Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Beavers elsewhere


Things are complicated in Wyoming.

Some of the people who live there like to hunt and fish and some of the people that live there like to see wildlife. And those camps can be at logger heads. At the very same timeas Wyoming released their amazing report on beaver benefits they were altering the trapping regulations from selling single permits for specific steams to unlimited beaver trapping everywhere. This caused pretty intense pushback from folks who cared about the issue and now Game and Fish is having to walk back its take back.

Public snaps back at beaver trapping changes

Following public objections and opposition from some unlikely camps, wildlife managers are walking back plans to open up an array of Jackson Hole streams to unlimited beaver trapping.

Portions of Ditch Creek, Willow Creek and Game creeks were all positioned to be open to any trapper possessing an over-the-counter license but will now be recommended for a complete closure.

Draft regulations that will advance next month to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will still recommend that Fall, Mosquito and Dog creeks — now collectively managed and restricted to a single trapper — be opened to any fur trapper who’s interested. Little Horse Creek falls into this same category.

Public insight gathered through the season-setting process and input from biologists prompted the revisions, Game and Fish spokesman Mark Gocke said.

 

OOh that must a been a lot of INSIGHT. I bet they got all the INSIGHT they could stand. I’m suddenly reminded of Leslie Knope describing the yelling that goes on at town hall meeting as “People caring loudly and shouting democracy at me”.

Something tells me they got a bellyful of caring and democracy.

One Jackson Hole group that staked out its opposition is the Wyoming Wetlands Society, which has spent years relocating problem-causing beavers from private lands into streams like Ditch Creek.

“Unregulated trapping in the 19th Century led to the extirpation of beaver from much of Wyoming, and while beaver have re-occupied large portions of their historic range, they have only done so at roughly 10% of densities found prior to European contact,” Wyoming Wetlands Society employees Carl Brown, Cory Abrams and Bill Long wrote in a comment letter.

“We are opposed to changing these areas from limited quota to unlimited take, and believe they do not uphold the recommendations set forth by the state in the State Wildlife Action Plan,” the biologists and former game warden wrote. “Unlimited trapping of beaver has the potential to inflict negative population impacts and potentially lead to localized extirpation.”

Unlike California where they give out as many depredation permits as people want, Wyoming issues a “limited number” of permits to particular individuals. Sometimes the anti-trapping crowd gets those permits, and that means the trapping doesn’t happen. Of course the trapping crowd HATE when that happens.

Ditch Creek resident Bob Caesar is among those who successfully acquired a trapping permit for his neighborhood stream and then proceeded not to use it. His reasoning was that the Wyoming Wetlands Society had been transplanting problem beavers into the drainage to reestablish populations, but a fur trapper was running a trapline that was negating the effort. Today, Caesar said, beavers are relatively sparse in the drainage that climbs east into the Leidy Highlands.

“I do know from talking to old-timers that they’re used to be some big beaver ponds up here and good trout fishing in those beaver ponds,” Caesar said in an interview. “And that’s all gone.”

Caesar was disappointed with how Game and Fish initially responded to the situation.

“I look at it as being vindictive, and that’s the kind of stuff you do in middle school,” Caesar said. “Why don’t they pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey Bob, can we talk about this? ‘But they went around [us].”

I’m thinking when you’re trying to save beavers in Wyoming you have to learn to talk differently on their behalf. You have to throw around phrases like “Talking to old timers” and   “Hey Bob can we talk about this?” You should probably learn to say ‘folks’ once in a while too. Because it helps to not sound too uppity.

But sometimes it works.

“We recognize the keystone nature of beavers,” Game and Fish’s McWhirter said, “and their extremely valuable role on the landscape. We don’t want to see that impacted.”

 Hmm. That’s nice. I wish CDFG had ever said that ever in their entire existence. That would be nice.

Some reaches of northwest Wyoming streams are already completely closed to beaver trapping, including Cache Creek, Cliff Creek and Granite Creek downstream of the hot springs. A common thread among those three streams is that they parallel roads, are easily accessed and see heavy recreational use.

Jackson writer and retired Bridger-Teton National Forest employee Susan Marsh took issue with changes that were afoot to Fall and Mosquito creeks, two of the drainages still slated for unlimited trapping. At both streams, she noted that beaver activity often occurs right along the well-used roads paralleling the creeks.

