Category: Beaver relocation

BEAVER MORTALITY CONFOUNDS RESEARCHERS

heidi08 Beaver relocation, Dispersal October 23, 2020

Everyone has been thinking more about the desert beavers, as we get ready for the NM Summit. Apparently it grew out of advocates wish for Game and Fish to adopt a beaver management plan like Utah’s. Of course not ALL of Utah gets the idea. Some of the regions are still chugging along without a single beaverclue.

Beavers in the Desert? The Potential for Translocated Beavers to Serve as Restoration Tools in Desert Rivers

The USGS Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Utah State University (USU) is partnering with the Ecology Center (USU), the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Wildlife Research Center to evaluate the efficacy of beaver translocation for desert river restoration by comparing the fates, space use, and dam building activity of naturally occurring and translocated beavers in the Price and San Rafael Rivers in eastern Utah.

Beaver translocation is an alternative solution to lethal control that is gaining popularity. Beavers are taken from a conflict situation and translocated to a targeted area with the goal of harnessing their dams as a passive, cost-effective, and natural method of restoration. The challenge of translocation is getting beavers to stay, survive, and build dams in a specific area. Success of beaver translocation projects varies widely and lacks standardized best practices; failures are typically undocumented, and the cause of failure is often unknown.

Well it’s known by the beaver I dare say, but I guess that’s not what you mean.

So far, nine naturally occurring beavers have been captured and monitored, seven adult residents and two subadults, while 31 nuisance beavers have been translocated to the rivers, 18 adults and 13 subadults. All individuals were fitted with a tail-mounted radio-transmitter and a PIT- (passive integrated transponder) tag for post-release monitoring. Most (65%) of the translocated beavers have unknown fate, from radio-transmitter failure or individuals leaving the targeted restoration areas, while only 33% of resident beavers had unknown fate. Translocated beavers also experienced proportionally higher mortality (19% vs. 11%), primarily due to predation or exposure during drought. The only mortality of a naturally occurring beaver was a dispersing subadult, preyed upon by a mountain lion.

The researchers calculated the farthest straight-line distance an individual was detected from its release location to compare space use between resident and translocated beavers. Resident adult beavers exhibited an average maximum displacement of 0.58 km²and dispersing subadult beavers had an average of 42.76 km². Translocated adult beavers had an average maximum displacement of 79.13 km²and translocated subadult beavers had an average of 67.74 km².

Hmm I guess that means the relocaters got their release sight an average of 25 km wrong?

In this study, it appears that translocated beavers have not directly contributed to restoration efforts by building dams, likely due to their higher mortality rates and larger space use, spending more time traveling and exploring than remaining in an area and using their energy to construct a dam. This is similar to the behavior of dispersing subadults as they search for a new territory to establish. However, given the behavior of the translocated beavers and the wood-limited systems they were translocated into, the outcome likely would have been different if translocations were accompanied by the construction of structural features such as beaver dam analogues.

Yes it is very hard to build a maintain a dam when you’re dead. New research has shed light on the confounding effect of mortality. The researchers will remember not to overlook that fact next time? That’s encouraging.

This study also highlights the importance of post-release monitoring. If no monitoring of individual movements and behaviors were taking place, it may be falsely assumed that translocated beavers built the newly observed dams. Other studies have had varying success with translocation, but perhaps the initial results are an indicator that harsher, arid systems are more difficult for translocated beavers to establish. This could be due to poorer habitat quality, with the best habitat already occupied by naturally occurring beavers.

Those pesky beavers. We sprinkle them like table salt into dry areas and they either crawl to water or die outright. Sheesh who do they think they are?

THE BEAVER SHUFFLE

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver relocation October 16, 2020

If you’re like me, you can see right away what’s wrong with this headline. Of all the neighbors I’ve had in my life, with their noisy parties, weed-smoking teenagers and squealing tires, beavers by far have been my favorite.

Beavers: Good environmental stewards, but lousy neighbors

EVERETT — In the Lake Chaplain watershed, beavers help ward off the impact of climate change and make streams more suitable for salmon.

But in the guardian of Everett’s water supply system, the creatures’ love of blocking running water is problematic.

The beavers stuff culverts with sticks, blocking water flow and fish passage. They build dams along the city’s service roads, flooding them. The wild, semi-aquatic rodents leave their mark well beyond Everett’s boundaries.

All over Snohomish County, beavers clash with the human-built environment when they set up shop on private properties or next to roads, causing flooding and damage to homes.

I’m so old that I can remember when Snohomish county was famous for resolving beaver conflicts by installing flow devices and protecting culverts. Now they just whisk the animals away and hope it will last for a few pages on the calendar. Jake Jacobsen used work for public works in Snohomish. He went on to collaborate with Skip Lisle and Michael Pollock and was my guiding light during my time on the subcommittee telling me how to deal with our beavers.

Well now the Tulalip tribe just takes them away.

