Category: Beavers and salmon

Giving up on love…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, Environmental, In the News August 16, 2015

We’ve all been there. That moment when waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Right just makes no sense and we decide to forage on our own anyway. Why wait for love to start our lives when we have our own ability to start things? Unfortunately for Beatrix it took her captors 31 days to decide that it wasn’t worth her waiting anymore. During which she lived in concrete blocks covered with plywood, tormented by the sound of rushing water she could never reach. Remember?

Now she’s finally free.

Dam floods area; beaver moved

TULALIP — Beavers are natural engineers, but can be a nuisance if they’re residing in residential or city areas.

This was the case for “Beatrix” a name given to a female North American beaver by the students at Brookeside Elementary, who was flooding the school’s play field with her dams.

But Beatrix was in luck because the “Beaver Bill” and the agreement of the Tulalip Tribes meant that there are government regulations on who can handle and relocate beavers.

“We thought this was a perfect time to relocate this animal and get her to a better place,” Dittbrenner said.

She was finally captured in July until Aug. 6 she was released into the Skyhomish River.

I guess they thought a month in concrete was long enough. Or that they were nearing the deadline of when a beaver would have enough time to create a food cache before winter. Remember how the last article talked about how important it was to find her a mate she liked and introduce the pair to their new home together? Well, the party line has changed now. (Of course the media didn’t glance at the other article and ask why the line changed. Why would they?)

Before Beatrix was captured, it was revealed that she was a single beaver through wildlife surveillance. Cameras were set up around her beaver lodge to monitor before capture.

Though Beatrix is without a mate, she is a highly social animal and should be able to pair with a beaver at her new location.

“They’re just so happy to see another beaver, and take to each other really well,” assistant wildlife supervisor Molly Alves said.

Just to refresh our memories, here’s what the last article said:

Now the rodent, named “Beatrix” by neighbors, waits for the nonprofit Beavers Northwest that captured her to find her a mate. Pairing up beavers makes it more likely they’ll stay at that spot.

Lucky Beatrix.

Remind me never to be that lucky, okay?

In the interest of fairness I will say that it’s way better to move beavers than to kill them. And that I know these folks want beavers to be living free doing what they do best. But honestly. If you’re going to release her anyway, just do it without the concrete motel 6 stay. Okay? I’m still having nightmares from this footage.

Now that we have THAT out of the way, here’s a fun photo shoot from the Napa beaver pond yesterday. Quite the wildlife corridor wouldn’t you say?

Too bad for the frogs and fish at Brookside

heidi08 Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? July 25, 2015

First the good news.

Remember the beaver in Brookside Elementary that had flooded a field and drove the administrators to seek a trapper? They had the sense to wait until the last day of school and warned kids to keep away from the traps. Then some moms and kids found out, got upset about the plan, drew some media attention and made a few administrators upset in the process. Eventually they were able to slow down the decision and shine some light on options. I talked to them about all the resources available and suggested they should really know better, since they were a whopping 7 miles from Michael Pollock’s office.

So far so good. Now the other news. The option the school picked was relocation rather than installing a flow device and letting the beaver stay to educate children about their important roll in restoring creeks. Okay, bring on the Hancock traps.

Beatrix the beaver trapped — and waiting for love in new home

Remember the beaver that a month ago became a cause célèbre in Lake Forest Park?

It was caught Tuesday, its life spared, and moved to a temporary home at the Tulalip Fish Hatchery near Marysville.

Now the rodent, named “Beatrix” by neighbors, waits for the nonprofit Beavers Northwest that captured her to find her a mate. Then off the pair will go to some creek on Forest Service land along the Highway 2 corridor. Pairing up beavers makes it more likely they’ll stay at that spot.

We are trying to handle this with as much sensitivity as possible,” wrote Pete Rose, Lake Forest Park administrator, in an email.

The answer to the city’s problem came in the form of Ben Dittbrenner, a University of Washington Ph.D. candidate in aquatic ecology, who a couple of years ago co-founded the nonprofit Beavers Northwest.

Okay, right off the bat I need to say that Ben is a good guy. He really admires the work beavers do and understands the ecology. I met him a few years ago at the State of the Beaver Conference when he was working as a watershed steward. He helped Mike Callahan with his salmon adaptions to the flow devices. He has since left to pursue his Ph.D on using beavers to mitigate global warming. He’s a good guy, but he’s no Sherri Tippie. She uses branches as a lure so that the beavers are relaxed and chewing when she releases them. And usually doesn’t bring the media. I’m sure using scent sets them on edge. They are already expecting a fight.

