Remember the nature sanctuary in Grafton that misunderstood the meaning of the work “SANCTUARY” and trapped its beavers a while back? I wrote the chief administrator and the council and I bet a lot of other folk did too because I received several responses, including one from Mr. Karokti himself. Well it looks like the learning curve in Grafton has taken an upward slope, at least for now.
A group of residents and members of the Nawautin Sanctuary Association in Grafton struggled with this issue this May when four beavers were trapped and killed by the Township. The sanctuary is a municipal property at the shores of Lake Ontario. Nawautin Sanctuary Association member Jean-Remy Emorine, who has lived near the sanctuary for the last six years, often walks his dogs at the sanctuary and watched the beavers.
“I was really upset when I heard those beavers were killed,” said Mr. Emorine, who is originally from France. “For me they are emblematic of Canada
I have taken the liberty of highlighting what I feel was the salient issue in this article. The town of Grafton did not, in fact “struggle” with this issue. Nor did the membership of the nature sanctuary debate or discuss because they were never informed. Approximately three folks had a discussion and a memo was written, a phone call was made and 4 beavers were killed. I would say the “struggle” for Grafton occurred instead at the emergency meeting where the remarkably tone-deaf decision blew up in their faces and splattered all over the media.
Never mind. They’re definitely struggling now.
“It’s unfortunate because I love animals,” he said, adding he knows there are other municipalities that struggle with similar beaver problems.
In his 25 years with the municipality, as far Mr. Korotki knows, no one has approached the Township with alternatives to trapping. Ms. Kilmer has been in contact with the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals, which does offer other alternatives. Mr. Korotki said they will consider alternatives in the future and consult with members of the association.
Well I personally sent him info on Mike’s DVD and Sherri’s book as well as our website, so hopefully we won’t be reading that excuse ever, ever again. Now it’s Adrian’s job to provide workable consultation and nature’s job to move in some beavers to replace the ones that were assassinated.
I quite liked this little insert the paper did, although for some reason I can’t get my brain used to “Mr. Nelson”:
Now its THAT time again! Let’s hope we can get this on the local channel once more!
The response by farmers’ leaders to the idea of ‘rewilding’ shows how unaccustomed to challenge they are
Following successful beaver reintroductions in two parts of Scotland, the first release in Wales could be about to happen. Photograph: Peter Lilja/Getty Images
Their dams, burrows and ditches and the branches they drag into the water create habitats for a host of other species: water voles, otters, ducks, frogs, fish and insects. In both Sweden and Poland, the trout in beaver ponds are on average larger than those in the other parts of the streams: the ponds provide them with habitats and shelter they cannot find elsewhere²,³. Young salmon grow faster and are in better condition where beavers make their dams than in other stretches4. The total weight of all the creatures living in the water may be between two and five times greater in beaver ponds than in the undammed sections5. Beavers slow rivers down. They reduce scouring and erosion. They create small wetlands and boggy areas. They trap much of the load that rivers carry6, ensuring that the water runs more clearly.
Beavers slow rivers down. They reduce scouring and erosion. They create small wetlands and boggy areas. They trap much of the load that rivers carry6, ensuring that the water runs more clearly.
Excellent beaver defense in this article. Where’s it from? Since it uses a word like “hegemony” we know it can’t be American because that’s too many syllables for US readers. Maybe you’re thinking ‘it’s just a blog’. But it’s a blog for the GUARDIAN, and its a blog with FOOTNOTES. And it’s really really good. I think it’s primary argument is that farming interests are treated as the only rural interests and ignore 95% of the population. He goes on to talk about reintroducing Lynx and halting the badger cull, but it’s a great read. With great footnotes.
Yesterday was a good beaver news cycle. There was also this from Idaho
Beaver pond in the high water of June. SE Idaho. Beaver remake creeks, streams, springs, even seeps. They usually greatly increase the diversity of wildlife in an area with their ponds. It is surprisingly hard to get Fish and Game departments to take them seriously, have a rational trapping season and to keep people from just killing them. Copyright Ralph Maughan. June 2013
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides.
