Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

Dam Liars

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 1, 2013

There are lies

there are dam lies

And there are statistics.

With one correction in spelling to Mr. Twain’s quotation, this is a fitting introduction to today’s column. Yesterday I received the results of the survey conducted at the four seasons in El Dorado. You’ll remember they were having troubles with beavers a while back and folks contacted us about wanting to keep them. A couple of them even came to Martinez to look around and see our flow device, then visit the beaver festival. They lost the battle with the HOA to save those beavers, but have formed a wildlife group to hopefully change the situation the next time. The HOA kindly responded with the usual survey of attitudes which 104 residents returned.

Ugh. I shudder to think what would have happened if Martinez got their hands on something like this. The questions aren’t exactly UNBIASED although the HOA deserves grim kudos for actually saying eradicate and not “remove” or “euthanize”. (Which Martinez used to cloak its ugly truth.) Okay 64 against keeping beavers and 36 for is significant at the p.005 level but the obstacle’s not insurmountable. They only need to change 19 minds. That’s like 10 couples. I’m thinking BBQ and martini’s, maybe in Martinez beaver glasses?

I especially love the part where the HOA asks residents if they will pay to thin the willow after they pay to kill the animal that would trim the willow naurally. Nice! I would start by saying, “Does the fact that you used our HOA dollars to complete this survey mean that if 51 had voted against eradication you would not have killed them next time?” If it does – we have our work cut out for us but it’s work we can do. Can you give me a map of the residences who responded to the survey? How many of them were on the creek?

If the answer is a mealy-mouthed “We have to protect the property regardless of what public opinion says” or something like that, demand they give a refund to residents for the expense of the survey itself (including the time it took them to add these things up), since its clearly a waste of time and of no value to the residents. Offer to do the survey for them next time so it won’t cost residents anything. It’s not as hard as it sounds. I know a beaver-friendly psychologist who would be happy to volunteer some time to put together new questions.

Is it better to solve a problem for the short term, or adopt a long-term solution”
Would you appreciate more variety of birds and fish in the area?
Do you know what a “keystone species is?”
Do you think the HOA at Four Seasons is as smart as other communities that have successfully employed humane solutions? Or would it be too hard for them?

Give me a call. I’m sure we can whip something together in no time.

And some more dam lies this morning from the Boston Globe, talking about how rebounding forests on the East Coast have made a wildlife boom.

As forest returns in New England, so do inhabitants

Beaver: Wiped out entirely in southern New England by 1900 with only small remnant populations in northern Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Now hundreds of thousands live throughout New England, including an estimated 70,000 in Massachusetts.

Mind you, nobody has actually COUNTED the number of beavers on the East Coast or West Coast or Barbary Coast since they noticed there were hardly any left! The 70.000 figure comes from the panicked inflated statistics offered when MA Fisheries and Wildlife responded to the voters decision to eliminate crush and leghold traps. As in “OMG we’ll be overrun with beavers. There will be 70,000 in 10 years!”

Nice of the Globe to write that down for them like its a fact. But I’ve noticed before the Globe is very compliant when it comes to beaver dogma.

For the record, MA has 10,555 miles of land of which 25.7 is water. That works out to about 2712 miles of water total, which would mean that there would be about 2 beavers for every mile of water in the state. Which I suppose is theoretically possible, except for the fact that MA is notorious for not allowing beavers in reservoirs or near drinking water, so that’s got to subtract a lot of real estate. Plus some of that water has got to be under towns and concrete, and beavers can’t live there. Not to mention that plenty of beavers in cities and on private land are getting killed every day. So I’m going to hazard the guess that that statistic is inflated. In 2009 the NYT reported the population estimated at 30,000 beavers in the state. Which means that these remarkable animals that take three years to reach sexual maturity and breed once a year have more than doubled their population in four years.

I said the time:

Today, Ms. Hajduk said, there are at least 30,000 beavers, all over the state.

