Category: Beavers and salmon

Legacy

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? March 26, 2017

Finally! The article about our beaver tenure came out! Of course it arrived the moment after I posted yesterday, but it’s perfect for our only-good-news-Sunday. It’s also a well written article by Martinez resident Sam Richards. (Turns out he lives next-door to the house where I grew up – because Martinez!) It is accompanied by Susan Pollard’s wonderful photos and I don’t sound as horrible as I was worried might happen, but I’m never happy when Luigi talks about feeding beavers with a stick. If you want to see the video where I look positively slagged you are going to have to click on the link to find it yourself. I manage one good line at the end, anyway.

A decade of beavers (mostly) in Martinez

MARTINEZ — It started in 2007, when downtown Martinez citizens noticed Alhambra Creek was flowing slow, and that trees along the banks had been gnawed down to little points. The furry, buoyant culprits were elusive at first, but their first dam of sticks, leaves and mud near Marina Vista Avenue told the, er, tail.

After winning an early fight over their very lives, given concerns about downtown flooding, the beavers went from cause celebre to cause for adoration. There were (and are) “Martinez Beavers” T-shirts and bumper stickers, and the 10th annual Beaver Festival will take place in August.

“Who had even heard of beavers in town before?” said Heidi Perryman, president of the nonprofit Worth a Dam group. Someone she met literally walking down the street told her that beavers lived a few blocks from her Martinez home.

“It’s actually pretty common, it turns out, but I didn’t know it then,” said Perryman, whose preservation efforts have helped give the local beavers a dash of national notoriety, and even some international interest, given the recently rejuvenated efforts to reintroduce Eurasian beavers in England, where they had been extinct since the 1500s, killed for their pelts (and as an acceptable edible substitute for fish during Lent).

“It’s been both a feel-good and a do-good story for Martinez,” said City Councilman Mark Ross, an early champion of the beavers. The rodents themselves have, by and large, done well in the creek; the creek’s ecology has indeed improved, say environmentalists who credit the beavers; and Martinez has become known for something beyond Joe DiMaggio, John Muir and the Shell oil refinery.

A feel good story for Martinez! Thank you for that quote Mr. Ross, I think I’ll put it in my city grant application. It’s nice to see the story remembered in such detail. I sent the reporter a copy of our newsletter which prompted him to think about it. Like pretty much everyone, he had no idea ten years had passed already.

At Luigi’s Deli, about a block from Alhambra Creek, a wall is packed with photos of people owner Luigi Daberdaku has met over the years. Most of them, he said, came downtown to find the beavers.

It didn’t take long for the beavers to win his and others’ hearts. Daberdaku fed them apple pieces — on a long stick. “I saw what the teeth did to the trees; what could they do to my hand?”

At a November 2007 meeting at Alhambra High School, David Frey of Pleasant Hill, a maritme consultant, suggested Martinez city engineers build a diversion around the beaver dam so the beavers don’t have to be relocated. The “beaver deceiver” built the next year accomplished just that. Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff archives

Daberdaku didn’t support downtown property owners who initially wanted the beavers gone. Neither did most who spoke at a rowdy November 2007 City Council meeting at Alhambra High School, where everything from moving the beavers to embracing their tourism potential to renaming the high school sports teams from the Bulldogs to the Beavers was discussed. Many invoked the name of a famous environmentalist son: “What would John Muir do?” One woman said, “We don’t want to be known as a refinery town that kills beavers, right?”

Former Martinez mayor Harriett Burt said learning the science of the beavers changed her mind. “It raised awareness about the creek environment in general,” she said recently, “and it’s been a good thing.”

Good Harriet! And Bad Luigi! I remember the night we caught him feeding apples with a stick and told him to stop. I hoped that was the only time. But that’s what happens when an entire city raises beavers. Not everyone is a good parent. The reporter even talked to Skip, which I’m sure amused him.

But the beavers’ real stay of execution may have been the “beaver deceiver,” a water bypass pipe under a dam, installed by Vermonter Skip Lisle in 2008. Designed to fool beavers into thinking they’re successfully damming a waterway, the pipe “secretly” carries water under the dam to prevent flooding.

Lisle still marvels at his Martinez assignment. “I was building a beaver deceiver, and there were throngs of people there, media, and helicopters overhead. It was unique.”

Perryman and the Worth a Dam group have kept beavers in the public eye, even when they were absent from Alhambra Creek. Beavers’ images adorn downtown murals at one creek crossing, and on a “tile bridge” downstream with children’s depictions of the beavers. The Martinez Beaver Festival, an intimate gathering at its 2008 beginning, now draws hundreds to the small patch near the Amtrak station that some call “Beaver Park.” For two years, a group from Oakland led by a city environmental stewardship analyst took the train to Martinez for lessons on how beavers renew urban streams.

