Category: Beavers and Birds

You’re doing fine, Oklahoma!

heidi08 Beavers, 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 September 6, 2016

I’ve been in the beaver biz a long long time, I’ve seen folks amused, curious, frustrated, angry, or protective of beavers all across the hemisphere and beyond. But there are a few things that really surprise me and make me tear up. Reading about beaver benefits in the NYTimes, watching our beaver story on London TV, and getting in the congressional record all spring to mind.

But this surpasses all of them.

First a little background. Years ago when Mike Callahan finished his beaver solutions DVD one of his first buyers was the ‘Skunk Whisperer’ from Oklahoma. He’s a remarkable wildlife defender that really wanted to know how to solve beaver problems so that folks would be able to stop killing them. He watched the video, talked to Mike, and learned about flow devices. And he waited.

And waited.

Seems no one in the state would hire him to do this work and save beavers. It was much easier to kill them. Never mind the drought. Never mind the fish. Just kill them every time. Ned was committed though. He decided he’d offer to do the installation for free just to show that it would work.

Still he waited.

Turned out, no one in is entire state could see any reason to try coexisting with beavers when it was so easy to shoot them. Really. Even the universities in OK teach classes about how bad beavers are. No one wants them. Not the farmers, or the duck hunters, or the fisherman. They are not welcome.

So you can imagine how surprised I was to find this:

I have a brand new beaver dam!

I am so ridiculously happy tonight you would not believe! Yes, this is the world’s dumbest little beaver dam, built by the world’s most juvenile and optimistic beaver. I will TOTALLY take it! Tonight I went out to the back corner of the property to look for oyster mushrooms. Instead, I found a beaver dam.

I live in central Oklahoma on 40 acres of land that belongs to my inlaws. Nobody has loved this land since before World War II, although there’s been constant activity in the form of a grazing lease and a couple of ancient but still producing oil wells.

There’s only one willow tree on the whole property, which I now plan to make the ancestor of an entire battalion of willows in the service of bank stabilization and erosion control. (My fantasy is that if I plant enough willows from cuttings, maybe some day the beaver will come back, build dams, and turn my dead ravines into beautiful pools. There’s beaver sign on this land — cut stumps — but none of it’s newer than ten years old.)

Late last summer I came upon one beaver stump near the property that was fresh enough that the chips were still visible by in on the ground. But the chips and the cut were weathered and grey, several months old at least.

Then today I was on county road that crosses the stream that’s in our ravine. The place where the road crosses is about 50 feet upstream from our property boundary, and it’s a culverted ford where the road surface serves as a shallow spillway when the water level is up, as it has been lately. Right in the middle of the road, left by the steam water, I found a fresh-cut beaver food stick!
That dumb little dam I found tonight is less than 24 inches high. It won’t survive the first rain event, I don’t think. I imagine it’s built by one juvenile beaver. But you know what? There’s a pond behind it that extends more than 200 feet up the ravine. And if you look closely at my blurry photo, there’s a black mark at the far end of the dam. That’s water, soaking upwards into dry soil. That’s my dumb little beaver dam already rehydrating the landscape.

It’s wintertime. I hope there are two beavers, busily making a whole family of beavers. That dam won’t survive the spring flood, but i want them to build it back six times as high.

I have felt for some time that given the available resources (not many), beavers were our only hope of rejuvenating the deeply-notched ravines that cross the middle of our property. I don’t care how many trees they eat — we weren’t using those trees anyway.

We have a beaver dam! My glee is probably out of proportion, but it’s just as real for all that. We have a beaver dam!

Dan from Oklahoma! Excited about beavers! As if it wasn’t enough to stumble on the excitement of the sole human glad to have a beaver dam on his property in OK, other folks actually responded to him with excitement on the same page! It’s a permaculture forum so folks were from all over, Michigan, British Columbia, Wyoming, Nevada New York, Idaho and one from Texas! And the responses weren’t “ew those rodents cause disease, kill it” or “this is the kind of dynamite you need to blow up that dam“. They were “Oh that’s wonderful! Beavers are so good for the water and land! Here’s a website I found on how to keep them!”

Honestly, it was like the entire internet was my Easter Egg Hunt and I just found the winning golden egg.

The post was dated 8 months ago, so of course I wrote Dan and asked about the dam. He wrote back that it failed in some hard rains and the little builder hadn’t been back unfortunately. But he was still eager to attract more and was thinking about planting willow along the bank to get them started. This morning another fellow from Las Vegas wrote how excited he was that the thread had started up again because so many states were using beavers to help save water.

So it turs out, some folks in Oklahoma are excited about beavers after all. I can’t wait to tell Ned.

Restoring Neighborhood Streams with beavers

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Beaver News, 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 or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? September 10, 2016

I had a nice surprise yesterday in the mail with the arrival of Ann Riley’s much awaited urban creek book. Her first one published 25 years ago and became the restoration bible. It is still a valuable asset and regarded as a necessary resource even though others on the subject have been published since. This second one is all about successful creek restoration stories – both labor intensive and natural. And guess who’s in it from page 171-179? That would be the story of the Martinez Beavers, who moved into an urban creek and transformed it all by themselves.

