Category: Beaver ecological impact

MARTINEZ BEAVERS IN SLATE MAGAZINE

Last month I spoke to a Ethan about the Martinez beavers and his idea for beavers in New York city. I wasn’t sure what would become of our conversation, but I was very pleased to see this last night.

Hot Dam

A radical, beaver-filled idea to improve city parks

Imagine a New York City brimming with life. A city where bullfrogs sing in marshes, where otters and muskrats frolic along the waterfront, and where kingfishers perform aerial acrobatics into ponds thick with fish.

This may seem like a distant dream. But what if I told you that New York could take a meaningful step toward this urban paradise with a little help from a humble rodent?

I’m talking, of course, about beavers.

People all over are starting to think about beavers in their neighborhoods and whether that could improve biodiversity. Well yes it could. But beavers aren’t throw pillows. You can’t just tuck a few where you want them and expect them to brighten the space.

They might have their own ideas.

But beavers, I realized one day, are not particularly large—and they prefer to stay in the water, away from dogs and small children. The question was: Would it be possible to introduce a small population of these semiaquatic rodents somewhere like Prospect Park?

“Oh, I think it’s possible. I totally do,” Benjamin Dittbrenner, a beaver expert at Northeastern University, told me.

Beavers can live in a relatively small area, Dittbrenner said, as long as there’s enough food and water. Prospect Park has plenty of water in its creeks, ponds, and lake—and those waterways are full of potential beaver food like pondweed. Beavers will also gnaw down trees along the water to open up space and stimulate the growth of the shrubby vegetation they love to eat, Dittbrenner said.

It was Ben who suggested the reporter might want to talk to me about what happens when beavers move into a city. Which I was happy about because I think Martinez makes a fine test case story.

That’s not to say bringing beavers to the big city would be easy.

In a place like Prospect Park, if a beaver were to dam up a creek, those creeks could flood, submerging nearby trails and amenities. Plus, the beavers would go to town on some of the park’s trees.

But these problems are manageable. To start, beavers don’t like to move very far over land, Fairfax said, meaning that only the trees closest to water would be at risk for gnawing—and the city could wrap fences around more important trees. The park could also plant some of the beavers’ preferred species, like willows, to supplement their food options, Dittbrenner suggested.

When it comes to flooding, as dedicated to hydrological interference as beavers are, humans are also pretty crafty. “Beavers: amazing engineers. People: also amazing engineers,” Fairfax said.

We’ve invented various ways of outsmarting beavers with contraptions like “pond levelers,” which drain water out of beaver ponds and limit flood potential. When trails do flood, the park can build signs to help people understand why the trails are flooding—Fairfax noted that ongoing environmental education is important for any urban beaver population. And when in doubt, the city could always build a boardwalk to help parkgoers cross over newly muddy patches. “People love boardwalks,” Fairfax said.

Happy that this got worked into the conversation. People need solutions when coexisting with urban beavers. And do they work?

Martinez Children watching Beaver- Suzi Eszterhas
Children watching beaver in urban environment
Martinez, CA

Beavers can also bring a lot of joy to a community. In 2006, beavers moved into Alhambra Creek, which runs right through downtown M.artinez, California. Initially, the city wanted to kill the animals because of flooding concerns, but many Martinez residents quickly protested the removal plan. This was partly because of local political quarrels, Heidi Perryman, a Martinez local and beaver advocate, told me—but at a 2007 City Council meeting to discuss the beavers’ fate, many locals also expressed their appreciation for the animals.

Eventually, the city installed a device to prevent the creek from flooding and wrapped some of the trees to prevent gnawing. The beavers, meanwhile, got to work transforming Alhambra Creek into a lush, vegetated habitat filled with animals like otters and green herons. Even though the beavers moved away from Martinez a few years ago, the city still hosts an annual Beaver Festival.

Tadaa! Martinez beavers in SLATE! Our little story and beaver festival in Slate! This must be kind of a big deal because Mark Ross himself wrote me back last night when I sent him this article.

