Category: Who’s blaming beavers now?

Oh no, another drought – Time to kill the beavers.

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now? November 28, 2016

It seems like only yesterday FEMA was paying southern states to relieve their emergency drought conditions. Now the south is facing low levels again, and things are getting colorful.

Brown water, beaver battle among early signs of water woes

ATLANTA (AP) — Beaver dams have been demolished, burbling fountains silenced, and the drinking water in one southern town has taken on the light brownish color of sweet tea.

Though water shortages have yet to drastically change most people’s lifestyles, southerners are beginning to realize that they’ll need to save their drinking supplies with no end in sight to an eight-month drought.

Already, watering lawns and washing cars is restricted in some parts of the South, and more severe water limits loom if long-range forecasts of below-normal rain hold true through the rest of 2016.

The drought arrived without warning in Chris Benson’s bathroom last week in Griffin, Georgia.

“My son noticed it when he went to take his bath for the evening,” said Benson, 43. “The water was kind of a light brown color and after we ran it for a while, it actually looked like a light-colored tea. A little disturbing.”

The problem was that Griffin’s reservoir is nearly 8 feet below normal, leaving “a high level of manganese” in the remaining water, but not making it unsafe, city officials told residents in a Nov. 16 “water discoloration update.” Benson watched that water turn from brown to “kind of a light green tint” before clearing up, he said.

It’s no better in Tennessee, where about 300 of the state’s 480 water systems serve areas suffering moderate to exceptional drought, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.

Across the South, communities relying on depleted watersheds can’t afford to waste what they’ve got left, said Denise Gutzmer at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

She also tracked a mass mussel die-off due to low water in southwestern Virginia, and described how hundreds of volunteers removed beer bottles and car parts from the bottom of Alabama’s Lake Purdy, which has 20 feet of water, three-fourths of its capacity. She even heard how workers dismantled beaver dams to increase water flow in west Georgia’s Tallapoosa River.

“That really underscores the desperation of the situation, like ‘Ok, we’ve got to clear the beaver dams,'” Gutzmer said.

That’s right. Before you actually stop washing cars and watering lawns, trap beavers. Because we all know beaver dams ‘steal water’ just like piggy banks ‘steal’ pennies. I hate when they do that, robbing the change in my pockets that I was going to carelessly let drip away or lose. Gosh. I’m so glad the the Associated Press took down this unchallenged quote as gospel and republished it in all 50 states across the country so that everyone can read how beavers steal water, the little kleptos. One of my very favorite things about the AP is how everyone syndicates what they say verbatim and there is no way to confront the clever reporter who in this case is the very ecologically wise, Jeff Martin.

Grrr.

Oh and 9 times less drought!

Any way thank you Linda of Oregon (formerly Martinez) for sending me this article on yahoo and thank you to my new beaver alert program that I’m loving very much (especially with retired librarian Bob Kobres of Georgia’s excellent help with my ‘boolean’ terms):

((beavers OR beaver) AND Martinez) AND “worth a dam” -football -soccer -track

Google Alerts has become laughable in how many important articles it misses, I have fired them, my new freeprogram is Talkwalker and I very highly recommend them. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to get deliveries of important beaver news without having to go hunt them down. So thanks again for a wonderful addition to the beaver battle!

Emotions should be used to defend gun rights, not wildlife.

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? November 21, 2016

How odd, I was curious why there seemed to be no beaver news lately so I rechecked my google alerts. They had vanished! Well, fortunately I repaired them just in time to get the PERFECT alert for an article that deserves my comment perhaps more than any other in recent years. It is Len Lisenbee’s gloating commentary on the Montana Trapping Law’s failure to pass. The headline itself is misleading, since it should read “Election bodes well for our right to kill wildlife”. But I couldn’t have mockwritten this article better myself. Even his photo looks like great work from central casting.

Election results bode well for wildlife

Many people might not know it but, besides Donald Trump’s rather amazing and certainly unexpected victory on Nov. 8, there were also several important conservation items on various state ballots. And there can be little doubt that our fish and wildlife resources also won important and rather surprising victories.

I am not referring to President-elect Trump’s well-publicized stance on gun control and his four-square support of the Second Amendment. No doubt that position, all by itself, won him countless votes from among like-minded conservatives.

Here is one important fact: Rarely does any wild species benefit from emotional voting questions. Animals that are protected from hunting, such as cougars and black bear in California, are still subject to the laws of nature that include continued breeding, population expansion and eventual adverse interactions with humans and their pets and livestock.