Riley has been a good friend of the beavers over the years but she wasn’t exactly forthcoming with this part of her book. It was strange and exciting to read our story told by an outsider and see myself consistently described as ‘Perryman’. Ha. The scan came out horrible but here are some wonderful segments worth sharing.

I love having this documented correctly in a book that will likely survive the next 25 years and beyond. Riley works for the SF waterboard and has done several trainings about planting trees out here. It’s through her that we were able to have the watershed stewards the last couple of years working with the conservation core. I particularly love how she cracks open the creek scientists pretend enviromental reports that the city paid for to have justification for their impulses. And of course I loved THIS.

How happy do you think the city will to be to read about that historic sheetpile? Maybe they’ll throw me a parade? That whole ordeal was such a nauseating bundle of tension that I have long repressed it: I was terrified every moment that the beavers would be killed. I can’t believe they survived. And I remain very partial to this video.

I am bursting with pride at this paragraph and you can certainly see why this reference made the wikipedia challenger disappear. Maybe its just me but I find it a little terrifying that many years ago in a panic I just happened to come across the 2005 ecological survey and made the decision to contrast it with the species we saw over time. I’m sure there were all kinds of reasons a well-trained person wouldn’t have done it. But I was right here when it all happened, and I remember how rare a thing it used to be to see a green heron or muskrat in the creek and how common it became.

Riley & Cory plan the attack! — *Ann Riley & WSP intern plan the tree planting*

More than anything else in the ENTIRE world I am wishing that some other city looks at this chapter and says hmmm, maybe we should try that. (And I’m looking at you, Mountain House). If allowing beavers to restore urban streams needed to be proven then I’m thrilled that Martinez was a testcase. I met Riley through Lisa Owens Vianni who I met through the SF bay Estuary project where she used to work. That got my foot in the proverbial door but it was my presentation at the Santa Barbra Salmonid Restoration Conference that impressed her.

She said it was might have been the best presentation they ever had.

There are a few picky things I would have changed about this chapter. The meeting wasn’t in chambers it was at the High School, and it was a Sacramento Splittail not a SPITTAIL and good lord I never want 5000 people at the beaver festival! But I’m so happy we’re in this very important book and the role our beavers played is documented forever. Thank you Ann Riley for bringing our story to the next level.

Anyone who cares about creeks and beavers should go buy a copy right now. It will pay for itself may times over.

A treasure box of beaver stories

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beaver Chewing, Beavers, 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? August 26, 2016

There are quite a few beaver treats to enjoy today. I guess we should start out with the ‘day off’ I gave myself after Placer. I had been waiting to try this and just needed the space between deadlines. From now on I’m officially working on the beaver mania clock, but this was pure enjoyment. Alert readers might recognize the audio from earlier in the year’s Scientific American podcast. But the graphics are all mine.

I sent this to Nick myself and Michael Pollock did told me he did too, but the champagne and thank you bouquet hasn’t arrived yet. I’ll let you know when it does.

Here’s another remarkable treat that arrived yesterday, this one completely without Heidi’s fingerprints. The funny thing is that my father worked for PGE all his life from the lowest oiler in Oakland to the coporate office on the 35th flood in San Francisco as General Manager of Operations. This is how he found a job for his shiftless immigrant son-in-law 30 years ago when the green card finally landed. Both men went on to retire from the company with generous pensions and mostly fond memories but maybe a little beaver intelligence survives in their absence?

Shasta County: PG&E Moves Gas Line to Prevent Beaver-Caused Leaks

ANDERSON — PG&E crews responded to a seemingly routine report of a gas odor on a rural residential road outside this Shasta County city. But what they found surprised them. PG&E crews recently relocated a gas line in Shasta County because of beavers chewing the line. They located the leak and dug to expose the gas line for repairs, revealing a void around the plastic line and chew marks on the pipe.

The void was a beaver den, which had likely been abandoned as the beaver came across the gas line and perhaps thinking it was a tree root, chewed away. As soon as the rodent punctured the line releasing gas, the beaver apparently gave up and left the unfinished den.

We knew the first time it happened it was a beaver,” said David Ferguson, a gas maintenance and construction supervisor in Redding. “We made the repair and thought it was an isolated incident,” he added. “But after it happened a few more times, about once every one or two years, we realized we needed to find a solution.”

Cherokee Drive on the road in southern Shasta County. The gas line lay next to the banks of Anderson Creek Overflow, which in recent years has had an incursion of beavers as the industrious rodent reclaims developed areas. On Wednesday (Aug. 24), PG&E crews finished the relocation job and began serving the four residential customers with the new gas line at a safe distance away from the beaver habitat.

And no I’m NOT making this up. I guess the explosions in San Bruno a few gave them so much trouble they are bending over backwards to show they’re nice guys? Maybe the decision was purely fiscal since sending someone out year year after year to fix the chewed pipe cost money. Whatever the reason I’m dam proud of PGE this morning!

