IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, AND IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES…

The rose-colored beaver glasses of late September have withered to a much more fullsome beaver picture. Mostly the superheroes are still regarded as pests. But sometimes a few folk still rally for them. Go figure.

This was an admirable letter on their behalf from Canada.

Letter: City of Airdrie shouldn’t kill its beavers

Nose Creek starts by Crossfield and flows to the Bow River with a watershed of 989 KM2. It flows through Airdrie and it was a small prairie creek. The City of Airdrie put in several dams creating some beautiful ponds that any beaver family would be proud of. As the story goes “if you build it, they will come” and come they did.

We live in Waterstone on the creek and love watching all the people and wildlife who enjoy the path and waterway. The pond was built and the beaver came and were welcomed, building a lodge and raised countless families over the years.

But this wonder of nature comes at a cost. As well all know, beavers eat bark. So we lose a tree or two each year – especially in the fall, when they put up a winter supply of food to get through until the spring.

Now, this is not a natural pond or a habitat for beavers, as there is no forest for them. Yet the pond is there and they do live there, much to the enjoyment of many who stop to watch them on a summer’s evening.

Two years ago, the City of Airdrie’s parks officials decided to kill them. But the shock of local residents got them to stop this and they decided to give a shot at being good stewards. Wire fencing went up around the trees to limit the food source. The beavers did just fine, raising more families and entertaining the park goers.

Well that certainly sounds promising. Wrapping trees with wire is good business for people who know that beavers are busy making habitat for all the wildlife. Maybe if you added a couple weekends where the community plants willow stakes you’d be in business.

Yes, they did eat a tree or two each year and the City planted trees but not the kind that beaver need. Now one could say that was poorly thought out. And maybe, we could live in harmony with the beaver and plant something they needed and are beautiful to watch grow like a Brooks No. 6 Poplar. This poplar grows very fast, has no white fluff like a cottonwood, and grows huge in 30 years. The park has a lot of space for this food source. But you would have to be good stewards, keep them from falling where you don’t want them to, and take the wire off a couple old trees each year.

But no, being a good steward and living in harmony with wildlife is too hard. “Let’s just kill them” and hope they don’t come back. And if they do, we’ll just keep killing them.

Does that sound like a good steward and a society you want to raise your family around? The beavers keep trying in hopes that we will find better stewards for our community.

Everyone should know that the very best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The next best time to plant is today.

Good advice for the city. But take it yourselves. Get a community organization to take it on. Organize a weekend of planting willow cuttings or fascines. Get the city to approve it, put a boy or girl scout in charge. Call the media and get some adorable photos of children digging holes run on the evening news, ‘

This is all doable. You are the change you’ve been waiting for.

Now onto the worst of times in Ohio where killing beavers is sooo much fun they have to hold a lottery to find out who gets the privilege.

Lottery for river otter, beaver trapping is Oct. 8

COLUMBUS — Beaver and river otter trapping permits on managed areas for the 2022-23 season will be issued via in-person lotteries Oct. 8, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.

A permit is required to trap beaver and river otter on state-managed areas, including wildlife areas, state parks and state forests. A complete list of available trapping permits is available on the Controlled Hunting Access Lotteries page at wildohio.gov.

Drawings will occur at noon at each division of wildlife district office. Office locations can be found at wildohio.gov. Each permittee may select one partner to accompany them for the duration of the season. Beaver and river otter trapping lotteries are grouped by region; trappers may apply in only one district (central, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest). Beaver and river otter trapping permits are valid from Dec. 26 to Feb. 28, 2023.

Seriously? The trap allows you to kill beavers and otters in state parks? What if you decided that hey people like to SEE wildlife in the park when they visit. What if you DIDN’T kill them? Hmm now we just need a couple undercover PETA members to show up to those offices and win the raffles. Doesn’t sound to hard does it?

Good lord. Surviving in this world with redevelopment and traffic and fires and destroyed trees is ALREADY a lottery. Stop making their lives more difficult.

BEAVERS ARE GOOD EATING, BLESS THEIR HEARTS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 25, 2022

You have to love Alaska. Everyone rushing to say nice things about beavers and they’re like frowning and being your southern great aunt Bessie saying “Bless their little hearts”. We know what they really mean don’t we? The headline really gives it away doesn’t it?

They can be destructive, but beavers and their habitat play a key role in a prosperous natural world

Everyone is familiar with beavers. Some recognize them as industrious dam builders, others see them as nuisances that block culverts and cut down valuable trees. No matter how one feels about this large rodent, they must be granted the distinction of being one of our most valuable species of wildlife.

Mountain men explored the West in part by pursuing valuable beaver pelts. The fashionable sheared beaver-top hats passed from the scene with the advent of the felt hat. Beaver soon lost its value as the driving force in the North American fur market. The market for beaver pelts has surged and waned since, but the animal itself has retained significance in folklore and in our modern lives.

“Busy as a beaver” is still a catchphrase. The sight of a massive beaver dam inspires interest and awe. Beaver dams can cause damaging floods in urban areas. However, in the woods they provide valuable habitat for many species of birds and other mammals.

Everyone is familiar with beavers. Some recognize them as industrious dam builders, others see them as nuisances that block culverts and cut down valuable trees. No matter how one feels about this large rodent, they must be granted the distinction of being one of our most valuable species of wildlife.

Mountain men explored the West in part by pursuing valuable beaver pelts. The fashionable sheared beaver-top hats passed from the scene with the advent of the felt hat. Beaver soon lost its value as the driving force in the North American fur market. The market for beaver pelts has surged and waned since, but the animal itself has retained significance in folklore and in our modern lives.

“Busy as a beaver” is still a catchphrase. The sight of a massive beaver dam inspires interest and awe. Beaver dams can cause damaging floods in urban areas. However, in the woods they provide valuable habitat for many species of birds and other mammals.

Ohhhh, In the woods they are useful! Like compasses that destroy things when you[‘re not in the woods. I get it. What about in the city? What about in Martinez? Oh then they;re just little buzz saws of destruction.

Beaver build ponds for several reasons. The overriding purpose for ponds in Alaska is to provide a safe, stable location for a winter abode. A pond must be created that is deep enough to provide adequate water for a house to have entries that will not freeze shut. Also, since beaver must store large caches of food to survive the winter, this food cache must remain in the water, not frozen in ice. Fall food stores will look like a pile of brush in the water anchored next to the conical beaver lodge. The vast portion of the feed pile will be underwater, out of view.

Stateside, where winters are relatively short, food storage for beavers is not quite the ordeal as it is for their Alaska counterparts. In many parts of the state, ponds will be ice-covered from late September through mid-May. Nine months of life under the ice requires a terrific amount of food. Beaver put on fat reserves during the summer months to help prepare for the lean times to come.

The type of feed generally depends on the location. Cottonwood, poplar and willow are the preferred foods. The Denali Highway lodges have a preponderance of willow. Occasionally there will be poplar, should they be available. A few ponds will have some dwarf birch in the feed pile. One pond I used to trap relied entirely on lily pad stems; their house was built completely with lilies and mud.

In many areas, especially in Alaska, trappers benefit winter survival by taking one or two adult animals from the lodge, thus providing more available feed for the remaining animals. Otherwise the entire group may starve during the tough winter months.

Location and habitat determine the size of an overwintering beaver family. While there may be a dozen or so residents in easy climes, the Denali country usually has a half-dozen members. A typical lodge will have a couple breeding adults, young from the previous year, and the two spring kits. Predation may take a beaver or two, but a wintering family usually consists of no less than four individuals.

Some houses are bachelor houses. These are composed of adult males that lost their mate or have not yet mated. These ponds may have three to five beaver overwintering. No matter how the population of a pond is structured results are similar. The beaver pond is an oasis of activity in the outlands.

Ponds are formed in what otherwise may be just a wandering trickle through the willows. Ponds provide for bountiful insect life. Water bugs, striders and, of course, mosquitoes provide excellent food sources for fish and birds. Every fisherman knows the largest grayling reside in beaver ponds. Duck hunters look for teal, widgeon and pintails that feed on small invertebrates and vegetation in the shallows. Otter and mink also come to hunt. Moose feed on pond weeds and the constantly renewing willow growth.

The beaver pond may be the only safe haven in areas hit hard by wildfires. A look from the air may show the only stretch green for many miles is a well-maintained stream choked with beaver dams.

Now that didn’t hurt so very much did it? Suck it up Alaska and say nice things about beavers. You can do it. Take a deep breath and keep going. Everyone else is doing it.

Beaver can also be an important food source. Past generations of Indigenous people found them easy to catch. A large male may weigh 60 pounds or more. Thirty pounds of rich meat, high in calories, is an extremely valuable addition to a winter diet.

Beaver is a dark meat with a distinct flavor not unlike bison or elk. Beaver taken during the winter months are best with the fat removed — at least for the western palate.

The next time you see a beaver damming up a roadside culvert or cutting your favorite poplar at the weekend cabin, stop and think before damning him for his seemingly destructive industry. The animal who is as busy as a beaver is just an overflow from one of our most important resources hidden deeper in the woods.

WOW. just WOW. I sincerely hope that the next wildfire that destroys your rotten town isn’t sustained by crispy vegetation that would have soaked up moisture if it had been next to that beaver pond you destroyed.

Just don’t do us any favors anchorage, okay? We’ll handle this ourselves.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN IN PENTICTON

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 16, 2022

Penticton is a city in British Columbia in the Okanagan Valley with a population of about 4o,ooo. It is one of the rare parts of Canada that gets very little or no snow, and it boasts of being nestled between two lakes with lots of summer fun.

It is also a tool belt with only hammers to its name where beavers are concerned.

3 beavers culled from Skaha Park pond

Industriousness killed the beavers.

Three of the flat-tailed, sharp-toothed animals were trapped and euthanized last month after making nuisances of themselves in the stormwater retention pond on the east side of Skaha Lake Park in Penticton.

You see what happens in this paragraph right? The words are carefully selected to present the least sympathetic picture of the beaver and the MOST sympathetic description of their dispatch. “Euthanized” “Culled” they just sound so gentle. And “sharptoothed animals” sounds like something that should be a jurassic park.

Len Robson, the city’s manager of public works, said the beavers were damming culverts and other equipment within the system, potentially putting the public at risk.

“If we let the beavers go in there, that pond won’t work and we end up backing up South Main Street and all those other areas during a flood event, so, unfortunately we have to exterminate the beaver from time to time,” said Robson.

“It’s not one of those things we like to do – it’s a necessity.”

Robson said the number of beavers that need to be removed from the pond varies on a year-to-year basis, with no animals destroyed in 2021.

It sounds so rational doesn’t it? Of course there’s NO OTHER WAY to prevent beavers from damming a culvert besides killing them right? You know like how we can only stop speeding on the hire with assassination?

Some one better write Len about a beaver deceiver, or maybe since it’s Canada a beaver baffler. Apparently the internet has been down since 1993 in those parts.

NEVER WEAR PERFUME AGAIN CAMPAIGN

heidi08 Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 7, 2022

Well the price of dead beavers just went up in the tippy top of Canada, behind Alaska. And just before international beaver day to boot. How thoughtful!

Beaver castors being bought for $65 ‘long overdue’ addition to N.W.T. fur program

Hunters and trappers in the N.W.T. are able to make more money harvesting beavers, after the territorial government added beaver castors to the list of things it’ll pay advances for.

Male and female beavers have a pair of castor sacs located under the skin, between the pelvis and the base of their tail, which produce castoreum. The scent is used to mark the animals’ territory and according to a press release issued Monday, it’s also “highly prized” as a flavour and an ingredient in perfumes.

Now, a pound of dried castors will fetch an advance of $65. (more…)

ECOSYSTEM DISSERVICES

heidi08 Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 16, 2022

There is an old joke about a man discovering his wife bent over searching hard for something on the kitchen floor.

“What are you looking for?” He asks.
“My Contact lenses! They fell out while I was reading on the couch and I cannot seem to find them.”
“On the couch? In the living room? Then why are you looking for them in here?” Asks her husband, very confused.
“The light’s better in here.”

Which happens to be one of my favorite jokes because it explains so much of what we do. Why we went to war in Iraq even though we were attacked by Afghanistan. Why we are upset when movie stars do annoying things that our friends do every day. And why we keep suing Wildlife Services instead of slamming CDFW for issuing mass depredation permits to everyone and their brother, whether they work for Wildlife Services or not. (more…)