Category: Who’s blaming beavers now?

“Quick! To the Batmobile! Beavers are sounding too good!”

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now? October 29, 2015

I am certain now, that somewhere there in a highrise in Stockholm or Chicago is a beaver war-room where authorities with clipboards are watching a multitude of screens – dismayed as news promotes beavers as good for water storage and nitrogen removal – so that whenever the news gets too alarmingly positive this secret cabal of beaver-blockers activate their many lobbyists and researchers and make sure headlines like these dominate the news cycle until the coast is clear.

What, you think I’m being paranoid?

A potential downside to the beaver’s comeback

While the structures are marvels of natural construction, they also change the chemistry of the water they’re in. They affect the sediments, water flow, oxygen content and temperature, creating conditions that help convert mercury into methylmercury. A few studies have suggested dams can boost levels of this form of mercury, which can cause developmental and neurological problems in animals and people. Oded Lavnoni, Frauke Ecke and colleagues wanted to take a closer look.

Beavers are wreaking havoc across Europe, scientists warn

Methylmercury, converted from regular mercury, forms as beaver dams alter the sediments, water flow, dissolved oxygen concentration and temperature of the water.

Over a two-year study period, researchers sampled water downstream from 12 new beaver dams and found that methylmercury levels were 3.5 times higher than the water upstream.

Oh my goodness, how terrifying!

Hey public, you know all those toxins we poured into the streams years ago? When we told you they were harmless and good for you, while they helped us get filthy rich – but actually turned out to be pretty dire? Well, after all those years of birth defects and cancer, they got covered up with mud in the streams, thank heavens.

And now those rotten beavers are digging some of them UP! Isn’t that terrifying?

The truly funny part of this ‘discovery’ is that it is being reported by “The Chemical Society”, who kindly brought beavers the mercury in the first place, so they should really know.

Duncan Haley, the esteemed beaver researcher in Norway, had this to say about the headlines:

So far as I know the paper on this isn’t out yet. I’d guess that on a few dams levels will have been raised from very, very trivial from a health viewpoint, to very trivial. Journalists love scary headlines.

So for the meantime we’re not going to be alarmed by this ‘chemical society’ news. Yes, people are and have been worried that beavers dig up mercury. They have worried about this for 50 years. No one bothers to report that if they hadn’t poured mercury into the streams to squeeze every last ounce of gold from the rocks in the forst place there wouldn’t be anything for them to dig up. (At least that’s why we have it in California. I’m not sure about all of Europe.) I’m sure its greed-based.

Those headlines are all thunder and no rain, so I think we should focus our energy on a much better one.

Can Beavers Help Save Los Angeles From Drought and Floods??

Years of drought have plagued California, and though rains are supposedly on the way, they might pose their own problems, like mudslides and flooding. Offering a possible solution to issues of both too much and not enough water is Britt Sheflin, a private chef who has applied for a $100,000 grant from LA2050 and the Goldhirsch Foundation to “Strategically reintroduce native beaver populations back into the dwindling watersheds around LA County,” using techniques that would have the beavers “trained” to build their trademark dams where they’re needed, while keeping them from being destructive.

The return of the beaver, Sheflin argues, could help mitigate drought (like the one California is in now) and erosion, plus help cut back on flash floods (which Los Angeles might be having more of if the predicted El Niño shows up). Sound too good to be true? Sheflin says it’s been tried and it’s worked in Canada, Nevada, and elsewhere in California, though she notes that Los Angeles would be “the first major metropolitan area to embrace this cost-effective solution.” There’s more here on how beavers can help out in a drought—researchers in Canada have found that “Even during drought, where beaver were present, there was 60 per cent more open water than those same areas during previous drought periods when beaver were absent.”

Don’t you love that cool beaver in shades? There are five days left to vote, and the LAist contacted Britt yesterday, so this is getting some great attention. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that this will, even if it doesn’t win, raise enough awareness to start a murmur across the land that sounds something like,

“why the hell aren’t we doing this?”

Gridley Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 28, 2015

The Grey lodge Wildlife Area is a richly maintained 9100 acre wetland in Gridley CA managed by CDFW. It is a sweet spot for thousands of migrating birds; bringing birdwatchers, fishermen, duck hunters and wildlife enthusiasts. Visitors and groups of school children take wildlife tours of the area. They even have a drive-through viewing loop for the less active visitors. But you won’t be at all surprised to learn that they have a constantly uninvited guest that gums up their waterworks and causes less than joy.

Recently Grey Lodge contracted local filmmaker Jay Goble to do a wildlife management film. They had lots of information they wanted him to include on the pesky visitor, (because messages of intolerance won’t promote themselves). Jay needed some footage but their haunted beavers are pretty hard to see. So he thought he’d come to Martinez and contacted me. Here’s one of Jay’s recent films for CDFW.

