AIRDRIE BEAVERS HAVE A CHAMPION

If you traveled north of Montana and kept on snow plowing until you passed Calgary you’d come to the city of Airdrie, And you have dropped into a most unusual presentation to the city council there. Meet champion Barbara Kowalzik who I suspect is going to be our very good friend soon.

Resident lobbies council for better wildlife management practices

With the City of Airdrie putting a pause on trapping and killing beavers of the Waterstone community, an Airdrie resident presented to council asking that the City adopt a policy to co-exist with beaver populations on November 7.

Summerhill resident Barbara Kowalzik, who has lived there for 13 years, made a presentation to council offering some information to consider as the City explores alternative to trapping and killing destructive beaver populations in the community.

While she presented as a concerned resident, Kowalzik holds a bachelor degree of sciences, and has over a decade of experience in wildlife conflict management.

Kowalzik said that the continued destruction of public and private properties has shown that Airdrie’s current management methods have been ineffective.

“The beaver lodge in my community has existed long before I moved here, and over the last 10 years I’ve seen these beavers relocated unsuccessfully and managed a number of times. I feel that I can say with confidence that we have an opportunity here to make a change because what we are doing is not working,” said Kowalzik.

Ohhh hoo hoooo. I am liking Barbara! What a celestial entrance! I wish I had known enough once upon a time to be able to march in and present to the city council that they should do it better.

“Many trees in my community have been wired, but unfortunately most are wired insufficiently or the cages aren’t properly secured which allows beavers access,” she said.

“I think the fact that beavers have taken a number of large poplars over the last few months speaks to the fact that there’s room for improvement.”

She added that she believed aggressive behaviours demonstrated by beavers were an overstated concern.

“Although beavers are social animals, they’re not aggressive and attacks and bites are exceptionally rare. I can say this from first-hand experience working with wild beaver populations,” said Kowalzik.

“I’ve heard the beavers in my community be referred to as aggressive a number of times, and implying this aggression as justification for trapping,” she said.

Beavers aren’t aggressive buddy. But watch out because I AM! Just putting chicken wire on a tree isn’t the same thing as protecting it. We know that.

“I would suggest that defensive behaviours, such as posturing and vocalizing, has been mislabelled as aggression, which can be very misleading as it relates to public safety.”

She suggested preventative measures as a solution. Those included a proposal to paint tree bases in sand mixures, and a practice called ‘diversionary planting,’ which equates to placing specific plants near beaver colonies to attract them so they don’t turn to other publicly or privately-owned trees and shrubs.

Another proposal was to explore pond levellers to manage water levels and mitigate beaver activity in certain areas.

Kowalzik’s presentation cited a study conducted by Stella Thompson published in the January 2021 edition of the Mammal Review, which estimated that environmental services provided by beavers can amount to $179,000 USD per square mile annually.

The big guns. Cities waste money by trapping beavers. Everything else falls on deaf ears. Keep going Barbara,

She said that could be taken into consideration when looking at the 2018 Nose Creek Watershed Water Management Plan, which highlighted the unhealthy ecosystem of the watershed.

“It’s polluted with phosphorus, nitrogen, and fecal coliform. Not only do beavers on the landscape help increase water quality, but they also help enhance biodiversity,” she said.

“It has a ripple effect, and I think the riparian habitat in Waterstone is a great example of this. There’s mink, muskrat, neotropical songbirds, numerous invertebrates, and numerous species of wild plants.”

She said the challenges presented could potentially be leveraged into new opportunities for innovation.

“Mutiple beavers in my community have been trapped and killed over the last month, but beavers still remain in the lodge and trees still remain accessible,” said Kowalzik.

Ohh hoo hoo Barbara. You got ’em on the ropes now! Don’t let up. Keep wielding that sword until they say uncle.

“I’m hoping we can leverage some of the resources available to us in order to make some well-informed decisions moving forward.”

