Category: Beavers and water

ADVOCATES UNDER PRESSURE

Beavers: An Unlikely Solution To Western Drought

I’ve been thinking in these past few days about the tight space a certain kind of beaver advocate finds themselves in. The kind that comes when you have been listened to a ‘little’ bit, and people are behaving as if they were willing to do you a favor by telling you privately how difficult the situation is behind the scenes and how they are doing everything they can. I was thinking of the vice-grip of pressure you feel in those moments, not to give up the thing you’re trying to protect, and not to be overpowered, but also not to appear unreasonable, (heavens!) because you don’t want to lose your hard-won status as the practical one who can see both sides and is willing to make compromises. You want to avoid saying “don’t do this” outright if you can, but you see the train is moving in the wrong direction and you want to step in before it gets too far from the station.

Maybe what I’m describing is too vague to understand, I always thought it was unique to my experience on the beaver subcommittee, but I had an hour conversation yesterday with a beaver guardian that reminded me I’m not alone in this. The farther I am from the drama the easier it is to see the chess pieces moving. “I shouldn’t be telling you this but” “We’ve done everything we can to work with the landowner but” “you did a great job explaining your position but now it’s time to back off, or you risk turning folks against you”.

It’s not just me. When you’re alone on the other side of that message you feel so torn and motionless. You can’t go forward, you can’t possibly go back, and you know one misstep could bring down the entire card house that you’ve worked so hard to put together.

I thought last night that it might be a uniquely female experience although I never did before. This pressure to behave while you are pushing hard for the thing you want to save, and never act like anyone is doing anything wrong or lying to you even when you know damn well they are – that’s the beaver-guardian’s dilemma, And it’s what I felt every single day on the subcommittee and right up through the sheetpile destruction. It’s why to this day I can say with out hesitation that serving on the beaver subcommittee was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, harder than my dissertation, harder than doing therapy with sex offers, harder than working in the teen psych hospital, harder than testifying as an expert witness.

It was HARD.

It was only when I saw those historic sheet pile photos, and realized that everyone had been lying straight to my face outright for months, with their so-sorry voices and secret phone calls — that all their covert messages to be patient and forbear were outrageous falseoods, that I finally felt free of it. Done. Released. So that now when Carmen in Texas, or Nancy in Michigan or Judy in Port Moody tells me that they feel confused and trapped and like they’re getting pressure on all sides from the city to cooperate but they know its the wrong thing and would hurt the beavers I can literally see the choking translucent net that holds them constrained.

I remember exquisitely how it felt, and that helps me point them towards the scissors so they can cut themselves free.

It took a long time, but I started learning eventually that it’s okay to be outraged when people behave outrageously. And that the amount of power you have is actually the opposite of the messages you are helpfully being told about it.

UTAH WANTS A BEAVER-MOBILE

Okay, I’ve checked all the website places I can think of to see if they’re fixed.

Images √
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Everything I can think of appears to be working, so if you notice something that’s not let me know. Maybe walk around and kick the tires a bit to check, will you? In the mean time we have 2 fun news stories to cover.

Proposed Beaver Holding Facility In Millville, Utah on Wild About Utah

Nice to think of the big beaver mobile they want to put together. Traveling around the state picking up unwanted beavers and putting them in just the right home.

I’m sure it won’t be anything like this, right?

Time for a Toyota. No really! This story is dated 2014 but for some reason it came up again yesterday,

Video: Leave it to Beaver

Sometimes it’s best to let nature take its course.

That’s what Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi environmental specialist Sean McCarthy learned when he and other team members tried to stifle the SimCity tendencies of some resourceful rodents.

During construction of the plant, two retention ponds were established. The ponds are designed to capture and hold storm water runoff, allowing any suspended solids to settle. Water discharge from the pond is regulated with an 11-foot sluice gate and seven-foot concrete wall just beyond the gate. When the gate is raised, the water flows out through three slots in the wall.

Except when beavers dam it.

