Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

I GUESS TRAPPERS SHAPE STREAMS TOO. WHO KNEW?

And the award for the most credit given to ridiculous helpers goes not, as you may have thought to Rudy Guiliani, but to everyones favorite pack-hunting predator: Wolves. Apparently when wolves kill beavers they make more streams.

Didn’t you know?

Wolves alter wetland creation and recolonization by killing ecosystem engineers

Beavers are some of the world’s most prolific ecosystem engineers, creating, maintaining and radically altering wetlands almost everywhere they live. But what, if anything, might control this engineering by beavers and influence the formation of North America’s wetlands?

In a paper to be published Friday in the journal Science Advances, researchers with the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project and Voyageurs National Park observed and demonstrated that wolves affect wetland ecosystems by killing beavers leaving their colonies to create new ponds.

Beavers are important ecosystem engineers that create wetlands around the world, storing water and creating habitat for numerous other species. This study documents that wolves alter wetland creation when they kill beavers that have left home and created their own dams and ponds.

Juvenile beavers disperse alone and often create new ponds or fix up and recolonize existing, old ponds. By studying pond creation and recolonization patterns along with wolf predation on beavers, project biologists and co-authors Tom Gable and Austin Homkes found that 84% of newly-created and recolonized beaver ponds remained occupied by beavers for more than one year. But when a wolf kills the beaver that settles in a pond, no such ponds remain active.

This relationship between wolves and dispersing beavers shows how wolves are intimately connected to wetland creation across the boreal ecosystem and all the ecological processes that come from wetlands.

So the idea is that when wolves kill beavers who are making a new pond that pond doesn’t happen, and the new pond made by some lucky beaver who wasn’t killed by beavers will survive. See how wolves shape the streams?

Puleeze….that is like saying that a car hitting squirrels determines the rate of acorn production in the forest that year.

Of course the news is bouncing around the entire internet this morning. It even appeared on ABC. Because nothing says “Fun story” more than a beaver meal making streams.

Wolves preying on beavers in Minnesota reshape wetlands

Wolves preying on beavers profoundly affect northern Minnesota’s wetland ecosystems because dams built by individual beavers — those not associated with beaver colonies — quickly fall apart. The new research doesn’t show wolves reduced the total beaver population in Voyageurs National Park, but that they influenced where beavers were able to build and maintain dams and ponds

Hey, you know what else reshapes wetlands? A beaver Trapper! Depredation! Same logic. Different theme music. Not just in Minnesota but everyfuckingwhere.

Sheesh.

As predicted in my little red hen retelling a month ago the very smart voices who were too busy to take on the beaver summit have indicated they very much want to be part of the first planning meeting. Wonderful. Maybe we’ll get to eat some bread when all this is over! I spent yesterday working on this, which is much harder to do than it looks. At least for me. What do you think? Something like this but better.

TOO DAM RARE

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 29, 2020

Now this is the perfect headline to flood my mailbox over and over. A girl could get used to this.

Restoring habitats could save a fifth of species from climate risks, says report

Nature group Rewilding Britain estimates the country’s “climate zones” – made up of the climatic conditions of an area – are shifting by up to 5km (3 miles) a year due to temperatures rises driven by human activity. That is far faster than many species of plants and animals which are adapted to live within those zones can shift their ranges, putting them at risk of population declines and even extinctions, it warns.

But restoring habitats across 30% of Britain’s land and sea by 2030 could help save a fifth of species from habitat loss, declines or extinctions, according to a report by the organisation that draws on existing research. It is calling for the creation of core “rewilding” areas covering 5% of Britain, which would mean large-scale restoration of natural processes and systems where nature can take care of itself.

Hmm. A fifth of species is a lot of species. Any particular recommendations for candidates that might help with that?

This could include allowing woodland to regenerate naturally, returning areas to a more natural state through removing dams on rivers or rewetting drained peatbogs and reintroducing key species such as beavers or birds of prey.

Well, yes. and duh. Get on it.

A first step is to improve the state of existing wildlife sites to ensure they have thriving wildlife populations that can withstand and adapt to changing conditions. But this is not enough on its own, the study said.

