Category: Who’s saving beavers now?

IMMERSED IN BEAVERS

I just realized that one of the things I love about this photo is that the way it’s taken makes Amy look like she’s IN the beaver pond, part of the scenery. Maybe like she’s just about to help that beaver build a dam when she’s done drawing. Amy-and-her-purple-crayon kinda thing.

Isn’t that just beautiful? The photo was taken lovingly by her husband who knows full well how to capture her beautiful creations. I am eager to see what she designs this year. Stay tuned because the premiere is due to come out very soon!

In other news about being up close at a beaver pond, we have a snippet about Skip Lisle leading an earth day beaver walk from the Bennington Banner.

Outdoors News in Brief

WILTON, N.Y.

Earth Day Beaver Education Program

To celebrate the 49th Earth Day on Monday, April 22, Wilton Wildlife Preserve & Park and Saratoga PLAN are teaming up to offer a nature walk that is all about the largest rodent in North America, New York State’s official animal; the Beaver!

Environmental Educators from the Preserve & Park will be joining with nationally renowned beaver expert, Skip Lisle to lead this family-oriented walk. The walk will leave from the Meadowbrook Parking area of the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail and explore the wetland habitats that are created and maintained by this fascinating animal.

Participants will learn about the importance of the beaver to the exploration and settlement of our region, about its natural history, about how it is one of the few animals to be able to manipulate the environment to create its own habitat, and about the efforts that Saratoga PLAN has gone through to help keep the beavers as residents of the Bog Meadow wetlands. Space is limited and registration is required by April 18.

I want to go! That sounds amazing! Touring beaver habitat with Skip Lisle sounds like the perfect thing to do on Earth Day. Oddly that was something I never go to do in Martinez. He was a little intimidated by the attentive beaver public. And we didn’t know him well enough back then talk him into going down to watch the beavers – although we did have him over for a spaghetti dinner because I was hoping to keep him from lowering the dam too much.

Something tells me he would have been delighted to see a community watching beavers together.

Not sure yet of the best beaver-y way to celebrate your earth day this year? There’s an upcoming beaver management online course featuring Jakob Shockey of Beaver State Wildlife Solutions. I know it’s not the same as being at a beaver pond with Skip, but Jakob was trained by Mike Callahan who was trained by Skip, so its almost the same thing. The class is free but you need to sign up in advance for this webinar:

Ecosystem Restoration Deep Dive with Jakob Shockey: Collaborating with Beaver for Ecosystem Restoration

Jakob Shockey is an expert in riparian ecosystem restoration and beaver ecology, restoration, and conflict mitigation. He is the Restoration Program Manager for the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council in Oregon, and the owner of the wildlife conflict mitigation company, Beaver State Wildlife Solutions.

In this deep dive, we will hear of the keystone role that beaver play in ecosystem function in the northern hemisphere. We’ll also hear how their eradication has disrupted ecology and hydrology, and how their reintroduction has led to restoration of these ecosystem functions.

While the beaver’s collaboration is invaluable as we seek to restore ecosystem function, often their hydrological designs conflict with our land use and infrastructure. Jakob will also discuss various conflicts that commonly arise, often leading to dead beavers, and how he and others mitigate these conflicts with innovative methods, enabling the beaver to stay in place and repopulate without flooded basements and blocked culverts.

When: Apr 23, 2019 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

INTERNATIONAL BEAVER AFTER-GLOW

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? April 8, 2019

International beaver day did not disappoint. It produced an excellent article from Wildlife Defenders, some amazing video and one classically civic story that will reminds us all of our humble beginnings. Let’s start with the fun stuff for a change and end with the call to action.

Coexisting with Beavers

Today is International Beaver Day, so let’s celebrate my favorite ecosystem engineer and the ways that Defenders helps people coexist with beaver.

First, Why Beaver?

Beavers are an important part of a healthy wetland and forest ecosystem. Beaver cut down trees and shrubs, eat wetland plants, and build amazing dams and lodges. These activities raise water levels, slow water speed, and change water direction, creating a dynamic wetland complex. In doing so, they can increase a wetland’s area, biodiversity, and water quality, as well as maintain more stable water temperatures.

Isn’t that an amazing photo? Yesterday I looked at with adoring eyes and thought it probably wasn’t in a natural setting because the water under mom looks very shallow. It’s unlikely a beaver would put herself in such inescapable conditions if there were another option. I looked up the photo credit (Chris Canipe) and found this video of beaver relocation which me smile very much,

So cute going to their new home, which means my theory about an ‘unnatural setting’ is likely correct. It’s a great article though so lets take in some more.

