Category: Beaver Behavior

Marching towards victory

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, 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, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? June 10, 2017

Yesterday was a VERY good day. We had three thrilling pieces of very good news, consisting of 1) for the very first time we get a US Forest Service exhibit at the festival which we never did before, 2) that the Alhambra Valley Band is confirmed in some variation, and 3) that Brock Dolman is going to appear in beaver costume to talk about beaver benefits on stage. I am so happy when things fall into place that I start looking immediately on the horizon for the dark cloud (or piano) that will inevitably follow.

But things are going in the right direction. I’m definitely happy for that.

Meanwhile, in the world of false beaver accusations, cranky old men are still saying crazy things about beavers, just in case you were curious.

Critter built impoundment beneath railroad bridge spurs Tom McDonald to action.

Over time, he sold most of the 11 acres. Other developers created the Portland Fairview RV Park, and a cozy cluster of single-family homes sprung up around Palisade Drive, Heartwood Circle and other residential streets. McDonald owns just a sliver of land between the RV park and Northeast 217th Court. Fairview Creek runs right through the tract, and Union Pacific’s railroad trestle is just a stone’s throw away.

That’s where the problems began, and McDonald had what he described as a “Holy cripes!” moment.

“We were out talking (and) walking around, and beavers were popping up around our feet,” McDonald relates. “They put a delay on our deal because it was so wet.”

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

“Looking at the situation from a layman’s view, it appears that area is ‘honeycombed’ with beaver burrowing,” McDonald said.

Because you know how beavers like to burrow in wetlands. Dig Dig Dig, that’s what beavers do. And destroy train trestles, like in those silent movies.

Honestly, is the crazyoldmanvan coming for you soon? I mean what would be the POINT of a beaver digging in flooded banks? They obviously aren’t making a lodge inside them. Now I suppose they theoretically could be making a canal to drag supplies through, but do you honestly think the metal and cement pilings and steel girders of the modern train trestle are going to be troubled by a bunch of beavers?

I’m a little doubtful about the 6 foot dam myself. I mean our dam was assessed by PWA once as 7 feet tall but that was because they were lying and measuring with sticks of terror. You can tell it’s not 7 feet tall because the man in the front filming is Moses Silva of sturdy Mayan frame and just over 5 feet. Assuming his mystery dam was as high as ours that means those beavers had a lot of resources to choose from.

Looking at this it’s kind of amazing to think that mom and Dad made this whole thing by themselves back then, because there were no yearlings to help.

Now I’m officially looking forward to our summer lineup. Here’s Brock as Buster Beaver at the Daily Acts breakfast in Sonoma in 2014.

BEAVERS IN MARIN

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Who's blaming beavers now? October 4, 2024

Last night’s talk in Marin was a rainy, positive, beaver booster shot for everyone involved, including me. The classroom was full of hardy bird watchers who made the trek to Richardson bay despite the weather and the traffic near the golden gate. Jon did a lovely job setting FRO’s remarkable children’s banner across the wall, and we let folks take newsletters and festival announcements as they entered. Then I proceeded to give an hour+ talk about the journey Martinez had taken with the beavers.

This was an enormously appreciative audience, that laughed in all the right places, appreciated the news and film clips, loved the images and video, and really enjoyed the civics lesson we had learned in living with beavers. Afterwards there were wonderful questions and unanimous positive feedback. One woman asked what had been the hardest part for me personally because I seemed like such a natural advocate. (Ha!) Another brought me a copy of Alice Waters chapter on beavers, and a third asked me if I knew they had a special grooming claw. The room couldn’t have been more varied or diverse. There was even a man who had trapped beaver in attendance, who described how their tails were good eating. A man brought up the beaver reintroduction campaign and wondered what I thought about it, prompting the woman who invited me to tell the group that Marin Audubon wasn’t supportive of the reintroduction plan posed recently. Which came as an obvious surprise to everyone there after my talk to hear such a thing!

But my favorite comment of the night came from one very interesting fellow, who said that there already HAD BEEN a beaver in Marin at the pond near Smith Ranch road, probably about 20 years ago. This made total sense to me, because you could see how they would come up Galinas creek after crossing the San Pablo bay from the Carquinez Strait. That beaver had eventually died or been gotten rid of but it confirmed my theory that whether they’re introduced or not, these plucky animals are going to get there on their own. It gave me the opportunity to repeat my new favorite metaphor: that any city ‘deciding’ whether they wanted beavers or not, was akin to any parents ‘deciding’ whether they wanted their teenagers to become sexually active.

It was going to happen on its own, whether they wanted it or not.

