City Reports – Page 135

Whacha Doing Wednesday Night?

heidi08 City Reports, In the News, Uncategorized July 15, 2008

The Alhambra Creek scraping/dredging project is on the the Agenda for the City Council Meeting, so it would be good to have warm beaver-supporting bodies on hand. The project is slated for the area next to the secondary dam, and there has been some concern that it might lead to dam removal, water loss and food reduction for our beavers. Councilman Mark Ross and new city Manager Philip Vince say that the work can be done without damaging the structure and preserving a portion of the tulles for the beavers to feed. They need us on hand to remind them all why it SHOULD be done.

The beavers use the secondary dam as a terrace feeding area. They’re enjoying tulle, fennel and willow from the area. This is giving a chance for our upstream trees to recover and increasing their visibility as they go beyond the three bridge viewing area. There has been some speculation as to whether they’re building a third dam farther downstream, but this appears to be an ungrounded, floating raft of debris, and not a dam. Beavers build dams from the bottom up, and not the top down.

Come to the meeting and support this important section of our beavers’ habitat. The dredging project has been on the planning calendar for a long time and is good for the overall health of our creek. There is no reason we can’t take care of our creek AND our beavers.

The punchline? Guess what’s really good at stopping silt from going downstream and clogging up marinas in the first place? Yup. Beaver Dams.

This Just In…

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports July 6, 2008

Tonight I had a call from the police station saying that they had a report of a dead adult beaver out by the pier. They had called Bob Cellini at city staff and he had told them to call me (thanks, Bob). The beaver was apparently in the water, recently enough dead to be still dropping blood when animal control picked him up, but our homeless said they had seen him there since the fourth. Linda and Moses were quickly on the scene, even before I received a similar call from Luigi saying that the woman who had reported the beaver to the police was in his store. We know the dead beaver can’t be mom because its tail was unscarrred.

So far tonight we have seen four new kits, both adults and for sure one yearling. Last night we saw the smaller yearling chewing on blackberries again, so that’s all our cast of characters. It appears unlikely that this beaver was ours, since it was so far upstream. Stay tuned for updates, but it looks like a grim reminder that Beavers are everywhere and if we relocate ours, new ones will come to fill their place.

Thanks officer and Bob and Luigi for making sure the information came my way.

Meet the Beaver-Defenders of the North

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports, In the News June 24, 2008

Fur-Bearer Defenders is a non-profit society dedicated to the prevention of cruel trapping. They are located in Vancouver, Canada, and were involved in the Surrey Beaver situation. They have been around for several decades, worked on a couple continents and know all the excuses humans give for harming wildlife. We swaped stories and invited the program coordinator, Fannya Eden, to guest blog.

From Fur-Bearer Defenders: There are many alternatives, such as pond leveler and other various types of water-flow devices that would allow us to live in harmony with our wildlife beavers. Among these alternatives, relocation is the last resort and should be done with the up most care. Trapping is cruel, and it is NOT a solution. Killing and removing the beavers from what is naturally their habitat will simply vacate the area for other beavers to move in. This only further perpetuates the cycle of cruelty and killing.

From The Province newspaper, June 7th, 2008:

… The killing hasn’t solved the flood-risk problem, a wildlife advocacy group said. “If one beaver is killed and removed, another beaver will actually move in,” said Fannya Eden, a project co-ordinator for the Fur-Bearer Defenders office in Vancouver. “That will just start the cycle of killing and cruelty.” “When they have family, what do you do? Trap the whole family? Do you take the parents and let the babies die?” Eden said there are various structures made of fencing, posts and tubes that can eliminate flood risk while allowing beavers to remain in their habitat.“It takes a bit of tweaking and care and maintenance to have the structures work,” Eden said. “There are ways we can coexist with beavers. It’s nice to have wildlife in our area and be able to observe them and take joy in watching them.” And beavers, she said, produce ecological benefits.

“Beavers are very important natural engineers,” she said. “They preserve the wetlands.”

We couldn’t agree more, Fannya! Thanks for all you do. It sounds there’s a little more work ahead in Surrey, where they’re now suggesting residents can “adopt” troublesome beavers. This is a cozier idea but still ignores the fact that if the habitat supports beavers, more will come. Let us know if there is anything Worth A Dam can do to help out!

Father’s Day for Beavers

heidi08 Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports June 15, 2008

Happy Father’s Day to all the brave Dads who brought their children over to see our display and took time out of their day to talk about the beavers. Have you ever stopped to consider what great role models beaver fathers are? They fully participate in raising the kids, work close to home, provide for for their family, are gentle, clean and entirely monogamous. I am pretty sure that if beavers had day-time talk shows there would be nothing to discuss.

