It’s impeachment O’clock. There were more than rallies supporting accountability last evening that you didn’t get a chance to see on your teevee. They looked like this.
This morning Ben’s on the radio trying to be nice to beavers while all of National Geographic says they’re ruining the ENTIRE PLANET. No really.
Enjoy?
So I’m finishing up the urban beaver pamphlet, and liking how it looks. Lory is kindly proofing it for me and wrote yesterday that it has a lot of really good information, which I am very happy to hear – because that’s totally what I was going for. This morning there are three city article that cover a 3000 mile radius and cross two nations reminding us that there is a BIG NEED for such things. Let’s do the bad news first.
B.C. government officials say a pesky beaver wreaking havoc to the shoreline of Yellow Lake southwest of Penticton, B.C. will be captured and euthanized by a licensed trapper.
Local resident Dave Campbell is an avid canoeist who expressed concern about the brazen beaver chomping down dozens of trees near a wheelchair accessible ramp to a popular fishing lake.
He said the risk of falling trees near the well-used ramp and walkway to access the lakefront dock is posing a public safety threat and the damaged trees impacts the aesthetics of the area.
“Whole families come here with children — I get a tickle, I get a buzz out of it, seeing people here with their kids playing, running around, having a picnic and enjoying this spot,” he said.
Whole families with children. Really. Good thing you’re killing the beaver because god knows whole families would never turn out if it was allowed to live. You know how destructive beavers are. They just leave a wasteland everywhere they touch.
Campbell said he’d like to see the beaver trapped and re-located or destroyed.
What a thoughtful man. And so very flexible. The article said you canoe? That’s odd. I usually like canoers.
A re-location of the beaver would be logistically difficult and cause the beaver anguish by live trapping and transporting it and introducing it to an unfamiliar area, according to the ministry.
Beaver populations are not considered a conservation concern near Yellow Lake.
We wouldn’t want to cause ANGUISH now would we? Much better to crush it to death until it drowns.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Now to Minnesota for some worries and bad puns.
Can’t a rodent cut down trees without it leading to a bunch of dam questions? (I tried to resist the low-hanging dam puns, but like the beaver, I thought, “gnaw.”)
Yes, Minnesota Department of Transportation officials confirm that a beaver has indeed taken up residence in the highway runoff pond and has taken down a couple of trees. (That’s not the work of a sloppy maintenance crew with tiny axes.)
MnDOT gets a handful of reports of beavers building structures in and around MnDOT structures each year, said Mike Dougherty, MnDOT District 6 director of communications.
MnDOT maintenance crews will work with other agencies to trap and relocate beavers if they block needed drainage, divert water onto roadways or knock trees over roadways. MnDOT works with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Army Corps of Engineers if a tiny corps of (beaver) engineers interferes with drainage infrastructure.
Okay, I am a very cynical jaded woman. But if the department of transport in Minnesota actually uses Hancock traps to humanely relocate problem beavers in safe locatiions I will eat the bug of your choice. You and I know that this is the thing they say when they want crazy vegans to leave them alone. It’s the middle of November for God’s sake. It’s 33 degrees in Rochester and going to snow tonight. Do you really think that sounds like an ideal time to relocate a beaver with no food cache, and no territory?
Lets have some good news for a change. Some VERY GOOD NEWS from our hardworking friends in Port Moody, B.C.
A new management plan for beavers in Port Moody will make it easier for the industrious rodents to co-exist with other species like salmon — and especially humans — says an advocate for the creatures, Judy Taylor-Atkinson.
At its meeting Tuesday, council unanimously endorsed a comprehensive plan that has been in the works for several months and involved input from several groups and individuals representing the interests of beavers and salmon as well as local streamkeepers, and was prepared by JBL Environmental Services. The plan will be implemented with an annual budget of $45,000 and any unused funds will be put into a reserve to cover potential cost overruns in other years.
