Category: Beavers and climate change

The National Scourge of Beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, What's killing beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 1, 2017

Even though there seems to be a beaver benefits renaissance in the Bay Area of sorts at the moment, there are still plenty of places where they aren’t welcome.Regarded as a pesky nuisance to be pushed gotten rid of whenever possible, beavers are woefully misunderstood in much of the country. My in box is literally flooded every morning with stories why trapping is necessary. No one seems to mind that this is kit season and they’ll be leaving behind lots of orphans, either. Take Alabama for instance.

Madison County Commission District 3 taking steps to fix a beaver problem

This sentence strikes me as particularly problematic. But maybe I’m being too literal.

That’s why at Wednesday’s commission meeting district three partnered with the USDA to have them come in and dismantle the dams, and eradicate and relocate the beavers.

I’m curious. Do you think the eradicate them first? And then relocate the bodies? Or the other way around?

On to Michigan where beavers are blamed for flooding as well.

Busy beavers causing flood of problems

“We have to pay for the trappers to go out there, set up costs, and then so much per beaver per trap,” he said. There’s also a cost for work crews and specialized equipment.

I’m really not sure why a county has to ‘pay’ for beaver trapping for every landowner? They aren’t require to pay for termites or mice in your house? And they don’t think they have to pay for health insurance? I would love to know what shred of municipal doctrine from the middle ages explains why a governing body is responsible for a beaver on your land? Call it morbid curiosity.

Things get a little better as we head toward Illinois, where Donald Hey has been preaching the beaver gospel for 25 years or more.

Dam Animals

The dry spell we’re experiencing this spring may have an upside: it will limit run-ins between man and beaver.

Beavers made Chicago. Beaver skins were the reason Chicago became a trading center. Until the 1970s, when antifur consciousness soared and area trapping stopped, beaver dams were just a rural problem. Since then, the populations have grown and moved down the I & I Canal, the Chicago River, and the Des Plaines River. They’ve been spotted downtown on the north branch of the Chicago River near Wolf Point, farther north near the Green Dolphin Street nightclub at Ashland and Webster, and near Ping Tom Park in Chinatown.

What’s the problem? Beavers eat bark, and prefer some tree species over others, including those $400 aspens suburbanites like to plant. Their dams plug up culverts and cause floods. And they’re often blamed for the dispersal of the intestinal parasite Giardia lamblia, which causes nausea and diarrhea in humans. Some call it beaver fever, but deer, muskrats, dogs and cats, and even humans can carry the parasite.

This article makes me apprehensive but not entirely uncomfortable. Maybe we have to make allowances because its Illinois? I’m just happy the ever try ANYTHING else except trapping.

In the suburbs, the problem’s more widespread and the solutions more varied. In Lake County, most of the beavers live along the creeks feeding the Des Plaines River. It’s up to Jim Anderson, natural resource manager for the Lake County Forest Preserve, to solve beaver problems on the county’s 24,000 forest preserve acres. Anderson says they tend to leave the animals in place unless the dams cause flooding on adjacent roads or private property–for instance, at the Wadsworth Savanna site this past week, a beaver that’s been clogging culverts for two years elicited a complaint from a neighbor whose backyard was flooding. “We’ll have to go out and take a look at it,” Anderson says.

To alleviate flooding, Anderson and his crew often run pipes through the dams to try to lower the upstream water levels. Or they tear out the dam altogether and see if the beavers relocate on their own. A couple times in the last two years Anderson has tried hiring licensed private trappers to move beavers to other areas in Lake County, but one of the beavers died. Anderson says the transfer stresses the animals out, and besides, there aren’t many places to take them where they don’t just cause problems for someone else.

Erickson says he’s never had a beaver die in 30 years of planned live trapping. “They’re very hardy animals,” he says. “That trapper just doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Erickson’s preferred no-kill method is a galvanized-cable snare that catches the beaver behind its front legs. Once caught, the beavers can surface safely and leave or enter the water as needed, and Erickson says they’re in fair shape when he returns to remove them, which can be up to 12 hours later.

Anderson says killing beavers, or “removing them from the natural world,” as he puts it, is a last resort in Lake County; when it comes to that, again, a licensed trapper is called in. Anderson says he believes the captured animals are shot in the head with a .22, but he doesn’t know for sure. Another method involves trapping them underwater, where they die of carbon dioxide narcosis. (Beavers have valves in their noses that keep water out and prevent them from simply drowning.)

Let’s hear a little from the biggest beaver advocate the state has to offer, shall we?”