“They packed the flow slots with trees and mud. It was almost like concrete,” says McCarthy. “We’d be down there once or twice a week and they’d be right back the next week.”

After battling the beavers for six months, the team packed it in by the fall of 2012. And the water stayed.

“It never empties,” McCarthy says. “Even in July and August there’s one to two feet of water. But there isn’t a risk of flooding since water still discharges when it reaches the top of the wall.”

The resulting lake brought other critters. Ducks, as well as fish and other species, now call it home.

Wonderful! Oh-what-a-feeling! Here’s the video they released at the time, unfortunately without any beavers. But nice to see.

WYOMING WONDERS IF BEAVERS MIGHT BE ALRIGHT?

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers and Flooding, Beavers and water August 21, 2018

One of my favorite parts about reading Ben Goldfarb’s book was coming across delightful and unknown characters I hadn’t ever met before. Think about that. I write about beavers every day – 365 days a year – for the last decade and still these were not names I was familiar with. And of all those wiley wonderful new characters, Dr. Rebekah Levine of Wyoming was one of my very favorites.

Now you get to meet her too.

Once considered the scourge of agriculture in the West, ranchers are now building beaver dams, and welcoming the creatures home

John Coffman learned the value of beaver dams the hard way.

When a beaver was plugging a head gate on a ditch on the scenic Red Canyon Ranch near Lander, he had a ranch hand shoot the animal, as

But the next two years brought heavy flood waters. Banks along the creek with no beavers eroded and the stream bed washed away until the head gate was several feet in the air and could no longer be used for irrigation.

A twin creek on the property that had about 40 beaver dams in one mile stayed together.

“We were talking and thought, maybe these guys weren’t only important for the ecosystem, but also the ag operation,” said Coffman, the land steward for Red Canyon Ranch, a property owned and operated by The Nature Conservancy.

Hey how about that! Beavers do useful things besides just causing problems! That must come as a shock to the frickin NATURE CONSERVANCY. What do you know?

“Beaver activities are not really welcome where humans live because beavers make rivers really messy,” said Rebekah Levine, assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Montana Western who has spent her career studying streams and beavers.

“We want them to be very stable, so stable, in fact we use them as borders. But that dynamism in rivers maintains the riparian forest and riparian vegetation that are so crucial to wildlife and critters in the western U.S. where riparian forests make up about 3 to 4 percent of the landscape, and at least 70 percent of wildlife depends on riparian habitat for some portion of their life history.”

Levine provides the science behind thinking about using beaver-like structures in areas where either beavers had been eliminated or where they were no longer desired for restoration. Her main idea was to improve wetlands for natural water connectivity and storage.

Instead of runoff and snowmelt rushing down a stream to its ultimate end in a river or field, the water seeps into the ground and then slowly seeps back out as summer seasons dry.

“We don’t have a lot of control over weather or climate, but can we increase the resiliency of watersheds that have some water now? How can we help watersheds make it through this tough little time?” she said. “Beaver dams are one way that you can naturally store some water.”

Beaver dams can also help maintain cooler water temperatures during warmer months – a necessity for cold-water fish species like trout.

While the work is still relatively new, results are beginning to support the hypothesis that beavers dams, and beaver-like dams, could be a critical part of maintaining tiny pockets of water an arid landscape.

What an article to come across. It wasn’t even tagged as a beaver article so my alert didn’t pick it up. I saw it by chance on Facebook, which is a perfectly fine way to share beaver news. The Ranch on Nature Conservancy land has started installing BDA’s.

In mid-August, Coffman hosted about 40 people on Red Canyon Ranch to finish building five dams on one ranch creek. The dams will be close to a road to allow anyone interested quick access to see the effects of the structures.

They are created to be impermanent, made of untreated fence posts, willow branches, sticks and mud. Water can then trickle through, working to slow down flows instead of stop them completely.

Another creek, the one that blew out a couple years ago, already has two beaver dam-like structures and another three on the way.

Coffman is quick to say that beaver dams aren’t necessarily always the answer, nor are live beavers tending those structures, but they definitely have their benefits.

