Category: Beavers and salmon

Assorted Advocacy

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 30, 2016

A truly thoughtful letter to the editor from Eric Rick Stevens of Garden Village about Lake Nipisssing (Near Ottowa, just over the lakes from Michigan) this morning.

Time to control water with nature in mind

We can’t keep controlling Lake Nipissing’s water with complete disregard for fish and wildlife. Engineers control water levels with only what’s in the best interest for property damage (docks) which is also very important. But when controlling water, they also have to start keeping fish and wildlife in mind.

Animals like beaver and muskrat have built their lodges over the summer are suddenly faced with low water levels, causing their entrances to be above water. Entrances have to be under water to protect them from predators and also keep their babies from freezing.

he practice of controlling water levels to protect only property damage is very cruel to nature. It’s sad to see a frozen baby beaver laying on the ice dead because the door to its lodge is now above the ice. I’ve also seen large turtles, maybe 100 years old, walking on the snow trying to break through ice to get back in water. This year the water is already at a very low level and still going down.

I realize controlling water isn’t easy, but we have to start controlling water keeping wildlife in mind.

Thanks for watching out for nature! But the solution puzzles me, since the lake is lowered according to how much snowfall they receive and there’s no way they could ‘plan ahead’ before the freeze. Lodges and food caches will already be set if they suddenly discover it has to drop by 4 feet to accommodate the snow. This letter and its sentiment is right, but I’m not sure how its possible to protect nature as well? I guess there could be an overflow lake that only holds water in high flow? But we know wildlife would find its way there too eventually.

It’s got to be a common puzzle though – because I know Silver Lake in the sierras where we go is drained before the snow falls so that it won’t overflow. All the hydro lakes. Surely in all the world there must be a brain smart enough to figure out how to protect property AND wildlife. right?

Honestly, I worry so much about our beavers as it is I’m grateful that we don’t have to think about the perils of snowfall too!

Time for a sweet little article from Amy Lignor on in Baret News.

The Environment Engineers

From the title of this article, you may think that this is all about conservation, organizations that promote and work on creating healthy habitats, or even companies promoting a greener, healthier planet. However, the real environment engineers we speak of are actually four-footed creatures whose mission it is to better nature’s ecosystem.

Not as mystical as, say, the wolf. Not as talked about as the Black Rhino or the long list of other species that are endangered and moving closer and closer to extinction. No, this little guy is sometimes forgotten about completely; yet, without them, the environment would be in far worse shape than it is already.

The beaver has a myriad of skills they’re born with that allow them to always be successful on their nature missions. It is no surprise that the term for an active person who gets things done is: “As busy as a beaver,” when you think about the amount of work these creatures do. Felling trees, changing waterways, building dams – the beaver not only does this to benefit themselves, mind you, but also to benefit other species…including humans.

Think about this: Dams help control both the quality and quantity of water both animals and humans utilize. The ponds, streams, and flooded areas they create are actually vibrant habitats that serve more plants and animals than you can shake a stick at. A variety of fish, insects, and birds benefit from the healthy world the beaver creates. And it is a fact that some animals choose to only live close by the beaver’s habitat.

However…like many animals the beaver has seen a horrendous drop in numbers over the centuries. Once upon a time in North America beavers could be found in almost every pond or stream you looked at. The statistics for the population were once out of this world, with some studies even stating that there may have been over 100 million+ of the creatures at one time. But during the early 20^th century the beaver was suddenly looked at for their fur and not the part they played in a healthy environment. Thus, trapping became monumental and almost lent to the beaver’s complete extinction. Over time, as people grew wiser to the issues, reintroductions of the animal into various habitats brought the number back up to approximately 12 million. Big number, yes, but certainly not when you take the past into account.

Hey Amy, who says beavers aren’t MYSTICAL? They’re plenty dam mystical, I can assure you. In addition to which you are off on their expiration date by several hundred years. But other than THESE niggling details it’s a pretty nice read. Thanks for the appreciation. We need reminders from every corner of how important beavers are to the planet we call home.

(Mutters to self…Not mystical….sheeesh)

More wonders from Cows and Fish

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? October 29, 2016

Time for more beaver wisdom from our very impressive friends at Cows and Fish in Alberta.

Beavers are friends of the environment

Beavers were promoted as friends of the environment and property owners during Beavers in Our Landscape workshop Oct. 12 in High Prairie.

