Friends saving beavers! I watched this video public comment yesterday and it gave me total PTSD flashbacks of our November meeting, lo those many years go. Caitlin does a great job starting the conversation AND rallying the troops, despite the fairly dickish admonishment to “Talk to staff, not us”. I love the sleeper cell confrontation in the last speaker who points to an article two years ago and says “If its such a terrible problem why haven’t you done anything yet?”
Now there’s a man after my own heart.
I fiddled a bit more with Elizabeth Saunders lovely illustration and was very happy indeed, until Bruce Thompson of Wyoming suggested there was an unfortunate urinary tract association. Sheesh. There’s always a critic. Still, when I got over the giggles, I was still this.
Artist Mario Alfaro came by yesterday with his latest additions and Ron Bruno came down to do a lovely panoramic so the city could see the final product. Note the fish in the mouth of the egret and the lurking frog in the corner! Click to see larger.
The only other thing we would like for him to incorporate is the top of the filter sticking out upstream. I gave him this photo yesterday and we’ll hope its possible.
Final news. Nearly month after a resident reported a beaver tailslap and sighting in the area next to the creek monkey, Linda Kozlowski sent this right before daylight savings:
hey! this is probably old news to you but…at about 5:45 (just now…still light out) was standing on north side if escobar and saw a b.a.b. (big ass beaver) come part way up on the bank just a bit north of the old lodge and forcefully pry a stick out of the mud and swim across with it to the other side….for sure went no further downstream. not as big as old dad but pretty big. cheers!
It’s the kind of news that’s almost too hope-inducing to bear, but we’ll head down tonight and check it out. The part that made me chuckle was realizing that BIG STICK he was trying to pry out of the ground was one of the cotton wood stakes we planted this November. Funny thing is, I almost couldn’t bear to go thru with the planting because the city was being so horrible and the beavers were gone. Then I thought, well if I was a returning beaver checking to see what was if there was anything worth coming back for, some fresh tasty trees might convince me.
This document is so packed with information it will take a while to upload but I thought it deserved to be browse-able. To download your own go to their website. You won’t regret it!
Incredible new achievement from our friends at Cows and Fish in Alberta. They are smart persuaders of beaver benefits for some pretty tough customers. And this really well-designed document covers all the issues and then some. Honestly, these are some of the finest beaver illustrations I’ve seen (besides Amelia’s of course!) I had to show you this one especially. Doesn’t that just say it all?
And just in case that news isn’t exciting enough, try this new research from the forest service, to be published next month in the Journal of Fresh Water Biology.
Beaver (Castor canadensis) alter freshwater ecosystems and increase aquatic production, but it is unknown how these changes influence the magnitude and lateral dispersal of aquatic nutrients into terrestrial ecosystems.
We examined differences in abundances of dominant aquatic invertebrates, wolf spiders (Lycosidae), and deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), at beaver and non-beaver sites. We used stable isotopes to track aquatic-derived carbon in terrestrial consumers and linear mixed-effects models to examine the importance of beaver presence and distance from stream channel on the percentage of aquatic-derived carbon in terrestrial consumers.
Sites with beaver activity had >200% higher aquatic invertebrate emergence rates as well as 60% and 75% higher abundances of spiders and deer mice, respectively, relative to non-beaver sites.
More beavers mean more bugs. Haven’t I always told you that? The USFS has been kind enough to count how many. And then look at all the happy spiders and deer mice who get to eat them. Hurray! I can’t wait until the entire article is available but this is a great place to start. Thanks!
Yesterday we worked on the project for this year’s Earth day and made stencil’s for these. Jon was kind enough to model, but just imagine 100 kids walking around with these on the day. We just found out that two of our hearty regulars won’t be able to help out that day! Maybe you are free on April 23rd and want to honor the spirit of John Muir by helping beavers? If you might, email me and I’ll make it sound even better! It’s a beautiful day, lots of ecologically minded folks, and beaver-admiring children. Persuaded yet?
Although an alleged recent sighting of a lone beaver in Martinez might bring some hope for their return, it still seems no answers have been forthcoming regarding the sudden disappearance of the Alhambra Creek beaver colony late last year.
According to Heidi Perryman of Worth a Dam, a beaver was spotted near Creek Monkey Taphouse on February 18 by a Martinez resident. The sighting is the first reported since September of last year, around the time when several young beavers suddenly and inexplicably died in the Alhambra Creek. During that time several adult beavers also disappeared, leaving the creek void of beavers for months.
Perryman says the lone beaver is likely what is known as a “disperser,” a young beaver seeking territory to mark as his or her own. She explained that currently there is no evidence that the beaver decided to stay in the creek.
Months ago, the California Department of Fish and Game oversaw the necropsy performed on a young beaver at UC Davis, however tests were inconclusive. Disease, toxins, and some poisons were all ruled out as well.
