Category: Beaver Rehabilitation

A collection of articles and videos on rearing orphaned kits.

MISSISSIPPI SEEING BEAVERS IN A NEW LIGHT

Sometimes I read a murky article about beavers from someplace like Washington or Utah and I’m frustrated because they, of all places, should know better. And sometimes I see an article like this from MISSISSIPPI and am over the moon.

Because we’re grading on a beaver curve.

Are they a nuisance or key to our health? Coast scientist supports misunderstood species

During a torrential rainstorm in April, Stormy Rose was washed through Biloxi’s storm drainage. Eventually, she wandered under the shining lights of the Beau Rivage. A casino employee spotted her red fur coat and wide, dark tail and called Woodside Wildlife Rescue.

Soon after, Stormy arrived at the home of Holley Muraco, a marine mammal scientist and research professor at Mississippi State University. The beaver was in bad shape – her spine rose out of her fur in a sign of malnutrition.

“There was nothing specifically wrong with her that I could find from a veterinary perspective, but by studying her over time, I realized she actually had this incredibly rare, weird, protozoa parasite that she should not have had,” Muraco said. “… She got this parasite, because it’s in our environment, and most likely, was spread through wild hogs.

Muraco’s research takes a “One Health” approach, a relatively new scientific perspective that recognizes that the health of humans and animals is connected through our shared environment. Once Muraco confirms the presence of the parasite, she will publish papers asserting that beavers could be “sentinels” for human health. Essentially, if beavers are sick, it could act as a warning for similar diseases in people.

Now that’s interesting. I’m not sure beavers are a great indicator species for humans because they tolerate way more than we ever could. But they also, as we know in Martinez, are sensitive in ways we are not.

Across the past few months, Muraco has constructed a special needs enclosure for young and recovering beavers, complete with personal pools. When they are mature and strong enough, future beavers will be released into a fenced, three-acre area, where Muraco can encourage the development of healthy, wild behaviors. Muraco said beaver rehabilitation takes about two years.

“While I have them in my care, I’m learning about growth and development. I’m learning about diseases, parasites, and then once we are ready to release, and I’m going to look at how they change the environment, and then behavior. There’s a lot we still don’t know about behavior,” Muraco said. “I’ve been recording her vocalizations; they vocalize underwater too.”

Muraco said that Gulf Coast beavers are seemingly unique from beavers found elsewhere in North America. They are typically smaller and have been observed in saltwater environments, which is uncommon for beavers. Muraco said Stormy is a particularly unique beaver.

“Her coat is super short; she has red fur – she just has a very different appearance than the northern beavers. I’m going to do some DNA testing and see if we actually have a genetic subspecies on our hands on the Coast,” Muraco said. “No one has ever really looked at Coastal beavers. It’s low-hanging fruit; we’re gonna have so many cool opportunities.”

Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all I love how she’s really thinking about and observing the beavers in her care. And I always assumed they verbalized underwater but haven’t generated much interest in proving it. Even Bernie Krause told me that it probably didn’t happen because sounds travel so differently in water. But good for you. Keep going.

And second of all some beavers have red coats.Or black coats. Or even blonde coats. Before we killed them all there were as many colors of beaver fur as you can imagine. Even today I know of a piebald beaver. It happens

Third of all. coastal beavers aren’t a different subspecies. And they have been studied and written about extensively. Even in Martinez our beavers lived in brackish water. Check out this article about salt water.

Michael Niemeyer of Wildlife Solutions, Inc. has worked as a trapper in southern Alabama and Mississippi for 16 years. He works with beavers almost daily and said most conflicts he sees with beavers surround roads, where beavers clog drainage systems, or at levees, where beavers burrow holes to drain lakes and ponds. He sees more beaver activity today than he did 16 years ago.

