Poor France. They are too busy eating nice food and rejecting refugees that they haven’t any time left to finish a complete thought. The harried things can only have half-ideas and not carry them thru to their logical conclusions. Descartes would be so disappointed.
A BEAVER colony is threatening the water supply of the 40,000 residents of a town in the Ardennes.The animals, who have lived in the area for two years, set up their first dam in November across the River Audry.
Since then they have added another six to their roster, across tributaries to the river.
Their work means that during heavy rain the rivers frequently burst their banks, taking detritus and pollution on a new course into the local reservoir – the water supply for the 40,000 people of Charleville-Mézières.
That’s right, those 6 dams block sediment and pollution from getting into the reservoir for most of the year – but when they wash out all that bad stuff whooshes down stream at once. What the article doesn’t say (because of their unfinished-thought-affliction) is that if only the beavers weren’t there the waterway could release gradual toxins all year long into the water supply. You know, like they’re supposed to.
Dam beavers!
Out in Napa the beavers are so busy ruining things that they are cramming the waterways with fish, which attracts other nuisances who gut and shit their fish into the water without any respect for the reservoirs. Take this photo from Rusty Cohn and this short video from Robin Ellison: classic examples of the many troubles beavers bring!
Hooded Merganser pair: Rusty Cohn
And it gets worse. Yesterday, Dr. Ellen Wohl send me this video taken by her student documenting beaver activity at Crystal Creek in Yellowstone National Park. I know you’ll be SHOCKED to see all the riffraff beaver bring to that pristine wilderness! Thank goodness France, Martinez and Napa will probably be spared these particular visitors!
I’m officially allowed to announce our good news today, so of course I’m thinking of John Muir’s friend Enos Mills, who was invited to his house and came to Martinez in 1908. One of the many books he wrote was the very famous “In Beaver World“, all about our favorite subject matter, and whose very last chapter is titled thusly.
I’m very very proud to imagine that Worth A Dam has possibly been considered as good a educational conservationist as the beaver is. Congratulations to everyone and all of Martinez who made Worth A Dam happen in the first place.
Speaking of the many species beavers assist in their award-winning Keystone capacity, here’s an awesome photo from the Tulocay Napa beaver pond taken yesterday by Rusty Cohn.
Turtles at Tulocay Beaver Pond: Rusty Cohn
Now I think we should all write than you notes to the Scottish Goverment for being so enormously stubborn the world keeps getting headlines like this over and over again.
None of this is about nostalgia. Beavers are often referred to as “ecosystem engineers” and herein lies much of the reasoning and controversy behind their reintroduction. There is extensive evidence from Europe and North America that wetlands created by beaver dams benefit everything from water plants, dragonflies and amphibians to fish and ducks to song birds and bats. In Knapdale, damming by beavers transformed a small pond into a wetland of a type and complexity probably unseen in Britain for centuries.
Beavers can also restore habitats without the need for a bulldozer or planning permission. On the Bamff estate on Tayside, we found that grazing by beavers trebled the number of wetland plants over a nine-year period. Where raised water levels saturated a meadow thanks to damming of ditches, the number of plant species increased by 49% and the multitude of habitats created increased the total diversity of aquatic invertebrates by almost 30%. Indeed the benefits were even further reaching. We found that the beaver dams also acted as a sink for agricultural pollutants, and may also help to reduce the risk of flooding. Individually these findings are not that surprising, though it is unusual to demonstrate them all in parallel.
Go read the whole thing. And thank the famously stubborn scots for needing a lot of convincing on the subject!
Yesterday two lovely copies of Gerry Wykes beautifully illustrated taleof the Detroit River beavers arrived in the mail. I can’t tell you how excited I was from the moment I opened and saw the striking frontspiece showing in part above. The first lines reminded me instantly of the Martinez Beaver story and the surprise with which people reacted to learn that beavers were lurking in their midst. But the tale continues with such a local sensibility to the particular meaning for this very urban river, that it was even more exciting.
The folks at the Conners Creek powerplant on the Detroit river were alarmed at first by some disappearing trees, which they attributed to vandalism, accident, or possibly Big Foot. The book makes a wonderful point of explaining that no one in their right mind would think the theft was the work of a beavers, since there had been no beavers in the Detroit river for 150 years! And just in case you’re wondering what America looked like then, Andrew Johnson was president (following Lincoln’s assassination) and in 1866 ‘negroes’ were officially recognized as American citizens.