He is very, very enthusiastic about the largest rodent in North America.

“They’re amazing, they’re fascinating,” says Dittbrenner. “They are keystone species, they’re ecosystem engineers.”

Those ponds created by beavers?

Dittbrenner begins the list of why the ponds are great: They remove pollutants from ground water, they are drought protection, they decrease the damage from floods, they produce food for fish and other animals.

Working with the Tulalip Tribes, over the last couple of years Dittbrenner’s small group has captured and relocated some 40 beavers.

I would like this story SO much better if they had installed a flow device. Just as I would like Ben’s website SO much better if the links for nonlethal solutions were not all dead or 404’s and he didn’t have the story about throwing beavers from the airplane on the front page. He’s doing good work for the right reasons I keep telling myself. But this kind of thing just upsets me.

Have you seen those inhumane concrete container crates they use at Guantanamo? They are NICER than what this beaver gets. And speaking of torture, how do you think a beaver feels in a tiny box listening to the roar of rushing water that she can never, ever repair? I can’t help myself. What on earth is the fascination with housing beavers at fish hatcheries? Are they just big concrete spaces with water?

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This is where beavers SHOULD be living. Rusty of Napatopia sent me this photo yesterday after the beavers did some repairs. He smartly asked if I was suffering from “Lodge Envy”, which I’m sure you can guess the answer to. Big beaver showoffs!

We have accomplishments of our own to boast of. Jon finished the stage platform refinement yesterday for the beaver festival. How lucky are OUR musicians going to be? There are three platforms which we formally inherited from the John Muir Historic site. We decided they needed sprucing up a bit. Here’s the center one.

Remember beavers in Urban Planning?

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental July 16, 2015

What a great day yesterday! It started out by picking up a fantastic gift bag donation from Trader Joe’s (Thanks TJ), organizing the amazing donations from Folkmanis puppets (Thanks Elaine), getting two copies of the unbelievably exciting book DAM BUILDERS from the publisher(Thanks Natasha), sending the finished festival brochure to the printers, (thanks Amelia!) and finishing a spread sheet for a stunning 134 auction items! Here’s a little taste.

Then retired librarian friend BK from Georgia sent this my way, and it made everything even brighter. This is such a beautiful review from PHYS.org I’m going to print it all. And if they want to come get me I’ll take the consequences.

Wildlife in built-up areas an undervalued part of our urban ecosystems

Urban wildlife such as deer, foxes and badgers should be cherished for the ecological benefits they bring to towns and cities, rather than feared as potentially harmful pests, scientists argue in a new report.

The review, published in the scientific journal Wildlife Research, states that in order for humans and animals to live successfully side-by-side in built-up areas, a cultural shift is required for the public to fully appreciate the integral role that wildlife performs in urban ecosystems.

Much of the public dialogue about larger urban wildlife currently focuses on the risk of disease, pollution and threat to property or pets, rather than the positive contribution these animals can make.

Lead author Dr Carl Soulsbury, a conservation biologist based in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln, UK, said: “While promoting education about urban wildlife and its risks is important, the benefit wildlife brings to urban areas is often poorly communicated. It includes benefits such as regulating and supporting the ecosystem, through to improving human health and wellbeing.

“We need to identify ways to maximize the benefits, in particular increasing the accessibility of natural green spaces and promoting interactions with wildlife as a form of nature-based therapy. It is only through such an integrative approach that we can advance our understanding of how to live successfully alongside wildlife in an increasingly urbanised world.”

How beautiful is THAT for a beginning? Wildlife in our cities is a treasure NOT a nuisance, and the problem is that people complain too loudly about the problems and don’t talk about the benefits. I have already written to Dr Soulsbury, because we obviously need to be friends.

The researchers detail how urban wildlife can provide a range of benefits to human health and quality of life which are often undervalued or overlooked. For instance, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates the presence and viewing of urban wildlife is beneficial for human mental health and psychological wellbeing.

Urban animals also regulate and support the ecosystems of towns and cities. Many creatures serve as important predators of pest species – for example, songbirds help to control insect populations and predatory birds help rodent control.