Descriptions of our newest threesome were particularly popular at today’s Farmer’s Market, as were details of when was the best time was to see them. There were several who had seen more of them on the news than in the water, and I passed along beaver tips for best viewing. We collected some remarkable stories, 53.00 in donations, made new friends and spread the beaver gospel. A few visiting bay area instructors mentioned updating students on the beavers, and one aunt with a nephew in Marin revealed that her son’s elementary school teacher had followed the story with her students and helped them write the city council. There was even one gruff beaver foe who talked with me about his concerns for costs and flooding and left with a much more positive outlook and a thankyou. All in all a successful day in the field.

Oh, and about today’s letter in the Gazette protesting that I had “twisted” the petition writer’s words; allow me to explain that my intent was to “untwist them”. Or rather to “untwist” the numbers the words were referring to. I am surely not the only one who knows those costs were exaggerated to make a particularly persuasive point. (I dare say that the City used the same guestimator to assess the costs of the beavers that they cleverly employed to measure the height of the dam: and with similar accuracy.) The city twisted the numbers to argue that Martinez couldn’t afford to keep the beavers, and some very cooperative people were generous enough to believe them and sign the petition.

They twisted the record: I was merely setting it straight.

The Same Old Story

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 14, 2008

The Canadian press is all a buzz with talk about the town of Surrey and its extermination of 40 beavers last year. They plan to take 40 more this year. Apparently there are complaints about them blocking streams, causing flooding and taking trees. Their city staff has said that there are no alternatives to killing the animals and originally reported they were being live trapped and euthanized. They later admitted they were being killed with conibear traps, which they insist cause no pain and kill the animal instantly.

Wrong three times out of three.

Information on alternative beaver management is readily accessible. Cities like to say they have no choice but extermination. Remember in November when our city manager reported that there was no other way to control flooding? He did this even though I was sitting in the audience holding his return email from August thanking me for describing flow devices and saying he would discuss it with staff.

The second lie? “We’re live trapping the beavers then euthanizing them.” What? Who even thought of that ridiculous lie? You, Surrey, desprately need a better spin machine. I don’t know which animal activists you figure that idiotic story would pacify, but it’s silly, wasteful and pointless. No one should have believed that story, ever.

The third lie: Conibear traps are painless. This is the most grim. I suppose if a beaver is lucky enough to stick his head all the way through and position it correctly they probably are painless. That rarely happens. Instead what happens is that the animal gets a foot or a tail stuck in the thing, can’t get free and just slowly drowns. There was a youtube video of this filmed underwater by an activist. It was horrible.

Surrey officials note (without any insight at all) that the beaver population seems to be increasing inspite of their best killing efforts. Hmm. Could it possibly be that mass killing causes a rebound effect when there is suddenly abundant food and broad territory for remaining animals? I won’t even mention the gentleman’s name from the “Environmental Consulting Firm” hired to do the trapping, but go look it up: the similarities are eerie.

So lets see, we have flooding fears, alarm bells and the expressed inability to do anything else. If my predictions are correct the next article should mention flow devices, say they’ve tried them but they didn’t work, and name a new concern: something eco-friendly sounding. Maybe salmon.

Carrie Baron, Surrey’s manager of drainage and environment, said she’ll be speaking with West Vancouver and King County about bringing a similar system here. Her initial concerns with the system were how salmon would pass through the fencing. But fisheries biologist John Werring, of the David Suzuki Foundation, told The Leader earlier this week that even beaver dams don’t serve as an impediment for spawning salmon.

Right on cue! You do remember the famed “salmon monologue” from the November 7th meeting, don’t you? Salmon provide the uneducated a useful reason to complain about dams. Turns out beavers help salmon as we and others have written about again and again. Dams are essential in making habitat for little salmon. Bring on the next complaint.

Mayor Diane Watts says she wants the killing stopped, and has approached the B.C. Ministry of the Environment regarding relocation, which they do not allow.

However a ministry official told The Leader this week relocation is no longer a preferred option by the province. “Basically it’s very stressful for the creature, and almost all the habitat around the province is already (populated by beavers),” she said. “And if you take one beaver and put it into other beaver territory, you’re just creating beaver competition, and stressing it more.” She added the animals cause “millions and millions of dollars” damage per year from the dams they build.

Are you having complete Deja Vu yet? Relocation not allowed. “Millions and Millions of dollars damage.” Those darned beavers. Wickedly outsmarting hard-working city staff and foiling their every move. Thank goodness Surrey doesn’t have some smart-ass animal lover making videos and starting a non-profit.

Beaver-weary community of Surrey: we can help. Download the subcommittee report and the powerpoint presentation. Read the articles on creative solutions. Write us with any questions you have and we’ll hook you up with the top beaver minds on the continent. You are not alone, and you can face these issues with creativity and compassion.

Any city SMARTER than a beaver, can manage a beaver.