Pintail Banding – Vimeo from Jay Goble on Vimeo

We had a nice chat and I filled him in on our absent beavers but also the other places they could be viewed, (although from now on is grim winter invisible-beaver time everywhere). We agreed that summer would be a much better time to film. We also talked about the negative earful he had gotten about beavers from GLWA and some of the research about how important they are to water, salmon, frogs, nitrogen removal, invertebrates and all the wildlife that relies on those species. He was really surprised to hear the OPPOSITE of what he had been told. And intrigued.

I made sure I told him about managing beaver challenges with flow devices and how ours had worked successfully for nearly a decade. I told him about looking for beavers in Napa, American Canyon and Winters. And said we would be happy to help with 8 years footage if he needed it.

Afterwards I thought of the (by comparison) nearly infinite resources of CDFW which can pay top notch filmmakers to spread their “beavers are bad” message. And the little mouthpiece of this website, which has such a short range and narrowly finite budget.

And I thought, if he’s calling ME for advice on how to film beavers, I guess we’re doing okay.

What Scott Simon meant to say…

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 26, 2015

NPR’s Scott Simon was kind enough to provide the audio, so I added my own finishing touches. I especially like the first slide and the fifth slide. But it’s all fun, and will only steal 65 seconds of your valuable monday morning, so enjoy!

I LOVED making the flying beavers. I could do that all day. That’s worth every second of labor it took to put together. Onward and upward. This morning there’s some assorted beaver news, with beaver bemoaning, beaver barometers and beaver benefits.

I’ll show you what I mean.

Busy beaver destroying area around Yellowknife visitor centre

An industrious beaver has been wreaking havoc at Yellowknife’s Northern Frontier Visitor Centre lately. “This beaver has totally changed the appearance of our landscape, having removed an entire area of trees,” says Tyler Dempsey, a staff member at the centre.

The beaver started building his (or her) lodge in Frame Lake, in downtown Yellowknife, about a week ago, using vegetation from the property of the visitor centre to do so. The underwater lodge is about three metres from the lakefront building.

Dempsey says while visitors, and even staff members, have enjoyed watching the busy beaver at work from such a close proximity, they couldn’t ignore the amount of damage it was doing to the property.

“An entire area has almost entirely been cleared out resulting from the beaver’s behaviour,” says Dempsey. “The rapid pace and productivity he’s been able to do this with — we would see massive changes, even overnight.”
Chicken wire around tree

When enough was enough, visitor centre staff wrapped their remaining trees in chicken wire to prevent the beaver from using them as lumber.

Dempsey says that seemed to help, but admitted that he and other staff at the visitor centre probably wouldn’t be that sad if the beaver chose another locale altogether.

“If he did go for greener pastures, I think we would probably welcome that move.”

(I know what you’re thinking. Yellowknife has a visitor’s center?)

Even though it’s 2500 miles away in the remote Yukon, I would remind readers that ‘reluctantly wrapping trees’ is pretty massive progress for YK where a trapper as recently as 2012 reported in the paper that beavers could “Bounce from their tails and leap to attack you.” (That got a letter from me which was published locally). I’m going to count small blessings and be happy that people in this remote Yukon province are enjoying watching the beavers work at all, even if they are using the wrong materials to protect trees. Maybe this bit of beaver instruction will teach itself.

Onto the beaver as barometer article from Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia’s winter will be short, outdoorsman predict

Want to know what’s in store this winter? Chest-high snowbanks or rivers of rain? Joe Googoo of Wagmatcook First Nation in Cape Breton thinks he knows. Googoo was taught by his father and grandfather to read clues in the natural world.

Googoo said he has noticed beavers building their dams in lakes instead of streams.

“Yes, the beaver are the best indication right now,” he said. “I went to around 20 or 30 streams. There were beaver in there last winter. There’s nothing there now. They all went down [last winter] because the streams are so shallow, they’re easy to flood.”

Googoo predicts the water will be high in streams next spring, indicating a lot of precipitation over the winter.

Um, okay.

I guess its not worth considering any other variables that might be at play regarding beavers building in streams versus lakes. Food, predators, or trapping for instance. I remember as a child pointing at woolly worms and exclaiming that it was going to be a cold winter. And we celebrate groundhog day on a national level.

I guess if we’re going to believe a man whose last name is literally baby noises we might deserve what we get?

This last bit of beaver chivalry is generous even by beaver standards.

Beavers save the Catawba River from sewage spill

Thank beavers for a cleaner Catawba River, Charlotte’s water and sewer utility says. Charlotte Water initially reported that 3,660 gallons of sewage overflowed into the Catawba in northwest Charlotte on Wednesday night.