While it seems no answers or progress have been made on determining the cause of the beaver deaths, Perryman and Worth a Dam are hoping to honor their legacy in Martinez.
Worth a Dam has been working with the city on a wildlife and beaver mural to adorn the cement surface of Marina Vista Bridge Wall. Back in November Perryman pitched the idea to the PRMCC of a mural located on the south facing side of the Marina Vista Bridge at Alhambra Creek.
“The beavers made a real impact on Martinez, and that’s something we want to capture with this mural,” said Perryman. She hopes the mural reminds people of the “living creek” that runs through the center of downtown Martinez.
The artist for the mural is Mario Alfaro, who has also worked on the Joe DiMaggio mural on the Main Street Plaza Bridge. The cost of the mural will be covered by Worth a Dam for a total of $6,000. The organization hopes to cover the cost with grants.
The art committee of the PRMCC approved the mural design, so the next steps come with the city council. Perryman noted that, because the city council meeting agenda is fully booked for the month of March, the project likely won’t be on the council agenda until April.
I’m always happy when accurate and positive information about the beavers and Worth A Dam is printed. Thanks, Joseph Bustos. You made the mural even more inevitable by linking it in the press to the loss of the beavers. Hopefully it will help nudge us a little farther along queue for getting on the Agenda for city council! Fingers crossed.
Imagine how surprised I was to come across this yesterday with the help of a friend. I don’t know how I missed it in the flurry of the holidays and retirement. But imagine how especially surprised I was to read the bold sentence from Dr. Michael Pollock himself;
At Wenas Creek, they are putting in manmade beaver-dam analogues by pounding posts into the streambed and then weaving branches among them. A few workers can run a post pounder with biodegradable hydraulic fluid and achieve hydrological results similar to those of an imported-beaver colony. The result, says Tobin, is that, “fish and farms coexist in the same reach.”
The natural solution: beavers. In the past, “problem” beavers have been relocated to streams in need. Their dams back up the water, raising streambeds while still allowing passage for salmonids. The downside is that it costs money to trap beavers and house them prior to relocation, and despite the offer of seemingly ideal habitat, they sometimes leave. Besides, says Tobin, manager of the North Yakima Conservation District, “you can’t control where they’re backing up water.”
Enter Michael Pollock of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who pioneered the idea of reinforcing blown-out beaver dams with posts. “That’s the best strategy, because they’ve already done all the work,” says Pollock. “We’re just reducing the dams’ failure rate.”
Pollock suggested dispensing with beavers altogether.
SACRILEGE! Some one hand me the smelling salts, I’m feeling faint. And tell me, how are repairs going to be made on those dams once injury occurs? Will a team of humans be living on sight just in case? Will they also dig in the mud to encourage invertebrates? And how will the trees coppice with no one to chew them?
Of course a sentence like that could NOT go unchallenged. So I sent him this last night:
With the exception of this aberrant infraction, he’s still mostly a good guy and at his heart a beaver believer. He quickly wrote back:
You are having way too much fun with your new found skills. 🙂
Which I confess, is wholly true. That was the most fun I had all week.
Last July, Alyth flooded badly and a young farmer started a rumour that the beavers on our land had exacerbated the flood. He tweeted his theory to the media and the story spread like wildfire, though very few locals believed it: apart from anything else, it was clear that upstream beaver dams had all held firm.
SNH then commissioned a study that showed the beavers were not to blame. But this month things got even better when research that has been done on our land over the last 13 years by Stirling University was published and the beavers were not just exonerated, but shown to actually slow floodwaters and thus reduce the impact of flooding, as well as increasing biodiversity & soil retention and stripping out pollutants.
Of course, for these farmers the presence of beavers is something real in a way that for the majority of people it isn’t. They have to deal with beavers busily trying to re-wild their land, to slow the flow of water in their ditches which are meant to hurry water off the fields as fast as possible. They have to confront the beavers’ desire to create wildlife rich, bee loud, water purifying wetland habitat by backing water up into the edges and hollows of their valuable arable fields, and they are not over the moon about it.
Lets pause a minute just to savor the delicious word choice at work here. The innocuous and unassuming phrase “bee loud” just appears to be an oddly phrased reference to noisy insects, unless you are familiar with arguably the most famous poem describing longing for rural life in the context of the city that was ever written. You may know it as the Lake at Innisfree. Do not think, for one moment, that it was by accident Louise evoked that hymnal of longing for a wild life. She wants the reader to remember their own longing clover and clear water. Here’s Mr. Yeats himself singing his words.