“Therefore the ease of trapping is increased in the same places where people camp and picnic,” Marsh wrote. “Instead of going to an unlimited take of beavers in these areas, we would urge [Game and Fish] to approach trapping regulations with caution, realizing that this activity can be incompatible with other uses of the national forest.

“The more dogs that end up in leg hold traps or snares,” she said, “the more public outrage will turn toward trapping in general.”

See, that there is some of those special Wyoming arguments against trapping I mentioned before. “Don’t allow trapping on the creeks where folks picnic because when the family dog gets caught in the conibear people will just be MORE anti trapping – and we surely wouldn’t want that”.

Very clever. I like it, Right up there with, “Don’t allow so much beaver trapping because a thriving population will produce more of the other wildlife we all want to trap”.

Game and Fish, meanwhile, is moving forward with plans to implement an annual beaver-monitoring program. The results from the surveys, which will be both ground-based and aerial, could help shape future beaver trapping seasons.

Hmm. So it looks like Game and Fish decided on a kind of muted unlimited policy in which they decided some streams are off limits and some streams are free-for-alls in the hope that this would regulate the beaver population. BUT they are going to implement an annual beaver monitoring program just to make sure they don’t kill too many.

I know its not enough. And the controlled trapping was better, but gosh I wish CDFG had EVER EVER EVER had a beaver monitoring program to count if there were enough beavers left. Or even admitted the need for one.

Sheesh.

 


June of course is Kit time. Not when they’re born around here but when they’re usually seen for the first time. For 11 years I watched new kits fumble around the creek every summer, I suffer withdrawal pangs every day that I don’t get to see a beaver kit in 2019, but  John Hutters in the Netherlands posted this photo on facebook yesterday that soothed my soul for a while.

It may well be the sweetest parent/kit shot I have ever seen, but I’m open to competition.

John Hutters: Madonna and Child

Look at that tail! Just look at it and tell ME that isn’t a social greeting! I adore this picture. John also has a sweet new film of mother and kit grooming but it isn’t on youtube yet so unshareable here. Something to look forward to, I promise.

Meanwhile our friend Emily Fairfax has started teaching at Cal State Channel Islands, where she is working on accessible ways to process data so that she can teach her students to be the most convincing scientists they can be, This meant she was excited about the beaver depredation spreadsheet we got from CDFW. And she tossed together this lovely interactive.


If you hover over a region it will tell you the name of the county and how many permits were issued. Pretty snazzy huh? Not quite the right parameters for this  website but darn cool to see live. Just look at that dark slash across placer county which stands like an open wound killing the most beavers of any place in the state.
Still.
Sigh.

But onward. We must fight for better things. Even if the freekin’ city won’t hang our lampost banners and  the printer isn’t printing our brochure yet. Never you mind. The show, as they say, will go on.  Here’s the lovely brochure for your perusal anyway. Use the +/- to zoom in and view it closer.

Brochure For Printer

Well okay, I guess that’s a bit of a problem. You got me.

Beaver dam breach causes washout of Phillips road

PHILLIPS — A beaver dam that gave way during Tuesday’s rainstorm in Franklin County caused two roads to wash out and closed a portion of Route 4 for about five hours, a Fire Department official said.

Beaver activity in Adley Pond has caused the pond to swell in size, and during a period of heavy rain Tuesday the dam gave way, Deputy Chief Jeremy O’Neil said.

Now there are plenty of public work crews and power companies that when they can’t explain things say “Oh the beaver did it” and we thumb our noses at them. But I looked up the area on google earth and did see an huge swelling pond and what might have been a beaver dam So okay. It’s a fair cop. These things happen.

Luckily Mainers seem to be taking things in stride.

The road was closed for about five hours Tuesday afternoon. It reopened around 6:15 p.m. and is safe to use, although further repairs will be needed, O’Neil said.

“(The beavers) don’t adhere to modern building codes, so when we had a significant amount of water in that body of water, the dam breached,” he said.

The Fire Department helped reroute traffic while the DOT and the Highway Department repaired the road.

I’m sure the beavers would say “Building codes are for sissies! We don’t need no stinking codes“. Or something to that effect,

Amelia is hard at work on the brochure for the festival and I just had to share her stellar map of the park, Don’t you want to go right away? Isn’t this amazing? We are so luck she has been kind enough to help us for a million years,


Indiana had a story that got my attention this week, and no, it wasn’t about Mayor Pete.

