Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

Bemoaning Beavers Broadly

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 5, 2014

Lake Wylie is a man-made lake just south of Charleston in South Carolina. Every now and then it has sightings of alligators and snake fish, and is the product of a 1904 hydroelectric dam made by the power company. Guess what kind of dams it doesn’t want?

Beavers causing concern on Crowders Creek

LAKE WYLIE — Al Morey says there’s “one heck of a nuisance” on Lake Wylie, and he isn’t sure anyone is doing anything about it. Lakefront resident Ed Lindsey wants to do something about it.

“We’ve had beavers for a while, but they’ve always kind of been in the water,” Lindsey said. “They’ve never done any damage.” Until now. Lindsey had three small plum trees taken down on his property, and six larger tree. A neighbor lost a couple more trees, he said.

“They would chew the bark all around a tree,” Lindsey said. “They’re really destructive.”

Morey works at Clawson’s Pile Driving & Construction. He estimates he has seen 80 or 90 trees in a 10-mile area with beaver damage.

“Lately what I’ve been seeing is they’ve been coming out in broad daylight,” Morey said.

The most extreme damage he has seen has been in Crowders Creek, Morey said. He’s seen five or six dams from the island beneath the S.C. 274 bridge, upstream.

Oh those destructive beavers, coming out in broad daylight to eat your trees for no reason! Better call the trapper right away. Or your pretend lake could get altered by real nature! I wasn’t at all surprised by this article from SC but I was surprised by the final paragraphs.

Nonlethal options for beaver management include water flow control devices and wire barriers or fencing around trees to prevent gnawing. The state department also provides information on those routes.

According to the state, a beaver colony can be as large as 20 to 30 acres. They help produce habitat for waterfowl, fish, reptiles, amphibians and furbearers such as minks and otters.

The wood duck, which nests in large numbers in South Carolina, often is attracted to beaver ponds. Beavers are located in every county in South Carolina.

Remember, we’re grading on a curve. So any mention of beaver benefits, wrapping trees and flow devices is a big win for South Carolina. I don’t have much hope for these beavers, but I’m pleased that the reporter included options, and have some hope for him.

As the weather picks up, more beavers are being blamed for power outages. This one in Colefax, Washington. (I guessed they plugged in too many devices?)

Beaver knocks out power at Colfax

COLFAX, Wash. — Avista Utilities says a beaver is to blame for a power outage at Colfax.

The utility says a beaver chewed through the tree that fell on a line about 2 a.m. Monday, cutting electricity for about 600 residents. Service was restored by 7 a.m.

I mean, it’s not like power companies are responsible for trimming and removing trees around power cables or anything. Mark my words, when Colfax moves the wires underground they’re going to blame gophers.

And here’s a story celebrating salmon and their glorious triumph over those ruinous, obstructing beavers.

Writer’s Voice – Honoring Salmon by Robin Song

For me, the bright spot in this time of year is the Coho Salmon. Theirs is the last of the salmon runs in our area, and they choose the cold autumn waters for their spawning beds.

That’s why I consider these fish heroes. They have come through so much. Even the creek itself presents challenges. Winter snows sends trees crashing down across the creek and the fish have to negotiate tangles of logs and branches. Beaver have constructed dams along the creek, lowering the water in places to where it is just a few inches deep and the salmon have to thrash over rocks and pebbles as they make their way to pools to rest.

The creek twists and turns, some bends so narrow that the water gushes through and the fish fight their way along, always driven to go farther. At last they reach the final obstacle-a large beaver dam across the west end of the pond, laying west of the lake. In the years when the beaver have been in the valley, they have kept the dam tightly constructed, repairing any breeches immediately. a pair of male Cohos head upstream. In those years the salmon have not been able to leap over the high dam with its many sharp-ended logs and branches bristling against their assault. In those times the salmon have to spawn in the pool below the dam, and along the creek west of that.

But this year the beaver left the pond and moved up to the lake and a breech opened in the dam and was left open. I walked out onto the old dam and stood watching for salmon in the pond and was glad to see some had made it over the dam and were swimming near it. I just caught glimpses of them before they moved into the deeper water of the pond. There were still many salmon in the pool-those who just couldn’t leap up the breech in the dam. And many were spawning in the creek itself.

Of course I posted a comment to Kristin, explaining how that beaver dam would also make deep pools for eggs to grow up in, not freezing in the winter or drying in the summer, and how it would be rich with invertebrates because of the beavers digging and mudding. But my comment must not have been poetic or honor-y enough, because its not there this morning.

And if you woke up like me and looked at the wasteland ashes of the election you might be comforted by this quote from Churchill, who famously said;

“Democracy is the worst form of government.

Except for all the others”

Turkey before Halloween?

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 25, 2014

Beaver comeback continues in Windsor-Essex on Turkey Creek

Nearly a century after they all but disappeared, beavers continue to make a comeback in Windsor-Essex County. The latest sighting has come in LaSalle, along Turkey Creek.

Ron Harway found the beaver in his backyard.

Earlier this year, Harway noticed the bark from a tree 60 centimetres in diameter in his backyard had been torn off. Now, wood chips lie in a pile on the ground.

Let me say, if that picture is your beaver, he’s a teeny tiny insect of a beaver. Looking at the later photo of the chewed tree I’d say it looks more like porcupine chewing or muskrat, just not much damage to show for all that gnawing. I suppose if it is a tiny kit who has no idea what he’s doing that means someone killed his parents and he’s an orphan, that’s IF its a beaver I mean. Which I doubt. Anyway Ron needn’t worry. he has a smart Turkey biologists nearby who know all about them.

Biologist Dan Lebedyk with the Essex Region Conservation Authority says more beavers may not be a good thing in Essex County.

Fifty years ago, the region had some of the lowest amount of tree cover in Southern Ontario. It’s been a long, slow recovery.

“So our resources are getting better but it’s not good to have an animal like this because we don’t have the actual resources to sustain a [beaver] population yet,” he said. Beavers can cut down up to 200 trees per year.

Lebedyk is also concerned about the local watershed.”Because all of our water courses are basically drainage systems for our agricultural industry, we don’t want to see dams created on our water courses. it would create flooding and damage property,” he said.

I feel fairly certain Dan might get a letter from me. And in the meantime you should really amuse yourself by watching some footage of beavers that Napa has been smart enough to welcome. How wonderful to have good friends in Beaver places! The first is from Robin Ellison and shows a young beaver chewing on the branches of a willow tree they brought down the night before.

The second is from Rusty Cohn who has been experimenting with a trail camera to catch work at night. Notice the two beavers on the right and a muskrat or mink at the left hand corner of the screen swimming by at the end.

Three scoops of stupid

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 22, 2014

Every now and then we pass through a news cycle that is so full of beaver benefits and so absent of stupidity I begin to feel like we’ve finally turned an important corner – that all across the country people are understanding more about the good beavers do and why they should solve problems without trapping.

Then there’s a day like today when I remember that people from one side of this country to the other (and everywhere in between) are still deeply committed to their stupidity about beavers. And it shows zero sign of evaporating.

We can start with the tail bounty they’re increasing in Winnebago County in Iowa. From now on, every person who brings in a cut tail will get 50.00$ instead of 25.00. Don’t worry, they have to prove it was from that county. I don’t know how. Maybe the beavers in Iowa have license plates?

Dorchester Struggles With Beaver Troubles

Then we can march 1000 miles across the state to Salem, Maryland where they’re tossing around ecological phrases to justify killing beavers by aiming the USDA at them. These are my favorite quotes.

“They’re damaging the ecological forests, as well as the timber value, because no one is going to be able to go in there and harvest that timber now,” said Libby Nagel of Salem.

“It’s killing the trees and the branches that absorb the nutrients. It’s killing a lot of habitat, mainly causing flooding in fields,” said Eberspacher.

Ecological forests? Absorbing nutrients? Did someone drop out of college after ecology 101? We should all be reminded of Alexander Pope’s Essay on criticism.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Apparently someone stopped reading before they sobered up.

Click on the photo if you want to see the newscast. The only good news from Dorchester is that when I first saw the story last night they were running it with my very favorite KIT PHOTO by CHERYL! I summoned all my doctoral indignation and wrote the station manager that if they were going to rifle through our website and STEAL anything they wanted they might at least have read the information while they were there.

This morning it’s magically swapped for an NPS photo. I thought it might be, so I took this screen shot last night.

And just when you thought the world couldn’t be any more ridiculous about beavers, there’s this.

Ravens, beaver cause power outages in Willow

According to MEA spokeswoman Julie Estey, the main outage — first reported on the MEA Facebook page just after 11 a.m. — cut power to roughly 3,700 customers. Estey estimates the second incident temporarily left fewer than a dozen people in the dark.

“It was actually caused by two ravens,” Estey said. “They were actually in a substation, and they took out one of the breakers.”

The Douglas substation where the breaker was located covers much of Willow all the way north to Talkeetna. Estey says the outage was first detected at 10:56 a.m., with power restored by 12:18 p.m.

A second, smaller outage reported between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. affected fewer than a dozen people on Willow Fishhook Road. While crews were quickly able to repair the line, the area was within the substation’s coverage area — which meant customers there lost power twice.

“A beaver cut down a tree and it actually fell onto the line,” Estey said. “So they got their power restored, and then they got hit by the ravens.”

“Made beavers” vs. “Beavers that have Got it Made”.

heidi08 Beavers, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 21, 2014

I came across this video the other day and thought you might find interesting too. It’s a fairly concise description of the fur trade – well, one PART of the fur trade. Calling HBC the fur trade is like calling Shell the oil industry. Remember that there were many other companies all doing the same thing at once.

