Category: Beavers and Birds

Are you saturated with good beaver news yet?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? June 20, 2017

beaver and gbh — *Beaver and Great blue heron: Rusty Cohn*

It’s getting to be a pretty beautiful time for beavers. We have wonderful stories floating out of Cornwall, Canada and California. Need icing on your cake? Rusty of Napa just photographed one of his beavers carrying a rock to reinforce the dam. Just remember you saw it here first!

After all the excited prodding to broaden the beaver started naturally in Devon, the Wildlife Trust used some crowd sourcing and pointed messaging to get some new beavers released on farmland there. Derek Gow was excitedly posting photos of the release of one of his yearlings and it looks like a hundred photographers showed up for the event.

Beavers have been returned to Cornwall after being hunted to extinction

A partnership between the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the Woodland Valley Farm has now reintroduced them, hoping not only to bring back the much loved creature back to its natural habitat, but also help keep create new wildlife habitat.

Farm owners, Chris and Janet Jones have spent three and a half years working towards the release, which they hope will help to combat severe flooding that the area has suffered over recent years and help enhance the wildlife.

A Crowdfunder campaign was also set up to make sure that the project could go ahead. A total of £15,000 was raised to pay for the installation of the 650m beaver-proof fence.

*The new kit: Photo and beaver thanks to Derek Gow*

Two European beavers, one male and one female, have now been reintroduced to the farm in Ladock near Truro.

Farm owner Chris said: “It was one of the best days of my life with the release of a pair of adult European beavers at our site near Ladock. The whole day progressed with excitement building up until we actually let the beavers out of their crates at 4pm, in bright warm sunshine.

“The beavers seemed to be enjoying exploring their new home, and the assembled witnesses were fascinated at having such a tremendous view of these normally shy and hard to spot animals.

“It has taken three and a half years to get this point, and followed from my thinking about natural ways to reduce flood risk following the flooding incidents in Ladock in 2012. Cornwall Wildlife Trust has been brilliant partners in getting this project off the ground, and the Crowdfunding campaign, without which we could never have got here.”

The results of the study are hoped to show whether beavers could help Cornwall combat flooding. If so, there could be a possibility of beavers once again returning to their native land to live wild in Cornwall.

Well, good luck to the second beaver brigade in Devon! Of course there would be important news about beavers from the home of my ancestors, because why the heck not?

Now on to the bigwig anthropologist in Canada who took some time to promote his upcoming TED talk to mention about Elephants and Lions to mention the animal the country should love best. And I’ll give you a hint. It ain’t the polar bear.

Going Wild with anthropologist Brian Keating

Honourary Conservation Advisor, Calgary Zoological Society and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Calgary Brian Keating was the featured speaker at a very well attended event at Heritage Acres on the evening of June 9. His presentation, titled ‘In Our Backyard, The Last of the Great North American Plains’ was hosted by Livingstone Landowners Group (LLG). LLG board member Kevin Van Tighem acted as MC for the occasion.

Keating’s talk was interspersed with several videos that he narrated live, covering a small portion of his travels to over 49 countries, and one from his own riverfront yard in Calgary following the fearless construction efforts exploits beavers there. He also gave a warm recommendation for the book ‘The Beaver Manifesto‘ by University of Alberta Professor of Environmental Science Glynnis Hood. “Every Canadian needs to read this book, because the beaver represents us,” said Keating, explaining beavers change the landscape around them and create biodiversity.

HA! You don’t say, Brian. I think saying every Canadian should read it is thinking just a little too small, don’t you?

Here are the lovely promised rock-setting photos by Rusty Cohn of Napa, along with one of my all time favorites. I decided to do them as a gallery so you can see the sequence. Double click on a photo to see it full sized. And Thank you Rusty

And here’s looking at you, kit.

seeing nose to nose — *Here’s looking at you, kit: Photo Rusty Cohn*

Too many good things for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Chewing, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 16, 2017

Some days I just can’t keep up with the hot number of good news stories reported about beavers. I’m already over the moon because Jon picked up the generous puppet donation from Folkmanis yesterday and we received our posters back from the printer. Didn’t this illustration of Alex Riley’s quote, my design and Coyote Brush Studios‘ beautiful artwork turn out extraordinary?

