Category: City Reports

Beaver Friends & Foe

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 4, 2014

brockkate — Brock Dolman & Kate Lundquist

KRCB is the local public radio station in Sonoma and yesterday it featured beaver friends Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. Click and listen to three and a half minutes of beaver praises. The photo is from our fifth beaver festival in 2012. (You can tell by Bob Rust’s giant inflatable beaver in the background!)

I love when beaver benefits are extolled on the air waves! Great work team beaver! (Although I’m not totally sure the west coast is without its own dramatic examples of cities living with beaver. Ahem.)

Yesterday saw some heavy, heavy rains in Martinez. So heavy that we were worried that filter had been knocked off the flow device again. Jean saw a confused beaver swimming at high tide during the day, probably when his bank hole was filled with water. But by afternoon the level was back down and we could see that the filter had not moved, and there was a huge snag on one of the stabilizing posts holding the pipe that we thought was the filter. The dam had been breached by the heavy flow. And more rain came later at night. In weather like this we’ve seen the beavers sit tight and wait for the excitement to be over before they begin repairs. Stay tuned.

As if to compensate for our worry yesterday, there was this headline from Ohio which provided us with the warm feeling one needs in terrible weather. Maybe it will warm you too. And it might be time for a German lesson.

Worker injured removing beaver dams near Hinckley

An 84-year-old man struck in the head with a log while blowing up beaver dams Tuesday remained in serious condition Wednesday at a Rockford hospital, DeKalb County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Gary Dumdie said.

Ivan Dremann of Ohio, Illinois, was using explosives to remove beaver dams from Little Rock Creek for a farmer on Lee Road west of Rimsnider Road northwest of Hinckley about 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a DeKalb County Sheriff’s news release.

Ouch. This is a very good time to observe that I don’t believe a person of any age was ever injured installing a flow device.

scha·den·freu·de

German, from Schaden damage + Freude joy

“a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people”

BWW to the rescue!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 3, 2014

Town, residents to work on solution to beaver dams

Owen and Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, an educational

nonprofit with 30 years of experience in providing solutions for beaver problems, visited Carlson Road on Nov. 13

and said in a report to the town council the water level at the culvert outlet across from the Prestigiacomo pond was three feet below the road surface.

“A downstream dam that rises only a few inches above the water level is unlikely to cause a problem because of the almost three feet of clearance to the road surface,” said Owen Brown, adding maintaining secondary dams is not a high priority for beavers. “But they will maintain their primary dam as if their lives depend on it, because they do. If the water in that pond is drained, the beavers will lose access to their winter food cache.”

Sharon Brown added it’s not unusual for beavers to reduce the amount of road flooding.

“Having dams upstream — such as the one across the road from Gordon Robotham’s home on Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo’s land — slows and stabilizes the water flow because beavers build leaky dams,” she said. “The water isn’t completely trapped.”

The Browns added during a deluge this past spring, water just downstream of Carlson Road rose high enough to threaten the road. Since the dam just downstream on Robothom’s side of the road was likely at least two feet under during the event, they said in their report to the town it was their opinion the dam did not cause the flooding.

It was a few weeks ago I saw a news item about the beaver dams in Dolgeville NY causing concern among the city council. I recognized the location and thought since it was in Sharon and Owen’s city they’d want to know. Obviously they’ve been hard at work since then, with some pretty great results. Looks like they even got locals to stand up for the beavers as well.

DOLGEVILLE — Leave the beaver dams along Carlson Road alone.

That’s the message residents who live along the road in the town of Manheim have for the town council and anyone else who wants to have the dams removed.

“There’s been no flooding since the beavers came in years ago,” said Gordon Robotham. “If there’s a problem with the beavers, it should have come up before now.”

Like Robotham, Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo have a beaver pond on their property. They installed a leveler system with a 12-inch diameter pipe in the dam last year to manage the water level, and said they have not experienced any problems since.