Now, if you regretted not being a fly on the wall for the Placer presentation you’re in luck. I think this should be cued up right to watch on your own. There are only a few places where I flubbed up, but I’m still quite sure its the BEST beaver presentation Placer County as ever had.

(And I’m looking at you, Mary Tappel.)

Wide open beaver places

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? August 19, 2016

There’s a slick new beaver-friendly article in the online world. This one is from “Sonoma County Wildlife” and features Cheryl’s photos (one with misattributed credit to me). It’s one of those very confusing articles to review, because I’m very very happy with the tone, and the resources, but predictably frustrated with the details about us.

Why we need beavers

Environmental improvements to the landscape

By felling trees and making ponds, beavers create diverse micro-habitats, adding wetlands and deep pools. According to the OAEC report, fish, insects, birds and amphibians and river otters proliferate in beaver-influenced landscapes. Beaver dams slow down streams, reduce erosion, and allow water to sink into the ground. The ponds they make are deep, cool places where young fish, like coho salmon smolt, can survive through the summer.

Beaver increase diversity in plant life as well. Shallow parts of the beaver pond become wetlands and eventually meadows where unusual plant species can flourish. Beaver ponds and marshes help to filter out sediment and pollutants, making the downstream water cleaner. Wetlands support greater plant growth and also wet decomposition of plants which removes 5 to 40% of nitrogen pollution from stream water.

Beaver activity even sequesters carbon. Recent research shows that meadows and wetlands created by beavers capture more carbon than the grassland or forest that they replaced. One estimate by geologist Ellen Wohl is that a beaver meadow contains 10 to 30 times the carbon of a dry grassland, depending on its size and age.

See this kind of article is exactly the cowpusher we need to get reluctant farmers off the tracks and keep them from standing in the way of beaver success: detailed and scientific listings of their benefits, which is great at encouraging folks to think about beaver in a new way. I’m guessing that most of this article was based on the ‘Beaver in California” report from OAEC recently released. Because they got very minor details about general Vallejo right, and very obvious details about Martinez wrong.

Learning to live with the urban beaver

Beaver seem to be slowly moving back to the North Bay. A nonprofit in Martinez called Worth a Dam just held its 9th annual Beaver Festival, celebrating the more or less continuous occupation of a pond on Alhambra Creek since 2007. When beaver first moved into Alhambra Creek, in downtown Martinez, the city made plans to have them trapped and killed. A group of residents persuaded the city council to try an intervention that would keep the pond from flooding and it was successful. Beaver also appeared in downtown Napa in 2014 and are still there.

In Sonoma County there is only one verified beaver pond, on Sonoma Creek in Maxwell Farms Regional Park just outside the city of Sonoma. This is the second recent attempt by beavers to repopulate Sonoma Creek. According to an article in the Bohemian, a beaver family moved up Sonoma Creek to Glen Ellen in the 1990s, but was soon caught eating grapevines and exterminated. Left to themselves though, they will slowly re-populate our streams. Young beavers naturally disperse to find their own territory as adults and move from one watershed to another, either overland or by water.

Getting these techniques right involves understanding how a beaver thinks. When the City of Martinez ran an underwater pipe through the beaver dam to keep the pond below a certain level and prevent flooding, they made sure that the ingress and outlet of the pipe were both placed underwater since the sound of running water will prompt the beavers to build their dam higher. Also necessary is a change of human attitude, regarding beaver as environmental friends rather than enemies.

The funny thing is that this links to OUR description of the flow device and still manages to get the details wrong. The pipe goes over the dam and the outflow was above water in every condition but high tide. People over focus on the noise detail because they love the story about Michel LeClare discovering that beavers covered the tape recorder with mud. But in reality there are other essential things beavers respond to that we have no way of observing. Like feeling the suction created by a leak on their very sensitive vibrissa or guard hairs.

But really, you’re just being picky Heidi. These are minor details in some really good advertising for beavers. Thanks, Sonoma Wildlife!

Learning by Loss

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? August 16, 2016

Yesterday I stumbled across this wonderful interview with Derek Gow about beavers in England. I admit that I was originally drawn by the amusing photo which of course readers of this site should recognize right away. But let’s make allowances for the fact that they haven’t seen beaver in 400 years and cut them some slack.

It might take a moment to adjust to his Cornish accent, but the whole 15 minute interview is very, very good. I got especially fascinated by his discussion of the species that suffered when beavers were removed from the landscape. At around 2:13 he talks about the Large Copper Butterfly that relied as catapillars on the coppiced willow trees at the edge of forests beavers once provided that never really recovered from their removal. Next he talks about the Bearded Tit which feed their youngsters on the larvae from flooded reed beds that rarely occur in the absence of beavers. It made me realize what an incredible numbers of species beaver ponds affect that we never even consider.

The entire interview is the work of Open Learn and you might want to register and peek about to see what else they have. I’m very impressed with the work Derek has done to educate his countrymen about why beavers matter. It’s an uphill job but he points out that if we want folks in Kenya to coexist with truly destructive animals like elephants and Lions, we should be able to tolerate a little beaver interference!

Amen.