Category: Beavers and climate change

Beaver Retreat

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere July 24, 2016

You may remember that Idaho has a fairly complicated relationship to beavers. In the fifties they thought they were valuable enough to fling them from airplanes and hope they’d land, crawl to water and start a nice pond. Or not.

Mostly they like to trap them. They fur trap a whopping number of beavers. It’s one of the states where recreational trapping is more common than depredation. But Idaho Fish and Game has been getting some pressure from Mike Settell and our friends at Watershed Guardians. Who keep pointing out the MANY valuable things beaver could be doing if they were allowed to live.

Either Fish and Game listened or they figure this will work in their favor in the long run.

Saving beavers – Earthfire Institute joins beaver relocation project

Rehabilitating wild animals is a natural extension of Earthfire’s activities. Our infrastructure, know-how and interest in the well being of wild animals led us to rehabilitate two orphaned moose babies in 2013. It became a successful community project, completed in close cooperation with Idaho Fish and Game. Now another rehabilitation/relocation project is underway, this time with beavers.

In April of 2016 Idaho Fish and Game asked Earthfire if we were interested in providing a temporary holding pen for trapped beavers. We would be part of a coordinated initiative offering relocation services as an alternative to the kill permits issued when landowners request beavers to be removed from their properties. By accepting this project Earthfire became an integral part of the Upper Snake River Beaver Coop and their mission: “.. to recognize that beavers are great eco-engineers and a great asset when dealing with climate change and declining stream flows.” Earthfire is cooperating with representatives from the Forest Service, BLM, The Nature Conservancy and Idaho Fish & Game. The four goals of the Coop are:

Better understand beaver populations in the watershed. Determine the status of their habitat. Selectively relocate beaver to select sites to improve downstream storage. They can help us store water in the upper watershed for slow release during the summer rather than all at once

Provide information and support landowners

The Coop is responsible for trapping, penning and relocating beavers in the Upper Snake River region. Earthfire’s primary role will be to keep the beavers fed, healthy and safe until relocation. They will be trapped one by one until they can be relocated as a family. Because of strong family ties, beavers do not do well alone and often succumb to stress diseases.

Earthfire’s staff has completed a beaver trapping class organized by Idaho Fish and Game so we can assist the Coop in all phases of the relocation.

To build the holding pen Earthfire established a $7,000 budget and excavated a 70’ x 40’ area with running water on the 40 Acre Earthfire property. The excavated area was then covered with felt underliner before installing the pond liner, another layer of protective liner and 8” of round rock. The fence around the pond was dug down 1 foot and cemented to the ground to prevent beavers from digging out. As an extra precaution hotwire was added to prevent the beavers from climbing or getting close to the fence. Two dens were installed because not all beavers get along. The dens can be closed in order to trap the beavers for relocation.

Um, yeah?

I was a little more excited about the prospect before I saw this video. Earthfire is primarily and retreat destination with injured animals that can never be released. They create ‘new’ connections between humans and the injured wildlife for reasons best understood only by them. Watch for yourself:

No word on how that whole habituation thing will be avoided with these wild beavers in transit. I guess it’s rather similar to the parachute escapade, either it will work or it won’t but in the meantime they get rid of some beavers. I did look up a bit about the beaver Coop of the upper snake river. (Okay, I admit, I first read that “coop” like chicken coop. But I’m pretty sure its co-op.) The whole thing is kinda secretive – I can find some partners of theirs but no one who actually takes credit for the project. This may explains why they’re keeping a low profile. Note they are selling both the fur and the castor – to use as a lure in traps.

Well we surely wish those beavers and their champions the best of luck.

The Importance of being Ernst

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers elsewhere, Tail slap, Who's saving beavers now? July 17, 2016

Sometimes even the back of the class earns a gold star. The Ernst trail in Meadville PA lies in the upper left hand corner of the state near Ohio. Neither state has been particularly progressive on beaver management issues in the past, so I was thrilled to see this. Remember the trapper who said he was only going to take the ‘soldier beavers’?

ON THE ERNST TRAIL: Importance of beaver pond outweighs potential flooding

In the spring of 2015 the water, in the wetland, just south of Bean’s, on the west side of the Ernst Trail, began to rise precipitously up toward the trail. The water was also rising on the east side of the trail. We were concerned that the water might flow over the trail and perhaps damage the trail surface.