Unexpected friends benefit beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? June 8, 2017

Vermont is leading the way again, look what they’re doing now:

‘Beaver Baffles’ Prevent Flooding and Resolve Beaver-Human Conflicts

BOLTON and RICHMOND, Vt. – To prevent flooding on nearby roads, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department recently completed several water control devices on beaver dams in Bolton and Richmond. Known as ‘beaver baffles’ these devices confuse beavers by using a large plastic tube to create a hidden breech upstream away from the beavers’ dam.

The Fish & Wildlife Department expects to install more than a dozen additional beaver baffles throughout the state this year. The baffles are one of many techniques that department staff employ or recommend to landowners to minimize beaver damage to property or trees. Other techniques include using culvert fences or placing wire mesh or special paint around the base of trees.

“The wetlands that beavers create provide habitat for a variety of wildlife such as waterfowl, songbirds, frogs, turtles, and otters. These areas can also absorb extra water during rain events and clean pollutants from water, so we work hard to preserve these wetlands whenever possible,” said Chris Bernier, wildlife biologist for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.

You know what I wonder? What kind of leadership is necessary to make it so your state Fish and Game agency actually spends time and money installing flow devices. I mean is it a top down kind of excellent governor thing? Or is it a bottom up kind of informed biologist who teaches all the others? Of course I wonder how can we get that kind of response going here? I’m pretty sure our fish and games days are filled with paperwork and occasional license stops. But I could be wrong.

The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has installed 291 beaver baffles in Vermont since the program started in 2000.

“We receive roughly 200 beaver complaints a year,” said Bernier. “Several staff members respond to these complaints, and one technician is dedicated solely to addressing beaver conflicts from spring through fall. Despite these efforts, other management techniques must be used. We also rely on regulated, in-season trapping to maintain a stable beaver population so Vermonters continue to view beavers as a valued member of the local ecosystem and not as a nuisance.”

Do you think it’s the influence of famous Vermonter Skip Lisle that eventually just rubbed off on them? What ever it is I like it. 291 sounds like a lot, but that’s like 17 flow devices a year. How do you think they decide which site gets an install and which one gets permission to trap?

Now we’re headed northwest to British Columbia where folks are interested in letting beavers help frogs.

Green Beat: Leave it to beaver

Monica Pearson is on a mission to bring back the frogs.

Our region was formerly a better place for frogs because wetlands were more abundant. Many wetlands have been lost to development and farmland like the 11,000 acre Sumas Lake that was drained in the 1920s.This project was proposed by the Vancouver Aquarium and Earth Rangers, who raised over $75,000 to help save the Oregon Spotted Frog. We identified a field where the historic wetland had been drained for agriculture but wasn’t in use any more because it was still too wet in Metro Vancouver’s Aldergrove Regional Park.

“Our goal was to learn about restoring a shallow marsh wetland specifically for Oregon Spotted Frogs, despite the presence of invasive Reed Canarygrass and American Bullfrogs. Research that I did a few years ago suggested that keeping a marsh shallower than 30 cm would be good for Spotties, and bad for Bullies, but it’s also great for invasive Reed Canary Grass, which we don’t want.

“When building a wetland, you need to be aware of your water budget. We weren’t certain that there would be enough to keep the wetland wet all year long, especially in a long summer drought. We expected that much of the wetland would dry up through the summer but less than two years after we had built the wetland in 2013, we discovered that the wetland was not only holding water year round, but actually getting deeper.

“Why? Beavers! Through some truly impressive engineering, some local beavers first plugged up drainage ditches, then re-routed water into those ditches from a nearby stream, and were filling it from the bottom. It was like filling a bathtub from the drain.

The result was stable water levels through the whole year — a much better outcome than we ever expected! There are over 100 bird species using the site, dragonflies, fish and many native frog species breeding in the wetland.

The surprise intervention of beavers in Monica’s project is encouraging in an age when so often our goals for rehabilitating nature seem out of reach, and we forget that creation itself might be able to lend a hand — or at least a paw.

Apparently Monica was surprised that beavers build such remarkable wetlands. They made the water deeper than her project needed and the article said they have to ‘manage’ it somehow. I hope not stupidly. But in the meantime I’m really glad that folks were reminded how much beavers help frogs.

There was a ton of beaver news yesterday, but I’m going to leave you without talking about the WETLAND WAR in Narvan just yet, because I’m headed to Marin tonight to sprinkle beaver gospel upon them and want to rush off to make some coffee before settling in to watch the Comey testimony. I’m pretty sure beavers won’t come up, but who knows?

