Category: Beavers and salmon

AND THE NOMINATION GOES TO….STONEWALLING!

heidi08 Beavers and salmon March 5, 2018

Just a few days ago I wrote about it being the end of February which was the deadline for Wildlife Services to submit their preliminary report on whether killing beavers harmed salmon. If they agreed there were questions it would submit to undertake a formal assessment on the matter. I’ll let Ben Goldfarb‘s article say it better:

Wildlife Services consented to submit a biological assessment to the National Marine Fisheries Service by Feb. 28. If both agencies agree that killing beavers is likely to harm protected fish, they’ll undergo a formal consultation that could end with a biological opinion, a document specifying measures for reducing damage to salmon habitat.

To no one’s surprise, February 28 came and went with no report from Wildlife Services. Meaning they decided not to decide. And for the time remain in beaver-killing limbo. Obviously there were no ‘right answers’ to the question they wanted to hear. Kind of like when you father asks you at midnight if you know exactly what time your curfew is, young lady.

I suppose that means that their temporary hiatus on beaver killing will be extended? It’s a big world, they can always just focus on killing other things until they think the coast is clear. Or until we stop paying attention.

Now it’s up to the Center for Bioligical Diversity and the Western Environmental Law Center to force the issue. Which I assume they’re working on at the moment. The original letter of 60-day notice of intent to sue was served on November 2, which means with holidays and court calendar the deadline ran out some time in the last month.. Wildlife services sidestepped the deadline by saying they’d issue a report at the end of February and they instead chose to do nothing.

The next move to make is for the good guys to say TIME’S UP! We waited long enough for your input and now you just have to follow ours. Or let the judge tell you what to do. Maybe step in and impose some kind of fine or sanction for their failure to act and that will require them financially to move forward.

As recently as December 2016, NMFS articulated the importance of beavers to survival and recovery of the Oregon Coast coho in its Recovery Plan for the species (NMFS 2016a). Noting that beaver removal has degraded coho salmon habitat, these federal fish experts also point out that restoring beavers and their dams has proven effective at increasing salmon populations (NMFS 2016a, pp. 3-8, 3-28). In its plan, NMFS explicitly called for changes in“beaver management to allow beavers to build more dams in Oregon Coast coho rearing habitat”(NMFS 2016a, p. 4-16).

Given all the positive benefits of beavers to ecosystem health, it is not surprising that researchers have documented that removal of beavers harms salmonids, including populations listed under the ESA5 For example, Pollock et al. (2004),in a study of the Stillaguamish River Basin of Washington, found that the greatest reduction in coho smolt production capacity was associated with the extensive loss of beaver ponds. Removing beavers means fewer dams because of less dam-building and less maintenan ce of existing dams by beavers. In coastal Oregon rivers, beaver dams in small streams often wash out during high winter flows and beavers rebuild them the following summer (ODFW 2005).

If you look at the letter it all seems a pretty open a shut argument if you ask me, Little bit part players like us can just sit back and watch and wait what happens.

For the above stated reasons, APHIS-Wildlife Services has violated and remains in ongoing violation of Section 7 of the ESA. If these violations of law are not cured within sixty days, the Center for Biological Diversity and No rthwest Environmental Advocates intend to file suit for declaratory and injunctive relief, as wellas attorney fees and costs.

HAPPY SALMON DAY TO YOU!

heidi08 Beavers and salmon February 28, 2018

Say that I slew them not?
Why, then they are not dead:
But dead they are, and devilish slave, by thee.

Richard 111 Act 1 Scene 2

It’s the very last day of February, You know what that means? Last week Ben’s article pointed out that after the lawsuit brought against Oregon WS for trapping beaver on the grounds that it harmed salmon

“Wildlife Services consented to submit a biological assessment to the National Marine Fisheries Serviceby Feb. 28.”

I checked yesterday, and found out they didn’t turn in their homework early, So today is the day when we find out what they said. Assuming they’re reading the same science we are this could mean they agree that killing beavers is bad for fish and undertake a formal assessment that could place conditions limiting where beaver trapping can happen. Which could be very good news for many lucky beavers in the state. Ben said he’d tell me as soon as he hears so lets all cross our fingers.

“If both agencies agree that killing beavers is likely to harm protected fish, they’ll undergo a formal consultation that could end with a biological opinion, a document specifying measures for reducing damage to salmon habitat. In neighboring Washington, where Wildlife Services did consult with with the Fisheries Service, the agency committed to restrictions on beaver killing — agreeing, for instance, to concentrate its trapping on agricultural drainage channels rather than salmon streams.”