Worth a Dam has also inspired other beaver champions. Caitlin McCombs found that group’s work while looking for help saving beavers near her home in Mountain House, near Tracy. McCombs then started the MH Beavers preservation group.

“I never knew before that beavers serve as a vital keystone, and that they promote an overall healthier environment,” said McCombs.

Caitlin! What a wonderful quote! We are so proud to have been part of your V.I.B.E. (Very Important Beaver Education). She won’t be joining us for earth day this year because she has a conference to attend for college, and we will miss her. But I feel that we helped her raise the awareness in Mountain House and she will think differently about beavers for her entire life. That makes me entirely happy.

By October 2015, the beavers were no longer deceived by the black pipe and built new dams downstream before leaving altogether soon after that. Some of the 24 Martinez kits had died, and others moved on. The original mother beaver, with a new younger mate, left, too.

But Perryman and others were overjoyed when, on March 5, a beaver was seen in the creek near downtown. It’s been seen at least twice since, and photographed at least once.

Does this mean they’re back? With three verified sightings, Perryman says yes.

Then again, were they ever really “gone?” While registering for a marathon recently, Councilman Ross said he was from Martinez. “The guy … said to me, ‘How are those beavers?’ Everywhere you go, the legacy of the beavers remains.”

Beaver legacy! That’s what we have. Of course., I’d rather have the actual beavers, but hey, it’s way more than most cities ever get. Thank you Sam for another fine reminder the beavers promote a city’s good nature. And thank the beavers for being such great sports for a decade even though the city installed a wall of metal through their lodge. What a crazy, beautiful way to spend a decade of your life!

Time for some lovely donations to the silent auction. This week’s treasures come from Litographs in Cambridge Massachusetts. They are a remarkable business I happen to love because they turn favorite literature into wearable art. Literally. The entire text of a beloved book becomes a shirt, card, poster, tote or scarf. Catcher in the Rye, Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Hamlet, The Princess Bride, classic or contemporary.

“We founded Litographs because we had a vision of bringing our favorite literature off the page, onto your walls, and into your wardrobe. We believe in sharing the power of books with more people.“

This is the entire text of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” which they generously gave beautifully matted and ready for framing.

Long ago I had a conversation with owner Danny Fein about possibly working with the now-public-domain text “In Beaver World” by Enos Mills. While he wasn’t sure this was a project they would tackle any time soon, he personally made this for our event. Look closely because that is the entire book. Thank you Danny and friends at Litographs! For this beautiful addition to our silent auction.

Spoiled for Beaver Choice

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? March 23, 2017

Some days there is so little beaver news that I am left sorting through my ragged thoughts and trying to find something new to say about them. This week has been a beaver explosion, so I can barely keep up. First there is the smart new beaver page out offered by Esther Lev of the Wetlands Conservancy and some graduate students who accepted the beaver challenge. You will have fun browsing the projects. Use the link to visit the site which connects to each project. I’ll let them describe the ‘zine’ themselves.

During the 2017 Winter Term, eight graduate students from the Master of Urban and Regional Planning, Master of Fine Arts, and Master of Environmental Science and Management programs at Portland State University engaged in a study of beavers in the Pacific Northwest. The question was whether better understanding the beaver could help us understand more about the culture, identity, and character of the Pacific Northwest, particularly for those of us engaged in planning and other activities with and for communities in the region.

The project had two components. First, each student identified a topic associated with beavers, and developed a research paper that explored that topic. All of those papers are posted here for your use and enjoyment. During the term we read Frances Backhouse’s Once they were Hats, her very informative and engaging book about beavers in North America. Thanks to Esther Lev, Wetlands Conservancy Executive Director, and Sara Vickerman Gage, we were able to spend a morning discussing the book with Frances Backhouse. We gratefully acknowledge the importance of both Frances’ work and her presence in the class with us. If you are interested in and/or care about beavers, do read her book!

Second, each student used their paper as the point of departure for creating pages for a class “zine” about beavers. A zine is a short, self-published, and mostly hand-crafted magazine. Usually combining words and images, the zine form attempts to both transmit information to and engage the imagination of the reader. Preliminary research in Portland revealed hardly any zines about or featuring beavers. We aimed to fill that void, at least in part.

TWC is who had me talk in Portland last year and is responsible for the art show “Beaver Tales” that is in its second venue. They are doing beaver-work wonders. I am thrilled that they’re on the scene and that all these students will remember beavers in their masters training.

