Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

Boots on the Ground in RI

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 29, 2013

: Evidence of beaver activity along Sylvie’s Brook in Diamond Hill Park in Cumberland has raised concerns of flooding in the area and a call for the killing of four beavers spotted in the area. Photo/Ernest A. Brown

Stay of execution for pesky beavers

CUMBERLAND – A family of beavers who faced being trapped and killed for causing tree damage and flooding at Diamond Hill Park has been granted a stay of execution.

After initially stating that he was considering having a local exterminator kill the beavers, Parks and Recreation Director Michael Crawley says that plan has been scrapped – at least for now.

Well, well, well. I was on the phone a couple times last week with Deb Smith of RI, who had gotten my number from Jake Jacobsen of Washington. Not sure how she got HIS number? She was shocked at the extent to which city officials had lied and used distortion in the media. She wondered why the big animal rights group weren’t calling back and getting more involved in the issue. I urged her to involve regular folk that used the park. Children and cyclists and science teachers. I stressed the importance of finding what they said the problem was, and talked about flow devices and wrapping trees.

Meanwhile, Dennis Tabella, president of the statewide animal-rights group Defenders of Animals says he plans to contact Crawley and the town in hopes of sitting down to discuss a more humane way of dealing with the beaver problem.

“It’s 2013 and we should be looking at more humane methods of dealing with these kinds of issues,” says Tabella. “The problem is that town managers and people in town government aren’t looking around at all the different options that are available.” Tabella says the Town of Scituate is a good example of a community that chose to deal with a nuisance wildlife problem in a “thoughtful and humane manner.”

In 2000, he said, the town agreed to work with Defenders of Animals to solve a beaver problem in Potterville Brook without killing them. The beavers had been blocking a culvert that passes beneath Nipmuc Road, causing water from the brook to flood residential property. At first, the town was considering having the beavers trapped and killed by a fur trader, but Defenders of Animals asked the town to stop the trapping and offered to pay for a network of plastic pipes that he says allowed water to pass through the culvert and deter the animals from damming the passage. The contraptions were installed near the culvert and, so far, have deterred beaver activity.

“We think that Scituate could be the model for other Rhode Island communities regarding humane systems for beaver control,” Tabella said.

Good work Dennis. I think so too.

Rhode Island goes ‘Martinez’

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 23, 2013

Cumberland Officials Consider Killing Park Beavers

CUMBERLAND — A family of beavers has grabbed the attention of town officials, who are concerned that the dam it built on Sylvie’s Brook near the athletic fields at Diamond Hill Park will lead to flooding problems in the area. They also are concerned about the beavers causing tree damage in the popular park.

Their idea to trap and kill the animals, however, is being called cruel and inhumane by some area residents. Local resident Deborah Vine-Smith is among those concerned the beavers will be killed. “Aren’t we supposed to be compassionate to wildlife?” she asked.

Wait! I know this story! Doesn’t the city say “beavers need to be killed” and residents say “Find another solution!” And the city says, “There is no solution but the FINAL solution”.

After reading a story in the April 17 edition of The Valley Breeze, Smithfield resident Nicole Waybright sent an e-mail to DEM that read, in part, “Is there another alternative? I can picture the town making a quick, zero-researched decision. Can something be done to prevent this tragedy? Acre by acre of R.I. is being developed. … I sometimes wonder where the animals will go. People see them as ‘nuisances,’ but is the answer to kill or destroy animal after animal for human comfort until extinction? There must be a way for park wildlife, environment and humans to co-exist without destruction.”

Go get the popcorn. I think this is going to get good. Rhode Island is not exactly a beacon state when it comes to beavers. This could be a turning point. Now shh, listen to this.

Fellow Smithfield resident Jim Bastian was so upset after reading the same story that he fired off an e-mail to various media organizations across the state, including ecoRI News.

“Once again, the arrogance and cruelty of human beings towards nature shows its ugly head,” he wrote. “Cumberland officials are moving towards killing the family of nuisance beavers that reside in their park. Isn’t that a great example of our handling of nature? Isn’t it a park … where we want wildlife to have at least something of a safe haven so on weekends we can ‘get back to nature?’ Or do we really mean, a very controlled nature where we force it to meet our petty narrow perimeter of what we need nature to be? It is not animals that are the nuisance, once again it is human beings.”