But as urban human populations continue to grow, so too does the chance of ‘human-wildlife’ conflict, the researchers warn.

These conflicts occur when the activities of wildlife, whether through aggression, nuisance behaviour such as bin emptying or the spread of parasites or infectious diseases, have a negative effect on humans. Most such problems are minor, but can be distressing to individuals and tend to shape attitudes of the public and authorities.

Dr Soulsbury added: “The main problem is that many of the benefits of living alongside urban wildlife are difficult to quantify. However, we do know that the presence of wildlife gives people an opportunity to connect directly with nature at a local level. This is becoming particularly important in our increasingly urban society where humans are becoming more remote from the natural environment.

“More work is needed to better understand the role of urban wildlife and urban biodiversity in general, in the promotion of mental health and its greater role as a recreational and cultural ecosystem service. To do so wildlife biologists will need to work with other research disciplines including economics, public health, sociology, ethics, psychology and planning.”

I agree! Hmm can we think of any psychologists we might know interested in co-authoring a research paper on this topic? Maybe one with a yearly access to a sample size of 2000?

I’m in love with this article and think I need the paper to which it refers. None of my usual sources can access it yet, so it might not be available. Here’s the link for the abstract if you’re feeling scientific. All I can say is that maybe Dr. Soulsbury needs to come to Martinez for some field research. I’m thinking August would be the perfect time.

Human–wildlife interactions in urban areas: a review of conflicts, benefits and opportunities Case in point…

Help Wanted: Only Beavers Need Apply

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 14, 2015

Yellowstone is in trouble unless we can bring back the beavers

People say that wolf reintroduction saved Yellowstone.

When biologists reintroduced wolves to the park in 1995, the initial effect was promising. Although elk populations did not decline as much as expected, the plants they ate started to regrow. Ecologists theorized that elk altered their behavior when wolves were around and consequently spent less time grazing.

The wolves quickly became the poster child for trophic cascades, how bringing back top predators can restore out-of-whack ecosystems. In recent years, however, ecologists have realized that bringing back wolves hasn’t been enough to restore plant communities in Yellowstone.

“Predators can be important,” Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, told Nature, “but they aren’t a panacea.”

Ohhh sure, wolves are all sexy and wild with their howling in the night and dramatic silhouettes. People like George Monblott make viral videos proclaiming their splendor. But guess what has a lumpy silhouette and doesn’t get big fancy supporters? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘B’.

Thus ecologists have started looking closer at the role beavers play in the ecosystem.

Beavers, too, suffered from the initial decline of wolves and rise of elk, as elk out-competed beavers for food — particularly willow and aspen trees — leading to the near-elimination of beavers and their dams from the park.

As beaver dams disappeared, so did the wetlands and streams they supported — and these are the areas that suffer most today.

“It’s problematic because the willows and beavers have a mutualistic relationship: Beavers eat and cut them down to build their dams, and the dams raise the water tables and bring water up so it’s more available for plants,”

“Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments,” Emma Marris, author of the book “Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World,” told Popular Science, “the willows can’t recover.”

Not only will the willows not recover, but the marshy habitats around them won’t recover either. That includes not only the trees and plants but also the birds, amphibians, and any other creature that needs wetland to survive.

Now it occurs to you that beavers might matter? After we’ve been talking about it for a decade? Well, isn’t that mighty white of you, as they say. I’m sure Dr.’s Hood, Muller-Swarze, Westbrook, Haley and Fouty will be very pleased. More importantly, I’m hoping you take from this that one single answer won’t create a solution. It’s a complicated interweaving of systems, and when you remove one they all suffer. It’s all connected, you know.

(But beavers are STILL more connected than most.)

Lets all be more like beavers…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? July 12, 2015

No new deaths, and Jr. was seen last night. How quickly the standard for good news changes when you are living in a war zone. The dam was worked on too, meaning the beavers themselves are feeling back to normal. I guess we should try and do the same.

These are nice articles to bring us gently back to the land of the living.

North woods entrepreneur: New beaver pond shows the power of the beaver’s creative destruction

To a beaver, the slightest trickle of water is the sound of opportunity. It’s said you can give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. But, I say, give a beaver the barest of brooks and he’ll create a new world.

