BINGHAM COUNTY WELCOMES BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout July 2, 2022

What do you know? While I’ve been cocooned in a bubble of festival details the world has continued to turn and find it’s own truths to say about beavers! Whether it’s the IFLS article that notices that beaver kits are, in fact, the cutest rodents in the world or this fine article from Binngham county Idaho.

CONNELLY: The beaver pond: Nature’s landscape remodeling program

Nature likes to remodel. Hurricanes, floods, fire, and so on can change the environmental landscape quickly and over large areas.

Nature uses another tool to affect change in relatively small areas, the beaver pond. Beavers are a “keystone” species, meaning their wetland-creating activities support many other species. In lakes and rivers with deep water, beavers may use bank burrows and lodges, otherwise beavers build dams to provide ponds as protection against predators and access to food during winter. Beavers normally work at night and are prolific builders, carrying mud and stones with their fore-paws and wood between their teeth.

Cute idea. The beaver pond “Remodeling program” could be reality TV that catches on. I like where this is going.

Beaver ponds can provide nurseries for trout and salmon. They are also beneficial to frog and toad populations, likely because they provide areas for larvae to mature in warmer, well-oxygenated water. A study in Alberta, Canada, showed that beaver ponds supported almost six times more newly metamorphosed wood frogs, 29 times more western toads and 24 times more boreal chorus frogs than on nearby free-flowing streams.

Beaver dams also help songbird populations by stimulating the growth of plant species important to songbirds and generally enhancing habitat. The presence of beaver dams has been shown to be associated with an increased diversity of songbirds.

Beaver ponds help build and restore wetlands which improve downstream flood control, plant and animal biodiversity, water quality, and erosion control. A recent study of beaver pond hydrology reported increased groundwater storage and regional water balance which can certainly be beneficial during drought.

Wow that’s a lot of good things to say about beavers in IDAHO. Have you checked your state laws? Are you sure that’s legal? I couldn’t not be happier with this article.

Many ranchers value beaver ponds because they enhance water and forage for livestock. After restoring beaver, one Idaho rancher reported that his ranch and surrounding public lands experienced an increase in wet meadows, healthy riparian habitat, and floodplains that are more resilient to fire, drought, and erosion. Lew Pence, who worked for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, said “I think beavers, in conjunction with proper grazing management, are the most economical way to bring these badly eroded riparian areas back to health”.

Additionally, a recent study concluded that increased vegetation productivity resulting from conservation-oriented grazing or exclosures and high amounts of beaver activity is equivalent to moving conventionally-grazed, low-gradient sites without beaver up at least 850 feet in elevation or increasing annual precipitation by almost 10 inches.

Wow. Jay Inslee you have made such an impression in Idaho that it’s starting to sink in. I am fully impressed. You should be very proud. Get ready for the classic “your mileage may vary” statement to make cover the lawsuits that follow.

Beaver ponds may not always be a good thing and do present some challenges. Ponds can be disruptive; flooding may cause property damage and can wash out railroad tracks and roads. When a beaver dam bursts the resulting flash flood may overwhelm a culvert.

In his book “Journal of a Trapper,” Osborne Russell reported much of his beaver trapping occurred east of the Snake River Plain. That was prime beaver country in the 1830s, and many areas still provide good beaver habitat today. If you want to view beaver ponds, the higher country stretching from Mink Creek to the South Fork of the Snake offers plenty of opportunity.

Okay nothing about solving problems or flow device but STILL. That was the best paragraphs I have read about beavers from Idaho EVER. I think that deserves a celebration. I don’t even know who wrote it. The article is titled “Connelly” but it doesn’t even say anything about the author. I did find this bio however. He’s the real deal.

Jack Connelly has lived in Bingham County for over 40 years. He is an avid outdoorsman and has hiked, camped, hunted, and fished over much of the U.S. as well as parts of Europe and Asia. Connelly worked as a biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for over 30 years. He now enjoys retirement with his wife Cheryl raising chickens and bird dogs at their home in Blackfoot.

Alright Idaho. You’ve been officially summoned to the beaver table. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

“CAN DEE FISHY YUMP OVER DEE BEEVER DAM?”

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout June 7, 2022

I don’t know how much proof people need and why we need to spend our time publishing studies like “Beavers Don’t Cause Beaver Fever More than any Other mammal” or “Don’t eat fish”. Some things you shouldn’t HAVE to prove. But I was glad to see this headine anyway,

Field experiments to assess passage of juvenile salmonids across beaver dams during low flow conditions in a tributary to the Klamath River, California, USA

Although the use of beaver ponds by numerous fish and wildlife species is well documented, debate continues as to the benefits of beaver dams, primarily because dams are perceived as barriers to fish movement, particularly migratory species such as salmonids. In this study, through a series of field experiments, we tested the ability of juvenile salmonids to cross constructed beaver dams (aka beaver dam analogues). Two species, coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and steelhead trout (O. mykiss), were tracked using passive integrated transponder tags (PIT tags) as they crossed constructed beaver dam analogues. We found that when we tagged and moved these fishes from immediately upstream of the dams to immediately downstream of them, most were detected upstream within 36 hours of displacement.

