The forward-thinking province of Saskatchewan, (which narrowly rejected a plan to offer ‘beaver bounties for citizens who bravely kill their own beavers), just announced it will come up with half a million dollars to kill beavers at the municipal level. The minister of hyperbole has granted license to claim the beaver population has EXPLODED in recent years and there is certainly nothing else they could do to prevent rodents from blocking culverts and building dams. Never mind those pesky environmentalists who claim that beavers raise the water table and slow water movements by creating ponds. No one’s trapping anymore because the value of fur has declined in recent years and all these beavers won’t kill themselves!
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM, says beavers are damaging rural infrastructure and private property.SARM president David Marit said Wednesday that part of the problem is the exploding beaver population.
Exploding beavers? Now that does sound dangerous! No wonder you found 500,000 to fight it! I guess America has seen shoe bombs and underwear bombs in the last few years, so why NOT an exploding beaver! It’s insidious!
Ohh. I just received a wire from the Ministry of Dangling Participles clarifying that the population of beavers has exploded, not the beavers themselves. Whew. That’s a relief! I was going for my beaver-proof vest. I’m curious though, how do you know the population has exploded? I mean when is the last time you did a regional count and how do you know the numbers have increased?
Funny thing about Beaver trapping. When governments rush in to take out massive groups of beavers, populations have a way of recovering. In fact they often rebound, with more food available for fewer beavers and female caloric intake increasing so that brood size increases. You end up doing the same thing all over again in 1-2 years.
Hopefully you set aside another 500,000 dollars to take care of that problem?
Or you could be proactive. Install culvert fences, flow devices and wrap trees. Allow beavers to manage your water and increase the population of things that are more valuable to trap. Regina is about 9 hours from Dr. Glynnis Hood whose beaver research has made the world take notice. She’s actually very knowledgeable about beaver management. I’m sure she could connect you with some graduate students that would come install flow devices for the cost of a pack of Skittles. You can by an awful lot of Skittles with 500,000 dollars.
But then you’d have all that money left over, every year, and your wildlife population would improve and your province will be known for its humane pragmatism. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?
I was pretty pleased with my ‘death and the beavers’ so I sent it around to the usual places, including to the chief executive of the Scottish National Heritage who’s authorizing the exciting beaver-capture on the Tay. Believe it or not I hesitated. I figured this kind of poking the dragon could result in some serious scalding, (or at least scolding). In the end, I was too proud of the evocative image to avoid sharing.
I added the message,“Still waiting for Scotland to do the right thing. This is an opportunity for study, not stealth. Any country smarter than a beaver can keep beavers in the wild. I believe at some point you will decide this is easier to do well than allow to be done badly. We’d be happy to connect you with real solutions if you need them.”
I absolutely agree it is important to do reintroductions well rather than badly. Indeed that is precisely my point. I think you maybe need to know what is actually happening in Scotland before making your mind up. In Scotland there is a legal, licensed, monitored experimental reintroduction of beavers going on in Argyll. The licensees are the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland – people who I think are both smart and know a bit about zoology. I would have hoped the whole Scottish conservation movement would have got behind them, but apparently there are some who won’t. Wonder why? The Argyll project complies with Scottish law, European law and IUCN guidelines. I hope it will be successful. To my mind that is what ‘doing it properly’ involves. Why not come across and see, or speak to SWT and RZSS and find out? Compared to this I can’t see that illegally allowing a few captive beavers of uncertain origin to escape is anyone’s idea of the right thing!
Dr Ian Jardine
Hmmm. No scolding. An attitude of reason. Obviously, he wants to appeal to a ‘colleague’. He clearly thinks he’s doing the right thing, and is going to need help finding the tools for redefining ‘right’. Of course I would change the words “uncertain origin to escape’ to “uncertain origin to exist” but that’s not worth writing back yet. I wrote
Dr. Jardine, thanks so much for taking the time to write back. I appreciate your efforts to protect the trial and its value and I respect your thoughtfulness regarding your role. My primary concern is the razor-thin footbridge of public trust you have secured for this effort – threatened on all sides by anglers who don’t believe the research proving that beavers help salmon, and farmers who are suspicious about beavers raising the water table and can’t ‘see the forest for their missing trees’….
The question I would ask myself is whether trapping ‘feral’ beavers broadens or narrows that footbridge. Without faith in SNH, the official beaver trial is functionally useless – even if it produces good data no one will respect it and ultimately no one will believe it. You have the science and data squarely behind you but the truth is that public good will is the only real tool you have for learning about reintroducing beavers in Scotland, and I would ask yourself seriously whether trapping ‘the wrong beavers’ hurts or helps that.
