Category: Beavers and Birds

No Retirement for Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Video, Who's saving beavers now?, Why We Care March 31, 2017

I know it’s not Sunday but there’s plenty of good beaver news to go around. Starting with this article from Muskoka in Ontario, Canada. It is nicely written by Andrew Hind, who obviously has come to appreciate our flat-tailed friend.

Muskoka beavers build a healthier environment

Despite being a Canadian icon and a symbol of industriousness, many people view the beaver as a nuisance animal, blaming them for flooding and for damaging property through the felling of trees. Any derision towards the beaver, which generally is misplaced and based more upon myth than reality, masks the absolutely vital role beavers plays in creating a healthy environment – especially in areas with lots of wilderness and wildlife, like Muskoka.

Beavers spend much of their life building and maintaining dams that hold back the water and create the ponds in which they live. What most people fail to realize is that the beaver is not the only one to benefit from the habitat it creates.

The contributions made by beavers, perhaps nature’s most industrious animals, are more profound than most people realize. They are not the nuisance they are so often made out to be, but rather our partners in preserving the health of our planet Earth.

“The beaver is the largest rodent in North America and it has been commonly known as ‘nature’s-engineers’ because of what they do for the environment,” explains Muskoka naturalist Robin Tapley. “A beaver is the only other mammal besides man that alters its environment to suit its living requirements. However, in the case of the beaver, its contribution has a positive impact on the local flora and fauna and this greatly increases the biodiversity in an ever-shrinking natural world. Science has demonstrated that the result of a single dam has increased the number of birds, reptiles, mammals as large as deer and bears, and plant life in areas modified by beavers.”

Are you smiling yet? This is a ‘second cup of coffee’ kind of read and a great way to start the weekend. What I love about an article like this is the fact that you can tell right away it’s going to be good. And you are just curious how good?

Dave McLachlin, a biologist for Ducks Unlimited, enthusiastically agrees. “Beavers are what we call a ‘keystone species. Without them we would witness a collapse of the ecosystem. The wetlands that beavers help create are the most productive environment we have in Canada.”

Beaver ponds not only create biodiversity, but also help with local flood control, reduction of water turbidity, the filtration of herbicides and pesticides, and – eventually – the creation of fertile bottomland.

To understand the importance of the beaver pond to the local system we need to understand more about the life cycle of these ponds.

Some people view the appearance of a dam in a stream almost as a sign of rodent infestation, a nuisance that needs to be removed. Many even believe that the dam and the pond it creates will eventually lead to destructive flooding downstream. Tapley bristles at the notion that the appearance of a beaver dam is a blight on the environment.

“A beaver dam is a complex structure designed specifically to slow the flow of water in a stream that results in creating a pond or wetland. Unfortunately, in the eyes of humans, flooded lands and fallen trees (specifically aspens, which is the tree of choice for beavers) appear to be an attack on the land. However, this is far from reality. The stumps grow new shoots which are a favoured food of moose and white tail deer, snags or dead standing trees become prime nesting locations for cavity nesters, including woodpeckers, wood ducks and mergansers, and the resulting wetlands offer increased habitat for insects, amphibians and reptiles, osprey, blue herons, mind and more – in fact, 85 per cent of all North American fauna rely on wetlands,” he explains.

Beaver dams, he explains, do not cause flooding – just the opposite. They help control the flow of water in the surrounding area, facilitating flood control in times of high water and also help maintain a stable water table, making streams, ponds and marshes less vulnerable to drought.

Give it up for Dave from Ducks Unlimited! He clearly understand beaver benefits and the good they do. The article goes on to take a little detour from accuracy describing how the “male beavers disperse for long distances looking to start their own family”. (Which of course would never be possible for heterosexual beavers unless the females did it too.) But never mind that Dietland Muller Swarze wrote that beavers were very unusual in that the female disperers went farther than the males. (The only other animal where girls go farther is porcupines, which is just the kind of odd fact that stays in my brain.) Dave gets the important bits right on the money.

The sediment and debris captured within the pond settle to the bottom, making for better turbidity and allowing for a huge variety of protozoan and insect life. Turtles, fish, and bullfrogs and fish love these deeper waters. Larger snakes begin to arrive, taking advantage of the abundance of frogs. The grassy areas around the edges of the pond, meanwhile, make for ideal nesting habitat for waterfowl, such as ducks and Canada Geese. These same grassy areas are attractive to small rodents, which are in turn prey for marsh hawks and foxes. In just a short period of time an amazing diversity of wildlife calls the beaver pond home.

