Category: Beavers or Social Ambasadors

The Charming Beaver Festival III

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Festival August 8, 2010

We were strolling along– Alhambra Creek
We could hear the people saying–Oh my, Oh dear
Folks are coming to see Alhambra Creek
And it’s thanks to Worth a Dam that they come here

See the heron and mink, the otters too
They have come because of beavers –that’s something new
They have stolen our hearts
We’ve come to view
And it’s thanks to Worth a Dam Who saw it through

Sung to: “Moonlight Bay” Lyrics by ‘Granny Gai l‘ for whom we are Grateful.

Yesterday’s event was a rousing success by every measure: great attendance, excellent Music, remarkable children’s art, beautiful wildlife, a busy membership booth and a momentous silent auction with only one item remaining by the end of the day. Adorable children learned beaver facts and more than a couple whispering parents coached them with the wrong answers (“beavers eat fish!”). I personally made sure that everyone wearing the keystone charm bracelet knew better. Thanks to our amazing volunteers who worked tirelessly all day linking things together and thanks to our fearless displays who answered the same questions again and again.

Three highlights of a million will stay with me for a good long time: The Morris Dancers procession with the children’s banner trailing behind, The Raging Grannies touching verse about missing Mother Beaver, and Mission Gold Jazz Band playing the song I listened to over and over while the beaver battle was raging — imagining a day when the beavers were loved and protected in Alhambra Creek – like they are today.

Beaver in Red Deer Dog Park found Shot

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

This amazing photograph is of Doris Forbes and her beloved beaver, Mickey, the official Mascot of the city I wrote about last week where a beaver had attacked several dogs at a local dog park. In 1939 the kit was found mauled by dogs and unable to use his back legs, and cared for by the Forbes. (Mrs. Forbes was a nurse.) He recovered from his injuries and lived in their home until he got too big and then had a special place built for him in the garage. As many as 200 letters arrived a day for Mickey and his keeper, Doris. Sometimes as many as 50 would stop by to see the beaver, who was especially attached to the little girl.

Mickey lived for 9 years as the beloved pet of the Forbes and became the official Mascot of Red Deer. He died peacefully in his sleep and he and Doris became the subject of a bronze statue in town. Footage of him appeared in hollywood films, his image sparked the design for a beaver costume, and his story was told by Kerry Wood in a novel called “Mickey the beaver and other stories”. In his peaceful, well-loved life he taught people about beavers and the good that they can do. And his memory certainly shaped the mercy that dog owners were able to show in saying the beavers shouldn’t be killed.

Except one was.

Someone shot one of the Red Deer beavers. The body of a 3-4 year old beaver was found Monday by a canoer, and the town is reeling from the shock that someone would bring a weapon into a city park and take matters into their own hands. This is the kind of shocking death that breaks through the barriers if a woman who reads about 10 beaver killings a week. We were so close. The city had listened to options, the residents had defended the beavers, 4 property owners offered relocation, and the city was starting to realize that it may not even be necessary with a little intelligent fencing.

And one of the beavers was shot.

Again I ask, was it mom? Was it dad? Was it the ‘guilty beaver’? Will there be more? Will the person be back tonight or tomorrow to take out the rest of the colony?

The town of Red Deer has been shaped for 70 years by stories of beavers. With the massive import of the fur trade it is safe to say that beavers are the bookends holding together its entire existence. It had better do right by them.

A Good Metaphor

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

I was checking to see what new reports there might be on Red Deer Park and found a nice article about people rallying around the beavers written by Drew Halfnight in the National Post. Apparently there are now four potential property owners willing to have the beavers relocated.

Residents of Red Deer, Alta., have rallied to save about a dozen beavers that have been attacking dogs in a downtown off-leash park, killing one of them. The city’s parks department said Wednesday it would trap and kill the beavers due to the severity of the attacks — at least six dogs have been seriously injured while swimming in a pond in Three Mile Bend park — but the idea of euthanizing the animals has set off a firestorm, and the city is re-thinking its plan.

Re-thinking might be a bit of an exaggeration (twice), but we are happy that the people of Calgary and beyond have found their ‘beaver-saving groove”. It’s a good thing when it happens, and powerful: humane, civic-minded, and communal. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that saving beavers might easily be the best and most collaborative thing Martinez has ever done. A disjointed ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown, two distinct school districts with competing high schools to split the town in half. Don’t forget to include a city council that has always understood how to play one side against the other and you have a civic recipe for discord. Saving beavers was a unifying goal and remains a reason why people from Virginia Hills drive downtown and people from Castro Street think of them as neighbors.

Now its their turn: Ohhh Canada! Not only have the adjectives changed, the narrative changed. the heroes changed, but the superintendent’s name has changed too. He’s gone from “Trevor” to “Kevin”—a much more ‘man of the people’, less aristocratic name. (Well, as I’ve often said, beavers do change things. It’s what they do…)

“We have received an abnormally large number of calls and e-mails,” said Kevin Poth, superintendent of the city’s park system, who said about 75 dog advocacy groups, wildlife groups and concerned citizens had contacted him in two days.

