Looks like Washington gets to go to the beaver movies for my birthday eve. How is that fair? Not that I’d personally love to be called a resource exactly, but I’m sure it’s better than being called a pest.
“Beavers in the Ecosystem” (Sept. 19);
Water Week
A resource worth celebrating
When rain fell late last week, and again over the weekend, it was the first time in almost three months that Whatcom County had any “wetting rain”—rainfall that was widespread over an extended period of time.
And although the soggy Saturday likely threw monkey wrenches into outdoor weddings, music festivals and other long-planned get-togethers slated for the typically sunny skies of late summer in the Pacific Northwest, the cooler temperatures and consistent moisture falling from the sky were welcome changes from the more than 80 days without any significant precipitation that preceded.
As part of Whatcom Water Week—which takes place from Sept. 16-23 at a variety of outdoor and indoor venues throughout the county—those who get involved in one or many of the lineup of events can find out why it’s important to pay attention to what’s falling from the sky and coursing through rivers, and how water affects everything from crops to fish to beavers.
“Whatcom Water Week is an event that celebrates our local water resources,” organizers from the Whatcom Watershed Information Network say. “Businesses, nonprofit organizations and community groups celebrate the importance of water, share information about the state of the resource, offer stewardship opportunities, and expand awareness and appreciation of our marine and freshwater resources and the role water plays in our lives.”
Don’t you want to go to the water film festival? Or maybe take in a Run with the chums? The tagline of the week is “It’s everybody’s business” because Washington State is just brilliant, ya know? Getting folks excited about water takes all kind of effort, but if anyone could do it it’s them.
I have put out feelers for the film to see if we can share it here. I’ll let you know what I hear back.
Over the weekend I started having an idea for a graphic based on a wheel instead of an arch. It took a bit of fiddling but I’m fairly happy with the way it came out. One of our beaver buddies suggested it might be useful to include a human and some cattle, but I’m not so sure. All in all, it lends itself to pretty straightforward messaging.
What do you think?
Oh and I thought I’d show you our returned beavers little dam in the part of Alhambra Creek we can’t see from the Susanna Street Bridge. If your sound is turned up you will understand why beaver dams are sometimes called ‘leaky dams’. This was filmed by Moses Silva.
If you ask Sara Melnicoff of Moab Solutions, part of the Mill Creek Partnership, Mill Creek had 11 or more beaver dams this spring. Then in July every dam was gone.
Eyewitness accounts support the claim that vandalism was involved. Maria Roberts, a Forest Service employee, was hiking with friends in mid-July when she saw a man pulling sticks out of the dams.
“When they come up streams and have to build dams to get two and a half feet [of water to build their lodges], there is then a whole cascade of effects that happen,” O’Brien said. “Streams are often incised from grazing, from long-ago blow-outs of cattle ponds, from floods and so on and really the only thing that can restore that stream is basically woody debris … beaver are the chief engineers that do that.”
dary cavity nesters who use the holes of cavity nesters,” O’Brien said. “[The] water behind the pond is a great nursery for fish. And then of course otter can come into the system because there’s fish. And muskrats are there. And water voles are there, so one thing that the beavers do is make the system far more complex. Without beaver, in a lot of, say, your mountains here, it’s a just strip of water coming through and there’s trees on either side.”
Arne Hultquist, director of the Moab Area Watershed Partnership, agreed that beavers are not the cause of E. coli in Mill Creek. “If I was having problems with beavers and E. coli, I would be seeing it at that site [above the Power Dam] and I don’t see it at that site. I see it down in town,” said Hulquist, who conducts water quality tests at various points around Moab.
The Cougar Creek Streamkeepers have spent a week doing construction down at Lower Cougar Creek to make it a better place for spawning salmon.
The seventh in a series from the Susitna Salmon Center. This segment by Jeff Davis deviates from the ecology theme to tell about the runs of the other four species of salmon in the Susitna River drainage. From tagging studies, Department of Fish and Game biologists have information about when the runs are, where most of the salmon spawn, how long they spend in freshwater habitats, and other details of the spawning season. Chinook salmon were covered in the previous episode.
