Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

Beaver Strategist

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 1, 2014

Yesterday an article from Georgia caught my attention. You may remember that Georgia is the state where the original Clemson Pond Leveler was invented, and the state where I first read about beaver tail bounties. Let’s say that in addition to having alligators and very nice peaches, it has a fairly schizophrenogenic stance on beavers in general. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see this.

Carole Currie: Talking ’bout the wildlife, again

Almost everyone around us at the Georgia farm has a wildlife story, and when there’s a gathering, there’s a lot of storytelling. There are skunks under houses (we’ve had that), deer eating everything (we’ve had that in spades), coyote sounds in the night and bobcat sightings.

Our story continues to be about the critters that keep stopping up the outflow drain at our pond, threatening to cause it to flood over the dam. Once we found the lodge, we knew it was beavers stopping up the drain. We are threatened by the beavers because of the damage they can do by flooding the pond and ruining the dam and to the surrounding trees. But the more we learn about the beavers, the more we have to admire them.

A recent “Nature” program on public television shed a lot of light on these overgrown members of the rodent family. The sound of running water to a beaver is like a call to work. They want to stop it, and they do so by packing the drain with mud. Somewhat blind and slow on land, they are fast in the water.

They are sociable, family-oriented critters who earn their reputation as being “busy as beavers.” They just don’t give up. Walt unstops the pond, and the next morning it is stopped up again. With their long orange teeth, they can fell a large tree overnight to pile onto their dam.

Once beavers were valued for their furs to make hats. When the hats went out of style and beavers overpopulated, many were eradicated but they are coming back. There are either eco heroes now because of their ability to create wetlands for wildlife and cattle or pests who want to dam up our pond.

It makes for a good critter story but one without a good ending for us or the beavers.

This made me think Carole needed a letter. So I wrote her about protecting the overflow on her pond and the benefits beavers could bring if she let them stay. I told her how it would be saving money because if she trapped them out more would just come next year. I told what we had done in Martinez (did you know there’s a Martinez in Georgia? My niece used to live there. They pronounce it mar-tin- EZ.) I was careful not to sound too ‘California’ in my email and said if she needed regional resources she should talk to the folks at the Blue Heron Preserve in Atlanta or Stephanie Boyle in West Virginia.

And whadaya know, she promptly wrote back!

Heidi, thanks so much for your thoughtful and informative e-mail. It casts things in a whole new light.

Carole

Which was nice. And maybe because I finished watching West Wing on Netflix last night, made me realize something: I’m kinda political strategist for beavers. A national beaver strategist? An North American beaver strategist? More like a Global beaver strategist! (GBS) and at the moment, weirdly enough, I’m the only one. Which is pretty amazing if you think about it in this day and age to be the only one of anything is fairly surprising. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead, take your wildest and most creative thought and google it. A million people around the world have already thought it and written it down.)

So it means something to be the only GBS. But it won’t last forever. I may be the only one now, but the only one so far. There are so many more regional beaver strategists than their were eight years ago when we started this campaign, that I’m sure many more GBS will come soon. Which is wonderful in a way I can barely describe.

I can’t wait to be redundant.

No Problem a little Explosives can’t Cure.

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? November 23, 2014

Silly me, all these years I’ve been working to ‘solve problems’ when I could have just blown them up instead!

Dam Bustin – Country Style

Woodlands County offers a service to it’s ratepayers with explosive results. The beaver flood control program provided by the county uses dynamite to blast away beaver dams that are flooding resident’s properties.

Dawn Fortin, Woodlands County manager of agricultural services, says that the intention of the service is to relieve flooding on private property and near roads to protect infrastructure. “We call it our beaver flood control program,” Fortin said. “We’ll remove the dam using dynamite or sometimes we use mechanical means like a backhoe.”

Ahh yes, no one is happier than a technician with explosives at a beaver dam. Sure it destroys wetlands for fish, birds and wildlife, does nothing to prevent flooding, destroys creek channels and will need to be repeated next year, but at least the price is right:

Glen Renfert, agricultural services technician, performs the service and is an employee of the county. The service costs only $70 and according to Renfert, just covers the cost of materials.”We don’t want to make a profit on it,” Fortin said. “If you get a whole bunch of dams on the property and there are some that are not causing an issue. We don’t just blow them up just because. If we only need to remove two or three out of five, we’re going to save them that much money. We don’t want to incur more costs for them unnecessarily.”

Of course you know that beavers would just rebuild right? And that all those materials from the blown up dam might still snag and cause flooding.