Niemeyer said relocating live beavers is usually impossible. It is illegal to relocate beavers onto public land in Mississippi without permission, and few private landowners would willingly allow the relocation of a nuisance species onto their property. He said that, even if beavers were relocated to an area where beavers are already established, the resulting battle for territory would likely mean death for relocated beavers.

That’s because it is better to SOLVE a problem than MOVE a problem.

Neimeyer said that, in his experience, nonlethal mitigation efforts to control beaver damage are expensive and ineffective in the long term. He said that almost all landowners choose lethal mitigation methods and that if they continue to be significantly less expensive and more effective than non-lethal methods, Mississippi landowners are unlikely to change practices.

Gee that’s super surprising. There must not be ANY properly installed flow devices in the entire southern south. Hmm maybe we can change that.

“And that’s where my approach with the beavers is; I just want to try to understand. I want to understand, once I start releasing these animals into my environment, exactly what is the carrying capacity of our property, and if beavers are going to exceed that carrying capacity. For example, I think people believe if you see one beaver, you’re going to have 500 beavers, but they’re not like rats or rodents. They only have the number that fits the environment that they’re in, and I want to show that. I’m going to show it with statistics and studies and say, ‘Alright, I have a breeding population of beavers in this pond, they’re only maintaining this number and they’re not going beyond what their resources are,’ Muraco said.

“By just using science, I’m hoping that then I can share that with our state and with our regulators and say, ‘Let’s put a little bit of effort into non-lethal mitigation techniques for landowners who would like to keep beavers around,’ instead of just having them labeled: kill them on sight. Maybe, just maybe, we can give them a chance – once we know a little bit more information,” Muraco said.

Your instincts are SPOT on. You just need to have access to all the great work that’s already been done and exists about beaver populations. Maybe taking a look at Ben’s book will at least introduce you to a host of scientists doing this work and you can follow up with the resources he has gathered together to start.

You are well on your way. Let me know when you are ready to plan a beaver festival in Mississippi.

WHEN BEAVERS COUNT YOU COUNT BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers December 29, 2023

Back in August of 2021 I wrote am ambitious little post called “Incent-a-beaver” saying that beavers were so important to the golden state it behooved the powers that be to pay landowners to keep them on their land. The idea was based on the incentives farmers are given to keep their fields wet during the flyway season.

Well I thought it made sense anyway and it must have been a little interesting because afterwards I got an email from Dan Ackerstein who worked with the sustainability team at Google and he said they were interested in how Google mapping technology could help beavers and could we talk.

I was about as excited as I could possibly have been to think that a big power like google could turn their skills to beavers but I was sworn to secrecy and could say nothing. (Which I’m sure as you can imagine was hard for me.) In the end I gave hm some other names and a photo of a beaver that had been taken on the Google Campus a few years back but helping eavers wasn’t the direction they wanted to go in. I thought that was it, an interesting blip on the radar and nothing else.

Until I saw this:

For the first time in four centuries, it’s good to be a beaver. Long persecuted for their pelts and reviled as pests, the dam-building rodents are today hailed by scientists as ecological saviors. Their ponds and wetlands store water in the face of drought, filter out pollutants, furnish habitat for endangered species, and fight wildfires. In California, Castor canadensis is so prized that the state recently committed millions to its restoration.

While beavers’ benefits are indisputable, however, our knowledge remains riddled with gaps. We don’t know how many are out there, or which direction their populations are trending, or which watersheds most desperately need a beaver infusion. Few states have systematically surveyed them; moreover, many beaver ponds are tucked into remote streams far from human settlements, where they’re near-impossible to count. “There’s so much we don’t understand about beavers, in part because we don’t have a baseline of where they are,” says Emily Fairfax, a beaver researcher at the University of Minnesota.