Donald Hey, one of the project’s heads, is a great admirer of the beaver–he credits it, in no modest terms, for the entire North American drainage system. Glaciers carved deep cuts in the earth, he explains; then prehistoric beavers slowed the raging rivers with dams. The rivers widened, occasionally flooding and moving silt and effluvia over the banks to make rich meadowlands.

In 1985, with support from environmental groups, Chicago corporations, and the state and federal governments, Hey and others acquired 550 acres from the Lake County Forest Preserve and turned a series of gravel pits off Highway 41 into a patchwork of ponds, marshes and wetlands. The beavers came, of their own accord, from the Des Plaines River. In 1992, Hey helped start the not-for-profit Wetlands Initiative, which now administers 17 other restoration sites in the Illinois River watershed as well.

Hey, an affable 63-year-old Missouri native who got his doctorate in hydrology from Northwestern, says giant Pleistocene-epoch beavers (Castoroides ohioensis) as big as black bears roamed the Great Lakes about 10,000 years ago. By the time of Columbus, according to paleontological and archaeological estimates, there were more than 400 million modern beavers (Castor canadensis) on the North American landscape. Hey walks me past a site at the Wadsworth project where in the mid-90s remains of 8,500-year-old trees with gnaw marks were found by University of Illinois and Illinois State Museum archaeologists.

Donald was the keynote speaker at the very first state of the beaver conference I attended. More than this, he was an expert witness in the Riverside appellate beaver case argued by our friend Mitch Wagner. He has been trying to explain why beavers are useful for his damaged state as long as anyone can remember. This article suggests he’s getting a little traction.

So, to summarize: Beavers shaped the land we live on. We hunted them to near extinction for commerce. Then we protected their fur and allowed the populations to grow. Now we’re moving them or killing them because they’re encroaching on our habitat, which used to be theirs.

“I think all the bird watchers should be put in a cage, not the beavers,” says Erickson. “What have the birds done for us?”

Um, I really didn’t say that. Honestly. And I won’t of course next week. But my my my what a way to end an article!

Rusty Cohn in Napa is getting impatient for the new kits to make themselves known. But I’m guessing he has a week of waiting ahead or more. Meanwhile he’s visiting the pond most nights and getting great photos to satisfy our beaver-watching craving. Just look.

Local retelling of beaver story

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now? May 26, 2017

A few months back I was contacted by Sarahbeth Maney who introduced herself as a 3rd year photojournalism student at San Francisco State that happened to grow up in Martinez. She needed to do a multimedia project for school and wanted to interview local women who had made a difference. A recent article in the times made her think that me and the Martinez Beaver story was just what she was looking for.

She came by before earth day and we spent the morning chatting about the story and looking through the scrapbook, then I sent her footage of the beavers. Sarahbeth was very nice, engaging, responsible and startlingly young. (I think her mom and I are the same age.) It was one of those interviews where I was answering specific questions that you never hear in the video, but I think it mostly works when you see it.

Of course, I said way more than made it to the finish line, about salmon and frogs and birds. I’m pretty sure I even mentioned nitrogen removal. There’s never enough time to say all the good things about beavers. I’m glad the surviving footage mentioned climate change and California’s water problems specifically. I’m also really happy about saying there was a dramatic difference between how long it took to solve the actual problem rather than the fear of the problem!

Yesterday she sent the finished product which is a short retelling (2.5 minutes) and fun to see. It puts things together nicely using bits and pieces from the story, her video, photographs and my footage. I never love watching myself on camera but I’m fairly content that I don’t look or sound too insane or tired in this. (Let’s face it though, I’m grading on a wide curve.)

Thanks Sarahbeth, for sharing your talents with our beavers, and letting me tell their story.

To Beaver or Not To Beaver?

heidi08 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, Educational, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? May 25, 2017

More silly mulling from the Scottish countyside: Should beavers be allowed or not? A reader on the Tayside group pointed out that this same argument could have been made 15 years ago, I say probably longer than that.

Beaver reintroduction – what’s the story?

Their reputation as strong swimmers and prodigious engineers is not an understatement. Their large incisors and clawed front feet enable them to construct dams and lodges that can extend for hundreds of metres, as well as burrows of up to 20 metres into the riverbank.

“Any species introduction, particularly if it has not been in this country for hundreds of years, can have a massive impact on the many benefits that the countryside delivers,” Mark Pope, an arable farmer from Somerset who has instigated numerous initiatives to provide habitat and food for birds and insects and encourage diverse plant species on his farm, said.