The “Montana Animal Trap Restrictions Initiative,” listed as I-177 on the ballot, was designed by anti-trappers to greatly reduce and restrict trapping on public lands within the state. It’s history is sordid, lengthy, and steeped in deceptive misinformation and outright lies. And in the end, Montana voters were 63 percent against the amendment.

This initiative was extremely wide-reaching, and would have banned all trapping on any public lands. That prohibition would have included all city parks, municipal golf courses and all state owned properties everywhere in the state.

That’s right, in addition to electing Donald Trump class president, the wisdom of which will soon explain itself, this november showed its intelligence by protecting the right to kill wildlife on public lands. Because the right to SEE WILDLIFE on said lands is obviously secondary to the right to kill it, which must always, always come first.

I’ll let Len explain, since he understands this so well.

Enter the voters in Montana. They were not fooled by the rhetoric spewed out by the anti-trappers. Many paid close attention to the advertisements favoring existing Montana Fish and Wildlife management. The vote results were a landslide, and common sense in the form of scientifically-based wildlife management was able to overcome emotions on this important issue.

What problems would this initiative have needlessly incurred had it passed? Based on similar ballot initiatives successfully passed in other states, the results would have been devastating. Local communities, counties and the state would have had to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to deal with “nuisance” wildlife issues. Species such as beavers, skunks and raccoons would have become living problems in short order. Wolves and coyotes would have caused major depredations on livestock, and they would have decimated deer, elk and moose herds within just a few years.

Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington are the only states that have enacted a ban on trapping. All were the direct result of ballot initiatives. And all of these states are currently experiencing major wildlife-related problems as a direct result of their misguided efforts to end trapping.

With this argument, Len firmly attests that failure to allow the sporty take of wildlife will result in public lands having to pay for the depredation of wildlife. Which might well be true, I suppose. States with more recreational trapping have less depredation, period. (Although it might be better for the stewards and park rangers of that land to decide which beaver colony is causing specific problems flooding culverts rather than letting Jimbob decide whatever beaver happens to be closest to the car.)

But I would argue that the difference for the beaver itself is actually negligible, since it makes very little difference to a him whether he’s killed for sport or for convenience. And, of possibly greater importance, the loss to the public that would have wanted to bird watch or photograph the beaver pond is hardly mitigated by whether the beavers were made into fur or just gotten out of the way. Right?

One example I like to use is the beaver problem in Massachusetts. The anti’s managed to get an emotion-filled ballot initiative against all trapping passed. Everyone who voted for it felt good.

But in just two years the beaver population increased dramatically and the complaints began to pour in. Backyards and basements flooding from beaver dam back-ups were the primary complaints. And the trapping ban on beaver was rescinded by voters one year later.

Wildlife management by emotions is never a good idea. But there always seems to be groups of individuals who, for whatever reasons, want to bypass scientific wildlife management. They always use emotions, deceitful information and lies to make their various points. And it is always wildlife that suffer in the end when too many people believe the lies.

Those crazy beaver huggers that want to bypass SCIENCE and use their emotions to make decisions. Now, I know what you’re going to say reader, but lets lay aside the fact that his example is false, MA never actually overturned the law, and bypass the fact that the entire gun rights lobby would disappear in a puff of logic if we ever made decisions based solely on science and not EMOTION – laying all this aside for the moment—- let’s just allow Len to demonstrate his keen grasp of the issues with his pointed discussion of climate change.

Considering that “climate change” used to be called “global warming” until the warming slowed and finally petered out completely, and also considering that our climate has been changing since well before the dinosaurs died out, and also considering that carbon dioxide is considered to be the major culprit of no longer mentioned global warming and yet is absolutely necessary for maintaining virtually all life on earth, I would hasten to suggest that there is ample room for more than one opinion on this subject.

Whoa! You know, the outcome of this crazy election is finally starting to make sense to me. Thank you for that. In the face of such a mind-blowing steely-surfaced argument I can only reply this:

This hasn’t worked at all, so we need to do it MORE…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? November 20, 2016

Mississippi is doing an outstanding job at not solving problems. It’s working so well for them that they have decided to do it more. I was going to question their intelligence but the 2010 census assures me that fully 78% have high school degrees so things are going better than we might have guessed for the region. Apparently the curriculum doesn’t include any information on beaver management though.

(Or evolution)

Program controls damaging critter

There’s a buck-toothed villain with a bounty on his tail in Alcorn County.

