Category: What’s killing beavers now?

Higher latitudes and better attitudes

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? August 11, 2015

Yesterday’s labor of love. I wanted to send this to our UK beaver friends. Simon Jones of the Scottish beaver trial wrote back this morning that it was such fun he was sending it to their educational department because he thought it would be a great idea for a classroom activity!

Just imagine, the children of Scotland learning about beavers while doing an art project from Martinez!

In the meantime there’s lots to catch up on, as this article from Prince Edward Island shows us that opinions can thaw even in the coldest of climes.

Beaver killed on Brownsmill Road

Debbie Miller is furious to learn that a beaver on Brownsmill Road near her Merigomish home was killed as a result of a permit given to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal.

The beaver was one of two that had a dam in the area, but a little over week ago on Aug. 2 she found it dead. She called to report it to Department of Natural Resources and was told it had been shot. She said the beaver’s dam had actually been destroyed the week of July 20. The following week she saw someone throwing something into the water.

Keith MacDonald , who is acting area manager for the Department of Transportation confirmed that his department had applied for a permit from the DNR and then hired someone to get rid of the beavers because they had blocked off a double culvert in the area. He said the DOT often have to deal with beavers because of their tendency to cause destruction to infrastructure. He said all the proper procedures of going through DNR were followed and the trapper chosen from an approved list.

Miller does not believe that the deaths were truly necessary, however.

“If anyone states that killing the beavers had to be done because they were being destructive, well they did not do any proper assessment of the area,” said Miller.

She said eroded banks in the area were from streams of water coming down the road due to lack of ditching, not because of the beavers. She said the beavers had developed a nice little wetland that was used by other animals, including ducks.

Beaver advocacy is in SUCH early days in this region that there is no mention of a flow device to protect the culvert instead. She even concedes that it would be okay to kill large populations but notes that in this case it was unnecessary because “There were only two!” Never mind, PEI is a tough area for beavers. The island insisted for years that they weren’t present historically and forced our own Rickipedia to do a little research and prove them wrong. They still regularly kill beavers to protect fish and this practice inspired one of my all-time favorite graphics, which I’m still delighted with.

I’m happy that Debbie is starting the conversation and upset about trapping. Maybe she will even find out that the culvert can be easily protected without dead beavers! Once she believes it she can make others believe it. All advocacy starts with compassion, remember.

Brock Dolman of OAEC sent this yesterday, and I thought you’d want to see it too.

Detonation of Dams: The De-watering of America

heidi08 Michael Gibson Natural Resources officer, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? August 8, 2015

Every now and then you encounter decisions made by theoretically informed individuals that are so egregious and devoid of common sense, that you just HAVE to write about it. This story about an airforce base in Louisiana fits the bill.

De-watering demolition defends against flooding

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. — Airmen from the 2nd Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal flight detonated explosives under two troublesome beaver dams in the east reservation on Barksdale Air Force Base, July 29.

The process of removing beaver dams is called “de-watering” and is necessary to keep the environment healthy and safe.

“Beavers will expand their habitat as far as nature will allow, and they will keep building their dams higher and higher if not stopped,” said Gibson. “By controlling the beaver population, we can help prevent flooding and damage to infrastructure. The flooding also drowns the trees. We lost around 10 acres of trees here because of flooding due to beavers dams.”

That’s right. Even though our tax dollars are paying Michael Pollock to do research proving that beaver dams are good for trout and erosion. They are also paying for soldiers to keep their hand in between military assaults by blowing up beaver dams. To keep the environment healthy. Because nothing is healthier than mud, sticks and fish blasted into the air.

It seems instructive to me that no matter what youtube video you watch of blowing up a beaver dam (and there’s a bushel to chose from, believe me) that the blast is ALWAYS followed by hoots and whoops of excited men.

Blowing up beaver dams is the cialis of watershed management. Boys just LOVE it.

Calling this procedure a technical term like the “De-watering” is particularly annoying. As if this extreme action was really for the good of mankind. It’s like calling the economy collapse of 2009 the ‘de-mortgaging.” Or your health insurance rejection a “De-benefitting”. Or your company firing you a “De-employment” Just don’t come to FEMA for drought assistance when all your water dries up, okay?

Just because you put a DE in from of it doesn’t mean it’s not a stupid idea.

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I have to mention that this time last week we were already exhausted in a good way from the best beaver festival ever. Honestly, it seems like a world away, but the calendar swears it has only been a week. This year we had most of our expenses paid for with grants, so were pleased that we not only held a very well attended event, but also generated funds for the next one. We have only one final item from the silent auction to get to its owner, and everything is organized and put away.

(Mind you, I have a shrink talk to give at the BAR at the end of the month, so I have to start working now and hope I can remember anything at all except beavers when the time comes.)

