Category: Beavers and salmon

Ascending Beaver Stars

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? March 26, 2016

Today is full of inspiration. I couldn’t be happier. We can start with this fantastic story.

After Muskrats Damaged Pond, Beaver Moves In to Make Repairs

Noelker’s parents, the late Walter and Evelyn Noelker, had built the pond some 80 years ago, and the family used to fish in it.

Then a few years back, muskrats showed up and began burrowing holes into the pond bank, damaging it to the point where it was too weak to hold up anymore, said Noelker. A section of the bank gave way and the pond was drained down to just 3 feet or so of water.

Then about six months ago, Noelker — who can see the pond from his house in neighboring Forest Hills subdivision — noticed the pond looked deeper again, back to its original 8- or 9- foot depth.

When he showed up to investigate he found his answer in a row of tree stumps with pointy tips surrounding the pond and a water-tight dam made from those felled tree trunks, other sticks and mud.

A beaver or a family of them had moved in and repaired the hole in the bank that had been created by muskrats.

How much do you LOVE this story? Not only does Mr. Noelker let nature take its course, he also has the good sense to recognize the help the beaver is providing. If I told you to close your eyes and guess what state this is from you’d be right. The beaver IQ capital of the world: Washington.

“We don’t care that the beaver is here. He’s our buddy now,” Leon Noelker said, smiling.

He rents a cottage on the property and wishes he could see them. We wanna stay! Trust me, they will be amply visible in the coming fine summer days that seem to stretch forever. Those hungry kits will wake up before the sun goes down and then he’ll be in for a real treat. Muskrats AND beavers!

Every beaver’s great friend Glynnis Hood is back in the news, this time international.

Beaver Hills area named UNESCO biosphere reserve

*Glynnis Hood, professor of environmental science at Augustana Campus, lives near Lake Miquelon and guides students’ research in the wetlands of the Beaver Hills area.*

An ecologically rich area of Alberta that is home to a University of Alberta research station and fertile ground for dozens of researchers over the years has won international recognition.

Home to a mix of preserved wetlands, green rolling hills and dense boreal forests, the Beaver Hills area east of Edmonton has been designated as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Biosphere Reserve, under its Man and the Biosphere Programme. The area joins a network of 669 sites in 120 countries that foster ecologically sustainable human and economic development. Researchers from various faculties at the U of A have conducted dozens of studies there over the last 30 years, focused on work ranging from wildlife and outdoor recreation to wetlands and land management.

“It’s a hidden gem,” added Glynnis Hood, an associate professor of environmental science based at the U of A’s Augustana Campus. “Beaver Hills is spectacular because of its subtle beauty. There are ecological surprises around every corner, because you’re not looking for the big features like mountains, but for the small surprises.” One of those surprises is the fisher, a weasel thought to be gone from the area that seems to have a healthy population and is now the subject of a collaborative University of Victoria study involving Augustana Campus.

“The Beaver Hills biosphere offers a rich opportunity to keep exploring questions that are right in our own backyard,” said Hood, who lives near Miquelon Lake and has for years guided students in researching area wetlands. She’s also studied human-wildlife conflicts and is currently researching low-impact wetland management practices.

Okay, I’ll let you guess what habitat-restoring engineer has been working hard to keep beaver hills so biodiverse. I’ll even give you a hint: they named the hills after them. We are always thrilled to see the way Glynnis continues to demonstrate their effect on habitat, and our need for wetlands. Now we have UNESCO appreciating her good work as well. This sentence intrigued me.

Last year she and colleague Glen Hvenegaard led the first field course in environmental science and ecology at the Miquelon Lake Research Station, which opened in 2015.

If that name sounds really familiar it should. Dr. Hvenegaard is the author of this paper on the importance of wildlife festivals which is very near to my heart.

Potential Conservation Benefits of Wildlife Festivals

Wildlife festivals promote a variety of social, educational, economic, recreational, and community development goals. As ecotourism activities, wildlife festivals should also promote conservationgoals. This article examines five potential conservation benefits of wildlife festivals which can be generated by providing: 1) incentives to establish protected areas; 2) revenue for wildlife and habitat management; 3) economic impact to nearby areas, encouraging residents to conserve wildlife; 4) alternatives to other uses that cause more environmental damage; and 5) support for conservation by educating local and nonlocal participants.

Truly a kindred spirit of ours. I’m glad they’re working together to teach the importance of interconnected ecosystems and getting out in them!

