Category: What’s killing beavers now?

Gentlemen of the night and early morning

Even if I was abducted by aliens this very moment, the following article would pretty much write itself. The column was written by Ben Gruber for the Hub -City Times.

Attending the Wisconsin Trappers Association Convention

Sept. 9 and 10 was the 54th annual Wisconsin Trappers Association Convention, held every year at the Central Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in Marshfield. A rainy start was unable to dampen the enthusiasm of trappers and outdoors enthusiasts from across the state and region that came to Marshfield to take part in the convention.

The buildings were filled with the latest innovations to hit the market for trapping, booth after booth of both new and used products available to those looking purchase, upgrade, sell, or trade equipment. Attendance appeared good despite the weather, and I was excited to see a fair share of younger folks here, although admittedly the demographic of trappers is headed the same way as that of all outdoorsmen: aging.

Nothing taught me more about wildlife behavior, wetland biology, and stream ecology than trying to outwit those raccoons, muskrats, beaver, and mink. I did that until I was about 18 when fur prices bottomed out and gas was expensive.

By his own admission Mr. Gruber hasn’t learned anything about stream ecology in many decades. Stop and think what your perspective on anything – cars, politics, sex, your parents – would be like if you had learned nothing since you were a teenager. This is what he knows about the role of beavers in streams and their importance theirin.

But I’m not a PETA fur-painter opposed violently to all hunting and trapping. Rather, consider me a pragmatist who gets frustrated when people don’t ‘read the label’ and make smarter decisions. The real problem isn’t the trappers of America whose numbers are so small they could fit in half of a roll of toilet paper. The real problem is US – you and me – who have expanded into every crevice of open space and get upset when the wildlife we displaced chews our begonias.

If America didn’t hire trappers to get rid of nuisance wildlife that little girl in the picture would never grow up to follow the trade.

I guess I think of trappers like prostitutes. Not my favorite profession, to be sure, but if the Johns stopped hiring them there would sure be fewer on every corner. The market demand creates the trapper just like it creates the hooker. If we alter the demand with education about flow devices and wrapping trees and teaching why beavers matter we have a better shot at reducing the numbers of grim night-walkers than if we arrest a few or spray paint their vehicles.

Don’t believe me? Let’s change this first and then we’ll talk.

Take me to the Faire!

heidi08 History, What's killing beavers now? October 12, 2016

The Renaissance faire was always a fun place to visit, I especially loved the old one in Novato before it moved. I loved the costumes and the ‘reduced shakespeare company’. Jon loved the beer. I remember one particularly clever vendor claimed that his “Oysters were guaranteed to work“. And one equally clever dissatisfied customer came back angrily saying “He had purchased two, and only one of them worked.” HA! ” The renaissance faire for visitors was the sometimes joyful sometimes awkward playdate of summer.

But for my acquaintances that worked it – it was more of a way of life. I remember one classmate who would work on stitching her bodice in Algebra class. For a month or two out of each year ‘Rennies’ would literally live in character, speak in character, dress in character, do some drugs in character, and have sex in character. Sometimes they had more deeply vivid lives in character than they had without them. Lets call it the seedy underbelly of faire life.

And lets just be thankful they weren’t working the Rendezvous circuit.

Event teaches crafts, history

Once again, the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge is a window to the past with the 23rd annual Mountain Man Rendezvous.

History enthusiasts set up camp at the refuge like 19th-century trappers and traders and gave presentations Friday to students about various historical topics, from blacksmithing to trapping. The rendezvous will continue today and Sunday, so visitors can learn more about the past.

Gordon “Talking Bear” Welch from Wichita has attended the rendezvous off and on for 15 years. On Friday, he spoke to schoolchildren about the life of a trapper.

“I give trap demonstrations, show them how beavers were skinned and turned into hats,” he said. “A lot of people ask if the traps would cut off a beaver’s foot. I say that’s the last thing a mountain man wants, because then the beaver can just swim away.”

Well isn’t that precious. Teaching children how hundreds of millions of beavers were slaughtered. I can’t think of anything more inspiring. Of course if the trap cut off both their feet they couldn’t ‘swim away’ could they? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many survivalists in the mix who expect the wild west to come back any day now.

“I think it’s best to know how to do things the old-fashioned way, just in case,” he said.

Minix said there’s value in learning old crafts, especially in troubled times. If a situation arises where people are cut off from modern technology and amenities, these old skills could be very useful.

