Category: Who’s blaming beavers now?

BEAVER-SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS REDACTED

heidi08 Who's blaming beavers now? August 17, 2021

I have to admit, that in my day I’ve seen my fair share of bureaucratic sputtering and hand-wringing over efforts to protect one team member from having to face the weight of public reaction from their horrificly inept or insensitive remark at one time or another, but this might take the proverbial cake. Seems one flow device was installed at Coats marsh during the punic wars and they want another one, but they don’t want to release the report about why it’s necessary until it’s been “Redacted” for sensitive material.

What do you want to bet that the sentive material is the magistrate referring to those “Goddamn rodents:? Or directly said, “How do we get rid of these rats once and for all?”

Few details on impact installation of pond leveller at Coats Marsh could have

The Regional District of Nanaimo intends to install a second pond leveller at Coats Marsh Regional Park sometime this fall, but some Gabriolans feel there’s a lack of information that demonstrates the need for it.

Nick Doe has been visiting the shallow-water wetland of Coats Marsh and surrounding forest for 10 years and has been making field observations and taking measurements, including water flow through to Coats Creek, for Gabriola Streamkeepers since 2015. Doe, an electronics engineer by trade, likes the solitude in the sensitive ecosystem, home to frogs, bats and waterfowl, and has witnessed the work of beavers as they have built two dams in the roughly metre-deep wetland and the way the overall ecology has adjusted to their homebuilding efforts.

Uh oh. Officials definitely get nervous when free-lance biologists start walking around their habitat and making observations of the habitat over several years. They hate that.

Years ago the beavers’ labour raised the level of the marsh and increased the overall surface area, expanding the habitat for ducks and insects including multiple species of dragonflies.

The RDN plans to install the second pond leveller at Coats Marsh “following recommendations” from a weir assessment report completed in May 2020 by mechanical engineering firm SRM Projects. Since last summer parks quarterly reports have mentioned the intention to do so.

Doe has been “anxiously awaiting” to read the report of the consultant, with whom Doe and others shared observations and historical information about the weir and marsh.

“I’m not sure what problem it’s solving,” Doe said of a second leveller, adding he wants to know what consideration has been given to how it might affect the overall ecology of the wetland.

“Since 2015 the beavers have been increasing the height of the dam,” Doe said. “That stabilized a couple of years ago. In the last three years there has been no increase in the height of the dam – the beavers are quite satisfied with the level they have.”

Oh I can tell you exactly what problem a second flow device would solve. The Frickin’ Beaver problem. They want to lower the water enough that the rodents are forced to leave the ex-marsh entirely. Does that sound right to you?

Upon requesting a copy of the report, an RDN spokesperson told the Sounder that it contains “sensitive information” and could not be shared unless redacted. The Sounder was later told the report had to be shared with the board of directors first. Yann Gagnon, RDN manager of parks, later clarified that consultant reports “can contain private personal information as well as information from third parties” and are not shared with the general public.

You know how beaver documents are… with all that “SENSITIVE” four letter words that need redacting. It’s a full time job, really, talking smack about beavers, doing bad things and covering them up. 24/7.

Gagnon provided the Sounder with a short list of “priority actions” noted in the 2020 weir assessment report, which include “lowering the greater Coats Marsh pond level to the ‘design’ weir spill level” by installing a Clemson pond leveller through the beaver dam as well as removing the beaver debris and vegetation buildup in front of the weir and footbridge. RDN staff did not respond as of press time about what impact, if any, that work would have on the beavers and overall conditions of the wetland.

Apparently they also would like to travel BACK IN TIME to the 90’s when people actually used clemson pond levelers. Good luck with that.

Madrone Environmental Services Ltd. has been contracted to install the second pond leveller. The parks report from July 2020 notes that an environmental management plan will be prepared to support the installation of a second pond leveller; however, staff did not say if that plan has been developed yet. An RDN spokesperson said the timeline of installation or total cost will not be known until mid-August “as they are currently working on the best solution for the environment.”

Why just a second? Why not a third pond leveler? Why not a fourth? Why not an actual sump pump or vacuum cleaner that can get rid of the water entirely? Come to think of it why is their a pond at all? It’s just a bunch of mud that’s going to need cleaning up eventually. Why not make my job easier once and for all?

Doe, who humbly acknowledges he’s “not an expert,” just wants to see the report and is frustrated to not have results shared given the amount of background information and data he and other volunteers provide the RDN that is then used to develop plans.

