Category: Beavers and Flooding

‘GETTING IN GOOD TROUBLE’ FOR BEAVERS

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

John Lewis speaking atop the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

It occurred to me watching the profound tribute to his life over the past few days that what happened in Martinez – what happened to my life in particular in the cataclysmic 2007 was that I got into some “Good Trouble“. Through no planning of my own I found myself scrambling to slow down the massive machinery of extermination and stop the fast moving train of reactive fear. At the time everyone acted like it was such an affront. Such a challenge to the way things were done. I can remember being lectured by the female clergy at the Rotary meeting I presented and was was scolded by council member Janet Kennedy. Why wasn’t I more patient and appreciative? I remember how scary and difficult everything was. I remember how it felt like I was weighing my responses more carefully than I had for any single thing I had ever done in my life before or since.

Mind you, I’m not saying it’s anywhere near as brave or important as what he spent his life doing. But battling to redeem the waterways of America’s is a little brave. And a little important. And its the kind of good trouble I seem to be equipped for, so I think I’ll keep doing it a while longer

I’d like to cause some “Good Trouble” in Sturgeon at the moment.

Sturgeon County offers beaver bounty to combat flooding issues

Sturgeon County will offer a beaver bounty to address flooding issues affecting the area north of Edmonton. The beaver control incentive policy, a first for the county, was approved by council last week and will start in August.

The program will pay $20 to property owners in the area in exchange for a beaver tail, along with the signing of an affidavit stating the beaver was found on private property within the county.

That means that if you kill an entire family you might make a cool hundred bucks! Gosh that will come in handy with the pandemic and all. Mind you this is Alberta. And you have the smartest researcher in all of Canada about 45 minutes away. And hey Glynnis is training a team of students to install flow devices for free, but heck. Blame the beaver. How bad can it get?

“Beavers are an important part of the ecosystem,” he said.

“When the population is balanced they can absolutely assist in some of the areas, but right now what we do find is that they end up plugging up culverts, they create dams that redirect water flow to areas that then end up flooding out roads, create washouts, damage infrastructure and flood agriculture lands so they end up being a pest in that area.”

So we know that sometimes, hypothetically speaking they are good. But now not so much. They are just using all this water to make more water! And we need our farms and roads! But the article must be written by a friend. Because it ends of a very positive note.

Glynnis Hood, a professor with the U of A’s Augustana campus in Camrose was recently awarded a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada to build a model to test the claim that beaver habitats lead to flooding

She’s studied the animals for the past 20 years.

“Beavers often get blamed for flood events, especially the major ones,” Hood wrote in an article on the U of A’s website.

“Some believe that beaver dams store so much water that big rains add to the volume and cause flooding. Others say that beaver dams actually help hold back water that would have otherwise flooded property.

“You end up with this two-sided view of whether or not dams upstream are good, or if they’re creating even worse floods that you would have expected.”

The research project is expected to continue over the next five years.

GO GLYNNIS! She’s a very serious researcher with years of academia behind her title. She is Interested in science and relying on peer review. She would never describe herself as causing “Good trouble” on behalf of beavers.

But she is.

AETATIS SUAE CASTOR

heidi08 Beavers and Flooding June 6, 2020

That beaver death rate wasn’t just shocking to us. It caught the attention of many conservationists in the UK. This time from the Spectator which. since the 1800’s has written about politics and happenings giving it the odd distinction of making it is the oldest weekly magazine in the world.

After the flood: The age of the beaver

Restoring biodiversity and protecting our bucolic woodlands will be a focus for farmers and those who dictate how subsidies are spent over the coming decades.

The greatest of these is the Eurasian Beaver. Ecologists unanimously assert that temperate river ecosystems can only be considered whole and healthy if they have beavers living throughout their length. Great efforts are being made by an enlightened few to reintroduce this noble and ingenious rodent back into our waterways. Even so, last year 87 beavers were killed on the River Tay by local farmers who were protecting subsidy motivated crops on low lying flood-plains. This equates to 20 per cent of Scotland’s total beaver population.