A short investigation revealed that beavers had dammed up the two culverts that drain from the west side of the trail to the east side and that there were many small dams on the east side as well. The board of directors decided to act.

In the course of trying to figure out what to do I visited the trail one June day last year at lunch with Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Conservation Officer Mark Allegro. He was busy with nuisance bear complaints and only had time at lunch to consider our beaver problem. Mark pointed out that there weren’t any good options; our best hope was to wait for trapping season and get a trapper to trap the beavers.

Since it was a nice noon-time, many people were on the trail, several of them recognized Mark, who was in uniform, and commented on wildlife they had seen along the trail. One person pointed out a huge snapping turtle on a log in the beaver pond, about 30 feet from the trail. Another showed me a couple of snakes alongside the trail that I had walked right by. Others noted birds they had seen, signs of beaver activity and so on. Our beaver pond was generating quite a bit of interest for trail users.

To better understand what a beaver pond had to offer, I talked to Scott Wissinger, an ecology professor at Allegheny College. Here’s what he said: “Because beaver ponds create so many different types of sub habitats of different shallow depths, flow regimes, plant communities and invertebrate communities, they are considered hot beds of biological diversity. Even if people don’t really care about invertebrate and plant diversity, they might care because the invertebrates and plants (especially their seeds) are magnets for charismatic animals that people do care about — fish, waterfowl, songbirds, amphibians and reptiles.”

With all this life attracted to the beaver pond, our board of directors decided to let the beavers alone. We’ll take our chances on the flooding.

Yes, if you need advice on trapping, go to the Game Warden, but if you need advice on BEAVERS go to college. I’m so hopeful about this article and will be working hard to get in touch with the author so he can see how to prevent flooding AND keep beavers. I can’t tell you how impressed I am that the people on the trail got you thinking about the enormous impact a beaver pond has on wildlife. And so glad that you listened, and kept asking questions because that isn’t easy to do when a man in a uniform tells you to give up.

Shout out to Janet Thew who posted on FB about the beaver totem skins offered by Decalgal. Of course I wrote her WRITE AWAY and she said she’d be delighted to donate to the silent auction. How much do you love this?

Final gift from Moses Silva filmed at the noisy crane work station by the beaver home. I guess not everyone is intimidated by progress.

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Save

Friday is beaver achievement day

It’s always feast or famine around here at beaver central. A trickle of news stories thru the week and then a DUMP of beaver news all at once. Maybe it’s something about Friday being less important than the other news days, but buckle up because we have lots to talk about.

The first is the long-awaited story from Charlotte North Carolina, and I dare say the most progressive look at beaver in that part of the South since I’ve been on the beaver-beat. Wen the article appeared it aired with a very special photo which I of course captured for your viewing pleasure before I made sure it was corrected.

On a quiet fall night on the Catawba River, a beaver dam stopped a potential disaster. The dam was all that stood between a sewage leak and the river that supplies much of Charlotte’s drinking water.

“A beaver dam strategically located contained the spill,” the utilities report stated. Beavers were the heroes on this day, and can benefit local ecosystems, but they are not always so helpful.

Beaver trappers in Mecklenburg County say that the rodent can become a nuisance. One beaver dam, for example, covered up the manholes to underground pipelines, preventing repair crews from entering. To curb their effects, the state has a beaver trapping season. A beaver is typically killed in the trap.

Hmmm fine beginning and intriguing angle linking it to the sewage spill. Now lets get to some more discussion of this issue.

Sharon Brown, a biologist from Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, a national beaver advocacy group, said that once a colony of beavers is removed, a new colony typically will move in sometime in the near future.

Some towns, like Martinez, Calif., near the San Francisco Bay area, have petitioned local governments to install flow devices to curb beavers’ negative effects. These devices steal water away from the beavers, lessening their impact. But it allows the beavers to still keep their dam.

“(The city council) was kicking and screaming” because they initially didn’t want to pay, said Heidi Perryman, who runs a beaver blog in Martinez.

Christopher Newport University, in Newport, Va., released a study comparing the costs of keep or removing beavers. The study looked at 14 dam sites, and compared the costs before and after flow devices were installed. It found that before the devices, it costs around $300,000 to remove beavers and to repair the surrounding areas. Often a new colony moved right back in.