“I think we deserve some feedback.”

I’m so old that I can remember when our own city council member wanted to REDACT their own child’s beaver drawingbecause they were sure that it only reflected the conflict in his newly divorcing family. He was so concerned about it that he sent another council member came to ask me in person not to share the artwork with the paper or the website. Ahh the good old days.

Good luck with all that redacting.

OVERESTIMATING BEAVER POPULATIONS

Well this jaunty column will hold your attention. The writing is clever even if the beaver management is…er…not.

Robert Ducharme: Mr. Busy and Peter Rabbit

If you live or have lived in a condominium association, nothing gets the dander of owners to rise faster than fights over pets. Some love them; some hate them. Everyone has an opinion.

But dogs and cats are not the only critters that have raised concerns at associations. There are others, sometimes not with the result you would think. And frequently not pets. In 2018 in rural North Carolina an association had a problem with beavers. Yes, beavers. (Mr. Busy is from Lady and the Tramp.) Seems local beaver dams were blocking Pokeberry Creek, causing water to rise and threatening the association’s boardwalks and bridges. (They have 24 miles of trails, so it’s large, rural and wildlife invested.)

Okay, we remember the beavers of Pokeberry Creek, in fact the people who cared about them still have a website. But this is the fun part.

It takes a lot of beavers to create such a problem and the association estimated it had three dozen beavers creating its perceived problem. The board of directors was stumped (no pun intended), and looked at alternatives such as raising or replacing the boardwalks and bridges, but deemed that solution more expensive than necessary, so it called the authorities. The U.S Department of Agriculture came, poked around, evaluated the site, and informed the board of directors that if the board wanted to go forward and solve the problem by removing the beavers, it could be done, but the beavers could not be trapped and relocated, but would have to be killed.

Three dozen beavers on a 7 mile creek? Why only three dozen. Why not a MILLION. If you’re going to pull random numbers out of your ass you may as well pick a bigger one.?

Of course a single family of beavers can build an awful lot of dams to cause condo-chaos. It’s not that hard. A single lilac mailbox can cause condo-chaos on most days. What I HATE about this is that some “experts” came in and cited that number. and everyone just believed it.

The truth is that BEAVERS ARE TERRITORIAL. There is zero way that 36 beavers worked together like furry mischief communists to cause you problems.

I’m sure the numbers were just inflated to make it seem like moving them was too hard.

Why killed and not moved? It seems in North Carolina beavers are, by law, considered a nuisance, and as such the law prohibits trapping and moving them. So they had to be killed; the board of directors was OK with that solution; and it so informed its fellow owners. But the board of directors did not expect the reaction of fellow homeowners and neighbors in the larger community. Outrage would be considered mild. So, two days later the board noted it was going to take a step back and consider other alternatives.

Ahh when the people lead the leaders will follow…they say. It worked in Martinez. Not sure whether it actually works in North Carolina condominiums, but it’s worth a shot.

Unfortunately, try as I might, I cannot find anything that details whether the beavers lived or died. The association’s website doesn’t mention anything about the beavers, though there is a picture of a new boardwalk. So, perhaps the unnamed solution was to pay to raise the bridges and boardwalks. If not, it would seem the board simply decided the beavers weren’t worth a dam. (No word on whether fur sales rose in the community.)

Let me guess what happened. I’m good at these.

There is one amusing side note to this story. Wikipedia tells me that Pokeberry Creek is a tributary to the Haw river. Which interests me because way back 15 years ago when I was frantically trying to find information about coexisting with beavers there were THREE helpful sites on the entire universe of google (imagine that!). One was Beavers: wetlands and wildlife, one was the old beaver solutions website, and the other was the Haw River Assembly.

I just thought you’d want to know.

I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW BEAVERS CAUSED PLAGUE

heidi08 Who's blaming beavers now? July 1, 2021

When you’ve been in the beaver biz as long as I have you’ve pretty much seen it all. Beavers blamed for fires, floods bridge collapses, even hospital medical records loss. But this? This I had not expected. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.

Earliest known strain of plague could have come from a beaver bite

Scientists have found the earliest known strain of plague in the remains of a 5000-year-old hunter gatherer.

The “astonishing” discovery pushes back the first appearance of the plague bacterium (Yersina Pestis) by more than 2,000 years, study senior author Ben Krause-Kyora, a biochemist and archaeologist at the University of Kiel in Germany said in a statement. This date is probably close to when the bacteria first evolved, he added.