The plan is to sell these at the festival and by mail, although we haven’t settled on a price yet and technically they’ll be thank you gifts for donations, not sales! They are 18 x 24 and would make a wonderful classroom or visitor’s center poster!

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, this morning there’s a fantastic story out of Alberta about the always inspiring Cows and Fish teaming up with the Miistakis institute to undertake a massive survey an beaver education project, to learn how best approach the landowners.

Is Canada’s national animal a boon or a pest?

Beavers: love them, hate them or ambivalent?

A recently launched survey seeks to learn Alberta landowners’ attitudes about one of Canada’s national symbols. Alberta’s Cows and Fish society has partnered with the Miistakis Institute, a non-profit research group associated with Mount Royal University, on a survey to assess landowners’ knowledge and perception about beavers, their habitat and their management.

There are benefits and drawbacks to having beavers on the property, and survey results will be used to further develop education and outreach on the role of beavers in the ecosystem.

“Beavers are a really important keystone species in our ecosystems and they provide some really critical function within our watersheds, and people don’t know a lot of that,”said Miistakis executive director Danah Duke. “We recognize that beavers cause a lot of damage. They take down trees, they flood areas. We recognize that and we recognize that in order for people to be able to coexist with beavers, we need to be able to manage beavers.”

Duke said she suspects many people don’t realize all the benefits beavers provide, such as raising the water table, slowing stream flow, creating habitat for biological diversity and making stopgaps against drought.

“Beaver ponds retain water 50 percent longer than stream sections with no beaver activity, so in times when water is scarce, we find places that have beavers and beaver ponds, water stays on the landscape longer.”

Anyone in Alberta is welcome to take the survey, but the project is aimed at southern Alberta for the moment, said Duke. Organizers are hoping to receive at least 400 responses so that they have statistically significant results.

I am so beyond impressed with the good work Cows and Fish is doing and has been doing since long before Martinez started to play. You can check out the great survey here, I was already their outlier this morning. It’s well done and obviously sneaks in a little education at the same time as it asks questions. Just check out this question which must come as close as a beaver survey can to being a push-poll.

I sure hope during their data analysis they recognize me and wave hello!

A final burst of good news just came from author Ben Goldfarb who is writing the newest book on beavers. He just found out he is the winner of the Aldo Leopold Mi Casita fellowship which means he gets to write his book at Leopold’s home in Taos. It’s a huge honor and beavers and Ben couldn’t deserve it more.

Leopold’s ‘Mi Casita’ residents focus on environment projects

Wolves, beavers and the land ethic are the areas of interest for this year’s participants in the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program, which is now in its fifth year. The residents will spend a month in late summer at the Leopolds’ first home located on U.S. Forest Service land in Tres Piedras.

Ben Goldfarb, a science and environment writer from New Haven, Connecticut, will continue working on a book project about the ecological and hydrological benefits of North American beaver restoration.

In fall 1912, Aldo Leopold, then the newly appointed supervisor of the Carson National Forest, married Estella Luna Otero Bergere, a prominent daughter of Santa Fe. They moved into their new house, called “Mi Casita.”

It was at Mi Casita that Aldo Leopold found his footing as a leader in forestry and conservation. He once described conservation as “the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.”

The U.S. Forest Service restored the Leopold house in 2007 and has joined with other residency partners to make it available for the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program.

The sponsors of the residency program aimed to promote a transformative “unfolding” by inviting conservation-minded writers, artists, teachers, professionals and practitioners to Mi Casita. Each resident receives a stipend of $500 to help defray travel and living expenses.

