posts and he’s your man! Meanwhile much of the west is starting to get the message.

“Most species are pretty dependent on wet meadows and things, as are my cows,” he said. “If you can manage those and create habitat, you are going to have more wildlife and more benefits.”

“This is low-tech, low-cost restoration,” said USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Sagebrush Restoration Specialist Derek Mynear. “This is not a new concept, but it is certainly taking off here in the West.”

Several places in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Washington and Oregon have bravely tried BDA’s with excellent results. Only the feather river in poor cowardly little California. Gosh I wish we were all as smart as a rancher. Here’s an examUpload Filesple from up by Ashland.

It’s about dam time

Deep in the Colestin Valley, between a meadow and a rolling oak woodland, there is a creek. And in that creek there is a dam. Willow branches are intertwined with fir logs, creating a structure that spans the width of the streambed. Its base is lined with grapefruit-sized rocks, covered by a thick coating of mud.

It’s a dam that would make a beaver proud, but this one was built by humans.

Last week, Lomakatsi and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created three engineered structures along Gen Creek to slow and spread the flow of water. Using all natural materials, these “beaver dam analogs” are designed to enhance streamside habitat for fish and other wildlife, while reducing further erosion of the creek. They provide many benefits of actual beaver dams.

Send in the humans. It seems like we let them do whatever they want anyway, Let them do some good for a change.

“One of the goals of the project is to slow velocities and encourage water in the creek to more frequently access its surrounding floodplain,” said Dave Johnson, wildlife biologist for the FWS office in Yreka, California. “Historically, before the stream became so deep and narrow, water used to frequently overflow into the surrounding meadow, supporting alder, willow, chokecherry and other plants that created a wealth of wildlife habitat.”

For centuries, beaver shaped the very makeup of the North American landscape. At one point, the United States was covered with enough water from beaver-created ponds to fill an area the size of California, Oregon and Washington combined. When beaver were eradicated during the fur trade, waterways lost their keystone stewards and hydrologic architects.

Fortunately, beaver populations are on the rise as resource managers and private landowners increasingly recognize the essential role they play in ecosystems. In fact, when using beaver dam analogs to restore streams, there is a high likelihood that the restoration efforts will attract actual beavers to move in and maintain the structures as their own.

They say that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Add to that the things YOU don’t kill also make you stronger, if you let them.

Let beavers make you stronger, California. Come on, you can do it. Just LET them already!

IDAHO EMBRACES THE GATEWAY DRUG TO BEAVERS

heidi08 BDA's, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers August 23, 2019

Good news this morning from Idaho where folks are slowly catching on about the benefits beaver dams can bring to their land.

Beaver dam analogs catching on in Idaho

Beaver swimming above a recently built BDA; Eric Winford

GRANDVIEW — Landowners and conservation professionals are excited about a new type of woody structure that mimics beaver dams. The benefits are similar — they store water, slow down runoff in streams, and enhance fish and wildlife habitat.

They’re called Beaver Dam Analogs or BDA’s for short.

Bruneau Rancher Chris Black worked together with a number of conservation professionals to install some BDA’s on his private land on Hurry Up Creek, a tributary of Deep Creek.

I think of BDA’s as the gateway drug to actual beavers. A lot of people get excited about them that might raise an eyebrow when an actual dam appeared of its own accord. The BDA softens them up. Gives them the illusion of control. “I started this” they can say comfortingly to themselves.

BDA’s are like starter kits for beavers.

“I’ve wanted to get beaver in here for years but it is an ephemeral stream,” Black said. “There’s enough willows to make good food for them and everything, but there isn’t enough water for them to stay.”

They’ve put in about 10 structures so far, and more are planned in the future.

“They came in and put them in very successfully,” he said. “They’re backing water up, they’re creating habitat for spotted frogs, for sage grouse, for beaver.”

In fact, when the group visited the site recently, a few people got down on their hands and knees and tried to find frogs right away. Bingo! A biologist emerged with a frog in his hand.

Conservation professionals with the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Fish and Game, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are all interested in exploring the benefits of using BDA’s to improve riparian habitat and store water.

Want frogs? You need beaver. Want water? You need beaver. Say it with me now.

The emerging technology of using natural on-site woody materials to build BDAs is building popularity in Idaho and the Intermountain West. The concept was developed initially by Utah State University and Anabranch Solutions, and it’s catching on in Idaho.

“It just benefits a whole host of wildlife species and that’s why Fish and Game is really interested in this,” said Chris Yarbrough, habitat biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “It’s a low-cost way to get a lot of bang for your conservation buck.”

We needed to figure out how to put these dollars on the ground in the best way possible, and leverage what’s already being done,” said Josh Uriarte, a project manager for the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation in Boise.

“One of the things coming up is mesic meadows, and how to improve mesic habitats, working with the different partners and agencies on how to do that. We need to be strategic in that, not just putting dollars in postage stamp-type areas, but in strategic locations.

Mesic habitat is land with an adequate water source – adequate but not saturating. Beaver meadows on the other hand were described by Ellen Wohl’s new book as similar to the surface of a “waffle iron covered with water”. Patches of saturated soil and protrusions of land seeping through. That is a hydric habitat, The most sustaining and ecologically rich type of habitat we have.

From the restoration guidebook:

Beaver dams create habitat while they are impounding water, but they continue to create habitat even after colonies are abandoned,often in the form of beaver meadows, particularly in more mesic climates

So mesic meadows can become hydric climates with the right beavers in place.

The Hawley Creek project is far more complex in many respects. With about 25 BDA’s in place, it’s been turned into a perennial stream. But the objectives of the project are similar — to improve habitat for fish and wildlife, and work toward providing season-long flows for endangered salmon, steelhead and resident fish.

By holding this water higher in the drainage, we’re not only providing habitat for native fish and anadromous fish, but we’re also providing irrigation water later in the season when they need it as well,” Bertram said.

They had a great many share holders to partner with. This entire project spread across a tapestry of ranchers, BLM land and forest land. Only someone with the patience of a saint and the vision of many beavers could have taken this on.

“At first, they were like, why are you building beaver dams? Once they saw the results, they didn’t want to go build more fence, they wanted to build more beaver dams,” Lohmeyer said.

“By slowing this water down, spreading it out, you can just see the response from the vegetation, the grass growing up, I can hear the grasshoppers in the background, passerines have just exploded, all of the wildlife species and insects have just exploded,” Bertram said. “And we’re already seeing brood-rearing sage grouse coming into this area and utilizing it in the short period we’ve been here. It’s been a huge success story for them, and I’m excited to see how the leks respond over time.”

“These meadows are like a sponge,” he said. “They take that water and they hold it, and release it slowly into the system. So we don’t get that big rush in the spring, when the springs are active, they run hard and then just dry up. Then you just have a dry meadow. With water being held back in the system, it releases slowly, and that benefits downstream users, too, so it’s a benefit for everything.”

What an epic project, with such lasting positive results! When Idaho signs on to the beaver team they certainly bring all their best tools to the table. I’m so impressed.

What we need is some folks to do this work all over California.