Ahh, Jim. Nicely said. Now you just need about fifty more letters from school teachers and senior citizens and a girl scout troop and maybe a local sheriff. I’m serious. Let me tell you in Martinez we found out that getting solutions is easy. Preventing flooding is easy. Solving problems is easy. And protecting trees is easy.

But educating city officials is hard, hard, hard work.

You’re off to a great start. Sounds like you might already have a friend in Mr. Brown

Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist for the state in the management of furbearers wrote that “beavers are often referred to as a keystone species because of their ability to alter the landscape and create wetland habitat beneficial to a variety of wildlife species.”

See if you can bring Brown on board to install a flow device. Get some third graders to help wrap trees. Martinez advice to Rhode Island is to stay vocal and do your homework. And maybe you should watch this from about 45 minutes on.

P1070278 — Click photo to watch an amazing civic beaver meeting

Good luck!

“Because 1000 dead beavers just isn’t enough.”

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 22, 2013

Congress may be unable to pass a background check, a budget or a resolution for more stalls in the ladies restroom, but a bipartisan group of state senators in New Jersey has decided that the old rule declaring that the division of fish and wildlife can only issue 200 depredation permits for beavers per year is insufficient to the numbers of beavers that need killing in the state. Remember that the state is the fifth smallest in the entire country and about the size of a postage stamp.

Leave it to Sweeney

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), introduced a bill last week intended to remove the limit on how many permits the Division of Fish and Wildlife gives out “for the taking of beaver.”

Under current law, the state can give out only 200 permits each year. Sweeney insisted the bill (S2665) was in response to a real problem. “Not that I go out and hunt beavers,” he said. “The problem is they’re actually causing flooding problems where I live.”

A reasonable person, (like say this reporter who is politely writing down everything they’re told), might think, gosh 200 beavers isn’t very many. A reasonable person wouldn’t take the time to look up the legislation S2665 and see that EACH PERMIT ISSUE is good for killing FIVE BEAVERS per year – meaning that it is already permissible to kill 1000 beavers every 365 days.

Lord knows a reasonable person certainly wouldn’t look up the USGS figures for square miles of water in New Jersey, which is 396 or 5.3% of the total state. Even if we assume that water is all excellent unpollted habitat for beavers, it is already legal to kill one beaver for every two or three square miles of water. Which, (if we’re assuming the population is as big as it can possibly be, and thinking of the territory needs quoted in Dietland Muller-Schwarze saying beaver colonies need to be about 2 miles away from each other) means that NJ already gets to kill around half of its entire beaver population.

Why should the garden state settle for half?

Certainly no reasonable person would take the time to write the senators sponsoring this bill on a sunday evening to clarify these issues, teach about flow devices, or reference the essential role that beavers play in water storage and drought protection.

I’m sure you’re aware of the percentage of counties in the US last year listed by FEMA as disasters due to drought conditions. Research has shown time and time again that small dams built by beavers raise the water table, recharge the aquifer, reduce drought, and cool water temperatures through hyporheic exchange. Reducing or eliminating those natural buffers will expose your residents, your fish and wildlife to brutal conditions.

I never said I was reasonable.

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Now for some inexplicable news from Vancouver where the Adrien Nelson has done such fantastic work to promote flow devices but apparently still needs to accomplish a little more reporter and public works education on how they work.

Beaver Deceivers rid Mission of pesky rodents

Water flow devices remove need to trap and kill

District of Mission public works operations supervisor Dale Vinnish agreed, noting the district used to trap and humanely kill about six to 10 beavers a year. “It seemed like if we got rid of one, two of them would come back next year,” he said. “If we got rid of two, you might see four of them there next year.”

Now, with the animal rights groups’ help, Mission began installing the anti-beaver devices last summer and now has eight throughout the district. “The beavers are gone,” Vinnish said. “We were fighting them constantly before, but now we just have to go check the Beaver Deceivers and pull a few sticks out so nothing clogs up. So it has been really great.”

