Category: Beavers and salmon

On a clear day, you can see for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Who's saving beavers now? November 12, 2015

Here’s a nice article from last month’s Freshwater Magazine. It’s a sweet piece of writing with some delicious frosting added yesterday that I’ll tell you about later. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

When a group of five scientists in the Pacific Northwest began advertising for workshops on the science of beaver restoration, they didn’t anticipate a few things.

The workshops would be filled to capacity within a week. There was so much interest they needed to increase both the workshop size and the total number of workshops offered. There would be a waitlist, followed by phone calls and emails from people clamoring to get in.

“People are starting to see the value of beaver for more than just their pelts or more than just pests, but how we can work in concert with them to fix more rivers and streams.”

Regulatory agency staff, nonprofits, tribal representatives, private landowners, members of the general public and others paid the $50 fee for one-day intensives on the science behind how beaver restore streams.

But the sharing of knowledge and best practices would live beyond the day-long events. Workshop discussions were captured in an official guidebook on beaver restoration, published this past June.

“The publication is meant to be an accessible resource for anyone using beaver to restore waterways,” said Greg Lewallen, a master’s student at Portland State University and the research assistant for the project. “With enough educational outreach, the perception of these animals will start to change. That’s why it’s critical we continue to spread the word about the large role that these animals play in ecosystems.”

This article does a great job of emphasizing how thrilled they were by the response they got. Waiting lists are a reminder that the west was hungry for this information. You probably remember this publication from the delightful cover that featured Cheryl’s photo. People were really excited by this information. Now the crew was so estatic by the response they got that they want to work on volume II.

Only in this second version they want to include a chapter on the topic dearest to my heart. Are you sitting down? They want to include a chapter on this:

Did you know that 81% of all Americans live in urban settings? So if most of us are going to deal with beavers its going to be someplace next to sidewalks and parking meters. And if the fact that they were including a chapter on the topic was all the news for this morning, that would be enough. I’d be in heaven floating on a pink fluffy cloud.

But that is not all. No, that is not all.

Now if you want to study tortoises you go to the Galapagos, if you want to see the works of Michaelanglo you go to Rome, and apparently if you want to learn about Urban Beavers you contact Martinez. Greg wrote me this week and we arranged a fantastic phone call for yesterday, where I told him the long and winding story of our beavers and the tireless work the people of Martinez had done to save them.

I was so flattered to be asked, and thrilled to think that before our city the topic of Urban Beavers was never even discussed. (In fact the words were probably only paired as an obscure reference to leggy females that drank Manhattans and smoked black cigarettes.) But now the words actually existed. And Urban Beavers were a THING, like open space or two-way traffic. And they wanted to include them in the next edition!!!

My excitement could only be described with this video short.

So I was as excited as little Madeline here during our conversation, and kept missing words and skipping over myself. But, since this was a story I had told a thousand times before, I found my way well enough. And before the conversation was over, a little moth of a thought started fluttering wistfully in my mind. I shushed it away many times but it came only back stronger.

What if I could be a co-author on this chapter. Was it even possible?

All through the hour long conversation I waived the fluttering thought away and tried to imagine whether I was qualified for such an auspicious venture. It’s true I had already co-authored two papers on beavers that were published in scientific journals. And a few in my trained field of psychology, where I had even been sole author. So maybe it wasn’t a crazy idea. But was it impossible? This was NOAA, Fish and Wildlife and the USFS; did my scrabbling, back room beaver-tactics really belong there?

Well, some dreams never see the light of day, and some apples fall to the ground before they ripen.We can never know what would have happened if I had summoned the courage to ask Greg if I could be a co-author of the chapter.

Because HE ASKED ME FIRST.

Guess what I answered. Go ahead, guess, I can wait.

“The stream restoration is on us – don’t mention it!”

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? November 11, 2015

Finally!

There’s been such a pack of good beaver news lately that I’ve been waiting to share this lovely guest-post forever! It’s from Dr. Dougald Scott whose on the board of the Salmonid Restoration Federation, and past editor of the River Mouth, the newsletter for the Northern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that he’s also a member of the California Working Beaver Group, and a believer in the cause of beaver streams everywhere.