Oh and maybe stop frigging killing the beaver you have in Scotland.

The network of nature reserves and protected areas across Britain is too small and fragmented to support species on the move. And in the future they may no longer be in the right climate zone for some of the species they safeguard.

Are you sure it’s just a fifth they could help? That seems a little low to me.

But folks just keep right on killing them. There’s even a new TV program coming up about how to kill them better.

Local man to be featured on Pursuit Channel

Greenville native Doug Boswell will be featured in a television program for his talents as a trapper. The 2000 graduate of Greenville High School will appear in January on the Pursuit Channel’s “Trapping Across America” series.

Boswell said he will appear in episode three.

“I worked for the Butler County Road department when I got out of high school,” he said. “I was on the beaver control unit and busted up beaver houses. They build these dams in front of the pipes. It causes a lot of wear and tear on the pipes. I was introduced to the other aspect through that.”

Now, he specializing in trapping beavers and getting them out of the area to prevent them from building dams.

“It’s a more efficient way of allocating tax dollars,” he said.

To which the only obvious response is, “There is something called the PURSUIT channel?” I guess it’s probably not about dreams of community college, huh? Sure he specializes in beavers. But he never bothered to learn even the simplest fact that beaver dams aren’t HOUSES, because he’s an idiot. And in Alabama where we will never know any better.

Let’s wash that unpleasant taste out of our mouths with this fine article from our friends in Napa.

Busy Beavers! Unlikely Watershed Heroes on the Napa River

Have you heard about the beavers in Napa? Look closely and you might spot a beaver dam or lodge in our local waterway The hard work of beavers can be seen all along the Napa River and its tributaries. Scientists and biologists working in our local waterways estimate there to be at least 20 different colonies (families of beavers) spotted as far up the valley as St. Helena. In Napa, the Tulocay Creek colony has grown popular among locals; mama beaver and her kits (babies) are regularly featured in the Napa Valley Register.

It might seem novel to find these industrious builders in our downtown and neighborhood waterways, but beavers can be traced back to the Napa River for centuries. For many years, scientists were misinformed about the habitats and behaviors of beavers in Northern California and did not consider beavers native to the waterways that feed into the San Francisco Bay. Recently, historians and scientists with the California Department of Fish and Game presented evidence that challenged long held beliefs about where beavers belong, and ecologists are establishing important links between the presence of beavers and the health of our watersheds.

Hahahahahaha. You know how many historians there are in the department of fish and game? Oh right NONE. That exhaustive groundbreaking research was the unpaid work of a physician, a psychologist, a retired archeologist and some stream keepers. But sure. Just thank CDFW. I’m nothing if not practical. And it can’t hurt.

Beavers are a keystone species in the wetland ecosystem. They play a critical role in providing beneficial habitat and food for a wide range of species, who otherwise wouldn’t be able to thrive in the Napa River. Dams form reservoirs that provide food and shelter for creatures of all sizes, keep water temperatures cooler throughout the warm summer months, and filter fine sediment in water to improve water quality. This provides ideal conditions for the young of threatened species such as chinook salmon and steelhead trout to thrive. Visit a local beaver dam downtown or on Tulocay creek, and you can see a wide range of animals, including turtles, otters, mink, and birds. Beavers transform our waterways from channels prone to erosion to oases of ecological diversity.

Wow. That’s certainly nice to see. Credit where credit is due.

In Napa County, we recognize the valuable contribution of the beavers to our watershed; government organizations including the Flood Control and Water Conservation District as well as the Resource Conservation District work to help beavers and people coexist. Engineers, scientists, and biologists work to make sure development in the valley doesn’t drive the beavers away from their homes, and work with local residents and businesses to prevent and mitigate damages done by beavers as they chew down trees and raise water levels in creeks.

Gosh. That’s rare. An entire county that recognizes the valuable work beavers do. Rusty’s awesome photos and Robin’s tireless advovacy are responsible for a huge part of that. OAEC education onsight helped a lot, and I like to think we in Martinez played our little part in getting it started. And beavers themselves did the rest. Unfortunately seeing beavers as an ally is rare.