Prior to blasting, the county sends trappers out to the location to trap the beavers. Once the beavers are removed, then the removal of the dam can begin. “Our trapper is a licensed trapper so he can harvest the beaver for its pelt,” Fortin said. “Other trappers use the animal for bait, the pelts aren’t worth much in the summer.”Woodlands County has a permit from AESRD to be able to perform the service during the off-season for trappers. Starting on May 1, and until Oct. 31, the county can perform the service for residents.

Well at least you’re thorough.

A story this funny needs a punchline. And I have one. The article is from Alberta, Canada. Which puts them around two hours from the top beaver researcher in the world. In fact, Dr. Glynnis Hood is currently doing research to establish the effectiveness of flow devices to regulate flooding. She might even be willing to send some students down to install a flow device for free. But go ahead, spend the 70 bucks.

And speaking of willfully misguided beaver decisions that don’t work anyway, guess who I heard from last night? Our old friends at the 4 seasons senior complex outside El Dorado Hills. Where neighbors got together to protect some beavers in 2012. They were eventually thwarted by the Orwellian HOA who hired USDA to kill the beavers and swing the dead bodies dramatically past the protesters. Blood under the bridge. Guess what’s back not two years later?

We have a new beaver population that has just moved into four seasons.Their fate is up in the air even though we have a new HOA board.They have tentatively agreed to work with us on the issue but I am not convinced of this. Would you be willing to send and email to HOA board telling them of your success and expertise in this area? Let me know.

What do you think? Would I be willing?

No Beavers in Mars

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 10, 2014

I was very worried by this opening paragraph.

There can be fewer more-Canadian endeavours than sending a beaver to Mars, but a Canadian technology company with a Newfoundland connection plans to do just that.

I thought immediately of Laika, the stray dog captured by the Russian to stuff into Sputnik in 1957. They said she died painlessly in orbit, but it was recently reported in the BBC that she died just a few hours after blast off of panic and overheating.

There was NO WAY I was going to let this be repeated with a beaver. Before I chained myself to a missile, I decided to read the next paragraph.

“Beaver” is actually the name of a micro-rover that Thoth Technologies Inc. wants to send to Mars in 2018. The company and Northern Light Canadian Mission to Mars, as it is called, is being led by St. John’s native Caroline Roberts and her husband, Ben Quine. Roberts is the daughter of former lieutenant governor Ed Roberts, whom she says named the rover.

Well, okay then.

Actually it makes perfect sense, since Popular Science already reported in 1930 that beavers had dug the canals on the surface of Mars. I know because Michael Pollock gave me the article framed at our first working beaver meeting in 2011 and it proudly hangs in my dining room.

Now don’t you feel better?

Yesterday, I got an email out of the blue from Beaver friend and supporter Robert Rust. He said he had a bunch of old beaver books he’d like to give me and asked if he could drop them off. Just so you know who we’re talking about, Bob is the creative genius behind the mechanical tail-slapping beaver this year, AND the giant inflatable beaver a few years before that.

Bob taught science to lots of kids in Martinez, and kayaked the creeks for years cleaning out trash and tires. He is a complete indirecatable genius, smart enough to invent anything, connected to everything, but living entirely by his own rules. I expected him to drop off dog-eared copies from his youth or college days. Instead he bicycled up to my porch with three perfect first edition copies of beaver giants that left me speechless.

One was a copy of the 1937 Beaver Pioneers signed by both authors. One was the 1947 first edition of the several times reprinted “One Day at Teton Marsh” by Sally Carrighar (complete with gorgous woodcuts in every chapter) And the third was an original Grinnell’s fur-bearing mammals of CA. No I’m not kidding. There was also a fun copy of “the Beaver is eating my Canoe” just to round out the day.

How excited am I? Back when this all started someone bought me a signed first edition by Grey Owl and I thought I was in heaven. Now I’m sure of it.

I’m a sucker for old books. One time when Jon and I were in Norwich, England we visited an used book store and asked about older books. The grey-haired owner smiled and took us across the street down these stone stairs into a trove of 15th century manuscripts and said we could explore at our leisure, locking the door behind him on his way back to the shop. I swear there was a hand copied Iliad. Now thank goodness we were so poor that we could only afford three slim volumes or I would now be the proud owner of an entire book store. One of the books we bought was a personal almanac from the 1600’s that told you when to plant crops and had personal pages for notes that some grandson had scribbled on in the 1800’s. One of the books was a volume on how to raise a good wife from the 1700’s. I could not resist when I read how girl children should be praised for being compliant and dull. And frowned upon for any signs of creativity. Ahhh.

But these treasures PALE in comparison to original works about beavers! Thank you SO MUCH BOB for your generous contribution to Worth A Dam and beavers over the years. Everything you’ve done for us has been surprising, and this is no exception. You can bet I’ll be sending over a care package this afternoon. Right after I’m done re-reading.