A final stunning moment comes this morning from Rusty Cohn of Napa. He used his drone to aerial film the creek and beaver lodge. Yesterday he and Robin Ellison met with the Geography Masters student I met at the State of the beaver conference last year. Alexandra Costello. She interviewed me for an urban beaver paper she’ll be doing a poster session for this year at the upcoming Geography conference in SF. While she’s in the area she wanted to see some urban dams. Robin and Rusty were only two happy to assist. The three had a fantastic visit and really surprised her, because even it’s ‘under construction’ spring state, the Napa dam was still bigger than the urban ones she’d seen in Portland. Those are made entirely of grass and mud, she said, with no sticks.

Whew, is that all? We worried it was something important…

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? March 23, 2016

In some states a tannerite blast is so common that nobody lifts an eyebrow when Bubba blows out a couple dams. Heck, I’ve heard some folks pack a picnic to go watch because it’s the best date night in town and better than Viagra at getting cranky old men in the mood.

However, in more civilized climes it can come as quite a shock.

Reports of explosion in Oswego County were beaver dam demolition

NEW HAVEN, N.Y. — Dozens of people across several Oswego County towns reported hearing and feeling an explosion Tuesday night that rattled windows.

Oswego County 911 said it received multiple calls about a possible explosion, but the matter was determined to be non-emergency in nature.

State troopers from the Pulaski barracks responded to a location in the town of New Haven where a subject was trying to dismantle a beaver dam, 911 said, which was apparently the noise and shaking people reported. Dispatchers had no other information.

Listen to the 911 dispatch:

Megan James lives on Miner Road in the town of Scriba. James, a nursing student at Crouse Hospital College of Nursing, was studying for a test around Tuesday night.

“And out of nowhere I heard and felt a huge bang,” she said. “My entire house shook and it sounded like someone was either breaking in or drove a car into the side of the house.”

Firefighters searched roads in the towns of Mexico and New Haven for signs of an explosion. After about an hour a dispatcher reported that someone had called and said they had set off Tannerite.

So the terrorist bomb plot of upstate New York turned out to be just a farmer who had watched too many Duck Dynasty episodes. And everyone was relieved and the police could go back to their donuts or speeding tickets and get to work.

Explain to me again why people blow up beaver dams?

Theoretically they believe they are blasting away an obstruction, but given the fact that a shocking number of people mistakenly think beavers live in the dam, I’m assuming they think they’re getting rid of them too. They’re also blowing up fish and ducks and stirring up a host of debris and mud that they’ll blame the beavers for later.

Which makes this call for a tail bounty in North Carolina fairly commonplace when compared to yesterday’s surprising request to have a beaver expert at the wetlands conference.

I’m so foolish I got all excited when I saw this headline.

Beaver help sought

LUMBERTON — A farmer who is concerned about the increase of beavers in the Saddletree community is asking the Robeson County Board of Commissioners for help.

“I bet we have the World Book of Records for beavers in a two- or three-mile area,” Ronald Hammonds told the commissioners on Monday. “We’ve had a record rain and that’s conducive to increasing the beaver number.”

Hammonds told The Robesonian that 30 beavers have been trapped around Saddletree in recent days. He said that dams are popping up everywhere, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimating there are 15 within four miles.

“We need a beaver management program like they have in Columbus County,” he said. “That program offers a bounty to those who will trap beaver. Any successful program needs to include a bounty as an incentive.”

Robeson County already contracts out with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to supply a wildlife specialist to administer the Beaver Management Assistance Program in Robeson County. That program has been conducted in the county for the past two decades and is credited with saving the county money in beaver-related damage to timber, crops, roadways and drainage structures.

Lumberton is so far south in NC that it is almost SC. Wikipedia lists it as having .1 square mile of water, which makes it pretty hard to imagine 30 beavers being trapped. He says all the rain has made the population increase. (You know, because beavers breed more frequently in damp conditions.) Say what you will about the beaver IQ of this farmer, he’s right at least about one thing.

Just destroying the beaver dams is not the solution.

Good news for beavers (East Coast version)

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? March 22, 2016

The East Coast is ahead of us in impressive academia and sunrise timing, but it other than inventing Mike Callahan and Skip Lisle it sadly isn’t often they win the beaver IQ contest. Looks like several new steps are getting made at once. Starting with Connecticut, which has recently needed more than its share of beaver guidance.