“We had a handful of ranchers from here get together, and for the most part people were on board with beavers as long as they weren’t getting in the way,” Coffman said. “There were 10 folks here and they all saw the benefits of beaver for water reasons, but didn’t have good solutions for dealing with them when they caused trouble for irrigation.”

That’s why, in some areas, the structures will be maintained by humans instead of beavers. In other areas, where the creatures don’t interfere with irrigation practices, they could be welcomed back.

Researchers from Syracuse University will be following the progress on the ranch. They took measurements of water levels and channel shapes and used drones to create high resolution topographic maps before the structures went in, and will track them over time, said Laura Lautz, an earth sciences professor at Syracuse University.

There are definitely still issues to iron out, Coffman cautioned. Permits can be tricky, and research needs to continue. But he hopes to build on successes that agencies like Game and Fish have had on other properties to restore riparian areas to an otherwise dry land.

Hmm. I guess that’s progress. “I’m fine with those rodents as long as they give me exactly what I want and nothing whatever that I don’t want”. Baby steps I guess. Looks like Dr. Levine still has her work to do. Good luck!

BEAVERS AND THE SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT

heidi08 Beavers and water August 11, 2018

Hmm our interview didn’t air yesterday so maybe in the future? Tonight we’re headed to Safari West to talk beavers to the visitors after dinner. In the mean time there is fantastic news to cover, a nice article about the plans in Napa and a potentially game changing article about groundwater laws in California.

Napa first.

Napa Flood Control: Protecting the beavers on Tulocay Creek

The beaver colony on Tulocay Creek, just off busy Soscol Avenue, has friends in high places.

A project is underway to protect the beavers so the flood control district can rebuild the creek bank to withstand erosion. This is happening as a four-story hotel is constructed on land adjacent to the beavers’ home of mud and twigs.

Nice.

A shallower pool is needed for construction workers to place rocks at the base of a 100-foot stretch of the north bank to keep it from further eroding, said Rick Thomasser, operations manager for the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

The bank will be given a more gentle contour and strengthened with root balls and tree plantings — a “biotechnical design” — then the pond will be restored to its full depth, he said.

To pull off this bank work and still have a thriving beaver colony when it’s done requires a special person, a “beaver whisperer,” Thomasser said.

Swift is a beaver booster. He believes they can generally coexist with humans if some accommodations are made. The beaver pond on Tulocay Creek is likely home to two adults, two juveniles and two newborns, or kits, in residence, observers say.

Great description of Kevin’s skills. I’m glad the article will let people know what’s happening, because they might be shocked when they visit the pond. I just sent to Amy because I realized she might now know about it. We even get some nice quotes from our friend Rusty Cohn too.

One of the beavers’ local champions is Rusty Cohn, who has been photographing the colony for years.

Cohn said he was “a little worried” that the smaller, upstream pond will expose the beavers to too much heat. Then again, “they’re real sturdy, adaptable animals.”

Swift and Cohn both say the environmental benefits to having beavers living just off Napa’s Auto Row justify human efforts to keep them happy.

“Beavers are pretty interesting, but the wildlife they bring with them is fantastic,” Cohn said.

Rusty talking to the media! We all learn the hard way that beavers need press agents. I’m glad the article is framing it as an effort to preserve beaver habitat. I can’t help but asking does that mean if the beavers move on it’s a failure? It certainly would be to me. Fingers crossed it all works according to plan.

Okay on to the groundwater article, which I was just sent this morning.

California Groundwater Law Means Big Changes Above Ground, Too

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), adopted in 2014, will change more than groundwater. The rules do not require critically overdrafted aquifers to achieve “sustainability” until 2040. But 22 years from now, once they finally get there, lives will be transformed.

City and county government leaders are starting to realize there’s a lot at stake. The landscape itself will change as groundwater extraction changes. Without careful planning, property tax revenues that fund a wide variety of essential government services could be compromised.

