BEAVERS AROUND THE WORLD

You know a lot of wonderful things are said about beavers, that their ponds help salmon and frogs and water storage and remove nitrogen and fight fires BUT is it enough? Could there be more wonderful things said about beavers that we haven’t even begun to discuss? Are we hiding their bright beaver lights under a bushel?

Enter the blanding turtle.

The challenge of beaver dams in Blanding’s turtle habitat

I had no idea that destroying beaver dams threatened Blanding’s turtle survival. I must confess that I find beavers adorable, but I learned that they can cause serious headaches for landowners and municipalities that have dams on their property. That’s why NCC has come to their rescue with a series of awareness workshops to help ensure the survival of Blanding’s turtle.

Beavers build dams, which create wetlands, to increase their food resource area and protect themselves from predators. In addition to regulating, filtering and purifying runoff water, these wetlands are also useful for other species; they promote the nesting and feeding of waterfowl, and also benefit several types of fish, amphibians, reptiles and even some mammals. A few years ago, a study on the movement of Blanding’s turtle, a species designated threatened in Quebec since 2009, revealed that more than 90 per cent of their habitat is in ponds created, maintained or regulated by beavers.However useful they may be, these dams can suddenly give way, flooding land and infrastructure. This is why they are sometimes destroyed by local residents. The option of destroying dams, besides being effective only in the short term (since beavers will return to rebuild their dam if they find the environment favourable) is a threat to Blanding’s turtle’s survival.

This was explained during a presentation given by NCC biologists Milaine Saumur and Caroline Gagné in Clarendon, Outaouais, last fall. They discussed alternatives dismantling beaver dams, including preventative structures designed to protect culverts and the installation of a water level control system upstream of a dam.

Well,now that’s very interesting, but if this author believe that the only thing that makes landowners fear beaver dams is the threat of the potentially washing out, she isn’t being creative enough. As we know all too well. beaver dams are removed because people are afraid they won’t wash out, they’ll cause flooding, they’ll bring mosquitoes, they’ll block fish passage, they’ll cause an eyesore, and any other possible reason you an dream up in your head.

Blanding’s turtles were once common in much of Canada but are now endangered. They happen to be of interest in longevity research, as they show little to no common signs of aging and are physically active and capable of reproduction into eight or nine decades of life.

But now THAT’s interesting. Don’t destroy beaver dams and you have a chance to live and breed forever! Hmm, that might get some traction!

Beaver viagra!

Another great photo this morning from our favorite Austrian photographer,

Leopold Kanzler is such a talent. The beaver in this photo looks like a windswept James Dean gazing off into the sunrise. Obviously anticipating the delicious cottonwood leaves that await him, or his children as soon as he slips back into the water.

Oh how I miss those mornings of gleefully watching beavers!

A final wistful article from Canada which is even sadder when read with thoughts of our recent beavers failed rescue at Lindsey. I’m not sure if this hospital is more patient or just less practical.

A beaver tale: Here’s what happened after the Mounties found this guy at the mall

Hope for Wildlife has been caring for the animal, which likely has a head injury from a car crash It’s hard to picture a more Canadian start to a news story: the Mounties getting called out to help an injured beaver in a Lower Sackville, N.S., mall parking lot.

And yet there’s as much of our national spirit — that urge to help — to be found in the news of the beaver’s recovery.

Little Nacho, as his caregivers call him, is in rough shape. An injured tail, road rash on his feet and missing fur suggest he was hit by a car, according to the founder of Hope for Wildlife, the rescue group that’s treating him.

He’s also showing signs of a head injury.

”Head injuries do take a long time to heal, but that’s OK, we take whatever time is needed for these animals,” Hope Swinimer says. “We’ve got three others in now so we might actually match him up with one other young beaver.”

Sigh. Add that to the list. Apparently even Canadian beavers get better health care than we do. But at least it give me another reason to post one of my very favorite photos EVER.

You’re welcome.

HOW ABOUT CHANNELING ACTUAL BEAVERS?

I know it’s only-good-news Sunday, but the world is mostly devoid of unreservedly positive beaver news at the moment so we get two stories that come very close to being good news. Let’s call them good-beaver-news-adjacent. The first is from Alberta Canada and does a pretty awesome job of talking about how beaver impoundments save water – it’s just missing the actual – you know – beavers.

Producer channels inner beaver to keep water on his farm

As a keystone species in North America, the beaver is so much more than just a hat with legs.

It is indisputably one of the most important and influential species, responsible not only for biodiverse ecosystems, but also for drought prevention. Takota Coen, a fourth-generation farmer, educator, and carpenter, has been channelling his inner beaver since he was a child.

“Every spring, all I did was throw sticks in creeks and try to build dams with weeds and mud,” the 25-year-old says. “Children have an innate sense of trying to slow water down.”

And all that play has made him a pro.

Now if I were in charge this realization that beavers save water and it makes a huge difference to available groundwater on a farm would lead Takota to tolerate the actual beavers on his farm and work with them to allow them to help his work. But sadly, I’m not in charge. So he doesn’t have any.

In the spring of 2014, Coen harvested enough water to meet their farm’s water needs for 40 years — 10 million gallons — in just 10 days.

A couple years earlier, when Coen decided to move to his parent’s farm, Grass Roots Family Farm near Ferintosh, Alta., the farm had a water problem: they’d already had two wells dry up on the property, a third that was dry right from the beginning, and a fourth that only pumped two gallons per minute.

“We had no choice but to look for water elsewhere,” he says.