Of course I looked up Dr Maughan and found that he is in Pocotello Idaho, which (as it happens) is where our friend Mike Settel got the grant from Audubon to count beavers so I wrote both of them to make sure they were friends! (Because that’s what beaver cruise directors do). I was a little chilled by the “educated and scientific” comments on his post though. Check this out from someone who calls himself CodyCoyote.
But here is an interesting fact about Beavers. When a pair mate, they will have 4-6 kits. When the time comes as the kids grow up , the parent beavers will selectively kill all but one male and one female from their litter, and drive them off to find a new territory of their own. It’s their way of dispersing, increasing habitat and domain , and assuring good genetic viability. But it’s a little draconian to us primates.
Beaver death panels? Just so we’re clear, this isn’t true, has never been true, and would never be true. A parent wouldn’t nuture children for two years just to set up their own little “HUNGER GAMES” right in the middle of their living room and see who lives. What frightens me about this comment is the pseudo-science of it. He uses appropriate words like “diperse” and “litter” and “viability” and I’m going to bet he worked (or works) for some government agency involved in the regulation of beavers. USDA springs to mind, but maybe it was USFS or Fish and Game. He’s educated enough to toss out words like draconian and he is still astonishingly beaver ignorant.
It’s also why you cannot transplant more than a mated pair of beaver anywhere, much as you’d like to have several colonies of beavers out there. I know of a couple instances where conservation-minded ranchers actually tried to restore beavers to their stream in the Cody area here, and they plunked down as many as six animals at once in the same stream basin. They immediately eliminated themselves by infighting. For not understanding beaver behavior, they overdid it and underachieved their goal of rebuilding riparian areas overgrazed by cattle in critical winter range for wildlife.
Information is not a banquet table, Cody. You can’t select randomly the tidbits you might like (the pasta salad and cheese slices) and put them together on a plate based on your own preferences. Yes beavers are territorial and won’t tolerate being dumped together with 5 strangers to happily start a new commune. This is why you relocate INTACT families. I know its not as convenient, but its a lot more successful.
Where did Cody get his information you wonder? A field manual for beaver management from USDA? I think the reason rumors like this and the Belarus killing get such success is that folks like to think about beavers actions are ruthless, so that their own actions look justified in response.
Cheer from Cheryl who made the 4:30 trek this am and was duly rewarded.
Kit 4:50 Escobar bridgeChecking out raccoon on bank.Mom come by and wrestled with kit then both went to annex where mom climbed bank for fennel. She sat below bridge with kit,wrestled some more before coming back to lodge.Second adult went towards annex 5:10.Beaver working on the dam at 6:05 until 6:20.Mom mallard and 2 big babies
Whooohooo! I’m glad Cheryl got to see baby 1 even if it was too dark for photos! Soon my pretties!
GRAFTON – Despite efforts to save a family of beavers at a local wildlife sanctuary, the last of the four beavers was found dead on Thursday evening.
The name Sanctuary denotes an area of rural peace and tranquility, ideal for passive, year-round recreation. The area features over 30 species of birds and a variety of native flora and fauna.
David Bryson, a member of the Nawautin Sanctuary Association (NSA), and Debbie Kilmer wrote a letter to the group’s executive on May 20 pleading with them to look for other alternatives to removing four beavers from the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary south of Grafton along Lake Ontario.
The fear was the beavers would be killed. “Is this not a nature sanctuary in which the beaver, as an indigenous species deserve the right to co-exist?,” stated the e-mail.
Just to be clear, the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary is a lovely jewel of a place in rolling Northumberland between mutiple wetlands and on the shores of Lake Ontario. Its 13 acres sit just across the pond from New York State. Residents serve on an advisory board to protect and promote the preserve, where motor vehicles are not allowed and folks are just encouraged to observe nature. Bird watchers, dog walkers and photographers enjoy walking its trails every day.
Because there was water, willow, gravity and oxygen, the area attracted beavers. (Funny how that works and will continue to work.) And folks enjoyed watching the many birds who came to their ponds, and the turtles on the banks. On the other side of the pond a property owner got anxious that the water level had risen and picked up the phone to call the city administrator, Terry Korotki, to complain. He did this in much the same way as you might tell your wife to get the fly swatter, and with sadly similar results.