Thursday, the utility corrected the report: “The spill last night did reach a Catawba River tributary but did not reach the Catawba River. A beaver dam strategically located contained the spill.”

Pumping is underway to suck the spill from the tributary. No word on the health of the beavers.

From a city that kills so many beavers it has been regularly featured on this website, I’m going to say that it’s mighty kind of beavers to save your asses when you’ve been trapping them for years and years. No word on the health of the beavers? Do you really need word to imagine their fate after living and working every in your filth?

Just watch, after Charlotte lets the beaver soak up their sewage spill they will say they need to be eliminated because they spread Giardisis.

Not Enough: The AE Report

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Environmental, stupid solutions, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Why We Care September 30, 2015

Did you ever have an arch enemy? I mean someone who thwarts your every move, foils your every plan, and seems to lurk just over your shoulder where you can never, never see them? AE’s are respected and listened to by all the wrong people and whatever work you do to dismiss what they say it’s too late because they’ve already gone on to speak to the next group that you’re going to have to try and re-educate.

The Martinez Beavers have had lots of enemies, city council, public works, hired environmental consulting firms, a few reporters, handsomely paid attorneys and various property owners. But we only ever had one AE. And if you don’t know who that was by now I’m not doing my job. Here she is talking at the April 2008 council meeting. And here I am over her shoulder looking inceredulous. I believe among her many erroneous points were;

that our beavers were leaving (or had already left),
that every flow device she had ever seen installed had failed,
and that trees can be protected with blackberry bushes because beaver never eat them as they dislike the thorns.

Originally Mary Tappel offered her services when our city was responding to beaver problems and she was supposed to present formally to the beaver subcommittee. We all got copies of her resume in preparation. But I happened by chance to recognize her name from an article about the Elk Grove beaver fiasco in the Sacramento Bee, which my folks used to get delivered to their home in the foothills. I remember being jarred by her comment in the article at the time that the beavers had to be killed because being sterilized was stressful. I thought, ‘isn’t being killed stressful?’ Then heard later that she was coming to Martinez to offer l her skills.

At the time she told the reporter for the Gazette that beavers “breed for 50 years”. I remember because when I read the article I wrote him and asked whether it was a typo. The editor said ‘no’ and called her to check that he got the quote correctly. And just like that my AE announced that she would not present to the subcommittee, because we were too inflamed and hostile, and she would just meet behind the scenes with city staff.

This meant that she could whisper her poisons unchallenged into their willing ears. Telling staff once that the father beaver should be killed so that the mother would have to mate with her sons when they grew up and slow population growth in that way. No. really.

God only knows what else she said.

The mayor liked her council so much that he invited her secretly to the April 2008 meeting where the subcommittee results were going to be presented. I remember how surprised we were to see her in the hallway outside. To this day I wonder what funds changed hands to get her there. That same night I had suddenly found out I was going to be the one to present our results. No warning, just like that go ahead and talk to 200 people. And then Mary would go after me and dispute everything I said.

It turned out to be okay though, because she was not very convincing with her waving cardboard sign. My luck. And she went away and we got what we wanted, so that seemed like a victory.

Imagine how excited I was when Jack Sanchez of S.A.R.S.A.S heard my talk in Santa Barbra and invited me to come follow her presentation on beavers in Auburn. The shoe was finally on the other foot! I was so happy. I pulled together the latest fish data and they said the talk was the best attended and the best delivered they ever had. I was on cloud 9 when it was over. Especially because of the intelligent comments of one listener from FWS who knew everything about the fish issue and could soothe anxieties at the end of the talk. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

One particularly knowledgeable young man introduced himself as Damion Ciotti from the Habitat Restoration Division of US Fish and Wildlife Service. We connected several years ago and he was very interested in our work in Martinez. I made sure he left with a copy of Mike Callahan’s DVD. You can’t imagine how helpful his comments were in soothing the beaver-disbelievers in the room. I couldn’t have orchestrated it better than to let fish savvy folk do the defending for me!

So I was stunned to hear a few months ago that my AE was invited BACK to S.A.R.S.A.S. to speak on beavers this September. Again? I got word yesterday from Damion that he attended her talk and was dismayed to hear her describe beaver as responsible for “Ecosystem Collapse“. He tried to ask pointed questions but realized she didn’t have any sources for her info but anecdote. She apparently said that there was no region in California where beaver should ever be introduced.

Ecosystem Collapse. If you google the phrase with the word beavers you get zero hits. Only articles about them being a keystone species. I guess the research world doesn’t think like Mary Tappel.