Since 2014, wildlife biologists working with the Tulalip Tribes have moved beavers from areas in the Snohomish River watershed, where they’re considered nuisances, to new homes in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Last month, the national forest signed an agreement with the tribes to expand that work to the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River watershed — a critical habitat for endangered fish like Chinook, steelhead and bull trout, Tulalip chairwoman Teri Gobin said.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying the tribe does anything wrong or isn’t careful about the beavers. I’m just saying that the fact that new beavers come back year after year means that you are better off actually SOLVING the problem than simply moving it.

And beavers making a difference in the greenbelt in residential areas is GOOD news for cities. Increasing biodiversity, reducing erosion, improving water quality and a creating social cohesion for residents.

In the Snohomish watershed, the tribes have relocated close to 200 beavers.

The animals don’t always stick around permanently — but that’s not the tribes’ main focus.

Even if beavers abandon their new homes, they usually build a dam first, benefiting the surrounding habitat and hydrology. And the next beaver family might build on what’s already there.

The relocated beavers can create over 61,000 gallons of new surface water storage along a 328-foot stretch of stream, according to Benjamin Dittbrenner, who completed a dissertation based on the project for Northeastern University in 2019. The groundwater table can nearly double in size, as well.

Yes, Ben took over for Jake when the new boss decided flow devices were a mistake. That was 200 beavers ago. Let’s say 40-50 beaver families in 6 years.

In the Lake Chaplain watershed, the city of Everett has taken a different approach with persistent beaver residents.

“We have a lot of really great habitat and we normally welcome them,” senior environmental specialist Anna Thelen said. “But we do need to keep some roads clear of water for employees, trucks and what not.”

So staff do their best to mitigate the negative impacts beaver damming has without entirely removing the structures. If the beavers build a dam along a service road, staff will make a notch so water can get through.

“Sometimes (the beavers) are OK with the compromised water level, so they don’t feel the need to put the sticks back,” Thelen said.

It’s a delicate balance — and sometimes staff end up notching the same dam again and again. The work has gone on for years, and the city just received another five-year permit to continue.

Now THAT is work I admire. A commitment to coexistence. Deal with the beavers you have and prevent the issues that might arise. I feel the influence of years of Jake in this policy.

“They are determined little guys,” Thelen said.“… And we’d like to encourage them to stay.”

BETTER THAN BEING DROPPED OUTTA AN AIRPLANE?

heidi08 Beaver relocation September 28, 2020

It’s Monday and I’m running out of September’s bounty of beaver articles to chose from. I spent yesterday trying to compress my virtual talk for the wildlife festival. And was supremely annoyed that one slide turns into gibberish every time, no matter how many different ways I tried it. In the end I was only able to get this file uploaded gibberish-free, which you can see does not have a fast enough frame rate and the beaver footage looks blurry. I will probably try two more times. It takes hours. Then I will call this good enough.

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I wish the beaver footage looked as lovely as it does on my camera But you know how it is. You can’t have everything you want. Sometimes you find out the president of the united states only paid 750$ in taxes the year he was elected. That’s about enough for the fuel it takes to drive a lone secret service vehicle to a single rally. Or buy milk for a Texas elementary school lunch program for a week. Or pay for a single box of bullets ofan Iraqi soldier.

It’s about twice what he paid Stormy Daniels. Just in case anyone wondered,

This is from Idaho which has only just begun to consider that a life beaver might be more useful to mamkind than a dead one. They haven’t spent any time at all on the finer details of successful reintroduction, like moving family members or giving temporary shelter to avoid predation.

But sure. It’s slightly better than dropping them out of airplanes. So that’s a plus.

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BEAVERS NEED HEROES

heidi08 Beaver relocation, Flow Device Installed, Who's saving beavers now? August 31, 2020

Let’s spent the very last day of August visiting some old friends shall we? The official part of summer – the summer that never came – is over, And we are beginning to feel the first stirrings of fall in the air. Lets have some nostalgia for people and places past, shall we?

Monkton finds a humane beaver solution: Deception

MONKTON — On a warm sunny Friday afternoon last month, Theresa Payea, dressed in waders, stood atop a well-established beaver dam in Monkton Pond (also known as Cedar Lake). Payea was there, along with a few other members of the newly re-established Cedar Lake Association, to help bring a decades-long battle with beavers to a peaceful, humane conclusion.

“I’ve lived here 28 years, but I’ve never seen the dam so close up,” she said. “You don’t realize how much trouble beavers are capable of.”

Payea and her neighbors got an up-close and personal view of that trouble last fall, after the beavers in Monkton Pond had outwitted an old baffle cage installed by the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife to maintain water levels. Beavers clogged up the hole and the water began to rise.

Hmm Monkton is about 2 hours away from Grafton in Vermont. I bet I can guess who they got to help them. Can you?

Down in the water, a few yards away, beaver expert Skip Lisle of Grafton was busy assembling a custom-made system that he invented to keep the water flowing, regardless of damming activity.

He calls it the “Beaver Deceiver.”

Over the past 25 years Skip Lisle has installed more than a thousand Beaver Deceivers all over the country, and around the world.

“Beavers do very little deductive reasoning,” Lisle told the Independent in a phone interview. “That’s the starting point. Most people assume animals think like people, but beavers are not capable of stepping back and taking a look at the big picture.”