Councillor Ron Chapman said he was somewhat divided on the issue because of the costs and liabilities they were presenting within the City.

“In the wild they are great, but the City of Airdrie is not a wild environment for them. In a municipal setting, I don’t see it different than having a mouse in your kitchen,” said Chapman.

Hmm does the mouse save money on your water bill and fight fires? Asking for a friend.

“If you have a mouse in your kitchen, you have to get rid of it because it’s doing damage. It’s going to continue to do damage while it’s there,” he said.

“I’m not convinced that we’re going to be able to… co-exist with them.”

The City of Airdrie is looking to do some additional research with the insight of other wildlife experts on how to best approach the beaver problem.

Councillor Candice Koleson said she looks forward to seeing what comes from those discussions, but added that she recognized that there’s a very apparent problem for the municipality.

“They are incredibly destructive. Big trees have been taken down overnight, and it’s very difficult for us to be able to justify that destruction,” she said.

The week prior to the meeting saw beavers take down a tree along Main Street, which has only raised safety and liability concerns around the critters remaining in an urban environment.

Well yes it’s easier to Kill a problem than to solve it. I agree. But is it better for the community? Is it better for the green spaces in your community? Better for your water quality? Better for the mental health of your residents? I’m going to guess the answer to that is “NO”.

Barbara we need to talk.

12th Martinez Beaver Festival 2019. Photo by Cheryl Reynolds 6/29/19.

THE SUN SETS ON THE MORNING NEWS GAZETTE

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, In the News December 19, 2019

This isn’t strictly Beaver News but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Martinez Beavers could never have existed without the Gazette that first promoted them. This a great report from KQED on its demise which I think is profoundly relevant and worth sharing.

I learned to read making out letters from the headlines on my dad’s lap. Now I am a mere 54 years young and the Gazette has been part of my life as early as I can remember. because my mom worked there once I started preschool. In fact when I started Kindergarten it was on Jones street which was the very same one the Gazette office was located on. Early in September I terrified her by ditching the neighbor and walking all the way to her office by myself at age 4. She had left for the day so I then had to walk home. I think today that it is stunning that nobody insisted on driving me or called the police.

54 years is a long time. But it’s pretty dam humbling to think the paper existed for an entire century century before that.

After 161 Years, An Era Of Local News Ends In Martinez

BELLS RINGING IN BELLEVILLE

heidi08 City Reports, Flow Device Installed, Who's saving beavers now? September 11, 2019

Remember our friend in the filmmaker in Belleville, Ontario who tried to rescue the drowning beaver and was horrified to find out they were being trapped in this day and age? We’ll he and his friends have been hard at work with some pretty great results,

City keeps fatal traps as “last resort”

Beavers in Belleville are not totally safe yet, but they are much closer to being treated humanely in the city than they ever have been.

Belleville city council passed a new policy regarding the trapping of “nuisance animals” Monday night which says lethal trapping should only be used as a “last resort.”

The “Humane Wildlife Conflict Policy” outlines several options to be used prior to lethal conibear killing traps, and stresses the city will “strive to implement proactive and preventative measures” of promoting coexistence and preventing potential conflicts.

The issue of how the city deals with “nuisance animals,” notably beavers, came to the forefront in the summer of 2018 when several East Hill residents rescued a beaver that had been caught in a drowning trap.

Yes we remember it well. Lets hear a little more about what the city is going to do instead?

That kind of trap will no longer be used by the city, which has since installed a Beaver Deceiver – a beaver control device — in the area of Haig Road where the incident occurred.

In any possible situation, the first step will be to identify potential problems and confirm there are “reasonable grounds” that property will be damaged or a threat to the community exists.

Mayor Mitch Panciuk, who praised McCaw for her efforts on this issue, said he was proud of the steps the city has taken to find innovative solutions to a very difficult problem.

“Is this policy perfect? No,” he said. “But today we have no policy. At least under this policy I know we will not be using inhumane traps except as a last resort.