This will delight you.

The attached a photo shows how beaver had rehabilitated the tiny creek on my property in Western Colorado. Rick Lanman admired the photo and asked if I had fenced out the cattle. It turns out this is an interesting story regarding cattle and beaver on our land.

Basically we lucked out. There was no way that we could afford to fence our 160 acres to keep cattle out; so up until 2001 we leased grazing rights to our neighbors whose cattle were already there and going to graze anyway. Living so far away and lacking in resources, there was little we could do to further manage the situation.Through the late 80’s and 90’s, all the land up and down the canyon was terribly overgrazed. The resident beaver were finally extirpated in the late 80’s due to the overgrazing.

In 2001 a wealthy hotelier from Florida purchased 23,000 acres immediately down canyon from us. He intended to make it into an upscale hunting and retreat lodge, and as part of his plan he ended cattle grazing in our valley. None of the other landowners seem interested in cattle, so we’ve been cattle free since 2001.

The small creek running through our property quickly responded to the absence of cattle by sprouting riparian vegetation, especially willows and cottonwoods. In the spring of 2008 I had arranged with the local game warden to introduce a pair of beaver into our creek. When I arrived in Grand Junction to be on hand and welcome the beaver, the game warden told me he was swamped and wouldn’t be able to bring the beaver up to our place for another month.

I was disappointed, but when I arrived at our camp, I was pleasantly surprised to find the beginnings of a dam… the little buggers had found their own way to our place! In the seven years since, the number of dams has fluctuated with the drought, but this summer there were more that 10 dams. The beaver have also moved downstream and made an impact there, although not always positive for the lodge people. However they are learning to appreciate the beaver for their ability to restore riparian habitat in semi-arid locations.

Needless to say, we now have a thriving wetland community and are thrilled – rehabilitation of our tiny creek over time thanks to beaver.

Thank you, Dougald, for sharing this important story first hand! What a fantastic illustration of a very crucial axiom!

Keep the cows out of the stream and the willow will come.

Let the willow grow and the beaver will come.

When the beavers come back, the stream is restored.

Here endeth the lesson.

More Beaver Gospel from HCN

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? November 9, 2015

In the beginning there was the word.

And the word was beaver.

The first truly exciting article I read about beaver was from High Country News in 2009. It described the way we had forgotten what watersheds were supposed to look like and introduced me to the dynamic character of Mary Obrien, describing her ‘long think rope of a gray braid.’ I was so excited to see her on the schedule at the first beaver conference that I peeked around looking for long gray hair, and was dissappointed that there were too many possibilities to guess. It was okay, she had cut her hair by then, but we met anyway, went to lunch and next year she came to the beaver festival. Remember?

Well this morning High Country News has done it again: celebrated beaver contribution on a grand scale with an article about the much beloved Methow Project and its guiding light Kent Woodruff. I feel obliged to say that the great headline was hijacked from the Canadian version of Jari Osborne’s game-changing documentary. But the rest of the text is golden.

The beaver whisperer

The lovers are wards of the Methow Valley Beaver Project, a partnership between the U.S. Forest Service, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation that, since 2008, has moved more than 300 beavers around the eastern Cascades. These beavers have damaged trees and irrigation infrastructure, and landowners want them gone. Rather than calling lethal trappers, a growing contingent notifies the Methow crew, which captures and relocates the offenders to the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and state land.

Why would Washington invite ditch-clogging nuisances — so loathed that federal Wildlife Services killed 22,000 nationwide in 2014 — into its wildlands? To hear Methow project coordinator Kent Woodruff tell it, beavers are landscape miracle drugs. Need to enhance salmon runs? There’s a beaver for that. Want to recharge groundwater? Add a beaver. Hoping to adapt to climate change? Take two beavers and check back in a year.