“There’s also gates or fencing that can be used to protect the culverts. The beavers don’t have to be killed to address the town’s concerns,” said Barry Prestigiacomo.

Manheim Town Supervisor John Haughton said the town only recently received a legal opinion from attorney Kenneth Ayers that any damage to the road as a result of flooding caused by the beaver dams would be the town’s responsibility to repair.

Ahh, memories! It was a letter from the lawyer of the 500 block on Main Street that started the excitement in Martinez all those years ago. (It’s always a lawyer!) Well it looks like Owen and Sharon knew what to do to fix things. I’m not worried about these beavers at all anymore. Too bad we don’t have little beaver M.A.S.H. units all over the country that can swoop in and solve problems at a moments notice.. We need at least one in every state, maybe as many as the state has electoral votes.

Someday!

Beaver Strategist

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 1, 2014

Yesterday an article from Georgia caught my attention. You may remember that Georgia is the state where the original Clemson Pond Leveler was invented, and the state where I first read about beaver tail bounties. Let’s say that in addition to having alligators and very nice peaches, it has a fairly schizophrenogenic stance on beavers in general. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see this.

Carole Currie: Talking ’bout the wildlife, again

Almost everyone around us at the Georgia farm has a wildlife story, and when there’s a gathering, there’s a lot of storytelling. There are skunks under houses (we’ve had that), deer eating everything (we’ve had that in spades), coyote sounds in the night and bobcat sightings.

Our story continues to be about the critters that keep stopping up the outflow drain at our pond, threatening to cause it to flood over the dam. Once we found the lodge, we knew it was beavers stopping up the drain. We are threatened by the beavers because of the damage they can do by flooding the pond and ruining the dam and to the surrounding trees. But the more we learn about the beavers, the more we have to admire them.

A recent “Nature” program on public television shed a lot of light on these overgrown members of the rodent family. The sound of running water to a beaver is like a call to work. They want to stop it, and they do so by packing the drain with mud. Somewhat blind and slow on land, they are fast in the water.

They are sociable, family-oriented critters who earn their reputation as being “busy as beavers.” They just don’t give up. Walt unstops the pond, and the next morning it is stopped up again. With their long orange teeth, they can fell a large tree overnight to pile onto their dam.

Once beavers were valued for their furs to make hats. When the hats went out of style and beavers overpopulated, many were eradicated but they are coming back. There are either eco heroes now because of their ability to create wetlands for wildlife and cattle or pests who want to dam up our pond.

It makes for a good critter story but one without a good ending for us or the beavers.

This made me think Carole needed a letter. So I wrote her about protecting the overflow on her pond and the benefits beavers could bring if she let them stay. I told her how it would be saving money because if she trapped them out more would just come next year. I told what we had done in Martinez (did you know there’s a Martinez in Georgia? My niece used to live there. They pronounce it mar-tin- EZ.) I was careful not to sound too ‘California’ in my email and said if she needed regional resources she should talk to the folks at the Blue Heron Preserve in Atlanta or Stephanie Boyle in West Virginia.

And whadaya know, she promptly wrote back!

Heidi, thanks so much for your thoughtful and informative e-mail. It casts things in a whole new light.

Carole

Which was nice. And maybe because I finished watching West Wing on Netflix last night, made me realize something: I’m kinda political strategist for beavers. A national beaver strategist? An North American beaver strategist? More like a Global beaver strategist! (GBS) and at the moment, weirdly enough, I’m the only one. Which is pretty amazing if you think about it in this day and age to be the only one of anything is fairly surprising. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead, take your wildest and most creative thought and google it. A million people around the world have already thought it and written it down.)

So it means something to be the only GBS. But it won’t last forever. I may be the only one now, but the only one so far. There are so many more regional beaver strategists than their were eight years ago when we started this campaign, that I’m sure many more GBS will come soon. Which is wonderful in a way I can barely describe.

I can’t wait to be redundant.