Ben Goldfarb HCN

HIGH COUNTRY BEAVER NEWS

heidi08 Beavers and salmon February 21, 2018

Yesterday was an oddly urgent day. In the morning I got an email from a wise beaver friend who was unhappy about the article I had written back in January saying the suit on Wildlife Services to protect salmon wasn’t going to help beavers much. I was surprised he’d read it and offered to let him counter the argument on the website. Then out of the blue I received (what I assumed was an) unrelated note from the editor of High Country News that they were interested in publishing one of Cheryl’s photos for an article they expected to publish soon. I called Cheryl, got her permission, and them saw this appear on the front page.

Of course I was eager to read more. Which is when I found out it was written by our good friend Ben Goldfarb, who is writing the upcoming book on beavers. and was coming to our festival this summer to promote it and read excerpts aloud.

Can the ‘Beaver State’ learn to love beavers?

When [one landowner] called for a trapper this time, though, she never heard back. She isn’t sure why her pleas went unanswered. But it’s likely she’d become caught in the middle of an unusual legal battle, one that could upend how the West’s wildlife agencies manage the region’s most influential rodent.

The case revolves around Wildlife Services, the branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture tasked with managing problematic animals. It killed more than 21,000 beavers nationwide last year, including 319 in Oregon.

Among Wildlife Services’ fiercest antagonists is the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. The center has sued the agency in Idaho, California, Colorado and other states, accusing of it failure to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their actions. So it shouldn’t have been surprising when the center, along with the Western Environmental Law Center and Northwest Environmental Advocates, notified Wildlife Services this November that it planned to take it to court over its Oregon beaver-killing. But this time, rather than citing NEPA, the center was wielding a much tougher law, the Endangered Species Act.

Ben was writing about the legal threat to Wildlife Services because of endangered salmon, Just like the comments made earlier in the day from my friend. I figured it wasn’t a coincidence, and waited for the mystery to unfold itself.

This case, however, hinges on Castor canadensis’s unique environmental influence. Beavers are a “keystone species,” an organism whose pond-creating powers support entire biological communities. In Oregon, a host of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead runs depend on them. By killing beavers without accounting for the destruction of rodent-built critical habitat, the environmental groups argue, Wildlife Services risks jeopardizing federally protected fish

A sockeye salmon jumps over a beaver dam. Beavers help build critical habitat for young salmon. Dr. Jeffrey S. Jensen, University of Washington, Bothell

.This case, however, hinges on Castor canadensis’s unique environmental influence. Beavers are a “keystone species,” an organism whose pond-creating powers support entire biological communities. In Oregon, a host of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead runs depend on them. By killing beavers without accounting for the destruction of rodent-built critical habitat, the environmental groups argue, Wildlife Services risks jeopardizing federally protected fish.

The article goes on to describe how there’s so much science behind the “beavers-key-to-salmon” argument that Wildlife Services immediately agreed to suspend trapping of all aquatic mammals until the issue could be reviewed by fish experts – their report is due to be released at the end of this month. Just for comparison a similar process in Washington determined that beavers were so important to salmon that WS would only trap them in agriculture drainage channels.

This is where it gets really interesting.

Whatever happens, the case’s symbolic significance is hard to miss. Around the West, a burgeoning coalition of “Beaver Believers” is relocating, conserving, or imitating beavers to improve sage grouse habitat, build wetlands for swans, store groundwater, boost cattle forage and repair eroded streams. Although Wildlife Services has been a powerful headwind in the face of that momentum, its willingness to consult in Oregon hints that the agency is capable of viewing beavers as boons as well as pests. And further legal action seems likely: “We’re talking to all of our partners about beavers,” says Andrew Hawley, staff attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, “and what we can be doing to help change how they’re managed throughout the West.”

The next paragraph discusses how some ridiculous beaver-crazed advocates aren’t sure that the suit will make much difference, because beavers will just get killed some other way anyhow. Who in the hell would say something stupid like that?

Oh right, it was me. In the January column the article links to next.

Some advocates worry that, if Wildlife Services’ ability to control beavers is curtailed, the agency’s “cooperators” — the counties and other land managers with whom it contracts — will simply hire private trappers, increasing undocumented killings. Beaver removal could continue unabated, but without the government tracking kills: a data-deficient free-for-all.

Adkins, though, is more optimistic. Because it’s a federal agency, she points out, Wildlife Services offers services to cooperators at prices that private trappers can’t match. By limiting federally subsidized trapping on salmon streams, conservationists hope to spur land managers to seek less deadly solutions. “Lethal management will probably never be taken off the books,” says Leonard Houston, a Douglas County resident who has live-trapped and relocated dozens of beavers under the auspices of the South Umpqua Rural Community Parnership, “but our hope is that this will make it a last option.”