The price over the same period of time with the devices was around $44,000 because the beavers’ damage is permanently controlled. “People don’t realize the benefits of beavers are hidden,” Brown said.

Beaver dams filter water, which helps contain urban runoff and water pollution from spreading downstream. They also create new ecosystems, as animals come to the slower water around the dam. Beaver removal can destroy these habitats.

In Martinez, the community ended up saving their town’s beavers, even creating a yearly festival to celebrate the beavers’ continued survival.

“There has been a strong push to coexist,” Brown said.

Ta daa! Positive beaver quotes from North Carolina! And a powerful 1-2 punch from Sharon and myself – why and how to live with beavers, my favorite topics. Of course Sharon gets extra respect for being a ‘biologist’ and Worth A Dam doesn’t even get a MENTION, but it’s okay, I’ll make sure we’re a household word eventually. Hrmph.

Back to Massachusetts now, where Mike Callahan might get hired to save some beavers in Mendon.

Mendon officials considering beaver device in forest

MENDON – Officials are looking into installing a beaver flow device in the Mendon Town Forest, where beavers are causing flooding. According to Community Preservation Committee and Land Use Committee Chairperson Anne Mazar, a beaver dam located in the Town Forest is causing flooding in the area. She and Bill Dakai, volunteer Mendon Town Forest Land Steward, showed the dam to Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, who said a beaver flow device could be installed there to solve the problem.

“A flow device lets the beavers live at the pond and build their dam, but the device lets water flow under the dam undetected by the beavers,” said Mazar.

Over the years, Callahan has successfully installed hundreds of the devices around the country, including one in Mendon at Inman Pond that Mazar said “works well.”

It is a long-term cost-effective and humane way to control beaver flooding,” she said. “Trapping and dam breaching is costly and not permanent.”Many towns, she said, spend thousands on culvert repairs because of damage from beaver flooding. Mazar said the device costs about $2,000 to $3,000.

If the site is right for the flow devices, towns can save time and money,” said Mazar.

If the name Mazar sounds vaguely familiar, it should because it was just a month ago we wrote about her when the town agreed to kill beavers in Lake Nipmuc. As you’ll remember, those conditions weren’t ‘suitable’ for a flow device and the beavers were killed. Of course I’m unhappy with that explanation, but Mike thinks like a businessman and never wants to stake his reputation on a situation that doesn’t look favorable – he needs that city to maintain faith in him down the line so they hire him again and save some other beavers.

Which makes sense, I guess.

In the meantime, we’re happy these beavers in the forest get saved, and wish Mike and Anne all the luck in the world. And I must remind everyone that the conditions weren’t exactly favorable in Martinez either, and look how we turned out!

Now you’ve been very good so I’m saving the best for last. I’ll spare you the silly article about the golf course being bewildered how a ‘baby beaver just showed up there lost one morning’ because I assume that EVERY READER of this website knows why orphans appear at golf courses. You definitely want to make this one ‘full screen’.

From the sublime to the ridiculous!

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers and climate change, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? July 6, 2016

Global beaver citizens that we are, I woke up with an email from the Edinbugh professor and regular reader of this website J. Suilin Lavelle, who said she just ran into Roisin Campbell at the mammal conference on the weekend! Roisin told her she had a lot of fun on her visit to Vermont meeting Patti and Skip. (Which I wrote about a few days ago because, honestly that’s how small the beaver world is.) The beaver champions of that nation are currently in a Brexit-induced panic because the Scottish government had dragged their beaver decision out for so long, and now the insanity over the EU vote might delay or derail everything.

You probably didn’t realize that Brexit was bad news for beavers too, did you?

Meanwhile, there’s a nice bit of news from the Mendenhall Glacier beaver cam this year, which I was recently alerted to by a US Forestry friend here in Vallejo.

Thousands Around the World Tune In to Snoop on a Beaver Den

Watching the beavers sleep has kept thousands of viewers occupied since June 28, when the US Forest Service installed an infrared camera in the den to record in real time the beavers’ activities. As nocturnal creatures, that means sleeping most of the day and getting up periodically to stretch, eat, or relieve themselves. Recommended viewing is between 7 AM and 7 PM Alaska Standard Time.

