Category: Beavers and Forests

Too many good things for beavers

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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.

Extra, Extra! Read all about the beaver good news!

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There’s great news from three nations today just in time for our Suday funnies. First there’s the fantastic announcement that Frances Backhouse (author of Once they were Hats) will be doing a lecture in 2 weeks for idea city (which is the canadian equivalent of TED talks). If you live near Toronto and have a spare 300 you might consider being in the audience. Us poor California folks will have to wait for the vide0,

Award-winning Canadian author Frances Backhouse is a former biologist whose curiosity about the world enticed her into a writing career. Her 2015 book Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver, was heralded by The Globe and Mail as one of the “20 books you’ll be reading – and talking about – for the rest of the year.”

Speaking the morning of Friday, June 16th – buy your tickets now!

Frances was kind enough to donate another copy of her beloved book for our silent auction, and we are eager to see how the dynamic ideacity event success. Hopefully it will remind folks, like Glynnis talk back in the day, that beavers really matter.

Lots of good work in this country too, where beaver friend and Geology Student Erin Poor just posted about the project she’s working on in tualatin. Remind me again, how many people were talking about the Pros and Cons of Urban beaver before Martinez and Worth A Dam? Oh that’s right. Zero!

Beavers are known as environmental engineers because of their ability to change the landscape to fit their needs. Beaver activity, such as dam building, can increase stream and floodplain complexity, which may create a more diverse habitat for wildlife in the area.

Many scientists are curious to discover how beavers affect impaired urban streams. The USGS recently began studying the effect of beaver populations on urban streams in Tualatin River basin, located in the Portland, OR, metropolitan area. Scientists are studying whether beaver activity can improve the health of city streams. Insights from this study will provide a good foundation of the “pros and cons” of beavers in urban areas, thereby allowing local agencies to make management decisions based on science. This research is a collaboration between the USGS Oregon Water Science Center and Clean Water Services of Washington County, Oregon.

Tualatin_beaver_study_WithinOurReachPoster_2016

Bring back beavers to fight flooding and pollution, expert claims

Further proof that one person can make a difference? Here’s a slapdash beaver article from one of the silly English rags that will steal any story and photo off the internet and call it ‘news’. Case in point? How about my photo that I mocked up before Brexit? This was on USA news today along with an assortment of dimly related beaver images from around the globe, including the shop lifting beaver at Christmas in Maryland. Never mind, at least folks are talking about it.

We have some wonderful new auction items to mention this fine sunday morning, and I’m thinking we should start with Jennifer Lovett’s smart book for teens and tweens “Beavers away“. It’s a great way to look at the issue and she does an excellent job talking about the importance of beaver to biodiversity. I especially like this graphic. I met Jennifer on the beaver management forum on Facebook set up by Mike Callahan in Massachusetts. (It’s a good place to hear about beaver work and if you aren’t a member you should be.) She is a big supporter of all things beaver and became a good beaver buddy.

Thanks Jennifer!

Beavers-Away

Finally we have a much anticipated donation from Marcella Henkles in Corvalis Oregon. You will remember she was the amazing raku tile artist who featured two lovely beaver tiles to the Beaver tales art exhibit both of which sold almost immediately. I’m sure she was surprised to hear from me begging at her door but she generously agreed to send me one of the works she had recently fired. The complex technique demands carving the image on wet clay then glazing it into color. You really have to see it in person to understand how the colors, textures and rough barn wood all work together. It’s gorgeous. Doesn’t this need to be on your wall immediately?

best henkle — Beaver with Aspen Raku Tile: Marcella Henkles

And just because beavers like to look their Sunday best, here’s a fun video from Robin of Napa showing some excellent back footed grooming.

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.

To Beaver or Not To Beaver?

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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!!!