Category: What’s killing beavers now?

PRETENDING TO HELP

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? December 30, 2019

Oh alright. Vanesso Petro whose boss is Jimmy Taylor at USDA says that as far as she knows the position is specific to predators and will not include any beaver work. Never mind that in Oregon beavers are categorized as predators!!! The positions are to stop predators that threaten live stock. Which, last time I checked, no one accuses beavers of doing. But I guess theoretically if beavers flooded some ranchers field that might be perceived as threatening live stock, and a smart supervisor might say that installing a flow device would provide a long-term solution to protect them? Hmm….

It’s been two good years of beaver news ever since Ben published his book. But we should remember that not everything is rosy. We should all be grateful for articles like THIS that remind us how truly grim things can get when you leave the warm circles of beaver academics. Take this article from upstate New York for example.

Nate Kennedy: Give trapping a try this year

Last fall when I ventured off to a local rod and gun club to take the New York State Trapper Education Course, I wondered what the day would have in store. I considered the various motivations that would bring one to fur trapping, and I thought of my own motivations for taking the course. The “reasons” to trap are varied, and all positive if you ask me. Personally, I connect with the tradition of it all. Much of this country was discovered and built by fur trappers, and that history and lifestyle lives on today.

If you hunt or fish much at all, you can understand the allure of a new outdoor pursuit or hobby. Another season. Another adventure.

An adventure! You know, like joy-riding or serial killing. Why not try trapping? And, as this article specifically recommends, trapping BEAVER. Because you can!

Here are some reasons why you should give trapping a try:

Outdoor recreation and exercise
Conservation and wildlife management
Tradition and history
Economic benefit
Wild game and wild fur

Nate makes sure to embellish each snappy heading with a little paragraph explaining what he means but I’ll spare you most of the effusive prattle. Let’s just zero in on number 2, shall we?

He notes that buying a trapping license or gun folds back funds into the conservation programs themselves, And then adds pointedly:

Wildlife management is one of the largest motivations for trapping. Managing certain species like beaver, muskrat and coyotes can be a great service to landowners, farmers and others who may experience the negative impacts of overabundance. A healthier population can benefit the species, the ecosystem, the landowner and the trapper alike.

Now now. Any advocate worth her salt could have written those exact lines for him. We know the three lies trappers repeat better than they do. This keeps the population healthy! This maintains a balance! This helps farmers!

There is a powerful scene in Never Cry Wolf where some old inuit leaders stop over and sit at the fire for a night. The old woman tells him a creation myth and the young grandson translates. She says long ago there were no predators and so many caribou that the people called them ‘lice’. They reproduced so much that the young ones got sick and the land got trampled. The spirit of the old woman returned to a hole in the ice and asked the creator for a tool to cut the sickness from the herd.

And the amaguk was born. Amaguk: wolf.

It’s way way better when she tells it, with her thick slow native speech and the firelight showing her glowing timeless face. But this will do for our purposes. It does well enough that you will understand when I say that little Nate with his conibear, and all the little Nates he encourages are still no amaguk,

Trapping for sport is very akin to Fantasy Football. You don’t actually do the work, or the training, or learn a skill. You just capitalize on the work of others and pat yourself on the back for doing so by saying you’re HELPING. Which, of course, you aren’t.

When you trap beaver out of an area, and their pond falls into disrepair because there are no little engineers left to tend it – that means there is no deep water for the trout, no meals for the otter or blue heron, and no breeding pools for the frogs and dragonflies. You didn’t help conservation.

You defeated it.

Nate is a rifle instructor at the Cornell school of 4-H in Seneca. He holds a master’s degree in environmental communication from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Which means he attended the very school where Dietland Mueller-Schwarze taught and did research for years. If the name rings a bell its because he’s the author of the FIRST beaver book that changed everyone thinking.

So he should know better and might get a letter.

Speaking of long term solutions to beaver issues, I made this for Mike yesterday to remind folks to enroll in the first-ever East coast beaver conference.