Beavers in San Diego?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 7, 2017

Right now in San Diego they are having a megalith of an international conference on urban wildlife that is gigantic by ordinary human measurements. It is hosted by San Diego State and the SD urban wildlife working group of the Wildlife Society. Lots of our friends are there including Travis Longcore, Beth Pratt and Glynnis Hood. Glynnis is the author of the ‘beaver manifesto’ and the researcher behind all the major beaver research.

Guess what Glynnis is presenting on? Go ahead, guess.

What’s old is new again: Cost-effective management of human-beaver conflicts

Glynnis A. Hood, and Varghese Manaloo

Human-wildlife conflicts result in ongoing and costly management by all levels of government. We installed and evaluated 12 pond-levelers to counter flooding by beavers and developed a cost-benefit analysis for these sites in a protected area in Alberta, Canada. We also documented beaver management approaches in municipalities throughout Alberta. Over three years, one pond-leveler site required regular maintenance until we designed a modified pond-leveler; another required minor modifications, and the remaining 10 sites required little to no maintenance.

Installing 12 pondlevelers resulted in a present value (PV) net benefit of $2,680,640 after only three years. A sensitivity analysis, without the contingent valuation included, still resulted in an $81,519 PV net benefit. Municipalities employed up to seven methods to control beavers: with the most common being lethal control and dam removal. Total annual costs for beaver management provided by 48 municipalities and four provincial park districts was $3,139,223; however, cost-accounting was sometimes incomplete which makes this a conservative estimate.

This research has led to further installations and research in a nearby rural municipality (14 pond-levelers) and the city of Camrose, Alberta (2 pond-levelers), where we have seen similar results. Alternative management approaches can provide cost-effective and long-term solutions to human-beaver conflicts in rural and urban areas.

What? Cities save money by installing flow devices rather than constantly trapping? You’re kidding! Of course we’ve been saying this for years but it’s wonderful to have the hard data to back it up.I knew Glynnis was working on research about the success of flow devices in urban areas, but I’m so glad the numbers are in!

Just in case you’re wondering, Glynnis did hear the Martinez Beaver story at the very first state of the beaver conference I presented at in 20011. She was so famous already then I was afraid to talk to her at the meeting, but as fate would have it we were stuck at the airport together in a log jam and chatted away for an hour before her plane came. She was wonderful of course, and very supportive of our work. I’m so very interested in the presentation she did, and how the topic of ‘urban beavers’ has become so ubiquitous! Their great logo was missing something. So I fixed it.

You probably never listened to our interview, but you really should.

Interview with Glynnis Hood

My only regret is that this conference is taking place in a region hasn’t had urban beavers for more than a century, why couldn’t they hold this conference at the Sierra College in Placer county instead?

The National Scourge of Beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, What's killing beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 1, 2017

Even though there seems to be a beaver benefits renaissance in the Bay Area of sorts at the moment, there are still plenty of places where they aren’t welcome.Regarded as a pesky nuisance to be pushed gotten rid of whenever possible, beavers are woefully misunderstood in much of the country. My in box is literally flooded every morning with stories why trapping is necessary. No one seems to mind that this is kit season and they’ll be leaving behind lots of orphans, either. Take Alabama for instance.

Madison County Commission District 3 taking steps to fix a beaver problem

This sentence strikes me as particularly problematic. But maybe I’m being too literal.

That’s why at Wednesday’s commission meeting district three partnered with the USDA to have them come in and dismantle the dams, and eradicate and relocate the beavers.

I’m curious. Do you think the eradicate them first? And then relocate the bodies? Or the other way around?

On to Michigan where beavers are blamed for flooding as well.

Busy beavers causing flood of problems

“We have to pay for the trappers to go out there, set up costs, and then so much per beaver per trap,” he said. There’s also a cost for work crews and specialized equipment.

I’m really not sure why a county has to ‘pay’ for beaver trapping for every landowner? They aren’t require to pay for termites or mice in your house? And they don’t think they have to pay for health insurance? I would love to know what shred of municipal doctrine from the middle ages explains why a governing body is responsible for a beaver on your land? Call it morbid curiosity.

Things get a little better as we head toward Illinois, where Donald Hey has been preaching the beaver gospel for 25 years or more.

Dam Animals

The dry spell we’re experiencing this spring may have an upside: it will limit run-ins between man and beaver.

Beavers made Chicago. Beaver skins were the reason Chicago became a trading center. Until the 1970s, when antifur consciousness soared and area trapping stopped, beaver dams were just a rural problem. Since then, the populations have grown and moved down the I & I Canal, the Chicago River, and the Des Plaines River. They’ve been spotted downtown on the north branch of the Chicago River near Wolf Point, farther north near the Green Dolphin Street nightclub at Ashland and Webster, and near Ping Tom Park in Chinatown.

