Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

REASONS TO KILL BEAVERS: PART XCLMIIXVII

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 8, 2019

Indiana had a story that got my attention this week, and no, it wasn’t about Mayor Pete.

Seems some beavers are going to be killed in swamp nature preserve because they’re making things too swampy. The preserve features the increasingly rare Overcup Oak, also known as the swamp oak and the water oak which is known to thrive in swampy conditions but who’s seedlings need sunlight and dry ground to start out.

The overcup Oak is so named because its cap almost entirely cover its acorn. And it’s one of the trees that used to flourish all acrossed the beaver flooded south, but now has become inseasingly rare, Rare enough apparently that they’re willing to kill beavers to maintain it.

Indiana cracks down on destructive beavers at preserve

MOUNT VERNON, Ind. (AP) — Wildlife officials are culling beavers and demolishing their dams in a swampland nature preserve in southwestern Indiana to protect a species of oak tree rarely found in the state. Overcup oaks thrive in swamps, but beaver dams in the Twin Swamps Nature Preserve have elevated water levels so high that the trees have been damaged or killed, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.

Now, the state has stepped in to combat the threat at the 500-acre (200-hectare) property in Mount Vernon.

“It’s actually altering the very habitat the nature preserve was designed to protect,” said Tom Swinford, the program manager at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “We had to take action.”

Hey you know what else kills Overcap Oaks? DROUGHT! FIRE! Gosh I hope when you kill all those swamp maintainers you don’t actually endanger them even more. Here’s what the SF guide has to say about it.

Fires brought on by severe drought in some areas may decimate large numbers of overcup oak seedlings and damage the bark of older trees, exposing them to disease produced by the heart rot fungus.

Hmm that doesn’t look good. I hope Twin swamps has some kind of plan to save water now that all the beavers are dead.

Swinford said beavers thrive in the southwestern nature preserve because they’re a tough species that don’t have many predators to keep their natural balance.

“There will always be beavers at Twin Swamps,” he said.

Hmm are you sure about that?

Beavers are great at making wet and swampy lands where cypress and wateroak can thrive, I sure hope you have a plan about how to replace the wetland after all the beavers are dead. I guess you can always change the name to twin-gulch preserve?

BEAVER CIVICS LESSON

The sad story of Nevers park in Connecticut continues to be told. This article yesterday shows hown the town is struggling to blame miscommunication on social media for the confusion.

3 beavers gone as town, residents prepare for more

SOUTH WINDSOR — With the three Nevers Park beavers now gone, and town officials unsure if or when others will return, many residents are pushing for ways to coexist and avoid trapping or harming them.

Beavers were responsible for felling nearly 200 trees in the park last year, and Parks officials said trapping was an uncommon last resort to prevent further damage and public safety issues there.

Parks officials plan to hold a forum in the coming weeks with representatives from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and a beaver specialist from Massachusetts suggested by residents upset over the way the town has handled the matter. The forum will discuss the damage caused by the creatures and how best to prevent future problems.

That’s Mike Callahan who will be explaining how to prevent flooding by using a pond leveler. Just for historical perspective out own beaver subcommittee meeting early on, maybe the second one, featured Skip Lisle talking about flow devices and how they work. He was on his way to New Mexico to do a training there, and said he could return when it was done. It was all so new to me that I can barely remember it all, but i know he stood at the back of the room, and was not invited to the podium.

Over 1,850 people have signed an online petition created weeks ago by Abbe Road resident Stephen Straight that calls for town officials to meet with the beaver specialist and implement his suggested solutions.

Straight said he is working to keep “the next beavers from being needlessly killed.”

Not all residents are on board, however.

One, who preferred not to be named as the issue has gone viral on social media, defended town officials and said the town had to make a tough decision to put residents’ quality of life first.

People spewing hate at town officials on Facebook seem to be misguided, he said, and they haven’t paid attention to the other methods of preventing tree damage and flooding that the town tried

“There were too many factors that affect public health, safety, and property in place to allow for the beavers to coexist” with Nevers Park activity, town officials said in a statement this month.

Ahhh the anonymous opposition. I remember that. At every beaver meeting there was a single dominating voice of a certain wealthy property owner who never even showed up to express his thoughts. He didn’t have to. He had made sure that ever single council member already knew them – and knew that they were intimately tied to his future campaign contributions. Money talks. Welcome to the family, looks like you got yourselves a horse race.

In an effort to dissolve misinformation about the trapping spread on social media, town officials clarified that the town did not spend any money to trap beavers, and the traps used are humane and meant to catch the animals alive without causing any injury.

Removing the beavers from this particular park was not an easy decision to make, officials said in the prepared statement, and they understand “the passion that residents have for animals.”

We would have done the right thing it was easier. Honest. As it was we trapped the beaver with pillows and cotton candy so it wouldn’t hurt them one whit. Scouts honor.

Why do reporters let them say these kinds of things? Resident Steve Straight had this to say;

I believe the reporter did her best, but the article contains inaccuracies:

First, there is no way the beavers were captured alive. We have eyewitnesses, have photos of the actual traps used. (See below.) People spoke with the trapper at the time he was trapping. The wording makes it seem as if the beavers were caught unharmed and perhaps relocated somewhere. Relocating is illegal in Connecticut.

The wording of the first sentence is unclear: “Town officials unsure if or when they will return” is very misleading. Those beavers are dead. The only questions is, What will the town do when new beavers come to the pond? Have them killed, too? And what about the beavers after them? And after them?

The system Mike Callahan would install, for $1,575, would prevent ANY flooding. The pond is naturally four feet deep, and beavers only need three. (That money could easily be raised privately.) Trees could easily be wrapped or painted.

From the reporter’s point of view, I understand how difficult it is to be accurate, especially given what town officials are saying.

I urge the town to coexist with the next beavers instead of killing them. And the next ones. And the next ones.

Steve is kinder than I could be. But I will say this much. The town needs to learn to coexist – but not just with its beavers. With its residents. With all those 1850 voters who didn’t want the beavers killed. Coexist with them. City officials can’t make them disappear by blaming social media. And they can’t jeep telling them bedtime stories by saying the beavers ‘went to live on the farm“.

Here’s a friendly reminder courtesy of our own beaver meeting and Middlechild Productions ‘Beavers las vegas‘.

Untitled from Heidi Perryman on Vimeo.

BEAVERS FOR ANARCHY?

heidi08 Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 10, 2019

Now you know that not just any beaver-killing article is going to get my attention. This ain’t my first rodeo, after all, and I’ve written about pretty much every variation you can think of regarding beavers flooding basketball courts or storm drains. You have to exceptional these days to get MY attention, with such a dazzling array of beaver stupid.

But this from Searcy Arkansas qualifies.

Breaking down beaver dams

Residents had been complaining about their lawns flooding in Skyline Meadows, which is directly beneath the hills of Skyline Drive, due to clutter in Gin Creek and beaver problems in a privately-owned wetland.

Beaver dams were threatening to flood the Skyline Meadows neighborhood until Wednesday when Harding University students broke through them during Bisons for Christ.

Now to be clear, the article doesn’t mean actual bisons. It means youth volunteers that team up during lent to do various jobs working hard. Because you know that old saying, “work like a – bison”. (?)

Beavers had dammed up a drainage ditch for all the water runoff for the right end of Skyline Meadows into Gin Creek, and had created around an acre of standing water that varied from an inch or two in depth to about 16 inches deep as of Wednesday. There are also multiple larger dams in that piece of Gin Creek itself, which is owned by Southwest Middle School.

“We’ll get those 4-5-inch rains and you see 2 inches flowing down the street,” Leroy Painter said of water draining into the nature preserve. “You can’t even see the street [for all the running water].”

“The No. 1 thing I can think of,” Leroy Painter said of problems with beavers, “is the mosquito problem [due to still water not running off], and the concern that eventually the water will have nowhere to go.”

You understand of course, BISON may be for christ, but obviously beavers are satanists. Bringing in mosquitoes and making baptismal ponds in everyone’s garden just wily-nily. They must be stopped by actions that require all hands on deck. Remember, it takes a village.

About 1,500 students were involved in 150 projects all over Searcy and White County, but it was men’s social club Gamma Sigma Phi that went as a group to work on clearing the beavers dams and wood buildup due both to beavers chewing trees off at the trunk and trees dying thanks to being in standing water all the time.

“That’s what it’s basically all about,” Gamma Sigma Phi member Matthew Morgan of Springfield, Mo., said of working on the project for Bisons for Christ, “to give back to the community and serve others.”

Nate Ham of Marion said the project was close to his heart because a friend of his lost his home in a flood two or three years ago when the flooding had gotten very serious in the West Memphis/Marion area.

“It’s not a good thing when houses get water to them,” Ham said. “His trailer almost floated away with the water.”

Well now, an article like this comes along once in a great while and you have to treat it like the precious message it is. You have to tuck the phrase “Bisons for Christ” into your arsenal and treat it with the full glory it deserves. I’m not greedy. I don’t expect it to get any better than this.

“Hopefully we’ll solve the problem before there is one,” Gamma Sigma Phi queen, Danielle O’Shields of Cabot said. (A queen is an honorary female member of a men’s social club.)

So these particular bisons for Christ have a QUEEN which gets to be an honorary member of their fraternity brotherhood. Letting a woman be in your special man-club. Golly, it just doesn’t get better than that. Except their’s a photo of the queen hauling refuge from the satanic dam. I gotta admit,

That’s a little better.

Searcy Parks and Recreation Director Mike Parsons said the beavers have been particularly bad this year, and it has been a struggle keeping them from causing damage in the areas where beavers go, which he said is primarily in the section of Gin Creek north of Berryhill Park and in the Searcy Soccer Complex.

“When they’re by Berryhill Park we normally just break up the dams and they go somewhere else,” Parsons said. “It’s a bit more difficult at the soccer complex. They build their dams and block our drainage pipes, causing lots of issues.”

Parsons said when the parks have a beaver problem, Searcy Parks and Recreation contacts the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for a referral for a trapper who will legally catch and relocate the beavers.

“The problem we have with beavers is, unless you get rid of them, they keep coming back to the same general areas,” Parsons said.

Game, set and match. That makes this the best beaver-killing article of 2019 and it’s only April. For those of you keeping score at home that would be a full score of five outta five on the beaver-ignorance meter.

The mistaken belief that beavers cause mosquitoes
The faulty effort to destroy beaver dam to get rid of beavers
Thinking beavers leave if their dam is destroyed.
Writing that you hire a trapper to ‘relocate beaver’
The belief that UNLESS they are trapped they will return.

That’s a full house team Searcy! You really outdid yourself and gave us beaver-heathens something to sing about. Of course if you weren’t committed to the idea that beavers are NOT for Christ, would have given you something to really sing about.

“They got the whole pond, in their hands.
They got the whole deep pond, in their hands.
They got the whole pond, in their hands.
They got the whole pond in their hands.

They got the otters and the fishes, in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the muskrats and the turtles, in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the dragonflies and crawdads in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the heron and the salmon, in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the water and the willow in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the watershed renewal in their ponds (etc refrain.)

They got the climate change survival in their ponds (etc refrain.)

Did I leave anything out?

INTERNATIONAL BEAVER AFTER-GLOW

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? April 8, 2019

International beaver day did not disappoint. It produced an excellent article from Wildlife Defenders, some amazing video and one classically civic story that will reminds us all of our humble beginnings. Let’s start with the fun stuff for a change and end with the call to action.

Coexisting with Beavers

Today is International Beaver Day, so let’s celebrate my favorite ecosystem engineer and the ways that Defenders helps people coexist with beaver.

First, Why Beaver?

Beavers are an important part of a healthy wetland and forest ecosystem. Beaver cut down trees and shrubs, eat wetland plants, and build amazing dams and lodges. These activities raise water levels, slow water speed, and change water direction, creating a dynamic wetland complex. In doing so, they can increase a wetland’s area, biodiversity, and water quality, as well as maintain more stable water temperatures.

Isn’t that an amazing photo? Yesterday I looked at with adoring eyes and thought it probably wasn’t in a natural setting because the water under mom looks very shallow. It’s unlikely a beaver would put herself in such inescapable conditions if there were another option. I looked up the photo credit (Chris Canipe) and found this video of beaver relocation which me smile very much,

So cute going to their new home, which means my theory about an ‘unnatural setting’ is likely correct. It’s a great article though so lets take in some more.

Beaver are an important ecosystem engineer and the habitats they create benefit many native species. In the west, for example, 90% of species are dependent on wetlands, such as those created by beaver, at some point during their lives. In beaver ponds, freshwater fish can find more food or a larger variety of food. They can also spend the winter in the deepest parts of a pond. The shallow pond areas are great for young fish to find food and shelter while they grow. Migratory birds can use beaver ponds as “stepping stones” while they migrate to and from summer breeding grounds. Each pond can also support several different kinds of birds with the large variety of habitats created by damming, flooding, and tree felling. In spring, beaver ponds are a nightclub for amphibians, whose eggs and young tadpoles like the warmer water temperatures and shelter provided by vegetation near the shores.

Beaver are so important and have so many benefits for other species, including many species that are now imperiled, that Defenders works to restore them to places where they will create and enhance habitat for all the other critters we also care about. In the Rocky Mountains, boreal toad and native cutthroat trout are some examples of the imperiled species benefiting from our beaver restoration projects.

Yes they are, And given that fact and the fact that the title of this article is “COEXISTING WITH BEAVER” it would be a mistake to focus on relocation of the animals wouldn’t it? Even with live trapping instead of killing?

It’s not easy being a beaver in some places. In urban areas, such as cities or towns, beavers sometimes cause conflict by building dams which cause unwanted flooding, or by taking down charismatic trees which people value. In many cases these “nuisance” beavers are killed because of their actions, but sometimes simple tools can be used to prevent these conflicts, create more acceptance of their presence by people, and keep beaver where they are. For example, to prevent beaver from felling trees they can be wrapped in fencing or painted with a mix of sand and paint. Beaver, just like us, don’t like the “gritty” feeling of sand when chewing. To minimize flooding, flow-devices can be installed which limit the water level of beaver ponds by using a combination of pipes and fencing.

Oh alright then. I’m a very picky beaver consumer. But I do like happy endings and stories of beaver successes. Go read the entire article if you need more good cheer and I’m going to save one treat for last. Next up is a variation of the story we’ve all come to know and hate – this time in Schenectady NY.

Schenectady officials decide to trap beavers after Woodlawn Preserve flooding

Problems have steadily mounted over the past half-decade as beavers have set up stakes, including blockage of a drain pipe that ran underneath the railroad. City workers were being deployed nearly every other week to clean out the culvert. A series of beaver-built dams also led to elevated water levels in the basin.

Stakeholders met with beaver consultants, who recommended a trapping company.“

Trails were so flooded, people couldn’t fish,” said Janet Chen, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Woodlawn Preserve.

Oh no! You mean there as so dam much nature in your nature park that it is inconvenient to exploit it? Gosh, no wonder you called in the ~~Friends~~ Enemies of Woodlawn ~~preserve~~ use. Gee I wonder what the trapping company will suggest?

“We observed a very high amount of beaver activity in the preserve,” said City Engineer Chris Wallin. “It was determined we needed to trap the beavers.”

While the 135-acre site serves as a nature preserve — part of the Albany Pine Bush ecosystem — the site has more practical roots as a retention pond first constructed in the 1950s to alleviate flooding in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood.

You know how it is. We never intended this park to have nature IN it. Just to provide somewhere for the water to runoff when it floods. Beavers are icky, and never mind that it’s spring and the family is having babies.

Trapping beavers is rare and largely ineffective, said Sharon T. Brown, a biologist and director of the Dolgeville-based non-profit Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW).

I’m sure that’s a typo or miscommunication. She didn’t mean trapping is rare right?

“It’s often counterproductive, and will create a vacancy,” Brown said. “It’ll probably be re-settled unless they want a cycle of trapping over and over again.”

Water devices like the “Beaver Deceiver” — mesh enclosures paired with a series of pipes running under or through dams — are a better way to prevent flooding and avoid harming the creatures, Brown said.

“There’s no reason not to consider these.”

Good job Sharon, and congratulations to the reporter for getting her input. There’s no reason NOT to consider nonlethal solutions, is there? Oh yes there is! Beavers are icky! And we’re the enemies of the preserve! Just look at our outfits! Shhh wait, this is my favorite part!

Friends said the device was cost-prohibitive. Chen said the beavers haven’t historically served as a public draw to visit the site.

“People to go to the preserve generally go to take a walk in the quiet,” she said.

That’s right. People come to a park because of the QUIET! Like Thoreau on the famously quiet Walden pond. They don’t want some icky rodent tail-slapping in the water and disturbing their solitude. They want peace! Something tells me Ms. Chen is going to get a letter to make her own life of quiet desperation a little more interesting in the very near future.

And besides, people never visit a park just to see beavers.

Okay, I promised a treat if you were patient and here it is. Chris Carr from the beaver management Forum shared this yesterday taken with his night camera. This is why beavers need to carry around those few extra pounds.

THE GOLDEN STATE TRAPPERS LAMENT

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 2, 2019

There are two pieces of great news that make this morning seem luxurious. The first is that I got my “W” key back – it had stopped working entirely and I as forced to paste it in or find another way to say the words work, wonder and why. The vast internet(s) helped me find out how to reprogram my keyboard and now my F2 key is behaving like a w, so I’m THRILLED. (Now if I can just reprogram my finger to remember that we’re in business.)

The second is this delightfully guilty pleasure I think you will share reading this article about the end of trapping in California – I imagine for many, many people it’s producing a thrill akin to watching porn. As a woman whose written about the ‘dying noble trapper‘ articles that appear religiously from Nebraska to Alberta every single winter, it is truly wonderful. Get your popcorn or your donut and settle in because honestly it’s that good.

As anti-fur sentiment grows, California’s oldest trappers are calling it quits

After a lifetime spent trapping animals in California’s western Sierra Nevada, Tim Wion traveled to Oregon recently to make one big, final sale at the annual Klamath Falls fur auction.

Unlike his fellow woodsmen, however, Wion wasn’t hawking the luxuriant pelts of wolves, bobcats, otters, coyotes, foxes and muskrat. Instead, the 75-year-old was selling off the many foothold traps and fur-stretchers that once provided him a livelihood.

“I’ve got no use for them,” Wion told a reporter. “Trapping is dead in California.”

See what I mean? That kind of start to an article right away makes you want to lean back on one elbow in bed and smoke a cigarette. Savor it all. It gets better.

A San Francisco ban on fur sales took effect in January, while two bills in the state Legislature seek to ban trapping for commercial purposes and outlaw the sale of fur products statewide. At the same time, a coalition of animal rights activists called Direct Action Everywhere is stepping up demonstrations at fashion shows and department stores.

“I’ve been on the front lines of this battle since the 1990s,” Aiton said. “But there will be no fighting this time. I’m 77 and … my health won’t allow me to fight one more minute.”

“They won. We lost,” Aiton said.

“My association is not fighting back because trapping is a dead horse in California,” Aiton said, “and there isn’t a dad gum thing we can do about it.”

Oh that’s sweet. The reporter who wrote this must know it’s sweet, right? I mean Mr. Louis Sahagun couldn’t be thinking readers would be sad or wistful when they read this, right? He’s got to know he’s giving a lot of people a lot of cheap thrills.

One of the bills slated for a final vote this summer was introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), who argues that there are so few active trappers in the state that their license fees no longer cover the expense of regulating the industry.

A total of 68 trappers reported killing 1,568 animals statewide in 2017, according to the most recent data available from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Among the 10 species reported taken were coyote, gray fox, beaver, badger and mink.

The revenue received by the Department of Fish and Wildlife for the sale of their trapping licenses was $15,544 and $709 for the sale of fur dealer licenses, officials said. Many of those trapping licenses were held by pest control companies.

The costs of regulating trappers doesn’t even pay for itself anymore! Mind you, I’m enjoying this too much to even begin to talk about the unregulated free-for-all that is depredation. Apparently California is just fine with killing animals as long as you don’t wear them afterwards, but that’s a fight for another day. Let’s just enjoy this for now shall we?

“What’s happening in California is too bad,” Nichols said. “We see the problem there as a movement of people who regard wild animals as almost human-like.”

Ahh, I can’t believe this article is going to make us all climax again so soon, but shh, here’s my favorite part.

Trapping advocate Nick Catrina, who runs a pest control business in Stockton, offers a less politically correct reason for trapping’s demise in the Golden State.

“Animal rights activists are terrorist groups, mostly led by lesbians, who destroy property and burn down animal research facilities for their cause,” Catrina said. “And progressives, in their march toward communism, are trying to ban trapping. They’ll get rid of hunting too after they take over the government of the United States.”

Communist lesbian terrorists! The indigo girls perform Karl Marx with pipe bombs?

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my goodness this article is so delicious it should be fattening. I just want to stash it in a brown paper bag and place it under the bed so I can read my favorite parts over and over again every night. I just can’t think of anything better that he forgot to mention. The funny part is that I recognize Mr. Catrina’s name from reading years of beaver depredation permits. I guess sometimes he moonlights in pest control. Next time I’ll say hi!

Today, trappers who were taught the secrets of their trade before their teens by older friends and relatives are feeling isolated.

“Old trappers are dying off,” Aiton said, “and not being replaced by younger ones.”

He realized that trapping was in trouble in California when, he said, “I ran out of world — the places I used to trap were covered with new homes and tough laws.”

The article ends with the wistful mention of his placing a live trap on his front porch to catch the occasional opossum or raccoon and watching them walk off merrily into the sunrise as he whispers goodbye, but it’s too late.

By then we are already lost in the the glorious sunrise of our own.