The plague-carrying hunter-gatherer, dubbed “RV 2039”, was a 20- to 30-year-old man and one of four people whose remains were excavated from a burial site near the Baltic Sea in Latvia. An analysis of samples from the man’s teeth and bones revealed that he was likely the only one among those buried with the disease. Researchers reconstructed the bacteria’s genome using genome sequencing, and believe the bacteria was likely a part of a lineage that emerged roughly 7,000 years ago, not long after Yersina Pestis split from a predecessor, Yersina pseudotuberculosis.

You see before the plague was carried by fleas it was delivered in a more cumbersome way. An animal bite to a human. And what animal should be blamed that always comes in handy?

The beaver of course. Is there any other?

But the switch to fleas as a means of transmission required the disease to kill its host: an old host’s death encourages fleas to move to a new host and pass on the disease. The researchers speculate that this new gene was responsible for driving the plague to become deadlier.

Because this early strain of Y. pestis was not yet flea-borne, the scientists think that the bacteria originally entered the hunter-gatherer’s body through a rodent bite, possibly from a beaver, a common carrier of the plague predecessor Y. pseudotuberculosis and the species with the most remains recorded at the site. Once there, the course of the disease was fairly slow, with bacteria slowly accumulating in high quantities in the man’s bloodstream until he died.

Now now. Don’t argue your CSI complaints to me. There was circumstantial evidence! The beaver remains were in the area. He was bitten by the castor plague! Don’t argue that maybe beaver bones were scattered around because he fricken’ ATE them. Or that the most likely rodent bite came from a RAT who’s tiny little remains blew away,

It was the beavers fault. There can be no other possible explanation. That’s only too obvious.

The three pandemics the bacteria would go on to cause are among the deadliest biological events in human history. The first pandemic, the Justinian Plague (which occurred roughly between A.D. 542 and 750), may have caused the Mediterranean population to decline by 40% by the end of the sixth century. The second, and most infamous, pandemic caused by the disease was the 14th century European Black Death, which killed approximately 25 million people — between 33 to 50% of Europe’s population. A third, lesser known, pandemic began in 1855 in China’s Yunnan province and killed more than 12 million people in India and China alone.

Look what that rotten beaver started. Covid is a frickin walk in the park compared to the beaver plague!

The people buried around RV 2039 were not infected and he was carefully placed in his grave, two indications that he didn’t carry the later, highly-contagious version of the disease. But because of its presence in his blood, scientists still think the plague bacteria could have killed him.

Rotten Beaver.

The idea that this ancient bacteria replicated slowly and was passed from rodent to human is bolstered by the fact that scientists have found other ancient skeletons infected with Y. pestis at other sites, where people lived very different lifestyles. “Isolated cases of transmission from animals to people could explain the different social environments where these ancient diseased humans are discovered. We see it in societies that are herders in the steppe, hunter-gatherers who are fishing, and in farmer communities — totally different social settings but always spontaneous occurrences of Y. pestis cases,” Krause-Kyora said.

You know how beavers always go around BITING people. And how we read stories about it happening all the time. I mean people strolling innocently down to the creek and and beavers leaping out and biting them to spread pandemics.

It’s amazing anyone in Martinez survived at all.

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BLAME IT ON THE BEAVER PART INFINITY

heidi08 Who's blaming beavers now? April 27, 2021

You know you think you’re contributing in some small way. You like to think what you do makes a difference. And then someone comes along and says “Is this thing on?” And you realize you’ve been writing about beavers every morning for nothing.

At least that’s how it feels when author Frances Backhouse posted this yesterday on the beaver management forum and said “I think this is the FIRST time this ever happened!”

Hundreds lose internet service in northern B.C. after beaver chews through cable

Internet service was down for about 900 customers in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., after a beaver chewed through a crucial fibre cable, causing “extensive” damage.

In a statement, Telus spokesperson Liz Sauvé wrote that in a “very bizarre and uniquely Canadian turn of events,” crews found that a beaver chewed through the cable at multiple points, causing the internet to go down on Saturday at about 4 a.m.

“Our team located a nearby dam, and it appears the beavers dug underground alongside the creek to reach our cable, which is buried about three feet underground and protected by a 4.5-inch thick conduit. The beavers first chewed through the conduit before chewing through the cable in multiple locations,” the statement said.

First time?

