Category: Beavers and Frogs

Beavers & the Public Trust

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental January 5, 2015

Back in September Suzanne Fouty sent me an article from the Oregon Quarterly about the work of Mary Christina Woods and the concept of Natural Law and the Public Trust. I read through it and about the work of the Children’s Trust with fascination and saw clearly how important that argument might be for beavers down the road, but I couldn’t figure out how to begin sharing it with you. The bookmark stayed uselessly on my computer while I tried to think of where to start.

Bill Moyers, in the final show of his very consequential career, figured it out for me.

When we think of climate change, the idea seems so big and unfixably hopeless that most stop thinking very quickly. Mary Wood challenged that lethargy dramatically with her dynamic work, and it’s even more exciting to hear described in person. Find an hour in your day for this program and watch the entire thing. Really. It’s that good. But here are some money quotes from the transcript that will give you the basic platform.

Well, the heart of the approach is the public trust doctrine. And it says that government is a trustee of the resources that support our public welfare and survival. And so a trust means that one entity or person manages a certain wealth, an endowment, so to speak, for the benefit of others. And in the case of the public trust, the beneficiaries are the present and future generations of citizens. So it is a statement of, in essence, public property rights that have been known since Roman times.

In fact, this was articulated by the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a landmark public trust decision last year. And the decision basically overturned a statute that the Pennsylvania Legislature had passed to promote fracking. And the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Chief Justice Castille, said this violates the public trust. And he began his opinion by saying that citizens hold inalienable environmental rights to assure the habitability of their communities.

And that these are ensconced in the social contract that citizens make with government. They cannot be alienated. They are inherent and reserved. So they are of a constitutional nature. And the point of the public trust is that the citizens hold these constitutional rights in an enduring natural endowment that is supposed to support all future generations of citizens in this country. It is so basic to democracy; in fact, the late Joseph Sax said the trust distinguishes a society of citizens from serfs.

Did you catch that? The people of this country are entitled to clean water and clean air and a liveable climate. Without these fundamental rights civic society as we know it becomes meaningless. This is the basic doctrine of the Public Trust, and what she has used so successfully in working with the Children’s Trust in Eugene OR. You don’t have to have a vivid imagination at all to immediately understand how this is important to beavers.

…environmental law held a lot of promise but that it’s not working, and that agencies have basically used it to allow almost unfettered destruction of our natural resources.

BILL MOYERS: What agencies are you talking about?

MARY CHRISTINA WOOD: Agencies that span the full realm of natural resources. So the US EPA, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Corps of Engineers, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service; you name it. There are dozens of agencies at the federal and state levels that control environmental resources. And they are supposed to represent the public interest and not corporations or moneyed interests in making those decisions. And we the public assume that the agencies are doing the right thing when they’re implementing environmental laws. Whereas in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Agencies have become politicized creatures that largely serve industry.

Climate is not just an environmental issue. This is a civilizational issue. This is the biggest case that courts will get in terms of the potential harm in front of them, the population affected by that harm, and in terms of the urgency. Climate is mind-blowing. It can’t be categorized any longer as an environmental issue.

Remind me again why climate change has anything to do with beavers?

And Eugene Oregon is about an hour away from the State of the Beaver Conference. Just sayin’.

Rally and Defend

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? January 4, 2015

“Race against time” to raise £20,000 needed to secure beaver family’s future on River Otter

AFTER staggering £30,000 was raised in three weeks, a leading conservation charity is appealing for help to raise the remaining £20,000 needed to secure the future of a family of River Otter wild beavers.

A public meeting has been arranged by Natural England in Ottery St Mary this month and public support has been dubbed “vital” in securing their return to the river banks near the town. Backed by East Devon MP Hugo Swire, the Devon Wildlife Trust applied for a licence from Natural England for their re-release in October.

The licence would give the charity permission to set up a five year monitoring project called the River Otter Beaver Trial. The project will oversee the population, range and health of the beavers and the effect they have on the local landscape and people.

It will focus on the beavers’ impact on wildlife, vegetation, water flow, water quality, communities and infrastructure. But it will cost around £50,000.

Devon is leaping into action to save its beavers, and I couldn’t be happier. As I am that beaver instigator Derek Gow will be coming with Paul and Louise Ramsay to the State of The Beaver Conference! We might even lure them over for a barbecue when its all finished.

Let it be clearly said that it all started with the farmer who had the foresight to let an environmentalist install a night cam. None of this would have been possible without that. People care about what they can see. And the media never does anything without a good photo. These were the very best beaver photos in 5 centuries. Think about that.

We have had a number of donations, some as large as several thousand pounds, and this shows the depth of feeling out there.

