Category: beavers and otters

CUTE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ENGINEERING?

heidi08 beavers and otters, Beavers and trout December 12, 2019

Sometimes you sing happy birthday to the wrong classmate. Sometimes the academy award goes to the lesser talent. Sometimes you thank the lady of the house for cooking the roast and the husband really did it all. It happens. We all make the occasional ‘acclaim’ error. Take this article for instance.

At park beaver pond, otters gorge on brook trout

Irene Greenberg had been roving around looking for something to photograph the Sunday before last when she came upon a brook trout bloodbath that’s the subject of Jackson Hole wildlife-watching legend.

It was a romp of otters that were responsible for the killing, which netted the mustelid family full guts of spawning fish. Greenberg, a semiprofessional wildlife photographer who’s got a soft spot for otters, was entranced and, for a while, watched on her own at a location she prefers not to reveal.

Hear that? A bunch of otters catch dinner at a BEAVER POND. And it’s ooh lets take photos of the atrocities! And be sure to canonize with our Cannon the 5 hungry culprits. Because they’re otters. And everything they do is adorable.

Even their murderous “gang” is called a “romp”.

Never mind that they owe their entire successful meal to the beavers who created that pond, and repaired the dams, Who wants to photograph those old things?

The brook trout are clearly spawning, with their ruddy undersides and yellow and red spotting easily visible in the shallow beaver-engineered ponds where they’re congregated.

The otters are “damn smart,” Mayo said. They faithfully show up to take advantage of the usually wary fish, which become easy pickings come the spawn.

“More or less every time they go under, they come up with a fish,” Greenberg said. “Sometimes they’ll come up and just eat them in the water, and sometimes they’ll come up on land and eat.”

“They are voracious,” she said. “And they eat a lot.”

Yes they do. Hey did you happen to notice in your frame-snapping frenzy, WHERE they’re eating a lot? My goodness it appears to be a beaver pond where all those brook trout are gathered. Gosh I wonder WHY they meet up there? I mean is it some kind of salmonid singles club?

Or could it be that beaver-engineered ponds make ideal habitat for babies to grow up? What with all those tastey invertebrates. And nice deep pools that don’t freeze solid in the winter where trout can thrive? Hey maybe you should be writing an article about THAT or photographing that doncha think?

But otters are cute. And you know how they sled in snow. It’s adorable! And so slinky. Lets write about them. Again and again instead of the brawny backed-engineers these ponds are made by. Because cute is more important than engineering.

Didn’t you know?

ON SECOND THOUGHT

Sometimes it’s hard to get past that negative initial impression and accept all the good things a person (or article) has to offer. Sometimes that first jarring meeting is so irksome or inappropriate that you can’t calm down and discover all the special treats a messenger brings to the table because they’ve already rubbed you the wrong way. But it’s our job as humans, as consumers of beaver news, to give people a chance, to take a very deep breath and read past the initial headline, no matter HOW provoking it may be.

How a local young, orphan beaver learned life skills from a bunch of otters

An orphaned young kit, little more than a year old, is there for care and rehab before release to back to the wild.

Scouts honor that’s the headline and lead photo of this article about an orphaned beaver being raised at Sonoma Wildlife rescue. No word yet on what exactly the magical otters are actually teaching said beaver – surely not how to swim because beavers can swim from birth – and not how to fish, because beavers don’t eat fish.

How to mug for the camera and steal all the attention?

I swear to god I sometimes think otters are just trolling me now, They know they get more credit for being cute than beavers do for saving the entire frickin’ planet. Did you know National Geographic just bought our friends at River Otter Ecology Project a submarine? So they could film underwater of course. Because otters lead charmed lives.

And beavers, well, you know.

The orphan at the rescue center isn’t a local. She was found in central California, near Madera. A backhoe operator clearing a drainage ditch there apparently swiped the bank where the beaver were denning, killing the parents and siblings, leaving one survivor.

A few months old, she was delivered to a local veterinarian, then volunteers from the Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation Service picked her up, and she came into the care of Cathy Gardner, the wildlife center’s director.