It’s amazing any survived at all. Lets not think any more about ‘Made Beavers”. Let’s think about “beavers that have got it made”.

Wonderments of the East Bay Celebrating 80 years of EBRP

The East Bay Regional Parks abound in wonderments: animals, plants, sounds, geological formations, histories, and languages that stimulate our curiosity and expand our capacity for awe. In exquisite, lyrical essays, Sylvia Linsteadt and Malcolm Margolin—with help from their friends—revel in these wonderments.

Our complimentary copy arrived yesterday with 4 pages of the Martinez Beaver story. They declined to use Cheryl’s excellent photos (or my accurate writing, ahem) but gave a gallant tale of civic response and public interest. The story puts Martinez in a community-building light and says we had people from all over coming just to see our beavers. I remain fairly picky about the details. (If you’ll remember the original chapter had said Martinez brought in a “Team of engineers” to fix the flooding problem and I was terrified everyone would think it was expensively hard work saving beavers.) I managed to get that wording fixed, but sadly the chapter still said mom had three babies and we discovered the first ever tulle perch in Alhambra Creek, which makes me mortified that my name was dropped in the passage without a corresponding footnote saying, “Heidi never said this and didn’t write it.”

A reasonable woman would be content that it makes it clear that the beavers had a positive effect on our creek and grateful that they sent me a copy. I strive to be such a woman. I’m not worried about the idea of giving EBRP credit for our beavers, (since they’re on city land), because I crisply remember a lively conversation I had with park wizard Hulet Hornbeck before he died, where he told me that they had been working for 50 years to clean up the Marina so that the arrival of the beavers would even be possible. And since he was wise enough to see the beaver family as a compliment, I heartily believed him.

It’s a very nice looking book and a trove of local treasures. I know you want to pick up your own copy here, or wait for the silent auction!

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Now you’ve done your history homework you deserve a treat. R.E. from Napa sent this yesterday and it’s very lovely. I won’t even bother telling you to enjoy it, because I know you will.

And finally a HUGE thanks to our friends at Safari West. My niece just got married in the Redwoods and since my wedding present to her had been an overnight stay at our favorite wilderness adventure in the wine country, they made sure she and her new hubby had an awesome time. The highlight came last night when Kimberly Robertson met the couple after their tour and dinner to take them for a tower feeding that left my well-spoken niece speechless. Thanks so much Safari West for making so many people so happy, and don’t forget to remember them if you’re looking for the PERFECT special day for someone in your family!

Time Travel and Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 20, 2014

Believe it or not, this program aired this very Saturday on the Children’s BBC program “Wild”. It was obviously filmed before DEFRA had made up its mind to ruin everything so there is no mention of beavers being illegally released or carrying parasites. It’s just an irresistible story of beaver adventure. I’m guessing someone at the BBC got a memo Monday morning and scrubbed it because if you search for the program online you get this.

Fortunately for us, stalwart beaver protector Peter Smith had already uploaded it to Youtube and we get to watch it first hand. I think I have a crush on host Naomi Wilkinson, because her enthusiasm for beavers is entirely infectious. Meanwhile pay attention to the language. This is alarmingly accurate for beaver-TV! If I were you I’d watch it today because tomorrow British government television might come lumbering along and swallow the youtube version next.

Wasn’t that amazing? The other amazing thing that came across my desk this weekend (besides a memory card problem, did you know your computer can actually send telegraphic messages and beep to tell you why it broken? Me neither!) was the Moorhen Marsh Study done in 1998 on the beavers at Mt. View Sanitation. For years we’ve been running into the odd person at displays who has mentioned that they were on the volunteer beaver study group between the Lindsay Museum and Mt. View Sanitation. I was fascinated by this and stunned that no information or observations about this study existed or ever found its way to our beaver sub-committee. That is until Kelly Davidson was cleaning out her desk and sent us this.

There’s a description of their methods and the some 15 volunteers who participated, as well as an excellent species list of 26 in all. It doesn’t say much that is startling about beavers and sadly there are no photos attached, but it did have a description of the behaviors they observed, all but one of which we see in Alhambra Creek. See if you can spot they outlier?

Beavers were observed swimming, chewing, diving, eating reeds, laying on their backs to eat, carrying stick or weeds in their mouth, patrolling or circling the ponds, shaking their heads, wiggling their ears, rubbing their faces with their paws and splashing.

Those beavers built a full lodge in the marsh and two kits were observed at the site. What I love best is thinking that one of those kits was probably one of our original parents. Bear with me here, but those beavers didn’t live in the bank and none of our 22 beavers have ever built a lodge but our original mom. In fact she built two in the span of three years and no one has done it since she died. This would make her 12 when she died, which is a nice life span for a wild beaver. So I’m going to assume it was mom that grew up in Moorhen Marsh. I’m reading this report as if I were looking at her baby pictures, which is a lot of fun. I will upload it to the website or you can read it here yourself.