Category: City Reports

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.

Oshawa Shines

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 9, 2010

So the citizens of Oshawa marched into the council meeting last night with signs and banners and stuffed beavers and demanded to keep their aquatic rodents. The experts did what experts do and defended their earlier position and said things like “beaver deceivers don’t work” and that doing nothing was not an option and that lives and property could be lost. (Martinez residents can well imagine because we were there, oh lo those many years ago, and we know EXACTLY how everyone pontificated.) But in the end the council did the right thing. By a bat-squeak of a majority they voted 5-4 to not kill the animals and look for other solutions. Hooray for our team! In the head rush of victory last night Marissa posted about wanting to do a beaver festival, so I would say the beavers of Oshawa have done their “community changing” work handily.

Speaking of our own community, Worth A Dam approached the city council regarding a memorial for mom beaver. Artist Paul Craig did some lovely metal silhouettes of mom and three kits (based on cheryl’s photos and adapted by our graphic artist volunteer, libby) which we would like to hang in memoriam. We had talked about three possible locations because we were worried they might not go for the sheetpile idea. Surprisingly, last night every member of the council said they thought the sheetpile was a lovely idea. They again thanked Worth A Dam for the work. There was smiling as the metal beavers were displayed for view and I was directed to talk to staff about getting them hung.

Go figure!

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, the vet from Lindsay Wildlife came down to meet the beavers last night and got the full show. One little fellow was on the “wrong side” of the dam at 7:30 and wasn’t seen going over during the past hour but might have sneaked by when we were talking to the council. He seemed to be trying to get back over and was blocked by all these sticks and obstacles. We were worried he had forgotten where the gap was, and just about ready to sneak over and line the path with apple peels when he decided to stop fooling around and headed straight for the gap. He obviously knew where it was the whole time, he was just trying to “discover” a new way.

Whew!

So he trotted gamely over and swam about, grabbing some branches. 45 minutes later a second kkit came over from the wrong side!!! Clearly these are BEAVERS WITHOUT BORDERS any more. They go where they please, and we had better go whereever they please too if we’re going to see them!

More Lies From Oshawa

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

From the city who said the beavers were being relocated when they were actually being killed, we learn the the “Stay” reported during the weekend didn’t mean the beavers would stay alive. The trapper never removed the beaver traps. So while residents protested and council members stood with them shouting and waving signs one beaver was already killed. Was it mom? Was a new kit? Was it the breeding male? The death happened sometime last week before the mayor talked to the press, but the trapper, couldn’t get out until later in the week.

(He has such a busy schedule. All these beavers won’t kill themselves, you know.)

Last night I read the city flood report and the risk assessment from the experts. Honestly it gave me complete PTSD. I was so upset with the flashbacks of PWA that I could hardly think straight. I sent it to Skip and Mike and Sharon to see if they might be able to help. The last chance meeting will be wednesday night, but unless they get a busload of 2nd graders and a roomful of parents I honestly think their odds are slim. I was hopeful when I read about 50 people at the protest including two council members, but knowing that one beaver was already dead when that happened doesn’t bode well for the others. This from a city that has been willing to have its lies reported internationally TWICE is a poor prediction of success. There are things the protest needs besides signs. Where are the pictures of the beavers? Where’s a discussion of the new babies? Where’s the emphasis on the close knit family? Where’s the count of remaining beavers?

Write the mayor and council. Join the facebook group. Any city that lies this blatantly about beavers is going to lie about zoning laws, about taxes, about police protection. Oshawa residents pay attention! Because your mayors beaver deceit and willingness to completely ignore the will of the people is this…

Slightly better than lying…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 10, 2010

Do you remember the story last November about the city of Oshawa that said it was going to ‘relocate’ some beavers and the residents found out it was actually killing them? Six Furry Lies (To be fair, I guess death’s a kind of relocation…”the undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns…“) But it was a pretty bad lie, even as cities go, and there was a lot of red-faced finger-pointing from those who had made it, saying they hadn’t known the trapper was going to kill them.

(I am reminded of the old joke about the man who finds a tiger in his garden and is told by a neighbor to take it to the zoo. The next day the neighbor sees the same tiger in the yard and asks what happened. The man replies, ‘Of course I took it to the zoo like you suggested! We had such a great time that tomorrow I’m taking it to the aquarium!” Ba-dum-dum)

Back to our less charming story. At the time resident Joyce Schnegg had just found out that they hadn’t killed ‘all’ the beavers and there were still four left. (Because even their cruelty is incompetent.) The mayor promised to bring in an expert to find solutions to the problem. The reporter of the story wrote me back and visited the website. It looked like there was going to be a kind of progress. “The arc of environmentalism is long but it bends towards beavers.“

Turns out the ‘expert’ the city brought in was this company, Beacon Environmental, a regular hire of the city of Oshawa and especially dedicated to assessing things like bird hazards at airports. They cashed their check from the taxpayers of Oshawa and said there were three basic options: install a beaver baffler (cutting-edge beaver management when Reagan was president), move the beavers or kill them.