Hmm. So their response is that WS trapping is cheaper because the federal government helps pick up the bill, and when the service costs more folks might be slower to kill them outright. Like imposing taxes on cigarettes, Interesting. The article goes on to describe the landowner from opening paragraph who had a flow device installed on her land at no cost to her through the good work of Jakob Shockley and Leonard Houston, and ends thusly:

After Susan Sherosick’s trapping requests went unanswered, she contacted Houston, whose name she’d seen in the newspaper. One Tuesday in January, Houston and Jakob Shockey, the founder of a company called Beaver State Wildlife Solutions, visited Sherosick’s land to install a flow device, a pipe-and-fence contraption designed to lower beaver ponds, thereby sparing both property and the animals’ lives. When I spoke with her several days later, she seemed cautiously optimistic about her ability to cohabitate with her buck-toothed neighbors. “The water’s down far enough now that it’s not hurting anything,” she said. “I’m waiting to see how it works out. It’s only been a week.”

Ben Goldfarb is the author of the forthcoming book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2018).

Excellent article, and it makes me tingle with anticipation as to what will happen next week. I understand how this action is the first rung of a ladder that might force the federal government to think about beavers differently.

But can I just say how, since I inherited this website in 2008 and have written exactly 3859 articles on behalf of them every single dam morning of every single day spanning an entire decade, I’m not exactly sure that the ONE column I’d want to be featured in a national periodical would be the controversial APHIS defending one!!!

Sheesh.

Well at least it doesn’t have too many typos.

STOP! IN THE NAME OF SALMON

heidi08 Beavers and salmon January 11, 2018

UPDATE:

I just had a phone call with Dr. Jimmy Taylor of APHIS in Oregon. He confirms that WS represents only a small portion of the legal take of beavers. Land owners who have concerns can legally kill beavers without a permit. And agencies who want to get rid of beavers can also use private trappers. Wildlife Services is the easiest target, but by no means the biggest. Also they keep records of the method and number taken, and have to report accidental take, while others don’t.

This is mostly a symbolic shot across the bow.

A little over two months ago you might remember reading here that something BIG happened in beaver world. It was in Oregon where two powerful conservation groups declared they were going to sue wildlife services because they were damaging the salmon population by continuing to trap beavers. Remember that? It was a wild move that had never been done before and it was a big, big deal.

Guess what news broke yesterday?

Threat of lawsuit halts efforts to kill beavers in Oregon

PORTLAND — The U.S. government will temporarily halt a little-known beaver killing program in Oregon, where the rodent is the state animal, appears on the state flag and is the mascot of Oregon State University.

Beavers once played an important role in the state’s economy, earning Oregon the nickname “the beaver state.”

Environmental groups have threatened a lawsuit alleging that the practice of killing the animals reduces the number of dams that create deep pools that are ideal habitat for young, endangered coho salmon.

In a letter released Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups, the government said it will further study whether the actions violate the Endangered Species Act.

Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said in the Dec. 27, 2017, letter it would “cease all aquatic mammal damage management activities” directed at beavers, river otters, muskrats and mink.

Wildlife Services killed more than 400 beavers in Oregon in 2016 as part of a federal effort to control damage to agricultural fields, timber land and roadways caused by flooding that resulted from beaver dams.

Whoo hoo? A moratorium on beaver trapping! I’m not exactly sure what this means for all the beavers in Oregon, but you can bet I’m going to find out. (In California it wouldn’t mean a heck of a lot because there are plenty of folks that trap beaver besides Wildlife Services). Our counting usually shows APHIS only counts for a third of all the beavers depredated in the state. I’ve asked if Oregon is different and will let you know the answer. For now be grateful that this puts SQUARELY in the public eye the important relationship between killing beavers and harming salmon.

In fact this news broke yesterday in Houston of all places!

Environmentalists say killing beavers to mitigate damage to private agricultural interests harms the environment — particularly endangered salmon species — because the dams help salmon, another Northwest icon.

Beavers are “nature’s engineers,” and their complex dams form deep pools in bubbling streams that shield young salmon and give them a resting place to fatten up as they migrate to the Pacific Ocean, said Andrew Hawley, a staff attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center.

The dams also have been shown to reduce turbidity in streams and maintain stable water levels — even in drought — by blocking and slowing the flow of water. “Instead of going in and just killing them, there are options for live-trapping them and figuring how to move the family units into other areas. Let them do what they do best,” he said.

“They do exactly the type of restoration work that the biologists say we need to do for salmon and coho and steelhead recovery, and they do it for free — and better than we could ever do.”

If you want to support these litigation beaver warriors, send them a little love here: Western Environmental Law Center and Center for Biological Diversity. You know I don’t break out this award ceremony for just any old news story, but this one deserves it. I have already heard from several lawyers watching this case and thinking about launching their own in their respective states.

