Category: Beaver Behavior

Leggy Matters

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 29, 2017

A week to go! Can you believe it? Tomorrow Leslie comes over to tag and process every item for the silent auction, and our living room starts to look like a festival way-station as we bring everything down we need to remember. I found out yesterday that the electrical has been laid in the park but the wifi boost installation has been delayed until wednesday, which matters because people can’t use credit cards at the auction without it. Wednesday? Two days before the festival. Do you think they could be cutting this any closer?

Knowing our city maybe they mean the wednesday after the festival.

Be that as it may, we stumble onward. There’s nice letter published this morning in Scotland from a Mr. George Murdoch of Laurencekirk, whom I don’t believe we know.

Beavers help reduce downstream flooding

Sir, – What a shame Mr Milne’s attack (July 26) on Jim Crumley led him to ignore the positive influence beavers have on the surrounding environment and focus only on the inconvenience they may have helped cause through helping raise the water level by an inch or two.

In a long-term (2002 to 2016) study conducted by Stirling University it was found that the presence of beavers increased the number of species found by 28%, improved pollutant levels, increased the retention of organic matter by a factor of seven, and almost halved phosphorous and nitrate levels.

By strange coincidence they also reduce downstream flooding in addition to helping restore degraded streams.

These measures, in turn, aid our avian community no end and attract and sustain an increasing number of birds.

If I may remind Mr Milne, Kinnordy is primarily a bird reserve managed by the RSPB.

The Alyth Flood Report, compiled by The Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, concluded that beaver activity made little or no significant contribution to the flood there, contrary to the subtle claim made in his letter.

If he wishes to look for a constructive response to his criticism, he could do worse than offer to lend a hand with any measures the RSPB might deem necessary to help him keep his feet dry.

George Murdoch.
Auchcairnie Cottages,
Laurencekirk.

Nice job, George! Excellently written. Of course it takes a hundred smart citizens to force a city to make 1 modestly less ignorant decision about beavers, and that’s in America. Probably more in a land where they’ve been extinct for 5 centuries it will take a thousand. But it’s good to know that folks are getting the message.

Even MassWildlife seems to understand about beaver-biodiversity. I just couldn’t help but notice where they chose to install their tail cam to get this fine footage. It makes sense.

Watch: Bull moose, then swimming bear on Westhampton trail cam

WESTHAMPTON — Nearly a week after we picked up trail cam footage of a cow moose and her calf, a good-sized bull came wandering by.

Footage of a bear, which came by that same trail cam two days later, is included at the end of the video. That bear, as a friend pointed out after watching the clip, was clearly on a mission. That mission apparently included a quick dip in a small beaver pond a short distance away. Footage of that swim, taken by our second trail cam, follows the first video.

I bet our city is grateful they never had these visitors to their beaver pond!

Wolves and Beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beaver Conference, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? July 26, 2017

On the last day of the 2015 State of the beaver conference, USFS Hydrologist Suzanne Fouty came over for dinner and spent the night in our home by the river. There was a lot of eco-conversation, nice wine and good food, and she was much beloved by our labrador and her hosts. One fact she stressed over and over and made a HUGE impression on me, so that whenever I read something like it I think of her.

Wolves are the key that let beavers do their magic.

See beavers can work magic, but they need materials to do it. They need willow on the riparian to eat and build dams which make their dramatic difference possible. When the waters edge is trampled by cows or elk, the important willow doesn’t grow back or gets eaten up and beavers can’t do their job. Suzanne is a firm believer that elk need wolves to be lurking so they are motivated to stay away from open streams and don’t eat the new shoots trying to grow. She said fencing can do some of it, but was expensive and easily damaged. She wanted to stress it at the conference but there were too many negative feelings about wolves to broach the subject.

This letter reminds me of our conversation for two reasons. One because of the content, which is excellent, and two because of the source. Wallowa- Whitman is the national forest where Suzanne works.

Well, Dallas McCrae got one thing right in his recent letter to the editor: He’d be laughed at. It’s disturbing that the go-to solution to the problem of overpopulated elk is to build a wall or a giant game fence, as the case may be. Is he serious? Sadly, I think he is.

A game fence, at least eight feet high, along the Hwy. 82 corridor and lower Wallowa Valley? Kinda sounds like Trump’s border wall, which, no doubt, is the inspiration for this idea. The game fence is part and parcel of a problematic habit of thinking … namely that we can solve an issue by isolating it without any ill effects.

Worst, many unintended consequences are entirely foreseeable. Who couldn’t see that putting dams up and down the former Colubmia River, now Columbia Reservoir System, would all but wipe out salmon runs?

The answers are right there staring us in the face. The simple alternative solutions don’t require massive expenditures of resources, only a change in perception and attitude. Thus, I offer another even easier fix than a fence. Listen to the land, to each other. Listen to the keystone species of wolves, salmon and beaver. Listen to the elk themselves.

Wolves, it turns out, are quite good at driving elk –– entire herds of elk –– off land. It is what they excel at and have excelled at for gosh hundreds of years. They know much more than we do about the oxymoronic pretense of “managing” wildlife.