In an effort to help local landowners conserve timber and crops, the Alcorn County Soil and Water Conservation District is encouraging landowners to sign up for this year’s beaver control program.

Organizers say last year’s program was a success, with over 100 participating landowners and 260 beavers eliminated on over 3,500 acres throughout Alcorn County. Since the beginning of the program, over 9,000 beavers have been trapped in the county.

“It’s amazing what those little workers can do,” said Sandy Mitchell, district clerk at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service office. “Even though we’ve been doing the program for 12 years now, they’re still producing, there are still plenty of beavers out there.”

That’s incredible! You’ve killed 9000 and the ones you missed keep reproducing? Instead of just giving up and moving to the next county or committing suicide by alligator? It’s like they’re MACHINES with no appreciation for all your effort! Considering that you’ve been doing this for more than a decade and it hasn’t worked yet, a lesser county would have started to rethink their strategy – you know, try something new, do some research or talk to other areas. But not you. You gamely keep trying the same failed plan over and over regardless of minor distractions like success. You have to admire that kind of determination.

Alcorn County resident Ozzy Hendrix has trapped beavers for half of his life. He has trapped for the City of Corinth as well as Alcorn County. In the last 15 years Hendrix has trapped over 100 beavers in the area around the train tracks on Harper Road. Hendrix said the most humane beaver traps are the ones that kill the animals instantly.

Anyone looking to trap beavers should first look for the telltale “runs” in shallow water, Hendrix explained.

“It makes a small indention in the ground where they travel in the water,” he said. “It looks like a little ditch. You put the trap down there, and they fit perfectly most of the time in these runs. We catch most of them that way.” Hendrix said there will be occasionally be a smarter class of beaver that will require a snare to trap.

A smarter class of beaver? Now that’s interesting. Hey I wonder if you happen to notice whether there are any more of them than their used to be when you started? Almost like the smarter survivors are breeding more smart survivors? It’s just a curious notion based on something I picked up in yankee school. Don’t trouble yourself about it.

Landowners may trap the beavers themselves or enlist the services of a trapper. They are asked to wrap each beaver’s tail and left back foot in clear plastic wrap or a freezer bag and keep them frozen until collection day. Landowners will receive $10 for each tail up to the maximum amount set.

Do let us know if this year’s beaver popsicle fest solves your problem, won’t you? I’m sure the 13th year will be the charm. I’m wracking my brain to figure out why you need a tail and a left foot too, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m pretty sure the tail would cover it?

Do you sometimes get two-tailed beavers in Alcorn county?

Gentlemen of the night and early morning

heidi08 Creative Solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? October 13, 2016

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.

Dear Mr. Fellman

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now? September 25, 2016

I’m trying something different today. Rather than post my review of this misguided article in my usual quippy way, I’m going to address the author directly, like an old friend sharing a beer. I’ve written him through his blog already so I’m sure he’ll check to see mine when he opens his mail. Here’s the article that got my attention:

The potato rake and the battle with the beavers

By BRUCE FELLMAN Sep 22, 2016

OK last weekend I was spending way too much time at the millpond dam near my house. I was down there carrying a potato rake, a pitchfork, various shovels, and a collection of hearty oaths.

I was frequently covered with mud, and I was always covered with sweat. I was, as I explained in an earlier edition of the Journal, doing battle with beavers, or, to use a somewhat earthier catch-phrase gleaned from a character that represented the Ipana toothpaste franchise in the 1950s, Bucky ”bleepin’” or “F-ing” Beaver. “You’re going to lose,” I was told cheerily when I revealed the fight I had undertaken against this apparently implacable foe.

The folks gathered around the table at a monthly meeting of an environmental group I work with nodded their heads in agreement at this grim assessment. “Beavers always win… especially when all you have is a potato fork.” If I would put aside my liberal queasiness against the equally liberal use of nuclear weaponry, I might, was the consensus, have a fighting chance, but without the highest of high-powered arsenals, well, “You’ve read Don Quixote, right?”

Ahh Bruce. You need better environmental friends! Come sit at our table. Yes, the beavers are determined not to freeze solid during the coming winter months, and they’d like to be able to reach all that food they’re busy storing so they don’t starve either. They’re quirky that way. But if you want that dam lower we can tell you how to keep it there successfully. And it won’t involve TNT or clam rakes.

