Category: Beaver Book

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEAVERS GONE?

heidi08 BDA's, Beaver Book, Beaver relocation, Beavers and climate change October 6, 2019

Years ago, and I mean more than a decade, I befriended filmmaker Mike Foster who was following the beavers of the San Pedro River. He was one of the few folks I knew at the time who had spent as much time as I had watching beavers. Our correspondence eventually tricked off as I got more involved in the beaver community and apparently the beaver population did too. Because this morning I came upon this headline:

Dam shame: Beavers face second extinction on San Pedro River

Twenty years after their triumphant return, beavers have nearly vanished once again from the San Pedro River.

No beaver dams have been recorded within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area for the past three years, and only a few individual animals have been spotted along the river 85 miles southeast of Tucson. Experts fear the remaining population is now too small to sustain itself.

“There are beaver down there. We don’t know how many, but there has been a decline,” said Scott Feldhausen, local district manager for the BLM. Officials from the Bureau of Land Management and the Arizona Game and Fish Department said they simply don’t know why the animals are disappearing or how many of them might be left, because they long ago stopped monitoring the population.

And stopped paying Mike to film them. It’s hard to imagine beaver not being hardy enough to survive, but maybe they’re being killed? Or maybe climate change made their lives harder? And maybe they would have preferred BDAs along that river to help them get a foothold on a landscape that has been without them for 300 years?

The bad beaver news comes as state and federal wildlife officials are studying whether to introduce beavers into another Southern Arizona watershed, Las Cienegas National Conservation Area near Sonoita.

An early version of the plan reportedly called for as many as nine beavers to be turned loose along Cienega Creek, within the 45,000-acre conservation area.

An environmental assessment of the proposed release was on track for completion late this year or early next, but Feldhausen said he is considering shelving the project as a result of questions raised by the Arizona Daily Star about the status of the San Pedro population.

He said his agency has not followed through the way he thinks it should have when it comes to monitoring beavers on the San Pedro, and he doesn’t want to see that happen again.

“If we are going to do these efforts in the future, we are just going to have to make sure the time and effort are worth it,” Feldhausen said. “It’s incumbent on us to find out if it was successful or not, and if not, why not.”

Maybe from a bureaucratic point of view you need to monitor your project, but from a beaver point of view you most likely don’t. They’re going to survive or die off whether you count them or not. I definately thin BDA’s would improve their odds, though.

A growing number of ecologists and environmentalists now celebrate the animal for its role as a keystone species and a restoration specialist for damaged landscapes. Simply by doing what comes naturally to them, these furry engineers improve the overall health of watersheds and create new habitat for a host of other species, beaver backers say.

The beaver’s contributions to nature were chronicled last year in Ben Goldfarb’s award-winning book, “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.”

Now the animals and their advocates are the subject of a documentary called “The Beaver Believers,” which premiered in Tucson late last month at a fundraiser for the Watershed Management Group.

About 250 people turned out for the Sept. 27 screening. The beaver-themed event raised roughly $15,000 for the conservation group’s riparian restoration work in and around Tucson.

Watershed Management Group Executive Director Lisa Shipek said she didn’t know anything about the plight of the beavers on the San Pedro until someone mentioned it during a panel discussion before the movie was shown.

“It was surprising for sure,” Shipek said. “There have been positive impacts from (the beaver’s) reintroduction … but I think we’re still learning. That’s why we need to keep tabs on how they’re doing in the watershed.”

I don’t have a lot of tolerance in my heart for people who say they didn’t know how good things were until someone came in and told them they were valuable, BUT I’m glad Ben and Sarah are making an impression. I guess sometimes you need to “antique road show” your environment to find out that that river left to you by your great great grandfather is actually worth something!

“Oh that old thing is valuable? We’ve been using it for years to keep cans in!

Mark Hart, spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department in Tucson, said the agency followed the beavers for the first five years or so, but it is not a species they generally track. Once the population seemed to be established, they turned their attention elsewhere, he said. “As far as we were concerned, the reintroduction had taken.”