THE BEAVERS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? December 2, 2019

I hope your long weekend of family and weather was enjoyable. We experimented with drying orange slices to string and our entire house smells delightful. Save yourself the heartache and don’t try kiwi. It dries like little curled bats and looks just about as nice. But lemon, lime and orange come out lovely!

Fresh horrors in the UK this morning where a folks who don’t want beavers back on the landscape apparently still want their fur. This startling headline greeted me this morning:

Shock as dead beaver discovered ‘shot and sheared’ on Broughty Ferry beach

The animal’s carcass was spotted washed ashore by a dog walker last month. It is believed the animal had been shot and skinned before being thrown in the river.

As of May, beavers are a protected species in Scotland, making it is illegal to kill the animal or destroy established dams and lodges without a licence.

But several reports of beaver’s being persecuted unlawfully have emerged in Tayside, despite the protection.

A dog walker, who spotted the animal, said: “I was walking the dog on the beach when I came across the dead beaver but was shocked to see it had been shot and skinned. It looked like it had been washed ashore.

Beavers can cause issues for Tayside farmers since their release into the region as they are said to undermine river banks and block drainage.

Landowners can obtain a “lethal control” licence from the Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

But in Perth last week, TV presenter and conservationist Chris Packham called on tighter legislation to prevent landowners using loopholes to cull the creatures.

He said the landowners’ applications must be heavily scrutinised to prove beavers are causing damage to human interests.

Good lord. The most horrific part of this story for me is that some asshole farmer is going to keep that beaver skin on his floor or wall and brag to his friends about how he finished him off. All I can say to that is JUST WAIT until climate change means you don’t get enough water for your crops and then think about all the water-savers you’ve killed.

TOTO, I THINK WE’LL BE IN KANSAS FOREVER

What a fun night in Rossmoor last evening. A lovely theater, two smart techs to help me and a great supportive crowd. A sizeable speakers fee for Worth A Dam and both my mom and Cheryl’s mom in the audience! The questions were intriguing and the feedback glowing – only one gentleman asked afterwards if it was possible to EAT beaver, bless his heart. I smiled and said they weren’t poisonous but people tended to think of the meat as greasy: case in point when the mountain men were starving they at their horses, and ate their dogs, but they didn’t tend to eat the animal they were all busy hunting after.

I barely got home and sat down with my glass if chardonnay when the power went out, and stayed out for a good three hours afterwards. Thank goodness the candles still worked!

This morning we can only pity poor Kansas who is obviously very, very confused about beavers. They keep hearing all those nice things about them but they obviously still hate them very much. I will say this beaver article from Adaven Scronce Diversified Agriculture and Natural Resource agent, is as CLOSE to being positive as any I’ve read from the state, but good lord its still pretty dire.

Busy beavers

Kansas State University Research and Extension

In Kansas, bobcats and coyotes are the only predators that will prey on adult beavers. Because of this, the beaver population can become over abundant at times. Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. While beavers and the dams they build can benefit the land and conservation efforts, the dams can have negative impacts on the environment around them. Some of those include, flooded crop fields and roads. Flooding from a beaver dam can result in the flooding of large areas where only shallow and slow-moving water existed before. While some plants and animals are able to adapt to pond life and wetlands, depending on the location and size, beaver ponds can cause significant damage to human interests. The damages from flooding caused by beaver-dams can include removing pastures and crop land from production and drowning stands of trees. Beaver dens can also potentially decrease the stability of the banks of streams and ponds and increase the chance of these banks collapsing under the weight of vehicles and farm equipment.

Okay, we’ll get to the part about all the flooding and damage beavers cause, but first I have to ask Adaven about this sentence, Beavers are one of the few vertebrate animals that can alter the environment to fit their needs. Talk to me about the use of the word vertebrate?

Are you implying they are also invertebrate animals that modify the habitat to suit their needs? Or are you just using the word randomly to show off that you know these kinds of scientific terms and can use them at will? I guess maybe orb spiders are an invertebrate animal that modifies the habitat to suit their needs but I wouldn’t call them a keystone species.