I am not picky. I’ve been following beavers a long, long time, and I know that if any city commits to do ANYTHING first before reaching for trappers – whether its use an egg beater or dressing up for Halloween – any forced delay is actually better than none – and a delay involving an actual flow device or wrapping trees is the BEST of all! Because stopping to think of options and outcomes is ALL I ask for really.

Great work team Belleville. Keep the pressure on and keep your mayor careful. Your beavers will be around to thank you for it!

THOSE WHO CAN’T RECALL THE PAST

heidi08 City Reports, History, In the News June 3, 2019

Beavers are showing in all the best neighborhoods and more and more often people who live creeks and streams know enough to be excited about it. This article is so close to being positive I should have my head examined for being annoyed by it, but it grates like chinese water torture after the 15th day. Especially because it doesn’t even reference what it wrote itself about this issue 5 years earlier!

Maybe we should make a game out of it. Play “spot the line that bothers Heidi” or something and give free tshirts to the winners.

Beavers’ re-introduction to South Bay going swimmingly

Okay stop. The headline already is irksome. Beaver reintroduction is illegal so no one “reintroduced” beavers to the south bay.

A newly discovered den on Los Gatos Creek. Documented sightings of beavers and dams from Sunnyvale to Coyote Creek. Evidence that a new generation of beaver kits is about to be born. It has been a good spring for the South Bay’s recently returned and now blossoming population of buck-toothed river rodents.

On May 24, Ibrahim Ismail, a student and teaching assistant at De Anza College, was conducting a lab with his class on Los Gatos Creek when they discovered the den. This was very near the spot where an individual beaver was captured on a camera-trap in 2014, the first seen on this watershed in a century and half. Ibrahim has spent a lot of time there in recent months.

He says he and his class were looking for tracks in the creekside dirt and watching three beavers swimming up and down in the creek. “And then we found what looked like a mountain of mud and sticks and twigs and large branches,” he says. “And in the back of my mind I’m like, ‘Wow, that really does look like a den.’ But I’ve been up and down this area so many times, and I’ve never seen any new activity.

“And then we saw all three beavers dive, and we could see through the water that they dived under and then crawled into the log pile.”

Okay relax. This is my favorite part of the article. A nice story about someone watching beavers. There’s nothing really annoying. Let’s just bask in the idea that beavers are welcome somewhere they show up. And this, This doesn’t bother me either.

Holmes, whose passion as a fly fisherman led him to found the Friends of Los Gatos Creek, which later became the SPCCC, understands that beaver can dramatically improve the ecology of a creek. That’s why conservationists throughout the region and the state are excited to witness the return of the beaver to watersheds throughout Northern California.

That’s perfect. You should be very happy about this paragraph.

The first colony of beaver to reappear in California set up camp on Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez in 2010. Since that time many long-absent species including steelhead trout, river otter and mink have returned to the watershed. Holmes says he has witnessed evidence that the dam that was recently discovered on Coyote Creek is having a similar effect.

OW OW OW! The stupid it hurts us it hurts us! It hurts us!

Nasty reporters with their pretend facts and not even checking their OWN newspaper to see what they said before. Now I know the paper has been purchased and regrouped since then, and changed its name several times but Google is still the same. It was 2007 the first article appeared on our beavers in the Contra Costa Times. You not only got the date wrong by three entire years, but by the birth of 11 entire beavers.

Kate Lundquist began researching the beaver with her colleague Brock Dolman because of the critter’s habit of improving habitat for other riparian species. Lundquist and Dolman, who work at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, were at the time working toward the recovery of another totemic California animal, the Coho salmon.

Lundquist had learned that biologists in Oregon and Washington were re-introducing breeding pairs of beaver to creeks and rivers in their states, where they were creating pools that were helping the Coho. No such program exists in California, where beaver re-introduction is not permitted.