Anyone wanna guess the number of firearms these men own? Me either. I’m pretty sure the actual rendezvous were no place to ever bring a decent human being let alone a child. There must have been shooting, stealing, boasting, swearing and all kinds of whoring.

Kind of like a Trump Rally really.

My ecosystem poster got a fair amount of attention yesterday. Fur-bearer Defenders wants to re-release it with legit images and co credit Worth A Dam. Environmental writer Mary Ellen Hannibel reposted it yesterday on facebook and I’m hopeful an artist friend of hers will take it under their creative wing soon.

It’s nice when crime pays, isn’t it? 🙂

Outlasting the Outliers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, City Reports, Environmental, featured, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? August 24, 2016

I was never very good at math, but for some reason I really got statistics. (Unlike Jon who is excellent at math and dismal in is stats class. Go figure.) That way of thinking about numbers just made sense to me. I could put the formulas together and analyze what came out. That said, I would be the first to admit that I remembered only what I needed to know to graduate and retained a chalk outline of the information in my brain once the dissertation was signed. But it generally helps me read research better and understand what was being done.

What remains of the chalk outline tells me that regression analysis is something you do when you have a bunch of numbers you’re trying to tease out the most significant factor that makes them different from each other. Why do some kids drop out of college and others succeed? Is it money? IQ? Parental support? Social skills on campus? etc. And of course identifying the primary cause is important because you want to use that in making future decisions down the line. So when a friend of a friend in the field of social stats for medication offered to work with the county portion of our depredation stats I was very excited.

This is what he wrote at the time:

I used the square miles to predict the expected # of permits for each county, bases on the square miles of water. Then I looked at the actual number of permits, and calculated a ratio of the two. The data and graph are attached.

You have one county that is clearly an outlier – Placer. This country issued almost 7 times as many permits as expected.

So yesterday I spoke to the Board of Supervisors of the outliers in question. The county chambers were high tech – there were four large wall screens and the entire meeting was streamed to Tahoe where it aired live with participants. There were two computer/media guys on hand to make sure everything ran smoothly and two women taking notes up front. The Commissioners filed into their seats on the dais and the meeting started a little after nine. There was an award for a stalwart Rosie the riveter airline mechanic who had worked for years and years at the historic society, and then several multi million dollar contracts were approved for snow plow equipment and police squad cars. You really got the impression that this was a county with discretionary funds.

And then there was me and beavers.

A CDFW supervisor from Tahoe introduced me and then Jack Sanchez from SARSAS added a nice introduction as well.

Heidi has become the nation’s foremost beaver specialist as a result of a beaver family moving into Martinez Creek in front of a Starbuck’s and producing kits. She started Worth A Dam and has spread the beneficial aspects of beavers in waterways worldwide.

Because Placer County allowed housing development too close to its waterways, an adversarial relationship has developed with beavers. I believe if the English, Russians and beaver trappers had not exterminated beavers in Ca in 18^th and 19^th centuries, we would have no need for our Rim Dams, Shasta, Folsom and Oroville.

I present with great pleasure Dr. Heidi Perryman to talk about beavers.

My talk went as it was supposed to, and everything worked the way it was supposed to. The four screens displayed my slides which were also streamed in Tahoe, and even without video and 8 the last minute surprise I think the message really got across. When it was over several commissioners asked questions and repeated the phrase “Seven times more” with horror. I really had the impression that the talk registered with them and left a mark. Vice chair Jennifer Montgomery even said she remembered our friends at the Sierra Wildlife Coalition in Tahoe saying something similar years ago when the beavers were killed at Kings Beach.

When I left the meeting I was followed out by the CDFW man who thanked me for an excellent presentation and talked about how they had made a mistake in Tahoe years ago because they didn’t understand and now knew better, and a reporter for the Auburn newspaper who wanted to talk about 7 times more and ask about mosquitoes. Jack and his wife came to say what a good presentation it was and so did one of is board members. They had already scheduled a private meeting tomorrow with one of the commissioners to follow up!

Honestly, we floated home feeling that we had really done something useful. I thought about Robin from Napa getting the PRA in first place so we could analyze the data, and Jon and I slogging through all those grizzly permits, and me writing my grad school friend in a panic about the data, and her asking her friend from Infometrics who generously donated his time and my meeting Jack when I presented at the salmon conference in Santa Barbara, and us all collaborating to prove that beaver belonged in the sierras, and I really felt like all the piano strings had pulled in just the right way to make this happen.

