Category: Beavers or Social Ambasadors

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!

“The sun shines not on us but in us.”

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers April 21, 2013

Okay imagine this times a couple thousand, and the following conversation over and over again with children, soccer moms, fishermen, birdwatchers, politicians, and lanky teens, so you will have some idea of what we did yesterday at John Muir’s birthday Earth day celebration.

It was a wonderful, bright, blur of a day. FRO and her daughter worked tirelessly helping children illustrate our newest idea – a giant wind sock that can hang at the beaver festival! Lory and Jean helped get things organized and answer questions. Cheryl tirelessly took photos. Jon managed better than usual with the heavy lifting, and I talked to a fairly uninterrupted stream about why beavers matter. As always it was particularly heartening to be in a community that remembered so much about the story and took such personal responsibility for it. One young woman even remembered having spoken at the November meeting as a child 6 years ago after asking for permission to speak early because of her homework and bedtime. Another teen with a lip ring excitedly explained to his friend about Grey Owl and how he had tried to teach people about beavers way back when. Even better to see the story reach new ears, and really make people think earnestly about whether beaver problems could be solved in new ways. It was exciting to connect with some key players and emphasize what a vital role beavers and their dams play for birds, fish and other wildlife.

The day flew by. It hurdled at such breathtaking speed that I could only tell how long we’d been there by the amount of water I gulped in between spiels, how full the flag was getting with children’s drawings, and where the shade moved to. I was happy to think of Enos Mills (the author of In Beaver World) having dinner at the John Muir house in 1908 on his visit, and maybe even thinking (while he was listening to the great conservationist himself talk about Yosemite or wild places) of the title for his last chapter of his book where he calls beavers “The Original Conservationists” because unlike Hetch Hetchy the dams they make do so much good for the world.

Thanks John Muir, National Park staff, Teddy Roosevelt, JMA, countless musicians and children and parents of Martinez or beyond, for an ecologically amazing day.

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Just in case you need MORE good news on this fine April morning, check out the latest entry on the NOAA Fisheries home page!

Beavers: Mother Nature’s First River Restoration Engineers

Until recently, the role of beavers in maintaining healthy river ecosystems was not well understood or appreciated. Not everyone wants beaver dams in their backyard! But the same things beavers do naturally—cut down trees, dam up water, flood riverbanks—are exactly what we are trying to do to improve habitat for Pacific salmon.

That’s why beaver reintroduction is identified as a priority action in the Upper Columbia Spring Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Plan. The Methow Valley Beaver Reintroduction Project is relocating them from places where they are unwanted, and moving them to places where beavers can be part of the solution to salmon recovery.

More dam new friends!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors April 15, 2013

First there’s this very fun “Cromwell Critter Cam” entry describing beaver activity in Cromwell Park Maryland.

I checked the beaver today, and discovered that the tree is still standing.

Courtesy of North Carolina State University, I leave you with a list of Beaver Pond Benefits

Active Ponds

Improve downstream water quality
Provide watering holes for agricultural and wildlife needs
Supply important breeding areas for amphibians and fish
Provide diverse wetland habitats
Furnish feeding, brood rearing and resting areas for waterfowl
Encourage many reptile, bat amphibian, fish and bird species

Nice! You really should look at the WORTH A DAM website for more beaver benefits, but now I’ve established first contact, so maybe they’ll be back!

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And then there’s this lovely lodge photo from Huntley Meadows Park in Virginia. I introduced our friend (and the photographer) Malcolm Kenton from D.C. to Ann Siegal the Washington Post photographer/reporter whose been keeping an eye on those beavers, and he went out the other night to see them and just happened to meet Ann in person who was doing the same thing! Small world and beaver connections everywhere! Enjoy:

Just imagine what that bench is going to sound like next month!

And then there were six…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental March 29, 2013

Willard Bay State Park Beaver Dam Partially Contained Chevron Oil Spill, Officials Say

Well looks like the Huffington post took time out of its busy day of politics and fashion flaws to write about the beaver heroes in Utah who saved the diesel spill with their dam. Apparently six beavers have now been rescued, and the first three are doing better.