Damion said she introduced herself as working for the state, and he was worried about the influence she might have with policy. She is still staff on the regional waterboards, which is a division of the CAEPA. (Bravely protecting the environment from beavers, apparently). She is still marching around calling herself a beaver expert, and even boasts of her work with Martinez on her resume.

Mary also dealt with beaver management questions and in foothill areas such as Granite Bay, Loomis, & Roseville; and towards the Bay/Delta area in Martinez, and to the south in Elk Grove, all in creeks and small retention basins. Mary’s involvement in foothill areas and smaller streams has always included salmonid passage concerns.

What a coincidence. With the exception of Martinez those cities are the very ones that issued the most depredation permits. Isn’t that just an amazing coincidence?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is not to say she hasn’t learned anything over the years. She used to preach devotedly that beavers ruined salmon passage, and now she says the salmon make their way around dams. Which is something. But I realize, sadly and with no small amount of panic, it’s not enough. I haven’t done enough. People want to hear what she says because they want to get rid of things that are inconvenient. She has a resonant message to deliver. And they want to hear what I say less because co-existence seems like it means work. Screw the salmon. Or the frogs. Just let me do what I want to do, sound environmental and give me cover. So I can get away with it.

I haven’t done enough. And even though, if you google her name, the warnings of this website are nearly the only thing that come up, even though I was able to follow her talk on her home turf in the very county where they kill the most beavers in the entire state, and even though I talked BWW into taking her off their resource list for beaver experts in CA: It’s not enough. I’m not doing enough.

My arch enemy continues to influence the American River area and all its surrounds. She has a powerful platform and a respected government job to grant her credibility. And I haven’t beaten her.

Yet.

A bucketful of hope…

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 23, 2015

Great video from Joe Wheaton and the beaver smarties in Utah. This came out in July but I must have been buried under a pile of festival preparations and I missed it. Don’t make the same mistake! It’s worth your time.

Any ideas how we can get the governor of California to watch this every night before bed? Come on Jerry, do we really want to be behind Utah in water management skills?

Our good friend Deidre sent this to me yesterday and I was happy to see good beaver news out of the Dakotas again. I mean almost entirely good news. They still have some work to do. See for yourself.

A Pond to Call Home: How Beavers Pick the Best Dam Water

Beaver ponds are a good indicator of beaver activity as well as beaver colony density, according to recent findings. Carol Johnston, lead author of a new study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and professor at South Dakota State University, first examined how shallow marsh helps predict declining beaver numbers in Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park in the late 1980s. More recently, she set out with her co-author Steve Windels to see if this is still the case.

What? I’m sorry. What? Could you say that again? Beaver ponds are good indicators of beaver population? Are you kidding me? Like spider webs are a good indication of spiders? Or gopher holes are a good indication of gophers? And someone published this in a journal? Seriously?

It gets better. (Worse).

how shallow marsh helps predict declining beaver numbers

Am I reading this wrong? Shallow water predicts fewer beavers? You mean like less money in your 401K predicts a ‘decrease’ in the stock market? Or hiring fewer policemen predicts an ‘decrease’ in crime?

Are you maybe confusing cause and effect here? Should you maybe replace the word “predicts” with the word “reflects”?

“Now, it looks like pond water is more of a predictor of active beaver colonies,” Johnston said. “When beavers create dams, they impound water. It’s intuitive that beaver ponds are related to the number of beavers.”

Ohh good. Whew. It’s intuitive for some of us apparently. Not the Journal of Wildlife Management or The Wilderness Society I guess. Maybe the reporter misunderstood. Carol Johnston is a beaver believer from way back and a name we’ve talked about before. I’m guessing the whole thing is a misunderstanding and what she’s basically saying is if you want more water you need more beavers. Or something like that.

I hope.

I had to play with my toy again yesterday, although this was WAY more work that it seems because I had to splice up the audio first before I even approached the visuals. I hope you feel inclined to share it with some concrete thinkers who need very clear beaver education.

There was a exciting beaver drama yesterday. Kelly Davidson Chou of Mt. View Sanitation contacted me saying she had a tiny beaver kit at the visitor’s center looking unwell. She didn’t even know there was a family on sight (although they’ve had beavers historically and probably were the parents of our original beavers.)

She brought it to Lindsay wildlife hospital and it weighted in and just under 3.5 lbs. (Which makes it too small to be our 4th kit who disappeared, although there was a brief moment of crazy hope.) We’re trying to locate his family at the moment, but I thought you’d want to see his adorable tiny self, that fit so easily into a 5 gallon bucket. The photos are from Kelly, who I’m SO JEALOUS OF at the moment that she got to retrieve and transport this little heart-breaker. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.