Beaver are an important ecosystem engineer and the habitats they create benefit many native species. In the west, for example, 90% of species are dependent on wetlands, such as those created by beaver, at some point during their lives. In beaver ponds, freshwater fish can find more food or a larger variety of food. They can also spend the winter in the deepest parts of a pond. The shallow pond areas are great for young fish to find food and shelter while they grow. Migratory birds can use beaver ponds as “stepping stones” while they migrate to and from summer breeding grounds. Each pond can also support several different kinds of birds with the large variety of habitats created by damming, flooding, and tree felling. In spring, beaver ponds are a nightclub for amphibians, whose eggs and young tadpoles like the warmer water temperatures and shelter provided by vegetation near the shores.

Beaver are so important and have so many benefits for other species, including many species that are now imperiled, that Defenders works to restore them to places where they will create and enhance habitat for all the other critters we also care about. In the Rocky Mountains, boreal toad and native cutthroat trout are some examples of the imperiled species benefiting from our beaver restoration projects.

Yes they are, And given that fact and the fact that the title of this article is “COEXISTING WITH BEAVER” it would be a mistake to focus on relocation of the animals wouldn’t it? Even with live trapping instead of killing?

It’s not easy being a beaver in some places. In urban areas, such as cities or towns, beavers sometimes cause conflict by building dams which cause unwanted flooding, or by taking down charismatic trees which people value. In many cases these “nuisance” beavers are killed because of their actions, but sometimes simple tools can be used to prevent these conflicts, create more acceptance of their presence by people, and keep beaver where they are. For example, to prevent beaver from felling trees they can be wrapped in fencing or painted with a mix of sand and paint. Beaver, just like us, don’t like the “gritty” feeling of sand when chewing. To minimize flooding, flow-devices can be installed which limit the water level of beaver ponds by using a combination of pipes and fencing.

Oh alright then. I’m a very picky beaver consumer. But I do like happy endings and stories of beaver successes. Go read the entire article if you need more good cheer and I’m going to save one treat for last. Next up is a variation of the story we’ve all come to know and hate – this time in Schenectady NY.

Schenectady officials decide to trap beavers after Woodlawn Preserve flooding

Problems have steadily mounted over the past half-decade as beavers have set up stakes, including blockage of a drain pipe that ran underneath the railroad. City workers were being deployed nearly every other week to clean out the culvert. A series of beaver-built dams also led to elevated water levels in the basin.

Stakeholders met with beaver consultants, who recommended a trapping company.“

Trails were so flooded, people couldn’t fish,” said Janet Chen, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Woodlawn Preserve.

Oh no! You mean there as so dam much nature in your nature park that it is inconvenient to exploit it? Gosh, no wonder you called in the ~~Friends~~ Enemies of Woodlawn ~~preserve~~ use. Gee I wonder what the trapping company will suggest?

“We observed a very high amount of beaver activity in the preserve,” said City Engineer Chris Wallin. “It was determined we needed to trap the beavers.”

While the 135-acre site serves as a nature preserve — part of the Albany Pine Bush ecosystem — the site has more practical roots as a retention pond first constructed in the 1950s to alleviate flooding in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood.

You know how it is. We never intended this park to have nature IN it. Just to provide somewhere for the water to runoff when it floods. Beavers are icky, and never mind that it’s spring and the family is having babies.

Trapping beavers is rare and largely ineffective, said Sharon T. Brown, a biologist and director of the Dolgeville-based non-profit Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW).

I’m sure that’s a typo or miscommunication. She didn’t mean trapping is rare right?

“It’s often counterproductive, and will create a vacancy,” Brown said. “It’ll probably be re-settled unless they want a cycle of trapping over and over again.”

Water devices like the “Beaver Deceiver” — mesh enclosures paired with a series of pipes running under or through dams — are a better way to prevent flooding and avoid harming the creatures, Brown said.

“There’s no reason not to consider these.”

Good job Sharon, and congratulations to the reporter for getting her input. There’s no reason NOT to consider nonlethal solutions, is there? Oh yes there is! Beavers are icky! And we’re the enemies of the preserve! Just look at our outfits! Shhh wait, this is my favorite part!

Friends said the device was cost-prohibitive. Chen said the beavers haven’t historically served as a public draw to visit the site.

“People to go to the preserve generally go to take a walk in the quiet,” she said.

That’s right. People come to a park because of the QUIET! Like Thoreau on the famously quiet Walden pond. They don’t want some icky rodent tail-slapping in the water and disturbing their solitude. They want peace! Something tells me Ms. Chen is going to get a letter to make her own life of quiet desperation a little more interesting in the very near future.