So where have all the beavers gone since then?

It’s a question Feldhausen said the BLM hasn’t even tried to answer at this point.

Some speculate that drought and groundwater pumping have reduced the river’s flow, leaving the mostly aquatic creatures with little more than stagnant puddles of warm, dirty water during the summer months.

Others suspect the beavers are being wiped out by mountain lions or even poachers.

Ironically, perhaps, the BLM just approved a new resource management plan for the national conservation area that opens much of the San Pedro to beaver trapping under Arizona Game and Fish regulations, though Feldhausen said he doubts there are enough animals left to attract serious trappers.

GEE YOU THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT? I mean, in addition to the fact that you drained their watertable and that probably affected the riparian tree diet, and without food or shelter my population would decline too.

Filmmaker and naturalist Mike Foster thinks what’s happening to the beavers could be part of a normal population cycle and that the numbers will rebound on their own.

“They’re pretty tenacious. I would be surprised if they’re gone completely,” he said.

AGREED! Wonderful to hear from Mike. People who spend time actually watching beavers know a lot more than we give them credit for.

Foster has decided to take matters into his own hands. He said he’s going to start walking the river again, and he’s taking his camera with him.

If there are beavers still out there, Foster aims to find them.

HURRAY FOR MIKE! HURRAY FOR BEAVERS! I agree that the odds of a total wipe out are small. Beavers have a way of making things work unless people get involved and start mucking it up.

I really like everything about this article, holding the BLM accountable for followup and finding the heroes, and this line. I especially like this one line.

Where have all the beavers gone?

Where have all the beavers gone, Long time, passing.
Where have all the beavers gone, Long time ago.
Where have all the beavers gone. Gone to trappers everyone.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

BEAVERS AREN’T DOING ALL THIS FOR THE TROUT

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers and trout, Friends of Martinez Beavers September 15, 2019

Ben Goldfarb & Sarah Koenigsberg toasting beaver success.

Which is excellent because last night was part one of the not-a-festival beaver event in Methow, Here are some late-breaking photos of last nights gathering (thanks Sarah!). Looks like they had an excellent turn out! Although the critics are withholding comment on Ben’s late-summer man-bun.

This morning there is more good news for anglers with a glowing beaver report from New Hampshire. I think the Chris Wood’s article set many things in motion and I hope we see more like this soon!

Adventures Afield with Andy Schafermeyer: Beavers help create brook trout habitat

A SUCCESSFUL angler often understands the relationship between fish and the world they live in. This complex system, often referred to as ecology, is crucial to catching fish.

Over the years, I have observed a direct relationship between Brook Trout and beavers that warrants further explanation. My favorite trout fishing is often small streams where beautiful brookies swim in pools and undercut banks. It is no secret that beavers create aquatic habitat where it might not otherwise exist and their role in expanding fishing opportunities seem clear.

To investigate further, it must be noted that beaver ponds/impoundments trap not only water, but many of the nutrients necessary for fish to grow larger than they would otherwise.

Why yes they do, Andy, So good of you to notice. Just wait, it gets better.

In short, I feel like beavers and I are working together to make the world a better place for Brook Trout. They set ‘em up and I knock ‘em out –- metaphorically speaking, of course. I don’t exactly knock them out but, rather, release them gingerly into the water I found them in. More accurately, I enjoy the experience of exploring a system perforated with small streams and still beaver ponds. I can catch fish in the fast moving current on a heavy nymph, and cast a dry fly on the still water of the pond. I find this type of fishing irresistible.

Well yes. Beavers are doing it just for you. And for trout. And for frogs and woodducks and otters. Why not be totally anthropormorphic about this?

The final selling point of these beaver ponds and connecting streams is that they are constantly changing — so frequently, in fact, that you will never see them on a map. I may fish a system for two or three summers only to find it gone the next. Beavers die, they move on, and dams break.

In contrast, these busy creatures are always moving into new areas. They are looking for water and unknowingly create awesome fishing experiences for a simple guy like me with an admittedly average understanding of the ecology that surrounds me.

I really hate to break it to you, Andy, but the truth is beavers are doing it for themselves.

Beavers have a lot in common with the women’s movement really, because when they are allowed to take care of their own needs society as a whole benefits.

Funny how that works.

ENDS AND PIECES ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Book September 6, 2019

You’d be surprised how not-thrilled many many people were with my killjoy response to yesterdays trapping news. People that you would expect to know better but who sadly had their heads turned by the alluring headline. Of course I wrote all the reporters and sent them the information showing the numbers of beavers killed by depredation versus trapping every year. Not a sole wrote me back.

Go figure. Sometimes people just want something to be a victory and won’t stop celebrating long enough to look at the facts. I get it.

Good news came later in the day from author Ben Goldfarb who was sent another very appreciative letter by a new reader of his fantastic book. The letter writer was also a biology instructor who sent a photo of a valued treasure.

Its from a series of plates celebrating various national parks. The Yosemite plate shows two beavers in the Merced River with Half Dome in the background! I am biology faculty at Cal State Stanislaus where one of my colleague’s heroes is Joseph Grinnell- I had to tell him about Grinnell’s beaver miscalculation. Great book.

Got that? Not only is this an enormously cool bowl from the national parks plates, but this professor LOVED telling his colleague about Grinnell’s error that our research demonstrated.

Ben’s excellent writing has tiptoed into so many important minds!

Yesterday there was a delivery at the door with a very very sealed box from China of 100 magnifying glasses! Assuming this all works I think they’ll be very popular next year.

The idea of course is that kids put together animal footprint cards with their correct species to identify the suspects, and then come to me when the “Case of the missing salmon” is solved to get their very own.

BEAVERS GET ANOTHER FINE BEN-TERVIEW

heidi08 Beaver Book September 2, 2019

Happy Labor Day. Happy September by the way. It has always been by far my favorite month. It used to be back-to-school, new notebooks, when leaves would change, acorns would drop, everyone would try and wear new sweaters before they need them in California, and my birthday looms on the horizon. I love the entire feel of September.

Perfect timing then for another big Ben-terview and event.

Author Ben Goldfarb brings his message of beaver admiration to Northwest Passages stage

Ben Goldfarb is many things. Award-winning author. Environmentalist. Journalist. Devoted fly fisherman. What he definitely isn’t? A beaver. No matter – he’s the next best thing. A beaver’s best friend. A “Beaver Believer,” in the Cult of Beaver.

“Like most people who grew up hiking and camping and fishing and canoeing, I’ve certainly been around beavers,” Goldfarb said Tuesday. “I had a baseline appreciation for how cool they are, and how they modify the environment. But I didn’t become a true Beaver Believer, as the people in the beaver cult call ourselves, until five years ago.”

Ahh yes. He means people like US. Like anyone fool enough to read this website. Ben came to our last beaver festival at the old park in 2016, and our first festival at the new park the following year. He published his book sometime in between, famously calling me “candid” and Jon a “genial fellow” – which, to this day, when he gets crabby or tired I still remind him of, Saying helpfully, “Wow, that sure wasn’t very genial.”

(It’s those kind of delicately candid observations that keep me so very popular around here, I can tell you.)

“Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter,” was released by Chelsea Green Publishing in June last year, about the same time Goldfarb and his wife Elise moved to Spokane from Connecticut.

Among its accolades, including being named one of the Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction and Best Outdoor Book of 2018 by Outside Magazine, earlier this year it won one of the nation’s top literary prizes: The E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing from PEN America.

It truly couldn’t happen to a better subject or a nicer guy. The beavers chose their champion, and Ben’s doing a great job.

I especially liked this exchange.

Who first realized the beavers were so important?