Lesser Slave Watershed Council and Peace Country Beef and Forage Association co-hosted the event with presenters from Cows and Fish – Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society.

“Livestock producers usually consider beavers as pests,” says Jen Allen, agri-environmental program co-ordinator of the beef and forage association.
“The workshop showed that we can work and live with beavers.”

Currently the critters seem to be rampant in the northern parts of Alberta.

“Beavers will always be prevalent here, so more people need to know about them better,” says Kaylyn Jackson, watershed co-ordinator for the water council.

Cows and Fish presenters urge property owners and livestock producers to be friends with beavers, that help sustain and enhance water supply and provide many benefits to the environment, habitat and people.

One of the most remarkable things about this Alberta organization is that it marches straight into the heart of the greatest possible beaver conflict and teaches “It is in your best interest to keep beavers on your land”. Even the name itself conveys how unafraid of conflict they are. They understand that you will never convince folks to work with beaver if they feel it is not in the interest of the two things held most dear to them: so Cows and Fish is a fearless name for this fearless organization.

Earlier this year they released their very impressive publication on beaver ecosystem services which you should go read again here and resolving conflicts. It happens to have some of the VERY BEST teaching illustrations I have ever seen on the subject, crafted by their brilliant artist Elizabeth Saunders.

And my personal favorite:

Back to the article which does a less outstanding job at describing this:

“We encourage people to work together and have conversations about where beavers fit into the watersheds and landscapes and how we might expand our tolerance for them,” says Kerri O’Shaughnessy, riparian specialist.
“We want to give people a better understanding of beavers so we can look at ways of living with them and reducing the conflict.”

A pond leveler maintains the capacity of water that suits the landowner and the beaver.

Wrapping the trunks of large trees with wire mesh deters beavers from cutting them down.

Other tips are offered in the section Beaver Solutions in the booklet Beaver – Our Watershed Partner, published by Cows and Fish in 2016.

-For smaller areas, excluding beaver with a mesh fence is an option to protect valuable trees and shrubs in yards.
-Fences can protect young trees, often the most targeted age classes of woody vegetation by beavers and many other animals.
-Circular wire mesh extending upstream of a culvert may prevent beavers from damming the flow.
-The most effective deterrent is fencing coupled with moving the intake of water far upstream of the culvert with a pipe system.
-Greater success will occur by increasing the area blocked from beaver upstream of a culvert. Beaver may create a dam upstream but the culvert will remain unplugged.

Honestly, I love seeing any article with their name in it because I always know I’ll be delighted by what is said. I made sure to invite their director, Lorne Fitch, to the state of the beaver conference and he said he was very interested but didn’t think he could afford the flight. Sad face. We need to hear more from them. You do such great work, Cows and Fish!

Now, if only they could start a sister organization in Saskatchewan!

Save

Reaching and Teaching

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental October 27, 2016

And it came to pass that the CBC picked up the story, making it known in all of Canada and beyond that four men in Wolseley did something heinous for sport.

People in Wolseley, Sask., upset after beaver killed with chair

There is zero new information on the crime but that cute photo of a beaver doesn’t hurt the cause any, so thanks for that.

In the meantime I guess this beaver’s battle is lost but the war goes on. And Worth A Dam is on the front lines as always. On Thursday we were asked by a the Helen Schuler Nature Center in Alberta, Canada regarding use of Cheryl Reynolds great photo of beaver teeth for an educational display on beaver adaptions. To which she graciously agreed. And yesterday I was asked by the preserve manager of The Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island if my poster was copyrighted and could anyone use it? To which I replied they were welcome to use it for educational purposes but the name Worth A Dam should appear somewhere on it because it was our design.

I would just point out that these two recent examples represent an educational broadcast range of some 4000 miles that our hard-won beaver knowledge has informed, which ain’t too shabby for a small-time organization that was formed to save a few beavers. Both organizations have large backing and structural support but they are asking this little mom-and-pop beaver group for assistance.

Which is pretty dam cool.

Beaver Public Radio

heidi08 Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere October 23, 2016

Now new Hampshire Public Radio reports on beavers!

Something Wild: West End Farm Trail

Over another small hill, Knight leads us to a beaver complex, pointing out the three ponds these rodents have constructed. Chris explains how each of the ponds are formed by beavers channeling water and flooding forest land. And if we come back in another year or two there could be a fourth pond. “You build another dam, flood another forest and presto you’ve got a fourth pond.”