You can probably guess what I think already.
Heidi
Footbridge of public trust. I like that image. Maybe, just maybe I could nudge him towards the realization that the The Scottish beaver Trial isn’t trying out how beavers will do in scotland – we have the Crannogs of history to tell us they’ll do just fine (thank you very much). It’s to see how beavers will do in the attitudes of the Scottish people. How will people do sharing their land and waterways with beavers? Wouldn’t some citizen science be helpful in that? Maybe a watchdog group that runs parallel to the formal beaver trial? Say a group recording progress of the untagged free Tay beavers?
Dear Heidi
Thanks for this. As you say it’s a tricky one and it comes down to judgements about science, politics and public perception and mood.
My judgment is that public opinion is behind the beavers at the moment. What I don’t want is a section of society getting a toe hold to say ‘you said you would do this properly but you’ve broken your promises’. On balance I see that as a bigger political risk – remember our last Government refused a trial introduction so this one gave promises to justify changing that decision. We may not agree on this one, but I think we’re on the same side in the long run!
Ian
On the side of beavers. (Excellent book title.) Not exactly accurate here though. We might both be on the side of ‘beaver-kind’ being a benefit to the watershed, and I’m really grateful for that, but Its hard for me to see how being on the side of beavers means trapping and separating family members and sending them to live in zoos. I think we’re on different sides for as long as these beavers lives run, lets say the next ten years under ideal conditions.
I’m glad for the contact. He sounds fairly set in his thinking that getting rid of the extraneous beavers will protect the good name of the study, which, btw, was pretty much my point in the graphic. I’m fairly certain that this is going to look like a necessary evil to Ian until it becomes an impossibly bad idea in the public eye, and that’s unfortunate. In protecting the ‘good study’ by getting rid of the ‘bad beavers’ SNH will ultimately tarnish the reputation of the good ones as well, and beavers will pay the price for it.
Sigh.
If you need a little good cheer after that exchange, I’m posting a photo of a nighttime visitor from my friend in England. Is that the cutest non-beaver face you ever saw?
Last night in Sonoma a group of wide-eyed and rained upon listeners were introduced to the tale of the Martinez beavers. It was an excellent setting and reception and Tom Rusert, who organizes the talks was charismatic and gracious. The crowd was a eco-savvy group, who understood exactly what it meant to get a city to do the right thing, or try to stop a city from doing the wrong thing! They laughed in the right places, gasped at the same things and thanked us profusely after it was over. We heard at least four rumors of beaver colony locations in the area and beyond, and Cheryl is ready for her fieldtrip to find beaver neighbors. Several pairs of inspired folk came up at the end, ready to advocate for beavers in the creek behind their house if any showed up, and challenged to think in new ways. Sonoma, as always, was a fairytale of a destination with cobbled alleys off free-parking streets and an excellent dinner for the crew at Taste of Himilaya before dashing off to the talk.
The title of this post comes from the fact that I am very pleased that I have two weeks and four days before my next talk in Yosemite. It was three weeks ago that I was presenting in Oregon and slightly less time before the State Parks Conference. It’s the four days I’m looking forward too, since it will take two weeks to figure out how to squish a talk I stretched from 40 t0 75 minutes, back into 35 minutes again while still saying what I want the park rangers to know. The four days are mine to squander and I plan on staring blankly at things for a good long while.
In the meantime, you should watch this PBS video of beaver reintroduction to improve arid habitat for fish runs. It features Michael Pollock who has confirmed he will be joining us in Yosemite. It’s a great look at the way beavers affect fish populations and I’ll try figure out how to keep it in the margins of this site for good.
Ready or not! Here we come! A cast of Worth A Dam characters journeys to Sonoma tonight to talk about beavers in Martinez, flow devices, protecting grapevines and letting beavers make homes for juvenile salmonid. The weather is not being polite and will likely rain very soon, keeping many potential attendees by their cozy firesides. Ahh well, it can’t be helped. We’ll have fun talking to each other anyway! And remember that ecology center in Ohio that advertised a beaver talk with a trapper? I am confident that this will be WAY better than that! (Sorry Josh!)
In the mean time, if you’re looking for a new way to see the world, may I suggest the winners of the beautiful Science Competition presented by the BBC. These fantastic microscopic images offer a breath-taking reminder that nature is awesome to behold at every scale. Click on the photo to go to the audio slideshow of the winners.