Ben says the residence committee was certain Aldo would approve, and we of course agree. He notes that Aldo’s son Luna who wrote so much about fluvial geomorpology never mentioned beavers. But here’s a secret fun fact. Luna was the dissertation chair of Ann Riley who’s recent book on restoring neighborhood streams has a chapter on the Martinez Beavers.

So I think this was all meant to be, don’t you?

Marching towards victory

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? June 10, 2017

Yesterday was a VERY good day. We had three thrilling pieces of very good news, consisting of 1) for the very first time we get a US Forest Service exhibit at the festival which we never did before, 2) that the Alhambra Valley Band is confirmed in some variation, and 3) that Brock Dolman is going to appear in beaver costume to talk about beaver benefits on stage. I am so happy when things fall into place that I start looking immediately on the horizon for the dark cloud (or piano) that will inevitably follow.

But things are going in the right direction. I’m definitely happy for that.

Meanwhile, in the world of false beaver accusations, cranky old men are still saying crazy things about beavers, just in case you were curious.

Critter built impoundment beneath railroad bridge spurs Tom McDonald to action.

Over time, he sold most of the 11 acres. Other developers created the Portland Fairview RV Park, and a cozy cluster of single-family homes sprung up around Palisade Drive, Heartwood Circle and other residential streets. McDonald owns just a sliver of land between the RV park and Northeast 217th Court. Fairview Creek runs right through the tract, and Union Pacific’s railroad trestle is just a stone’s throw away.

That’s where the problems began, and McDonald had what he described as a “Holy cripes!” moment.

“We were out talking (and) walking around, and beavers were popping up around our feet,” McDonald relates. “They put a delay on our deal because it was so wet.”

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

“Looking at the situation from a layman’s view, it appears that area is ‘honeycombed’ with beaver burrowing,” McDonald said.

Because you know how beavers like to burrow in wetlands. Dig Dig Dig, that’s what beavers do. And destroy train trestles, like in those silent movies.

Honestly, is the crazyoldmanvan coming for you soon? I mean what would be the POINT of a beaver digging in flooded banks? They obviously aren’t making a lodge inside them. Now I suppose they theoretically could be making a canal to drag supplies through, but do you honestly think the metal and cement pilings and steel girders of the modern train trestle are going to be troubled by a bunch of beavers?

I’m a little doubtful about the 6 foot dam myself. I mean our dam was assessed by PWA once as 7 feet tall but that was because they were lying and measuring with sticks of terror. You can tell it’s not 7 feet tall because the man in the front filming is Moses Silva of sturdy Mayan frame and just over 5 feet. Assuming his mystery dam was as high as ours that means those beavers had a lot of resources to choose from.

Looking at this it’s kind of amazing to think that mom and Dad made this whole thing by themselves back then, because there were no yearlings to help.

Now I’m officially looking forward to our summer lineup. Here’s Brock as Buster Beaver at the Daily Acts breakfast in Sonoma in 2014.

Buckle up, Buttercup. I think Beavers are coming

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Educational, Environmental May 31, 2017

Isn’t that always the way it is. I start to sniff the faintest hint of an upcoming beaver battle and then boom! it shows up in Spades. Here’s a feisty warrior from the newest issue of YES magazine.

In California Wine Country, Restoring Salmon Habitat After More Than a Century of Dams

Wander out the back door of the tasting room at Truett Hurst Winery in Sonoma County, California, and follow the dirt path to the red Adirondack chairs next to Dry Creek. Look just downstream to the side channel that splits off the main waterway. You will see sets of interwoven logs and overturned trees with roots that splay along the banks. These aren’t the result of a particularly rough storm—they are there by design. As Dry Creek rushes by, these logs and root beds point the way to a newly excavated side channel—prime habitat for spawning and juvenile salmon.

In freshwater waterways along the coast from Marin to Mendocino counties, agencies are restoring salmonid streams to create habitat diversity, areas that provide deep pooling, predator protection, and side channels of slower-moving water. California salmon are in dire straits. Decades of dam building and development have destroyed or altered salmon habitat, eliminating the diversity of habitat these fish need.