Wow, that’s a lot. Maybe this whole environmental movement has gone too far. We obviously brought them back too much. How many did their used to be? 29,000? Oh wait, remember those historical trapping records that showed 60 to 80 beaver per mile of stream? I wonder how many miles of stream Massachusetts has. (Gosh the internet is useful. 4320 miles of stream in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.) Lets just multiply that by the low number of 60…how many beavers would we expect if we were back to that baseline? I mean if we had done an even adequate job of “bringing them back” 259,200. Let’s be generous and just round down to 200,000.

Uh oh. By the most conservative possible calculations, Massachusetts is short 170,000 beavers!

Say it with me now:

There are lies

there are dam lies

And there are statistics.

Local News Outsourced: A Sterling Example

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, pictures, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 28, 2013

Sterling Massachusetts has a problem. Well a few of them apparently, but one problem in particular is worrying them at the moment. It starts with a B and ends with an EAVERS.

Beavers creating a dam problem on Legate Hill Road

Sterling Conservation Agent Matthew Marro has begun a process to determine who owns the land where drainages have been backed up by beaver dams and causing severe flooding at Kyle Equipment Company at 14 Legate Hill Road.

Marro noted there have been welldocumented situations involving beavers and dams in the area and that he and other conservation commissioners have personally observed the creatures throughout the season.

Kyle said investigations they personally conducted in the area revealed that the drain basin serviced by a 24-inch diameter pipe located near the far corner of his property is “totally clogged by beavers.” He also noted that the wetland areas near the back of his property also contain two beaver dams which have resulted in a clogged culvert under Route 12.

Apparently Sterling is so certain of its facts that they have declared the phrase welldocumented to be a single word. Not only is that certain. That’s damcertain. All that flooding is obviously the fault of the beavers. Of course they need killing. We just need to find out who pays for it. This isn’t a complex moral dilemma that upsets us. We’re not worried about who gets killed, but the thorny problem of who gets billed.

The Kyles insist, however, that the DPW has done all it can to increase the drainage to alleviate the situation. However, something further must be done with the beavers, they said. “It is only going to take anotherth raini stormt bbeforef I hhave watert coming through my shop,” said Sean Kyle. He also pointed out that the paved area behind their shop has been destroyed and floats when the area gets flooded.flooded

The Kyles are apparently SO UPSET that they’re stuttering. I have not changed this copy a fingertip. The paper is accurately quoted in being inaccurate. (I heard a This American Life program report about local newspapers outsourcing their writing to the Philippines. Very very chilling and you should listen someday. As it is, we should probably not be critical of the writing in this article because its clearly not their native language.)

I’d rather be critical of the Selectmen and Public works director who have lived in this town and should know better. They are located 70 miles from Beaver Solutions and Mike Callahan. In less time that it would take him to listen to that TAL episode on his truck radio describing foreign fingers writing our local papers because we’re too cheap to bother with it ourselves, he could come to Sterling with his truck ready to build a culvert fence on those drains and the Kyles need never, ever flood again.

And no beavers would need to be killed. (Although several infinitives will likely continue to be split.)

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Excellent photos this morning from Cheryl’s visit last night. Here are two happily munching willow near the secondary dam.

satisfied siblings — Satisfied Siblings: by Cheryl Reynolds

And this photo of a kit ponderously chewing. I love the water colors in this. Cheryl says it was a super high tide so mom must have been busy again this morning. There aren’t beavers in the Bahamas I guess, but this sure looks tropical.

kit chewing over beautiful water — Kit chewing close: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Three for the road

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 27, 2013

Voices of what appears to be reason other than mine are always a delight on this website. Enjoy this excellent piece from Dick Sherman writing on the Danvers situation. Remember this is an area in Massachusetts very near Salem which had some beavers in its pond that were flooding their backyards, so they hired a trapper. And he killed several and then they complained the water was too stagnant. Oh and the trapper said he was prohibited from removing a dead beaver by regulations so they buried it but the turtles dug it up. Sound familiar? Maybe this will ring a bell.

Well,apparently if you have a lot of sense in Danvers, you move to New Hampshire.

Let the natural process continue

My name is Dick Sherman, I grew up in Danvers as did my wife, (now in our 70s and live in N.H.). For 15 years, we lived directly on College Pond in the St. John’s Prep area on Spring Street. I can tell you about the beavers, Beaver Brook and College Pond.

In my opinion, the town is making a mistake by killing beavers and trying to control that watershed area as suggested by the residents. The area in question by Glendale Road and behind Glen Magna is a natural (God put it there a long time ago) watershed area. It feeds to Beaver Brook, which on the surface goes under Maple Street and then into College Pond.

The water table (aquifer) itself is under Maple Street. College Pond was and is a magnificent treasure, which as you know, is recognized now by the town as a conservation overlook area.

I sense from your article that the nearby residents, which once again pollute the Beaver Brook and College Pond as opposed to letting nature help out. Now you have now beavers, algae, and high water in the area. Did you not know that when you purchased, that you were in a “flood zone” and watershed area? Certainly, you did not know how beneficial it is to the ecology and to Danvers residents now and then.

Ahh thanks for writing this, Dick, but let me be honest. You must have driven your neighbors insane back on Maple Street. These people want lawns and potted plants, not actual nature. Come to think of it, you might still be driving them insane now. Maybe that’s why they ran your response in its entirety. It’s too long for a letter to the editor and too short for an op-ed. But they put in every gloriously impractical word. Maybe they wanted to watch the “fireworks”.

I especially liked this part of your letter.

This area incidentally (Spring and Summer streets) was the same and exact area that the “witches” were found as the result of eating bad rye and perhaps drinking from College Pond.

Could it be genetic?

Anyway, the residents of Danvers, in my opinion, do not “value” and protect their resources. I am not just talking about the beavers here. You should be fishing in College Pond now, or enjoying it’s former beauty, but it has been hidden away for many hundreds of years. So you develop the lands and give away this asset as opposed to protecting it for subsequent generations.

Well now isn’t that refreshing! Thanks for an excellent letter Mr. Sherman and I hope it makes a few people think differently about their watershed. And thanks for the excuse to rerun my graphic. Which has made me very happy.

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Some additional news this morning. I’m late in sharing this with you which is definitely worth the listen. It’s a lovely interview with Jenny Papka of Native Bird Connections about avian vocalizations. You will remember that Native Birds joined us for the last 6 beaver festivals even our very first when we barely had 5 exhibits to rub together. It is no secret to say we are very, very fond of them. Here’s just one reason why:

6 amazing minutes of radio. Great job Jenny. We are so proud of you. And why isn’t Big Picture Science looking into beaver vocalizations? That would be REALLY interesting!

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Final grim read from our friend Beth of the National Wildlife Federation. She lives very near the Yosemite Fire and has some amazing observations about the massive blaze engulfing it. Read this and you might want to share.

How Much of Yosemite Will Burn in a Fire Fueled By Climate Change?

Known as the Rim Fire, to date it has burned almost 160,000 acres (roughly the size of Chicago) with about 22,000 of those acres in Yosemite. Not surprisingly, given its immense size and threats to a cherished national park, the fire has prompted a media blitz, headlining everywhere from CNN to the BBC to Al Jazeera.

Yet almost universally missing from the media coverage, as usual? That climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more intense. As they have in past years, reporters won’t connect the dots in their main stories, treating the science that’s staring us in the face as a side story.

NPS fire crew enters the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoias to establish defensible space protecting the big trees if the Rim fire advances. (Photo USFS)

I found this picture very affecting. Go read the whole thoughtfully horrifying thing. It’s your park.

(And your climate.)

Warren County and the Stupid Pie

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 11, 2013

Once upon a time there was a county in the Adirondacks in New York that had the misfortune of a road washout which they thought was caused by a collapsed beaver dam. It cost the county a great deal of money and no one wanted that to happen again. All the officials sat down and tried to think of how to solve the problem. Finally one bright man from the soil and water department suggested the idea of paying trappers an extra bounty for every beaver they killed! Especially when those beavers lived by county roads! Sure more dead beavers would mean safer roads right?

What Warren County didn’t realize was that while a trapper can be required to lop off a tail to prove he has killed a beaver to collect his bounty, he cannot show a log from each dam he dismantled to prove he took it apart. So the beavers might be dead, but the dams might still be there.

More dead beavers=More untended dams=More washed out roads.

Warren County has just made themselves into a big ole pie of stupid.

Warren County officials consider ways to prevent beaver dam problems

That term may be a bit crass, but Warren County officials are exploring giving stipends to trappers to remove beavers whose dams and ponds threaten roads or public infrastructure.

The idea of paying trappers was one of a number of suggestions that county officials kicked around this week to try to deal with a growing problem of impoundments created by beavers that threaten municipal property.

Several beaver dam collapses in recent years have washed out roads in the region, a number of them in Warren County. That has led to county officials looking for ways to deal with a burgeoning beaver population that has grown as the number of trappers has declined.

Jim Lieberum, the Soil & Water Conservation District’s district manager, said one remedy was to try to foster more trapping, by paying licensed trappers for each beaver they take in addition to whatever they can sell pelts for. A $10 payment per beaver could be a starting point, he said.

Since our friends at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife are IN New York State, I can only assume they will try their beaver best to shine some light on this intenstinal darkness. Something tells me they will have their work cut out for them. Good luck team beaver!

I hope you don’t scare easy because here’s something else we need to talk about. This is the stats by county of the numbers of beavers killed by Wildlife Services in California in 2010. This doesn’t even count beavers killed by permit from CDFW.

These numbers were obtained from the FOIA request by Sacramento Bee reporter Tom Knudson. 1082 total. I’ve been thinking they needed to be a graphic to get the whole picture but I never got around to it until yesterday. What I’d like is a chart of counties colored by the numbers of beavers they killed with WS. If I ever figure out how to do that, you’ll see one of our grimmest offenders is Northeast of Mendocino – this big swath of Colusa, Butte, Plumas and Lassen counties. which is responsible for more than a quarter of all WS beaver deaths in the state. Our friends on the Klamath have their work cut out for them.

If you’re like me you need some good news after that beaver mortuary. Here’s some good cheer I received this morning from Karen Werner of San Jose. She works in Education at the Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose.

Awesome! After four failed attempts to see wild beavers (Antelope Lake in the Sierra, San Luis Reserve by Los Banos, Guadaloupe River downtown and Lexington Reservoir in Los Gatos) we visited Martinez last night and were rewarded with three beavers, munching away, swimming about and interacting with us. After reading your recent blog entries, I’m quite confident that we saw this year’s kit, last year’s kit, and a mature adult. I took some photos (I need a longer lens!) which I’m happy to send if you’re interested.

Thanks for being a voice for the beavers! We’re not much for crowds, so we avoided the festival last weekend, but all reports say it was a triumph – congrats!

Thanks Karen! And I’m so glad you enjoyed the show. We certainly do!

The Crucible of Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? August 10, 2013

In the days immediately following a successful beaver festival I am suffused in a warm glow of fuzzy good feeling. Things are changing little by little for beavers, and we are helping in our little way. Martinez got smarter and other cities can too. Gradually the nation’s beaver IQ will go up and then we’ll all benefit.

Even with this heady insulation, a few shockingly disturbing articles manage to float to my in box (like the woman who made baby beaver dolls out of ACTUAL baby beavers) and I think, NO. I won’t write about that. I won’t pollute this good feeling I worked so hard to have with that artless sadism. The arc of environmentalism is long, but it does bend towards beavers. We are moving in the right direction.

And then something like this happens.

Beavers, dams stir concern in Danvers neighborhood

Over the years, beavers have built dams on the stream that runs between that neighborhood and Endicott Park. The stream runs down under Maple Street and eventually to College Pond.

