Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

Beaver Information Airdrop

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and water, City Reports, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 22, 2016

Colonel Gail Seymour “Hal” Halvorsen is best known as the “Berlin Candy Bomber” who dropped candy to children during the Berlin airlift from 1948 to 1949. Sometimes you need to sneak things into the people you want to have them, because they are surrounded by obstacles.

When I saw this report I wanted to Airdrop information to the poor besieged sufferers in North Carolina. Obviously the state is steeped in closely protected beaver ignorance from head to tail. I’m think we’d drop a package with Mike’s DVD and Dietland Muller-Schwarze beaver book with a little bag of sand and a can of latex paint to teach them how to protect trees. They obviously need all the help they can get.

And no, I’m not exaggerating.

Hurricane Matthew presents ongoing beaver issue in Lenoir County

So the good folk of Kingston believe that the hurricane brought beavers like a kind of ‘beavernado’ and if they dig enough holes in the dam they’ll find them. They wonder why they’ve never seen the culprits in the day time. And think trapping is the only way to stop them. When I’m finished slapping my forehead you should fire up the airplanes because something tells me Mr. Davis and the newscaster need an airdrop right away.

I noticed a very cool thing about one of Suzi’s photos yesterday. In addition to top and bottom teeth, (which is very rare in a photo) you can actually see the grooming claw if you look closely. I’ve only place I have ever seen this before in a dead beaver that we could photograph closely. This is obviously much, much better.

It’s almost my favorite day, Christmas Eve Eve – an underappreciated holiday with all of the seasonal charm and none of the social pressure. I will give you a Suzi Eszterhas treat. Hohoho!

recently-updated5 — ***Suzi Eszterhas photos – Martinez Beavers***

Three states of why beavers matter

heidi08 Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 19, 2016

Sometimes we get the faintest whiff of beaver benefits and actual solutions from sources you’d never expect. I think I’m a little like a mother who knows that her middle child isn’t the brightest bulb in the box and so reacts with extra praise when he gets the simple problems right. We want to encourage them, right?

Discover Nature and Evidence of Beavers in Your Area

This is the Missouri chapter of public radio, not an area usually known for progressive beaver solutions. So this quote at the end got my attention:

Beavers play a valuable role by damming backed up silt-laden waters and subsequently forming many of the fertile valley floors in the wooded areas of our continent. Beaver dams stabilize stream flow, slow down run-off, and create ponds which influence fish, muskrats, minks and waterfowl.

However, some landowners wish to protect certain trees from potential damage from beaver cutting. This can be done by enclosing the target trees with wire netting up to a height of three feet.

It must be the season. This article from North Carolina actually focuses on the benefits of joining BAMP (their beaver-killing club), but look at what it also finds time to include;

Rodent causes problems for farmers, residents and roadways

Beaver aren’t all bad. In fact, they can be responsible for some very diverse ecosystems. A 2015 PBS article titled, “Leave it to Beavers,” explains beaver dams as “Earth’s Kidneys.”

“Beaver dams and the ponds they produce act as filters, generating cleaner water downstream.”

One pond observed in Greene County, known as good duck hunting grounds, has a beaver family to thank. The dam extends several hundred feet across the mouth of a swamp creating a large, shallow home to waterfowl.

You heard it here, folks. Beavers aren’t ALL bad! Spoken like the most educated ecological mind in the entire state. Over the years I’ve become accustomed to the annual justification for BMAP printed in local papers. Usually they say something about how bad beavers are and what a cost-saving deal it is for the unlucky counties that are suckered into it.

Seeing the need for the management for the ever-increasing damage caused by the growing beaver population, State Legislative action created the North Carolina Beaver Management Assistance Program in 1992.

BMAP is a cost share program to aid landowners having problems with beaver damage. As of 2016, the cost share is a $4,000 per county contribution for annual membership.

The BMAP cooperative endeavor also receives funding from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, NC DOT, USDA Wildlife Services and others.

Participation in BMAP is a county-by-county decision. Locally, Lenoir and Greene County participate, Jones County does not.

The total $21,800 set aside in Lenoir County for control and management (between BMAP membership and specialist) is an investment that pays dividends. Per the BMAP 2015 annual report, from June 2015-June 2016, beaver control prevented the loss of, or damage to, $262,140 in resources, including over $140,000 to roads and bridges alone. Efforts resolved beaver damage problems at 28 sites in the county, 13 were private landowners and 15 were Department of Transportation sites.

Of course, the more you use BMAP the more you NEED BMAP because of things like population rebound and short term solutions. Its a racket. Guess how much money BMAP spends on flow devices and solutions that will last longer than a season? I’ll give you a it, it’s a ROUND number.

One thing that confuses me in the article is this:

Also in the budget are funds to support a percentage of a Wildlife Beaver Specialist.

What percentage of the guy did you get? The part that goes over the fence last? Because I’d ask for my money back.

Hey, speaking of actual beaver specialists, and beaver benefits, NOAA just released its offical Oregon coast Coho Recovery plan. Which mentions beaver lots of times (by my count 227 times). Lots like this:

It even had time for the honorable mention of our noble friends in South Umpqua.

If you want to grind your teeth in envy that California is so remarkably backward that we just can’t have nice things, go read the report. It’s beaver-licious, and someday we might be too!

Confluence

heidi08 History, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 14, 2016

I knew Joseph R. Walker was a mountain man who happened to be buried in Martinez. I wrote about him years ago when we were working on the historic prevalence papers. I believe I referred to this picture as a “Dreamy Mona Lisa with a beard.” Ha! But I never realized before how very important he was to the eventual settlement of California. It’s not a stretch to say we might not even be here if it wasn’t for him.

He was the first white man to cross the Humbolt Sink in Nevada. The first to find a pass over the Sierras. The first white man to stand in Yosemite. And although he is fairly forgotten by history, he was considered the greatest of fur trappers in his day.

THE GREATEST.

He was a big man, 6 feet 2 and 220 lbs – but a thoughtful, unboastful, determined man who was said to never drink more than a toast. He was fair and cautious in his treatment of natives, but brutal if he felt they wronged him. While he never earned the fame of Bonneville (Who got Washington Irving to write his memoirs) or Fremont (who is famed for naming Tahoe) he was regarded as a remarkable leader of men and encouraged the most loyal regard by those who served him. The saying was that he only lost a single man in all his travels and that man had been attacked by a grizzly bear, not an indian.

Given our current political fray I found this quote about Fremont, attributed to Walker, amusing.

“Frémont, morally and physically, was the most complete coward I ever knew. I would call him a woman, if it were not casting an unmerited reproach on the sex.”

Yikes! That’s kind of respectable and catty at the same time. (Kind of like those leaked emails of Colin Powell.) Fremont was a complicated character in his own right, with his notable achievements including taking over as Governor of California, getting court marshaled for insubordination, being one of the new states first senators, and eventually running for president on an antislavery platform for the GOP.

Different story. Different day.

Back to our hero, I guess compared to Walker lots of men were short on courage. He was just 34 when Bonneville retained him to do a reconnaissance mission in ‘Alta California’ – which is what the Mexicans who were in charge of it called the territory. Since they were asking him to spy on another country Bonneville got him a Mexican passport before sending him out the door. Walker’s disguise was a fur trapper so he hired 60 grizzled others to look the part. They traveled down the Green River in Utah to the Humbolt in Nevada to the edge of the Sierras. They had been assured they would find the “Bonaventura” which was supposed to flow from Utah to the Pacific. Guess how true that turned out to be? Unfortunately it was already November by the time they started their ascent of the Sierras and conditions quickly went from bad to miserable.

Here’s how a nice article in the Half Moon Bay Review recently described it

Growing short of food for themselves and feed for their animals, they moved ahead. What followed as they made their assault on the mountains is a truly California story. Their animals began to starve. The air was thin. Their wool and fur-lined clothing was little match for the snow and freezing wet cold. Most of all, the unknown way forward became a brew of uncertainty and fear, even for these seasoned men.

Walker needed to use both reason and inspiration. As they neared the highest ridges in mid-November they were also approaching the very edge of their ability to survive. They began eating their horses. There was talk of mutiny and retreat. They began to wonder whether they were more likely to survive by going forward or by retracing their steps in retreat.

The part about eating their horses stuck in my craw the first time I read this. I guess because they theoretically were there to hunt beavers which they were just tossing away after they skinned them. Apparently during dire times mountain men were known to eat horses, mules, dogs, and their native guides – not to mention sucking what little nutrients they could glean from their beaver skins, leather fringes or moccasins. Apparently they were on the original Paleo diet, gorging on barely cooked meat and fat when it was available and not eating much of anything else.

Suffice it to say our noble captain lead his men through an eventual pass and they left the snow to camp under the really big trees of Yosemite. He eventually discovered “Walker Pass” and opened all California for discovery. After Joseph and his friends had trapped out beaver they rented themselves as guides to the pioneers heading west.

He lived to the remarkable age of 80 and eventually went to live with his nephew on a ranch on Mount Diablo.

And so it came to pass that the most famed beaver trapper of his day was buried in the town of the most famous beavers in the nation which happened to be the home town of the most famous conservationist ever and where he was visited by the author of the most famous beaver book ever.

Because … castor coincidence.

Belated note. RIP to early Martinez Beaver supporter Paul L. Wilson who died peacefully and with family yesterday. Paul was the city watchdog and always ready to make sure they did the right thing. You will be missed.

Stirling had a beaver dam

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 7, 2016

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

Mary had a little lamb. It was probably the first song you played on the plastic recorder in third grade. Did you know the original poem was written by the author and editor Sarah Jopsepha Hale about the real child Mary Sawyer who lived in Stirling Massachusetts? Supposedly the little girl really did bring her lamb to school one day and it really did make the children laugh and play (which of course children would never do normally). Later Sarah also published one of the first novels against slavery, and was famous for writing that while slavery dehumanizes the enslaved, it also dehumanizes their masters and retards national progress. Good point!

Flash forward 180 years and apparently they can tolerate lambs in educational facilities in Stirling, just not beavers in creeks.

Selectmen say beavers must go

“The intent was to sell the property once we put the easements in place,” said Town Administrator Michael Szlosek. “But the center easement was too intrusive. The desire was to get the Conservation Commission to move that center easement.”

But even with a less intrusive easement, there is still the matter of the beavers.

The selectmen agreed that, although there has not yet been any committed interest from a prospective buyer, the flooding caused by the beaver dam decreases the value of the property and that the dam must be broken and the land dried up before the parcel can be sold.

“You can’t trap and relocate beavers because they are a nuisance animal,” said Szlosek. “There is no place to put them. Nobody wants to kill the animals [but] the beaver population in Massachusetts has exploded over the last 10 or 15 years. What else can you do? They’ll continue to breed and they’ll flood more land.”

Because of the restrictions on lethal trapping, the animal control department is not able to preside over this matter. The town of Sterling will need to seek out a private company that can provide the trapping service.

“There was a referendum banning almost all trapping in Massachusetts so you really have to go through a lot of hoops to be able to do it,” said Szlosek. “Obviously, we will have to observe that.”

According to Szlosek, the season during which permits can be granted to trap beavers is between Nov. 1 and April 15. During the off season, appeals can be made to the Board of Health and a permit can be issued if the presence of the beaver dam demonstrates an impingement on personal or environmental safety.

“They’re relatively harmless creatures except that they can cause a lot of damage to properties,” said Szlosek. “They’re indirectly destructive to other species because they destroy their habitats.”

Destructive to other species because they destroy their habitats. Just pause a moment and let that sink to its full outrageous effect. Beavers destroy habitat. I obviously have been lying to you all these years and misleading the children at the beaver festival. We really should be doing an Demolition Beaver bracelet activity and teaching how they ruin things for fish and wildlife.

Mr. Szlosek gets a letter. And maybe a poem.

Stirling had a beaver dam
The babbling brook was stilled
Szoslek wants the dam removed
And all the beavers killed

The fish will have to go away
the muskrat, otter, mink
And all the birds that hunted there
go missing with the link.

‘Inane justice’

heidi08 Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 22, 2016

“It’s a beaver. Or it might be an otter. I can’t quite tell,” Boone says.

Is there a more fitting quote to capture the scrupulous care involved in beaver trapping? I sure never saw one. Here’s some more beaver ignorance from Illinois, which has never seen a furbearer it couldn’t shoot.

At war with the beavers

LODA — Wearing rubber boots and armed with a hand-held cultivator tool, Jon Boone ventures out into a heavily forested area just south of the township road that the locals call the Loda Slab. The 63-year-old, tall, gray-bearded man leads the way through 6-foot-high prairie grass, using his tool to create a path for a trailing reporter.

“When you come out here, this is not a hike through a park,” Boone warns. “This is what Illinois looks like at its best.”

“There he is!” Boone says, pointing to an animal that had just popped its head out of the 4-foot-deep water in front of him, part of the meandering Spring Creek.

“It’s a beaver. Or it might be an otter. I can’t quite tell,” Boone says.

He makes regular visits to the spot in Spring Creek just west of Loda where the large dam is located. He usually visits first during the daytime, using hand tools like cultivators, rakes or picks to break up a few spots in the dam to create a flow of rushing water. As long as his nuisance permit is valid, he then returns to the scene that night, armed with a shotgun, ready to shoot any beavers he sees.

“The sound of the rushing water makes them want to fix the dam,” Boone says. “Sometimes, I’ve been out here for hours and never seen a thing. Those are the boring nights. The last time I was out here, the only thing I saw was a shooting star, and I sat here for an hour or two.”

In the past three months, Boone shot two beavers, and three more were trapped. But the beavers — which could number more than 10, he says — remain, and so does the big dam, along with another smaller dam just downstream.

Beavers, otters, toddlers… who really can tell the difference? What I see – I shoot and just to be on the careful side I only shoot if its in the water or on the dam. (Or within striking distance.) I’m a responsible man you know. A trustee. They write articles about me.

Boone says he recently tried to buy some dynamite to blow up the beaver dams, but an area store refused to sell it to him. He said there is a person in the area who is licensed to use dynamite, and it remains a possibility that the village could use that person’s services, but Boone says “we probably will never do that.”

Who knew that dynamite regulations were stronger than those for assault rifles? We’ll ,he’s at least getting solid advice from the very top;

“The conservation guy (at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources) goes, ‘You know, as much as they’ve spent paying you to come out here and do this, you should hire a professional trapper,'” Boone recalls. “I said, ‘Well, first of all, they’re not paying me anything, because I’m a trustee.'”

Aww you men you kill furbearers for nothing in your spare time? That’s mighty white of you, really. Loved this quote

“I have an inane [sic] sense of direction,” says Boone, whose great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the brother of Daniel Boone, an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman and frontiersman. “I never get lost.

“I get confused a lot, but I always find my way back.”

Is this reporter really really stupid or really really smart? “INANE” means silly or stupid. The noble trustee was really trying to say “INNATE” to convey that his unique ancestral heritage gave him this ability. Now did the man get it wrong and Will the reporter didn’t know the difference so just wrote it down? Or did Will just mistype or auto-correct his way into trouble? Or (and this makes me the happiest to think of) did Will hear the mistake, and just think that it was a fitting description for this old loon and leave it in?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Yesterday we finished the 150th and last pendant necklace. They are all lovingly tucked into individual bags and arranged by ‘letter’ to be ready for the beaver festival. Jon wanted to know how all this kind of thing got done when we were both working?

I made the Gessner otter for our friends at ROEP and mildly asked when the ‘otter festival’ is coming? They said they might plan something for their 5th year, and Cindy Margulis on facebook suggested that they could get the Oakland Zoo TO HOST IT for them.

That seems fair. Martinez can slog away while they descend to earth on a fluffy cloud. Because otters live a charmed life. It’s true.