“In the case of beavers, the NFU has concerns about the damage to farmland and the landscape caused by their physical activities.” Mark, who is also chair of the NFU Environment Forum, added. “Farmers and the public must have the tools to manage the impacts beavers will have to farmland, the countryside, flood defences and urban areas.

“Beavers can add biodiversity, as well as the interest, enjoyment and socio-economic benefits they can provide to many people. What the NFU is very clear on is that in some locations there is a clear need to manage this species to minimise undesirable impacts on agriculture, forestry, inland waters and other land uses.”

There is increasing interest in the beneficial role beavers could bring to habitats. The natural activities of beavers could help to regulate flooding and improve water quality, if managed properly. The Devon trial on the River Otter, led by the Devon Wildlife Trust in partnership with Clinton Devon Estates, the University of Exeter and the Derek Gow Partnership, has been exploring the role of beavers in managing and creating wetland habitats, the impacts on water quality, and influence on water flow and flood risk.

Tolkein once wrote “Go not to the elves for council, for they will say both ‘No’ and ‘Yes’.” Mostly no, though.

On the other hand, beaver burrows near watercourses can weaken river embankments and flood defences. Material felled and gathered by beavers for dams and lodges can create flood risk downstream and block drains upstream. The potential consequences of this for farmland and the rural economy is a cause for concern.

It is estimated that the costs of the 2007 and 2013-14 floods on agricultural businesses alone were £50m and £19m respectively, not to mention the wider economic impacts on local employment, infrastructure and utilities and the damage caused to people’s homes and communities.

The knock-on effects can be wide-ranging. The loss of productive farmland, for instance, would have a detrimental effect on food production and supply.

The Scottish Beaver Trial was a five-year project between the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Forestry Commission Scotland to undertake a trial reintroduction of beavers to Knapdale, Mid-Argyll. The trial concluded in 2014 and as a result the Scottish government is considering recognising the European beaver as a native species.

A change in the legal status of beavers raises additional concerns. This is because beavers have no natural predators in the UK so it is important that populations can be managed, particularly if they are present in extensive low-lying areas such as East Anglia, Wiltshire and the Somerset Levels where their activities could block field drains leading to waterlogging (known as ‘wetting up’) of productive farmland.

Clarification: Beavers might benefit us if they don’t kills us all first. “We killed off all their natural predators in the UK so there’s nothing left to kill them and their numbers will swell like taxes with national health”. Are there no otters? No bacteria? No vehicles in your land? Beavers just don’t get killed by predators you know. And honestly, why act like you want to explore an issue and ONLY speak to one farming fiend from the National Farmers Union?

Who’s going to list all the many benefits for fish, wildlife, birds and water storage that come with beavers? Who’s going to talk about how much you can learn about nature by watching them? Who’s going to say how much they improve the health and vitality of urban waterways?

We need a National Beavers Union!!!

Beaver Reverberations

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water May 19, 2017

Yesterday’s blockbuster report is sounding bells all over the northern hemisphere. (Probably everywhere but Wisconsin.) The latest accolades come from Canada, where the CBC wants every countryman to know that beavers are Worth A Dam.

Beavers are dam important for the ecosystem

The beaver is a Canadian icon. To some it’s also a royal pest. Beavers are more than just a nuisance, though. They are also important engineers of our environment. A new study published in the journal PLOS One has discovered just how important beavers are in protecting habitat.

What role do beaver ponds play in the ecosystem?

There are lots of species that rely on beavers to engineer the environment to suit their own needs. Creatures like the Sandhill crane, the mule deer, and, most importantly, juvenile fish. Not only that, when there is a beaver pond, the water is able to be better absorbed by the land, allowing it to resist both droughts and floods a lot better.

For a long time, it was believed that beaver ponds increased the temperature of water in the ecosystem due to its greater surface area absorbing more energy from the sun. That was always thought as a possible way that beaver ponds could be damaging the surrounding ecosystem.

This assumption has been overturned by new research. Nick Weber is with Eco-Logical and his team conducted experiments along Bridge Creek, Oregon.

“As the volume of surface water increases,” he says, “it just takes a lot longer for streams to heat up during hot summer days.”

The work was done in the high desert of Oregon where temperatures can soar in the summer. But it’s not much different from what we can get in Canada, especially as our world warms.

Why is this significant?

It’s significant because the high temperatures of river water — which on some days can reach up to 29 C — is problematic for fish like salmon and trout. These fish need temperatures closer to 25 C, which is exactly what is achieved by having a beaver pond. Having much cooler water increases the survival of juvenile fish like the steelhead trout.

Needless to say, when we are living in the current warming world, it’s important to find ways to reduce the impact of higher global and water temperatures on important stocks like salmon.