Jim and Judy, you are my HEROES. You did this. It was soo not easy. It was so not going to happen without you. It was so difficult at every sticking god-forsaken turn, BUT YOU DID THIS!!! 45,000 dollars a hear for a beaver budget? My god. These are practically beaver moguls. What can’t they do?
The need for such a plan was sparked after an attempt by city workers to relocate a family of beavers from Pigeon Creek in the Klahanie neighbourhood went awry and a young kit was drowned in a trap.
Taylor-Atkinson said the plan ensures such a mistake likely won’t happen again as it puts the emphasis on finding ways for the community to coexist with beavers.
This is it, This is what cost you 45000 dollars. If you hadn’t horrified an entire community by locking up a drowning baby then you might have walked away a little more cheaply. You are paying for insensitivity and bad planning. Well that and the salmon.
But Ruth Foster of the Mossom Creek Hatchery on the city’s north shore told council she’s not convinced the dramatic changes to the creek’s dynamics are good the salmon.
“We fear many years of work to restore Suter Brook for fish may be in jeopardy,” she said.
That’s why education is also a major component of the city’s new management plan, Taylor-Atkinson said.
“Beavers are a public relations challenge,” she said.
You’re poor little handicapped salmon. Apparently Judy has been told that hatchery chum can’t jump over a dam and will just stop swimming if they come to any obstruction. You can see why they had to fight EVERY STRETCH OF THE WAY to get this done.
Taylor-Atkinson said the end result may not look pretty, with chopped and gnawed trees scattered across the pond’s banks, but that’s the point.
“The messier a watershed is, the healthier it is,” she said.
As a result of these efforts, Taylor-Atkinson said the beaver family has thrived. It now numbers at least five but could be as large as seven. So far, it’s still the only known beaver colony in the city.
As well, the watershed has benefitted, Taylor-Atkinson said. Chum salmon heading upstream to spawn have been spotted in the fish ladder and a heron has made the pond a regular stop on its rounds looking for tasty morsels that might happen along.
Let us all pray, every morning and every night, to be half as successful, smart and patient as Judy and Jim. Let us strive to make a tenth of the difference they have made for beavers and nature in Port Moody and lets all celebrate an international holiday in their honor!
Hmm. 45000? That could be a pretty awesome Canadian beaver festival. Just saying.
Every now and then you run into a city that has dealt with some beaver-killing pushback in the past. A bunch of residents circulated a petition or picketed and don’t want beavers killed. The city officials calm down the rabid press saying ‘there there’ as loudly as they can and someone puts in a garden rake and calls it a beaver deceiver and promises get made not to trap the beavers again unless they really really have to.
Last may we took a visit to Cumberland Rhode Island where the exact scene was played out, only instead of a rake they used a giant metal cage which I said looked like it was leftover from shark week. Remember?
Oh you know what they say. We tried being humane and it didn’t work. Now we have NO choice. It’s like your mother picking up the pieces of the broken flintstones glass and saying “I guess we just can’t have NICE THINGS!”
Cue the failed trail.
CUMBERLAND – Walking along the Old Road Trail at the Cumberland Monastery, a path of straw now covers the muddy ground where a wooden footbridge used to stand.
Residents wondering when the bridge, previously located at a spot near the town’s highway garage, will be restored may be out of luck, as town officials told The Breeze that there are no current plans to put the bridge back.
“That trail is going to have to be abandoned,” said Frank Stowik, head of the town’s Highway Department, According to Stowik, the trail is currently wet and unusable, and while the water table is at its lowest right now, after a couple of good rainstorms, it will be under water again.
The town had added the “beaver deceivers,” gravel, and bridge after a family of beavers moved into the area in 2014 and caused the trail to routinely wash out, Stevens explained.
We tried it your way. Now you have lots of beavers, a bigger pod and no bridge. See how that worked out? I guess the Monastery trail is just going to have to be closed. Get a stairmaster. The city can’t do anything about it.