“It really has opened up our community to have an interesting discussion about how we interact with wildlife in an urban centre,” he said. The callers fall into three categories, he said: those who want the animals killed, those who want them re-located and those who want nothing done at all. The vast majority have defended the beavers.

So as I’m enjoying this lovely article, thinking about our own November 7, 2007 dialogue, when I see this towards the end, mentioning the horrific intentions of P.E.I. to prove its ignorance 150 times.

The Red Deer beaver debate is not isolated. Last month on P.E.I., officials said they would kill about 150 nuisance beavers whose dams were causing flooding and destruction of roadways, killing mature trees and interfering with migratory fish runs. A member of beaver advocacy group Worth A Dam compared the practice to “controlling speeding by destroying cars.”

This surprised me, because I didn’t think my letter was ever published. Ahhh but it was sent to a host of carefully chosen names, one of which was Drew Halfnight at the National Post. I thought his name looked familiar. “Halfnight” is the kind of Tolkein-worthy name one doesn’t forget. (“Go not halfgently into that halfnight...”)

Nuisance Beavers, May 15th

I was confused to read about the PEI ecision to trap another 150 beavers this year saying they “cause flooding and destruction of roadways, kill mature trees, contaminate water and interfere with migratory fish runs.” Damage to roads and culverts is easily managed, not with a ‘magic wand’ but with a wrench and some tubing. Beaver taking of trees produces a natural coppice cutting encouraging new and bushy growth which is why migratory and songbird population increase with the number of beaver dams in an area. Their dams actually improve water quality and act as a natural filtration system in streams. Although there are rare incidences of their carrying giardia when it is present in a stream they never cause it. (we do that) The misunderstood relationship between beavers and salmon though, is if the greatest concern. Research from NOAA fisheries in the past ten years has documented consistently the significant benefit beaver dams provide to juvenile salmonid. In fact in many places where beavers aren’t naturally present they are introduced or people are hired to build little ‘beaver dams!’.

If trapping was a successful, long term solution, PEI would not need to kill twice as many beavers this year as last year. I certainly don’t believe conibear or snare traps are humane, but I am more concerned about the inhumane treatment you are giving to all the wildlife and birds who depend on beaver ponds for their survival. I would recommend you do your own wildlife count in the area of the targeted beavers, so you can see for yourself next year the fallout of your decision. Beavers are a keystone species and the decision to solve the problems they cause by killing them is akin to controlling speeding by destroying cars. It would work, but at what cost? Flow devices and culvert fences are proven, inexpensive tools that require little maintenance or experience to install. Beavers are an investment in your watershed and removing 150 of them will have trickledown effects that PEI has clearly not considered – not the least of which is a population boom next year when you need to remove 300 and so on and so on.

I would be happy to provide more information or connect you with resources that can. Beaver management experts are a short trip away, including Skip Hilliker in Maine, Michael Callahan in Massachusetts, and Skip Lisle in Vermont. You don’t need a magic wand or a snare to solve beaver problems. You just need to be smarter than a beaver, which I assume most of PEI is.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress

Sometimes a good metaphor can stay in a reporters mind for two whole months! That’s pretty powerful!

Assorted Goodness

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Environmental July 7, 2010

:Yesterday beaver-friend Joe Eaton published a column in the Berkeley Daily Planet that was the very best memorial article yet written about mom beaver. (And I say that as somewhat of a connoisseur.) Go read the entire, painfully comforting piece.. A small taste of what awaits you follows,

Mom, as she was generally known, was thought to be about six years old. (The longevity record for a North American beaver, according to the Animal Ageing and Longevity Database genomics.senescence.info/species, is just over 23 years.) Recognizable by a distinctive notch in the side of her tail, she had been observed in the Alhambra watershed before she paired with her mate and got down to the business of dam construction in the fall of 2006.

I first connected with Joe when he was writing an article on the Martinez Beavers for the San Francisco Estuary Partnership Newsletter. That article has always been one of my favorites as he is the only reporter who included my oft-repeated quote ‘Any city that’s smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver’. We met at the Creek Seeker’s Express last year. I am heartened by his thoughtful attention to wildlife, but even more by his knowledge base and effort to connect with experts and references. His article on the mink last year was a thing of beauty. He concluded yesterday with,

In her short but prolific span, the female beaver was an effective good-will ambassador for her species. The Martinez family, just by being beavers, did a lot to enhance consciousness of the beaver’s role as an ecosystem engineer. Public support forced city officials to back off from an initial plan for lethal control and to work out a modus vivendi with the rodents. What happens now? Will the two-year-old sibling stay on as a parent-surrogate? Will the widowed male mate again? Will one of the dispersers return? Stay tuned.