I couldn’t see any windmills on the horizon, and, in fact, I couldn’t see any beavers. That my foe was invisible was hardly surprising: Castor canadensis is, at the very least, crepuscular—active, that is, beginning at dusk—and the beavers I was confronting appeared to be downright nocturnal. I’ve found no signs of a permanent lodge. I can’t spot any suggestions of gnawed-down trees and shrubs. Ghost critters or not, they’ve certainly made their presence unmistakable.

In front of the dam is a wall of mud, perhaps six inches high and foot wide. It’s reinforced with sticks and branches, many of which have been stripped of their nutritious bark—a beaver buffet item—and all of them showing signs of gnaw marks. Occasionally, I’ve found a beaver footprint, and if this wasn’t proof-positive of my invisible foe’s identity, consider the following.

Crepuscular? Have you checked the nutrition label on a willow leaf lately? Do you really think a 60 lb beaver is going to consume all the calories he needs by eating leaves an hour a day? And find time leftover to raise a family and make the repairs you’re complaining about? Beavers are NOCTURNAL. And the biologist who made up the other thing also believed no one could see him if he closed his eyes.

Indeed, it was the demise of the stream, a favorite hangout, which girded my loins for the fight. This nameless body of water has long been the home and, I suspect, nursery for a group of uncommon dragonflies known as Dragonhunters, large, fierce, and beautiful insects whose primary prey is fellow odonates, and I’d be hanged if I was going to let this creek be engineered out of existence. Now, when it comes to beavers, engineering is just what they do.

Nature’s master craftsmen have been creating, maintaining, and, when they consider it appropriate, recreating wetlands to meet their needs since the glaciers receded more than ten thousand years ago. It’s simply their nature to do this, and when they returned to our area, after being trapped to the point of local extinction, in the 1970s, we were to learn that, even when we humans might suggest, “Bucky, this area is fine as is and doesn’t require any improvement,” there’s no arguing with beavers.

But, I thought, perhaps my persistence might convince them to go elsewhere to practice their unnecessary dam trade. After all, there’s already a perfectly functional dam in place. The pond it created and maintains doesn’t require any additional help. So I do my daily work to bring back the water flow over the dam, and make the stream safe for its resident flora, from Bur Marigolds and Cardinal Flowers to liverworts and mosses, and resident fauna, which includes otters, minks, Great Blue Herons, crayfish, Powdered Dancer damselflies, Stinkpot turtles, Brook Trout, waterthrush warblers, or any of the myriad other animals I’ve spotted here since I took this area under my observational wing in 1984.

Okay. This endears you to me, Bruce. You’re a stream keeper. You’re motivated by stewardship and want to prevent the stream from changes that will result in less biodiversity of the species you love to photograph. Me too!

capture — Dragonflies mating: Bruce Fellman

(You take amazing photos by the way, you really should visit the beaver pond some evening before the month ends and try your hand at beaver photos. Poke around this website for a while and you’ll see the builders aren’t as impossible to see as you think.)

mirror mirror — Martinez Yearling Grooming: Cheryl Reynolds

Hey guess who can help you take care of that creek you love? I’ll give you a hint. It has fur and a flat tail. Those deep pools have more to do with the brook trout and the turtles than you imagine. And those creek plants you love so much – guess who’s raising the water table so that their roots have something to drink? Beavers are the original creek stewards. Why not learn to work with them instead of against them?

And every night, for the past few weeks, the Castorean Conservation Corps has returned with mud, sticks, and impressive skills to undo my efforts.

Yes beavers fix repairs they believe are necessary for their family to survive the upcoming winter. Go Figure. Hey you’re good with tools and own a pair of waders. Why not buy Mike’s DVD and learn to install a flow device that will keep the dam at the height you can stand and still protects the beavers? It will save your creek and your sanity. Unwilling to spend a dime on these dam rodents? How about a free book that will teach you to do this as well? Or hey, if you don’t like being in the water, why not hire Mike Callahan or Skip Lisle to do it for you? They’re a phone call and a couple states away. We brought Skip out 3000 miles to solve our problem a decade ago. You’re getting off cheap.

Now, I’ll let you go. I’m glad we’ve had this little chat. I know you have a lot of reading to do. Start by watching our story to learn how the flow device controlled our dam height for ten years and how the beavers transformed our creek. Then go down some evening and actually watch the family you’re fighting with. There are a million fascinating columns in your future if you learn to appreciate the effect beavers have on wildlife and watersheds. Don’t believe me? Check out the writing of Vermont’s Patti Smith for the Battleboro Reformer, or Connecticut’s Ben Goldfarb for the High Country News.