You’ve seen these kind of kabuki dares before. Yesterday for example when Pacific Gas and Electric said, okay if you’re determined to sue us for fires started by our power lines then we’ll turn the power off when there’s fire danger and make you remember how important we are in the first place. Gosh we might have to close the caldecott tunnel. That will be hard on your economy won’t it? Get a stair master.
Because of the time and expense related to the wetlands permitting process, Stevens said that the Rhode Island Land Trust Council is trying to ask the RIDEM for a waiver for beaver-related public trail management, hoping the agency will be more flexible when it comes to these specific scenarios.
To ask for the bridge back, the permitting process will require a survey, engineering drawings, wetlands delineation, and consultants, which takes time, Stevens said.
“Ultimately whether we did it right away or down the line, it was clear it had to be removed,” he said.
Wait, I know this one! There are specific rules and costs for fixing a trail in wetlands that you’ve dragged your heels on for years. And now you’re hoping that maybe you can use the beavers to waive some of those requirements! Just like Martinez did when it pretended the sheetpile along a certain mogul’s property like was a beaver project so they could use restricted funds to pay for it. Gosh there really is NOTHING new under the sun.
That video ends somber because during that work was the first time we ever saw mom’s eye condition and even though I don’t think it had anything to do with why she died 16 months later I am sure the stress of having your home destroyed had something to do with her health. Ancient history. I guess that’s all blood under the bridge now, as Edward Albee once said.
I bet you didn’t even know that the when Ben Goldfarb first sent me his manuscript for review it had a section on the monstrous Martinez sheetpile story and as much as I wanted to shame the city for their fraud and expose it all I ultimately begged him to take it out because I thought it would make too many powerful voices too angry and harm the chances of whatever beavers we had left.
I figured at the time I got one get one coupon for change and Ben who was basically finished with the book and had his editor’s blessing to everything he had written, would maybe consider the change out of the goodness of his heart. Believe me when I say there were other places I wanted to use that coupon, in the description of my home as full of beaver tchotchkees for example, or to make me sound slightly smarter and less kooky than I did. But I nobly used the coupon for the beavers. And thankfully, he agreed to change it. So the sheetpile story will remained untold- except by me on this website which we all know perfectly well nobody reads.
Hey maybe that manuscript will be worth something on ebay one day. He’s getting pretty famous. Hmm too bad its not handwritten.
If you are a regular reader of this sight you will remember that this respected college, the Alma Mater of Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, has had beaver problems before. Many times before. So many times, in fact, that the campus earned its own beaver killing headline “Welle-SLAY-college and a rewritten anthem.
Ahh that was some mighty good spoofing. I’m partial to a nice beaver killing alma mater. Looks like times aren’t changing nearly as fast in the ivory tower as they are everywhere else.
Wellesley Department of Public Works employees could be seen Wednesday removing debris from a dam constructed by beavers at the State Street pond near the track and football field parking lot. The beavers’ project was obstructing the culvert and causing flooding concerns along the Fuller Brook Path, according to Natural Resources Commission Director Brandon Schmitt.
The town left the beavers alone. Wellesley contracts with an outside firm for beaver removal/relocation in some cases, though only between Nov. 1-April 15.
Pinocchio! Beaver relocation is illegal in your state. Are you saying the DPW commits crimes November through April 15? Or are you just euphamizing readers into a foggy non-awareness of the T-word. Lethal Trapping.
“As the beavers are still there (and busy as beavers), it’s very likely the debris will be back and have to be removed again,” according to the town. “We work very hard to find a way to coexist with the beavers.”
Until November. When we can kill them.
A contraption called a Beaver Deceiver (best animal thwarting device name since the Mosquito Deleto) has been used to prevent damming at Rosemary Brook But State Street pond doesn’t have the depth and size to allow for this technique there.
Here that Skip? Your name gets a compliment, even though the school can’t be bothered to hire your expertise. Here’s guessing they wouldn’t spring for Mike either, even though he’s an hour away.
Better just to complain and kill at regular intervals, then find a reporter who is so gullible she can lie about it with a straight face.
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.
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,