Eventually this first pond drains, and shrubs and trees return to what is now a clearing. Dave explains those first plants to colonize after the water has drained are actually primary food source for beavers. “So they’ll move back up to the top of the drainage and they start all over again. So they cycle in and out, and up and down the watershed.” Flooding a forest seems like extreme behavior, but it creates habitat for fish, frogs, turtles and water birds. And all inside the city limits.

After 9 years of covering beaver news I’m starting to see a pattern. September is full of beaver problem reports because the animals are busy taking trees and making food stores for the winter. But come late October we’re treated to an assortment of beaver benefits as people either start noticing the wildlife, water storage or upcoming beaver moon. I might like late October the best of all the year!

In the meantime, lets just appreciate the harvest.

How the West was Watered: The next chapter.

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 22, 2016

These are the golden days of beaver news. Yesterday a glowing report on VPR and today a glowing report on NHPR. But we’ll talk about that later, because this article from New Scientist Magazine has earned top billing.

How beavers could help save the western US from a dry future

By MacGregor Campbell

How fortunes change. The fur rush drove the North American beaver, Castor canadensis, to near-extinction. Then, after a remarkable comeback last century, the once-prized rodent became a pest. Now, some say it could be on the cusp of a fresh rebranding: not as a prize or a pest, but as a prodigy.

Known as nature’s engineers, beavers seem to magic water out of nowhere. Crucially, their dams also help to store that water. At a time when California faces endless water shortages and long-standing drought, could beavers be part of a more natural solution?

Shrubs swallow the rocks, bulrushes stand in a wide expanse of clear, still
water, and cottonwood trees tower over the landscape. In the speckled
shadows, yellow butterflies dip and soar while finger-sized blue dragonflies
perch on reeds. Translucent baby fish take cover under waterlogged sticks.
Beavers and humans have been busy. “We’re building an ecosystem here,”
says Michael Pollock, a researcher with the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), based in Seattle, Washington state.

Ohlala! Curl up with your saturday morning cuppa and settle in for the best read of the entire week. Any article that starts out with Pollock is going to go places we want to be. We’re all in at this point. Unfortunately that’s all the preview the magazine gives for free but we are old friends right? They didn’t mean to keep us out.

In 2010, local landowner Betsy Stapleton got in touch with Pollock after
reading about some of his research. Pollock was interested in something
called beaver dam analogues. Typically consisting of a line of posts set
across a stream bed and interwoven with willow and cottonwood branches,
these faux dams slow water down and widen out a stream to form a pond.
The goal? To attract beavers. Putting one up is like prepping beaver real
estate for sale.

In Sugar Creek, much to Stapleton’s delight, the faux dams worked. As she wades through soft muck into surprisingly pristine pond water, she points out evidence of beavers all around. Sticks with chew marks are strewn across the pond bottom. A scent-mound of dried mud stands guard telling interlopers that the pond is spoken for. Vegetation has been stuffed into both dam analogues. “They like to plug every little hole,” says Stapleton.

For Pollock, Sugar Creek was a test case for a new way to manage water.
When Stapleton first contacted him, the site had just a trickle of water. It felt
symptomatic of the wider issues facing California, namely persistent
drought and dwindling groundwater resources, neither of which is likely to
be eased by climate change. Traditionally, the answer has been to build
more channels, reservoirs and other artificial water infrastructure. Pollock
believes beavers are a better solution.

At Sugar Creek, on the other hand, the water gets stuck. Beneath it isn’t just
rock but rich soil too. NOAA hydrologist Brian Cluer points out sand and fine
dirt that has come from further upstream. In the still waters of the ponds, it
settles. Grasses, reeds and other plants take root in the stuff, locking it and
its moisture in place. With time, a thick base of rich, moist soil builds up,
helping to raise the water table.

Cluer says that all this has a huge knock-on effect. The water seeps down
into the ground, recharging underground aquifers. That matters because
California is depleting its groundwater at an alarming rate. It is now tapping
into “fossil” water that has been underground for tens of thousands of
years. Farmland is sinking as aquifers collapse. This is the price you pay for
an intensive water management system predicated on drained wetlands
and artificial channels, says Cluer.

Oh my goodness, creating biodiversity AND recharging our bone- dry collapsed aquifers. That’s got to sound pretty good to a lot of bureaucrats out there. Hope the aide to the governor is reading this. We’re at the part of the article where they talk about the ‘buts’ though. But here’s the bad news. I’m braced. Give it your best shot MacGregor.