“The Coho are blinking out in this state,” she says. “They are very endangered.”

Beaver re-introduction is not allowed in California because for a century it was believed that the beaver was not native to the Sierra, the Coast Range or most of the rest of the state.

Okay, we’re generally happy that a reporter is talking to Kate and talking about salmon. Even though if he had talked to me I could have corrected that 201o thing, and reminded them that they wrote about beavers in the south bay 6 years ago, but okay. As long as the message gets out I certainly don’t have to be the one who tells it.

Lundquist and Dolman, conservationist and wildlife biologist respectively, later proved that was a fallacy in a peer-reviewed study published in the journal of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which details evidence of beaver going back more than 1,000 years.

Lundquist says that by the time the two primary surveys of mammals in California were taken in 1937 and 1942, the beaver population had already been slaughtered.

“They had been trapped persistently since the 1700s,” she says, “and when the mountain men arrived in the 1830s, they finished them off.”

Lundquist and Dolman’s paper is a work of “historical ecology.” Its key finding is a piece of physical evidence: an ancient buried beaver dam that was discovered in the Red Clover Valley in Plumas County in the late 1980s. Carbon dating shows that it was built in three phases—the most recent layer in 1850, the layer beneath it in 1730, and the base layer in AD 580.

My mouth keeps opening and closing again. I want to complain but I don’t even know where to begin. Neither Brock nor Kate were authors on the paper about carbon testing the beaver dam. That was wikipedia Rick, who by the way started his very own think tank at the time called The Institute for Historical Ecology which I guess is where you got that name. Kate wasn’t author on the Sierra paper either. But sure, it takes a village, right?

Back in the South Bay, Ismail reports that there may be even more good news. A few weeks ago, while tracking the Campbell colony, he took note of some changes.

“I noticed that one of them has started to grow, and her body’s changing. And we are 90 percent sure that she’s pregnant. So in the next month and a half or so, we should have a new set of kits. And hopefully we’ll be getting some of those on camera.”

Now now, It’s June, And if your rare south bay beaver had kits I’ll bet you all the money in my pocket that they’d be born already. And I’d like very much to know how you can tell the beavers apart so that you are certain this one is ‘bigger’ and not just a different beaver. Of course if they talked to me I could tell them that. And could tell them our history tracking beaver family dynamics over a decade.

Here’s the thing. It’s very good to have beaver benefits and our nativity work discussed in the news and to get California thinking. That part I’m very happy about. Never mind that 6 years ago the Mercury News published a story about beavers in San Jose talking about their history in California with lead author Rick Lanman talking about this very subject.

Family of beavers found living in downtown San Jose

SAN JOSE — A family of beavers has moved into Silicon Valley, taking up residence along the Gd yards from freeways, tall office buildings and the HP Pavilion represents the most high-profile Bay Area sighting since a beaver family settled in Martinez in 2006. The discovery of those beavers sparked national headlines when city leaders at first tried to remove them and then backed down after public outcry.

The appearance of the furry mammals in downtown San Jose is believed to be the first in 150 years.

“Whether these beavers came from the bay or Los Gatos Creek, I don’t think we know,” said Rick Lanman, a Los Altos physician who has published scientific papers on California beavers. “As long as we keep improving our environment, we are going to see more recolonization. It is a really cool story.”

Just to clarify. this is the exact same paper talking about the exact same research and being excited about beavers showing up in the South Bay 6 years earlier.

But that’s fine. Tune in next week when the Mercury news reports on the important new discovery of fire.

I know. I’m too picky. An article that doesn’t frustrate me appeared in the Mt Diablo Audubon Newsletter this month. Let’s end on a friendly note.

A CRAZY BEAVER ARGUMENT

heidi08 City Reports, Environmental October 15, 2018

I had a funny dream snippet this morning that I was introducing author Ben Goldfarb to Mitch Wagner, the attorney who represented the friends of Lake Skinner case. And I realized this ancient history was actually wild-foresight-crazy-progressive, It made me wonder whether the Western Environmental Law Firm who sued Wildlife Services in Oregon for trapping beaver last year even knew about it. And it definitely seemed like time to talk about it again.