This tale is SO OLD that the first time I heard it I fell off my dinosaur and broke my wooden underwear. Remember the beaver that started fires by chewing through the power pole? Or the beaver that ruined medical supplies? Or the beaver that shut down 911 calls by chewing through the cord? Or the beaver that knocked out power at that wedding ceremony?

Gee do you think, just maybe, MAYBE that beavers get blamed kind of like you blamed your little brother when your mom didn’t see who spilled at the table? Do you think it’s an easy way to explain something that should have been avoided or averted or planned for but got overlooked and happened anyway?

I believe if you google the phrase “Blame it on the Beaver” you will get many,many hits. 17 headlines from this website alone. I remember making this graphic 11 years ago for just such an article.

So no, paying attention to crimes against beavers doesn’t matter or change the world in any meaningful way. Even people who are known for being obsessed with beavers do not notice. And people who like to pretend this never happened before so that they don’t look irresponsible for not planning how to avoid it, get away with it when they say it’s unHEARD of.

But sometimes it gets noticed. I remind myself I did make it into the “acknowledgements” section of Ben Golfarb famous book.

“Second, Heidi Perryman has supplied me with an endless stream of stories, sources, studies and quips since our first email exchange. This book would be far drier without her involvement.”

Okay. I’m a book moistener, Maybe I won’t stop just yet.

TINY ADVANCES IN BEAVER MANAGEMENT

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? February 4, 2021

Variety is the spice of life,

I mean when you review beaver news every day you hear the same thing over and over. Residents saying “Don’t kill the beavers because they save water” or “save fish” or “save wildlife”. But you don’t hear this very often.

“We are worried about the abundance of wildflowers and pollinators we had in the area”

Tiny will work with residents on better ‘beaver-friendly’ solutions

Leave it to beaver to create a link between the township and residents of a neighbourhood.

The connection is between residents of Wymbolwood Beach and municipal staff that removed a beaver dam in the area of Skylark Road and Tiny Beaches Road South.

Tiny resident Julia Aronov took up the matter with council at a November meeting. Staff brought back an answer at a January meeting, after putting together the pieces of the puzzle.

“The Township of Tiny is an environmentally focused municipality,” said Tim Leitch, director public works and interim chief administrative officer. “Unfortunately, we do have areas in the municipality that have beaver activity. It is part of our environment and we definitely do not want to do anything to disturb that.”

However, he said, there are some confined areas within the township’s drainage network that experience accumulation of debris due to beaver activity.

‘Tiny’ is in fact a regular sized town in Ontario near Toronto. It’s about 2500 miles from our friends at Fur-bearers but they apparently have gotten the memo anyway. Just listen to this.

“We want them to involve us in this,” she said. “We had so many people saying they could help build a pond leveller.”

According to Nature Conservancy Canada, “pond levellers are glorified pipes that extend through a beaver dam and prevent upstream flooding. Setting the pipe at the desired water level allows any excess water to flow through the pipe to the downstream side of the dam. This allows the beavers to remain in their dam, while alleviating upstream flooding nuisances.”

Aside from this, when Aronov had approached council last year, she had included myriad documents to the effect in her presentation.

“I’d like to see if the township is willing to try a more friendly method,” she said.

Hmm I’m not sure I’d call them “gloried pipe”. But okay. They know what they are and they’re willing to help install one. What does the city say about that?

“The research we’ve done…the devices still require maintenance and a lot of them just make it easier for us to take away the sticks from in front of the culvert than inside the culvert,“ he said. “One commitment that I did make was that where we see a situation where we’re able to anticipate problems occurring, we will reach out for different approaches and hopefully be able to develop some plans to minimize any impact on the beaver activity.

Boy that was some research. You must have done hours and hours of research to come up with that bit of gossip. I can just imagine city staff now, sitting bleary eyed in front of a stack of books at county library in the wee hours trying to keep awake by drinking iced coffee and charcoal biscuits.

Or hey, maybe when he says “research” he means “Bob’s brother in law in YK told him that those things never work!”

The idea isn’t that the build outside the culvert. The idea is that they don’t build at all. Here watch this helpful video and get your grandaughter to slap you several times.

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Maybe leave the research to the librarians next time? And you can get back to filling potholes.

However, he said, there are some confined areas within the township’s drainage network that experience accumulation of debris due to beaver activity.

“With this blockage,” added Leitch, “damage can occur to the infrastructure, private and public property, within hours. It’s our responsibility to ensure these blockages are removed.”

I’m sure if everyone your team works very very hard they can make Tiny advances in how beavers are managed.