People remember more farmland birds in the past, more butterflies, more flowers, more bees. Now they see farming methods which use artificial fertilisers produced by the use of large amounts of fossil fuels, raided from the earth, set alight and polluting the sky. They see huge tractors with deep ploughs churning the earth, and they see brown water flowing off the land in times of flood and brown dust blowing in the air in dry summers. They worry that the very soil on which our food security depends, is in danger of impoverishment, and of being blown away or washed out to sea. They worry rightly. This kind of farming which has been the prevalent kind for the last 50 years, is extractive not regenerative. According to a Sheffield University study published in the Farmers Weekly it has left us with soils that in many cases just have 100 harvests left.
Meanwhile uphill, on the sheep farms, we landowners are also under scrutiny from the progressively larger sector of the public that is getting its head round the thorny questions of flood prevention and biodiversity loss in the uplands. Sheep farming has been carried out in some of our hills for hundreds of years, often responsibly and with great dedication, and some sheep farmers are not surprisingly upset to be told they are ‘sheepwrecking’ the countryside. But as globalization hits the price the farmer gets for lamb it becomes difficult to justify economically such a highly subsidized traditional activity, and as climate change progresses it becomes harder to defend environmentally, especially in our highest and most vulnerable landscapes.
As organisations like Nourish Scotland know all too well, we need to take a long hard look at agriculture and try and be more rational and less traditional in our approach. We need to look back, but also forward to new kinds of farming being tried around the world. We need to consider the true costs of various kinds of farming and see whether they can really justify the impacts they have by the food security they offer us. Ask again whether its true that higher productivity of industrial farming really gives it the edge over organic farming. Look at the possibilities for influencing what people eat and steer them towards food grown in the least extractive, most regenerative ways.
With climate change, its causes and its effects, fossil fuels and flooding, or drought or storms, everything has to change. We can’t go on as we are just watching it get worse and we farmers and landowners, who after all have a far bigger impact than most people, a far greater chance to make a difference for good or bad, really need to start listening to what the rest of the population are saying and change our ways before things get any worse. Just for a small but symbolic start let’s hope by the time you are reading this beavers will be legally protected in Scotland and the farmers will be applying their pragmatic minds to the question of mitigation rather than getting their guns out of the locked cupboard and heading for the waters edge at dusk.
Beautiful summing up Louise! You have embroidered the separate threads of beavers, food politics, climate change and biodiversity into a delicate and powerful coat of arms for supporters to brandish in united sensibility. This was a well done piece of inspiration and perspiration and we here in Martinez could not be more impressed! I hope this finely crafted article gets all the audience it deserves!
Yesterday was cheerfully blessed with a couple more donations. The first this charming print by Shirley Harvey of Montreal Canada. I know several bass players who will start a bidding war for this.
Shirley Harvey Art
And some striking prints from Amy Calderwood’s Vavooxi of Kansas. Isn’t this beautiful?
Poor France. They are too busy eating nice food and rejecting refugees that they haven’t any time left to finish a complete thought. The harried things can only have half-ideas and not carry them thru to their logical conclusions. Descartes would be so disappointed.
A BEAVER colony is threatening the water supply of the 40,000 residents of a town in the Ardennes.The animals, who have lived in the area for two years, set up their first dam in November across the River Audry.
Since then they have added another six to their roster, across tributaries to the river.
Their work means that during heavy rain the rivers frequently burst their banks, taking detritus and pollution on a new course into the local reservoir – the water supply for the 40,000 people of Charleville-Mézières.
That’s right, those 6 dams block sediment and pollution from getting into the reservoir for most of the year – but when they wash out all that bad stuff whooshes down stream at once. What the article doesn’t say (because of their unfinished-thought-affliction) is that if only the beavers weren’t there the waterway could release gradual toxins all year long into the water supply. You know, like they’re supposed to.
Dam beavers!
Out in Napa the beavers are so busy ruining things that they are cramming the waterways with fish, which attracts other nuisances who gut and shit their fish into the water without any respect for the reservoirs. Take this photo from Rusty Cohn and this short video from Robin Ellison: classic examples of the many troubles beavers bring!
Hooded Merganser pair: Rusty Cohn
And it gets worse. Yesterday, Dr. Ellen Wohl send me this video taken by her student documenting beaver activity at Crystal Creek in Yellowstone National Park. I know you’ll be SHOCKED to see all the riffraff beaver bring to that pristine wilderness! Thank goodness France, Martinez and Napa will probably be spared these particular visitors!
Artist Mario Alfaro came by yesterday with his latest additions and Ron Bruno came down to do a lovely panoramic so the city could see the final product. Note the fish in the mouth of the egret and the lurking frog in the corner! Click to see larger.
The only other thing we would like for him to incorporate is the top of the filter sticking out upstream. I gave him this photo yesterday and we’ll hope its possible.
Final news. Nearly month after a resident reported a beaver tailslap and sighting in the area next to the creek monkey, Linda Kozlowski sent this right before daylight savings:
