Category: Who’s Killing Beavers Now?

“You have the right to remain ignorant, anything you learn may be used against you”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 2, 2013

Two weeks ago I wrote about the west Sacramento beavers that were being trapped because they chewed trees. I had in my mind the decision tree of my own – either blasting their ignorance, or coaxing some wisdom into life by talking sense to power. I chose the latter, and wrote the forest manager and the editor with friendly suggestions and I didn’t use a single unkind word. I was rewarded by an invitation to write an op-ed for the paper, which I’m told ran this week. (The paper isn’t online. I found out about the article because Leonard Houston’s sister in law scanned it and sent it to me) I was thanked by the forest manager who said she was sending my letter on to all her colleagues.

Alright then. That worked well. Maybe you DO catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

But after all those successes I got word of a recent UPI article, two weeks later, describing the same thing, in the same alarming tones. Obviously a second press release was issued, maybe after my op ed ran? It’s the classic complain louder technique that we enjoyed when we were toddlers. If it works for three year olds why not try it for forest managers?

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 28 (UPI) — A beaver invasion in West Sacramento, Calif., has put homeowners on alert as police estimate as many as 30 rodents have infiltrated a neighborhood. “I started getting lots of calls from concerned residents,” West Sacramento’s Urban Forest Manager Dena Kirtley told KOVR-TV, Sacramento, in a report published Wednesday.

He said about six beavers have been trapped so far but many more are roaming the neighborhood, tearing down trees. “They can weigh upwards of 70 pounds and by the damage on the trees, were a good 4-feet tall,” Kirtley said.

Well, just dead actually.We don’t live trap beaver in California. Four feet tall, Dena? I guess maybe if they stretch on their webbed tippy toes, but there weren’t 6 beavers that were four feet tall, you killed some children too. Apparently once Sacramento minds are made up you can teach them very little.

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Quick burst of good news to wash that bad beaver-killin’ taste our of your mouth. Leonard Houston just got back from Eugene Oregon where he was part of a panel discussing beavers and salmon at the Environmental Law Conference.

Beavers may help geese, but in Alabama we kill them both!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 1, 2013

Outdoors just for kids: Some geese rely on beavers

Geese and beavers are very different animals. One is a bird covered with feathers, and the other is a really big furry rodent that eats trees. They have one very essential thing in common, though — they both need water to live in. And it turns out that beavers can actually help geese find a place to live.

Check out this sweet article for children in the Billings Montana Gazette and think about cities that teach children the important relationships between species. Then read this. Never mind that in Billings they’re publishing children’s articles about how beavers and geese are friends, in Pell City Alabama they know just what to do with that friendship.

Pell City Parks and Recreation Department Director Bubba Edge said the parks and recreation department staff will identify the nests, then do both egg addling and oiling around the first of April.

“We are working under the direction of Alabama Power Company, which has control over all streams leading to the lake,” he said. “The beaver dam is holding back water, which allows bacteria to accumulate. Then when we have heavy rains that wash the water over the dam, it ends up in the lake. A free-flowing stream will hopefully eliminate the problem.”

Draper said under the direction of Alabama Power Company, the city would likely use the USDA to trap the beavers.

The dam is holding back water which allows bacteria to accumulate? You can guess how thoughtfully I wrote the major players in this article. I’ll let you know if I hear anything positive back. The reporter has already written to explain that geese aren’t native, cause a lot of problems, and the lake is a reservoir so the beaver bacterias might be more dangerous.

Hmm. I don’t know what to say about that. But I do know that there are lots of places they want to kill beaver in California and defend it by saying “beaver aren’t native to the area and cause a lot of problems“. That seems to be just what you say before killing something that people might object to. (In fact if you ever travel to an unknown land and you overhear folks start saying that about YOU I would definitely watch your back.)

A glimmer on the horizon? The handy manual for self-justification for killing wildlife, Jim Sterba’s book [no link on purpose] NATURE WARS, has been discussed in every paper from the Wall Street Journal to the Boston Globe. Folks just can’t get enough of his exciting excuses for defending our homeland from Nature. (And killing beavers! Don’t forget the beaver killing!) Recently Earth Island shockingly added its voice to the bandwagon. Which, after I had hired a crane to assist in picking my jaw up off the floor, I just had to respond to.