The heightened wildlife activity centred on the beaver pond confirms its importance in biodiversity and maintenance of wetlands. In fact, Ducks Unlimited, which has a mandate to protect duck populations, recognizes the value of working with beavers to restore wetlands and the symbiotic relationship between healthy duck and beaver populations.

“The habitat resulting from beaver activity is tremendous. Not only do so many species depend on it for food, shelter and breeding grounds but research has shown that bacteria attracted to a mature beaver pond helps remove nutrients (phosphates and nitrates) contained in the runoff from nearby farms, making for cleaner water. Herbicides and pesticides are also removed in a similar way,” notes McLachlin.

Beaver ponds are cyclical, however, and come and go. “Eventually the beavers move on and the dam breaks down, draining the water and leaving behind an extremely lush meadow and the cycle begins all over again,” explains Tapley.

And yet the one-time pond continues to pay rich dividends for the environment. The meadow – its soil consisting of muck that sat submerged on the pond’s bottom – is rich in nutrients and provides fertile ground for seed blown upon the winds. As a result, it doesn’t take long before there is enough lush vegetation for deer to begin grazing. Tree seedlings soon take hold. In about 15 more years a beaver meadow has formed. If left undisturbed, the area is likely to once again play host to beavers once trees have matured to about 10 centimetres in diameter.

Early Muskoka farmers appreciated the value of these rich bottomlands and cultivated them for raising crops. They reaped the bounty of more than a decade of labour by a colony of beavers.

So not only do beavers benefit all that wildlife when they’re actually in residence, when the pond silts up and is abandoned, the soil they leave behind is the rich loam farmers love best. And in between making ideal grow conditions and removing nitrogen beaver dams also prevent flooding. Are you sold yet? It’s wonderful to see an article like this appear out of nowhere. I usually hear something in the pipeline along the way, but this was a completely un-looked-for blessing. Go read the whole thing so Mr. Hind is reminded that folks care about beavers.

And late breaking I was just sent this by writer Ben Goldfarb who will be meeting with doctoral student Dan Kotter in Yellowstone to discuss his research. Here’s what the trail cam picked up recently, and check out Mr. Wolf at .41. Those beavers do not even trouble their pretty little (dry!) heads about him.

Plenty to do! And they’re just the critter to do it!

“To Beaver or Not to Beaver”

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? March 28, 2017

One of the advantages of having ‘beaver buddies’ all over the world is that there is almost always someone on hand to help me get the things I cannot reach. Like this, intriguing headline that requires a paid subscription or a passport to unravel. Fortunately for me, Chris Brooke of the Save the Free Beavers of the Tay FB group leaped to the rescue:

Beaver fever proves giant rodents are not a dam nuisance

It is a wonder that anyone wants to reintroduce beavers almost 400 years after they were hunted to extinction. They sound like a farmer’s nightmare, creating soggy fields, rotten trees and pools of standing water, and infuriate anglers, as their dams are believed to hinder fish migration.

Yet a study into their effect on flooding on a farm in Devon has led to “beaver fever”, a clamour for more, not fewer, of the huge rodents and similar trials across England.

Beavers’ dams control the flow of water after rain and act as natural filters of chemical fertilisers that run off fields. In summer they also stop streams drying up, according to researchers at Exeter University, while coppicing trees creates a patchwork of different habitats that has increased the range of plants and wild animals.

Ooh I’m liking the way this is going. Time for coffee and a comfortable chair while I explore further. Mind you, this is the largest selling ‘respectable paper’ in ALL of the UK, so I think there are going to be folks paying attention. Including all the magistrates, farmers and anglers.

Richard Brazier, who led the initial research, has been asked to carry out six feasibility studies for beaver projects in Dorset, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cornwall. “The science suggests it would benefit society to have beavers in the landscape,” he said.

Naturalists in Wales have applied for permits to release ten pairs in Carmathanshire, while beavers in Scotland have been granted native species status after similar trials in Argyll.

In Devon, the beavers built 13 dams on a 180m stretch of stream inside an enclosure. Water flowing out had 30 per cent less nitrogen than water flowing in, almost 70 per cent less sediment and 80 percent less phosphates.

“Fertiliser getting washed out of soils is a huge problem worldwide,” Professor Brazier said. “It leads to algal blooms that starve the water of oxygen, which leads to fish deaths. It’s one of the reasons we have to treat our drinking water.”