Beavers came back to a very different Detroit river than the one they had been trapped out of.
The disappearing-tree mystery was solved with the help of a team of experts including Jason Cousino, who saw the remaining stumps and knew enough to install a night camera on one of the felled trees. Sure enough, a BEAVER was filmed returning to finish his hard night’s work. The city was elated, everyone merrily took credit for cleaning up the river. and it was even reported on Regis and Cathy Lee. Surely if the polluted Detroit river could make a comeback, anything was possible.
A Beaver Tale: Gerry Wykes
The hardworking beaver paid no attention to his fame, and set about making a massive lodge that from almost nowhere attracted a mate. To everyone’s surprise in the spring of 2009 kits were born. The author does a commendable job making the science of beavers, their adaptations, their life history, and even the fur trade exciting and accessible. Even though it’s written for a younger reader, I’d be fairly happy if every city official knew as much about beavers as they read in this book. Even the details of complex concepts like “coppicing” of trees are delightfully explained.
Gerry Wykes: A Beaver Tale
I adore this illustration in particular. (The colors are so vibrant and inviting I’m wishing it was the pattern on my bed sheets or kitchen towels.) In addition to the inviting animals, Wykes does a impressive job of showing the hardened urban skeleton they moved into, right down to the smokestacks and abandoned houses. His artwork beautiful captures the fragile resilience of “nature in the city”.
The representations of beavers are wonderfully accurate. He really captured all the parts of their lives in his illustrations. I’m not sure where the author gained such a fine familiarity with the beaver shape, shading and movements – but this gives me a little idea:
There a few little mistakes we could have set him straight on if he had asked, like writing that beaver need Cottonwood or Willow to survive. Not true. Beavers LIKE those trees, but they can survive on a host of others including (but not limited to) Alder, Aspen, Maple, Oak, Elm and Fruit.There are even places like the Delta (the spot of historically the largest beaver population in California) where they survive without TREES – existing on Tule roots and cattails. He also mentions that folks came to America looking for the other kind of gold and were surprised to wind up with beaver gold. Which I suppose might be true for Columbus, but since we know even the pilgrimswere hungry for cheap beaver fur, doesn’t sit right. It certainly doesn’t adequately describe the ruthless resource war that was taking place across this land for a century as folks sought out the ever-shrinking population of remaining beaver pelts. There, of course, could have been LOTS more information about the way that beavers help fish like salmon and trout, or wildlife like otter and mink, or herons, frogs, turtles and bats while helping rid streams of pollution. But, I’m picky. I admit it. Maybe I’m like the snobby wine connoisseur of beavers?
Regardless of those minor points, this is a beautiful book and worth holding in your hot little hands. It’s perfect as a gift for a curious youth or that nosy sister-in-law that was so interested in the sudden arrival of the curious Martinez Beavers. It goes on sale in March and is available from the publisherfor 18.99. OR if you’re very lucky indeed, and no one gets there first, there will be a copy in the silent auction that you can claim for your very own.
Thanks Gerry and Wayne University Press for a truly delightful read!
So yesterday I was strolling blithely through the internet(s), minding my own business and expecting to see the usual array of appetizers and grandchildren on FB when I suddenly caught sight of this and became immediately interested. Something tells me you will to…
The White House has issued a directive (PDF) to point federal agencies toward building ecosystem-services valuation into their plans, investments and regulations. The directive, released late last year, will help agencies synthesize conservation’s ecosystem benefits with its value to society.
“For too long, we’ve thought of conservation as separate from society,” said Ken Elowe, assistant regional director of science applications for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Northeast Region. “What’s actually needed is a more landscape approach, one that doesn’t segregate people.
Like say, for instance, allowing beavers to work their magic in urban areas.
Of course I immediately marched off and looked for the memo they were talking about. And verily, I say unto you, it was much, much better than I ever expected. Truly.
