Category: Beavers and climate change

MEMO TO CDFG ON WATER RESILIENCE

Good lord, it’s August 5th already.

This week is the CDFG listening session about water resilience, where they need to hear from smart folk about beavers and why they matter both for water storage, drought and fire resilience AND species habitat protection.

Let me just review my notes.

I have to start working on my presentation for Rossmoor and to top it off they’re paving our street so we can’t park at the house or around the corner for 4 days AND it’s the final week before Jon’s birthday.

There’s so much to do!

WATER RESILIENCE PORTFOLIO INITIATIVE LISTENING SESSION

The Commission is hosting this public listening session to offerstakeholders an opportunity to provide input on what constitutes a “climate resilient water portfolio” for California and, specifically, on water resiliency for fish and wildlife.

State agencies are asking Californians to help shape a roadmap for meeting future water needs and ensuring environmental and economic resilience through the 21st century. Input from the public will help the California Natural Resources Agency, California Environmental Protection Agency, and California Department of Food and Agriculture craft recommendations to fulfill Governor Newsom’sApril29executiveorder, calling for a suite of actions to build a climate-resilient water system and ensure healthy waterways.

Ooh ooh I know! Call on me!

How much do I wish I could be there on capitol hill for this very important meeting with a dozen supporters in the balcony so that when I leap to my feet during audience feedback they all unfurl a huge banner with this emblazened on the front.

For those of us who can’t be there in person, the entire meeting will be live streamed at www.fgc.ca.gov the day of the meeting and they are accepting written feedback.

Submitting Written Materials: The public is encouraged to attend the listening session and engage in the discussion about items on the agenda; the public is also welcome to comment on agenda items in writing. To see a calendar of related events and learn how to provide input directly to the California Water ResiliencePortfolio Initiative,please visitwww.WaterResilience.ca.gov

We have so much homework to do!

Water_Resilience_Agenda_2019_0808_final_072619-1

“AND JUSTICE FOR BEAVERS”

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

If there are any regular readers of this site besides my mother, you might remember that way back in 2016 there was a case where a girls school in New Mexico was restoring their creek to make it nice for some beavers and a crabby old rancher complained they were mucking up his water. He even stomped over and shot one and ripped out the dams with grappling hooks. Ringing any bells?

Well, let’s just say sometimes justice gets served.

New Mexico court ruling seen as win for beavers

Lawrence Gallegos, the New Mexico landowner representative for the nonprofit Western Landowners Alliance, who has a background in ranching, was a witness in the ongoing civil case, filed in 2016 by landowner Ed Sceery against the Santa Fe Girls’ School. The lawsuit sought a court order for the school to remove beaver dams on its property or to “otherwise abate the flooding” on his land.

The Girls’ School had intentionally made its land “more attractive and amenable” to beavers, Sceery argued, which he claimed were causing flooding that prevented him from accessing parts of his 46-acre property and made it impossible to graze cattle, forcing him to sell some of his livestock.

Then-state District Judge David Thomson, who is now a New Mexico Supreme Court justice, decided in the school’s favor on key issues in the lawsuit, saying the school was not responsible for the impacts beavers have had on Sceery’s land in La Cieneguilla, a tiny community fed by flows from the Santa Fe River.

An upright judge, a learnèd judge! A Daniel! A second Daniel!

Hoo Hoo HOOO! What a nice thing for a judge to say! I think all of New Mexico is going to get lucky with this kind of thinking! What a great way for this case to fall and a fabulous teaching moment for every one of those girls.

Environmentalists, a Santa Fe attorney and Gallegos — whose two daughters attended the Girls’ School — recently praised the ruling, saying it recognized beavers as an important species for the state’s ecosystem and affirmed precedent protecting landowners from being sued over the behavior of wild animals.

Michael Dax, New Mexico representative for the environmental advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said he hopes the decision will set a precedent for the protection of beavers going forward.

“As we here in New Mexico and across the Southwest are looking at a future where drought is going to become more common, we need policies that are going to promote recovery of beavers and the water conservation benefits that they create,” he said.