The beavers that were part of the group rescued Tuesday night had burns on their skin and eyes, and only patches of fur left on their bodies. Erickson said she worries that some of the newly rescued beavers might not survive the fallout from the spill. It’s unknown whether any other beavers might remain near the fuel leak site and have yet to be rescued, officials said.

One of the new beavers, a head-strong mother, is resisting the three-a-day cleanings with Dawn dish soap. So Erickson and other workers had to sedate her. Workers brought in more than 40 large bottles of the soap to scrub the beavers clean during their hour-long baths.

It’s terrible that they’re in such bad shape, but it makes me so happy to read this – to think of the family together again. And to remember that Sherri Tippie said when she trapped entire families the last was ALWAYS the mom. We were lucky in every way with our mom beaver, who, when she was sick, was such a good sport and let Jon and Cheryl nudge her into a dog crate with no fuss at all.

Protecting other animals and plants is part of the beavers’ daily routine, said Phil Douglass, spokesman for the Department of Wildlife Resources. Beavers are natural homemakers, he said, crediting beaver dams, or “lodges,” for drawing moose to Utah because moose like still waters for drinking. The dams also keep the water cool for trout and make surrounding areas healthier by inviting more plant growth.

That paragraph starts out so well. And then things get so horribly muddled. I’m going to assume Phil knows that beaver dams aren’t lodges and that beavers don’t live in the dam. I’m going to say that who ever patched this article together didn’t know the difference and assumed they were interchangeable. Just so we’re clear, beavers don’t draw moose to their lodges, okay?

Anyway, I finally managed to post a comment on HP after 16 hours of trying, so go join me in singing the beaver praises if you have a moment.

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Remember, today is the last day to submit recommendations to Fish & Wildlife for adopting beaver as a surrogate species. Sick of listening to me nag about it? Lets let Owen and Sharon of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife do it for me. Send your comments here.

Unbelievably good news…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions January 13, 2013

Let’s say, (and why not) that an unnamed city a fair drive from Martinez had some beavers that were blocking a culvert. Not surprising yet? Here’s the fun part: through a weird accident of fate they didn’t want to kill them. (Yet.) They wondered if they could solve the problem another way, and wrote Wildcare for help.

Wildcare didn’t know much about fixing beaver haitat but they had recently published my article about it and sent their SOS my way. I followed up and talked to these folk about the issue and arranged for Cheryl to go have a look at the habitat. Gasp-inducing fact #1: when I mentioned the value of beavers to the watershed and all the wildlife they’d produce, the person on the phone said “Oh you don’t have to convince me! We know!”

Let’s say that when Cheryl was out scoping the habitat she met the man behind the beaver-savin’ campaign who happened to have installed a camera to keep watch on them. Lets say he was actually employed for this unnamed city and asked if we could do a site survey and tell them what they might need. Let’s say at our yearly new year’s dinner,Cheryl arranged for Jon and Igor to come traipsing around the habitat and look around.

Now let’s say that the habitat turned out to be the most magical beaver wetlands imaginable. They had a delightful morning following the twists and turn of a perfectly meandering stream and identifying 6 dams and countless chews. There were cheerful conversations, otter scat, paper whites, and more secret dams to uncover than they had time to track down! A second visit was planned. Mike’s DVD was given along with two Worth A Dam hats, at which time the resident beaver saver offered his card.

Gasp-inducing fact 2: his card said he was from an undisclosed department that had greatly balked about saving our beavers, lo these many years ago.

What happens next? Well, Igor and I may be requested to present a plan to the city council, (no names until they’re on board) and detail the reasons to live with beavers, of which I can tell you right now the biggest one is that this habitat is so beautiful that even if they trap every single one they’ll be more in 6 months anyway. We discussed the Worth A Dam scholarship and having Mike or Skip come do it and we’ll see what happens next!

All in all a pretty remarkable start to the new year. And I am in wonderland.

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Martinez update: Beaver visit last night saw no actual beavers but plenty of work on the primary dam, nothing on the secondary

And lots of work on the possibly to be renamed ‘third dam’.