In a June 22 memo to the City, Beacon Environmental said there are three options for beaver management: using a “beaver baffle” — a device that regulates water levels in the pond while allowing beavers to remain — removing the beaver dam, or leaving the status quo. In its report, engineering firm Greck and Associates recommends removing the dam, saying it could “increase peak storm flows, increase downstream flood elevations and reduce storage and discharge capacities.”

A subsequent City report makes no mention of the beaver baffle, instead laying out three possibilities for removing the dam: live trapping and releasing the beavers, lethal trapping or repeatedly breaking apart the dam until the beavers get frustrated and leave. Beacon Environmental ecologist Brian Henshaw says lethal trapping is the most humane route if the City is set on removal.

“We don’t make that recommendation lightly,” he said. “But it’s not fair to move an animal to a place it doesn’t know, where it can’t set up a lodge and get a food store in place before November. That could result in death by starvation.”

Three choices. Guess which one the city picked?

So about 50 residents gathered on the corner to protest the decision to kill the beavers, including 2 council members. One advocated the use of a beaver deceiver (which the paper reported tricked the beavers into thinking the water flowed the opposite direction.) (!) and both shuddered at the traps brought by a resident from the dam to show how they worked. 50 people is a pretty nice number for a beaver protest. Check out their facebook page.

The two protesting council members were able to get actions slowed enough to manage a temporary ‘stay’ on the execution. There will be a ‘last chance ever -and I mean it this time’ meeting next week to discuss options. Clearly the mayor had 8 months to do something productive and used it to apply taxpayer money to find a firm that would say exactly what he wanted to hear and take the blame. (See “Cal Engineering report on the wall behind the beaver lodge for an example) I’m sure Martinez understands that civic decision well enough. Apparently, it’s just a language barrier. When Oshawa said last year that ‘the beavers were going to be relocated’ they didn’t mean they going to be alive when they were relocated, and when the mayor told the press they were looking for solutions they didn’t mean they actually wanted to solve the problem.

Drop a note to the Mayor and the Council so they know that there are options and lots of reasons to use them.

Groundhog Day for Beavers

heidi08 City Reports July 9, 2010

Ahhh the endless loop. The möbius strip of reasons for getting rid of beavers. Not nearly as much fun as this:

Last week the press reported that the beavers in Sammamish State Park in Washington had to go. The story was that they had burrowed under the road and the asphalt was collapsing. (Asphalt is to modern society what Gold was once to the 49ers: Nothing matters more.) I followed up with a letter about the value of beavers to the watershed and the tools for effective beaver management. I also pointed out that being just outside Kings County they could open their front door and find 10 professionals easily that could tell them how to solve this problem without trapping.

This morning I read that its not the burrowing, but the hazardous hardship to salmon that warrants beaver removal.

Kerry Ritland said that’s not the worst of it. “The fish can’t possibly jump over that dam or make it through a hole. So, it’s a full fish passage barrier for Coho salmon primarily, possibly Chinook salmon,” said Ritland.

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This is a picture of a salmon jumping a beaver dam. Which they do. It was taken by Dr. Kristina M. Ramstad who gave permission for its publication on Wikipedia. Obviously, we used to have millions more salmon and at the same time millions more beavers. The two species co-evolved, which could never have happened if beaver dams were harmful to salmon. In fact, since salmon benefit enormously from beaver dams during two phases of their development, it looks like the two species are going to have to co-recover. Of course the ‘salmon argument’ doesn’t have anything to do with reality. Its a symbolic argument intended to provide environmental cover for the person who wants said beavers gone. Just use the search function on this website to see examples in Canada, Oregon, Washington and Martinez. It’s “see I care about nature” paper mache, designed to cloak the intolerance in compassion.{/column2} It’s right next to the “they’ll hurt the trees” argument, because its ostensibly protecting one living thing by removing another. Never mind that both these living things depend on beavers to build and maintain their dams.

So Kerry Ritland gets a letter. The reporter at Fox gets a letter. The reporter at Kings 5 gets a letter. But I’m not holding my breath. Issaquah just did this a month ago with some beavers that were buiding too high a dam in Laughing Jacobs Creek. Clearly strapped cities that can’t afford crossing guards or hot lunches always have enough money to pay city workers to uselessly tear down a dam and ultimately hire a trapper to kill a few beavers.

Oh, and did you notice our new updated logo in the left hand corner at the top which reflects mom’s tail? Beaver-friend Jean Matuska updated the header, which if you can’t see yet, will show just as soon as your cache clears, I promise. Thanks Jean! We are grateful for the help.