Category: Beavers and water

WHERE HAS ALL THE WATER GONE?

heidi08 BDA's, Beavers and water July 30, 2020

I mean, as long as we understand these things. That’s what really matters. These researchers at Syracuse University are making sure we leave nothing to chance.

Where Does the Water Go?

Beavers play an important role in maintaining the habitat around streams throughout the United States. Beaver dams slow water velocity, preventing stream banks from eroding. Without these dams, the rushing water and sediment cuts the stream channel deeper into the ground, dropping the water table. If the water table drops too far below neighboring plants and shrubs, native vegetation dies off resulting in a barren landscape and a loss of biodiversity, further upsetting an area’s ecological balance.

To replicate the effects of beaver dams, a modern stream restoration technique known as “beaver dam analogues” (BDAs) has been developed. These artificial structures consist of wooden posts woven with vegetation to slow water velocity. The intention behind BDAs are to raise the water table in order to restore or maintain native vegetation and to slow water velocities to reduce erosion.

As populations of beavers have declined, municipalities, state agencies and private landowners in the western U.S. have installed BDAs, but have not necessarily monitored their effects, according to Christa Kelleher, assistant professor from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. As a result, little is known about how these structures function in their surrounding landscape.

Yes yes,no one is researching the BDAs they are so excited about putting in but we’re here to change all that! Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you the amazing BDA researcher!

Through a grant from the National Science Foundation and in partnership with The Nature Conservancy Wyoming, Kelleher and collaborator Philippe Vidon, professor in the Department of Forest and Natural Resources at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will investigate how BDAs affect the storage and flux of water along stream corridors. The team will look to answer the question: Where does the water go?

Topics Kelleher and her team will investigate include: if water in the stream primarily leaves as evaporation because the dams generate a large pond upstream; if water moves from the stream to recharge the groundwater aquifer (underground rock or sediment that holds groundwater); or if water simply moves around the BDAs into the surrounding land and then re-enters the stream through groundwater-surface water interactions.

“We will accomplish this by field observations and modeling to try to get at not just individual processes, but their interactions,” says Kelleher. “What we learn around these beaver dam analogues will be compared to similar observations and analysis along stretches of river that do not have these structures, to contrast our findings.”

Allow me to say that your important research of whether water in BDA’s get evaporated or hypoheic exchanges itself into groundwater, is the perfect foundation for MY RESEARCH. Which is what the fuck would happen to all that water if we didn’t kill beavers in the first place.

Please stay tuned or our dynamic conclusion.

[wonderplugin_video iframe=”https://youtu.be/QmBLSGy6g58″ lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

‘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.

SAVING WATER: SAVING US ALL

heidi08 Beavers and groundwater, Beavers and water July 16, 2020

Oregon just can’t stop shouting about beavers. Good. Maybe next time they vote on whether to kill them or not they’ll pick door number two. Meanwhile there’s articles like this:

Beavers, Our Eager Aquifer Engineers

Well, today, the beaver has an equal degree of importance, but in the area of water conservation. As a positive factor in water conservation, beaver have no equal, and the knowledge of how they function in this all-important role is just becoming known to us.

The water impounded by these dams is what a beaver is after. They build their stick and soil homes in the ponds to keep them safe from predators and provide a place to start a family. And it is that water that makes the beaver irreplaceable in creating one of the best resources for water conservation.

The water keeps rising behind the dams and eventually will become part of our underground aquifers vital to so many parts of human civilization. For that reason, there are several conservation organizations restoring beavers to their native habitats.

Ahh beavers are blushing. The way you do go on! Well of course beavers save water better then anyone. That’s what we were meant to do!

Like it or not, everyone who uses water is unknowingly depending on the dam-building talents of our North American Beaver. Without question, we have the industrious beaver to thank for helping keep the water available for us to drink, cook with, flush our toilets with, irrigate with, and use as we will in hundreds of other ways.

That’s well said. Dam straight! And a great shoutout to our new cousins in the beaver-saving world.

