Category: Beavers and Birds

AUDUBON: WATER, BIRDS AND BEAVERS

This was nice to see, from the Colorado Rockies side of the Audubon family. Of course it’s true for all the other places water flows too. But you knew that.

Beavers Offer Help for Western Waters

Colorado and the West face unprecedented drought conditions, impacts from wildfires, and water scarcity driven by climate change. These changes threaten our local and regional water supplies, our food supply, bird habitat, economies, and our quality of life. Beavers can help mitigate these impacts. Beavers re-shape the landscapes where they live, creating wet meadow complexes in an otherwise dry area. These diverse wetlands provide important habitat for birds and other wildlife. Beaver wetlands even survived Colorado’s largest wildfire, the Cameron Peak Fire, and continue to provide critical water quality and wildlife habitat functions, a weighty win-win.

To learn more, Audubon Rockies staff went into the Poudre Canyon to capture images of the stark, burnt landscape surrounding vibrant green vegetation and clear flowing water at the Cameron Peak burn scar. We also caught up with an ecohydrologist and researcher who specializes in beavers, Dr. Emily Fairfax, to ask questions about the resilience and benefits of beaver complexes. Here’s what we learned. (more…)

ANOTHER DAMN BEAVER DAM CAM

I’ll be completely honest. I don’t love all the footage and studies from Voyageurs about wolves stalking beavers or doing everything they can to eat beaver mcnuggets. But they do some amazing trailcam work. And this is one of the best I’ve seen.

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A Beaver Dam: Fall to Winter

Here it is, the sequel to “A Beaver Dam: Summer to Fall.” It features more footage from a trail camera on a beaver dam at Kabetogama Peninsula in Voyageurs National Park.

The purpose of the camera was to confirm the area was a border for the territories of two wolf packs — the Nashata Pack and the Shoepack Lake Pack. The Nashata Pack is seen most frequently in this video. The pack has a distinctive breeding female who is seen bedding down in front of the camera toward the end of the video. She can also be seen “slipping” on the ice in another clip.

The Voyageurs Wolf Project, focused on understanding the summer ecology of wolves in the park, notes that there was a “very cold stretch last fall for several weeks in October during which all the ponds and lake edges froze,” so “some of the ‘wintry’ scenes in the video are actually from October and November.”

Kabetogama Peninsula is about 115 miles northwest of Duluth.

The interesting part is that with the exception of the wolves and the bobcat we got the exact same images from a beaver dam in downtown Martinez. But you knew that, didn’t you?

“IT MAY BE A DESTROYED POND, BUT AT LEAST THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME”

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and Birds, beavers and community, Beavers and Nitrates, What's killing beavers now? May 24, 2021

It’s the old story. Girl meets beaver pond. Girl loses beaver pond. You know the rest. This time it’s told from New York with trains.

Dammed pond dries out after state removes beaver dam

SARANAC LAKE — When the state removed train tracks for its rail trail project earlier this month it also removed a beaver dam that was creating a pond near where McKenzie Brook flows into Lake Flower.

Locals in the neighborhood who frequently walk along the tracks were shocked and upset. They say draining the pond of water is harming the wildlife living there. The state departments of Transportation and Environmental Conservation say the dam removal was permitted to prevent it from flooding and eroding the corridor, and that impacts to wildlife will be minimal.

“Two beaver dams were partially blocking water flow at a culvert and action was taken to mitigate potential for flooding,” DEC spokesperson JoMo Miller wrote in an email. “This is a common and necessary action for mitigating what can be a significant, costly and sometimes dangerous failure of infrastructure.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You know the railway explaining that it had to tie beavers to the tracks to prevent THE FLOODING. Everyone does it. You know how it is.

Barbara Kent has lived within a mile of the pond her entire life. Every day, several times a day, she walks her two dogs “Maisie” and “Marigold” on the train-track trails passing the pond, where she takes in the sylvan sights.

Turtles sun themselves on logs, herons swoop low to stand in the water, loons and mergansers feed on the water and frogs belch noisily. Kent said the beavers dammed up the water generations ago and their work has lasted decades.

“It was always there, always,” Kent said. “Everybody just loved it up there.”