What if, instead of trying to manage around our local ecosystems, we let our ecosystems manage us for a change? What if we let some beavers chop down a few trees, creating little glades of open sky next to our ponds? What if we embraced some flooding around our parks as biodiverse wetlands and vernal pools replaced sterile, trimmed lawns? What if, as Fairfax suggested, we reconnected Prospect Park to New York harbor by digging a canal through Brooklyn toward the East River or the bay?

Four hundred years ago, beavers covered New York City, building dams and engineering wetlands that shaped and nourished the local ecosystem. In our own efforts to manipulate and control nature, we’ve driven countless species toward extinction and pushed the world into climate crisis. Beavers are, in Dittbrenner’s words, “chaos-makers.” But maybe it’s time to stop separating ourselves from the chaos that is ecology, and instead embrace something disorderly, bold, and revolutionary—something, dare I say, bucktoothed.

Sounds plenty good to me.

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE ASK A BEAVER

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and water August 27, 2023

Supposedly Maggie Thatcher famously said “if you want something said ask a man, if you want something done ask a woman”. Which is very true and mostly more likeable than anything else I ever heard about her. Well maybe that’s true for beavers too.

Dr. Katie Holzer is a Watershed Scientist with the City of Gresham, Oregon. She completed her doctoral degree in Conservation Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she studied amphibian habitats in urban and agricultural areas in the Pacific Northwest. Her research focuses on the human-animal-ecosystem connections affecting urban stormwater runoff and its impacts on freshwater habitats and water quality.

Earlier this week she presented her findings at the beaver institute and this part really blew me away. One treatment storage pond had a series of manmade steps to clear out particles and some beavers moved in and built dams RIGHT on top of them Here’s how they worked with and without beavers.

BEAVERS, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE POWER OF POSITIVE STORIES

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change August 25, 2023

I get a little excited every time I read a NRDC article about beavers. It just feels like the heavy weights have joined the fray. This was not a disappointment,

Partnering with Beavers to Adapt to Climate Change

Mitigating climate change and adapting to a warming planet requires as many partners as we can muster. This includes embracing nature as a key ally. Estimates suggest that nature-based solutions can provide 37% of the mitigation needed to keep climate warming below two degrees Centigrade. And, nature, can help us prepare for the changes we are already experiencing and know are coming. Many people appreciate that if we plant more trees, they can both cool our cities and absorb carbon. But, perhaps less well known are the many benefits that beavers bring to the climate fight. Beavers are ecological engineers whose ponds store carbon, improve water quality, create habitat to support biodiversity, and help reduce climate impacts.

I’m dying of curiosity to know how they arrived at that figure. 37% of climate change relief? Really?

Riverscapes are stream or river habitats and their associated floodplains, wetlands, and riparian vegetation. These habitats are disproportionately important parts of the landscape, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Riverscapes with beaver dam complexes are capable of naturally storing more water during storms and slowly releasing it later in the year. This reduces flood peaks and can prolong water availability during periods of heat and drought, supporting riparian vegetation and decreasing water-related stresses for aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. The wet, saturated soils and braided stream channels don’t readily burn and can therefore also serve as firebreaks, slowing the spread of fire, and giving firefighting teams time to contain them before they get out of control.

Now that is familiar and we know it well. Good for us. Good for beavers.

Beavers improve water quality and create biodiversity hotspots

Beaver-dam complexes improve water quality and reduce pollution. One way this is achieved is by providing a vegetated buffer between agricultural lands, transportation corridors, and other land uses and adjacent water bodies, which can filter out pollution and sediment before they can impact water quality. Maintaining or increasing beavers and their habitat benefits a wide array of native aquatic and terrestrial species. Beaver habitat provides microclimates and shade, complex hydraulics, clean and abundant water, nutrient cycling, and food-web support for a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial organisms, including endangered species. These benefits increase in importance as the climate warms.

You mean like this? Yes beavers really make biodiversity hotspots. Do you know I’ve seen three different organizations in three states copy this design and advertise it as their own. I guess that’s a kind of flattery.

Today, the beaver population in North America is estimated to be 10-15 million animals. And, wetlands in the continental United States have been reduced by more than half. Where beavers are absent or reduced in number, we are left without the rodent partners that can repair and restore our degraded streams and wetlands and sustain the ecosystem services communities need. Luckily, we can help nature bring back the conditions that beavers need by kickstarting natural processes. If we take steps to make riverscapes healthier again, beavers can return and get to work making dams of their own. Once this happens, ecosystem services can start to accrue.

I know right away the number one thing I would do to let beavers help with climate change. Get out of their way and stop killing them. That would be a great start.

The White House recently released a report outlining how we can invest in nature to solve today’s challenges. The report called out protecting beavers as a nature-based solution and recommends using federal facilities and assets to deploy a suite of nature-based approaches. To accomplish this, the Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture should work together to launch a National Healthy Riverscape Initiative to prioritize and invest in maintaining and restoring freshwater habitat on public lands. To support such an effort, the Bureau of Land Management should finalize its Public Lands Rule with strong provisions for both conserving and restoring priority lands and waterways. At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should increase investments in wetland protection and restoration to support communities and tribes seeking to invest in nature-based solutions to reduce future flooding or increase ecological resilience to drought. By protecting and recovering the places that beavers live, programs such as these can give these critical animals an opportunity to revitalize the entire landscape.

And get out of their way and stop killing them. Don’t forget that part.

In 2022, the California legislature provided essential funding to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to invest in beavers’ natural ability to improve ecosystem health and help adapt to climate change. The agency is currently staffing up and developing a comprehensive beaver management program. Across the country, states are working to update their State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) which will guide fish and wildlife conservation starting in 2025. Congress requires a SWAP for all states and territories that apply to the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program which has distributed over one billion dollars since 2000. While beavers aren’t threatened, their beaver ponds create essential habitat for many species of greatest conservation need. Protecting and restoring beaver habitat should be prioritized in SWAPs. Finally, state, tribal, and local governments, can prioritize wetland protection and restoration to help reconnect streams to their floodplains as a risk mitigation strategy in the hazard mitigation plans required to secure grants from FEMA.

Okay. You can use California as a model. I’m not sure what they’ve accomplished yet but sure, it’s a start.

Tribes across the West are demonstrating what is possible when beavers are returned to the landscape. The Tulalip Beaver Project relocates “nuisance” beavers to hydrologically impaired tributaries in Washington’s upper Snohomish Watershed to improve fish rearing habitat and retain more freshwater in the watershed for longer periods of time. In Montana, the Blackfeet Nation’s Ksik Stakii Beaver Mimicry Guidebook focuses on mimicking beaver habitat to restore streams and naturally store water. And, in California, Indigenous leaders are leading the way in advocating for policies that support beavers to benefit salmon conservation and contribute to holistic land restoration.

Yeah. Okay. Hype California again.

If given the chance, beavers can serve as a free restoration workforce that increases our ability to adapt to climate change while also stemming biodiversity loss. Positive stories of communities, tribes, and landowners partnering with beavers are emerging across the country—let’s create more of them.

That last line is my favorite in the entire article. POSITIVE STORIES OF COMMUNITIES. Let’s create them. Tell them. Share them. And spread them. I think Martinez agrees with that.

By the way did you see that recently this was voted the most popular mural in Claycord?

Best Mural In Claycord? Nothing Says “Welcome” Better Than a Snorkling Beaver Eating Ice Cream

MARTINIZING CALIFORNIA?

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact July 25, 2023

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by AP reporter Amy Taxin regarding the beaver policy change in California and what it meant. She was also interested in what we saw in Martinez all those years ago when we decided to coexist with our beavers and our recent festival. She said their photographer needed to see some for the story so I introduced her to Rusty and the beavers in Napa.

When we talked about CDFW’s policy change and how we had been a test case for coexistence she quipped “So now the policy is to Martinize California?”:

Don’t look at me. I didn’t say it.

California aims to tap beavers, once viewed as a nuisance, to help with water issues and wildfires

(AP) — For years, beavers have been treated as an annoyance for chewing down trees and shrubs and blocking up streams, leading to flooding in neighborhoods and farms. But the animal is increasingly being seen as nature’s helper in the midst of climate change.

California recently changed its tune and is embracing the animals that can create lush habitats that lure species back into now-urban areas, enhance groundwater supplies and buffer against the threat of wildfires.

A new policy that went into effect last month encourages landowners and agencies dealing with beaver damage to seek solutions such as putting flow devices in streams or protective wrap on trees before seeking permission from the state to kill the animals. The state is also running pilot projects to relocate beavers to places where they can be more beneficial.

The aim is to preserve more beavers, along with their nature-friendly behaviors.

“There’s been this major paradigm shift throughout the West where people have really transitioned from viewing beavers strictly as a nuisance species, and recognizing them for the ecological benefits that they have,” said Valerie Cook, beaver restoration program manager for California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. The program was funded by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration last year.

You make it sound so simple and bloodless. A policy shift. Funny how minds just change like that. I mean it’s not like there were law suits and letters and heated meetings or anything.

The push follows similar efforts in other Western states including Washington, which has a pilot beaver relocation program, Cook said. It marks a new chapter in Californians’ lengthy history with the animals, which experts say used to be everywhere, but after years of trapping, attempts at reintroduction, and then removal under depredation permits, are found in much smaller numbers than they once were — largely in the Central Valley and northern part of the state.

It is unknown how many beavers live in California, but hundreds of permits are sought by landowners each year that typically allowed them to kill the animals. According to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the beaver population in North America used to range between 100 million and 200 million but now totals between 10 million and 15 million.

Kate Lundquist, director of the WATER Institute at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, said she expects California’s changes will lead to fewer beavers killed in the state and a growth in wetland spaces. She said she believes the past three years of drought and devastating wildfires contributed to the state’s shift on beavers.

“There has been increased motivation to identify and fund the implementation of nature-based climate smart solutions,” she said. “Beaver restoration is just that.”

Beavers live in family units and quickly build dams on streams, creating ponds. The pools help slow the flow of water, replenishing groundwater supplies, and can also stall the spread of wildfires — a critical issue for a state plagued by fires in recent years, said Emily Fairfax, professor of environmental science and management at California State University, Channel Islands.

“You talk to anyone who has lived near beaver ponds. They’ll tell you: These things don’t burn,” said Fairfax, who has researched beavers and the ponds they build.

Well okay, Before Emily leaves her job at Channel Islands and heads off to Minnesota pastures let her stand once more and recommend we need beavers here.

This is only part of the article I really LOVE. And see our influence in.

California will continue to issue depredation permits as needed, but the state wants people to try other solutions before resorting to killing the animals, officials said. Those could be wrapping trees with wire mesh or using flow devices on streams to control beaver pond levels to prevent flooding.

California has planned two pilot relocation projects, including one to bring beavers back to the Tule River. Kenneth McDarment, a councilmember for the Tule River Indian Tribe, said the tribe started seeking ways to reintroduce beavers nearly a decade ago due to drought and hopes to see them relocated later this year.

“We’re going to give these beavers a chance to do what they do naturally in a place where they’re wanted,” he said.

The state is also hoping to educate people about the benefits of beavers.

Rusty Cohn, a 69-year-old retired auto parts businessman, said he knew little about the animals before he spotted chewed trees on a walk through the Northern California city of Napa in a region better known for winemaking than the critters. He later observed beavers building a dam on a trickling stream, converting the area into a lush pond for heron, mink and other species, and became a fan.

“It was like a little magical place with an incredible amount of wildlife,” Cohn said. That was eight years ago, he said, adding that beaver sightings in that spot are becoming rarer amid increased development, but he can still find them on streams throughout Napa.

Ahh Rusty you took the words right out of my mouth! So glad the article ended with you. I guess it’s fine that our hour long conversation appears no where in it. You know how it is…

Always a bridesmaid and never a bride,

SMART PEOPLE ARE IMPATIENT WITH BEAVER PROGRESS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact July 11, 2023

Let’s say you lived in a family of all female siblings and your eldest sister was a highly successful model for vogue and came in second at the Olympic ski trials. And then one day you saw her sitting in front of the mirror sobbing because she was so “unattractive no one would ever love her”.

I suppose in those circumstances you might be forgiven for a response that is less than sympathetic.

Which I offer by way of a response to this article which complains:

“But environmental groups say policy makers in Oregon and Washington — where beavers continue to be managed as furbearers, nuisance animals and even predators — have been slow to respond.”

I guess it makes sense that the state who is the best about beaver management in the entire country would also be the state with the least patience for poor or slightly unideal beaver management, but still this article in The Columbian made me snicker ruefully, and mutter over and over again: “tell me about it…”

Why are we still mismanaging beavers in the Northwest?

Recognition that American beavers are a vital and often missing component of riverine habitats is growing nationwide, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

Nearly wiped out across the West a century ago, beavers have spent recent decades regarded as a nuisance animal.

Now, their reputation as a keystone species is slowly taking hold.

The dams they create, for free, offer many of the same benefits as costly rehabilitation projects. Their work has been shown to expand floodplains and wetlands, recharge groundwater, provide higher summer flows, improve water quality, create healthy habitat for salmon and encourage a greater diversity of plants and animals.

The natural water storage they create slows the runoff process, keeps freshwater habitat cooler later into the summer and helps counter the impacts of drought.

And as wildfires become larger and more intense with climate change, beaver ponds have been shown to provide firebreaks and offer refuge for aquatic and land animals.

But environmental groups say policy makers in Oregon and Washington — where beavers continue to be managed as furbearers, nuisance animals and even predators — have been slow to respond.

Oregon—the Beaver State—allows unlimited killing of beavers, and has no mechanisms in place to track how many are taken each year. State agencies have no authority to manage them on private land, and do not know how many beavers there are or where they’re causing problems.

Unlimited killing of beavers? You mean like all those depredation permits that California issues every year that are literally for an UNLIMITED number of beavers? Maybe I’ve been out in the elements for too long to be shocked by these claims, but honestly, show me the state that has a cap on the number of beavers that need to be preserved for a healthy watershed or literally even knows a ball park population number about the amount of beavers they actually have?

In Oregon and Washington, proposals to provide beavers with greater protections are gaining ground.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife managers say that making the state’s relocation program permanent could begin as soon as this year. They also point to an opportunity to add beavers as a “species of greater conservation need” in the agency’s statewide wildlife action plan.

In the Oregon Legislature this session, a bill to remove the “predator” status of beavers passed. Beaver supporters say provisions in the bill are small but important measures that can help prevent the indiscriminate killing of beavers and help landowners learn to live with North America’s largest rodent.

Oregon Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, — the bill’s primary sponsor and chair of the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment — says it’s going to take time for beavers in Oregon to be seen as friends instead of foes.

Her bill, she says, is the first step.

Removing its “predator” status will move management of beavers from the Oregon Department of Agriculture to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, where they can be overseen as wildlife instead of agricultural pests.

Landowners could still kill them on their own property, but most people would need a permit to do so.

After introducing the bill — and before the walkout — Marsh worked with Republicans in her committee and agreed to amended language to gain more support. Under the amended bill, landowners with beavers causing damage that imminently threatens infrastructure or agricultural crops could bypass the permit, and owners of small forestland are exempt.

But everyone would have to report the beavers they kill to the state, giving ODFW an opportunity to estimate out how many beavers are in the state, understand where and how they’re causing problems and provide landowners with options other than killing them.

Honestly, I don’t think we need “protections for beavers”. We need “INCENTIVES FOR LANDOWNERS”. Environmental tax credits for keeping beavers on your property. Funding for installing a flow device. Groups that can help you wrap trees. A live beaver is more valuable than a dead one.

Marsh believes public support for beavers in Oregon is growing.

“We just heard increasing voices across the state for stepping up for beavers,” says Marsh. “We’re seeing beaver-affinity groups, and increasingly seeing landowners who are raving about the results” of allowing beavers to reclaim portions of their property.