A second exciting development came from our beaver friends in the Czech University of Life Sciences. They recently completed the English translation of their ‘living with beavers’ guidebook. There is a lot of great info on management and history, so I would take some good time to browse. There’s a great discussion of tree protection and flow devices, as well as some pretty creative solutions for preventing bank burrows. Enjoy!

The Sound and the Parry

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, 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 elsewhere, Creative Solutions March 13, 2017

Parry Sound is in Ontario Canada directly north of New York. It is famous for having the deepest freshwater seaport in the world and various hockey achievements. This morning it has decided to offer a pleasingly accurate beaver article with some very nice photos. Enjoy!

The industrious beaver is not afraid of hard work during the winter

PARRY SOUND SIDEROADS AND SHORELINES — Winter is the time of year when many wild animals living in the Parry Sound area have adapted to escape and wait out the heavy snowfalls and dropping temperatures. Bears hibernate in cosy dens, squirrels have built nests and stashed food away, and frogs have dug into the lake bottoms and drastically reduced their temperature. But the industrious beaver continues to be quite active during winter until the lakes freeze over completely, and even then this animal can be seen busily repairing any damage to its lodge or dam.

Beavers are completely adapted to an aquatic existence and look quite awkward when slowly waddling on land where they are vulnerable to coyotes and other predators. Their front paws contain claws that can easily manipulate twigs to chew the inner bark of branches – their primary food source. In the Parry Sound area, their favourite wood is the aspen tree but they will also eat ferns, mosses, dandelions, dogwood, and aquatic plants, to name a few.

The resulting dam sets in motion an entire alteration to the ecosystem. Hence, beavers are considered a “keystone species” (one that plays a unique and crucial role in the way an ecosystem functions. Without keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether). The building of dams modifies and creates a dramatic change to the surrounding environment. The backwater flooding from the dam floods the lowland near the creek; trees die creating an opening in the forest canopy; aquatic plants and shrubs soon develop, making a favourable habitat for waterfowl, herons, moose, amphibians, fish, insects, muskrats, otters and a score of bird species. Their activity purifies water and prevents large-scale flooding.

Over a period of time the food source runs out and the beavers move on; the dam breaks and eventually a meadow forms, creating habitat for an entirely new group of species. And thus, the vital chain of evolution around a beaver pond continues.

A few years ago, the television program The Nature of Things featured a show entitled “The Beaver Whisperer” outlining the efforts of a few Canadians who have studied and/or worked with beavers, giving an in-depth account of the beaver. The Parry Sound area is home to many beavers and if you are lucky enough to see one around twilight, watch and observe the complex behaviour of this fascinating animal.

Nice to read that Jari Osborne’s great documentary is still making an impact! (Although it was called the Beaver Whisperers as in more than ONE). And nice to see even a brief discussion of beaver benefits from that neck of the woods. They need all the allies they can get. I’m going to assume, that even though they’re very clever, the beaver in that photo isn’t balancing a aspen log on its back. I’m pretty sure the log is just laying in exactly the right place on the ground behind him. Although that would be quite a feat if it were possible. Think about it, how would the beaver even get the log there in the first place?

I think it’s one of those photo placement victories, like someone photographed pushing the tower of pizzaa over, or a baby holding up the moon. But it had me confused for a while, I admit. Thanks for the mystery!

Ohio has beaver nostalgia!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, History March 9, 2017

What a pleasant surprise! An article from Ohio about beavers that isn’t discussing how to trap them! Richland County is in the middle of the state, down below Lake Eerie.

A living heritage: Beaver in Richland County

It has been more than two centuries since beaver shaped the rivers and creeks of Richland County, but at long last they are quietly reclaiming little pools of their ancestral wetlands.

When the first settlers came to the forested hills of Richland County in the early 1800s they encountered many wild animals we seldom or never find here today. Their letters and diaries and later reminiscences document the abundance of wolves and bears, otters and panthers.

But there is one common native of the American wilderness that was never listed in their memoirs because, by the time the pioneers arrived in the early 1800s, this critter had already been hunted out of these lands.

That was the beaver.

The last people who saw beaver in Richland County were Wyandot and Huron hunters, or French fur trappers. The Richland beaver clan gradually departed here through the decades of the 1700s: carried out bundle at a time as furry pelts.

The fur was toted to a frontier trading post; then made its way to the coast where it was loaded on a ship and sailed across the ocean. Somewhere in Europe the fur was processed into waterproof felt material, and then manufactured into hats.

You’ll note the date that Richland last saw beavers was about 100 years before California lost out. It’s funny to think about the cascading domino effect that swept the nation in slow motion, East to West, over many years ago as the loss of beavers back drove folks ever west to find more. Funny in an eerie kind of way, I mean, not at all amusing to think about the drought and wildlife devastation that followed the hunt.