Natural resource specialist Peter Schneider and fisheries biologist Don Martin initially set up a beaver camera in 2004 to satiate their curiosities about a collection of food outside the beaver lodge on Steep Creek. To monitor the beavers’ activities, they set up a camera outside the lodge and even had it insulated throughout the winter.

Are you keeping track of the mileage with your atlas at home here? The beaver story has gone from Scotland to Vermont to Juneau to Vallejo to Martinez so far. Some 2500+miles and counting. Not bad for a morning’s work!

And just so we don’t feel too smugly accomplished, here’s a glimpse of how far we have yet to go courtesy of the silliest research ever published.

13614929_10207072161388714_3577635218269275857_n — **Yes. that photo is what you suspect it is; because you, dear reader are smart and this article is stoo-pid.**

As more beaver colonies form, the rodents have an adverse effect on the climate by changing levels of methane gas. This happens because beaver colonies are formed in ponds constructed by the beaver dams. These tend to be pockets of shallow water (no more than 1.5 meters high.) Within this oxygen-poor standing water, methane gas levels build up and the gas, because it cannot dissolve in the water, is eventually released into the atmosphere.

According to Professor Colin J. Whitfield (University of Saskatchewan in Canada), compared with 100 years ago, 200 times more of greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere from beaver colonies. This has come from a study into beaver colonies in Eurasia (the Castor fiber species) and North America (the Castor Canadensis species.)

The model suggests beavers currently contribute 0.80 teragrams (or 800 million kilograms) of methane into the atmosphere. Interviewed by International Business Times, Professor Whitfield suggest this problem not going away anytime soon unless action is taken: “Continued range expansion, coupled with changes in population and pond densities, may dramatically increase the amount of water impounded by the beaver…[this] suggests that the contribution of beaver activity to global methane emissions may continue to grow.

Truly the reporter selected the IDEAL photo to accompany this groundbreaking research, it really communicates the level of intelligence of those involved. (Nutria) See Dr. Whitfield is from the university of Saskatchewan which is famous for the kill contest they held this year. He teamed up with Dr. Cherie Westbrook of Alberta who was probably just happy to publish something without the name Glynnis Hood on it, and I’ve been told that she regrets how this study has been misused. But I spare her no mercy and want this supposedly seminal research to be the beaver albatross around her educated neck. She should have known that folks would be only too happy for another bogus reason to blame beavers.

Let me explain this again for those who are mislead, yes beaver dams release methane, which is one of the green house gasses we are not really worried about. It dissolves in 2-3 years, unlike carbon, which we are VERY worried about, which lasts for decades. (When you drive to work your car doesn’t release methane.) Along the way beavers increase the water supply which we are going to need as carbon numbers keep rising. Beavers also aid biodiversity, which we need in on a planet that is rapidly losing species. (I of course tried to write the editor yesterday about the photo, but it appears they are obviously not overly concerned with accuracy.)

Oh and did you know that we successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit after the fireworks on independence day? We’re on a 20 month rotation studying a planet at 540,000,000 miles away. And the five year mission predictions were accurate to within 1 second.

Welcome to Jupiter!

This train is Bound for Glory – this train!

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout July 3, 2016

When I pause and try to make myself remember that it was MONDAY I found out the artist for the charm activity wouldn’t follow through on his promise and now today it’s SUNDAY and we have a whole new awesome design from Mark Poulin it blows my mind. How adorable is that blue heron? Or the otter?

So kids will be making these bracelets on the day by visiting booths to learn how beavers help these species thrive. They will start at my booth and I’ll give them info and a silicon band to put the buttons onto. And I’ll be ready for them with my special Ecosystem Engineer cap!It’s starting to feel like the festival is REALLY happening. Friday we received a certificate for Lemongrass Bistro, Saturday we got SF Zoo tickets, and today our ad appeared in this issue of Bay Nature. Beautiful placed in a prominent corner next to a stiff coupon that makes the magazine naturally open to that page. Voila!

My favorite part is that the ad will educate as well as promote. Scanning eyes will think, hmm was the west watered by beaver? And minds will be forever changed because that thought was entertained. Not bad for 575.00.

Finally these photos from Rusty Cohn at Tulocay beaver pond in Napa last night just to make the point…