A death rate like 1/5 gets attention. And it should. When Scotland announced it’s original plan to catch ALL the tay beavers years ago they were hampered by an extremely faulty count. I’m hoping this statistic used the same math and there are way more beavers than they realize. I’m so happy it’s getting noticed that I won’t even complain that they used castor canadensis instead of fiber for this photo. The European beaver just isn’t as beautiful with it’s piggish snout. Our beaver of course boasts the nose shot as the most perfect.

We need a nation that is built to withstand the flood of future pandemics and the strain of climate change. Beaver dams provide towns and villages with robust safety from flooding and from the strain of droughts. They are far more effective than the concrete culverts we erect. These ecosystem engineers manage water flow in a way councils could only dream of.

It all comes down to this. Beavers could make things better if we could just stop killing them long enough to notice. Ain’t that always the kicker? Shh this is my favorite part.

Perhaps the beaver could be the symbol of an invigorated United Kingdom that emerges from the deluge of coronavirus to stem the flood of threats that the 2020s hold for us all. We have all come to appreciate nature more during the lockdown so now is the time to begin rewilding our gardens, our lives and even our economy. Not only will beavers help farmers across our island to manage their rivers but they inspire the kind of creative and proactive risk management that our politicians will need to embody in order to survive the coming storm.

The age of the beaver is upon us.

Good lord, let’s hope so.

THE SUN SHINES ON BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Beavers and Flooding March 10, 2020

I don’t know, you might be saying, does a beaver conference like the one they just held in Maryland even matter? Lots of experts talking to each other, but Is anyone really paying attention?

Deploying beavers to create dams could prevent Ellicott City flooding

Pickering is an ancient village in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, England, U.K. Descriptions of the place bring to mind Ellicott City, the old mill town in Howard County, Maryland, U.S.A. Visitors will find stone buildings along the main street in both communities. Both are nestled in valleys near public parklands. Both are tourist destinations. And both are situated on waterways and prone to damaging floods.

Pickering, in the drainage of the North York moorland, had considerable success in addressing its flood problems in recent years, but not in the big, costly way you might expect.

Oooh I wonder how. Don’t you? Hmm I have an idea,,,

“Pickering pulled off protection by embracing the very opposite of what passes for conventional wisdom,” journalist Geoffrey Lean reported in the Independent. “On its citizens’ own initiative, it ended repeated inundation by working with nature, not against it.”

Two beavers were released last year into a forest to build dams and help slow the flow of floodwater into the area. Just last month people who live in Yorkshire saw results. A storm by the name of Dennis came through and dropped what meteorologists call a “weather bomb” across England, with 90 mph winds and a one-day rainfall equal to what normally falls in two weeks. The storm caused extensive flooding, but apparently beaver dams upstream augmented the sticks-and-heather flood control already in place around Pickering.

“Beavers introduced to Yorkshire in 2019 may have prevented Storm Dennis flooding with their dams,” declared the Yorkshire Post on Feb. 20.

Alan Puttock, an environmental researcher from the University of Essex, proudly displayed that headline in Hunt Valley last week as he presented research at BeaverCON 2020, a gathering of professionals engaged in managing beavers and reintroducing them to places where their dam-building could benefit humans.

Yup, someone was paying attention. HURRAY HURRAY HURRAY! There was a beaver conference and a reporter paid attention!!! Hurray for Mike and Scott and Alan and Dan Rodricks!

So much of human activity causes flooding, it’s exciting to think about the possibility of bringing back beavers, deploying them where needed and where it makes sense, and letting them restore the landscape to its natural best.

We could consider it a team effort — combined human and beaver ingenuity to address serious challenges in land use, water quality and flood control. Could beavers have spared Ellicott City its recent trauma? I don’t know. But I know we’ve tried man-made solutions for a long time. Maybe it’s time to include a nature-based one.

Got that Maryland? Beavers are part of the solution. So stop killing and complaining and start celebrating! Let beavers do what they do best. And some things will work out okay.

WATER WORKS BETTER WITH BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and Flooding, Beavers and water February 1, 2020

Fire and water is there anything more primal? As you know beavers can help with both. This new film from Dr. Ellen Wohl and her student Julie Medeiros is a great way to talk about the later. Please enjoy and pass along.