Garik Asplund, Joseph

Gosh, that’s a great letter. An epic letter. I could read much more from Mr. Asplund and be very very interested in what he has to say about beavers. I couldn’t find much about him online, except he’s a farmer and ran for city council last year. He got 17% of the vote sadly and didn’t win, but writing letters like that makes him much too smart for city council anyway.

Of course I sent this to Suzanne to find out if they were already friends, or just kindred spirits. I’m sure they would have lots to talk about over a beer or two. I know they would have a lot in common.

Beaver in a Box!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and trout, Who's saving beavers now? July 25, 2017

Fun post yesterday from our beaver friends at Wyoming Untrapped

Our goal is to educate the public about coexisting with beavers as well as their benefits to any ecosystem. Over 80% of all Wyoming wildlife species use wetlands. Beavers construct new, and enhance already existing, wetlands. Beavers were nearly trapped to extinction in Northwest Wyoming and are struggling to rebound due to pressure from continued trapping, conflicts with landowners, and habitat degradation. The Beaver Awareness and Restoration Project will include an educational component in which area students will work alongside Bridger-Teton National Forest hydrologists, wildlife biologists and land managers to learn about forest management, ecology, wildlife-human conflict, environmental science, and appreciation for beavers.

The program also received a 10,000 dollar grant allowing it to relocate beavers from areas where they were causing problems to higher up stream in uninhabited areas. No other Wyoming organization is advocating for the small, but mighty, beaver which brings numerous beneficial components to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. WU believes that beavers, and all wildlife, should be valued for their contribution to our wild world!

Yesterday the post had more info about the relocation program, but I commented that it will be wonderful when beavers get to stay where they like and people learn new tools for managing them, and now it’s changed to what I’ve posted here.

I guess I cast kind of a beaver-shaped long shadow. Go figure.

Too much cute

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Who's saving beavers now? July 23, 2017

Cuteness overload! Call the police! Our wildlife tattoos from Coyote Brush Studios arrived yesterday and I am in shock about how beautiful they are. Jon and I immediately had to try some out on a few journals just to know how they worked. The big one is my journal made from imperfect seconds. It’s missing the water drop and the turtle because there were none that weren’t perfect and I selflessly (but just barely) didn’t want to ruin any of the 150 children’s sets. The little mini-journals have beaver tattoos we bought separately to sell at the festival. Go ahead, tell me you or your child can resist having their very own. I’ll try and believe you.

If you’re lucky you have a grandchild or neighbor kid that you can hustle down to the festival so they can earn one of these for free. Then you can steal it back after the work is done and they fall asleep dreaming of beavers after their exhausting and joyful festival. (And yes mom, I know what happened to that Halloween candy every year!) If you can’t cajole a child into coming, you will just have to make a donation and snap up your own.

Meanwhile, we met up with stalwart volunteer and good friend Erika this week and she presented us with a bundle of gifts including a 50 dollar dinner certificate from Metro in Lafayette, and a 100 one from Esin in Danville! Plus she had made some truly adorable additions for the silent auction at her clay class in Walnut Creek. These all hold tea lights, but would work just as well for candy or incense too! They are even cuter in person. Thank you Erika, and you can thank her yourself when you see her working like a dog helping kids with tattoos at the festival!

That’s a great deal of cuteness already, I’m sure we’re all weak in the knees at the moment. But it gets better. Because Rusty was back at the pond last night with some photos we all want to see. Enjoy the new Napatopia kits!

two cuties 2017 — Seating for two: Rusty Cohn

Wyoming Wonders

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? July 22, 2017

Whew! Things are back to normal. The solar unit needs insurance, I woke up at 4 and my email has completely stopped working. That seems more like it. While I try and manage radio silence if you need to reach me try this. Mean while there’s still plenty to talk about.

Starting with our friends Wyominguntrapped. They have some pretty heavy hitters as partners, including the Forest Service. The beaver awareness project website was launched yesterday and looks awesome. The program director said yesterday that her dream was to have their own beaver festival one day.:-)

Following several meetings between the Forest Service and Wyoming Untrapped in which the benefits that beavers have to the forest were a topic, an idea was formed that would bring together many community partners and would help to reestablish populations of beavers on National Forest Service land.

There is a lack of tolerance for beavers as well as a lack of public awareness of the benefits that beavers provide ecologically. Beavers are an integral keystone species that gets little attention by wildlife managers but have substantial, positive impacts to the ecosystem. Increasing knowledge and a love of beavers in children will increase the understanding of this unique species which will lead to a growth in tolerance and co-existence with this valuable, beneficial species. Students will gain scientific knowledge about hydrology, ecology, biology, and engineering using hands-on solutions to real-world problems. Students will gain knowledge of careers by meeting members of the community to whom they are rarely exposed.

Go to their website and check it out, but there are a few special treasures I want to focus on today. In addition to our lovely poster and links to this site they have some fantastic footage by Filmmaker Jeff Hogan. If his name sounds familiar it should because every single PBS or BBC documentary you have seen of the region uses his work. And with good reason. This footage complete took me by surprise.

I’ve been doing this every morning since Bush was president. I’ve watched 25 beavers grow up and 5 beavers die and seen things I never expected time and time again. But this blew me away. Seriously. Watch it.