Mr. Korotki ran it by the mayor who told him to call the trapper they always used in these situations. Meanwhile two advisory members wrote letters and begged the city not to trap. They contacted Fur-bearer Defenders who told them about solutions and they were actually hoping someone might listen because they were, after all, on the board. Lesley Fox of FBD wrote a letter to the mayor explaining about better solutions. No matter. By Thursday night four beavers were dead from a leghold trap.
In an emergency meeting at the Grafton Library on Friday night, frustrations boiled over as a number of people were upset by the NSA executive’s decision to kill the beavers. “There is nothing that says that we need to hold a meeting first,” executive chair Ray Bowart said during the meeting. The executive said its reasons for trapping and killing the beavers included the strong possibility of flooding on private property.
At one point during the meeting Bowart made the comment, “the reaction to this (e-mail Bryson and Kilmer sent) caused the beavers to be taken out.” Shortly after tempers flared, which resulted in Bowart resigning from the Executive and leaving the meeting.
Did you catch that? When Bowart was challenged about his decision to kill the beavers he blamed those who objected saying “The fact that you made a fuss about these animals was the reason they had to be killed”. Really? So I guess Grafton better be careful about protecting senior centers or day cares from now on. Consider yourself warned.
This was particularly rich.
Secretary / treasurer Meredith Coristine said he regretted the comment was made about the reason the beavers were killed. “If we made an error, we apologize.”
Well, okay then.
Why on earth do people think that’s an apology? And why didn’t I think of it when I was five?
“If I broke that lamp when I was swinging my baton, I apologize.”
” If some of those cookies were eaten by me, I am sorry”
“If Timmy was accidentally scratched while I hugged him, I regret it”.
No wonder administrator’s are so fond of the passive tense.
Thank god for this:
Bryson put forth a motion that was accepted unanimously that any matter regarding wildlife existence in the sanctuary will require a meeting by the membership to discuss options.
I must be tired today because I find this article deeply upsetting. Of course cities kill beavers all the time and people are often upset by it, so that’s not really new. It’s that they were so close to winning on this. Two very strongly placed and vocal advocates on the front lines and an agency at the ready to help. And we still get four dead beavers and god knows how many orphaned kits. I think its the nature (pun intended) of this particular setting and its designation as a SANCTUARY that really upsets me. I know that if I lived there this might be the new sign.
Maybe you’re depressed too after that article and need good news. VERY GOOD NEWS. Absolutely fantastic news!
Jon went down to take the dog for a walk before day shift this morning at 5 and saw at least TWO KITS. They were swimming about by the Escobar bridge and an adult beaver was in protective attendance. One scrambled onto the bank by the old lodge. It was still dark so there are no photos. Jon flew home and woke me up but by the time I got there at 5:30 they had gone in. Still, we will start seeing them now, and we will have at least two so that means we will start HEARING them soon as they talk to each other.
I hope no one needs me to spell or do math any time soon because I’m going to be sleepy every day for a month now.
First we should give MORE kudos to our beaver friends at Fur-bearer Defenders who have strewn a path of beaver deception around the municipality of Mission in British Columbia just outside of Vancouver, installing 9 beaver deceivers to control flooding in culverts.
A beaver deceiver being installed in Mission. Each unit saves the municipality thousands of dollars annually. Submitted phot
Gosh, I’m so old I can remember when Adrian Nelson had just gotten married and nervously installed his very first one after chatting a lot to Mike Callahan and scouring his DVD. And now these installs are practically a piece of cake! Delicious, effective cake that they actually talk an entire city into paying for!
The non-profit group approached the district with a simple, non-lethal alternative for managing flooding concerns associated with beaver activity: build a wire fence around the culvert intake, interrupting the beavers’ natural instinct to build where there’s current and the sound of flowing water. “They work awesome,” said Dale Vinnish, public works operations supervisor. “We don’t have to trap beavers. They moved elsewhere. They’re not causing a problem.”
The nine “beaver deceivers,” at $400-$600 apiece and built in one day, save the district thousands of dollars, because workers no longer have to pull apart dams. Previously, the municipality would break down two to three dams daily, several days a week, in addition to paying for the capturing and killing of about a dozen beavers annually.
“If we weren’t trapping, we were going in continuously to break apart the dams,” said Vinnish.