Well you know how it is. You and some turtles live your life near a beaver pond. And the beavers get killed them the pond gets destroyed. It’s a dog’s life.

The water body on McKenzie Brook is known colloquially as “Toxic Pond” because the old landfill, now greened over, can be seen through the trees.

Kent was “mortified” when on May 7 she walked down and saw excavator tracks leading off the rails to the dam. The middle of the dam was torn out. Water that used to trickle through the dam underneath now poured over the top. The water level in the pond was dropping and mud could be seen all along the perimeter.

On May 18 the water had dropped low enough to expose tires, logs and beaver huts out in the pond.

The water flowed over the busted dam and through a culvert, to a pond between the Sara Placid Inn and Suites and the Best Western hotel, under another culvert on state Route 86 and into Lake Flower.

“I fell apart over it,” Kent said with a sad chuckle. “I’m 73 years old. It doesn’t take much to rattle me.”

Well, you gotta break eggs to make an omelette and destroy some ponds to keep the trains tracks nice and dry. You know how it is.

Kent said she has no problem with the rail trail project, a controversial topic in town. She just hopes it will be accessible to people of all abilities. But she also said work has been done on the train tracks before without needing to rip the dam out and she doesn’t think it was necessary now.

“Am I being unreasonable?” Kent asked. “This was breeding grounds for so much wildlife.”

The DEC claims the environmental impact will be small.

“While there may be local and short-lived impacts to wildlife, these impacts are not expected to be significant,” Miller wrote. “Some local wildlife species using this wetland may move to other wetland areas and riparian corridors within the immediate area, whereas other species may continue to use the area.”

Adirondack Park Agency Spokesperson Keith McKeever said his agency would defer to the DEC’s judgement in commenting on this issue, because it has jurisdiction.

Kent said she’s worried the now-dry edges of the pond pose a wildfire risk.

Come on, it’s just a little destruction. The turtles and the frogs and the fish gotta be used to that by now. Be reasonable. It’s for the trains!

Kent wondered if the beavers would rebuild their dam and if the state would return to remove it again.

Some don’t want to leave it to beavers. Kent said she’s seen other frequenters of the trail throwing branches back into the water to dam it up again. She’s not sure if this is illegal or will just be ripped out again.

Kent said this feels like it’s a “losing battle.”

She was even hesitant to tell the Enterprise at first.

“But I kind of felt I owed it to the turtles,” she said.

Kent loves the area and has many happy memories there. Her dogs know the trail by heart. Kent was ecstatic on Tuesday when she saw a heron — whom she’s named “Harry” — still flying around. But she’s concerned for the turtles, ducks, eagles and geese. She was worried that she didn’t see any loons.

She hopes they’ll all find another place to live and expects some of the turtles have taken up residence downstream in Lake Flower.

Sure the wildlife has had their home destroyed and the beavers are gone, but just look the tracks are super dry, isn’t that great? The problem with you is that you don’t appreciate the right things.

ROB RICH TALKS BEAVERS TONIGHT

heidi08 Beavers and Birds May 10, 2021

Montana is about to get a lot beaver smarter, and it couldn’t happen soon enough. Rob Rich is going to present tonight for the Audubon society in Bozeman and you just know he’s going to do an amazing job. Rob was once a writer for High County News and left to take a position with Swan Valley Connections. He is a big beaver believer and has been working behind the scenes to educate them on the connection between beavers and birds. Looks like his work is paying off,

Being Beaver: Ecology & Conservation

For its monthly program, Sacajawea Audubon Society will host a virtual event featuring a presentation by conservationist Rob Rich. “Being Beaver: Ecology & Conservation of a Keystone Species” will be held Monday, May 10th at 6:30pm.

Rob Rich works as conservation and education associate with Swan Valley Connections, where he coordinates diverse projects advancing watershed health and teaches field ecology in the Montana Master Naturalist program. Drawing on his experience with beaver restoration throughout the Pacific Northwest, Rich also works with the National Wildlife Federation to coordinate the Montana Beaver Working Group. He sometimes writes for Earth Island Journal, High Country News, Camas and other publications, but he’s most at home outside, exploring each day’s natural curiosities.,

Registration information for this virtual event can be found at www.sacajaweaaudubon.org.