There were a lot of people in Europe in those days and they all wore hats.

The best hats were made from beaver fur because these warm blooded animals evolved in chilly ponds so their skins are naturally designed to keep water out and heat in. If a hat was to shed rain it was well to be manufactured from the soft, dense under fur of a beaver.

When permanent residential villages were established along the Clear Fork and the Black Fork in the 1700s, they were peopled mostly with clans of diverse tribes who had been displaced from their homelands by Beaver War conflicts.

The other major impact that the Beaver Wars had on Richland County was the complete extermination of Mohican watershed beavers.

Richland County happens to be placed on the continent at a particularly generous confluence of influences—bedrock stratum and weather pattern—that produces a wealth of water resources. We have a ‘Spring field’ township precisely because water is so plentiful it cannot be contained under the ground.

So imagine what happened when these two dynamic natural elements—water and beaver—were free to interact in wild genius.

Back then every Richland stream, creek, and tributary was undoubtedly repurposed by beaver, and shaped by their dams. The image we have today, of meandering streams flowing through the bottom of carved creek beds, did not exist in the era of beaver. These same waterways 300 years ago would have been seen as a series of small beaver ponds.

True. And every single one of those ponds were filled with wood duck and otter and trout so thick a man could walk across them. But why dwell on the past. It was a great idea turning all those little furry engineers into gold, right? That’s why we’re still doing it every day – trading our clear streams for fracking waste water and letting oil wells tunnel into every public land. Because what good is the environment if you can’t spend it. Amirite?

Wetlands

Since the beaver disappeared 200 years ago Richland County has transformed: dried out, plowed and planted, and paved so dramatically the animals could hardly be expected to recognize the place. Yet, interestingly enough, when they made their way back here 20-30 years ago, one of the places they gravitated toward is a wetland that they may well have created themselves hundreds of years ago.

Almost like a homing instinct they have set up camp once again at the headwaters of the Clear Fork River.

It is marshland today, and seemingly created through construction of the Clear Fork Reservoir. Yet documents from engineers in the 1940s show that the area was already waterlogged before they built the dam.

In fact records from 200 years ago, when surveyors first paced off the wilderness of Richland County, indicate there was a backlogged stream in the place even then.

This marsh is situated within a stretch of landscape that is otherwise well drained. By the surface and subsurface evidence, a local geologist and forensic landscaper suggests that this bit of wetland may well have been first terraformed by beaver engineers hundreds or thousands of years ago in order to create a comfy neighborhood for their community.

Perhaps the beavers who navigate the marsh today are direct descendants of the ones who started the swamp long ago when they backed up the waters of the Clear Fork.

I think this author is having a wistful moment wondering what the watershed looked with a healthy beaver population. Good for him. I know I always am. I can’t imagine if it will ever get that way again, but if beavers have their way they will turn our ruined city waterways to wetlands the same way they have transformed Chernobyl. They won’t need our help or invitation either. I don’t know where the human race will be when that happens, but I suspect the beavers won’t miss it.

Timothy Brian McKee is a featured columnist on our site every Saturday with a column titled Native Son. Every Tuesday, he taps into his knowledge and collection of historical photos and bring us Then & Now, a brief glance at the way things were.

Beaver Roundup

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, What's killing beavers now? March 8, 2017

Beaver Round-Up 2017

The great “Beaver Roundup” takes place in Dillingham Alaska at the northern edge of the Bering sea and the outer limit of the Tongiak Wildlife Refuge, ( (famous for walruses and herring). The Roundup started as the outgrowth of a kind of Rendezvous-like fur exchange where the trappers would meet up to compete for best price and swap stories. As the ice starts to break up beaver yearlings leave their family lodge to find a new home sand that’s a good time to get some nice winter pelts. Since the only transportation was by sled-dog, a sled-dog competition was the natural offspring of the gathering. There are still no roads in Dillingham, so the only access is by sea or air. Now the annual event is more than 70 years old and it’s a weekend-long much anticipated gathering of early March.

There’s a parade and a beauty contest, games and contests of all sorts. A highlight of the day is when a plane flies overhead and drops candy and ping pong balls which the many children gather. (I’m not sure what the appeal is of ping pong balls, since there doesn’t appear to be tournament – but I guess since they’re white on the white snow it presents a challenge to find them?) Think of it like a kind of an Easter egg hunt from the sky.

Except, it started by trapping beavers.

Maybe you can explain why the Tongiak Wildlife Refuge is a sponsor of the event? They took first place in the parade this year with their ‘snow goose’. I guess its a different world where protecting wildlife by saving it for hunters makes perfect sense. And plus its REALLY cold (13 today) and quite honestly, unless you’re a walrus, there’s not much else to do.