To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour(from Auguries of Innocence by William Blake)
Once upon a time, not long ago, there were some beavers swimming and chewing happily in the Owens Valley River in southern california. Hardly anyone noticed that their dams created habitat for numerous waterfowl – the felled trees made homes for obligate nesters, and chewing produced coppicing with dense bushy regrowth that migratory and song birds preferred. One tireless audubon advocate noticed that their ponds flooded some cottonwoods which were the homes of these remarkable birds.
It is important that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the California Department of Fish and Game address this critical issue sooner and not later. Audubon members are urged to contact the Inyo County Board of Supervisors, the California Department of Fish and Game in Bishop and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in Bishop to urge them to begin controlling beaver numbers along the lower Owens River in the Lone Pine area (and elsewhere in the southern valley?). The threat to the Great Blue Herons due to girdling or drowning of nesting trees is real and will worsen.
It seems Michael Prather’s warning was the ‘shot heard round LA’ – or at least provided an excellent excuse for the reflexive decision to kill beavers. Los Angeles Water & Power was only too happy to dress up their beaver killin’ in a feathered Audubon suit, and decide without debate that the beavers in an entire range should be killed to protect the birds. Never mind that this was all done 10 years ago with disastrous and well documented results.
‘‘Beavers Will Die So Birds Can Survive.’’ This headline ran in the local Riverside, California, newspaper in January 1999 (Farwell 1999a). It marked the beginning of an effort by the management of the Southwestern Riverside County Multi-Species Reserve to eliminate beavers with the purpose of protecting songbird habitat.
concluding
Observations at Lake Skinner produced insufficient data to demonstrate that beavers harmed habitat for either least Bell’s vireo or southwestern willow flycatcher. In general, vegetation ‘‘managed’’ by beavers favors songbirds, both by providing nesting opportunities and boosting insect populations as a food base, some examples of which are summarized by Mu ller-Schwarze and Sun (2003).
Alright, maybe beavers are good for little tiny birds, but Mr. Prather was worried about majestic blue herons. What about them? Funny thing, here’s an interesting paper put forward by Fish & Game in New Hampshire. Click on the link to read the highlighted sections which demonstrate the herons often nest in flooded dead trees of beaver ponds, and are in fact dependent on them.
Well, maybe those New England herons are different? How do we know that beavers are good for this specific habitat in this specific waterway? It’s not like there’s an technical study done on this exact location to assess the impact of beavers in Owens valley.
Oh.
Beaver ponds generally provide unique and valuable habitat for many species of wildlife. Increased structural complexity and high interspersion of unique plant communities and habitat features are important factors influencing wildlife species presence and abundance. High breeding bird density, bird species richness and diversity, and total breeding bird biomass are typically associated with beaver ponds.
Well sure, there may be some incidental good that beavers do for an area, but its the conclusion of the report that really matters. I’m sure that the department of water and power wouldn’t have made the decision to kill all the beavers if the report they commissioned had recommended something else.
Although beaver activity has resulted in the removal of much willow and other shrub and woody vegetation and the dams create favorable tule conditions and reduce fish spawning habitat, they also provide important fish rearing habitat, mesic meadows, and promote the growth of other riparian species. It is most likely that the physical removal of beaver dams will result in more adverse environmental impacts than environmental benefits.
It is our conclusion that beaver dams should be left as they are, allow the natural forces associated with future out-of-channel and base flows to remove or incorporate them into the riverine ecosystem, but focus on controlling the number of beaver by reach through trapping as the management strategy.
Wow.
So a commissioned report advised keeping a healthy population of beavers, beaver dams have been proven to benefit birds including the great blue heron, and Mr. Prather is still able to say “eek beaver!” and provide environmental cover for a species genocide campaign that not a single reporter can be bothered to question.
Are we surprised?
(Many thanks to RL for finding the articles that made ashes of the Owens valley beaver killing argument.)
The forward-thinking province of Saskatchewan, (which narrowly rejected a plan to offer ‘beaver bounties for citizens who bravely kill their own beavers), just announced it will come up with half a million dollars to kill beavers at the municipal level. The minister of hyperbole has granted license to claim the beaver population has EXPLODED in recent years and there is certainly nothing else they could do to prevent rodents from blocking culverts and building dams. Never mind those pesky environmentalists who claim that beavers raise the water table and slow water movements by creating ponds. No one’s trapping anymore because the value of fur has declined in recent years and all these beavers won’t kill themselves!
Ready or not! Here we come! A cast of Worth A Dam characters journeys 
Great Blue Heron (and beaver dependence) Kelly JR New Hampshire Fish and Game