It’s a process of creative destruction that kills a forest and replaces it with a rich wetland environment that, in its first summer, is already home to at least three broods of mallards and probably more.

It’s a perfect environment for raising young ducks. The pond, which is isolated from any open water source, obviously harbors no giant muskies waiting to inhale a downy little duckling. And the canopy of now-dead alder and aspen offers the young ducks substantial protection from hawks or falcons.

But there was much more at the new pond early one morning this week. Frogs were poking noses from the water, a garter snake was coiled on a sun-splashed rock on the shore, while legions of dragonflies darted around in search of breakfast or a sunny perch of their own.

In the long view, beaver ponds are temporary components on the landscape, even though they can last, at times, for decades. Over time, they change, of course. Our new pond is full of woody cover, but soon enough those dead trees and shrubs will disintegrate and fall below the surface of the dark waters, opening up the pond. The brush will be replaced with true wetland vegetation, like cattails, rushes, or sedges. If they haven’t already, turtles will eventually find their way to this oasis in the forest. I’m curious to watch the transition over the years to come— assuming that the beavers and their progeny continue to maintain the dam.

I love a beaver article that takes the long view on beaver impact. But Marshall Helmberger stopped short of mentioning the egrets and herons that come to the pond to eat those frogs, and the fish that feast on the dragonfly larvae. Not to mention the mink and otter that come feast on the fish. How about the nutrients that will accumulate in that damp soil and the many plants that will eventually settle in that meadow? I’ll let Dr. Wohl explain:

I never get tired of hearing that clip. That is the best lightening overview on beaver impact I have ever heard. Even better than Enos Mills, and that’s saying something. Ellen donated another book for the auction, this one looks like an excellent summer read.

A combination of travel writing, nature writing, and science writing, Transient Landscapes is a beautiful and thoughtful journey through the natural world.

Now on to my favorite beaver article this season, I have tried to track down the author but had no luck yet. This appeared yesterday in the News Tribune in Washington state. (Of course)

Eager beavers seeking summer fun can rely on these tips from the animal world

Here are five ways your kids can be more like a beaver this summer.

Tip 1: Create your own shelter

Have you ever pitched a tent outdoors, or gathered all the pillows and blankets in your house for an epic pillow fort? It’s amazingly satisfying to put a roof over your own head, even if it’s just for fun. Beavers are known for creating their own homes, called lodges.

Tip 2: Hang out with your family

If you spent the summer by yourself, you’d probably get bored. A beaver would feel the same way. They love to play and socialize with their family members every day. Beavers live in family groups called colonies.

Tip 3: Eat a healthy snack

Nothing tastes better than fresh veggies found at the local farmers market. North American beavers have diets based on the plants found in their natural range, which includes Canada, the United States and northern Mexico. They love to eat bark, twigs, aquatic plants, and the leaves and roots of deciduous trees.

Tip 4: Go for a swim

What’s the best way to cool off in summer (aside from eating Popsicles all day)? Taking a dip in the pool, of course. Swimming is a refreshing activity for lots of animals and a major part of the beaver lifestyle.

Tip 5: Help habitats

All living things are connected, and every animal needs a home. Protecting and creating homes for other animals is a great habit to practice every summer (and the rest of the year, too). You can try it yourself by planting trees, building bird houses or bat shelters, or volunteering for habitat restoration projects.

Beavers modify their surroundings quite a bit. In the process of creating lodges, dams and canals, they create rich habitats for other animals. Cutting down trees allows shrubby plants to grow, which are great food for deer and elk in winter. Beaver ponds also attract frogs that are hunted by weasels, raccoons, herons and others. Ducks and geese may build nests on top of beavers’ lodges.

A beaver colony is a good thing for a healthy forest.

I love. Love. LOVE. This article! How it of course PRESUMES that children might want to be like beavers. How it finds ways to educate children about beaver adaptions by pairing them with things they already know. And of course how the last paragraphs emphasize that beavers are GREAT for other animals in the forest.

Love.

I don’t know about you but I can see the beginnings of a beaver badge tied in with the festival, in which children show us they have taken beaver action during the season and earn something to acknowledge their role in the colony! Maybe they even get the list of how to be like a beaver at earth day, check the items off and turn it into us at the festival?

Hmm we’d have to add one of course. Teaching others what you know. Beavers do that all the time.