IN DEFENSE OF BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Environmental December 15, 2017

Two fine articles appeared yesterday in defense of our favorite hero. The first is from the World Wildlife Federation’s Blog post. It has one of my top favorite photos that isn’t ours. The second is from a group called EPIC in Arcata that I hadn’t heard of until last week when Eli Asarian of Riverbend Sciences sent them my way regarding depredation permits. They were considering the impact of beavers on salmon and wondering whether depredation permits took that into account. I don’t know if I was helpful, but I think you’ll agree that something about the article suggests I made a lasting impression of sorts.

Repairing the beaver’s reputation – and our freshwater ecosystems

Engineering for nature comes naturally to beavers. Though they can sometimes pose real challenges for the people who share their space, their dams and the resulting ponds can help restore vegetation, combat climate change, rebuild fish habitat, reduce pollution by capturing sediment, and build resilience against floods and droughts by storing water and slowing the pace of racing streams and rivers. Without beavers at work, most of the biodiversity we associate with wetland habitats – the fish, birds and bugs – would all disappear.

Throughout Alberta, there’s a growing demand to find solutions to human-wildlife conflict. And in the North Saskatchewan Watershed (Alberta), where the threats from habitat loss and fragmentation and pollution are ranked “high” to “very high,” beavers are damn important. With some help from WWF-Canada’s Loblaw Water Fund, the Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society, also known as “Cows and Fish,” is working to repair the beaver’s reputation, and, by doing so, the freshwater ecosystems it calls home.

Cows and Fish is repairing this rodent’s rep, and reducing human-wildlife conflict, by raising awareness about the important role beavers play in riparian health in their “Living with Beavers” workshops, like this one on Dec. 7.

While the beleaguered beaver may never be welcomed as an ecosystem saver, Cows and Fish is offering communities practical solutions for coexistence so that beavers and their dams – along with the core role they play in wetland health – don’t have to be removed.

Hurray for Cows and Fish! For my money they are the most persuasive unsung beaver advocates on the planet. Not appearing in any PBS documentary or publishing a coffee table book but making a real difference by talking to one farmer at a time, over coffee, in meeting, and putting out excellent resources that make sense to the average viewer.

This is one of their drawing from the impressive “Beaver: Our watershed partner” by artist Elizabeth Saunders.

Now onto the story from EPIC, which stands for Environmental Protection Information Center. See if you can spot possibly my subtle influence.

Why Beavers are Worth a Dam!

Beavers are a keystone species, playing a critical role in biodiversity and providing direct benefits to surrounding ecosystems as well as fish, wildlife and people. Dams created by beavers create wetlands that help decrease the effects of damaging floods, recharge drinking water aquifers, protect watersheds from droughts, decrease erosion, stabilize stream banks, remove toxic pollutants from surface and ground water and many threatened and endangered species rely on the wetland habitat c

reated by beavers. They also produce food for fish and other animals, increase

habitat and cold water pools that benefit salmon, repair damaged stream channels and watersheds, preserve open space, and maintain stable stream flows.

Consequently, incised stream channels, altered streamflow regimes, and degraded riparian vegetation limit the potential for beaver re-establishment. For these reasons, preventing further habitat degradation and restoring degraded habitats are key to protecting and restoring beaver populations.

It’s a great article, with excellent science to back it up. It even has links to the FOIA data from Wildlife Services obtained by Executive Director Tom Wheeler which is what I was asked about last week. It ends with a wonderful plea on behalf of beavers.

Beavers Need Help

While the North Coast Region has a beaver deficit, every year hundreds of beavers are killed in California’s Central Valley by Wildlife Services, a federal agency tasked with (lethal) “removal” of “problem” or “nuisance” animals because landowners view them as a pest. The Department of Fish and Wildlife also issues depredation permits for landowners to trap and kill nuisance beavers on their property.

Instead of trapping and killing beavers that are unwanted in other regions, it is imperative that a relocation program is created, so that beavers can be relocated to North Coast rivers and other places to help restore streams and wetlands. Beaver reintroduction is a sustainable cost-effective strategy, but we need to work with stakeholders to navigate the political, regulatory and biological frameworks to safely restore their populations.

Well, I don’t disagree with that sentiment. Our review of depredation permits has never seen one from Humbolt county in three years, which implies they mostly aren’t there. Eli did tell me about a few sites that have beavers along the Klamath, so fingers crossed they’ll flourish eventually. But you know me, I’m never as happy about moving beavers as I am about working to let them stay right where they are.

And about that headline, I’m not saying my brain is the only brain this has ever occurred. And I’m not saying folks don’t get subliminal influences that just stick in their heads but they don’t realize they saw it somewhere else first. I’m just saying the timing is eye-popping. Eli introduced us on 12-08, and I wrote Tom about our depredation permit review that same day and sent this summary graphic. He replied a couple days later, saying it was a great design and that he had been planning to do the same.