Damaged caused by beavers can be managed by installing a beaver pond leveler, fencing off valuable trees and crops, and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization. Even though beavers and their dams have the potential to cause damage it is also possible to live with beavers if preventative measures are put in place to prevent beavers from damaging valuable resources. The Kansas Department of Wildlife notes the best way to prevent damage from beavers is through sustained population control and that pond owners should not wait until beavers become overabundant, because, at that point, damage has already been done. Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

The mind reels. The jaw drops.

Lets start at the beginning. Kansas is advocating using a pond lever! And wrapping trees! This is a very very momentous day. Congratulations Mike Callahan, you finally broke through the fourth wall! I keep pinching myself because I think I’m dreaming. But the very next sentence wakes me up to the bucket of cold water.

and removing the local beaver population and preventing recolonization

Not either try these things OR remove the local population. But AND. Install the pond leveler AND kill the beavers also. Because you can never be sure. And the most important thing is to keep beaver from populating the area because by then its too LATE.

Never mind that beavers are territorial and the population will never grow because offspring will disperse. Nature acts differently in Kansas. Our text books told us so. Beavers are like house mice in Kansas. They breed and breed and breed and by the time you notice droppings on your kitchen counter its TOO LATE. They are already ruining the place.

You have to love this smarmy falsely-compassionate last line.

Keeping the beaver population under control not only benefits the land owner, but it benefits the remaining beaver as well.

Hear that? I’m doing this for your own good. Killing your mother or your children for your own good.I know beaver chapter said something about population density and that weird word ‘dispersal’ but there was a kegger at billybob’s house that friday and I never read that far,

Because. Kansas,

CALIFORNIA’S SLEIGHT OF HAND

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? September 5, 2019

Time for another victorious defeat for California beavers. We seem to be having these pretentious affairs every couple of months. And usually with credit given to a certain well known conservation group that seems to follow the spotlight.

I’m talking of course about the ban on fur-trapping.

California bans fur trapping for recreation, commerce

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California on Wednesday became the first state to ban commercial fur trapping, ending the practice nearly 200 years after animals like beavers and otters introduced the American West to international trade.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he had signed a bill into law making it illegal to trap animals for the purposes of recreation or to sell their fur. It is still legal to trap animals for other purposes, including pest control and public health.

Now if you were anyone off the street just tuning in you might say “Hurray no more fur trade in the golden state!” But of course you and I know that the fur trade hasn’t been the primary cause of beaver death for 30 years or longer. And all of the MANY beavers that still die every day in conibear traps and by gunshot wound die because of DEPREDATION which remains very much legal. In fact when you depredate beavers you don’t have to even count how many you kill. Isn’t that convenient? No one can report it because no one knows.

A good way to avoid those pesky AP articles.

But in recent years, California licenses for fur trappers have declined considerably. In 2018, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said it sold 133 licenses, leading to the harvest of 1,568 animals and the sale of 1,241 pelts. A legislative analysis of the bill noted most furs are sold outside of California, with data suggesting there have been no fur sales in the state for the past three years.

Meanwhile, the state has issued about 500 trapping licenses a year for pest control and other uses. People who trap animals for those purposes are not required to report how many animals they capture.

Hey here’s a funny funny joke. OF those 500 permits issued to kill nuisance animals in 2018. 210 of them were for beavers. Because what seems like good news is never good news for them.

I guess that won’t be a headline anytime soon.

Newsom’s office announced the bill signing on Twitter by referencing the governor’s childhood pet, an otter he named “Potter.” The announcement included a photo of what appeared to be an otter puppet exclaiming: “My friends & I should not have to live in fear of being trapped & our fur being sold!”

Of course. Of course he did.

The real surprise of the day doesn’t come from silly pretend news that doesn’t matter to beavers at all. But from very very local and REAL news that matters a great deal.

Consider it another verse of “It’s a small world, afterall”.

Yesterday Robin of Napa confirmed that the mother of famed beaver researcher Joe Wheaton lives in the city currently. Which lead me to hunt about on google and LOOK what I dredgged up.