And we here in California are looking with awe and respect. Well done. Excellent well done, we say. We should ALL be marching to court to protect beavers!

Lee Lewin, founder and program director of the Girls’ School, declined to elaborate on the lawsuit, referring questions to Egolf. But she did say the school is “very satisfied with the judge’s order, and we feel as if the species, the ecology, the habitat [of the area] is going to continue to thrive.”

“This decision reinforces what I think most New Mexicans believe, which is that native species — especially those that are mitigating the effects of drought and climate change — belong on our landscape,” he said, “and they need to be protected on our landscapes.”

Cue the processional music! This is a major victory for beavers everywhere! Well done and well argued and a path forward for everyone to follow. You know what they say. The arc of just is long, but it bends towards beavers!

And what do we have to celebrate? Well that would be two LOVELY new beaver kits in Napa Creek photographed by Rusty Cohn last night.

Ohh what a beautiful sight! The only thing better than an adorable beaver kit at the end of July is TWO adorable beavers kits in July! Or heck, I’d love to see 12 but lets not be greedy. Here’s a closer peek of one.

NO EASY WALK FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change July 25, 2019

Again with the good news?

With all these positive reports noone wlll believe that beavers have a rough time in the world, They will look at this website and shrug “What are you doing trying to save something that everyone loves and thinks is really useful?”

It’s like starting a nonprofit to save cars for.

Beavers Work Hard for River Ecosystems

“When we lose beaver, we also lose the wetlands they create, we lose the water storage,” Dalia Malone said. “Beaver dams store tremendous amounts of carbon. When beaver dams dry out because the beaver have left, that carbon goes up and is contributing to global warming.”

Delia is the ecologist for the Colorado Natural Heritage Program and something tells me we’re going to be great friends. Call it a hunch.

She’s wrong about one thing though.

Beavers don’t just make a huge difference in the back country uplands. When you let them move right into a dam city they set about making a huge difference too.

Just ask Martinez.

I have to share this photo and explain. On tuesday night there was a big meeting at the planning commission to discuss a controversial gun range in ~~Stars Hollow~~ oops, I mean Martinez. I wasn’t there. I didn’t organize a response or have anything to do with it. But yesterday I saw that protestors were carrying these signs at the meeting.

No, Really.

WEATHER OR NOT WE NEED BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and climate change July 24, 2019

I’m sure we’ve all gotten used to seeing beaver benefits touted in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. Over the years, they’ve shown up in some unlikely places like USA today and TVGuide.I’ve become prepared for that.

But the Weather Channel?

How Beavers, the Original Ecosystem Engineers, May Help the American West Adapt to Climate Change.

For the past 12 years, the Beaver Project has been working with agencies such as the Forest Service to move so-called nuisance beavers to new locations in the valley.

The work of beavers is in direct contrast to the effects of climate change, which is predicted to make water run out faster. Scientists postulate Washington State will get less rain in the summer and less snow during the winter (mountain snowpack is an important source of water during the dry months). These trends could lead to more frequent and more severe droughts in some areas.

“Storing water for the future. That was kind of the whole initial energy and funding behind the project,” says Alexa Whipple, director of the Methow Beaver Project. They’ve done about 300 re-introductions so far, she says.

Hold on. I’m just rubbing my eyes. Not only do the scientists at the weather channel get to mention climate change they get to say that beavers can help with it! Wow are all the Trump officials on vacation or something?

One study done in a different part of Washington State found that each beaver dam held over 100,000 gallons of surface water, with three to five times as much stored as groundwater.

Whipple says they can also see the water sticking around longer in the Methow.

“‘There’s a higher water residence time,’ is how we like to say it in the research world,” says Whipple. “Basically you’re holding water longer and releasing it later into the season when things are drier.”

This could be the climate adaptation they were hoping for.

“The more we can store that water on the landscape, the more the ecological and ecosystem function can be sustained,” says Whipple.