In telling this story, Sterba, a flint-eyed former Wall Street Journal reporter, is at times excessively harsh toward the tender hearted suburbanites opposed to lethal animal control methods. But his central point is sound: Too many people have gone too far in romanticizing animals – and that makes it difficult to think clearly about how best to manage our involvement with other species. When every deer is Bambi, sound ecosystem stewardship becomes impossible.

Grrr. Yes it’s all those wacky compassionISTAS out there, keeping us from killing responsibly. I commented the following

Sterba fails to recognize that often non-lethal solutions are both less expensive and more permanent than trapping. He never acknowledges that beaver flooding can be effectively controlled with flow devices, allowing the beavers to remain and discourage new colonies naturally with their territorial behaviors. He never admits that beaver-created wetlands promote fish, birds and wildlife while raising the water table. I am saddened to see Earth Island promote his short sighted solutions.

Which, surprisingly, prompted a letter back from the editor, thanking me for my “thoughtful comments” and saying that they would run it as a letter in their print edition this summer. Good. Earth Island does great work and they should know better than that.

And by the way if they’d like to do a beaver article for that issue, I’d be happy to help.

“A series of pools…”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 22, 2013

It seems fitting that after yesterday’s feature of NCLC stewardship for Stanley Marsh (which was the very best beaver story I have covered in 5 years) there should follow a response to the worst beaver story I have read. Ever. No we’re not talking a tail-bounty or trip to the trapper’s back porch for an entire third grade classroom. In the 5 years of writing about beavers I’ve gradually become thick-skinned to those stories and they shock me less and less. I don’t much react to city politics or legislative lying to kill beavers. I don’t get startled anymore when folks pretend beavers eat salmon or harm salmon or kill trees for birds. This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve seen it all before.

But THIS took my breath.

Keifer Oklahoma is in Creek county in the upper right corner of the state. Home to barely 2000 , its biggest excitement occurred when its primary paper the “Sapulpa Daily Herald” declined to report in November 2008 that Obama had won the presidential election and indicated instead that McCain had won handily in Creek county.

(Okay then.)

Apparently there was a city meeting the other night where concerns could be addressed by public works and it was mentioned that the Department of Environmental Quality had asked for some water tests. When they went to assess the creek…well, read for yourself…

“I have walked the banks along Chiders and noticed there seemed to be Beaver Dams almost every 10 feet,” Gary Hudson said. “The Beavers have made the creek into a series of pools,” Ashford said.

Consensus among members was that the action of the beavers was definitely reducing the water flow and perhaps contributing to the degradation of water quality within Chiders.

As to what course of action to undertake to thin out the beaver population it was noted that in order to trap, remove, or kill the rodents that permits from the state were required when Kiefer undertook efforts in the past to remedeiate the beaver problem.

Wikipedia tells me that Kiefer has nearly two square miles of land and zero area of water, but apparently a little bit of the mostly dry Chiders creek runs through one corner.

The ironically named “Creek county” is the furthermost right bottom dark red one above. Red meaning EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT (which is worse than the very bad categories of Severe or Extreme) Red which means it is eligible for FEMA money for disaster relief for the alarming and enduring drought conditions it has suffered. I haven’t found yet just how much money its received, but I will. It’s definitely hundreds of thousands to pay for crops or livestock or business failure due to drought. Don’t get me wrong. FEMA is supposed to pay for disaster relief. That’s one of the reasons why we have a federal government. I’m happy my tax dollars help people after Katrina or Sandy and thrilled that even though the paper couldn’t bring itself to write the dread “O” word, the county is happy enough to cash his checks for disaster relief. But this sentence takes the cake

“there seemed to be Beaver Dams almost every 10 feet,” Gary Hudson said. “The Beavers have made the creek into a series of pools,”

If I were the Secretary of the Interior and I read a sentence like that in a meeting where they went on to discuss ‘thinning’ the population, I would crumple the check in my hand and light a cigar. “Mary,” I’d say, putting my feet up on her desk. “If you’re trapping the water-savers you obviously have no need for this money.” I’d take a few pointed puffs and watch her surprised face through the smokey haze of exhale. “I thought you learned something in the dust bowl, but I was obviously wrong.”