But that’s starting to change. Over the past several years, a team of beaver scientists and Google engineers have been teaching an algorithm to spot the rodents’ infrastructure on satellite images. Their creation has the potential to transform our understanding of these paddle-tailed engineers—and help climate-stressed states like California aid their comeback. And while the model hasn’t yet gone public, researchers are already salivating over its potential. “All of our efforts in the state should be taking advantage of this powerful mapping tool,” says Kristen Wilson, the lead forest scientist at the conservation organization the Nature Conservancy. “It’s really exciting.”

You got all that? Beavers are so important we need to know where they are and how many there are. And we can make a computer formula that tells us the answer.s, Oh and just for extra credit notice that the author of this article is Ben Goldfarb.

The beaver-mapping model is the brainchild of Eddie Corwin, a former member of Google’s real-estate sustainability group. Around 2018, Corwin began to contemplate how his company might become a better steward of water, particularly the many coastal creeks that run past its Bay Area offices. In the course of his research, Corwin read Water: A Natural History, by an author aptly named Alice Outwater. One chapter dealt with beavers, whose bountiful wetlands, Outwater wrote, “can hold millions of gallons of water” and “reduce flooding and erosion downstream.” Corwin, captivated, devoured other beaver books and articles, and soon started proselytizing to his friend Dan Ackerstein, a sustainability consultant who works with Google. “We both fell in love with beavers,” Corwin says.

Corwin’s beaver obsession met a receptive corporate culture. Google’s employees are famously encouraged to devote time to passion projects, the policy that produced Gmail; Corwin decided his passion was beavers. But how best to assist the buck-toothed architects? Corwin knew that beaver infrastructure—their sinuous dams, sprawling ponds, and spidery canals—is often so epic it can be seen from space. In 2010, a Canadian researcher discovered the world’s longest beaver dam, a stick-and-mud bulwark that stretches more than a half-mile across an Alberta park, by perusing Google Earth. Corwin and Ackerstein began to wonder whether they could contribute to beaver research by training a machine-learning algorithm to automatically detect beaver dams and ponds on satellite imagery—not one by one, but thousands at a time, across the surface of an entire state.

…So there it is. laid out and clear for us all. The origin story and the key players. So what happened? What is going to happen next?

After discussing the concept with Google’s engineers and programmers, Corwin and Ackerstein decided it was technically feasible. They reached out next to Fairfax, who’d gained renown for a landmark 2020 study showing that beaver ponds provide damp, fire-proof refuges in which other species can shelter during wildfires. In some cases, Fairfax found, beaver wetlands even stopped blazes in their tracks. The critters were such talented firefighters that she’d half-jokingly proposed that the US Forest Service change its mammal mascot—farewell, Smoky Bear, and hello, Smoky Beaver.

Fairfax was enthusiastic about the pond-mapping idea. She and her students already used Google Earth to find beaver dams to study within burned areas. But it was a laborious process, one that demanded endless hours of tracing alpine streams across screens in search of the bulbous signature of a beaver pond. An automated beaver-finding tool, she says, could “increase the number of fires I can analyze by an order of magnitude.”

With Fairfax’s blessing, Corwin, Ackerstein, and a team of programmers set about creating their model. The task, they decided, was best suited to a convolutional neural network, a type of algorithm that essentially tries to figure out whether a given chunk of geospatial data includes a particular object—whether a stretch of mountain stream contains a beaver dam, say. Fairfax and some obliging beaverologists from Utah State University submitted thousands of coordinates for confirmed dams, ponds, and canals, which the Googlers matched up with their own high-resolution images to teach the model to recognize the distinctive appearance of beaverworks. The team also fed the algorithm negative data—images of beaverless streams and wetlands—so that it would know what it wasn’t looking for. They dubbed their model the Earth Engine Automated Geospatial Elements Recognition, or EEAGER—yes, as in “eager beaver.”

Wow that’s a lot of work to come around to the acronym EEAGER but okay. I get it. Now for the icing on the cake.

