Category: What’s killing beavers now?

FAIRFIELD TRAGEDY

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? September 16, 2020

You remember the story of the beautiful cascading dams through the middle of Fairfield and how they were being lovingly followed and photographed by resident Virginia Holsworth. Well, it’s September 16. We all guessed that this would happen this month. But there is no joy in being right when something this devastating is the cause. This is what that big beautiful dam in Fairfield looks like now.

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Those are the lush reeds that had grown in the deep water exposed to their roots to die. Remember what it used to look like.Just a month ago Cheryl visited and so did our friend from Pittsburg. As far as I know the city has only take out the one large dam, but there are at least four others and I’m worried about what happens next.

Virginia is beside herself and rumors are flying that the city took the beaver kit and gave it to Suisun wildlife. We know that’s not true but I will do my best to move this into the public eye where we can still do some good. As Mike Callahan wrote once to me when I was heartbroken about our dam. ” Did they trap? If they haven’t trapped yet all is not lost.”

Here’s Virginia in her own words.

RIP Laurel Creek Dam (look in pictures to see before and after)

It happened, the city broke the dam. What was once a beautiful developing ecosystem is now destroyed. Hundreds of animals have lost their homes and avenues of travel. The steelhead that were growing have washed down stream. The frogs and turtles have been misplaced, the birds which feed on the animals have left. There is also talk from locales that the city also took a baby beaver from the area, which I will be looking into. (Edit: The baby beaver was found in Vacaville)

This is because the city would rather destroy than take preventative measures to work with the beavers, who will always keep coming back.

I will be out by the dam in the evenings creating community awareness and informing people of this Facebook page, so they can look for guidance on how to protect our beavers and local ecosystem.

I told Virginia she has three big jobs today. Number 1 call the mayor and find out who did this and whether a depredation permit has been saught. Number 2 call her neighbors and let them know what happened and what they can do. And number 3 local paper and get them interested in the dynamic habitat that was lost.

Believe me when I say I know just how she feels.

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WHAT DAMAGE TO WILDLIFE DOES OUR RESPONSE TO WILDLIFE DAMAGE CAUSE?

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? September 11, 2020

You know how it is, you wake up and blearily check your inbox to see what beaver issue you’ll be writing about this morning, like a fisherman checking his line. Sometimes you get tiny little guppies and have to string together a couple to make a meal.

But sometimes you get a whale.

Report to cover wildlife damage management activities in CA

USDA, CDFA to conduct joint environmental review of agencies’ roles in wildlife damage management

WASHINGTON — The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is advising the public of the intent to prepare a Joint Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Statement (EIS) for wildlife damage management activities in California.

APHIS has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to develop a joint environmental review of both agencies’ roles in wildlife damage management in California. The scope of the analysis will include APHIS’s cooperative activities with Federal and State agencies, California counties, Tribes, and local municipalities managing human-wildlife conflicts caused by birds and mammals. Cooperative activities may include:

Reducing damage to agricultural resources;
Reducing damage to infrastructure and property;
Reducing wildlife strike hazards at airports;
Managing damage by invasive species;
Reducing threats to human health and safety associated with wildlife; and
Protecting threatened and endangered species

Did you hear that? Gosh did someone say beaver and salmon and wildfire? I’m sure I heard someone call my name. I know someone is calling yours.

.The Federal Register Docket will be available for viewing on September 9, 2020 here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=APHIS-2020-0081. Comments will be accepted September 10-November 10. Two virtual public meetings will be held during the scoping period on October 13 and October 27, 2020. Details for participation in these meetings can be found at www.CaliforniaWDM.org

–USDA APHIS

Hmmm. Hmmm. Of course I rushed to the website to see what I could find. It is very interesting to me that USDA & CDFA would enter a MOU to prepare and EIS about potential effects on wildlife. Why? Usually EIRs are things you submit after kicking and dragging your heels for a very long time. They are what people the courts make you submit when you’ve exhausted all other options or have lost the argument.

An EIR is like a root canal. Very useful when needed. but nothing you’d volunteer for.

For context, the huge lawsuit won at the appellate level in Riverside against CDFG and LA waterand LA water was ONLY requesting that they do an EIR before trapping beaver. It turned out to be a nuclear weapon that to my knowledge has never been used again.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and Wildlife Services (WS-California), a state office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS), intend to prepare a joint Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) to provide a robust and comprehensive environmental analysis of current and proposed future wildlife damage management activities undertaken across California. The EIR/EIS will evaluate impacts associated with wildlife damage management activities performed by CDFA and California Counties under CDFA’s proposed Wildlife Damage Management Program (WDMP) as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and by WS-California as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These activities would be undertaken in a collaborative effort between WS-California, CDFA, and California Counties to prevent damage to agricultural resources and infrastructure, protect natural resources and promote human health and safety. Additional information about the proposed WDMP and WS-California’s current wildlife damage management activities is provided be low.