Read that title again: INCORPORATING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES INTO FEDERAL DECISION MAKING!!! Do you realize what a presidential memo about this means? It means EVERY federal agency that works with nature, habitat or wildlife is advised to put special value on these services. NOAA. BLM. USFS. FWS, APHIS. They are all directed to consider the ecosystem services of any species they manage.
Now mind you, it doesn’t actually SAY the word beaver in this memo, but it might as bloody well have. It goes on to describe in detail every single service they provide and their irreplaceable value. Don’t believe me? Just read for yourself.
And why wasn’t there a parade for this memo? What is wrong with me that you didn’t read about it on October 7th when it was released? The truth is NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT. Or if they did they weren’t allowed to talk about it. I heard from Suzanne Fouty yesterday that she never heard about it at the Forest Service. And Brock Dolman said OAEC didn’t know about it either. This was a SLEEPER memo, obviously uncelebrated to risk upsetting as few people as possible, the same way you might transition your father to decaf without telling him. But I’m ringing and ringing the bell. And you can help. Here’s my news flash of the memo. With the exception of a single word it only contains actual text of the memo. You should be able to hit the plus button to make it bigger.
After that extreme gratification, you should lie back and enjoy the virtual smoke of Beth Pratt’s recent TED talk at Yosemite. She does a great job describing the importance of Urban Wildlife and the book she mentions will have the photo by a certain Martinez beaver defender you might recognize. I’m guessing this is going to make a difference for a host of beavers.
Great news this morning in the Guardian, who happily picked up the Devon story. You will like every part of it, so I recommend reading the entire thing yourself. It starts with Dr. Brazier surveying the ‘damage’. Enjoy!
The devastation is part of a scheme that backers hope will provide a template for a more balanced approach to flood prevention. The government is spending £3.2bn on flood management in the course of this parliament. As flood events such as those seen in Cumbria at the end of last year become more common, so attention has turned to flood management, with a call for resources to be allocated not to building flood defences to deal with the water when it arrives downstream but prevent it getting there at all.
The beavers resident on the three hectares of woodland near Okehampton in Devon could be part of the solution. In the five years since they moved there, they have toppled trees, gnawed bark, dug channels, constructed dams and made a rather impressive home for themselves.
“Prior to working with beavers we’d never really come across animals that would disrupt your work so much,” says Brazier, a hydrologist at the University of Exeter, as he surveys the tangle of branches and tree trunks.
But there is hope, too. New shoots are sprouting from the felled willows and a closer inspection reveals that beneath the devastation lies further evidence of new life promoted by the beavers’ work. “They are a keystone species who are obviously engineering the environment to their own benefit,” says Brazier. “But what’s interesting is all the other benefits.”
The Devon project targets three key indicators: water storage, flood attenuation and water quality. The beavers are, they believe, helping in all three. The 13 dams they have built along the 150 metres stretch of water have increased water storage capacity, evened out the flow of water and improved the quality of the water that emerges from the dams.
Oh its good when science evaluates beavers. Because even when the scientists don’t like us the results are ALWAYS our friends. I can’t imagine another incidence of a three hectare study getting reported in the Guardian, but I’m very happy England has had 500 years to get surprised by things they used to see every day. I especially loved this section.
Mark Elliott, who leads the beaver project for the Devon Wildlife Trust, pulls a large stone from the water. On the underside, a small community of grubs and larvae writhe and squirm: they are caddisflies and mayflies. “What’s happened here is transformational,” he says. “You have this incredibly complex mosaic of a transitional, dynamic habitat. There’s now a complex braided stream providing a habitat for orchids, watermint, bog pimpernel, herons, kingfishers, water beetles and damselflies. Five years ago when we started out, we didn’t know where we were going to get.”
They’re called ecosystem engineers for a reason! You could have asked me what you were going to get and I would have told you. But it’s better for the news cycle if you’re surprised and think you’re the first one who discovered this. Well done! There is only one section I enjoyed more – and I’m assuming that’s a valentine gift especially for me.
Perhaps the most common misconception about beavers is that they will eat all the fish in the newly clean rivers, a charge repeated by Labour MP Mary Creagh during a select committee hearing into the government’s response to flooding. It was pointed out that beavers are actually herbivores.
Honestly, go read the whole thing, and send it to your PTA or uncle. It’s worth sharing. And because it’s a very special day, I made us this.