More good news? The Director of the Montana Zoo wrote me back yesterday and is excited about taking the opportunity presented by the orphan baby beavers to teach about the value of beavers in the watershed and educate the public about effective and humane beaver management. I put her in touch with Mike Callahan who offered to help in any long-distance way he could and showed her the successes we have had using art projects to educate children about beavers. I also offered my children’s beaver powerpoint and several helpful articles. Looks like Montana is going to have a little beaver-teachable moment.

And the final piece of good news? Ahh I’ve been saving the best for last. A while back I wrote about NOAA’s March draft of the 2010 “Recovery Plan for the Evolutionary Unit Of Central California Coast Coho Salmon“. The document outlines policies and procedures for helping the suffering salmon population. Guess what it doesn’t mention? At all? I’ll wait. Honestly, beavers are such an unpopular solution that saying they can help the fish population is like discovering you can cure impotence with feminism. “Really? Isn’t there another way?” The unwanted answer hardly recruits followers.

Still, the document is a ‘draft’ so they are still accepting comments, and a host of very smart minds have written back about the missing piece of the puzzle. Last night I read the comments of a certain prominent beaver-salmon researcher who can remain nameless. The whole thing was an exhaustively sourced thesis that makes my meager endorsement seem silly. I don’t have permission to quote but my favorite part is something like “Given that salmon depend on beaver ponds for two stages of their development, we will need the beaver population to recover before the salmon can.“

Swear to God.

Be still my heart. Wow! We are inching towards the promised land where salmon people and beaver people have actual conversations and listen to each other and where commenting aloud that ‘beaver dams hurt salmon populations’ is a punchline that makes everyone in the room burst out laughing. I’m waiting for the day where every time a city or property-owner decides to kill some beavers they have to pay a salmon-tax and face the consequences of their destruction of habitat.

Fingers crossed. I’ll keep you posted.

Taryn’s Beavers Make Friends

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 9, 2010

Taryn Power Greendeer of Wisconsin has slowly been growing support for her beavers and their wildlife water works. There was another meeting about their fate with standing room only attendance. Now she is graced by this bit of lovely environmental reporting by Jim Solberg for the Jackson County Chronicle.

In March, I enjoyed a tour of a farm near Arcadia, Wis., where a beaver dam had made a slough deep enough for Tom and Sue Roskos to paddle their canoe through the Trempealeau River wetlands along their land. Well, another nature-loving couple invited me recently to view a beaver pond and the wetlands associated with it on their property in Vernon County.

The beavers have maintained a dam along a stream going through Bill and Taryn (Powers) Greendeer’s farm for around 14 years. Unfortunately, though, their concern for the beavers and the diverse community of life that has come to depend on them has put them in the center of a conflict with the town board over the pond’s proximity to a town road.

While she was pointing out the rich wetland habitat that surrounded the dam, Taryn expressed hope that the issues raised by the town board and neighbors could be solved while also preserving the wetlands. Bill told me, for instance, that their cattle have been moved so the beavers can continue building farther down the stream. Taryn said she is hoping the birds will be allowed to finish nesting before any further and possibly disruptive actions are taken to lower the water in the pond.

In the four hours I was there on that rather chilly day, I was surprised by the amount of life I saw or heard around the ponds. Three species of frogs were calling in the main pond — the gray tree frog, the green frog and a species of special concern in Wisconsin, the pickerel frog.

Five other species of frogs have also been heard calling there — the American toad, the spring peeper, chorus frogs, wood frogs and leopard frogs — so this wetland is clearly a breeding site for at least eight species of frogs.

We also heard and saw numerous redwing blackbirds that were singing and calling all afternoon. Barn swallows flitted in flocks over the water, feeding on insects that had emerged from the pond, while a pair of mallards and at least one pair of wood ducks flew around.

A pair of sandhill cranes fed below the dams while and a number of great blue herons flew overhead. There is, in fact, a heron rookery hidden behind a nearby hill. As we talked, a secretive green heron made a surprising appearance from deep within the thick growth of willows.

Later, I watched a kingfisher as it dove repeatedly from an overhead utility wire to catch fish, chattering noisily between dives. We saw plenty of fish as we walked around the various ponds. They provide food for many other critters besides the kingfisher, including the herons, raccoons, turtles and trout.

As the sun was setting behind the hills, the green heron posed majestically for me on a stump and as it flew away, a beaver emerged from the water of the creek very near my car. The beaver and I exchanged looks for at least a couple minutes, and the industrious rodent did not seem to be upset as I snapped its portrait.

Ahhhh this is a lovely and familiar tale! Take care of your beavers and beavers will take care of your wildlife and watershed! Thanks for letting us read about their magical effect and observe their impact on you as well. I am reminded of the summary I just put together for my upcoming beaver talk in Oakland.

Many of you will have heard how beavers change their environment: their dams recharge the aquifer, improve water quality, augment fish diversity, and bring a host of new birds and mammals to their ponds. We expected that. What we didn’t expect was for an entire community to become part of the environment that was changed. Come learn how these uninvited guests are still teaching the city of Martinez that beavers can be “Worth A Dam”.