Doesn’t it strike as odd that they are creating a impact report in advance of any action they are going to take for the year? I mean let’s say that there is an extreme unexpected drought that suddenly threatens all the wildlife in southern california. Wouldn’t the impact of any previously approved action vary according to current environmental conditions?

Maybe it’s something akin to the police damage waivers unions require cities sign. We’ve weighed the possible consequences and whatever outcome happens we pre-approved the risk. We are no longer liable for the results.

It’s the last one on the list that I think touches us most closely. Watercourses. protected species. and natural habitats means beaver if anything in the world does. It is practically their middle name.

They will accept 60 days of public comment on their proposal and there will be a public virtual meeting in October. I’m assuming that thy are planning to create an EIS for the impact of every species in every region of the state. That’s a bizarrely broad undertaking, but we can certainly give them an earful.

Anyway, we’ve all got a lot of reading to do. All the info can be found on the WDM page. It’s just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure that when they say “wildlife damage” they mean the damage wildlife does to YOU not the damage they do every day to wildlife.

‘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.

NEW ORGANIZATIONAL CHART NEEDED FOR CDFW

heidi08 Beavers, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? July 10, 2020

It’s finally time to talk about some heady new developments in the beaver world. They start with the very unlucky beavers in Oakley that we all know about where County Flood Control made the unpopular decision to kill some adorable little dam builders in April. This lead to a big article and a big meeting between the county supervisor and some flood control and some beaver buddies including me. Which lead to a series of conversations that are still ongoing.

One of them is with Jennifer Rippert a scientist of the Habitat Conservation Unit of CDFW for the Bay Delta Region. (Who knew that there even was such a thing inside the enormity of Fish and game? I’m ashamed to admit, not me) And yes, I do still call it that sometimes when no ones looking.

Well the Habitat Conservation District is charged with making sure California’s regulated species have sufficient habitat to go on existing.

Habitat Conservation Program

California’s fish and wildlife resources, including their habitats, are held in trust for the people of the State by CDFW (Fish and Game Code § 711.7). CDFW has jurisdiction over the conservation, protection, and management of fish, wildlife, native plants, and the habitats necessary for biologically sustainable populations of those species (Fish and Game Code § 1802). CDFW’s fish and wildlife management functions are implemented through its administration and enforcement of Fish and Game Code (Fish and Game Code § 702).

Color me surprised. Of course up until now I’ve mostly dealt with “the-permission-to-terminate-lives” division of the agency. I mean I know of course that there’s more. But it’s hard to see sometimes. The entire department layout is a behemoth to behold.

So that first yellow box on the left is the division that hands out permission to depredate that we review each year. And the next yellow box is the department of habitat conservation, and even though they’re close together in the chart you might well notice there are zero lines connecting the two. Because they have very little interaction with one another. Even less now that Covid means every one stays in their safe zones.

So it turns out that long before the beavers in Oakley were killed. Jennifer got called to the scene and did a sight visit of the little beaver dam in Oakley. She pointed out that it was making great habitat for fish and wildlife and that they should endeavor to keep it by accessing resources available through various nonprofits. She referred them to Friends of Marsh Creek and she truly felt that a tragedy had been avoided. That was the day before the Covid shutdown in California.

Following that contact, however, she learned that even though the lower divisions at flood control were content to work with her recommendations the highest parts of flood control wanted extermination. In fact there were conversations between them and the city manager of Oakley and they all insisted the beavers must be exterminated. Apparently there was even concern that the interest by the local residents might lead to someone being BITTEN.

Because you know how beavers are.

So Flood Control did the same thing you did in junior high when your mom said you couldn’t go stay over at your friend Marcy’s: they asked their dad instead. Or in this case – the wildlife division of CDFW. And of course they knew nothing about the habitat concerns or what had transpired already and they quickly granted permission for shooting beavers.

And you know how the story ended.

In my wildest dreams of reform I have only ever wished that there was a site visit and a consideration of the habitat that would be lost BEFORE a depredation permit was issued. And in this case that actually happened. The thing I dreamed about for 13 years actually happened. And the beavers still died.

It never in a million years occurred to me that the people who did the visit would not have any direct communication with the people that allowed the killing.

Obviously it’s time for a new dream.

In my new dream when department A gets a request for killing beavers they pick up the freakin’ phone and CALL department B to find out if there are any ecosystem services needed in the area before they grant a the goddamn permit. And the head of B sends out a scientist from the appropriate region to check, then reports the answer to A who either grants the permit OR recommends they wrap some frickin trees instead.

In summary, allow me to add that the very best thing California can do to sustain it’s species is to allow the ECOSYSTEM ENGINEERS to do their jobs without interruption. Please let me know i there are any questions.

BELLEVILLE ABORTS BEAVER KITS, KILLS PARENTS

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? June 29, 2020

That’s what’s exhausting about beaver work. It’s one step forward two steps back. It can feel like all our hard work amounts to nothing. At least it feels that way to Doug Knutson, the defender of the Belleville beavers.