And besides, people never visit a park just to see beavers.

Okay, I promised a treat if you were patient and here it is. Chris Carr from the beaver management Forum shared this yesterday taken with his night camera. This is why beavers need to carry around those few extra pounds.

BEAVERS ALL AROUND

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? April 6, 2019

Our friends Frances Backhouse, Glynnis Hood, Mike Callahan and Jim and Judy Atkinson on CBC Radio. Well worth a listen on a Saturday morning. If this sounds familiar. you’re not crazy. It first aired last November. It as so nice, they played it twice!

Rethinking the Beaver: Why beavers and humans have to learn to get along

Four centuries of fur-trade trapping nearly wiped beavers off the North American map. Now they’re back, big time, and we’re discovering that sharing the landscape with such tenacious ecosystem engineers isn’t always easy. We’re also learning that there are compelling reasons to try to coexist with this iconic species. Contributor Frances Backhouse explores how two control freaks — humans and beavers — can get along.

I especially love the discussion of the blackfoot mythology. It’s delightful to hear it explained by Eldon:

Eldon Yellowhorn is a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, where he teaches in the Department of First Nations Studies and the Department of Archaeology. He is from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta.

And of course our good friends Jim and Judy Atkinson! Listening to her talk about the community response to the beavers is like looking through our scrapbook. I especially love listening to her discuss vocalization of the young. But beavers aren’t just reruns, there are also new reports about their glorious benefits. This time from Planet magazine.

BUSY BEAVERS

Beavers in Washington state are being relocated to areas where they will make a positive impact on ecosystems.

Projects to relocate beavers to threatened habitats across the Pacific Northwest, such as the Methow Beaver Project, aim to restore and make such areas more resilient. New research indicates beavers and their dams may be a natural check against some impacts of climate change.

The goal of the Methow Beaver Project is to relocate beavers causing problems on private land in urban and suburban areas to the Methow Valley of Washington State, located along the eastern side of the North Cascades. Here, their architectural tendencies can be put to work. Beavers cause headaches by plugging road culverts, cutting down trees and flooding commercial orchards. A small number of beavers behind such problems are trapped, brought to the Winthrop National Hatchery, tagged, weighed, photographed and then wait there to be relocated.

More robustly kind things to say about the Methow project. This one especially warming because of the attention to detail about the busy beavers themselves. I especially liked this:

“The beavers are very easy to work with,” said Nelson. “They are very docile, it’s like working with a dog or a cat. They all have personalities. Some of them will huddle in their lodges in the hatchery with their eyes closed like, ‘this is a horrible thing, it will all go away soon.’ And then some will just swim with great confidence like [they] own the place.”

One memorable beaver that Nelson encountered was dubbed “Half-Tail Dale” by the team. He came into the hatchery with half of his tail and one of his back feet missing.

“What a survivor, you know? He was a hearty fellow. We had great appreciation for him,” said Nelson.

Half-tail Dale! I sometimes get weary of the catching and caging of beavers in concrete, but this account observing individual personalities makes me quite a bit happier. I seem to remember a very famously scarred beaver tail that basically started this website.

THE IMPORTANT RODENT

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? April 5, 2019

Let’s start the weekend off right with a fantastic letter to the editor from Moscow. Idaho that is! Where I know there happens to be some fine support for beavers and a recent effort to bring Ben Goldfarb out for a discussion of his book.

Looks like his reputation and information precedes him.

An important rodent

In spite of all the snow this past winter, dry conditions and little moisture are predicted for spring and summer in the Pacific Northwest. One way to slow runoff and conserve water is to reintroduce beaver, North America’s largest rodent. Beaver dams, comprised of willows, brush, mud and gravel, are so closely interwoven that little water escapes from the upstream pond. Weight of the water is sometimes pressed deep in the ground, recharging aquifers for use by farms and homes downstream. More water is often channeled to the water table below the surface than above it.

Isn’t that an amazing start to a letter to the editor? I mean no “stop sign needed on geary street” or “too many potholes” for Moscow. Just straight in for one of the BEST beaver letters ever written. Shhh, there’s more.

1. Beaver are identified as a keystone species, an animal on which other species largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would drastically change. Beaver shape the landscape, create wetlands and alter the physical, chemical and biological condition of running water. This rodent enables the existence of many other species to include aquatic plants and invertebrates, amphibians and wetland-dependent birds and mammals. Remove this keystone and the ecosystem collapses.