With beaver friends like this….who needs beaver enemies?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, What's killing beavers now? August 5, 2015

At least Vermont has the good sense to question bad advice once in a while!

Commission wavers on fate of beavers

Though the Select Board didn’t pull the trigger on the trapper proposal at its meeting Monday night, members were told a nonlethal alternative, suggested by a licensed wildlife rehabilitator late last year, wouldn’t work in the estimation of an expert from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Chris Bernier, the department’s furbearer project leader, visited the site in June and quickly concluded that erecting an “exclusion fence” or “beaver baffle” at the culvert would be futile.

According to an email from Bernier, that’s largely because the culvert in question serves as the outlet for nearby Berlin Pond and any permanent structure designed to deceive dam-building beaver would be easily overwhelmed by water flows, require frequent maintenance, or both.

“It is safe to say any structure (baffle, fence or combination thereof) would be readily overwhelmed during even moderate rainfall events,” Bernier wrote, noting his “desktop review” of the upstream drainage area revealed marginal storage capacity and “bank full flows” averaging 229 cubic feet per second.

Now we’ve met Chris before over the years, and his advice has been a mixed bag at best. But I wonder if you can guess what percentage of CDFG wardens contacted about the Martinez Beaver situation warned that a flow device would NEVER WORK. I’ll wait while you think. 50%? 75%

How about 100%.

Okay Mr. Solutions-only-work-on-easy-problems…we understand your hesitation. But Skip Lisle INVENTED the technique you’re dissing, and he happens to live 100 miles from you. (2900 less than he traveled to Martinez to fix OUR problem nearly a decade ago.) Maybe you could, I don’t know, ask his OPINION on the matter before you decide, in your infinite wisdom, with your beaver 101 education that this problem can’t be solved?

At the time, John Aberth — a Roxbury resident, college professor and licensed wildlife rehabilitator — gave the board a crash course in “beaver baffles” and “beaver deceivers,” arguing they would be relatively inexpensive to install, easy to maintain and significantly more effective than trapping.

Swayed by Aberth’s presentation, the board referred the issue back to the commission, which has since obtained a conflicting opinion from Bernier and reluctantly expressed renewed interest in trapping. The request was briefly discussed by board members who did not take any action.

Hmmm, like valiant little salmon trying to swim upstream against a current of bad information. Vermont MAY get this one right with a little more effort. I wrote everyone I could think of and Dr. Alberth for good measure. In the meantime let’s hope that the vibrations of nearby Skip Lisle will shake them into paying attention.

Now for some eye candy.

KTVQ.com | Q2 | Continuous News Coverage | Billings, MT

Did they just get the memo?

heidi08 Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? August 3, 2015

This clip would be hyperbole if the article was based anywhere else but from Michigan, which along with it’s Wisconsin neighbor has been ripping up beaver dams to save trout (!) since the dawn of time and insisting the research telling them not to doesn’t apply to them because their streams are ‘special’. Maybe doing their own research will make a difference?

Outdoors: Beaver dams deserve second look by anglers

“Angler groups are under heavy impressions that beavers are the main causes for sediment contribution into the river channel,” said Huron Pines watershed coordinator John Bailey, who gets plenty of pressure from fishermen for beaver dam removal.

Still anglers persist in the quest for beaver dam removal. Finally, in an attempt to settle the question, the University of Michigan did a study on the west branch of the Maple River — a 16-mile tributary in Emmet County. A large population of naturally reproducing brook trout and local concern about beavers made it the perfect locale.

The scientists hypothesized that if beavers were causing excess sedimentation, it would affect both water quality and macroinvertebrate (aquatic insect) abundance.

To their surprise, water quality wasn’t significantly lower above dams nor was water temperature significantly greater above dams. Rather, dissolved oxygen levels and water temperature were stable above and below dams.

Dams did affect tasty trout treats such as mayflies, stone flies and trichos, though not in ways the researchers expected. There were more of these below the dams than above.

Stable water temperatures and dissolved oxygen levels meant that trout weren’t negatively affected. The shift in macroinvertebrate communities above and below dams did result in a change in available food sources for trout.

However, since trout have a highly variable diet, and they will generally consume any available food sources, the shift in community didn’t necessarily limit feeding.

In fact, hexagenia limbata — the large, burrowing mayfly larvae — prefers to dwell in the silt bottom that results from the damming process. (The hex hatch is an annual legendary fish phenomenon. Hex hunger generates more trout titillation and tourism than any other aquatic event.)

“Look for active dams with signs of use. If a beaver dam is large and old enough to have created a substantial pool of deep water, it just might be a brook trout bonanza.”

Michigan is shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, to learn that dissolved oxygen behaves in their state exactly like it does in every other state. Next thing you know someone will be suggesting that gravity works the same way too!!! In the mean time, they’ve contented themselves with the discovery that beaver dams actually improve invertebrate conditions and that this might be good news for the fish that eat them.