By the end of a 21-day field experiment, 91% of the displaced juvenile coho and 54% of the juvenile steelhead trout were detected on antennas upstream of the dams. In contrast, during the final week of the 21-day experiment, just 1 of 158 coho salmon and 6 of 40 (15%) of the steelhead trout were still detected on antennas in the release pool below the dams. A similar but shorter 4-day pilot experiment with only steelhead trout produced similar results. In contrast, in a non-displacement experiment, juveniles of both species that were captured, tagged and released in a pool 50 m below the dams showed little inclination to move upstream. Further, by measuring hydraulic conditions at the major flowpaths over and around the dams, we provide insight into low-flow conditions under which juvenile salmonids are able to cross these constructed beaver dams, and that multiple types of flowpaths may be beneficial towards assisting fish movement past instream restoration structures.

Finally, we compared estimates of the number of juvenile salmonids using the pond habitat upstream of the dam relative to the number that the dam may have prevented from moving upstream. Upstream of the dams we found an abundance of juvenile salmonids and a several orders of magnitude difference in favor of the number of juveniles using the pond habitat upstream of the dam. In sum, our study suggests beaver dams, BDAs, and other channel spanning habitat features should be preserved and restored rather than removed as perceived obstructions to fish passage.

Are you paying attention WISCONSIN? Or do you stop reading when you saw all those long words. Let me make it clearer with a little graph. How’s this?

Just to clarify, on the first day only ONE fish had cleared the beaver dam. But two weeks later most of them had. And we’re talking salmon AND steelhead. Or to put it in the simplest terms. Do you remember the Swedish chef from the muppets? I think he would put it something like

“Can dee fishy yump over de beever dam? “Dee fishy is var tasty und dee dam est var hi. Mork Mork Mork! Yes! We can see dat the fishies all yumped over the beever dam!“

Are you following along? Look about those fine scientists blowing up beaver dams so that salmon and trout can get by, JUST STOP IT. You got that?

Overall, we suggest that unless there is clear and compelling evidence that a beaver dam or BDAs are preventing the movement of fishes and that this is likely to have a population-level effect, such structures should not be removed. Options such as temporarily notching may be an alternative under some conditions, such as the presence of adult salmon stacking up below a dam, but guidelines need developing. For human-built structures such as BDAs and other weirs, we conclude that our data provide some guidance as to what constitutes a passable structure, but that more examples from the field are needed under a wider range of flow conditions.

Kind of mealy mouth for my tastes, I wish you didn’t have to be so cautiously scientific about everything. JUST STOP IT. That’s what I’d say. But then I don’t work for NOAA Fisheries and nobody pays my salary.

BEAVER THINGS ARE FALLING INTO PLACE

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout May 4, 2022

I just love days like these. Yesterday I learned that our long time helper Erika will take over for Fro with the animal spirit flag painting, with Susan, April and Alana and Jon as her aides and to top it off this story aired on the NPR podcast “Short Wave”. You should definitely listen.

Why You Should Give A Dam About Beavers!

WILL TEN YEARS OF DATA BE ENOUGH?

heidi08 Beavers and salmon April 16, 2022

So yesterday the very best argument for beavers was dropped in video form from the Oregon Field Guide. They revisit Bridge Creek where they produced ground breaking footage of Michael Pollock discussing BDA’s to fight incision and increase salmon. It seemed encouraging at the time, but I guess it might have been a fluke that there were more baby fish after beaver dams came.

Now they have 10 years of data piled up. And there are 180% more juvenile salmon than there used to be. I would call that irrefutable. Do me a favor? Watch this video all the way through and share it with everyone you’ve ever met.

TAHOE TELLS MARIN A THING OR TWO ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and salmon April 15, 2022

Marin worries get answers from friends of ours.

Beavers, salmon thrive together in Tahoe creek

As co-founder of the Sierra Wildlife Coalition working with officials at the U.S. Forest Service’s Taylor Creek Center in South Lake Tahoe, I believe that Steve Eakle’s letter published April 2 misstated the situation with the beavers here. He is referencing out-of-date information.

Before the coalition got involved in 2014, it is true that staff was pulling out beaver dams almost every day over fears of flooding. Our group installed three flow devices (aka pond levelers) that worked to eliminate flooding, so there has been no need to remove dams since 2014. (more…)