“Normally”, Gardner says, “baby beaver are cross, cranky, temperamental. They will throw their bottle away, make noises. This one was sweet, very different.” Unfortunately, she was also ill. Beaver urine is caustic. In water, where beaver normally live, it’s rapidly diluted. But penned up, the baby beaver’s tail and feet were badly burned. Gardner nursed her through the resulting infection, changing pads around the clock.

Those rotten beavers. Snarly and temperamental with caustic urine. Never mind that the noises a baby beaver make are endearing. And that a healthy unfrightened kit is so adorable that they certain tribes would give them as a consolation to a squaw that lost her child so she could raise the snuggling bundle.

Boy this article is making itself hard to love. Deep breath. Another deep breath. It will get better. It has to.

Human efforts are focused on moving water efficiently down narrow, well-defined channels, steering it to orchards, vineyards, farms and towns, or draining it rapidly away to prevent flooding, opening land for cultivation or construction.

Beavers treat water very differently. Their waterworks do pretty much the opposite. Their ponds spread water out, slow it down, blocking narrow channels. Their dams traps silt and encourage the growth of trees and plants. The result is widened and overgrown water channels, broad shallow wetlands and meandering streams.

That sounds better, Oh good they have more photos buried in the article.

Not surprisingly, beavers’ unique engineering talents have also made them very popular with modern conservationists and resource managers. Beaver ponds, for example, are essential shelter for juvenile salmon, trout and other fish, providing pools of upstream water even in drought years.

The ponds stop snowmelt and heavy rains from rushing downstream too swiftly, allowing it to recharge and replenish groundwater along the way. Where beaver live, they’re a keystone species, altering the environment in ways that provide habitat for a rich and diverse network of plants, insects and other animals. Beaver wetlands are also proving to be a bulwark against wildfires in western states, where they’re being managed.

Hmm lots of groundwater talk. I’m guessing the author interviewed some watery friends of ours.

At the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman, co-Directors of the OAEC Water Institute, have been active for more than ten years in efforts to Bring Back the Beaver to their historic range in California, in places they can provide maximum benefit.

According to Lundquist, beaver fall into the public’s blind spot and restoring their legacy in the state has been challenging, since for many decades they’ve been cast as vermin, or mistakenly, as non-native.

Dolman says other states are amazed at just how hard and complicated it is to try and restore beaver to California. Across the west, in Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and other states, managed beaver re-introductions have been occurring for years, demonstrating multiple benefits to watersheds, to the delight of ranchers and conservationists alike.

It can be frustrating, Dolman notes. “We spend tens of millions in efforts to save Pacific salmon as they continue to disappear, trying to restore degraded habit and drought-proof pools, and repair erosion-cut streambeds, when the beaver will work for free.”

Well that’s better. Recognition of their importance and some argument about what a resource beavers are.

Solutions range from simply painting tree trunks or vines with sand and paint (the beaver hate it), to using pond leveler devices, and other beaver-proof systems. One vineyard installed an electric fence four inches off the ground to keep the beaver out — it works because they can’t jump.

“What we need now is an endowment or bill to fund a Beaver Management Plan for the state that will ensure all interests are protected, while providing suitable habitat,” Lundquist says.

Engaging wildlife to protect declining fisheries, restore water resources and defend against wildfires may be the most sensible and cost-effective approach to problems that widely impact human populations.

Endowment? Good luck with that. How about a tax credit for individual taking steps to live with beavers on their land? How about a fire safety credit for active dams? Just this week we were in the foothills working towards fire-safety for my parents land. Some firemen came to do an inspection of defensible space so we can hopefully renew her insurance another year. What if having beavers in your steam was acknowledged as a step towards that?

Well, all in all this article ended up in a much better place than where it started. I’m counting my blessings as we speak. I know that the person who writes the headline is not usually the person who writes the article. So I’m not blaming Stephen Nett for saying that otters teach beavers. He is a naturalist and science writer so he knows better and seemed to get the environmental benefit of beavers down pat. And good for Kate and Brock for steering him in the right direction.

I guess you really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – or an article by its headline.

THIS JUST IN? BEAVERS HELP OTTERS!