More water sticking around on the landscape could mean more water for agriculture or wildlife. Ponds can also recharge groundwater reserves, store carbon and create wetland habitats for plants and animals.

Well, well, well. I guess it’s really time to climb aboard the train. Even the Weather Channel thinks so.

Now just in case you’re appearing before congress today and feeling stressed this morning, here’s your moment of zen by our good friend Art Wolinsky of New Hampshire,

Relax. Everything will be fine.

SANTA BARBARA PRESENTS BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and climate change June 18, 2019

I think it was a million years ago that Jon and I piled in the Prius and headed for Santa Barbara for the salmonid conference. Lots of the beaver ‘gang’ were showing up for a presentation on beaver history in California and their benefit to salmon. Jon and I rented a nice cottage that looked out on the oil rigs and had everyone over for enchiladas. That’s Mary O’brien, Mike Callahan, Sherri Guzzi, Michael Pollock and his girlfriend the tribal lawyer seated around the table. It was a pretty fun night of conversation, laughter and beers that geared us up for our big days ahead.

I would say Santa Barbara has never seen such a gathering of brilliant beaver minds, but that wouldn’t be true. Because look what’s coming:

Celebrating Beavers Event with The Beaver Believers Film Premiere

Join us for an evening celebrating our new climate & ecosystem heroes, the beavers! Santa Barbara Permaculture Network hosts an evening of fun & film, featuring the recently released documentary, The Beaver Believers, to be shown in the spacious outdoor patio of Bici Centro (Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition), in downtown Santa Barbara. Families welcome, bring your own picnic sandwiches, snacks provided.

The Beaver Believers documentary film tells the urgent, yet whimsical story of an unlikely cadre of activists – a biologist, a hydrologist, a botanist, an ecologist, a psychologist and an hairdresser – who share a common vision: restoring the North American Beaver, the most industrious, ingenious, bucktoothed little engineer, to the watersheds of the American West.

The Beaver Believers encourage us to embrace a new paradigm for managing our western lands, one that seeks to partner with the natural world rather overpower it. As a keystone species, beavers enrich their ecosystems, creating the biodiversity, complexity, and resiliency our watersheds need so desperately to absorb the impacts of climate change.

A biologist, a hydrologist, a botanist, an ecologist, a psychologist and an hairdresser walk into a bar – stop me if you’ve heard this one. It ends with stream restoration and biological diversity! There has been a LOT of media on this event. I have gotten four notices an hour for the last two days. Someone at work knows how to plug their events.

They even have a link and mention to the beaver festival!

THE ECOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF BEAVERS – Martinez CA Beaver Festival June 29 2019

Because the beaver isn’t just an animal; it’s an ecosystem:
https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/the-ecological-benefits-of-bea…

Plus tons of excellent information about beavers

Eager, The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded wetlands dried up and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat:

And this:

In an interesting historical footnote mentioned in the paper, California brought back some beavers to stem erosion from 1923-1950, bumping the statewide population from a dwindling 1,300 in 1942 to 20,000 by 1950. The translocations happened in 58 counties — including Marin, Napa, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Cruz — and are thought to be responsible for the beavers that live here today….So, it’s not a crazy idea that beavers could be brought in again to help mitigate twenty-first century problems like climate change-induced droughts and water shortages. https://baynature.org/article/beavers-used-to-be-almost-everywhere-in-ca…

And even this:

Most south coast residents aren’t aware beavers were in our region, and some still remaining, but when hiking in the backcountry behind Santa Barbara and Ventura, you might come across beaver rock art done by the original native peoples of this land, proving beaver have been here for thousands of years. Let’s welcome them back to help rehydrate the land!

What a great event this is going to be! There’s even a local artist who’s fallen in love with the animal and is going to premiere his “Beaver float”

Ray Cirino, local artist, has fallen in love with beaver, and will display and share his Summer Solstice Beaver Float, and other beaver artwork. Others are encouraged to bring artwork, poems, or favorite books about beavers to share.

Ray looks like a very interesting artist. I would LOVE to see the beaver float. Hmm maybe he could share it at the festival…