“But we now have a race against time to secure the remaining amount to ensure a viable longer term project and enhance the chances of the beavers having a longer term future on the River Otter.”

The public meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 14, at 6.30pm, Ottery St Mary Scout Centre on Winters Lane.

You can add to their donations here:

the countryside of my ancestors, and I hope that meeting is even more crowded than the first. But in my head – from a strictly pragmatic view – it has been wonderful for beavers everywhere that DEFRA has been such monstrous idiots about this whole process. I have loved reading people extol beaver benefits from all over Europe and even Australia. Having something to prove has been amazing for the beaver public image. I’ll almost be sorry to see it go.

Almost.

I’m looking forward to what happens next. In the mean time, I spent yesterday working on adding a Napa section to my urban beaver talk for Oregon. Rusty Cohn was kind enough to give me great photos and I think it shows elegantly the vibrant effect of beavers on a neglected city creek.

Beaver Adventures

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere December 22, 2014

Guess who’s holding next beaver conference?

The Scottish Wild Beaver Group is off and running, and ready to teach beaver benefits to all.

An exciting conference hosted by the Scottish Wild Beaver Group will be held in the heart of Scotland in March 2015 exploring the history and ecology of the beaver, their role in biodiversity and wetland management and how they can help us in flood prevention and ecotourism.

2015 will be a landmark year for the Scottish wild beaver as following the five year Scottish Beaver Trial the Scottish Government will make its decision later in 2015 on the reintroduction of this iconic species which was hunted to extinction some 400 years ago.

A range of speakers will be talking at the conference on the history of the beaver, their ecology and wetland management, ecosystem services that beavers provide and rewilding/flood catchment management.

We will look at lessons learned from managing beavers and farming in the Netherlands, the benefits that beavers have brought to ecotourism in Perthshire, and hear from delegates from both the Welsh Beaver Project and the Devon Wildlife Trust on their local beaver campaigns.

Maybe some day they’ll be beaver conferences and festivals all over? And you can plan you vacation around them. I’m not afraid to dream. Good luck to our Scottish cousins, and congratulations on this important next step.

Last night we did a beaver tour with Perla, Mike and their boys who drove up from Menlo Park. The beavers were no where to be seen on this longest night of the year, but the kids excitedly spotted a turtle and an egret. They were referred by Rick Lanman. It turns out Perla is the CEO and founder of this organization reviewing non profits so that funds and volunteer hours can be better applied.

The entire family had just watched the PBS documentary and were full of stories about Sherri Tippie and beavers being attracted to the sound of running water. We talked about the story and the benefits of beavers and did our best to get them excited about the beaver festival. But it is worth noting that GNP, by the way, has zero information at all about Worth A Dam, which is under the non-profit Inquiring Systems Inc, which also has zero reviews.

Maybe you can help?

Beavers with Benefits

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2014

Someone has finally got the beavers and water story right. And it’s about time.

Leave it to beavers: California joins other states in embracing the rodent

AR-141229981.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667 — A beaver dam spans the length of Los Gatos Creek. (Thomas Mendoza — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

LOS GATOS >> Californians are crossing their fingers for more rain after three punishing years of drought have left streams, rivers and wetland parched.

One animal has the potential to restore these dry landscapes.

Go ahead, guess which one. I’ll wait.

Isn’t this a fabulous start to an article? Before you do anything click on the link so they get to count hits for the report. It will convince them that this interests people. We met the reporter Samantha Clark before when she covered the beavers in San Jose for the campus paper. Now she has landed a gig with the Santa Crus Sentinel. Turns out she used to go to school with my neice so maybe osmosis has something to do with her remarkably being the first reporter in the state to get the water story right.

“This state has lost more of its wetlands than all other states, and beavers can rebuild those wetlands,” said Rick Lanman of the Institute for Historical Ecology in Los Altos. “Knowing that it is native should help guide restoration efforts.”

This article reads like a who’s who in beaver doxology honestly, just wait.

Beaver dams bestow benefits to the environment that we humans can’t easily copy. They turn land into a sponge for water. Their gnawing and nesting promotes richer soil and slows down water, improving imperiled fish habitat. Their dams raise water tables, nourishing shrubbery alongside streams that stabilize eroding banks and add habitat for birds and deer. They also help the endangered California Red-legged frog.

“There’s a growing interest in using beaver as a habitat restoration tool,” said Michael M. Pollock, an ecosystems analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. “They create good wetland habitat much more cheaply than other restoration methods.”

Samantha did her homework, tracking down Rick, and Michael. They are busy men but the generally make time to talk about beavers, I’ve been very impressed.

“It would be great if we could recognize the benefit of the beaver and to resolve conflict nonlethally and manage them to continue receiving those benefits,” said Kate Lundquist, director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute, a group that is drafting beaver policy recommendations for state Fish and Wildlife.