If the difficult beavers of South America are the nagging critical aunt of the beaver world who’s petty complaints you just can’t escape, the epic “TO BEAVER OR NOT TO BEAVER” struggle of the UK is that glowing fountain of praise from your indulgent grandmother. I love hearing them argue about this over and over again because they are repeating the pro’s with a megaphone on an international scale. I don’t want them to ever stop, because who will take their place?

The government has promised £2.5 billion for improved flood defences, including £15 million for natural flood management such as planting trees and adding bends to rivers which have been artificially straightened.

“Most of the money is being spent on concrete,” said Chris Jones, a farmer, who is planning to release beavers upstream of Ladock, in Cornwall, a village that was flooded twice in 2012. “We need our land to store more water, so we don’t have these massive pulses of water after every heavy rainfall.”

Not everybody is a fan of the animals, which can grow to 25kg. A spokesman for the Angling Trust criticised “adding more barriers to fish migration”, while the NFU opposes beaver reintroductions because of “damage to farmland … and the risks of them spreading disease”.

Mark Elliott, of Devon Wildlife Trust, said that farmers’ “biggest concern is that beavers will become a protected species. If they are going to be accepted by landowners, there have to be clear mechanisms for managing the conflicts [between the two].”

Really Mark? Is that really your ‘biggest concern’? That beavers will be protected? Wouldn’t a bigger concern be that there wouldn’t be beavers at all? Or that all your rivers will dry up and that global warming will make it too arid to have them there anyway? Or that Theresa May will turn out to be exactly like Trump. How could the protection of beavers be your BIGGEST concern?

Okay, I’ll give Mark a break. Maybe that was a misquote or taken out of context. Maybe you’re having an off day or your cat is in the vet. It’s mostly a wonderful article. And I’m still very happy about it. We all should be!

Legacy

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? March 26, 2017

Finally! The article about our beaver tenure came out! Of course it arrived the moment after I posted yesterday, but it’s perfect for our only-good-news-Sunday. It’s also a well written article by Martinez resident Sam Richards. (Turns out he lives next-door to the house where I grew up – because Martinez!) It is accompanied by Susan Pollard’s wonderful photos and I don’t sound as horrible as I was worried might happen, but I’m never happy when Luigi talks about feeding beavers with a stick. If you want to see the video where I look positively slagged you are going to have to click on the link to find it yourself. I manage one good line at the end, anyway.

A decade of beavers (mostly) in Martinez

MARTINEZ — It started in 2007, when downtown Martinez citizens noticed Alhambra Creek was flowing slow, and that trees along the banks had been gnawed down to little points. The furry, buoyant culprits were elusive at first, but their first dam of sticks, leaves and mud near Marina Vista Avenue told the, er, tail.

After winning an early fight over their very lives, given concerns about downtown flooding, the beavers went from cause celebre to cause for adoration. There were (and are) “Martinez Beavers” T-shirts and bumper stickers, and the 10th annual Beaver Festival will take place in August.

“Who had even heard of beavers in town before?” said Heidi Perryman, president of the nonprofit Worth a Dam group. Someone she met literally walking down the street told her that beavers lived a few blocks from her Martinez home.

“It’s actually pretty common, it turns out, but I didn’t know it then,” said Perryman, whose preservation efforts have helped give the local beavers a dash of national notoriety, and even some international interest, given the recently rejuvenated efforts to reintroduce Eurasian beavers in England, where they had been extinct since the 1500s, killed for their pelts (and as an acceptable edible substitute for fish during Lent).

“It’s been both a feel-good and a do-good story for Martinez,” said City Councilman Mark Ross, an early champion of the beavers. The rodents themselves have, by and large, done well in the creek; the creek’s ecology has indeed improved, say environmentalists who credit the beavers; and Martinez has become known for something beyond Joe DiMaggio, John Muir and the Shell oil refinery.

A feel good story for Martinez! Thank you for that quote Mr. Ross, I think I’ll put it in my city grant application. It’s nice to see the story remembered in such detail. I sent the reporter a copy of our newsletter which prompted him to think about it. Like pretty much everyone, he had no idea ten years had passed already.

At Luigi’s Deli, about a block from Alhambra Creek, a wall is packed with photos of people owner Luigi Daberdaku has met over the years. Most of them, he said, came downtown to find the beavers.

It didn’t take long for the beavers to win his and others’ hearts. Daberdaku fed them apple pieces — on a long stick. “I saw what the teeth did to the trees; what could they do to my hand?”