Julie and Emily? Colorado sure is producing some amazing beaver researchers! I can’t wait to see what they both do next.

Jon and I were busy yesterday with some potential beaver hosts in Sussex, who were sent our way by the the good folks at the Beaver trust. Alistair and Diane Gould operate a ‘course fishing’ escape with a stream “Furnace Brook” in Sussex that they dream might one day host beavers. You can see how perfectly they’d fit in.

The area in the 16th century was part of the Wealden Iron industry, and its use dates back to Roman times. The Goulds now are treating it as a sustainable paradise for fishing and education with the goal of healing any scars that were made over centuries of use.

The Goulds were visiting their son and grandson in San Francisco and wanted to learn more about living with beavers. Maybe someday soon you’ll be reading about them on the news. They were also thrilled to visit the John Muir historic site nearby.

Not all that far from Furnace Brook by American standards, a famously successful beaver reintroduction just occurred at the Holnincote estate on the other side of the base of the country. This was a project of the National Trust and has been roundly promoted to see if the beavers can help with flooding. This is from the Guardian, but believe me its been EVERYWHERE these past few days.

‘Drivers of change’: beavers released on National Trust land to ease flooding risk

The aim of releasing a pair of beavers on to National Trust land at the Holnicote estate in Somerset is to ease flooding and increase biodiversity. “It’s an exciting moment,” said Ben Eardley, the project manager for the National Trust at Holnicote, as the female beaver found a bramble-covered ledge to hide away in. “The beavers will shake this place up, they’re a real driver of change.”

In time, Eardley said, the beavers will thin out the trees in their 2.7-hectare home, bringing in more light and with it more flora and fauna – birds, invertebrates, other mammals. Another big hope is that the dams they build will slow the flow of water, easing the risk of flooding downstream.

DO-OVER BEAVERS ARE SETTLING IN

heidi08 Beavers and Flooding January 23, 2020

Have you ever noticed how people complain about beavers until they want something from them? Yes, we noticed that too. It’s like that annoying roommate you had in college who always talked smack about you and hung out with her other buds until she needed help with her latin paper and ooh then she was your BEST friend ever.

England is doing that with beavers and flooding lately.

Beavers in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean ‘settling in well’

A second pair of beavers released in the Forest of Dean as part of a scheme to tackle flood risk are said to be settling in well – and building dams.

The beavers replaced a pair introduced in 2018, the first in Gloucestershire for 400 years, as part of a wider plan to return the animal to the UK’s wild.

But they had to to be trapped and moved after seven months when one was found to have tapeworm, a parasitic disease.

The new pair took their place at the same site near Lydbrook in the autumn.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK in the 16th Century. But efforts have been made to reintroduce them to the wild in areas including Somerset, Yorkshire and Cumbria, while they have also been living wild in areas around the River Tay in Scotland for some years since escaping or being illegally released some years ago.

Oooh sure. You probably GAVE them the tape worm in the first place. But sure get rid of those beavers and start over. How’s it going so far?

Forestry England said their replacements had been captured in Scotland, from different areas of the River Tay. It said the “necessary health checks” had been carried out and the female had been released in the autumn followed by the male a few weeks later.

Rebecca Wilson, from Forestry England, said cameras at the site showed the beavers were “dam building and tree felling” and had “settled in well”.

“Nocturnal dam building is creating deep pools of water, slowing the brook’s flow,” she said. “The tree felling followed by coppicing trees will bring benefits for a variety of wildlife that depends upon more complex habitats.”

Well sure. Now that you have some do-over beavers let them get to work. I’m so old I can remember when a servant or pet got a tape worm you treated him with 9.99 worth of pills instead of killed and replaced. But what do I know?

It is hoped the animals will help prevent flooding in the area by improving biodiversity and building dams and ponds.

The authority said it would be monitoring the “hydrological and ecological changes” the beavers make.

As in, none of the kids really like Martin, and we never, ever play with him. But we invited him to Scott’s birthday party because “It was hoped he would bring his complete set of Pokeman cards” which everyone wants.

Good luck, beavers.