Category: Beaver Book

“A PASSIONATE, ECLECTIC GROUP OF BEAVER BELIEVERS”

Someday it’s a great day to be a beaver-believer. This article combining Ben Golfarb’s excellent book with the recent struggles at Warner Park in Madison Wisconsin makes me proud to be a member of the club.

‘Dam It! WI Is a Backward Beaver State’

In April 2017, a quiet war was being waged over Warner Park’s resident beavers. Apart from a handful of local news articles, the dispute came and went free from the public eye.

Beavers — not exactly known to fit the human definition of orderly — made their presence evident at the park by damaging and felling trees. The city’s Parks Division contracted a trapper, reasoning the flooding risk posed by the beavers’ dam outweighed their benefits.

Unaware of the city’s plan and outraged at the prospect of beavers being removed, citizens decided to take traps into their own hands. The safety risk posed to those doing so forced the Madison Parks Division to remove the remaining traps.

While the traps are gone, whether or not the issue has been resolved is subject to debate. The positives and negatives of living with, or without, beavers have not been discussed on a city-wide scale.

However, Ben Goldfarb, the author of “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter,” has offered a framework for doing so.

Ta-daa! Hi Ben, I am SO happy your book was written and you are willing to trot about the countryside and remind people why beavers matter.

Goldfarb, an award-winning environmental journalist, visited Madison’s Olbrich Botanical Gardens on Feb. 20 to speak about beavers and their ability to solve a range of environmental issues.

The problems Madison lakes face are products of land management and infrastructure choices, UW-Limnology wrote. Chemical run-off, chiefly nitrogen and phosphorus, is creating “unsightly and unsafe” lake conditions.

Beavers are the “landscape Swiss Army knives,” as Goldfarb refers to them, that can fix all of the above. Their dams slow water — creating wetlands — which can sequester pollution, prevent erosion and slow flooding.

Goldfarb and other self-proclaimed “Beaver Believers” not only trust in the rodents’ capacity to “tackle just about any ecological dilemma” but recognize compromise may be a part of doing so. The passionate, eclectic group supports coexistence efforts rather than removal.

Flow devices are one of the many tools being used to moderate conflicts between humans and their paddle-tailed neighbors, Goldfarb said. Most flow devices — including Skip Lisle’s Beaver Deceiver and Mike Callahan’s Pond Leveler system — consist of a water outlet and fencing.

“A passionate, eclectic group.” Aww shucks, you’ll make me blush. Yup that’s us. It takes a village. We’re a mixed bag, A heterogeneous bunch of grapes if you will.

Goldfarb concluded with the words of fellow Beaver Believer Kent Woodruff, which capture the essence of beaver belief.

“We’re not smart enough to know what a fully functional ecosystem looks like. But they are.”

Ohh be still my heart! I just love this beaver club we’re in. Don’t you? Excellent work, Ben. Sometimes I get the feeling a tide is turning.

The gentleman from South Carolina who wrote me about the beaver living under his house noticed that it had an injury so I suggested taking it to rehab. Yesterday Carolina Wildlife Care came and trapped and took it away . Maybe you have some pocket change you can send their way to thank them and help pay for its treatment and board?

A HEYDAY FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers and salmon February 8, 2020

Heyday Publishing that is.

Looks like artist and water guru Obi Kaufann just signed a 6 volume contract with California’s favorite publisher. The latest book looks very nice. But it’s the one that comes after that which got my attention.

Artist, author of ‘The California Field Atlas’ talks about Sonoma County’s ecology

Bestselling author, artist and adventurer Obi Kaufmann answers to an unusual calling: over the past few decades he’s explored vast tracts of California’s wild backcountry on foot, from the Siskiyou Mountains near the Oregon border to the Salton Sea near Mexico.

In the process, he’s acquired a unique firsthand view of the state’s diverse natural world and the complex workings of its deepest systems.

This coming Tuesday, Feb. 11, Kaufmann will be in Santa Rosa to introduce a slice of what he’s discovered and his new hand- illustrated book, “The State of Water,” along with perspective on what he sees as California’s unfolding ecological story.

Okay now that looks like it definitely belongs at the beaver festival. And Californians thirst for knowledge about their own water. But guess what he’s working on now?

“I am working on a series of what will ultimately be six books,” he said. “And two of the main characters in the next book (on forests) are Sonoma County locals — the salmon and the beaver.”

“Can you imagine, just 200 years ago, nearly every watershed on nearly every water course in Sonoma County held these two species,” he said. “We’re looking at thousands of beavers, a beaver population density of two or three per kilometer.”

“Beaver created cold, clear, clean water habitat for salmon. And at the end of their life cycle, when the fish returned to the headwaters of their birth, they laid their bodies down, depositing hundreds of thousands of metric tons of calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen, which came back down the Russian River in big floods to feed the forests the fertilizer they need.”