Too dam rare.

FIRST PUBLIC MEETING TONIGHT

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 13, 2020

They could have just described beavers and left it at that. Don’t you agree?

7 Keystone Species — and Why they Matter for Our Planet

“Keystone species have low functional redundancy,” explains biologist Raquel Filgueiras of the conservancy group Rewilding Europe. “This means that when populations of these species decline or disappear, there are very few or no other species that can fulfill their role. Ecosystems then degrade, and sometimes completely collapse.”

Wolves are one of many keystone species that humans have viewed as pests or, even worse, enemies to control or remove.

The wolves’ return also aided beavers. North America’s largest rodents are essential ecosystem engineers, and they now had a plentiful supply of leaves, roots, and bark to eat, and wood for building dams.

Yes, yes, wolves are the handmaidens of beavers in that they keep the elk away from the fresh green shoots so that they stick around to make beaver food. Then they can build their dams and restore stream function. Yeah beavers.

Beaver dams can be a nuisance for humans: They may divert waterways where we don’t want them and cause flooding; the trees beavers cut down can destroy our sense of the picturesque.

But beaver dams play a grander role in the ecosystem that we may not comprehend. They slow water flow in streams, which can help reduce erosion and provide water during drought. The flowage behind these dams creates wetlands, which can absorb seasonal flooding. And the wetlands filter water, replenishing aquifers and producing cleaner water for all.

So tell me, does this matter to any other animals besides the beavers themselves?

Other mammals, fish, amphibians, insects, and birds depend on the beaver’s dam-building. Some 85 percent of North American wild-animal species rely on wetlands — including many threatened and endangered species.

The beavers’ work is also becoming recognized as key to fighting wildfires. Not only do their dams retain water in the land-scape, but channels dug by beavers -appear to act like irrigation canals, keeping vegetation too wet to burn even during droughts. These wetlands become a beaver-generated safe space for frogs, salamanders, birds, and other animals to wait out a fire.

Come to think of it. Beavers are the ONLY keystone species that have been shown to impact stream health, biodiversity, fire resilience and reduction of pollution. That seems pretty dam important. The article goes on to discuss cactuses and prairie dogs but honestly, our interests are limited for obvious reasons.

Worth A Dam Comments.

Now then you might want to just remind yourself of these facts when you put together your comments for the USDA which is meeting tonight in on the first of their open forums for discussing the impact of their actions on wildlife species in California.

The meeting is zoom accessible from 5:30 to 8:30 tonight. They won’t be posting the link to the meeting until 5 pm but it will be posted here.
Give them lots to think about tonight. You can send your comments HERE and I hope you do. Beavers need you.

CDFA_Scoping_Meeting_Webinar_Agenda

BEAVERS ARE NUMBER TWO IN THE KILLING FIELDS

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 9, 2020

So the USDA dropped this from the mountain yesterday. It’s their data G list – a list of all the animals they killed in the United States in 2019. It includes starlings and badgers and coyotes and eagles and foxes and wolves and oh beavers across forty states in this great country. Coyotes were the most targeted animal, but beavers are number two.

Guess how many were killed? Go ahead guess.

24,543

Mind you that’s in 40 states and that’s only the numbers of beaver deaths we know about. If you hire a private trapper or kill some yourself on your ranch no one reports it. Here’s the numbers for California.

717– firearm

50 — neck snare

11– night vision

31– cage trap

82– body grip

22– suitcase trap

913– total

And it’s sobering and shocking, I know, but just remember this is only about a third of the beavers killed in the state. The others are killed by private trappers. Now that the CBD lawsuit means they won’t trap beaver in salmon or steelhead streams the demand for private trapping has gone UP. You can see also there is a decline in cage trapping and an increase in shooting. I guess because they are killing less in small streams and more in big bodies of water where salmon aren’t an issue. Here are the same numbers from 2009.

Of course there are already lawsuits announced by the usual suspects. I continue to think that USDA is merely the most visible player in this grand death game. At least in my state the ones we can’t see, the ones who aren’t even required to tell us what they do or how many they do it too, are a much bigger problem for beavers.