At a November 2007 meeting at Alhambra High School, David Frey of Pleasant Hill, a maritme consultant, suggested Martinez city engineers build a diversion around the beaver dam so the beavers don’t have to be relocated. The “beaver deceiver” built the next year accomplished just that. Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff archives

Daberdaku didn’t support downtown property owners who initially wanted the beavers gone. Neither did most who spoke at a rowdy November 2007 City Council meeting at Alhambra High School, where everything from moving the beavers to embracing their tourism potential to renaming the high school sports teams from the Bulldogs to the Beavers was discussed. Many invoked the name of a famous environmentalist son: “What would John Muir do?” One woman said, “We don’t want to be known as a refinery town that kills beavers, right?”

Former Martinez mayor Harriett Burt said learning the science of the beavers changed her mind. “It raised awareness about the creek environment in general,” she said recently, “and it’s been a good thing.”

Good Harriet! And Bad Luigi! I remember the night we caught him feeding apples with a stick and told him to stop. I hoped that was the only time. But that’s what happens when an entire city raises beavers. Not everyone is a good parent. The reporter even talked to Skip, which I’m sure amused him.

But the beavers’ real stay of execution may have been the “beaver deceiver,” a water bypass pipe under a dam, installed by Vermonter Skip Lisle in 2008. Designed to fool beavers into thinking they’re successfully damming a waterway, the pipe “secretly” carries water under the dam to prevent flooding.

Lisle still marvels at his Martinez assignment. “I was building a beaver deceiver, and there were throngs of people there, media, and helicopters overhead. It was unique.”

Perryman and the Worth a Dam group have kept beavers in the public eye, even when they were absent from Alhambra Creek. Beavers’ images adorn downtown murals at one creek crossing, and on a “tile bridge” downstream with children’s depictions of the beavers. The Martinez Beaver Festival, an intimate gathering at its 2008 beginning, now draws hundreds to the small patch near the Amtrak station that some call “Beaver Park.” For two years, a group from Oakland led by a city environmental stewardship analyst took the train to Martinez for lessons on how beavers renew urban streams.

Worth a Dam has also inspired other beaver champions. Caitlin McCombs found that group’s work while looking for help saving beavers near her home in Mountain House, near Tracy. McCombs then started the MH Beavers preservation group.

“I never knew before that beavers serve as a vital keystone, and that they promote an overall healthier environment,” said McCombs.

Caitlin! What a wonderful quote! We are so proud to have been part of your V.I.B.E. (Very Important Beaver Education). She won’t be joining us for earth day this year because she has a conference to attend for college, and we will miss her. But I feel that we helped her raise the awareness in Mountain House and she will think differently about beavers for her entire life. That makes me entirely happy.

By October 2015, the beavers were no longer deceived by the black pipe and built new dams downstream before leaving altogether soon after that. Some of the 24 Martinez kits had died, and others moved on. The original mother beaver, with a new younger mate, left, too.

But Perryman and others were overjoyed when, on March 5, a beaver was seen in the creek near downtown. It’s been seen at least twice since, and photographed at least once.

Does this mean they’re back? With three verified sightings, Perryman says yes.

Then again, were they ever really “gone?” While registering for a marathon recently, Councilman Ross said he was from Martinez. “The guy … said to me, ‘How are those beavers?’ Everywhere you go, the legacy of the beavers remains.”

Beaver legacy! That’s what we have. Of course., I’d rather have the actual beavers, but hey, it’s way more than most cities ever get. Thank you Sam for another fine reminder the beavers promote a city’s good nature. And thank the beavers for being such great sports for a decade even though the city installed a wall of metal through their lodge. What a crazy, beautiful way to spend a decade of your life!

Time for some lovely donations to the silent auction. This week’s treasures come from Litographs in Cambridge Massachusetts. They are a remarkable business I happen to love because they turn favorite literature into wearable art. Literally. The entire text of a beloved book becomes a shirt, card, poster, tote or scarf. Catcher in the Rye, Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Hamlet, The Princess Bride, classic or contemporary.

“We founded Litographs because we had a vision of bringing our favorite literature off the page, onto your walls, and into your wardrobe. We believe in sharing the power of books with more people.“

This is the entire text of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” which they generously gave beautifully matted and ready for framing.

Long ago I had a conversation with owner Danny Fein about possibly working with the now-public-domain text “In Beaver World” by Enos Mills. While he wasn’t sure this was a project they would tackle any time soon, he personally made this for our event. Look closely because that is the entire book. Thank you Danny and friends at Litographs! For this beautiful addition to our silent auction.