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 13, 2013

Recently there was another article about protecting trees by trapping beavers. I wrote the editor and received an invitation to write an op-ed in response. Okay then! I thought I’d practice here.

Trapping, as you know, is a short-term solution that will need to be repeated again and again when new beavers return to the area, often within the year. It almost always makes more sense to keep the beavers you have, solve any problems they are causing directly, and let them use their naturally territorial behaviors to keep others away.

Protecting trees is a fairly easy problem to fix. Wrapping them with in a cylinder of wire (not chicken wire because beavers are way bigger than chickens) 2×4 galvanized fencing is best and will guarantee the trees will be protected. Remember to leave enough space for the tree to grow! Another, less obtrusive idea is to use abrasive painting. Chose a latex paint that matches the color of the bark, and add heavy mason sand to the mix at the last moment, and paint the trunks to about 4 feet. The beavers dislike the gritty texture and will not chew. This will need to be repeated every two years or so.

Remember that beaver chewed trees will ‘coppice’ which is an old forestry term referring to hard cutting back a tree so that it grows in bushy and more dense. This is why beavers are so important to the nesting numbers of migratory and songbirds – their chewing creates iprime real estate for a host of bird life. Willow is very fast-growing and if the stumps are left in the ground they will replenish quickly. In Martinez we have seen our urban willow re-flourish time and time again.

Research has shown that Beaver activity has a dynamic and generative impact on willow. In addition to cutting trees, their ponding and damming actually creates more ideal riparian border for willow to sprout. In fact some researchers have even referred to beaver as “willow farmers”. One USFS project in Oregon recently introduced beavers specifically to enrich the riparian border. Remember that in West Sacramento and Martinez beavers eat lots of other foods as well, including tules, fennel, blackberries and pond weed!

Why should a city learn to tolerate beavers? They are a keystone species that create a dramatic impact on the spaces they cultivate – even urban and suburban spaces. Here in Martinez we have documented several new species of birds and fish since they colonized our creek, as well as otter and mink! In addition, beavers are considered a ‘charismatic species’ which means that children love to learn about them and they provide a great educational tool for teaching about habitat, ecosystems and stewardship.

Why not involve the local boyscout troop or science class planting willow shoots every spring? To see these techniques first-hand for yourself, why not ride amtrak to Martinez and check out our urban beaver habit. We even have a beaver festival in August. This year will be the sixth.

Heidi Perrman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

www.matinezbeavers.org

Casual Carnage

heidi08 Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 10, 2013

Have you noticed that something cultural gets a little unhinged in the winter months? When the ‘snow’ hits the ground folks turn all ‘man-against-the-wildernessy’ and we get cheerful articles about trapping coyotes or fishers and why otters are worth hunting.

Case in point:

The day I nailed a frozen beaver carcass to a tree

I’m willing to try anything once, but I never thought I’d hammer a frozen, skinned beaver to a tree.

But that’s what I did last week when photographer Leah Hennel and I joined Mirjam Barrueto, a research associate with Wolverine Watch, for a day in the field to learn more about the survey.

Mirjam did the heavy lifting. Literally. She hauled the 10- to 15-kilogram beaver carcass (I’d say it was closer to 15 kilograms) and broke the 600-meter snowshoe trail in knee- to thigh-deep snow to the Bow River site, which is easier than some of the backcountry sites they visit.

Sometimes I read beaver-killing articles and I worry if I’ve grown too rarefied and overly sensitive. Maybe I don’t understand the larger geo-political context of trapping beavers. Maybe I’ve become too “beaver-centric”, with unreasonable alliance to the animal I’m representing.

And then I read an article like this beaver crucifixion and think: “Are you frickin’ kidding me???”

Yes wolverines are cool and studying them is cool and the beaver was already dead and skinned anyway and that’s a fairly purposeful end to his pointlessly de-purposed life BUT I have to ask, what if wolverine’s favorite food was house cats, or lapdogs or babies. Would you still post a photo of yourself nailing one to a tree?

If you want to see the gristly diorama for yourself you’ll have to go to the site. At least I got the writer interested in going on a real beaver trek one day….