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, beavers and otters July 6, 2019

You know how it is. You work all year throwing a beaver festival and a week later its all gone. Like the faded shadow of a dream of a dream. Who remembers what they were doing last Saturday morning before the sun came up? Not me.

Never me.

It’s okay though because through our steady effort we moved the needles on public opinion to make this headline possible. Prepare to be shocked. Nobody but us would expect a headline like this. And yes I think the festival had a spiritual, zeitgeist-y, atmospheric role in its subject matter, Why do you ask?

Beavers engineer their ecosystems in a way that helps moose and otters

A whole host of different mammals appear to benefit from having beavers in the area. In forests where beavers have been introduced in Finland, their presence is linked to increased activity of several species, including moose, otters, and weasels.

Beavers are described as “ecosystem engineers” because their dam-building work has such a huge effect on habitats. Both the Eurasian beaver and the American beaver were almost driven extinct by hunting in the early 20th century, but they have since recovered in North America.

Beavers and weasels! Who knew? The glowing article has the very FINEST beaver photo I have ever seen. And I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of these things. I bet you’ll agree with me that this photo, from Troy Harrison at the Getty is OUTSTANDING. Teeth, tail, whole package!

More recently, beavers have begun to re-establish themselves in Europe, thanks in part to at least 157 reintroduction projects that have taken place in 24 European countries. The touted benefits they bring to the environment include drought prevention, carbon sequestration, flood management and keeping streams cool.

They are also thought to boost biodiversity. To learn more about their impact on other mammals, Petri Nummi at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues set up camera traps and surveyed snow tracks at forest sites in southern Finland where the American beaver was introduced in the 1950s.

Moose, red foxes and raccoon dogs visited beaver ponds more than control ponds where beavers were not present. Snow tracks showed that moose, otters, weasels and pine martens were more active in beaver patches than other sites.

Well of course there were. Sheesh. Have you folks just started paying attention? Invertebrates=fish=things that eat fish=things that hunt things that eat fish. And nutrients for the moose! All this means more footprints,

“The otter is a species of some concern in Europe, so this may be important from that point of view,” says Nummi.

Beavers change the environments they occupy in several ways. Their dams flood large areas, creating shallow ponds that harbour lots of invertebrates. The trees they fell create open spaces in the forest where young saplings can grow. When beavers leave a pond and their dams break, the previously flooded area is rich in nutrients and can become a meadow.

Felled trees, saplings and aquatic plants can all provide food for moose. Weasels and pine martens feed on smaller mammals, which may benefit from dead trees they can shelter under. Red foxes and raccoon dogs eat frogs, which are plentiful in beaver ponds. Besides feasting on frogs and fish in the ponds, otters make use of abandoned beaver lodges and ice holes during the winter.

Previous studies in the same area have found that beavers are associated with a greater abundance of bats, frogs and waterbirds.

Nummi’s article has been accepted for publication in New Scientist and we look forward to reading the entire thing some time in the very near future. I’ve included the abstract below. It’s fun reading this as if it was “News”. The Daily Mail picked up the story this morning and is having a party with it. Good. Keep on touting beaver benefits in Europe.

PetriNummi^a WenfeiLiao^b OphélieHuet^c^e ErminiaScarpulla^d^e JanneSundell^e

Abstract

Beavers are ecosystem engineers which are capable to facilitate many groups of organisms. However, their facilitation of mammals has been little studied. We applied two methods, camera trapping and snow track survey to investigate the facilitation of a mammalian community by the ecosystem engineering of the American beaver (Castor canadensis) in a boreal setting. We found that both mammalian species richness (83% increase) and occurrence (12% increase) were significantly higher in beaver patches than in the controls. Of individual species, the moose (Alces alces) used beaver patches more during both the ice-free season and winter. The Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra), the pine marten (Martes martes) and the least weasel (Mustela nivalis) made more use of beaver sites during the winter. Our study highlights the role of ecosystem engineers in promoting species richness and abundance, especially in areas of relatively low productivity. Wetlands and their species have been in drastic decline during the past century, and promoting facilitative ecosystem engineering by beaver is feasible in habitat conservation or restoration. Beaver engineering may be especially valuable in landscapes artificially deficient in wetlands.