Joe Wheaton: studying his hometown creek

St. Helena High School graduate Joe Wheaton has turned his hometown creek into an international waterway. As a PhD candidate in physical geography at the University of Southampton, England, he chose to do his doctoral research and dissertation on Sulphur Creek.

In the process, he has brought distinguished geographers and geomorphologists to the study the creek; and to share with the community and the world the working of a geological wonder, one that was ignored and hidden in the back streets of town for more than a century.

This amazing article is dated 2006, one year before the beavers showed up in Martinez, So none of this was on my radar. Napa was just a nearby city, and creeks were just things that other people studied while I was busily working to make children a little less unhappy.But there is not now, in all the world, a single more well-known and well respected beaver researcher than Dr, Joe Wheaton who apparently went to Napa high school before he literally put beaver benefits on the map and became their foremost authority.

The mind reels. The jaw drops. Do you think if he had landed a job at UCB California would have been the premiere state where the forest service protected beavers and the BRAT tool was invented? Do you think Mary Obrien would have ended up working for the Sonoma Land Trust instead?

I’m getting dizzy. I need to sit down.

Add to this fact that our dispersing beavers might have settled down in Napa, that Rusty and Robin became friends of those beavers and friends of Worth A Dam and that the County Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht came to our beaver festival. Twice.

Twenty-eight-year-old Wheaton was born in Napa, lived on Dry Creek Road but attended school in St. Helena. When he was 13, his parents moved to their present home on Inglewood Avenue.

He received both his BS and MS degrees at UC-Davis. Wanting to continue studies in fluvial geomorphology and ecohydraulics, he entered the University of Southampton, in Hampshire, England, where he will complete his PhD requirements this year.

Lets make the circle comp[ete. Any other famous beaver supporters from Napa?

Amy Gallaher Hall creating chalk art centerpiece in the Park at 12th Annual Martinez Beaver Festival 2019. Photo by Cheryl Reynolds 6/29/19.

I guess what they say is true. Beavers really do make the world go around

BEAVER LIES AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, What's killing beavers now? August 6, 2019

From Beaver Management Facebook Friend Chris Muller:

The tongue is so quick that it’s difficult to spot live except when they yawn. I’ve rarely photographed the tongue while eating but here’s a recent one. Even shooting at 7 frames per second there’s only one shot with any evidence of the tongue so it’s largely luck to see it fully extended.

Well that’s a relief anyway. 7 frames a second is something I never did, and Sarah says she was shooting at 60 frames a second. Plus I made people wonder about it and try out new things, and I never get tired of that.

Yesterday I got a great treasure in the mail via Ben Goldfarb but actually from Chris Jones, the Cornish farmer who first stepped up to allow beavers on his land. Remember that my paternal grandfather was born in St Austell, Cornwall,where his family had worked for years in the tin mines. After the gold rush, when California wanted to mine deeper gold they came along to use their expertise and find a new life.

Thanks so much Chris and Ben, I love it!

I heard from the attorney at CBD yesterday that they were very interested in the idea that non-dam building beavers contribute as well, and she planned to follow up with wildlife services. So it’s already been a week of tying up loose ends. The story made it into the SF Chronicle today – albeit with more flash than substance.

‘Nature’s engineers’: Feds to stop killing California beavers

Under the threat of legal action, Wildlife Services, a controversial program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, has agreed to “cease its current beaver damage management activities” in almost all California counties, according to a statement from Wildlife Services state director Dennis Orthmeyer issued via email.

In other words, the government program will stop killing California beavers.

Ahh would that it were true. Beavers of course will STILL be killed by wildlife services if the damage landscaping or levees and if they have the audacity to live in a stream that’s too wide to dam. I know its good for people to make the link in their heads that beavers matter, but I don’t think it’s good to tell everyone they’re safe.

It’s too much like the grinch patting Cindy Loo Hoo’s head and sending her back to sleep while he finished the job he never had any intention of stopping.

Throughout California, the beaver will roam free, able to build as many dams as it pleases — at least for now. Wildlife Services’ press release explains that it is stopping the beaver-killings “out of an abundance of caution” as it evaluates the impacts of the beaver damage management program