Trump’s USDA Sued Over Program Allowing ‘Horrific’ Mass Slaughter of Native Wildlife

The lawsuit (pdf) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico by WildEarth Guardians and accuses Wildlife Services (WS) of running afoul of various federal regulations stipulated by the National Environmental Policy Act, Council on Environmental Quality regulations, and Administrative Procedure Act.

According to the court filing, the program has failed to provide an Environmental Impact Statement on the program’s impact on key ecosytems, nor has it provided timely supplemental analysis mandated by law. As such, the document states, WS is disregarding “new scientific publications on the ineffectiveness of lethal predator control and the negative cascading ecological consequences of removing keystone species from their native ecosystems,” according to the filing.

Oh so THAT”S what that big action about putting a EIR on every species killed in California was about. Keeping up with beaver news is sometimes like reading a murder mystery backwards. It all makes sense eventually, but not until you get to the beginning.

The lawsuit portrays the annual killing deaths as folly—especially in light of the climate and ecological catastrophes as well water shortages affecting the U.S. West. Regarding beavers, Smith said the agency is “removing the very animals that will save us from these crises.”

They “act as ecosystem engineers, increasing biodiversity and ecosystem function—including filtering drinking water and removing water-borne pollutants—where they are native,” the filing states, adding:

Beavers, due to their beneficial engineering of ecosystems provide outsized ecosystem services. One study, conducted in southern Utah, a landscape analogous to much of New Mexico, found that in terms of wetland habitat only, a mere 2,560 beavers in the lower Escalante River basin would provide $275.5 million dollars per year in wetland habitat services. If riparian and aquatic habitat services are added to that number, it becomes nearly $450 million dollars per year. […] Beavers particularly can have remarkable impacts on reforestation in areas affected by wildfires.

Well, they aren’t wrong. And since they’re based in New Mexico the fate of beavers and their ability to store water really matters.

Another conservation group, the Center for Biological Diversity, offered similar condemnation Wednesday, characterizing the program as both barbaric and needless.

“Year after year Wildlife Services continues to needlessly kill wildlife, even though effective tools exist to prevent most conflicts,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center.

I asked Collette about the differing methods yesterday and whether she thought it was because of their salmon action. She hadn’t considered it but she thought it was better they are mostly using rifles because the method is more humane and specific to the target.

Maybe. It’s also a lot less work. You don’t have to come back the next day and check the traps. I’m not sure their work should be any easier.

Click below to go read the entire lawsuit here:

THE MISSING BEAVER PIECES

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 13, 2020

I heard yesterday back from one of the lawyers at the Center For Biological Diversity that has done some work on beavers in the past for California (Collette Adkinz) that the news about the mass EIR for every species likely to be impacted by APHIS was in direct response to their NEPA/CEQA litigation. I was right about it being something no one volunteers to do. They are the root canal, so to speak. She hoped Worth A Dam would be responding as well and I thought first about beaver population, which no one is studying. Because trapping beaver in a populated area means something different than trapping the only beaver in the area. The closest thing we have to an indication of population numbers is the record of their nuisance. Obviously if there aren’t enough beavers to merit even a single depredation permit, there probably aren’t very many beavers in the area.

So I spent yesterday starting to go through our UN permits – meaning all the places where a permit was never granted. It’s a long job because you have to take the record for the actual permits and discern what never happened. And my old friend that used to make these maps for me is long gone so I had to laboriously use a new tool to try it myself.

But I think this is starting to look really interesting.

First of all what this shows is that the Southern half of the state is missing plenty of beavers. And second I think this is beginning to show what a huge impact it has on all of central california when beaver are depredated. The population takes a long while to rebound. Regions at the edge like Kern or SLO take even longer to rebound. I have four more years to slog through but I think in the end the counties who have reported no beaver depredation over the time period or only 1 or two permits in 7 years should be marked as a special risk on the EIR of what is likely to happen to the population with an APHIS response.

Or hey maybe what it means is that before APHIS is allowed to trap beavers someone should you know, actually count how many there are.