All but three of the 14 groundwater basins in the San Joaquin Valley are ranked as critically overdrafted. Ten others, mostly along the Central Coast, are also critically overdrafted. Several dozen more throughout the state are ranked as high or medium priority, which also face deadlines to bring their aquifers into balance, meaning extraction and replenishment are equalized.

Um, I have a suggestion.

“Everybody everywhere who is implementing SGMA is going to be thinking about how to protect areas that are good for recharge,” said Hanak. “People didn’t think about that in the past, and now they’re going to have to.”

Ooh I know! Call on me! Beaver dam credits! Landowners get credit’s for allowing beavers to build and maintain dams on their land because they’re helping recharge the water table. The more dams the more credit. Seems to make perfect sense to me.

“We need more tools in this new water world we’re in,” Oviatt said.

This new water-world may be new to California, but it’s not new to beavers. They’ve been saving water and recharging aquifers from the arid corners of Arizona to the driest parts of Oklahoma since long before any of us were had crossed the landbridge.

They can do this. If we can let them.

WELCOME BACK, BEAVERS!

heidi08 Beavers and Flooding July 25, 2018

At this point you might be asking yourself “Is there any beaver news in the world that’s not about Ben Goldfarb’s book?”. And of course there is, so settle in because yesterday was a beaver bonanza day as they released beavers in to Forest Dean in England to help with flooding and biodiversity. It took my English husband forever to pinpoint that the Forest of Dean was North of Devon on the edge of the west coast before Wales. Everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – covered it, the local papers, the national papers, the news. If an entire nation didn’t just hear that beavers help flooding I’d be very surprised.

Let’s go with a nice respectable paper like the Guardian.

Beavers released in Forest of Dean as solution to flooding

Four hundred years after the beaver was hunted to extinction in the UK, two of the mammals have been reintroduced on government land in an English forest as part of a scheme to assess whether they could be a solution to flooding.

Two Eurasian beavers were released on Tuesday into their new lodge within a large penned-off section of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. The hope is that the animals will build dams and create ponds on Greathough Brook, which feeds into the River Wye, and slow the flow of water through the steep-sided, wooded valley at times of torrential rainfall.

In 2012 the villages of Lydbrook and Upper Lydbrook were badly flooded. Hundreds of thousands of pounds has been spent on conventional schemes such as replacing drains to try to keep the communities dry and safe.

The government hopes that introducing the beavers into a 6.5-hectare (16-acre) enclosure on Forestry Commission land will help hold back the waters in a more natural way and improve biodiversity.

This comes straight from the top, the secretary of the environment Michael Grove. So it’s important to realize the significance. Of course they haven’t yet decided the niceties of whether of not the beavers have a protected status in the UK or not – but heck why worry about the little niggling details?

Rebecca Wilson, the head of planning and environment for the Forestry Commission in west England, said: “Beavers are natural habitat engineers, restoring complex wetland habitats and providing habitat for declining species whilst slowing the flow of water downstream.”

As well as having the potential to ease flooding, the beavers may also improve the habitat for other flora and fauna. Greathough Brook was once home to thriving populations of water vole, glow-worms and wood white and pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies, but they have vanished as the trees have blocked out much of the light. The beavers are expected to harvest some of the timber, which could improve the habitat for other species.

Well, that’s nice. Yeah beavers! And yeah ministry of the environment.

Can you imagine some day our secretary of the interior saying beavers benefit the environment? What am I saying. That could never happen. He’s too busy selling off assets. But this is a great article.

I confess I actually get worried when I see headlines like “Beavers prevent flooding” for the same reason we avoid headlines like “eating kale prevents cancer”. We want the word helps in there somewhere, because nothing is guaranteed and two beavers can’t change the climate on their own, Oh and parts of this paragraph was a concern.

Officials emphasized that the beavers had been tested for disease and a management plan was in place to make sure the enclosure remains secure. They also stressed that the beavers do not eat fish and would not stray more than 30 metres (100ft) from freshwater.

Um……about not leaving the water….ah well never mind.