Wow, what a paragraph. Something tells me the author has a book of his own that needs writing. Idaho isn’t exactly the ecological capital of the world either, so it means something to read these words coming from one of its citizens.

Beaver also provide habitat for fish. In a study of beaver ponds in southwest Colorado, large numbers of small brook trout occurred in ponds having a stream inlet where gravel beds enabled the fish to successfully spawn and reproduce. In time, overpopulation of these fish reduced available food items so the individual trout grew poorly. In a few older, seepage ponds, abandoned by the beaver, gravel beds became silted over. Unable to spawn under these conditions, ample food existed for a few larger fish. Based on this research, the Colorado Game and Fish Department set a liberal bag limit of 50 brook trout for headwater stream beaver ponds containing this species.

The beaver deserves respect for its role in slowing runoff and conserving water, creating habitat for a multitude of other species and providing a site used by recreational fishermen.

Fred W. Rabe

Great letter Fred! Enos Mills himself would be impressed by this letter! The author Fred W Rabe is such a succinct advocate I had to look him up. Turns out he’s a retired biology professor from the University of Idaho, and after retiring wrote a few books of his own.

Retired UI prof still teaching through photos, books

While Fred Rabe has been retired for more than a decade, his work ethic as a University of Idaho professor in ecology, invertebrate zoology and biology has remained.

“After I retired I thought I was sort of bored, and I had done my Ph.D. work on high mountain lakes, so I thought why not just start off in northern Idaho and go all the way to New Mexico and do some work on the ecology of high lakes,” Rabe said.

So Fred went from teaching biology to preaching beaver benefits. Makes perfect sense to me. He’s a natural naturalist and destined to become a friend of ours. I’m sure Ben Goldfarb will want to meet you and share a beer when he comes to Moscow. Like minds deserve companions.

I admit the headline of this letter made me snork a bit. An important rodent. It doesn’t exactly raise expectations of grandeur. That might not be Fred’s title, but I suppose the editor knows his readers.

And the beaver is, in fact, an important – no, THE most important – rodent.

Oh and guess what was spotted yesterday morning headed up the creek below the arch bridge at the Marina?

NEVER SAY NEVER

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Mike Callahan, Who's saving beavers now? March 29, 2019

Regular readers of this website might remember the story of Nevers park in Connecticut, where there was a plan trap the beavers once the freeze unfroze. There was ample outcry on the ground and I thought there might be enough public support to change the outcome. This morning I read this from Steve of Ct.

Some local success in South Windsor, CT. After promising not to, our head of parks had traps set for our beavers in a local park. Someone posted that on Facebook, I snagged a town council member on the way to their meeting, after which the mayor called me at home and we talked. This morning he called again to say the traps were being removed and he was calling Mike Callahan to schedule an assessment. Not a bad way to start the day!!!

And thus begins another urban beaver success story, only this time they only had to call in the expert from 30 miles away not 3000. The joys of living on the east coast eh? I sense great things for the beavers in Nevers Park. Good luck team, you are in great hands.

I also received a worried message message from our beaver-watching buddies in North Carolina in Pokeberry Creek, Apparently one of the yearlings hasn’t been using his right front paw and they are wondering whether to involve a rehabber.

Yup it definitely looks like its hurting. I’m asking some rehab friends for advice. But it’s a big deal to trap and take it to be treated, and my friend Lisa reminds me that casting is really hard with an aquatic animal. Since its a front paw on a beaver – and not all that important – I’d be inclined to make sure it has plenty of food within swimming distance and wait. But what do I know so we’re asking the experts.

Meanwhile there’s strangely beautiful story out of Utah.

School Board approves wetland, bike trail project near Jeremy Ranch Elementary

The land around Jeremy Ranch Elementary School will be getting a makeover in a few months as Summit County plans for a major construction project.

To accompany two roundabouts the county plans to construct in the spring, it will be restoring the wetlands around the elementary school and building a bike path for students. The Park City Board of Education approved the county’s Wetland Mitigation Plan and easements to create a new trail at its meeting last week.

Wonderful! Wetlands, elementary school, bike path, sounds perfect. What’s the weird part?

According to the county’s mitigation plans, it intends to reroute Toll Creek east of the culvert into a new channel. The county will then install beaver dams and berms and plant willow cuttings to slow down the stream so the wetlands can re-form. The idea is that flora and fauna that left the area when the wetlands dried up will return, Hauber said at the meeting.

“For the school, it gives an opportunity for outdoor science because they can go out and actually see a wetland,” Hauber said.