Apparently flow devices are the new “beaver repellant”! I suppose it’s great someone from public works think they work and want to use more. But why is the word COMPROMISE such a difficult concept to grasp? If the flow device makes the beavers leave it didn’t WORK and you have wasted your time and money. The reason you install it in the first place is because it makes the problematic behavior leave (not the beavers), so your culverts don’t get blocked and your roads don’t flood. You’d better hope the beavers are staying right there, doing other stuff and keeping more beavers from moving in.

Sheesh!

Now I’ve seen everything…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 13, 2013

Beaver blogging is a strange pastime that often reveals the very odd and irrational underbelly of civic planning, nature awareness, and education. Over the years I’ve been doing this I’ve gotten used to reading about city engineers who think beavers should be trapped or they might flood the town, mayors who think they should be trapped before they eat all the trees, and city planners who think they’re breeding in the sewers. I’ve been through the rabid beaver scares, the beavers eat salmon scares, and the beavers ruin the water for fish scares. Heck, recently I’ve even followed a beaver murder.

But this surprises me.

In case you fainted too, I’ll recap. The beavers are chewing trees along a beautiful nature path. What if the trees falls down and hurts someone? The clip features a city council member that wants the beavers dead, and a city council member who thinks that would be wrong. IE somewhere in the world there are city council members who know a little more about nature than Martinez.

The tie breaker in this contest is the Salmon Arm Bay Nature Enhancement Society (SABNES) describes its mission thusly:

To Assist the Ministry of the Environment and the Nature Trust of BC with the development and operation of the Salmon Arm Bay, its walkways, trails and viewing facilities for scientific, educational and environmental purposes and to increase the awareness and involvement with related projects in the community

I was having a hard time thinking about a non-profit developed specifically to “Help” an already existing governmental agency, but then I thought about the ‘friends groups’ in National Parks, (of which the John Muir Associations one.) The difference of course is that the friends group exists solely because of the federal group, and all it does is things that help it. As such we have a member of NPS at every meeting and they have to approve everything that goes to press or gets communicated about them.

Of course SABNES should respond that beavers are a huge asset to the nature area. Their chewing of trees stimulates a natural coppicing that becomes ideal nesting habitat for migratory and songbirds. They should point at this study which showed that beavers increased bird count for an area specifically because of their chewing. In Martinez we have greatly enjoyed the abundance of new bird species that have come since the beavers settled. And they might enjoy this video, which shows one of the many uses birds find for beaver-chewed trees. Rookeries for Great blue heron is another. Or dead trees for wood ducks. Or lodges that make much desired swan and geese nesting locations. You get the idea.

Here’s a thought. Instead of helping the Ministry of the Environment find reasons to kill beavers (they’ve got that covered), and letting councilman Eliason think that killing them is cheaper, why not help them learn about how important beavers are for the very environment they’re charged with protecting? Maybe you can sponsor a local high school science class to do a species count, or boy scouts to sand paint trees, or appoint a few wildlife and tree monitors whose job it is to check for new nesting and dangerous trees that need city staff to remove them?

Better yet, watch this at your next council meeting or board meeting, and then we can talk.

Wag the beaver?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 12, 2013

Belarus is the land of more than 10 thousand lakes and 20 thousand rivers. Due to its water expanses Belarus is often called “a blue-eyed country”. A great number of folktales are connected with lakes, springs and rivers.

Sigh. Do you ever get the feeling that the whole of beaver news is controlled by this enormously powerful cartel that will NOT allow a single positive news cycle regarding the animal to exist unchallenged? I’m imagining a ‘wag the dog-type’ war room with multiple video screens where they constantly monitor the tone of beaver news around the world for positive threads that would threaten the supervillan-esq international campaign to eliminate beavers forever. And when a story like San Jose starts soaking the airways with good feeling and benevolence they BANG! SLAM! BLAST! insert one of their own, guaranteed to eclipse it many, many times over.