It goes back a long way. There were people, there’s a great book called the “The American Beaver and His Works,” written in the 1800s. There was another great book called “In Beaver World,” in 1913. It seems like every couple of generations society rediscovers just how important this creature is. I think that the thing that has catalyzed this latest round of interest in beavers is climate change. We know that the West is getting hotter and drier. As it does, our water resources are increasingly under stress. A lot of our precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. And we’ve begun to recognize that this animal that builds thousands of little reservoirs essentially up in the high country, up in the headwaters, has a really important role to play in helping us keep our streams hydrated, even through the summer and fall. It’s really climate change that has caused beavers to reenter the zeitgeist.

And the flurry of isolated beaver success all across the planet. Like Scotland. Vancouver. And Martinez. Don’t forget that. Ahem.

In your book you propose using beavers like medics, dropping them onto the front lines of climate change. Does Eastern Washington need this type of treatment?

One of the reasons that I was actually excited to move to Spokane when the opportunity arose, this is a city with a great beaver consciousness and culture already. There’s the Lands Council, which has had a very active beaver program for at least a decade, and has done lots of beaver relocation across Eastern Washington. There’s the fact that when you walk along the Spokane River, along the riverfront, you see half the trees down there have been wrapped with wire to prevent beavers from chewing them down. In a lot of cities those tree-chewing beavers would be killed. But in Spokane, there’s a great commitment to managing those impacts nonlethally. I think there’s already a lot of good beaver work happening in this area.

But certainly there’s the need for more. Hiking and camping around Eastern Washington, all the time I see streams that would have historically had a very abundant beaver population, where they just don’t seem to occur. One great example is Hangman Creek. Here’s this watershed that’s fantastic beaver habitat, and I think they are in there, but in very low abundance. Every spring it’s just dumping huge amounts of agricultural runoff into the Spokane River. Beavers would be one potential solution to that problem, by building dams, slowing water down, causing all of that sediment to settle out of the water column. They really have an important role to play in mitigating some of that agricultural pollution.

WE KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN SOONER [STATE] OR LATER

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Book August 26, 2019

Give it up for Oklahoma, where a nature writer David John enjoyed the beavers on his property for a record thirty days notes. Noting, without any touch of shame, ”

“I tried doing the right thing, But it was hard. So I stopped”

Move over Thomas Aquinas!

Nature Note: Bye, bye beavers

In early June, a dam was built at the outlet to the pond, next to a little bridge, probably with the help of an older female that appeared on the pond. Flowing water is a magnet for beavers to build a dam, to keep the water as deep as possible. The dam raised the water level nearly 2 feet, a good thing, but it also flooded trails around the north end of the pond.

In July I decided I needed to relocate the beavers, so I live-trapped both and released them on Bird Creek, the stream from which they came. My hope was to be able to live with them, but they caused too much damage; chewed down trees and produced flooding. Not their fault, that’s what beavers do. They need a large area in which to work. We just didn’t have enough room for them.

Although beaver dams can cause flooding, they are amazing engineers at flood control. No high tech stuff for them, just sticks and mud.

A whole month? You tried to do the right thing for an entire month? My god. By sooner state standards you’re practically a saint. Nice of you to let the kits be born before you stuffed them in a cage, or more likely, made them orphans.

That’s the classic pro-life position isn’t it? Make the kids be born and then forget about them.

Pardon me if I’m feeling a song coming on.

Oklahoma where a beaver cannot be sustained
And the drought deserved must be preserved
so the dustbowl state’s again regained!

Oklahoma, where the birds and fish will never rest
In ponds deep and cool, they’re no one’s fool
So the frogs and turtles travel west.

We know climate change is a scheme
And fondly of dry creeks we dream

So when we say…YA!
I’ll try my best todayyyy….HA!
I’m only saying I’ll live with beavers a whole month
For a whole month, O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a
Oklahoma!

Gosh that was fun. I feel better now.

Time for the second fun start to your day, Ben Golfarb was on Montana public radio yesterday with a great interview and a very nice interview-er. They both do a great job. Enjoy!