Seems some beavers are going to be killed in swamp nature preserve because they’re making things too swampy. The preserve features the increasingly rare Overcup Oak, also known as the swamp oak and the water oak which is known to thrive in swampy conditions but who’s seedlings need sunlight and dry ground to start out.

The overcup Oak is so named because its cap almost entirely cover its acorn. And it’s one of the trees that used to flourish all acrossed the beaver flooded south, but now has become inseasingly rare, Rare enough apparently that they’re willing to kill beavers to maintain it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indiana cracks down on destructive beavers at preserve

MOUNT VERNON, Ind. (AP) — Wildlife officials are culling beavers and demolishing their dams in a swampland nature preserve in southwestern Indiana to protect a species of oak tree rarely found in the state. Overcup oaks thrive in swamps, but beaver dams in the Twin Swamps Nature Preserve have elevated water levels so high that the trees have been damaged or killed, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.

Now, the state has stepped in to combat the threat at the 500-acre (200-hectare) property in Mount Vernon.

“It’s actually altering the very habitat the nature preserve was designed to protect,” said Tom Swinford, the program manager at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “We had to take action.”

Hey you know what else kills Overcap Oaks? DROUGHT! FIRE! Gosh I hope when you kill all those swamp maintainers you don’t actually endanger them even more. Here’s what the SF guide has to say about it.

Fires brought on by severe drought in some areas may decimate large numbers of overcup oak seedlings and damage the bark of older trees, exposing them to disease produced by the heart rot fungus.

Hmm that doesn’t look good. I hope Twin swamps has some kind of plan to save water now that all the beavers are dead.

Swinford said beavers thrive in the southwestern nature preserve because they’re a tough species that don’t have many predators to keep their natural balance.

“There will always be beavers at Twin Swamps,” he said.

Hmm are you sure about that?

Beavers are great at making wet and swampy lands where cypress and wateroak can thrive, I sure hope you have a plan about how to replace the wetland after all the beavers are dead. I guess you can always change the name to twin-gulch preserve?


Well, California may not be ready for anything like Wyoming, but South Windsor is about to get a whole lot more like Martinez.

Let me explain.

Hearing set Thursday on beavers

SOUTH WINDSOR — With the possibility that more beavers will move into Nevers Park, Mayor Andrew Paterna is hosting a forum Thursday night on how to manage the large rodents and their activities that cause flooding and tree damage.

Attendees can hear from Christopher Vann of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s Wildlife Division, the Humane Society of the United States, and Michael Callahan from Massachusetts-based Beaver Solutions LLC, which provides advice and methods on how to coexist with beavers.

Hey. I’ve seen that movie! Don’t a whole lot of people show up and demand the town save beavers? Then some city plants stand up and say the town needs protection from flooding and everyone boos. Am I thinking of the right one?

Nearly 2,100 people have signed an online petition created in April by Abbe Road resident Stephen Straight that called for town officials to meet with Callahan and implement his solutions. There is almost no doubt that beavers will return, Straight said.

“We need to stop all trapping NOW and work toward coexistence with the next beavers,” Straight’s petition states. The beavers harm no one, he added, and South Windsor residents and visitors should be able to enjoy these creatures as they go about their work.

I bet you didn’t know Martinez would be a model huh, and that other cities would follow in our footsteps? Apparently standing up for beavers is the hot new thing. it’s so cool everyone wants to try it now.

Other residents, including Carrie Morse of Maine Street, agreed that the town should have explored other options before deciding to have them trapped and killed.

Straight hired Callahan after the beavers were trapped and removed in April. The system would cost the town around $2,000 for materials and installation, Callahan said. Several residents, including Straight and Morse, have said they’ve pledged to donate to the effort.

“People really care,” Morse said. “I hope our officials realize the importance of preserving our wildlife and ecosystem.”

Nicely done Steve! I’m thinking that you have just become eligible for the Worth A Dam scholarship. It’s lovely to think of your community taking this on and your beavers benefiting because of it. To paraphrase the old Chevron commercial: Do people really show up to a meeting like this just because they care about beavers?

People do.

Ahhh memories! Like the corners of the mayor’s mind. If I live to be 102 that will remain one of my very favorite days on the face of this earth. Maybe our beavers are MIA at the moment, but by golly our hearts are still in the right place.

Oh and you can stop watching dash-cam police videos forever now. It’s been done. This is way better than a white bronco on the freeway. There’s no competition anymore. Ever again.
See for yourself.

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