You might remember Belleville from their excellent interview on Furbearer Defenders, or the fact

that Doug is a filmmaker at Windswept Studios in Canada, or that they had Skip Lisle out last year for a training in installing flow devices. They were a success story.

Now they’re the other kind of story.

Senseless killing of our national symbol: McCaw

A Belleville councillor calls the city’s killing of beavers that were causing flooding in the city’s east end, as “troublesome.”

At this week’s virtual meeting of city council, Councillor Kelly McCaw was referring to a staff report that indicated four beavers had been removed and euthanized.

McCaw referred to 11 emails the city had received from citizens in the east end, “lobbying for the senseless killing of our national symbol.”

Doug did everything right. Reached out to friends. Got public attention. Earned the support of the city. Brought in Skip Lisle. How could this have gone wrong?

AND IN JUNE???

She added she didn’t blame the staff. “I want them to know I certainly don’t blame them for doing their job. Who I do blame, really, is the Ministry of Natural Resources. I consider them, in my personal opinion, to have not been helpful in any situation pertaining to beavers. From my perspective they’re nothing short of a propaganda arm for organizations like the fur managers. Relocation should be an option for us, but thanks to the ministry of natural resources that isn’t an option, and here we have a couple of beavers that have been euthanized because we have no option.”

Hear that? If we just could have MOVED them we wouldn’t have had to kill them. I don’t blame the murdering staff. I blame the rules.

Dear dear girl, don’t you realize if these beavers were moved new ones would have come? The same thing would have happened all over again. Either you learn to solve the problem or you keep on killing them. It’s that simple.

A report by Manager of Transportation and Operations Joseph Reid notes that staff has been using mitigating measures in the Belle Creek area.

After many calls from residents citing water levels and unmanageable issues, the city retained a Water Resources Engineer who recommended to remove some beavers from Bell Creek.

The city started live trapping May 27. A total of four beavers were live trapped and “dispatched humanely.”

Reid adds, “We believe there are still beavers in the area and will monitor the area. The flooding has been resolved for the time being.”

May, as you know, is not really a time of flooding. Or of beaver building up the dam. Temperatures are in the high 60’s and rainfall is about 3.2 millimeters a month. So not a time to hit the sudden flood.

But hey, about the time to be nice enough outside to do some trapping. And since everyone’s in quarantine, well that’s an added benefit.

Oh you know what else happens around May? Kits are born. But you knew that didn’t you.

Mayor Mitch Panciuk says there was a safety problem with flooding and under provincial rules beavers can only be moved a short distance. McCaw says she will do some research before presenting a motion to lobby the province to allow a longer relocation distance.

Hmm. I’m glad you made such an effort to switch from foot severing traps to drowning traps. That was mighty white of you. I mean if you’re going to kill infants or abort beavers you wouldn’t want them, to feel any pain right?

Poor Doug, and poor everyone who worked hard to get this right. It’s unbelivable the amount of sustained pressure it takes to get success to succeed when it comes to beavers. I told Doug that I knew just how he felt. It was after our beaver triumph that the city secretly decided to put sheetpile thru the lodge. I was horrifying and my heart was nearly broken.

But in retrospect, it was a turning point not a breaking point. In the secrecy of their private meetings the city let slip the dogs of war, and it meant nothing would be off limits ever again. I could push as hard as I knew how and never worry again about appearing unreasonable.

Some background from Doug himself:

[When Skip came out] it was an amazing time – full of hope and promise! The City seemed to have had a Road to Damascus conversion – they seemed genuinely committed to finding alternative measures to manage beavers and wildlife. And they seemed very proud of all the accolades they were receiving over Belleville’s new role as leader in sustainable management. I had the Mayor and City Manager say to my face that there was virtually no chance trapping would happen in Belleville again!!!

But something happened since then. I have been shut out of all communication with the City over the beavers. I was told not to film them working (strange when they were so enthusiastic last year!??). This issue could be this – at the other end of the space where the beavers live(d), is an open space park. We live on this park. It is a beautiful natural space enjoyed bu many and full of wildlife. But the City announced plans to build a massive “destination location” (mayors words) playground – we along with our neighbours fought this tooth and nail! It would be impossible to link these things together but things changed at this time. I used to be the Mayor’s best buddy for the beaver work we did – last time I saw him he just snubbed me!?

Anyway when flooding issues arose this Spring – new dams – Skips BD worked perfectly.- the City said it would remedy the situation. I OFFERED any assistance I could. Skip couldn’t come with Covid lockdown but he was only a call away – and I could refer the vast amount of experience and knowledge available here. However this offer was declined – “we know what we’re doing”. So they put in their “pipe-thing” – I shared pics on this form and it was universally condemned – and sure enough it never worked. Rather than regrouping or asking for help, they seem to have hatched the plot to say “we tried everything” (they did not!) and went right back to trapping!?!