Great work Fur-bearer Defenders! We are entirely impressed that you are easily giving Washington State a run for it’s money as the beaver-management champion of the northern hemisphere. Go Mission!
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New footage from our famous San Jose beaver friends. Love the ‘urban safari’ feel of this video. Sadly if this is momma beaver, I’m not seeing any teats, and that means no silicon valley kits this year!
Next, a nice column on ‘Extinction Events’ from Minnesota. His point is climate change, but my point (as always) is beavers!
For instance the pond created behind a beaver dam becomes the habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal species. Remove the beaver engineers and the entire ecosystem collapses.
It’s about time we start to realize the number of species that are displaced or wiped out when beavers are removed. Trickle-down economies work both ways. I wasn’t happy with this later sentence “Without the stream, there could be no beaver dam” because that’s not exactly true. I’ve heard of beaver creating ponds from tiny springs, so that the big beautiful pond becomes the only water in a desert. Certain ephemeral streams (like we have here in California that dry up in the summer) wouldn’t dry up if we had enough beavers. I kindly sent him this Chumash legend:
Author Jan Timbrook who is a curator for the Santa Barbara museum of natural history described this in her book ‘Chumash Ethnobotany” has some very interesting things to say about beavers:
“A willow stick that had been cut by a beaver was thought to have the power to bring water. The Chumash would treat the stick with ‘ayip ( a ritually powerful sbustance made from alum) and then plant it in the ground to create a permanent spring of water.”
And on to the ugly. I’ve been sitting with this story a couple of days, but its fairly unavoidable and we better deal with it. This is the kind of negative advertising I hate, even more than I hate the Belarus story. Ultimately Americans value roads much more even than we value human life. Now every city will be more tempted to tell property owners they’re liable for beaver dams. Call me crazy, but it seems like if you’re worried about the stability of a dam, the smart thing to do is to reinforce it!
Spetacle Lake in Kent, CT has made a proactive decision to improve its fishing, birds and wildlife by hiring Beaver Solutions to manage its culvert problem. Congratulations to everyone involved, because HOA’s are not the known for ecologically wise decisions. And for a cool 5000 a month you can book this cottage to enjoy a ringside seat. Imagine yourself sitting here to watch the evening beaver visit.
KENT — The North Spectacle Lake Homeowners Association will soon address flooding caused by beaver dams. The group got the green light Monday from the Inland Wetlands Commission to proceed with its plan to work with Beaver Solutions of Southampton, Mass., to minimize the flooding caused by beavers. The company plans to raise and widen a culvert but not remove the beavers.
Good work, Nutmeg State! You won’t regret it. And moving on to less pleasant discoveries, there’s this news from the Master Chef auditions.
Texas stay-at-home dad Brian certainly got the attention of the judges with his dish: roadkill. He served up stripped and shaved Cajun beaver tail. “Literally, you could pass that off as beef,” Graham Elliot said, but Brian disagreed with him on that point.
In case you can’t make it out, that’s Chef Brian running onstage wearing a beaver tail after serving beaver tail road kill that apparently tasted like beef to at least one judge.
Ugh.
Need better news? Last night Jr. showed off some new maturity skills, never whining for food from an adult and never provoking a single snap even in side-by-side feeding. Looks like he has adapted to life as a yearling. Congratulations and Happy Birthday!
Remember the nature sanctuary in Grafton that misunderstood the meaning of the work “SANCTUARY” and trapped its beavers a while back? I wrote the chief administrator and the council and I bet a lot of other folk did too because I received several responses, including one from Mr. Karokti himself. Well it looks like the learning curve in Grafton has taken an upward slope, at least for now.
A group of residents and members of the Nawautin Sanctuary Association in Grafton struggled with this issue this May when four beavers were trapped and killed by the Township. The sanctuary is a municipal property at the shores of Lake Ontario. Nawautin Sanctuary Association member Jean-Remy Emorine, who has lived near the sanctuary for the last six years, often walks his dogs at the sanctuary and watched the beavers.
The name Sanctuary denotes an area of rural peace and tranquility, ideal for passive, year-round recreation. 
The area features over 30 species of birds and a variety of native flora and fauna.
Spetacle Lake in Kent, CT has made a proactive decision to improve its fishing, birds and wildlife by hiring 