Well, okay. Maybe its just me. Certainly this happened (is happening, will have happened) with the horrific Belarus story. The fisherman who was bitten twice near Lake Shestakov and died from the blood loss because his companions could not stop the bleeding. One story reported a local Dr. saying that he probably would be alive if they had used a tourniquet (which is kind of stunning because isn’t that the first aid you learn in 4th grade?) Sometimes the story appears with other footage taken earlier in the month in another region of a beaver lunging at the cameraman who falls – a la the blair witch project. Sometimes its said that the video is from the attack itself, which isn’t possible since it was posted weeks before the story broke. It doesn’t matter, the story is a mashed up flaming fireball of fear now, hurtling around the globe. The man’s name isn’t being released so no awkward facts can hamper its freefall course and I can’t find a photo of the lake on the whole enormity of google because if you try to look it up there are literally hundreds and hundreds of pages with mug shots of fanged beavers and mislabeled nutria, groundhogs or muskrats trying to recreate the grisly scene of the crime.

Better kill the next one you see! Every mother with children is thinking. they might be rabid! Never mind that we even don’t know if this beaver was rabid because it ran away after biting him. The friends of the man speculated it was rabid because it was early morning and the beaver was walking and obviously beavers NEVER do that. Sigh. I can’t help it, a fantasy has popped in my mind that this was a young disperser leaving the pond for the first day of life on his own. Of course he was frightened, jumpy, scared. A scene from a James Dean movie where the hero over-reacts with tragic consequences that ruin his life forever, and scar countless others. (Stop that, Heidi!)

Well, the secret underground beaver lobby has more resources, better networks and for some reason it is remarkably easier to believe that beavers are murderers than it is to understand that beavers are good for salmon. I give up. You win this round handily, but all I can say is that our San Jose success must have really, really gotten their attention.

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Family of beavers found living in downtown San Jose

By Paul Rogers

A family of beavers has moved into Silicon Valley, taking up residence along the Guadalupe River in the heart of downtown San Jose.

The discovery of the three semi-aquatic rodents — famous for their flat tails, furry brown coats and huge teeth — a few hundred yards from freeways, tall office buildings and the HP Pavilion represents the most high-profile Bay Area resurgence of beavers since a beaver family settled in Martinez in 2006, sparking national headlines when city leaders at first tried to remove them, then backed down after public outcry.

As word about their new home spreads, the animals also are being held up as a symbol of the slow but steady environmental recovery of San Francisco Bay and its streams after decades of pollution and sprawl — a hopeful sign of the resilience of nature in the nation’s 10th largest city.

“Our female beaver produced 15 live births. They’ve all dispersed,” said Heidi Perryman, president of Worth a Dam, a Martinez nonprofit that advocates for that city’s beavers. “They could be in San Jose. There’s certainly a chance.”

There are still four beavers living in Martinez. Flood control concerns were reduced by putting a pipe in the beaver dam that regulates the flow of water. So if the water gets too high, it drains out downstream.

Beavers Return to San Jose

Post on Apr 11, 2013 by Samantha Clark from KQED

The swallows may not be flocking back to Capistrano these days, but the beavers have returned to San Jose. Even when they’re not receiving guests, curled wood shavings and girdled willow trees give the critters away. It started when a lone beaver was spotted in the Guadalupe River, just across the street from HP Pavilion in downtown San Jose.

Thrilled, the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy set up a trail camera to monitor its activity.

Then another beaver appeared. “I jumped up out of my chair and high-fived my wife and hugged her when I saw the second beaver,” said Greg Kerekes of the conservancy, after going through the camera footage.

Soon, he discovered that three beavers, a pregnant mother and her two yearlings, were keeping house at the confluence of the Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek. A family indicates they will likely settle, said conservancy executive director Leslee Hamilton.

Environmental educators hope the beavers will stay because they benefit wildlife and can help teach children about watersheds.

In 2007, a family of beavers also colonized Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez. “You could sit at Starbucks, drink your morning coffee and watch kits (young beavers) play,” said Heidi Perryman, president of Worth a Dam, a beaver advocacy organization. Since the beavers have settled in Martinez, the ecosystem has flourished, seeing at least 13 new species.