It’s only appropriate, then, that California is where EEAGER is going to get its first major test. The Nature Conservancy and Google plan to run the model across the state sometime in 2024, a comprehensive search for every last beaver dam and pond. That should give the state’s wildlife department a good sense of where its beavers are living, roughly how many it has, and where it could use more. The model will also provide California with solid baseline data against which it can compare future populations, to see whether its new policies are helping beavers recover. “When you have imagery that’s repeated frequently, that gives you the opportunity to understand change through time,” says the Conservancy’s Kristen Wilson.

GOT THAT? California is first and sometime this year we are going to finally know how many beavers the are in the state. And not just be able to infer from depredation permits. This is big news. The biggest.

When beavers count you figure out how to count beavers.

Beaver on the move, another on the mend, plus BI’s new Elevator Pitch

Bob Kobres Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver News, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers in Wales, The Beaver Institute, Urban beavers, Video, Who's saving beavers now? April 13, 2023

It’s not clear yet whether this is one beaver who escaped from elsewhere or a pair who were released by rewilders, but it sounds like a good dam move to me!

Dam it! Couple discover elusive night-time garden vandals are actually the first wild BEAVERS in Wales for over 400 years

By FFION HAF Daily Mail

A couple whose garden was being vandalised in the night has uncovered a surprising culprit in Wales’ first wild beaver for 400 years.

The dam-building rodent was discovered by a husband and wife who noticed trees going missing and machete-like damage in a field next to their house in Pembrokeshire, west Wales.

Curious about the cause of the damage, the homeowners bought a ‘stealth camera’ which captured footage of the creature swimming in their pond and felling their trees.

The origins of the beaver are unexplained, but the landowners believe it may have come from an unsanctioned release by rewilding enthusiasts.

The rodent has been found living near a rural property where it has started to build itself a lodge under the family’s pond deck.

Nicknamed Anthony by the family – after military historian Antony Beevor – the herbivore has become as ‘fat as a pig’ spending as much as six hours a night chewing tree trunks and dragging branches around.

The discovery is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.

Beavers – which can grow to be the size of a large spaniel – were hunted to extinction in Britain 400 years ago, but have been slowly reintroduced in recent years.

The landowners, who wished to remain anonymous to protect the location of the animal, were ‘astonished’ to discover the herbivore was living behind their house.

They said: ‘Some of our trees began to go missing overnight and others were simply being mauled. It looked like someone was hitting them with a machete.

‘There are no deer in Pembrokeshire, so we couldn’t work out what was causing the damage.

‘The only clue were some teeth marks left in the bark.’

Two weeks after first noticing the damage, the couple decided to buy a £100 stealth camera and leave it out overnight to try and catch the vandal in action.

When they reviewed the footage a week later, they spotted the creature.

‘To our astonishment, the camera showed a beaver swimming around our pond and eating our trees. We couldn’t believe it.

‘Since then, it has cleared quite a few trees and branches.

‘There is nothing subtle about a beaver. They are very easy to spot.’

The closest official colony of beavers to Pembrokeshire is in the Dyfi Estuary over 50 miles away in Mid Wales, where no escapes have been reported.

‘It’s much more likely the beaver has been released in Pembrokeshire by a determined rewilder’, the landowners added.

Since their reintroduction to the country in Argyll in 2009, beaver numbers have been increasing across the UK through enclosed colonies set up by various wildlife trusts.

But this is only the fourth time a beaver has been found living wild in Britain.

Other wild populations were discovered in Scotland’s Tay-Forth catchment area, in East Devon’s River Otter and on the Avon near Bristol.

A similar beaver discovery was made in East Devon in 2014, despite there being no reintroduction trials in the area.

Initially, DEFRA planned to remove the beavers, but the Devon Wildlife Trust persuaded them to allow England’s first wild beaver trial.

The trial was successful and in 2020 DEFRA announced the beavers could stay. In October 2022, beavers were protected by law in England.

But in Wales, where environmental law-making is devolved, no such protection exists, and the discovery of a wild beaver could now force the Welsh Government to legislate on the issue.