New Hartford Land Trust eyes resurgent beaver population

NEW HARTFORD — Connecticut has become a virtual “Field of Dreams” for a burgeoning beaver population, a fan of the species told conservationists here last week.

New Hartford Land Trust members explored the nature of the beaver and solutions to the problems their instinctual behaviors cause during the land trust’s annual meeting this week. Presenting the program was Michael Callahan, owner of Beaver Solutions of Southampton, Mass.

“Beavers are second only to people as animals that change the environment,” Callahan said. “Biologists call them a keystone species because they help hold an ecosystem together.”

Callahan said “nature likes change” and beavers are agents of that change. As they cut trees to create dams, woodlands are flooded and natural succession occurs. Beavers eventually create an open grassy habitat called a “beaver meadow,” attracting waterfowl.

As aquatic vegetation grows, invertebrates become common, which attracts insect-eating wildlife such as tree swallows, eastern kingbirds and bats. Fish populations change from cool-water to warm-water species. Mink and otter move in and the wetland becomes attractive to muskrats, mallards, Canada geese, black ducks and least bitterns. Nature is on the move.

If beavers remain in an area, they typically exhaust the food supply and the animals move on to a new territory. The old dams break down and mud flats develop that morph into grasslands supporting birds. Eventually trees grow back and the cycle is complete.

“Beavers can cause us problems, but the benefits put it in perspective,” Callahan said. “Overall, they create a vibrant ecology comparable to the biodiversity of coral reefs.”

Heyyy we recognize that man! It’s Mike Callahan the very good friend of beavers and Worth A Dam. So happy he is preaching the beaver gospel in CT. I dropped the breadcrumbs in a very neat line and hoped for the best. But you never know. I can’t help noticing a rather large shamrock in the corner of that photo, so I’m going to have to say his luck of the irish had something to do with it.
Given his name sake and appreciation of what no one yet understands I can’t help thinking of this long-lost commercial. I can’t help posting it.

Roosevelt Forest Commission to revisit beaver trapping issue

STRATFORD — The Roosevelt Forest Commission is expected on Wednesday to revisit its decision to allow lethal beaver traps to be deployed in Roosevelt Forest, a 400-acre woodland that’s home to scores of forest creatures.

A colony of beavers has set up shop near the dead end of Pumpkin Ground Road, where there’s a trailhead that leads into the forest. Beavers build dams, and the dam that’s they’ve built is backing up a tributary to Pumpkin Ground Brook is causing a stir throughout the region.

The Roosevelt Forest Commission will meet in Town Council chambers in Town Hall. The meeting will begin Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Of course revisiting doesn’t mean they’ll be any kinder on the second round, but thinking twice is certainly preferable to not thinking at all. There have been a few protests and flurries about the inhumanity of trapping, so I’m going to fantasize that some Hartford trust member is best friends with some Roosevelt forest member and says at poker night something like, you know we had this fantastic presentation by Mike Callahan. Maybe you should call him?

Okay, these stories are both about a state as big as a postage stamp. Where do I get off referring to the whole “East Coast”? I’ll tell you where, because yesterday I was sent an email by Dave Penrose of North Carolina, looking for a beaver expert to present at the upcoming 3 day conference on stream restoration. Because he thinks that a stream restoration conference needs a beaver presence. Think about that!

I promptly introduced him to some nearby beaver voices in the land, including the good folks at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve. I also sent it to John Hadidian in case HSUS could get Stephanie Boyle involved from Virginia. The conference is three days in August so I said I was absolutely preoccupied and couldn’t help because of the beaver festival. He said, “That’s intriguing. What’s a beaver festival?”.

Something your state needs, I answered.

Martinez Beaver Festival promo 2015 from Tensegrity Productions on Vimeo.

Endless beaver promotion!

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, Who's saving beavers now? March 21, 2016

Trees for Life charity puts case for governmental commitment to reintroducing beavers

The award-winning conservation charity, Trees for Life, is saying today that allowing beavers to be reintroduced to Scotland would be a golden opportunity, offering wide-ranging environmental, social and economic benefits.

The Scottish Government is due to decide on whether Eurasian beavers will be allowed to live freely in Scotland after an absence of some 500 years and in the run up to this decision, Trees for Life is urging ministers to recognise the beaver fully as a resident, native species.

Alan Watson Featherstone, Trees for Life’s Founder. says: ‘Allowing this native species to return would offer Scotland huge benefits. Beavers are superb ecosystem engineers and could transform and greatly improve the health of our rivers and forest ecosystems, help restore our depleted wetlands and reduce flooding – while substantially boosting wildlife tourism.