“The wetland is behind our property,” wrote David Saunders of 12 Brentwood Circle. Saunders was unable to attend the meeting, and neighbor Mary Jalbert read his letter to the selectmen. “We have never seen flooding as bad as it has been this year in June and July. In the past we have had many temporary flooding events in the springtime — but they receded very soon after the rain fall subsided. This year they did not recede.”

Jalbert explained to the selectmen that the health inspector had visited the area twice this summer and on the second visit ordered a licensed trapper to remove the main dam. While the water level dropped some after the dam was removed, the water has now become stagnant.

Did you get that? This is a classy neighborhood just 5 miles from Salem, and the home-owners complained the beaver dams were backing up too much water. So the city removed the dams (and the beavers) and now they’re complaining that the water is too stagnant.

“Unless something is done to get this water moving, we are going to have more water back up to property,” said Ryan. “That’s going to seep into property. Mold will develop. And we will have a health issue in that regard as well. Not to mention damage to personal property.”

He added that the stagnant water is also a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“When the dam was there, water was actually flowing,” said Soles. “Since they have removed the dam, I can agree the water doesn’t move.”

Let me get this straight. When the beavers were alive there was too much water. And now that the beavers are dead there’s not enough flow? And you’re in Massachusettes? Where solutions from both Mike Callahan and Skip Lisle are about 2 hours away from you?

“The wetland is behind our property,” wrote David Saunders of 12 Brentwood Circle. Saunders was unable to attend the meeting, and neighbor Mary Jalbert read his letter to the selectmen. “We have never seen flooding as bad as it has been this year in June and July. In the past we have had many temporary flooding events in the springtime — but they receded very soon after the rain fall subsided. This year they did not recede.”

Gosh, worse flooding than ever before. Those dam beavers! Moving in and ruining everything with the furry ways. Oh wait,

Rainfall was the big story in June’s weather

Rainfall was the headliner this year. June gave us copious amounts. We had 17 days with rain, much of it from tropical downpours that flooded streets and homes locally. From the 6th to the 8th, we had over 3 inches of rain here in Salem. Thunderstorms were no strangers. We had six days that produced these storms, some with an abundance of thunder, lightning and damaging winds.

So you had more rain than usual and even though the beavers built up their dams to keep the water, some flowed over while the dams were there. But you didn’t like all that water and hired a trapper and lo and behold in August the water isn’t flowing anymore! And now you’re worried about mosquitoes and mold. Oh and something worse.

He said algae was covering the wetlands now, and worse yet, a dead beaver was causing an awful stink. He said the trapper had told him dead beavers are not allowed to be removed but they can be buried, which was done.

“They buried it and supposedly turtles brought it back up,” said Soles. “And it’s rotting and we can’t open up our windows.”

I think I am more fond of this graphic than any I ever made. I suppose a healthy turtle would eat carrion. But even with my vivid imagination it is hard for me that they would unbury a beaver corpse and chow down. It was even harder for me to imagine that dead beaver bodies couldn’t be removed in MA. The entire state would be drowning in them if that were so! I asked our resident MA expert who happens to be married to a trapper. “Not true and completely ridiculous” was his answer. Apparently the reporter of this story didn’t bother with the cumbersome burden of verification.

Grave-robbing turtles, mold and mosquitoes, you would think this story couldn’t get any better. But gentle reader, you’d be wrong.

Jalbert raised another concern. A “floating” sewer was installed in that neighborhood and she wondered if the rising water levels would affect its performance

Floating sewer? A sewer that floats? Now how could that possibly go wrong? This entire town seems woefully unready for the demands of civilization. Honestly this whole story is rumor after heresay after gossip after imagination. I seem to remember this area was famous once for believing impossibly crazy things that their neighbors uttered and taking it for fact. You would think that in 321 years the region would have learned at least to look for a smidgeon of evidence before taking irreversible action.