Ya think?

Beaver Terrorists

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Educational, Environmental, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? July 3, 2015

Did I really say for a moment we were winning? Silly, silly, me.
KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, Louisiana

USDA exploding beaver dams to benefit trout

VILAS County – WI

Wildlife Services Project Leader Kelly Thiel directed the removal of the dam by blowing it up with explosives.

“The purpose of our work is to create a free-flowing stream for the benefit of the trout to be able to migrate up and down,” Thiel says. “If you have beaver dams in there, they can’t migrate, they’re locked in. To have a self-sustaining stream, it needs to be free-flowing.”

Trout struggle to travel, spawn, and live without those cold, free-flowing streams.

The U.S. Forest Service and Wisconsin DNR decide which streams Wildlife Services will clear. Of the approximately 1,500 miles of streams that Wildlife Services clears in northern Wisconsin, most of them are high-quality trout streams.

The work leading up to a particular blast can take months or years. Wildlife Services surveys beaver populations on streams. Then, once it selects a stream for clearing, workers trap all the beavers near the dams in the spring or early summer. It blasts about 150 dams each year.

“This stuff detonates at 23,000 feet per second,” Thiel says, stringing a cord between containers of explosives.

It took about three pounds of explosives to blow up this dam on the Little Deerskin River. Workers placed them strategically and double-checked all the equipment before clearing other people from the area and taking cover with a remote trigger.

The explosion sent tree limbs, water, and other debris dozens of feet in the air.

Those lucky trout! Gosh, I bet that water is so crystal clear afterwords when all that debris falls back into the stream. The fish must LOVE it, I mean not the baby fish that were hiding in the side sticks of the dam obviously because they were blown up, but the other fish that survive the falling limbs and rocks, they must love their new gritty home. And the predators must love it too because even after fish stop falling from the sky, there’s no cover left for the survivors. Easy pickin’s.

Ironically yesterday was the LAST day for Wisconsin to receive public comment on their truly misinformed beaver management plan. You remember, the one where they think even though research says beavers help trout in the wacky west, Wisconsin fish are weaker and their conditions are harder, and so they must be saved by painstakingly killing beavers and blowing up dams. I and others dutifully sent them comments containing actual science, but they will obviously ward it of with their powerful information-resistant shields and continue doing what they do.

At least USDA will get to keep having fun. For them buisiness is booming. BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Here are my submitted comments in case anyone’s interested. I was trying HARD not to be too sarcastic, but the last paragraph is my favorite.

Beaver Management Plan

I’m interested in the research that has lead you to believe trout in Wisconsin function differently than trout in Utah, Colorado or Oregon. I’m surprised that no one in the audience of your webinar asked about this, or wanted to understand why you think the principles of hyporheic exchange operate differently in the badger state then in the west. Current research emphasizes the hydraulic pressure of water behind beaver dams push that water downward and promote exchange of groundwater into beaver streams, making them cooler.

It surprises me that there is so much faith in the Avery study noting the co-occurrence of dam removal with trout population improvement. Obviously correlation doesn’t mean causation. A cursory review of the literature and periodicals of the time confirm that there were significant other changes to the watershed during that period, that could easily have affected fish health. To assume that this is reliably due to the reduction in beaver seems naïve and ahistorical.

I was confused to hear that Wisconsin believes the population of beaver went up historically before this program was implemented, until I realized you were referring only to the baseline of the 1900’s – then it made sense. I’m not sure why you ignored the significant beaver population that existed before then. The fur trade brought the French to your state as early as the 1600’s I think, and obviously natives lived with beaver abundance long before that. In 1621 Samuel de Champlain described America’s pristine landscape and exclaimed that beaver occupied “every river, brook and rill.” Surely given the waterways of Wisconsin your landscape was no different. Your beaver population must have been prodigious, much, much higher than it was even before you instated the beaver management plan. If beaver really couldn’t co-exist with trout why didn’t the Dakota Sioux or Ojibwe complain about the abysmal fishing conditions?

The attached study completed recently looked specifically at the issue of trout passage of beaver dams, and found that natives like brook and cutthroat passed easily in both directions, while nonnatives had more trouble. Are you suggesting that Wisconsin has fewer native trout? Or that the trout it has are disabled in some way?

It is regretful that when the issue of ‘protecting resources” was discussed in your presentation, you seemed fairly disinterested in the most impactful one you take for granted; the one that creates habitat, increases invertebrates, sequesters carbon, and stores water. As I just returned from presenting at the chapter presidents meeting at TU specifically on beaver and trout. I want to suggest that you select just one stream as a control to study what happens to fish population if you stop trapping beaver.

I think the results would surprise you.

Let’s cleanse the pallate with two lovely photos from Robin in Napa showing the barren ruined habitat that beavers leave in their destructive fish killing wake.