Using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) maps of the property, Coen found the longest and highest valley on the farm, rented a Caterpillar D3 for a day and dug a 1.5 kilometre long, 1.2 metre wide, 0.3 metre swale — which he calls a “wetland on contour.”

That swale enabled Coen to catch all that runoff, and eventually, more.

Ahh so you made yourself a beaver pond and the rain filled it up! Great idea. I wonder how much that LIDAR and caterpillar rental coast you? Gosh, I know something that would have done that for free! Suddenly this graph springs to mind.

Onto Maine where we’re very happy they’ve decided to live trap a beaver rather than kill it. But honestly.

Catch & Release: Stalking the Wild Beaver

As state-certified Maine Animal Damage Control Cooperators, Maynard Stanley Jr. (pictured) and his wife Norma catch and release wild animals and help solve problems and conflicts between people and animals. This beaver (pictured) was building a dam in a culvert with sticks and mud, which, if left unattended, can cause a road to wash out, sometimes just overnight. So, Rockland Public Works Department called “Critter Catcher” Maynard Stanley Jr. on Tuesday to trap the beaver. The beaver is about four years old, Stanley said, and, after trapping it, he relocated it to a Maine Wildlife Management Area far away from people.

Oh okay.

You sent Mr. Critter catcher out to get ‘a beaver’ because obviously there was only ONE right? And he determined this bachelor is 4 years old by reading his kinder page? Something tells me this story is going to get more provoking. Just wait.

Before releasing the beaver, he and his wife stopped by Owls Head Central School for a quick Show and Tell. “The kids had lots of great questions,” Stanley said. “They love to see wild critters up close, smell the different trapping lures, and I enjoy sharing my experience and helping others understand wildlife and how to coexist. I give wildlife talks and have shown critters at other schools and never pass up a chance to talk with kids.”

Never mind that the poor beaver is confused frightened and isolated from his family. This morning we’re going to a brightly lit schoolroom full of noisy children who will poke at you and ask questions. Do you think that beaver was still in the clamshell trap? I’m going to guess he was because I doubt critter control moved him to something more comfortable. So five hours in that trap and then another five to drive him to his destination and then released without family or safety into some strange stream somewhere.

Poor little beaver.

The good news is that at least that culvert will NEVER get blocked again, right? I mean no other beaver is going to plug it tonight, or next month, because this story has a happy ending rof course?

THE BEAVER ATE MY HOMEWORK

heidi08 Beavers and turtles February 8, 2018

“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

This simple line from the Mock Turtle’s song in Alice in Wonderland always struck me as profound. Like an argument, a pond has two (or more) sides. A deep pond has shallow spaces in it. Those shallow spaces are teaming with aquatic insects, and lined with boggy aquatic plants.

Which is why this article surprised me.

Pet Talk: A summer spent saving turtles

Last summer, two rising second-year veterinary students traded blue lab coats and lecture halls in Urbana for chest-high waders and wetlands in Lake County in northeast Illinois.

Human development and ecological imbalance, such as an abundance of beavers, has destroyed or altered areas where Blanding’s turtles live. For example, in Illinois, dwindling numbers of large predators has led to an increase in the beaver population. Beavers make dams, creating deeper ponds with little water flow and pushing out the Blanding’s turtles, which prefer shallower areas.

The Blanding turtle is a relative of the red-eared slider, which we in Martinez know very well thrives in beaver ponds. So I rushed to the library to find out if this was true. It sounded doubtful, because one of the nost valuable things beavers bring is stream complexity, with braids, channels, and different sections that appeal to different creatures at different periods in their lives. I thought surely if beavers were such a substantial threat to Blanding turtles I’d find all kind of research on the subject.

Guess how much I found? I’ll give you a hint. It’s a ROUND number.

So why care about saving an endangered species? Biodiversity! It is important that we conserve and save native plants and animals to prevent extinction of natural ecosystems. Losing a single species can result in a detrimental domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem in which that species resides.

Gosh darn those pesky beavers and their stubborn and wanton daily destruction of b-i-o-d-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y. If there’s one thing that troubles me about these animals it’s the barren ponds they create, like watery deserts where they live the solitary lives of bitter beaver misers….

What’s that? Beaver ponds are TEAMING WITH BIODIVERSITY?

Including Blanding turtles?

Here’s expert naturalist Bob Arnebeck from New York writing about them on his web page:

I’ve found Blanding’s Turtles in shallow fresh water bogs that only fill with water in the spring that are no bigger than a driveway. Indeed, I’ve seen two turtles, both almost nine inches long, living in such a small bog. I’ve also found them in large beaver ponds,

Here’s New Hamshire Wildlife bulletin writing about them in their technical manual.Here;s what the Species at risk public registry in Nova Scotia has to say (who hates beavers more than anyone) observed:

Extensive beaver activity is also apparent at most known Blanding’s turtle sites in Nova Scotia.

Meaning where one lives, the other thrives.

How about this Master’s thesis by Tamessa Hartwig from New York on specific habitat observations of the Blanding turtle which has several observations about beaver habitat including this one:
HABITAT SELECTION OF BLANDING’S TURTLE (EMYDOIDEA BLANDINGII): ARANGE-WIDE REVIEW AND MICROHABITAT STUDY

In addition, turtles in W isconsin hibernated in a beaver flowage at the mouth of a creek and in borrow pits (Wilder, 2003)

The sad truth is of course is that the poor Blanding Turtle’s habitat overlaps most precisely with the voracious “human people habitat”. Which means as our subdivisions and culverts concrete up the earth there is less and less space for them, and that’s just too dam bad because we don’t care.

So we blame beavers.