Great work. Maybe the American biologists will eventually catch on?

BEAVER SCATTER PLOT

heidi08 beavers and otters, Beavers and saltwater, Beavers and Scotland March 21, 2019

I generally did poorly at algebra and dreaded math as the bane of all existence. I avoided or dropped such classes with alarming regularity, and when a professor announced that I could never succeed in her course without at least algebra II I admit I burst into tears. But somehow I eventually found my way to a champion statistics instructor who wanted students to be able to do all calculations by hand and I instead of faiiing . I strangely excelled. Unlike every other class I had ever been in for my entire life I did every scrap of homework and even did some of it twice. I got every answer correct on every final and went on to became the friendly research assistant of the teacher. When I graduated I even received an award. Statistics just made sense to me.

Add this to the mysterious fact that when Jon, who all his life had excelled at math and science, took stats in college he received his lowest grade ever. Go figure, Math and statistics: I honestly think the fields tap into different parts of the brain. They are as different as water-skiing and carpentry.

Which is why it’s time to talk about scatterplots.

A scatterplot consists of an X axis (the up and down axis), a Y axis (the side to side axis), and a series of dots. Each dot on the scatterplot represents one observation from a data set. Sometimes the two variables aren’t related at all, (like height and IQ), and then the scatterplot looks like an amorphous jelly fish-like blob. But sometimes they’re VERY related, so that when one goes up the other follows, like smoking and cancer, and then the scatterplot looks like almost like a straight line or an arrow pointing to obvious conclusions.

The scatterplot of learning about beavers based on your geographic location is generally consistent by region. If you are in the midwest, for example, you likely know very very little. But if you are in Washington state you know a whole bunch. There are pockets of various arrows and pockets of jellyfish. Recently certain areas of the world have started to get much, much smarter indeed and that brings us to the beaver scatterplot.

Take Scotland for instance.

Beavers to ‘spread naturally’ across Scotland after Tory bid to prevent legal protection fails

Beavers will be allowed to “spread naturally” across Scotland, the SNP’s Environment Minister has said after a Tory bid to prevent them being given legal protection was rejected.

Roseanna Cunningham dismissed as “somewhat apocalyptic” warnings that the move would cost farmers thousands of pounds and hit some of Scotland’s best salmon rivers.

She told MSPs that there would be no attempt to “formally contain them in certain areas”, although she said “pop-up populations in completely separate” parts would not be tolerated.

Now it’s good that beavers will be tolerated across the country and that granted protected species status, but a nation that has lived 400 years without beavers doesn’t exactly know what “Spreading naturally” looks like, so the odds of beaver showing up and being considered “unnatural” are fairly high. It’s already been happening for the last 10 years in fact. Add to this the fact that there are some regions that are so geographically inaccessible or so blocked off with motorways that beavers will never get back unless they’re introduced. Don’t they deserve beavers? Our beaver friends in Scotland aren’t thrilled with this pronouncement, but as I always say:

Baby steps for babies.

She told MSPs: “What we anticipate now is that beavers will simply be allowed to spread naturally…Now they are here they must be left simply to spread into a natural range.

Meanwhile, for an army of young conservationists in America, their future looks bright with beavers, that is if the famed ‘green new deal’ has anything to say about it.

National service for the environment – what an army of young conservationists could achieve

A modern volunteer army of conservationists could get to work in every country, adjusting their efforts according to the environmental needs of each setting. The first task set could be in environmental monitoring – collecting data on pollution and wildlife abundance. These surveys would provide invaluable information about the health of ecosystems and how they are changing.

Ecosystems could then benefit from projects which reintroduce species and restore habitats. Mass tree planting could absorb atmospheric carbon and provide new habitat for returning wildlife. Wetlands – coastal ecosystems which protect against sea level rise – could be expanded with vegetation which would also create sanctuaries for migratory birds. Reintroduced beavers and other ecosystem engineers could act as animal recruits who create new habitats, such as dams and lakes, which allow even more species to thrive.