I am so happy to read an article that’s actually promoting beaver benefits in California! (And not complaining about methane emissions.) But there seems to be one voice missing. Rick, Michael, Kate, hmmm now who could it be?

Since beavers moved to the Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, the area has seen new species flourish. By moving mud, the beavers create a haven for bugs.

“Because we have an insect bloom, we have a bloom of all the different fish and animals up the food chain,” said Heidi Perryman, founder of the beaver advocacy group Worth a Dam and who led the effort to save a Martinez beaver family from extermination. “We’ve identified three new species of fish and seven species of bird. And we see more otter and mink than we ever saw before.”

Ohhh that’s who was missing! Someone whose learned how to live with beavers and seen it first hand! Not bad. Samantha doesn’t do enough to talk about HOW to live with beavers, but she nails WHY.

In San Jose, a beaver has taken refuge in the dry Guadalupe River. The critter’s dam outside a dripping storm drain created a tiny oasis.

“They can get by with very little,” Pollock said. “In a number of cases, they’ve built on streams that have run dry and because they have built the dams, water flows again.”

Because beavers are so good at recharging ground water, they can make streams flow when they would otherwise run dry such as during the summer months.

If I were a state facing drought for the past 3 three years, I’d be thinking about this article and these plucky rodents and re-examing my policies. Wouldn’t you?

Happy Solstice Everyone! Beavers get easier to see after today!

Beaver madness

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's saving beavers now? November 20, 2014

beaver guests If you missed our exciting CT debut you can check out the podcast and learn about the guests here. The beginning of the program is a little excessively whimsical, but it’s a pretty awesome listen overall. I was so happy to learn Sherri was going to be on at the end, and thrilled when the host rightfully called her “the Bruce Springsteen of Beaver Trapping”. I’m not unhappy with my performance. I did an okay job of saying what I wanted to say regardless of whatever silly question was asked. (A trick politicians innately seem to have, but is hard for us compliant folks to learn.) It was very hard to hear on the phone, and I was straining ever muscle to make sure I followed what they were saying, even with the dog locked outside and the volume up.

I weirdly never feel stressed during the actual event, but I was a basket case the rest of the day, so I guess it does take something out of you. The amazingly well-spoken caller from East Haddam, CT, was echoed by almost the exact same comment on this website from Pennsylvania. Did you see? Telling people on the East coast that we can live with beaver has amazing results. I loved the genuine interest and education of the producer and the host, who contacted me after to say thanks and make sure they hadn’t posted nutria pictures. And Sherri called me excited after the interview and wanted to kvetch about all the things we didn’t get to say. Not missing any opportunities, I then boldly wrote and thanked both authors, asking for copies of their books for the silent auction. It was quite the morning.

No resting on our laurels, time marches on, and yesterday I noticed this photo leading an article about mink farming in Nova Scotia. The article quotes our friends at Furbearer Defenders and criticizes mink farms for being unsanitary. But its righteous message is compromised by its inherent plagierism. Maybe the photo seems familiar to you? Or maybe you didn’t recognize it without CREDIT to our own Cheryl Reynolds? I wrote the editor and the reporter so we’ll see if it gets credited soon.

In the meantime there’s this charming appreciation of beavers from an outdoor column in Illinois.

Since the early 1960s I have been amazed with beavers.

Before that we had no giant rodents in our state so this was an all new animal. As they became more numerous, many farmers loved to see them and became very protective of any that built dams on their waterways. In fact many farms that contained beaver colonies became a sightseeing event for many folks.

Is that true that Illinois didn’t reintroduce beaver until the 60’s? That would be very surprising. But reading through his column I see that he is largely unburdened by facts or research of any kind. He emphatically states that beavers were easy to wipe out because they only have two kits every year. And that they fell trees and eat the entire thing, all the way to the top.

Well, okay then. Maybe not the 60’s.

Ice conditions make trapping very dangerous and hard work. After catching a large beaver, there is a lot of work to get them ready for market. The animal must be skinned, fleshed (all the fat removed) and placed on a round stretcher to dry. This results in several hours of hard work. The hourly rate doesn’t attract many trappers.

When I was at the beaver festival in Utah I had an interesting conversation with Mary about the Utah trapping association. She had invited them to the event and they brought furs for the children to touch. Mary was especially impressed by one trapper who explained that ‘beavers are really good for the creek! They make all this wildlife!’ and she admonished her students to spend more time talking to them. Because you can’t only talk to people who agree with you. And they could learn things.

Which is true. I agree 100% with the concept. Someone should have many conversations with trappers, wardens and invite their local technicians from APHIS for a beer.

Someone else.