Decades of research support Woodruff’s enthusiasm. Beaver wetlands filter sediments and pollutants from streams. They spread rivers across floodplains, allowing water to percolate into aquifers. They provide rearing grounds for young fish, limit flooding and keep ephemeral creeks flowing year-round.

“We want these guys everywhere,” says Woodruff, a white-stubbled Forest Service biologist with an evangelical gleam in his blue eyes. On this sweltering July morning, he watches as wildlife scientists Catherine Means and Katie Weber hoist Chomper and Sandy, now caged, into the truck that will convey them to the Okanogan-Wenatchee. “We want beavers up every stream, in all the headwaters.”

Yes we do. And mouth too. (Ahem). I’m so happy this is getting the attention of the higher-ups. Kent is a mild-mannered but passionate man who makes easy alliances across party lines. I’ve always been a little jealous of him. Compared to our hard scrabble here in Martinez, the Methow project has always lived a fairly charmed life because it has SO much agency support. Here’s the list of partners in 2014:

So you can see he’s very gifted at playing well with others. One thing I love about the article is getting the back story about Kent himself;

That’s where Woodruff came in. Since arriving in the Okanagan in 1989, he’d focused on birds, installing nesting platforms for owls. But he yearned to leave an enduring legacy, and in 2008 his opportunity -arrived. John Rohrer, Woodruff’s supervisor, had been relocating beavers on a small scale since 2001 — even digging a holding pool in his own backyard. Meanwhile, the Washington Department of Ecology wanted to improve regional water quality. Woodruff thought beavers could help. He offered to expand Rohrer’s endeavor.

I never knew he was a bird man! Cheryl will be happy to read that. Now I’m a purist and want there to be a sentence in here crediting Sherri Tippie for the realization that beaver families do better when they’re relocated as a unit. But I guess saving beavers is a bit like the story of Stone Soup if you’re lucky. Everyone contributes what they can without realizing it matters and in the end helps create something nourishing.

Anyway, its a great article. Go read the whole thing, and if you feel inclined leave a comment about the valuable role beavers can play in urban landscapes.

Here’s was my contribution yesterday, which is an timely response to the articles implication that the answer to our beaver problems is to take them out of the city and move them up country. (As you know, I believe the answer is to let them move wherever they dam well please and make adjustments accordingly.) Credit where its due, the play on words comes from our friend Tom Rusert in Sonoma. But I’m fairly happy with its application here. See if you can tell what city this is:

Painting the town – er trunk, in Fargo

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers and Birds, 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? November 8, 2015

Beaver Backers paint trees in Fargo to protect furry friends

Thief River Falls resident Nina Berg, a member of the Beaver Backers organization that sprung up to defend the Fargo beavers, said the large-scale tree painting Saturday will hopefully spare the beavers.

The board voted to cull beavers after hearing concerns from residents and staff about the animals destroying trees and costing the city thousands of dollars. Park District officials said later they were open to non-leathal options.

The painting is a solution that will appease beaver backers and those concerned with the trees, Berg said.

“(The mixture) will be very unappealing to the beavers, and they will avoid those trees that we’re trying to protect,” Berg said.

The group spent several hours on Saturday painting more than 1,300 trees on the Fargo side of the river. The group will paint about 75 percent of the trees in the park and save 25 percent of the trees for the beavers to munch on and build dams

Hurray for the sensible, compassionate folks of Fargo who held a kickstarter to raise funds for the project and got 30 volunteers out in November to sand paint trees! 1300 is A LOT of trees. They are officially the tree-painting capital of the world now. I’m thrilled that this was able to happen, but still a little confused about the color choice.? Why not match the trunk? We’ve certainly marched into Home Depot with willow branches for them to match. But heck, maybe mint green was on sale.

Michelle Peterson said the painting will save beavers and the trees and hopefully sway the Park District to allow the beavers stays of execution. “If they come out here and see that it’s working, then hopefully they’ll let us keep coming out and doing this every year,” Berg said, adding that the group had permission from the Park District to paint the trees.