It’s not all sweetness and light, however. Humans and beavers working in
harmony to restore degraded ecosystems is an alluring dream, but the
reality is somewhat more complicated. For one, there’s a reason why
beavers are considered a nuisance: they don’t always do what you want
them to. Introduce them in the wrong area and they can wreak havoc.
Chewed trees, plugged culverts, flooded fields and roads – the same
behaviours that make beavers excellent engineers are often at odds with
human infrastructure. Across the US, that means damage costing tens of
millions of dollars each year.

Introducing beavers to an area doesn’t always go well for the animals either,
says Jimmy Taylor, a wildlife biologist with the US Department of
Agriculture, based in Corvallis, Oregon. Dropping them into a new area can
leave them vulnerable to predators and without enough food while they
build their infrastructure.

Alright if the most negative voice you got is Jimmy Taylor, I can handle it.It’s funny how this article is turning into a ‘Who’s who’ of beavers and my beaver podcasts isn’t it? You really should go listen to them again just to make sure you know what’s going on. Yes, beavers don’t always survive reintroduction and beavers block culverts. Can we go back to the good news now? No we have to fret about fish first.

Minimising conflict between beavers and humans is a good start, but not
the whole story. Some fish and wildlife managers are concerned that the
dams obstruct fish and so will harm stocks. Pollock doesn’t buy the
argument. Together with Wheaton and others, he has recently completed a
large-scale study of the effect beaver dams have on steelhead trout
numbers at Bridge Creek in Oregon. In 2008, the team started building
beaver dam analogues along a 32-kilometre stretch of the watershed,
eventually completing 121 by 2012. The resident beavers chipped in,
building on top of the artificial dams and creating new ones too. By 2013,
there were 236.

Before the experiment, the density of fish living in Bridge Creek was the
same as at nearby Murderer’s Creek, but by 2013 it was nearly double. It
seems that far from being harmed by the dams, fish were benefiting from
the wetter, more protected environment. What’s more, so far as the team
could tell, there was no change in the number of adult fish heading
upstream to spawn. They seemed to have no trouble hopping over the
dams.

“Beavers and salmon have been evolving together since at least the
Pliocene, 3 million years ago,” Pollock points out. He says preliminary
results at Sugar Creek tell a similar story. Before the beaver dam analogues,
they counted tens or hundreds of baby fish in a typical summer. After?
Thousands. “There’s way more than we can count,” says Pollock.

Ohhh yes, that’s the kind of research I like best! The snappy ‘take that’ kind of research! If I didn’t know better I’d think that maybe this would change the way people looked at beavers. I’d think that this article would open eyes, and minds. But I’ve been in the beaver biz a long time. People are very, very stubborn. I guess I should be happy if it changes a few minds and gives some others pause.

Oddly enough, this article does a lot of heavy lifting for the rodents but makes the decision to end on an appreciation of their anal scent glands. Hmm? Not the note I would have ended on, but the rest is wonderful so we’ll let this slide.

How could you not love beavers? They are intensely social and form lifelong pairs. Each family – or colony – splits its duties: while one animal gathers
building material, another excavates the pond and yet another watches the kits (that’s a baby beaver to me and you), keeping an eye out for predators
or rival colonies.

A single family can create and maintain tens of square kilometres of water infrastructure. They thin local forests, both for building material and bark – their preferred food – and store it in underwater caches of sticks and small logs that also provide homes to baby fish.

Perhaps the beaver’s most surprising attribute is its anal scent glands. They
produce a substance called castoreum, which beavers use as a calling card.
Humans use it in perfumes and occasionally as a flavouring additive,
typically in substitutes for vanilla.

Lets give MacGregor the benefit of the doubt and lets assume that he wanted to finish the article on some grand sweeping note about beaver benefits or how society misunderstands the gift it was given, and his small minded editor in gaberdine made the article end on anal scent glands, because ew! People will tell their friends!

Overall this is a fantastic read and just in case you want to pass it along to your friends or senators I will risk the long arm of the law and link to it here. Shhh,

On a local note, I heard from Leslie this morning that our wayward beavers have nearly finished the tree they took down and she had fun watching them all evening. I also heard back from the grounds keeper at the junior high that he is grateful for the information and loves nature and will keep my number handy. So that’s about the best we could hope for.

You do everything you can to raise your children right, and get the right information out there, but at some point they go out in the world and you just have to trust things will work out.