Hurry! Only 12 days left to call WS liars!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental November 19, 2014

Well, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of other opportunities, but this is an important one. Before we get down to work and roll up our sleeves, let’s have dessert first.

Searching for beavers on the Quabbin Reservoir’s restricted Prescott Peninsula

About 20 DCR biologists and volunteers stomped to shake off the cold Sunday morning, standing in a ring outside a small shack on the Prescott Peninsula as Clark set the plan for the annual beaver survey. Teams would split off, tramp through the woods to follow their respective streams, take down data on any active beaver lodges, then return to the shack for lunch.

Beavers were non-existent in Massachusetts for more than a century due to hunting and trapping, plus elimination of habitat. After the valley was flooded in the late 1930s, the beavers returned.

Clark said that after the beavers came to the reservoir, the population followed a pattern typical of reintroduction — explosive growth, followed by a crash as the habitat is oversaturated, then a steady leveling off.

No way, are you suggesting that the population actually regulated itself? Without trapping? Even when the Massachusetts voters imposed new restrictions on trapping in 96 and the population was supposed to explode? This is pretty outlandish stuff. Just how long have you been collecting this spurious data?

The first Prescott survey was held in 1952. The survey has been annual since the early 1970s, and some of Sunday’s searchers have returned every year for 30-40 years.

Holy Guacamole Batman. You mean they have 62 years of data on beaver population? And the effect of conibear restriction is somewhere in the middle? You know a statistician worth his pocket calculator could easily whip those numbers into a regression analysis that disproves the accepted lie about beaver population exploding after the new rules were applied? You do know that, right?

Well, maybe the reporter got that wrong. He seemed really distracted by the meat balls. He does say that people aren’t normally allowed in the area because it’s in the watershed. Ahem. (News flash:Every place on this planet is part of a watershed. Just so you know.)

_________________________________________________________

Everyone ready? It’s November 18th so that means you still have 12 days left to tell Wildlife Services that their rodent management plan is ridiculous, oblivious of the environment or science, and barbaric in the extreme. But those are just my words. You’ll find your own. Here’s Mike Settel from Idaho talking about what’s needed.

In Wildlife Service’s newest justification for ridding us of beaver you can find that bit of humor and others in a recent request for public comment on Wildlife Service’s “Aquatic Rodent” EA for North Carolina.

Don’t attempt to e-mail your comments because, according to their deputy director for environmental compliance Alton Dunaway, receiving comments only by FAX and snail mail will “modernize” their public involvement process. I recommend Faxing comments to (919) 782-4159…However, an e-mail you may find useful is for that of the author, Barbara Schellinger.

Even though it is a North Carolina document, the rationale proposed sets a precedent for mis-information and obfuscation regarding wildlife management. Please FAX your comments and request that WS includes non-lethal mitigation as beaver solutions, provide current data showing beaver harm salmonids, and prove that beaver dams increase sediment pollution (there are other spurious claims that are suspect or dated, but you should read those for yourselves). Regards, Mike

Thanks Mike for putting us on the right track. Remember, what they get away with in North Carolina will become precedent everywhere. I will share just a little bit of their ignorance, but you should really go read the report for yourself here:

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources guidelines for management of trout stream habitat stated that beaver dams are a major source of damage to trout streams (White and Brynildson 1967, Churchill 1980). Studies that are more recent have documented improvements to trout habitat upon removal of beaver dams. Avery (1992) found that wild brook trout populations improved significantly following the removal of beaver dams from tributaries of some streams. Species abundance, species distribution, and total biomass of non-salmonids also increased following the removal of beaver dams (Avery 1992).

Beaver dams may adversely affect stream ecosystems by increasing sedimentation in streams; thereby, affecting wildlife that depend on clear water such as certain species of fish and mussels. Stagnant water impounded by beaver dams can increase the temperature of water impounded upstream of the dam, which can negatively affect aquatic organisms. Beaver dams can also act as barriers that inhibit movement of aquatic organisms and prevent the migration of fish to spawning areas.