Kaufmann believes the two native animals offer modern Californians an ecological architecture for restoration.

I’m guessing Brock Dolman promoting beavers and salmon will be heavily featured in that book. I just hope it comes out FAST. California needs to get the beaver salmon point soon, or it will be too late. For the salmon I mean, beavers of course will stick around no matter what stupid stuff we do.

Plenty of people get on the beaver bandwagon eventually. Check out this article.

Polluted, damaged streams in Chesapeake region at center of debate over cleanup

A billion-dollar industry has emerged as local governments work to stay below EPA limits for urban runoff that allow them to qualify for stormwater permits and that help determine federal funding to states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

But environmental scientists say it is unclear whether the high-cost projects are worth the investment. The work typically uses heavy machinery to clear old trees and plant new ones around re-engineered streams that contain boulders, wood and vegetation meant to absorb harmful pollutants.

In some cases, such projects may be hurting surrounding wildlife unnecessarily, some experts say.

“You modify the system so much that you risk transforming a stream ecosystem into something else. And the question becomes: Is that good?” said Solange Filoso, an aquatic biologist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science who advocates for smarter stream restoration designs and a greater focus on the sources of urban runoff.

Now we all know that. And we all know what would do it better. But I didn’t know Maryland knew that too.

Thomas Jordan, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, said a fair amount of guesswork is involved in the effort. He cited a $1 million project on his center’s property in Anne Arundel County, Md., that initially caused the water to turn a rusty color — because of iron leaching out of rehydrated soil — and, later, appeared to be no more effective at removing pollutants than a beaver dam further downstream.

“And the beavers do that free,” he said.

Thomas Jordan at the Smithsonian Environental Research Center gets an email. Something tells me this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

BEAVER ADVICE FALLS ON THE OPPOSITE OF DEAF EARS

heidi08 Beaver Book, Flow Device Installed January 5, 2020

Good morning! I’m late today because we were kind of busy yesterday. Cookies made. House completely rearranged. Shouting occurred. Let’s just say the chocolate wasn’t the only thing that was “tempered”. ba-dum-dum. But now its beautiful and we have the whole morning together. Let’s share and tell our way to victory, shall we?

This one from Portland, Maine.

Letter to the editor: Trapping not the only way to manage beavers

I’m writing in response to the Dec. 27 letter about wildlife populations and self-regulation, specifically beavers. The letter caught my attention because I’ve been reading “Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter” by Ben Goldfarb.

Hey we know him! What did you learn when you read our friends manifesto?

The book also discusses the idea of cultural carrying capacity, which is the number of animals that humans can tolerate. The level of tolerance comes from how much conflict arises between people and the animal, in this case beavers.

No one wants their property flooded or water contaminated, but is trapping the only answer?

I’m sure hoping you say it isn’t.

According to Skip Lisle, the answer is no. Lisle has a master’s degree in Wildlife Management from the University of Maine, and he worked with the Penobscot Nation to find ways of peaceful co-existence with beavers.

Lisle discovered, as have many others, that killing beavers is not an effective long-term solution. It’s better to find non-lethal ways of ending conflicts with beavers, which led to his company Beaver Deceivers LLC (https://beaverdeceivers.com). He provides flow devices and has invented other tools to prevent beavers from damaging private and public property.

This is a helpful reminder that instead of trying to get rid of animals, we should be looking for ways to live peacefully with them.

Erica Bartlett

Wonderful Erica! Well said and well read, as the saying goes. Now we ourselves in Martinez hired Mr. Lisle to put in one of them there contraptions and it solved our issue for 10 years. That was ten years we didn’t have to pay trappers or think about flooding in our creek. Ten years of more wildlife and better fish in our creek. Ten years of no new beavers moving into our creek.

Hey, that sounds almost like a solution!

ANOTHER HEART TOUCHED BY A BEAVER

heidi08 Beaver Book, Who's saving beavers now? December 7, 2019

I’m going to make you all cry now. Well not me, Patti Smith. The Vermont “me” – way more graceful and without the sarcasm. She’s going to make you cry with this beautiful column about the death of her heroic ambassador beaver, Willow. You’ll know, when you read her elegiac prose, how much I thought of the death of our own mother beaver loo, lo, these nine years ago. It takes the courage of a matriarch to change a woman’s life apparently. Mom was the one who decided to live near us in Martinez. And Willow was the first that allowed her life to be touched by Patti. My heart grieves for her loss, and ours.

Smith: View from Heifer Hill: In Memorium for Willow the beaver

On the night of December 3, I broke a trail through the deep fresh snow to the shores of Sodom Pond. It was not the tough, uphill work that made me immune to the beauty of the moonlit forest; I was going to say good-bye to my old friend Willow.

Some of you met Willow when I began writing about her in this column nearly twelve years ago. If so, you will know that she was the first volunteer when I decided I would like to meet a beaver. She has been sharing her life with me (and you?) ever since. This fall found her settled in a new pond with Henry, mate number five, and Gentian, their 18-month-old kit.