Beavers play a crucial ecological role and provide a range of important benefits for other species. They coppice and fell trees – letting light into the forest, enabling other species to grow and stimulating new growth of the trees themselves. By damming watercourses they create wetland areas – providing habitats for amphibians, invertebrates and fish, which in turn attract birds and otters.

Another great advertisement for beavers. Thanks Trees for Life and Scotland! Please keep dragging this decision out so more and more environmental groups write articles about how good beavers are. Scotland has become the beaver gift that keeps giving. Even if at the end of this they decide to defend their favorite ‘f’ words (Farmers and Fishermen) they will have done soooooooo much to promote beaver benefits in the news cycle that we will never ever stop thanking them.

Sometimes stubborn decision-makers produce the very best kind of opposition. Look at Martinez. If they had made up their mind quickly and intelligently I never would have had to research reasons why they were wrong and this website wouldn’t even exist!

Thank you notes all around.

Looks like we got ourselves a horse race!

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? March 15, 2016

Residents unhappy with Stratford’s flooding issues

According to residents, beavers built a damn [sic] on Peck’s Pond, which connects to Pumpkin Ground Brook. They say they’ve experienced flooding as a result of the dam, which started in October.

Department of Public Works officials say they tried to create a piping system to keep the water level to no avail. Attempts to breach the damn were also unsuccessful.

The town’s solution is to trap and kill the beavers. Officials say it’s not a solution they wanted to come to. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection officials say they can’t trap and relocate the beavers.

That’s right, channel 12 news couldn’t pass up an opportunity to swear about beavers and said they built a damn. (Does that mean if the flooding gets worse they’ll say they built a god damn?) Apparently public works put a weighted pipe through the dam but can’t understand why that doesn’t stop beavers? The video shows the pipe flowing, so if they didn’t just blow it out, it’s clearly not big enough to handle the amount of water needed to control flooding. At any rate the city needs to pry open its clenched wallet and actually hire Mike or Skip who actually know what they’re doing. Looks like public pressure might help that happen.

Beaver advocates to speak to Town Council

People concerned about the town’s plans to trap and kill beavers in Roosevelt Forest are planning to ask town officials if anything can be done to change the trapping plans.

A group of Fairfield County animal activists and concerned residents will ask Mayor John Harkins and the Town Council at tonight’s regular council meeting about town’s plans to remove beavers who have settled at Pumpkin Ground Brook. The activists plan to speak to the Council during tonight’s public forum, which begins at 6:45 p.m. in the Town Council chambers. They also plan to host a brief demonstration regarding the trapping at 6:15 p.m.

The animal activists will ask if the Town Council can overrule the Roosevelt Forest Commission’s decision to lay down traps. Town officials opted to trap the beavers to alleviate flooding in the forest after residents living on Barrister Road complained in October. After Public Works crews tried to break up the dam and installed a flow device to prevent the water backup, the beavers patched up the dam, leaving commissioners with little choice.

Before the meeting they’re going to have a little demonstration too. Something to bring the news cameras I warrant. All this fuss – wouldn’t it be easier to do this right from the beginning? I wrote the forest commission and the mayor yesterday about what to do and real solutions. Do you think anyone will listen? I’m not holding my breath, but we’ll see.

Yesterday Jon and I went down memory lane and kept watch at the Escobar bridge from 6:30 to 7:30. We saw no beavers but it was surprisingly familiar and peaceful. One young man strolled by and asked if we had seen any beavers. He said he had watched a muskrat yesterday at about this time. As if hearing his cue, a rather fat and happy muskrat suddenly appeared out of the area of the latest beaver home, swam across the bank and hopped up onto the shore to paddle in the bushes and get some food. After this he marched back down, hopped in the water, and dove back into the lodge.

Maybe feeding a family?

I was thinking how happy he must be to have the space all to himself! He looked like we all feel after a the very large man sitting next to us gets off the bus. Apparently Napa saw one too, so maybe its the season.

Delightful presents arrived last night. Jamie Larson of Tags and Tiles in Havasu Arizona has a soft spot for beavers and was encouraged by our story to donate six of her gloriously layered dogtag necklaces. She even created them especially for us! If you can believe it, they are even more adorable in person. But if you want a beaver I’d go buy one yourself now, because it will be cheaper than the bidding war we’re going to see on August 6.