A robust Beaver Deceiver system requires two things, Lisle said: a large, long pipe and a sophisticated filter.

Lucky for you Skip was on hand when the deceiver installed by Fish and Wildlife failed. I’m not at all surprised. They just refuse to learn from the source that’s right under their noses. Thank Goodness Skip was near by to correct their mistakes.

“We’re now experiencing the very real effects of climate change, and beavers do a wonderfulQ job of mitigating climate change, so it’s money well spent.”

Hurray for Skip! And hurray for solutions that keep the beavers around doing what they do next! Meanwhile in Colorado Sherri Tippie just got together a band of friends and relocated some beavers that were in harms way. So happy to hear she is recovered from her fall and doing what she does best!

I guess our friend Eric Robinson from San Diego and B.R.A.V.O. has been working with Sherri to get her back on the ground running. He sent these photos along with the summary “we have recently built a successful team around Tippie to support her efforts to rescue and restore beaver in the Denver area.”

You know those beavers are the luckiest this side of the Canadian border. Just listen to her croon to them.[wonderplugin_video videotype=”mp4″ mp4=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Video-Aug-2020-First-family.mov” webm=”” poster=”” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

ALL THOSE DAMS AREN’T GOING TO BUILD THEMSELVES

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver relocation, Beavers October 25, 2019

More good news about beavers from our friends in Wyoming which is turning out to be a very beavery state. Even if they aren’t quite ready to declare their love in public.

Problem beaver family relocated to Absaroka Mountains in hopes of improving habitat

In back was a 40-pound female beaver, taken from private property where she and her family’s work were flooding a road and farm field. They were needed elsewhere — where flooding would be welcome. This was a special individual. The matriarch for a beaver family of five, her partner and three of her young had already been moved, but she was the first to be released at their new home with a radio transmitter.

Beaver had previously lived on the stream, located in an isolated drainage on the Absaroka front, but mysteriously disappeared about a decade ago. The habitat suffered when the beaver went away.

“It’s not so much about the beaver as it is beaver dams,” Altermatt said.

Um, which repair and build themselves year after year? I think its about the beavers, buddy. You need them to do what humans can’t be relied upon to do. Sheesh!

There are many benefits having beavers doing what they do best. When water is slowed, sediment drops out, increasing the water quality. And when the water level rises, so does the water table surrounding a creek, enabling vegetation to grow. Expanding the wetland area around the creek “is the biggest benefit for terrestrial wildlife,” Altermatt said.

Fish thrive in streams with ponds created by beaver dams and waterfowl are attracted to those areas. In places void of beaver habitat, biologists are forced to do what they can to recreate dams called “beaver dam analogs.” The man-made structures “are intended to make the area more attractive for beavers and increase riparian-dependent, woody vegetation such as willow,” said Travis Cundy, aquatic habitat biologist for the Game and Fish’s Sheridan Region.

Yes they do. You got the idea. And beavers make it possible and keep it happening.

They’re monogamous. They mate for life for the most part,” he said. “They do much better if you move them as a family.”

If a male beaver is caught and relocated before the rest of the family is trapped, he may move on from the new area in search of his mate. And that’s where Altermatt’s beaver trailer comes into play: He can keep the first trapped beaver healthy and relatively happy in the trailer while trying to capture the rest of the family.

“The first beaver is always the easiest to catch. Almost every time I trap I get one the first night; I call it the dumb one,” he said. “The smart one might take a week or two to get.”

And what did sherri tippie teach us? That the first beaver is USUALLY the male and the last beaver is USUALLY the female. Because, well, you get the idea.

At the release site on Sept. 27, Game and Fish Information and Education Specialist Tara Hodges accompanied Altermatt to help negotiate the steep banks to a good release point.

As Altermatt opened the gates to freedom, it took a while before the beaver realized her luck. The pretty gal stuck her nose out, then ducked back in. Then slowly she stuck her whole head out, her eyes starting at Altermatt’s feet and moving toward the sky. As much as Altermatt had done to protect her and her colony, no human is to be trusted.

While they’re usually docile creatures, Altermatt has been rushed by an angry beaver before. They’re not quite as ferocious as a charging grizzly — which Altermatt has also experienced — but encounters with any wild animal can be dangerous.

In this case, however, the tagged beaver slowly waddled to the edge of the creek, dived in nose first and disappeared under the edge of the grassy banks.

Well of course she did. Sheesh.

Did I mention Fro was dropping off the curtains yesterday? I was hardly prepared for the glory of seeing them in person. How awesome will these look framing the stage? Jon was kind enough to give us an idea of scale.Now I just have to figure out how to hang them! Fro is such an amazing combination of talent,

patience and vision. She made sure every child’s work stayed true, and still managed to turn the whole thing into a masterpiece. Rumor is she might be joining us again for Earth day, when we start the amazing prayer flags that hopefully can hang at the festival. Something like this, only much much cooler.

The idea came from a friends visit to a Croatia Children’s festival that inspired it, but I can’t wait to see a line of beaver flags made by children at the festival! We can do some at Earth day and more at the beaver festival itself and end up with several strands which can zigzag all around the park.