Nina and Michelle ROCK! They got tons of media for this project and volunteer support. Fingers crossed they used enough mason sand to really discourage those beavers. Jon always found that by the end he was using his hands to really get the sand to stick.

And because remarkable stories like this deserve a treat, I’m sharing the stunning photo found by Ann Cameron Siegal on Creative Commons. It was taken by Elizabeth Haslam and posted yesterday on the US Fish and Wildlife Facebook page. And some lovely human said, “I just saw this fantastic documentary on all the great things beavers do”.

Guess what the nation’s wildlife experts commented. Go ahead, guess.

great mother kit beaver — Elizabeth Haslam: Creative Commons

“Awesome! Do you remember what it’s called? In case folks are interested.”

That’s right, even though all of America and parts of Canada watched Jari Osborne’s incredible documentary in 2014, and all of Canada watched it in 2013, even though it had the highest ratings of any Nature program on Public television that year and was the one that PBS sent for Emmy consideration, the experts at fish and wildlife didn’t even know about it. Because, I guess, busman’s holiday. They already know it all. Why learn more?

If they wanted to learn more they should come to the beaver festival this year. I spent yesterday finishing the grant application for this year’s children’s activity. It details how Mike at Wildbryde will design charms shaped like rail cars to for children to fashion into a bracelet. I can’t help being a little proud of this.

“Oh, the beaver and the cowman should be friends”

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, featured November 7, 2015

Do you know who Carol Evans is? You really should. I read about her work in Elko, NV many years ago and knew I had to reach out. You for sure saw her in the beginning of the PBS documentary checking out the beaver restoration of Suzie Creek in Nevada with Suzanne Fouty. Now do you remember? Carol has been working her special collaborative magic with the unbelievably complex cast of characters in her state with some pretty amazing results.

So amazing, in fact, that she was recently invited to a biodiversity and climate change workshop at Tufts University in Boston. (Which is about as close as you come in this line of work to being a rock star). Because the university is among the finest in the land, the web page for the conference has everyone’s presentation and slides up and downloadable. You could spend many hours but, start with Carol and Jon, who are a superhuman tagteam of why to live with beavers.

I know that everyone is busy and maybe thinking you don’t have time to watch. But believe me, you should. Here’s my favorite slide of Carol’s, showing the ground water increases adjacent to a beaver dam.
(That’s a little thing beavers do called “recharging the aquifer”.)

And just in case you are inclined to watch hers and not his, I will warn you that you would be making a very grave error. Because Jon Grigg’s straightforward, plainspoken presentation is wonderfully powerful. I can completely understand why they have had such success all over the state because of his resonance. I don’t agree with every single thing he says, but that is how collaboration works. You form alliances based on mutual interests and set aside disagreements until you get things accomplished. And I am proud to think both of them are allies in our work to educate folks about beavers.

Wasn’t that awesome? That’s right, now even Nevada knows more about beaver restoration than California. Sigh.

I got a call this week from a producer working on a beaver film for the UK, he wanted to make the argument for beaver reintroduction there and will be interviewing Carol, Mary Obrien and Michael Pollock, among others. They will be doing the bulk of their filming in Nevada and Oregon, but I made a strong case for urban beaver restoration and pitched what we had done and what Napa was currently doing. He was actually really interested in including Napa because it was so well known and was going to pitch the idea to his team. Fingers crossed, their local beavers maybe stars someday.

It’s been a weirdly busy month. In addition to everything else, I received a disappointing note that my beaver article won’t be included in this ‘Phoebe’ newsletter for the Sierra Foothill Audubon Society because it got bumped for climate change. Hrmph. Another year of massive beaver depredations in Placer county I bet. Hopefully it can appear sometime in the future. In the meantime, I received a great video this morning about genetic resilience and climate change in cottonwoods, that actually has a segment on the importance of beavers. The title is aptly a quote from Martinez’s own John Muir.

Its very well done, I learned several new words and you will be much smarter at the end than you were at the beginning. It won’t let me embed it here, but click on the title to go see for yourself. The beaver segment starts at 31.20. Just remember, we are what we learn.