As a result, salmon populations have plummeted. The number of coho salmon that return to the California waterways from the Pacific Ocean each year has dropped from around 350,000 in the 1940s to less than 500 in 2009. Although they’ve rebounded slightly, numbers are still 90 percent to 99 percent below historic levels, and many scientists are worried that California’s historic five-year drought followed by an exceptionally rainy winter could wreak further havoc.

These habitat restoration projects are one tool being employed to try to prevent California salmon from going extinct. Ettlinger says that in Marin there has been a growing movement for another type of project—reintroducing beavers. “Beaver ponds are ideal salmon nurseries,” he says. “In the salmon restoration community, it’s become apparent that coho and beavers evolved together.” Plus, “a lot of the wood replacement we’re doing now in Lagunitas Creek the beavers would do for free.”

Don’t look at me. I didn’t say it.

Apparently things are gearing up for a first-rate struggle between salmon supporters and bird lovers, which makes as little sense as anything I can imagine. Obviously they should both be lining up to welcome beavers with bowers of willow branches and safe harbors. It is in their interest to support the services of this well known ecosystem engineer who creates essential habitat and rearing grounds for salmon AND birds. But I’ve seen people act against their own self-interest before, so who knows what will happen?

It all really couldn’t be more perfect timing for me to march into Marin Audubon next week. I sense a lot of drama coming their way, and for once I won’t even be the cause of it!

The Johny Appleseed of beaver controversy?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and water, City Reports, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? May 30, 2017

St. Augustine of Hippo was one of the early Christian converts who went on to become a great Catholic theologian. He was a sinful young man raised by a devout mother who prayed for his conversion so often he was called “The son of so many tears“. Eventually the holy spirit persuaded him to read the letters of Paul who was also the subject of a dramatic conversion. He went on to become a great believer and defender of the church. He was known for his treatise on marriage, mortality and even the recommendation not to always take the bible literally. But he is most known for the rather embarrassing prayer of his youth which went something like,

“Oh Lord, make me pure, but not yet”

Which basically translates in a very human way to saying, ‘God I know chastity is good for my soul, but can’t it be for my body first just once please?’ And when I tell you more you will know exactly why St. Augustine sprung to mind recently.

Things on my end have been pretty focused on the upcoming beaver presentation in Marin that I mentioned yesterday. It’s especially great timing because I can plug the festival AND tie in with the push to bring back beavers in the county. I was asked way back in the winter to present by the VP who organizes the speaker series. No problem, I said.

Yesterday I received word that the powers that be do NOT support beaver reintroduction in Marin, and after reading my article ask please, that I don’t recommend it. Enter Augustine.

I replied that my talk would focus on what beavers did in Martinez and of course I think every Audubon everywhere should be doing everything it could to coexist with beavers, but that I had nothing to do with Dr. Meral’s push for reintroduction in Marin and wouldn’t mention it. (To be honest, I actually don’t think beavers NEED to be reintroduced, because I know of at least three incidents where they turned up in the forbidden county on their own and will undoubtedly do so again in the future.)

But for a dark moment I once again felt that familiar vice grip that I remember from my 90 days on the beaver subcommittee. “Don’t offend the wrong people by arguing with them, but somehow show them somehow that they’re wrong anyway!” Does beaver controversy follow me wherever I go, like the peanut character Pigpen’s dust cloud? Am I the Johnny Appleseed of controversy?

I’ll do what I can, of course to show that there are plenty of ways to live with beaver in almost any setting, and a host of benefits for doing so. Who knows what will happen? It might be hotter water than I was expecting, but that should make for good attendance and lively discussion. I started of course by looking up the president to see what I’ll be dealing with. Here she is talking about the importance of buying property to protect WETLANDS. Hey I know something that can help with that.