Category: Beaver relocation

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.

“BETTER DEAD THAN WATERSHED” SAYS CDFW

heidi08 Beaver relocation, Beavers and water October 21, 2019

When you undertake a gigantic change that has never come close to being done before, you begin very simply. Baby steps forward. Eyes on the prize. Never stop moving obliquely towards the light.

Except no one ever told Eric Robinson change happens slowly. He’s just beavering in. All-in.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has, for nearly a century, adhered to a strict policy saying that forbid beaver relocation. Beavers were problems. And you don’t move problems to somebody else’s property. Unlike Washington and Utah and Idaho a beaver causing trouble in one place can NOT be live trapped with his family and relocated to another place where his dam building might do some good. Never mind beaver contribution to watershed, drought, fire prevention, biodiversity. The only solution is the final solution.

“BETTER DEAD THAN WATERSHED”

Until the revolution that is.

This week will be the first ever meeting on beaver relocation in California. It is the vision of Eric Robinson of Southern California and involves his dream to bring back beaver from the crushing traps of San Diego and restore them to the empty dryish creekbeds of the Tule Tribe with the help of some well-placed friends. Like all revolutionaries, he has a vision of a better world and no time for the obstacles to his success.

The famed Molly Alves from the Tulalip tribe will be there teaching beaver relocation and housing, wildlife rehab staff will get first hand training from the expert, joined by our own Cheryl Reynolds and Brock, Kate and Kevin of the OAEC. It will be, for all intents and purposes the first meeting of the beaver revolution to rattle California and you can bet there is already serious push-back against it happening.

But it is happening.

If you feel the earth move suddenly this week you’ll know why. There are ideas that are so radical even talking about them is heresy of a kind. Get ready for life beyond the barricades, because its coming.

This revolution will not be televised. But you can read about it, here.

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?