So Lake Skinner is a reservoir and recreational park in Riverside County in southern California. It has trails and a campground and a boat launch. And way back in the nineties some beavers made there way on the scene.

Now the park is part of the Riverside Country Park District, but since it is part of an important water supply, Metro Water has a hand in it too. All together they decided it wouldn’t do to have beavers taking down trees and mucking things up there. So they announced they had permits from CDFG to trap them.

There were regular users of the park who loved watching the beavers. They didn’t want them killed so they made a fuss. The park came up with a list of bogus reasons why it HAD to be done. The beavers were cutting trees and there would be no place for the Bell’s vireo to nest they argued. (Which happened to be a listed species on site), They had to kill beavers to save birds!

Well the protesters made friends and had supporters, and one of their friends just happened to be attorney Mitchell Wagner, a sole practitioner in Riverside. He wasn’t an environmental lawyer, he wasn’t a biologist. He just ‘happened’ to think this was a bad idea so he signed on to represent these Friends of Lake Skinner beavers. And just like me, since it wasn’t his field, and wasn’t something he knew anything about, he talked to a lot of folks to learn what to do next, And he read. And he listened.

Mitch cared about animals and had handled some animal welfare cases in the past. But maybe if Mitch had been a seasoned environmental attorney who was used to how all this works and the slow inches of progress one could expect he would have taken a different approach, But he was used to thinking for himself and doing things his own way. The other side was represented by the attorney generals office at the biggest firm in the area. But he was not daunted. He did what in retrospect I now realize was the most crazy and long shot thing he could possibly do.

He argued that removing beavers violated the environmental qualities act.

In his studying and talking to people Mitch learned that beavers were good for the environment, for fish and birds and water quality. And he figured if they were GOOD for the environment removing them for no reason must be bad. It made perfect sense in a crazy way, The parks department and water companies weren’t supposed to do things that were BAD for the environment. Were they?

So off they went to court. He sued the parks department, Metro water and the California Department of Fish and Game for good measure.

Late breaking. I just got an email from Mitch who read this and offered an improved paragraph saying,

“A more accurate account would be that I, as a sole practitioner, litigated the Lake Skinner beavers case against three government agencies, including the California Department of Fish & Game, out of conviction for the plight of the beavers and equal conviction in the law and my ongoing animal welfare advocacy. Indeed, as a sole practitioner, I, like the beavers, have always been accustomed to David v Goliath battles, having litigated against government agencies and large corporations.”

!!! Much better! Thanks, Mitch

It probably surprised no one when they lost their initial suit. But Mitch was a fighter and appealed. At this trial he brought in the big guns, wetlands expert Donald Hey from Chicago, and beaver expert Sherri Tippie from Colorado. Can you even believe that? This was 18 years ago. Before Ben’s book, before the nature documentary, even before Michael Pollock was releasing any salmon research.

Mitch argued that removing beavers violated CEQA and he won.

To everyone’s surprise, the appellate court ruled that the decisions weren’t justified. That they should never have trapped the beavers in the first place and that the parks department and Metro and CDFG, that they had caused the lawsuit with their actions and would have to pay all his attorney fees and the expert witness fees.

More than fifty thousand dollars! Not to mention the time and attorney hours they had to spend trying to fight it.

To this day there are still occasional beavers in Lake Skinner. And this was such a wild unbelievable outcome, that it was never tried again as far as I know. Even thought it’s still true that removing beavers hurts the environment, No environmental attorney was crazy enough to argue that.

It took Mitch,

Because sometimes you have to be out of your element to do something that’s never been done before. Which we in Martinez know first hand.

If you haven’t read this yet, you really should.

LAKE SKINNER REMITTITUR