Spoiled for Beaver Choice

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? March 23, 2017

Some days there is so little beaver news that I am left sorting through my ragged thoughts and trying to find something new to say about them. This week has been a beaver explosion, so I can barely keep up. First there is the smart new beaver page out offered by Esther Lev of the Wetlands Conservancy and some graduate students who accepted the beaver challenge. You will have fun browsing the projects. Use the link to visit the site which connects to each project. I’ll let them describe the ‘zine’ themselves.

During the 2017 Winter Term, eight graduate students from the Master of Urban and Regional Planning, Master of Fine Arts, and Master of Environmental Science and Management programs at Portland State University engaged in a study of beavers in the Pacific Northwest. The question was whether better understanding the beaver could help us understand more about the culture, identity, and character of the Pacific Northwest, particularly for those of us engaged in planning and other activities with and for communities in the region.

The project had two components. First, each student identified a topic associated with beavers, and developed a research paper that explored that topic. All of those papers are posted here for your use and enjoyment. During the term we read Frances Backhouse’s Once they were Hats, her very informative and engaging book about beavers in North America. Thanks to Esther Lev, Wetlands Conservancy Executive Director, and Sara Vickerman Gage, we were able to spend a morning discussing the book with Frances Backhouse. We gratefully acknowledge the importance of both Frances’ work and her presence in the class with us. If you are interested in and/or care about beavers, do read her book!

Second, each student used their paper as the point of departure for creating pages for a class “zine” about beavers. A zine is a short, self-published, and mostly hand-crafted magazine. Usually combining words and images, the zine form attempts to both transmit information to and engage the imagination of the reader. Preliminary research in Portland revealed hardly any zines about or featuring beavers. We aimed to fill that void, at least in part.

TWC is who had me talk in Portland last year and is responsible for the art show “Beaver Tales” that is in its second venue. They are doing beaver-work wonders. I am thrilled that they’re on the scene and that all these students will remember beavers in their masters training.

A second exciting development came from our beaver friends in the Czech University of Life Sciences. They recently completed the English translation of their ‘living with beavers’ guidebook. There is a lot of great info on management and history, so I would take some good time to browse. There’s a great discussion of tree protection and flow devices, as well as some pretty creative solutions for preventing bank burrows. Enjoy!

Cree “Beaver Bird”

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? March 18, 2017

Gentlemen may prefer blonds, but we prefer beaver ponds…

Beaver Bird: The Adaptable Hooded Merganser

Mergansers are expert divers. Swimming serenely, they suddenly disappear, leaving barely a ripple, and can remain submerged for up to two minutes. All birds have a nictitating membrane, a transparent extra eyelid; for mergansers, this serves as a diving mask that allows them to keep their eyes open underwater where they swim gracefully with webbed feet. Using wings to steer, they appear to fly through a liquid sky.

“They’re a cool bird to watch,” said Dr. Kevin McGowan at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, “popping up in little ponds—very similar to wood duck nesting habitat. In fact, they often share the same pond, but hooded mergansers dive underwater to find their food, while wood ducks feed on the surface.”

“Between the 1980 and 2000 Breeding Bird Atlas surveys in New York,” said McGowan, “the occurrence of hooded mergansers more than doubled. They like beaver ponds, and there are more beavers now than there have been for a long time. Their breeding range has also moved south, probably due to reforestation over the past 100 years, which has improved their habitat.” The occurrence of breeding hooded mergansers nearly tripled in Vermont between 1981-2007, according to findings of the first and second Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas, edited by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.

National Audubon predicts that, as the climate warms, hooded mergansers will significantly expand their winter ranges northward and live year-round where they are currently found just during the breeding season. Researchers in Manitoba discovered that, in 2001 hooded mergansers were returning to their breeding grounds 32 days earlier than they had been returning in 1939.

Despite its ever-changing environment, the endearing, diminutive waterfowl that is known to the Cree as the “beaver duck” is doing just swimmingly.

The beaver duck! Isn’t that wonderful? All these years I’ve been talking how hooded mergansers showed up in our beaver pond and Napa’s beaver pond, and I thought I was on to something but I wasn’t sure. Now I’m sure. This makes me happy. The Cree are one of the largest tribes of first nations in North America and extended across the middle band of Canada. The definitely knew their beaver because the Cree was one of the most important nations for the Fur Trade in the Hudson Bay Company of early Canada. When I gave a talk to the waterboard one fish scientist asked whether our mergansers eat themselves out of house and home, because they were such voracious fish eaters.

I’m just glad that these birds and beavers get along.