What’s the problem? Beavers eat bark, and prefer some tree species over others, including those $400 aspens suburbanites like to plant. Their dams plug up culverts and cause floods. And they’re often blamed for the dispersal of the intestinal parasite Giardia lamblia, which causes nausea and diarrhea in humans. Some call it beaver fever, but deer, muskrats, dogs and cats, and even humans can carry the parasite.

This article makes me apprehensive but not entirely uncomfortable. Maybe we have to make allowances because its Illinois? I’m just happy the ever try ANYTHING else except trapping.

In the suburbs, the problem’s more widespread and the solutions more varied. In Lake County, most of the beavers live along the creeks feeding the Des Plaines River. It’s up to Jim Anderson, natural resource manager for the Lake County Forest Preserve, to solve beaver problems on the county’s 24,000 forest preserve acres. Anderson says they tend to leave the animals in place unless the dams cause flooding on adjacent roads or private property–for instance, at the Wadsworth Savanna site this past week, a beaver that’s been clogging culverts for two years elicited a complaint from a neighbor whose backyard was flooding. “We’ll have to go out and take a look at it,” Anderson says.

To alleviate flooding, Anderson and his crew often run pipes through the dams to try to lower the upstream water levels. Or they tear out the dam altogether and see if the beavers relocate on their own. A couple times in the last two years Anderson has tried hiring licensed private trappers to move beavers to other areas in Lake County, but one of the beavers died. Anderson says the transfer stresses the animals out, and besides, there aren’t many places to take them where they don’t just cause problems for someone else.

Erickson says he’s never had a beaver die in 30 years of planned live trapping. “They’re very hardy animals,” he says. “That trapper just doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Erickson’s preferred no-kill method is a galvanized-cable snare that catches the beaver behind its front legs. Once caught, the beavers can surface safely and leave or enter the water as needed, and Erickson says they’re in fair shape when he returns to remove them, which can be up to 12 hours later.

Anderson says killing beavers, or “removing them from the natural world,” as he puts it, is a last resort in Lake County; when it comes to that, again, a licensed trapper is called in. Anderson says he believes the captured animals are shot in the head with a .22, but he doesn’t know for sure. Another method involves trapping them underwater, where they die of carbon dioxide narcosis. (Beavers have valves in their noses that keep water out and prevent them from simply drowning.)

Let’s hear a little from the biggest beaver advocate the state has to offer, shall we?”

Donald Hey, one of the project’s heads, is a great admirer of the beaver–he credits it, in no modest terms, for the entire North American drainage system. Glaciers carved deep cuts in the earth, he explains; then prehistoric beavers slowed the raging rivers with dams. The rivers widened, occasionally flooding and moving silt and effluvia over the banks to make rich meadowlands.

In 1985, with support from environmental groups, Chicago corporations, and the state and federal governments, Hey and others acquired 550 acres from the Lake County Forest Preserve and turned a series of gravel pits off Highway 41 into a patchwork of ponds, marshes and wetlands. The beavers came, of their own accord, from the Des Plaines River. In 1992, Hey helped start the not-for-profit Wetlands Initiative, which now administers 17 other restoration sites in the Illinois River watershed as well.

Hey, an affable 63-year-old Missouri native who got his doctorate in hydrology from Northwestern, says giant Pleistocene-epoch beavers (Castoroides ohioensis) as big as black bears roamed the Great Lakes about 10,000 years ago. By the time of Columbus, according to paleontological and archaeological estimates, there were more than 400 million modern beavers (Castor canadensis) on the North American landscape. Hey walks me past a site at the Wadsworth project where in the mid-90s remains of 8,500-year-old trees with gnaw marks were found by University of Illinois and Illinois State Museum archaeologists.

Donald was the keynote speaker at the very first state of the beaver conference I attended. More than this, he was an expert witness in the Riverside appellate beaver case argued by our friend Mitch Wagner. He has been trying to explain why beavers are useful for his damaged state as long as anyone can remember. This article suggests he’s getting a little traction.

So, to summarize: Beavers shaped the land we live on. We hunted them to near extinction for commerce. Then we protected their fur and allowed the populations to grow. Now we’re moving them or killing them because they’re encroaching on our habitat, which used to be theirs.

“I think all the bird watchers should be put in a cage, not the beavers,” says Erickson. “What have the birds done for us?”

Um, I really didn’t say that. Honestly. And I won’t of course next week. But my my my what a way to end an article!

Rusty Cohn in Napa is getting impatient for the new kits to make themselves known. But I’m guessing he has a week of waiting ahead or more. Meanwhile he’s visiting the pond most nights and getting great photos to satisfy our beaver-watching craving. Just look.