A new pro-beaver organization has come to the fore in Central Oregon, “Beaver Oregon Works.” If you live on a stream or river and have landscape that may be at risk to being utilized by a beaver, go to their web site, beaverworks.org, or email them at: info@beaverworks.org. Their field technicians can mitigate any beaver issues you may be encountering.

This organization states that beavers create wetlands and are the “Earth’s Kidney” and as such provide downstream drought and flood protection, water table and aquifer recharge and improved water quality. They even help bring back salmon to the Northwest.

Removal of beaver from their ancestral habitats has wrought the alteration of many ecosystems, causing flooding, drying up of marshes, plus loss of salmon and other wildlife environments.

Goodness gracious! We could hardly have said it better ourselves.

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.

SCOTTISH FARMERS THINK KILLING IS WORKING SPLENDIDLY

heidi08 Beavers and water June 5, 2020

New photo from Roland this morning, I would recognize this as Napa from a million miles away. Look at all that duckweed surrounding that adorable little face,

Keep looking back at that photo as you read this fairly upsetting article from the Scottish Farmer noting that there has been ‘JUST ENOUGH KILLING’ to keep everything ship shape.

Beaver management proving fit for purpose

Scottish Natural Heritage has released a new report revealing its beaver licensing statistics – in the eight months following the species being given formal protection on May 1, 2019, the agency issued 45 licences which permitted either lethal control or dam removal.

Licenses were granted when there was no other effective solution to prevent serious agricultural damage. Five of the licences permitted dam removal or manipulation only. All licences were issued for the purpose of preventing serious damage to agriculture and all but one of these (97.5%) were issued on land classified by Scottish Government as prime agricultural land, which makes up 13% of Scotland’s land cover. Evidence of serious damage included waterlogged fields and crops, as well as erosion on riverbanks and embankments.

Under these licences, 15 beavers were trapped and moved to either Knapdale or a trial reintroduction project and fenced sites in England, 83 beaver dams were removed, and 87 beavers were shot by trained and accredited controllers.

Licenses were granted when there was no other effective solution to prevent serious agricultural damage.

Mind you, I’m not Scotish, but I think I have a VERY VERY GOOD idea of exactly what kind of exhaustive nonlethal measures were tried to prevent damage. I’m going to guess it involved ripping out the dam, and when the beavers built it back, well then lethal means were needed.

GRR.

So basically like a quarter of the population? That’s all? Who knew that beaver killing would be a side effect of Brexit. Well, besides us that is.

“It’s always been clear to both us and our partners that lethal control of beavers will sometimes be necessary under licence as a last resort when other mitigation is unlikely to be effective,” said SNH director of sustainable growth, Robbie Kernahan. “Some of the well documented and most serious issues have occurred on the most productive areas of agricultural land in Scotland. Due to their generally being well-drained, low-lying and flat, these areas are often vulnerable to beaver burrowing and dam building,” he explained.

I want a list. I want a list with photographs explaining each issue caused and the brilliant steps taken to resolve it before beavers were killed. You have one, right?

Welcoming the report, NFU Scotland president Andrew McCornick said: “In its first year of operation, the accreditation, management and licensing framework for managing beavers…is proving effective and fit for purpose.

“It has allowed the management of beavers in those areas of productive farmland where the species has had a clear impact,” he continued. “The report notes that more than 90% of beaver territories have been unaffected by the licensing system.

We were might suspicious at the onset, but after careful consideration and examination the killing appears to work just fine. What a relief. Will someone much wiser than me please explain the ridiculous final paragraph?

“While that may involve lethal control, we note from the report that three-quarters of licence holders have proactively engaged with the role of trapping. NFUS is encouraged to see that where mitigation was proven to have worked, there was no longer a need for licensing.” he concluded.

I’m pretty sure it means farmers are so good at killing beavers they should just be allowed to get on with it themselves? You know like in Oregon where any private landowner can kill any beaver on his land without interference.

Please ask the farmers union if they would still like the water?