Give me the Bad News First

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 9, 2014

Alpine County 4

Amador County 1

Butte County 7

Calaveras County 1

Colusa County 5

Contra Costa County 20

El Dorado County 9

Fresno County 3

Glenn County 3

Kings County 7

Lake County 2

Lassen County 5

Madera County 10

Merced County 24

Modoc County 6

Mono County 2

Napa County 2

Nevada County 7

Placer County 51

Plumas County 9

Sacramento County 32

San Joaquin County 8

San Luis Obispo County 2

Shasta County 20

Sierra County 3

Siskiyou County 3

Solano County 8

Sonoma County 3

Stanislaus County 9

Sutter County 16

Tehama County 5

Yolo County 18

Yuba County 6

Need I say more? A special thank you to Robin Ellison from Napa who pursued the PRA request and processed the last 50 handwritten permits herself yesterday. Just, (as she said), when she was starting to get over her PTSD from last time. Thanks also to NCHEMS which allowed me to turn these stats into a handy map for free. The total number of beavers permitted for killing from 2013 to July 2014 was 1028 + 132x (unlimited wildcards issued where any amount could be killed). That’s a lot of beavers. And a lot of water storage that drought-ridden California threw away,

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On an entirely different note, I need to take a moment to say that 29 years ago today I had no degree and Jon was without a country or a job. Who ever knew those crazy kids would make it work?

Visitors & Casualties

heidi08 City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? November 8, 2014

Last night’s visitors from San Francisco were 30 high school students with backpacks and notebooks who came to see the beavers.They were accompanied by their energetic and fearless teacher/handler Catherine Salvin. I gave a little talk on the footbridge about beavers as ecosystem engineers and described their physical adaptions to life in the water. Then Jon took them on a tour of the dam and up to ward street to look for the kit. On the way she made sure they sketched the dam, the flow device, and the chewed trees.

There were some great questions, some appreciative listeners and a few who predictably couldn’t have been more bored. They had read the New York Times article beforehand, and were fairly schooled in the basic story. (Someone couldn’t exactly remember the word and said they were ecosystem technicians, which I loved.) I’m happy to say that not one student thought beavers eat fish or live in the dam. That’s Catherine right front below.

After their tour our smaller yearling made several appearances, swimming obligingly and foraging for them to watch. When it first emerged 30 noisy bodies trampled for a closer look and it dove immediately. I was surprised how quickly they learned to watch silently so they could see and sketch the beaver at leisure. A second beaver appeared later on and a great egret fished ostentatiously at the bridge during the quiet moments.

All in all it was a good night, for beavers, for ecological education and for Martinez. Thanks WALC!

This morning I heard from Robin that the second wave of depredation permits for beavers (the not-computerized ones that had to be scanned by hand) had arrived. She wrote,

“Yes, we have Region 4 well represented with counties Kern, Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Madera. Also Region 6 with Mono county. Nothing in the Southern coastal region- Los Angeles to San Diego.”

What does this mean? 4 – Central Region Serving Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. Region 6 Serving Imperial, Inyo, Mono, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That means permission to kill the water-savers in the driest regions of the state. Robin will generously donate her weekend to get the stats together. But she can’t possibly go fast enough for me.

I recently was talking to a reporter from the guardian about depredation in California, and she wanted to know if the numbers were going up or down. I realized we couldn’t know for sure, but might glean something from earlier records. I don’t have access to earlier depredation permits, but I do have the stats from a FOIA request by reporter Thomas Knudson on beavers killed by the USDA in 2010. Comparing the two is kind of like apples and oranges, because one is ‘permission given’ and the other is actual beavers killed, and just because a permit is issued the beavers could be killed by someone else and never wind up in the USDA stats. Think of it like “All mothers are women” but “not all women are mothers” grouping problem. Remember the column on the left is the actual number of beavers killed by USDA. And the column on the right is the number of depredation permits issued (which might valid for an unlimited number of beavers).

However you slice it, we still have our grim winner:

So Placer county is still the leading beaver killer in the entire state. No surprise there. Even more interesting to me is second place. USDA killed 108 beavers in Colusa County in 2010. But in 2013 the entire county got only got 4 permits. What gives? Did they suddenly have a change of heart and think that killing beavers was wrong? No indeed. Those 4 permits were issued for the incredible number of 94 beavers PLUS one unlimited wildcard of dead beavers. And they were all awarded to USDA. Let’s assume that those US killers are good at their job and always get their beaver. 94 + X (make that at least least 10 probably a lot more) and that puts them right back in their number 2 spot.