How would you like to be a new college graduate working for a summer reintroducing beavers! Fixing drought one beaver at a time. I can’t think of anything better – for the planet OR for a young ecologist.

Finally, I read this morning that our own Morro Bay in California is about to get a lot smarter, thanks to Kate Lundquist of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

Morro Bay Science Explorations with the Estuary Program

Join the Morro Bay National Estuary Program for our Morro Bay Science Explorations talk!

Title of talk: Wildlife Conservation and Restoration in Our Creeks.

Kate Lundquist, Director of WATER Institute, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center.
Topic: The history of beaver in California and the importance of beaver to watershed restoration.

- March 21, 2019
- 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
- Free

WONDERFUL! The estuary is always getting a great deal of press for cute baby sea otters, its about time they saw some beavers coming their direction! Good luck Kate, and don’t forget to mention the most famous estuary beavers, ahem.

BEAVER ON THE RED CARPET

heidi08 beavers and otters January 18, 2018

My goodness! Yesterday was a whirl of activity with exciting development for the festival pouring in and making me feel like uh-oh it’s really happening! Today the joyful strain continues with two excellent beaver appreciation articles. It’s almost like someone’s been reading my mind. (Or my website)

Ecosystem Engineers in Rivers: How and Where Organisms Create Positive Biogeomorphic Feedbacks

Ecosystem engineering is by definition an interdisciplinary concept, tying together geomorphology (the study of physical processes and forms in rivers) and ecology. Two researchers at Umeå University in Sweden that bridge these disciplines, a fluvial geomorphologist, Dr. Lina Polvi, and a landscape ecologist, Dr. Judith Sarneel, examined the available literature and summarized the range of ecosystem engineers that are found in river environments in their review recently published in WIREs Water.

An important aspect of this work was to determine where various ecosystem engineers have the most impact, in terms of three geomorphic factors—channel width, sediment size and the relative stability of the channel. For example, rivers affected by beaver dams can become more complex and change from being single-thread meandering channels to more complex multi-thread systems. However, although the beaver can be found throughout a river system from very narrow to very wide channels, they will only engineer by building dams and truly alter the river’s form in narrow- to intermediate-sized channels.

This sounds basically like beavers always make a difference but in the right shape streams they make a bigger difference. Fair enough. The article goes on to talk about other kinds of ecosystem engineers and how one should be careful to only put in native ones. Really? Somebody is STILL researching this? They talk about macrophytes as engineers of streams to which I say HRMMPH! When has anyone ever had a macrophyte festival?

Beavers are sooo much better,

I like this letter to the editor in the Register-Guard much better for obvious reasons,

Beavers important to ecosystems

I appreciated the Jan. 11 article bringing attention to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services’ illicit killing of Oregon’s beavers. During the 1990s, I conducted a research project on the then-state-endangered river otter population in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Because beavers occupied many of the same sites as otters in my 40-mile stretch of watershed, I documented their behaviors as well.

Through my research — and that of many others throughout the country — good river otter habitat is often equated to be a consequence of beaver activity. In fact, through complex science, these ecosystem engineers provide habitat for many other species as well: plants, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and fish — including Oregon’s beloved salmon. Results from research conducted in Oregon, Alaska and British Columbia show that juvenile salmon have higher survival rates in streams with beaver ponds.

Beavers should be revered for their contribution to sustainable ecosystems, not killed to justify an agency’s existence. Two long-time beaver researchers, Bruce Schulte and Dietland Müller-Schwarze, expressed it well: “Given the flexibility of beaver behavior, perhaps we would be better to manage human activity, to use preventive measures to avoid problems with beavers, and to reap the benefits of living with beavers.”

Judith K. Berg. EUGENE OR

HOW much do we LOVE Judith? What a wonderful letter! Of course ideal otter habitat is the result of beaver work. And ideal salmon habitat and blue heron habitat too. Judith is the author of the very successful book “The Otter Spirit” which has won several awards, I’m thinking she deserves an award for her letters to the editor too, because “Beavers should be revered, not killed” is a mighty fine sentence.

She is definitely a member of Worth A Dam in spirit! Thanks, Judith.