Willow’s life was remarkable on two counts. As a beaver ambassador, she welcomed many visitors over the years. In this capacity, she played a small role in awakening humanity to the tremendous role beavers play in making habitat and in holding cooling water on a heating planet.

Willow also had an unusually long life. I have speculated about the superpowers that kept her alive while so many other beavers disappeared. She has been blind in one eye for the past five years and has had the disheveled, bony appearance of advanced age for nearly as long. I suspect she was close to the maximum age for a beaver. The record for a beaver in captivity is 23 years. Beavers in the wild seldom attain half that age.

I wish I could say something that would soften this article for you. But I can’t. All I can do is remember this, the night after we lost mom and my long sniffling watch to see if her kits were cared for, I filmed these the night after mom died.

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In late November, after the first snow of the year, I heard a beaver’s tail slap warning when I arrived at the pond. Henry made a brief, nervous appearance but swam away again. Willow did not show up. I tried not to worry, but Henry’s anxiety was contagious.

The next night, I headed to the pond again hopeful that I would find the wayward beaver and prepared to search if I did not. Only Henry came when I called. I wandered downstream to previous ponds and back on the far side of the brook. I found no recent sign of Willow, but many reminders of the hours spent on those shores. When I arrived at the far side of their home pond, I could see young Gentian out on the ice processing a tree they had felled. From that vantage, I also saw the tracks of a bear. The bear had walked across the slushy surface of the pond the previous night and pawed at the roof of one of the beavers’ temporary lodges.

Willow was nowhere to be found but the next morning she came back to look closer at the bear tracks. I know, I’m crying too. And remembering this.
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The next morning I set myself the grim task of determining her fate. If I could not find evidence of a predator attack, I would assume that Willow had achieved the near-impossible—dying of old-age in nature. Frost crystals gleamed on the sedges by the pond, and a light skim of ice crystallized into snowflake patterns over the open water. I followed the beavers’ trails up the hillside again. I saw no evidence of predation. I returned to the place where the bear tracks left the scene. The tracks continued up the hill, went over a stone wall and up stone steps to a cellar hole. Bear feet left impressions along the edge of the foundation. At a corner, it looked like the bear paused to goof around with a branch since the tracks went back and forth, and a groove appeared beside them. As the tracks continued into the woods, the groove went with them. The bear was dragging something. I knew what I would find.

The pile of sawdust under a skim of ice looked like bedding from a squirrel’s nest at first. When it registered as Willow’s last meal, I dropped to my knees and howled my sorrow to the still forest. The depth of grief is a measure of love, so I welcome it. I loved that old beaver.

A week later, I made my sad return trek to the pond. The section of ice near the entrance to the lodge was slushy, and I made an opening with my ski pole. I called Henry and waited for many anxious minutes before I heard the gurgles that announced his approach. He rose to the surface wearing a cap of ice and then lumbered up the sloughing snowbank to beach himself, in magnificent portliness, for a treat. In his company by the moonlit pond, I found my farewells had already been said. The night demanded attention to what was there, not what was missing. I could feel Willow’s presence in Gentian, snoozing in the lodge nearby. Could she share her mother’s remarkable traits? If she does, she will live a long life — and she will share it with us.

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I will never forget the wrenching feeling in Lily pond reading as Hope watches her beloved beaver die, I don’t know why, but women mourn beaver matriarchs and that’s just how it happens. There is of course always the fear of what will happen to the children. But I’m sure you know they were cared for. That night we all commented on how the yearling was accepting the kit for a back ride. We rarely saw those two apart in the coming month.

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Patti, we are so grateful you allowed this beaver to touch your life. Your readers hearts and minds were forever opened because of it.

And thank you, Mom, and Willow.

Lastly; the Hubermans

Hans.

Papa

He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do – the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was set out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested.

Markus Zusak: The Book Thief

A WILD LIVE WELL-LIVED

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beaver Rehabilitation December 4, 2019

Audrey Tourney has died.

I was saddened to read yesterday that Audrey Tourney died at 89. She was the founder of the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary located in St Rosseau in the middle of Ontario about 300 miles north of New York. She was the angel behind many orphan beaver releases not to mention bears and foxes and others. When she started her work she was told that rehabbed beaver could never be released into the wild because they had missed out on too much learning. They needed to go to a zoo. But Audrey didn’t much believe that.

And now no one does. Because of her work and what she taught us.

The wildlife and rehab and beaver world found a huge gift in Audrey and the world is a better place because she breathed in it. This Canadian short is a profound look at the work she did and how many lives – both human and wild – she changed forever.

I know yesterday was “Giving tuesday” and the soft hearted wallets are considerably lightened already but if you have anything left you should make a donation in her name to Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. They do remarkable work, and their hearts must be heavier this season.