When you go to Sacajawea Audubon you will see this photo and information about the wetlands they are working to build for the benefit of “birds and beavers”!!!

Please register for SAS’s May 10th Annual Program Meeting here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the webinar.

Share our virtual program using hashtags #beavers, #wetlands, and #IAWP.SAS programs are free and open to the public. Our programs feature a special guest speaker the 2nd Monday of each month, September through May. Join us for a virtual social at 6:30 pm.

Doesn’t that look good? I think it deserves our attention! And while I was snooping around for more online beaver programs I came across this graphic from the Kings County Water district. Kings County is the top of the beaver class that Martinez and Bozeman should be hoping to learn from.

ARE YOU SITTING DOWN?

heidi08 Beaver ponds, Beavers and Birds June 10, 2020

Pennsylvania is a hard state for beavers. We know only two supporters from that area. Mostly beavers are killed whenever they are seen. And even when it is noticed that their ponds help wildlife, like in this recently reprinted report from 1999, the appreciation is still pretty thin. Like Bilbo’s famous toast quote.

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

The Life of a Pond

On the margin of the lake where the feeder streams converge are a string of beaver ponds like tourmaline jewels. We paddle softly as we approach, portage neatly over the dam. We hardly notice its intricate web of mud and sticks, how with a minimum of materials it holds back the current and flattens it into a pool. We’re not here to appreciate beavers (they’re so secretive we rarely see them). We’ve come to the beaver ponds on this spring day to see ducks.

Of course we’re not here to see those nasty invisibeavers. No one ever sees them but weirdos and fishermen.

Beaver ponds are fine places for waterfowl, a recent study funded by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Penn State Cooperative Wetlands Center has confirmed.

“The Game Commission was particularly interested in waterfowl broods—mothers and their chicks,” says Diann Prosser, a graduate student in wildlife ecology who with Robert P. Brooks, professor of wildlife and wetlands, investigated beaver pond succession—the stages a pond goes through during its life span.

You don’t say. Beaver ponds are good places for birds! Get out! Next you’ll be telling me they’re good places for fish and frogs too! How much rubbish do you expect one woman to believe?

Beaver ponds are active for about 30 years. The first stage (which Prosser calls “new active”) begins when a stream is dammed and a pond forms. The trees and bushes, their roots drowned, give shade and leafy cover. Eventually they die and rot (or are cut down and eaten, depending on their size and species). Then the beavers must travel further afield to forage, and the dam is widened and the pond enlarged, during this “old active” stage. Trunks and stumps dot the pond, but few shade trees remain except on the edges. The pond is carved with channels, a mix of open water and shrubby hummocks. After the beavers leave the “abandonment” stage—the dam eventually breaks and the water subsides. Grasses and shrubs recolonize the pondflats, and slowly it returns to woodland.

I am sure this happens sometimes. But it’s always bothered me that this idea of beavers eating their way out of house and home doesn’t take into account that as the pond grows conditions improve for more aspen or willow or cottonwood. That’s why beavers are called ‘willow farmers’ by some. They eat willow and their actions increase the very thing they need most.

Unlike, oh say, humans.

Prosser and Brooks surveyed beaver ponds in all three stages, looking not for beaver but for birds. They found all six of Pennsylvania’s common waterfowl breeding on beaver ponds: Canada goose, wood duck, greenwinged teal, American black duck, hooded merganser, and mallard. “New active” ponds and “old active” ponds produced the most waterfowl. Geese seemed to prefer the older, more open ponds; while wood duck, hooded merganser, and black duck liked newer ponds with more cover.

Whether you look at the beginning, middle or the end, beaver ponds are havens for wildlife. And here’s a corollary: killing beavers is bad for bird and wildlife populations. Capeesh?

Marsh and song birds also frequented beaver ponds. The American bittern and Virginia rail, both secretive waders, were found in older ponds, as were the alder flycatcher and redwinged blackbird. The Louisiana waterthrush and Acadian flycatcher visited active ponds; the swamp sparrow, common yellowthroat, and veery lived in all three pond habitats.

“A beaver pair’s goal in building a dam is to create a pond where they can build a lodge, hide from predators in the water, raise offspring, and store food for the winter,” says Prosser. “In the process, they are creating a variety of wetland habitat for waterfowl and other birds.”

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