The Pembrokeshire landowners continued: ‘It looks like the Welsh Government need to legislate or they’ll be in danger of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.

‘With so many enclosed beavers around Britain, you wonder how long it will be before there are more escapees.’

The animals, which can live for as long as ten years and weigh up to 30kg, are not universally popular.

In Scotland, where beavers have been so successful many farmers feel their livelihoods are being threatened because beaver dams can flood valuable farmland.

The Scottish Government has even begun issuing licenses to cull them.

But rewilders call this ‘ecosystem engineering’ and highlight the positive effects of wetland creation, providing habitat for animals like otters, water voles, toads, frogs and wildfowl.

This is what makes beavers a ‘keystone species’, in other words, they are the glue that holds a habitat together.

We are key! Have a look at the entire report — lots more photos!

Now for a tale of a wounded tail.

Kelowna’s downtown beaver on the mend

By JACQUELINE GELINEAU KELOWNA CAPITAL NEWS

Eva Hartmann — Interior Wildlife Rescue Society

One of Kelowna’s urban beavers is back splish-splashing after being rescued with an injured tail.

The beaver was captured from the Rotary Park Marsh on April 5, after a pedestrian noticed the sick-looking critter and contacted the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (IWRS).

The volunteers jumped into action and took the beaver to a vet to have the abscess drained. While waking up from the sedation, the beaver was given carrots and sweet potato, but she is now back on her regular diet of ‘browse’ such as twigs and other high-growing vegetation, said Eva Hartmann, founder of IWRS and registered veterinarian technician.

Everyday volunteers head out to the bush and pick twigs for the beaver to snack on.

Beavers munch on the tissue layer found just under the bark. Hartmann said the downtown girl in the IWRS’ care only likes to snack on poplar trees. The beaver spat out the Saskatoon berry bush and pine tree twigs that were collected for her. Hartmann laughed and said that she knew beavers preferred poplar and willow trees, but didn’t realize how picky they could be.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kelowna Capital News ?????? (@kelownacapitalnews)

That’s quite a video but beavers usually have a bit deeper voices. ;*)= Click for the rest of the story and more pics.

A new video was released from the Beaver Institute that is fantastic but they are going to tweak it and re-release it at a later date for now. Just know good things are afoot. Sneak preview my favorite line is that your local beaver pond is your rainforest, and your coral reef. How smart is that? This is a special edit from heidi who came home yesterday and is trying to figure things out.

Pretty cool, I think! And don’t forget to sign the petition to protect we beaver folks on federal lands! It’ important!!

Bob

Beavers Present Challenges, Get Shot, and Inspire a New Job Description

Bob Kobres Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Scotland March 18, 2023

Busy Beavers Present Challenges Close to Areas with Human Activity

By Wendy Greenberg, Town Topics

A volunteer at **Friends of Princeton Open Space** (FOPOS) paints a latex paint and sand mixture on trees to prevent damage at Pettoranello Gardens.

A robust area beaver population provides an ecological benefit, but also presents challenges to open spaces, as the beavers’ sharp teeth can fell a variety of trees, sometimes causing flooding in urbanized areas.

While damming streams to create ponds for building away from human activity can result in more ecological growth by providing a healthier riparian buffer and bird habitat, chewing on softwood and hardwood tree species where human activity and infrastructure are present has been problematic, according to Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS), a longtime nonprofit group that supports space for preservation and protecting natural resources. This activity has occurred in Pettoranello Gardens, and more recently in adjoining Mountain Lakes Preserve.

A solution may have been found, balancing the interests of the beavers, the habitat, and humans. That solution — a pond leveler and tree protection — has seemed to deter the beavers, said Cindy Taylor, open space manager for the municipality.

“We’ve had some success,” Taylor said of a pond leveling project. “It seems to deter them [the beavers], but not 100 percent. We’re still testing and experimenting with the paint/sand ratio (as a tree protector) and we’re observing and learning as we go. We’ll continue to observe and take a population count when possible.”

The tree damage seems to have decreased as well. “We saw a lot less tree damage during fall/winter 2022-2023 as compared to fall/winter 2021-2022,” she said. “I do visit in the late afternoons to look for activity, but haven’t seen active individuals recently to get an idea of a population count.”

While beavers nearly disappeared from New Jersey in the early 1900s, their population has increased due to legislative protections and trapping limitations, according to FOPOS.

. . .

FOPOS became involved when the staffs in the municipal departments of Animal Control, Public Health, Recreation, Public Works, Open Space, and Engineering reviewed possible options for managing the situation. Trapping and humanely killing or trapping and relocating the beaver were rejected, said Taylor. Taylor was familiar with pond levelers — devices designed to prevent pond flooding — and identified companies that provide and install them. “It offered the possibility of allowing the beavers to live their lives without causing further flood damage,” she said.

The pond leveler that was installed is designed to prevent beavers from disrupting the flow of water over the spillway at Pettoranello Pond, and will result in the pond controlled at a safe level.

In addition to the flooding, Taylor noted that the other concern that needed to be addressed was the felling of trees along the edge of the pond that anchor the shoreline and help maintain water quality by serving as a barrier against runoff, a concern which had spread to the lake shore in adjoining Mountain Lakes Preserve as well. Taylor said she was most concerned with maintaining trees around the edge of the pond for shade, with an approach that protects the trees rather than removing the beavers.

Anna Corichi, FOPOS’ director of natural resources and stewardship, said that FOPOS volunteers have painted trees with a mixture of latex paint and sand, a recommended technique. Caging the trees with wire fencing is also an option, but takes away from the aesthetic.

“We did start mitigating the trees that surround Pettoranello Pond and Mountain Lake to discourage the beaver from felling trees,” Corichi said in a press release. “The painting started at Pettoranello last spring, and at Mountain Lake when beaver activity was observed last fall. We’ve also caged some larger trees at Mountain Lake that are too labor-intensive to paint.”

“Whether in the riparian zone or not, our interest is in preserving trees and their ability to store carbon, and as much forested habitat with as much connectivity as possible,” Corichi continued. “We’re a nature preserve and our mission is to support wildlife and preserve their habitat, and if not here, where is there a better place for beaver to make a home?”

Read the whole article here

Fig the beaver fights back to health after botched shooting

By Richard Baynes, The Ferret

A beaver named Fig is recovering after a member of the public found him on a Scottish roadside with bullet wounds from a botched shooting.

The distressed animal had been shot in the face, damaging his vital upper incisors – which beavers use to gnaw down the tree stems they eat – and peppering him with shrapnel.

Fresh calls have been made by conservationists to tighten up the rules around the culling of beavers, as a result of Fig’s injuries.

The SSPCA has not revealed exactly where Fig was found, but said they found the dazed animal wandering on a Perthshire roadside. The River Tay area has a growing population of beavers descended from animals unlawfully released or escaped, and more than 1,000 of them live in the wild in Scotland.

Fig has been recovering at the SSPCA’s National Wildlife Centre near Alloa in Clackmannanshire, and his teeth have grown back as their roots were undamaged – beaver teeth continually renew as they are worn down. A new home in the wild is being organised for him in an area where there are no licences to shoot beavers in place.

Read the whole article here

Finally, a position focused on Beaver!:

Amphibian and Beaver Field Technician; Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Wyoming

Background: Beavers are ecosystem engineers capable of creating habitat for many other organisms, including amphibians. After being extensively hunted and trapped in the 1800s, beaver populations are increasing, and land managers are interested in the role of beaver reintroduction as a tool for stream and wetland restoration. Long-term amphibian monitoring programs in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have identified positive relationships between beaver activity and amphibian occupancy and colonization rates. This technician will work with a University of Wyoming graduate student to survey beaver and non-beaver wetlands in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park for amphibians, collect environmental DNA samples, and collect tissue samples for DNA extraction.

Location: This position is based out of Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Housing will be provided for the field technician at the UW-NPS Research Station. The technician can expect regular days off to explore the parks and surrounding areas. Occasional camping may be required.

But it’s not for the timid:

Qualified applicants will have the willingness and ability to work long hours (including weekends and holidays) and be flexible with their schedule, as work hours will be determined by weather and collaborators’ schedules. Applicants must also be able to tolerate harsh field conditions (heat/cold, wind, rain, biting insects, mud, etc.), pay extreme attention to detail, and meet high standards of animal care. Interest in the research, a strong work ethic, and the ability to conduct meticulous data collection are most important. Priority will be given to individuals currently enrolled in or recently graduated from an ecology, wildlife biology, or related program with past field experience. Qualified applicants need a valid driver’s license with a clean driving record. The ideal candidate will have experience working long days outdoors and possess Wilderness First Aid, or Wilderness First Responder certification. Experience working in bear country is also beneficial.

Full details here.

Bob

OILED BEAVERS READY FOR RELEASE AT TANZANITE PARK

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver Rehabilitation December 17, 2022

There was an diesel spill a few weeks ago in Sacramento. I heard from Cheryl that a few female beavers were rescued and one died. They were treated by the oil drs, rubbed and scrubbed and ready for release yesterday. Cheryl was there to observe them go back to the scrubby little park they came from

Sacramento is a hard place for a beaver. Even a rescued beaver. Their depredation rate for the last few years as exceeded Placer. I guess now they’re free to be killed with a permit some time at their leisure? Anyway it’s good to see them go back home.

‘This is the good part’: Three beavers released back to Sacramento park after diesel spill

Three beavers are back home at a pond in Tanzanite Community Park in Sacramento. The animals spent weeks in rehabilitation after a “malfunction” caused diesel to be released onto a concrete loading dock and then into a storm drain.

On Thursday afternoon, officials with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response and the Oiled Wildlife Care Network were on hand for the homecoming.

The three female beavers were released from blanketed crates and – much to the delight to the caregivers on hand for the release – quickly made their way back into the water.

“We always joke, we wish they’d wave back at you, but no, they’re ready to get away from us and ultimately, that’s really what you want from them is to be back, back in their home,” said Dr. Jamie Sherman, a veterinarian with the Oiled Wildlife Care Network.

I can’t figure out how to embed the video but go watch the little clip of the release by clicking on the headline. It’s sweet. For now I’ll just make due with those photos of beavers we have in towels from that rehab in Utah 9 years ago. They are still some of my all time favorites.

Sherman said once the beavers were taken into their care, they were sedated and given a full physical examination to evaluate their health and to begin the process of removing diesel from their fur. Over the next few weeks, she said, they focused on cleaning the coats, helping the animals rehydrate and gain weight and prepare to be released back to their home.

“(It’s) one of the best parts of this, and to bring all these people together who have invested so much time, so much effort, and so much care to be able to see these animals go back to the wild is incredible,” Sherman said.

After the spill, six beavers were taken into rehabilitation, according to Greg McGowan, of the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, within the Department of Fish and Wildlife. McGowan said two beavers are still being treated, and one died.

McGowan said after a spill, the challenge is not only to get the oil off the fur but to get the animals warm and able to regulate their own temperatures again.

“Anytime we’re out here doing our jobs, we feel like we’re fighting the good fight, but there is a part of it that’s less exciting, less positive when you’re dealing with animals that are suffering and struggling,” he said. “This is the good part, seeing them clean and happy, and return to their house.”

Well, we’re glad that you can do this job and take care of our beavers and wildlife. But I’d be happier if there weren’t diesel spills in the middle of town that ran straight into our creeks. That would make me REAL happy.