Afterwards Commissioner Jim Holmes sent me this very nice note.

Dear Dr. Perryman, Thank you so much for your very informative presentation on Urban Beavers. It gave me a wonderful overall picture of the importance of beavers in our ecosystem.

The recorded meeting should be available soon, and in the meantime I am definitely very aware of the step they took forward and the role we played in making that happen. Sometimes I think what I like best of all about this beaver chapter of my life is the self-guiding interdependence of it – weaving the help of friends into a creation of my own imagining without anyone telling me what I should do and letting that make a difference.

Feel sorry for the trapper in New Hampshire

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, What's killing beavers now? August 17, 2016

With Pelt Prices Dropping, N.H.’s Beaver Population Grows

New Hampshire NPR would like you to consider the poor, unappreciated and undervalued trapper this morning. Because you know, those icky beavers can’t be regulated in any other way. Everyone says so, Even the NH Furbearer biologist Patrick Tate, whose salary is paid by selling trapping licenses. Go figure.

Well sure, this report contains a brief ineffective interview with a ‘save it all’ vegan at the end, and no discussion whatsoever of the valuable services beavers provide or the fish and wildlife that are harmed by their removal, but the real issue of whether this is a trap-happy report or not comes down to this essential question: A) Does it feature a sympathetic photo of the trapper? And B) is he presented in some humble, hardworking way like sitting on the stairs, writing a letter to his mother or standing on the street in his socks? Answer here:

If only there were a hole in his stocking! That would be really effective story telling. Because OBVIOUSLY no one else in the ENTIRE state can manage the voracious beaver population without help from trappers! I mean it’s not like our NH friend Art Wolinsky as been living peacefully with the flow device he and Mike installed and his beavers for half a decade right? Icing on the cake: Art just wrote me that they invited Mr. Tate to watch Mike install this flow device in person. No kidding.

Well the important thing is that the trapper is knowledgeable about what he’s doing. He clearly is very informed about beavers, right?

Kaska’s not sure how many beavers are in this pond. He should be able to tell once he catches one—by looking at its tail. Beavers are territorial: they fight by biting each others’ tails.

“If tomorrow I find a beaver in one of my traps that has bite marks out of his tail, that will tell me I have two different family units in this area. Maybe I’ve got the stranger; maybe I’ve got the resident. But that tells me that I maybe have more.”

Yup. Because tail marks always mean that a stranger beaver is snooping around the area, right?

The evil that men do to Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, What's killing beavers now? August 2, 2016

A truly horrible story from Scotland broke yesterday. Apparently Scottish farmers are worried that a decision to protect the beavers will come any minute and have decided to respond by killing as many as they can in the meantime.

Farmers “rush to shoot beavers” before they are granted protected status

FARMERS are rushing to shoot as many beavers as possible before a new protection order comes into place, it has been claimed. The Scottish government has been considering granting protected status to beavers since 2015 – but there are currently still no laws governing when or where they can be shot.

On February 12 this year, an email to government officials stated that farmers in the Strathmore and Forfar areas of Angus were killing beavers ahead of the proposed new protective legislation

The email read: “It was clear from discussions that farmers and gamekeepers are shooting as many beavers as possible just now before they become protected. I suspect they will be just shooting them in the water, which might result in injuries rather than death much of the time.

“Like seals that are shot in the water no doubt they will just float off downstream or die in their lodge.”

Scotland has let itself get in a pickle with these beavers. They must have just woken up and found them because 150+ beavers do not suddenly appear overnight. Our good friend Paul Ramsay is still working hard to for their safety and is pushing the government to make the right decision. Or at least ANY decision, because the ambiguity is starting to mount up.

Paul Ramsay from the The Scottish Wild Beaver Group said: “This callous approach has already hardened the differences of attitude between conservationists and these farmers in ways that will be hard to undo. An urgent response is needed by the Scottish government to protect these much-loved and beneficial animals and to provide farmers with an incentive to look for a better response to the situation.”

I made that sentence bold because it struck me as particularly artful in a way that I have come to expect from the Ramsays on this campaign. I’m sure he means it will be every bit as hard to soften the conservationists heart as it will be to reform the farmers. Which is probably true and worth mentioning. I found this final sentence particularly stunning.

Possessing and moving a dead beaver is illegal without a licence in the UK, however, a licence is not required to shoot them.