Marsh admits beavers can quickly damage property if they’re not properly directed.

“When you know how to work with them, there’s a tremendous capacity to store water and to keep people safe during wildfires,” she says.

And when she evacuated her land in 2020 when the Riverside Fire ranged five miles away, she went to her beaver pond to take a picture of her farm that was threatened by wildfire. She said trees were breaking on her property from the 70 mph winds, and the sky was orange from the nearby blaze.

“In the beaver ponds, it was as if somebody put a glass dome over the ponds,” she said. “It was 10 degrees colder, and it was still. There was no wind. The trees were barely registering, and in that moment, I realized that there’s a lot more happening in these beaver ponds, especially during wildfires, than we’ve even begun to investigate.”

Lovell says the livestock they left behind in the haste of evacuation found refuge there. And the wildland firefighters who used the farm as the entryway to fight the fire identified the ponds as a backup water supply.

“That’s the climate resilience that we really didn’t see and anticipate,” she said.

That is the very best paragraph I’ve ever read about beaver benefits. And I’ve read a lot of them. That should be repeated over and over again until it becomes our national anthem.

The smart article goes on to talk about how farmers are afraid of the restrictions to their land and how beavers can cause problems. Then there’s a a great segment with Jakob Shockey about how beaver problems can be solved.

Jakob Shockey has spent years educating landowners across Oregon about how to coexist with beavers.

Shockey is executive director of the Jacksonville, Ore.-based nonprofit Project Beaver (formerly The Beaver Coalition) and owner of the wildlife control business Beaver State Wildlife Solutions.

“I’ve managed to make a full-time job out of helping the monkeys outsmart the rodents,” Shockey told the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment in March.

Shockey told the committee about tools he uses to help growers and other landowners benefit from beavers without the damage that comes with them.

He says pond levelers work like the drain in a bathtub that can be set at any level to prevent the flooding of crops; electric fences have been highly successful at keeping beavers away from orchards; and methods to cage off irrigation culverts prevent them from getting blocked.

“We can come up with some pretty crafty things. Most beaver conflicts you can find a solution for,” says Shockey.

Changing the “predatory” status of beavers would also remove language that labels them as agricultural pests, says Shockey.

“A lot of folks feel like, if they have a pest species on their land, in order to be good stewards of that land they have to get rid of that pest species,” he says, adding that the label sends a signal to landowners that isn’t helpful. “Most folks I end up working with didn’t have any idea that another solution was available.”

Shockey says that landowners who get caught in the endless treadmill of trapping beavers to get rid of them instead of finding a permanent solution to live with them end up impacting neighbors who would benefit from them, too.

“Beavers are territorial, and they mate for life. If you remove one, another family will move in, so you’re going to be depopulating the surrounding region of beavers,” he explains.

Shockey believes the top priority in beaver management should be helping people learn to live with them in the places they choose to repopulate.

“The fact that in the House they were able to work together and get bipartisan support [for HB 3464A], I was just tickled. It feels like the bill we’ve all been hoping for for the last decade.”

Shockey hopes the Oregon Senate can meet and vote on the bill before this year’s legislative session ends.

How much do you love this article? With all your heart or with your intestines too? I guess that’s what happens when the tide starts turning. The places that are already saturated with beaver wisdom start getting more and more soaked and even the dry places like California start to get a little bit smarter.

To Shockey, the public’s perception of beavers changes one landowner at a time. He says even though Oregon is still working to legally change the status of beavers, he thinks the Beaver State is well positioned to lead the Northern Hemisphere in developing a healthier relationship with nature’s greatest engineers.

With help from agencies and Washington organizations, Project Beaver developed a manual for best management practices to help people coexist with them, which people in Europe are looking to adopt, he says.

Once people stop fighting with beavers and start working with them, says Shockey, they’re sold.

Go read the whole beautiful article and send it to all the fence sitters in your life. Great writing K.C. Mehaffey. A few more like this and I could be out of work any day.