So the proposal is to take inspiration from nature, and the beaver, to help restore habitat by constructing artificial beaver dams. And the coolest part is that beavers eventually take over the dams after a few years.

Not only can the dams restore river systems, but it means beavers might be guided into building dams where they might reduce the impact on people’s lands.

Hurray for beavers! Everybody worships at the ‘salmon and trout’ alter, it seems. Birds and frogs don’t matter as much. But that’s fine. Whatever reason you find to appreciate beavers is good by me. It’s wonderful how surprised folks are by this news, which is old news to us. I think Pollock was talking about the cooling effects of hypoheic exchange 10 years ago, but better late than never.

All this excitement has clearly made the researchers giddy, because yesterday Dr. Wheaton forwarded me an email from the senior author, Nick Weber, excitedly showing photographic evidence of beavers using the BDA’s they had made. Look closely at the picture, because I see something other than beavers. I especially like that patient coyote.

Do you think Joe Wheaton is trolling me?

Come on in, the water’s fine!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? May 18, 2017

Another block buster from our friends at the science site that should be called “Beaver Phys.org”. This morning the news has also been picked up by plenty of followers including “New Scientist”. Because beavers are just rock stars like that, you know?

Beaver dams may buffer against temperatures that threaten sensitive species

Both natural and artificial beaver dams may alter stream temperatures which may benefit temperature-sensitive salmonid species, according to a study published May 10, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nicholas Weber from Eco-Logical Research, Inc., USA, and colleagues.

Beavers are ecosystem engineers, altering stream temperatures by building dams that increase surface water storage and connectivity with groundwater. Some studies suggest that the dams make water warmer and so are detrimental to salmonids, which are sensitive to temperature. Weber and colleagues tracked beaver dams and monitored water temperatures along 34 kilometers of the John Day River in Oregon over eight years. In addition, the team assessed the impact of artificial beaver dams on water temperature along four reaches of Bridge Creek.

Yes beaver dams lower the temperature for sweaty fish. We here at beaver central have been touting this fact for years. Pollock proved it years ago, but now it’s especially even more extra proven. Has any creek been the subject of more study than Bridge Creek? I doubt it.

The researchers found that beaver dams may alter stream temperatures to the benefit of salmonids. Studies suggest that juvenile steelhead salmonids in Bridge Creek experience extreme stress at about 25°C, and the researchers found that maximum daily temperatures in much of the study stream exceed this temperature for much of the summer. However, temperatures rarely exceeded 25°C after the proliferation of beaver dams, likely because they help moderate temperatures both by increasing water storage and encouraging exchange between surface water and groundwater exchange. This fits with the fact that both beavers and salmonids were once more abundant and widely distributed in North America, and suggests that beaver dams could help mitigate the thermal degradation that can threaten sensitive species.

Dr. Weber notes: “Beaver are often considered a keystone species, and their propensity to build dams plays an integral role in maintaining biodiversity and enhancing aquatic processes that benefit an array of aquatic and terrestrial organisms. Recognizing this, beaver relocation efforts and installation of structures designed to mimic the form and function of beaver dams are increasingly being used as effective and cost-efficient approaches for restoration of stream and riparian function. Despite this trend, the notion that beaver dams negatively impact stream habitat remains common, specifically the assumption that beaver dams increase summer stream temperatures to the detriment of cold-water species such as trout and salmon. However, by tracking beaver dam distributions and water temperatures throughout a high-desert, scientists have demonstrated that beaver dam can actually reduce high stream temperatures by increasing surface water storage and connectivity with cool groundwater. These results suggest that construction of artificial beaver dams and beaver relocation projects could be used to mitigate the impact of human induced thermal degradation that may threaten sensitive cold-water species.”

If you need the reference to go look up it’s here. Feel free to notice how many of the names are friends of this website.

Weber N, Bouwes N, Pollock MM, Volk C, Wheaton JM, Wathen G, et al. (2017) Alteration of stream temperature by natural and artificial beaver dams. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0176313. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176313

Dr. Wheaton wrote yesterday to make sure I saw it, but three beaver readers had beat him to it. Let’s hope all those backwards thinkers in Wisconsin who rip out beaver dams to protect their baby trout read it and at least think, huh??? Maybe they’ll even start to read the research later than the 1970 study they tuck under their pillows at night.

Our Edinburgh professor friend saw this photo last night uploaded on to the California Academy of Sciences page “biographic” and sent it our way. I knew you’d appreciate it. No sissy GoPro camera for this lovely shot. Read about the sturdy and patient French photographer who got this beautiful shot.