Wow. Give it up for the USDA and author Barbara Schelllinger who was willing to dig back through 47 years of research to find the completely bogus paper she just knew to be true! This woman is no slacker when it comes to bravely lying about beavers. Good lord, the letter almost writes itself. Although I personally feel that Issue 7 deserves the lion’s share of our attention.

Therefore, the breaching or removal of a beaver dam could result in the degrading or removal of a wetland, if wetland characteristics exist at a location where a beaver dam occurs. The preexisting habitat (prior to the building of the dam) and the altered habitat (areas flooded by impounded water) have different ecological values to the fish and wildlife native to the area. Some species may benefit by the addition of a beaver dam that creates a wetland, while the presence of some species of wildlife may decline. For example, darters listed as federally endangered require fast moving waters over gravel or cobble beds, which beaver dams can eliminate; thus, reducing the availability of habitat. In areas where bottomland forests were flooded by beaver dams, a change in species composition could occur over time as trees die. Flooding often kills hardwood trees, especially when flooding persists for extended periods, as soils become saturated. Conversely, beaver dams could be beneficial to some wildlife, such as river otter, neotropical migratory birds, and waterfowl that require aquatic habitats.

DingDingDing! I found the opening! (Well, one of many actually.) See in their effort to say “it’s a wash, really” beaver dams HELP some species sure, but they HARM others. So getting rid of them is a zero sum game with totally justifiable consequences. Just take the darter for instance!

Darter!

Maybe we’re the only ones that remember there’s this famous case from Alabama in 2008 where the city of Birmingham was sued by The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (among others) for upwards of a million dollars over removing this beaver dam that was protecting thousands of the rare endangered watercress darters. In the end the case cost the city some 4,000,000 dollars and dragged out in court over 4 years. Am I ringing any bells, does this sound vaguely familiar?

The city “knew or should have known that removing a beaver dam and surrounding natural structures would potentially disrupt the water level of the Basin and its inhabitants,” the agency claims.

Dam [sic], this is gonna be fun. If you want to share your letters, send them to me and I’ll make sure they’re visible. I’m sure WS is hoping they can make it all the way to November 30th without hearing from you. Let’s disappoint them, shall we?

Last night, on the footbridge, I loved you best of all!

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, kits, Who's saving beavers now? November 16, 2014

I love her, in the springtime

And I love her in the fall,

But last night, on the back porch

I loved her best of all!

These shocking lyrics reflecting the moral depravity of our youth were published in 1923, some 89 years ago, before video games and ‘R’ movies. Maybe the fact that our house had already been around for a quarter of a century before the song was recorded had something to do with why, when I went to see the beavers last night, this was the soundtrack I heard in my head.

You see, our kit, (the 2014) model, has been living at Ward Street since August. And I’ve been getting more and more worried about his truant little runaway self. I talked with our experts, who had not seen it before but told me not to worry, advice impossible to follow. Beavers are very social animals, and they need face time with their parents learning beaver things for upwards of 24 months before they’re ready to hitch off on their own.

So guess what I saw from the footbridge last night, with Lory and Jon?

Our twentieth kit, climbing on mom’s tail, crunching on snacks, with 2 or three other beavers! (Maybe even dad?) Swimming, chewing, whining and acting like his little kitself again! I can’t tell you how much lighter our three moods were as we walked eventually back to our cars. The beaver family is together and everything’s right with the world.

Now that we’re all in good moods, I will show you this treat that I stumbled upon yesterday. Look who has a new website! Now there are three great beaver resources to share with folks who want new ways to solve problems!

We are a company dedicated to protecting our land and infrastructure, as well as allowing for creative remedies that improve habitats and end wasteful killing and spending. Our technology and practices are state-of-the-art, and have been employed domestically as well as internationally to mitigate the growing problems presented by the beaver population.

Finally! Skip Lisle’s website has hit the internet(s) running! Complete with great information and awesome photos showing off his skill. Go explore the sight, its lots of fun. I couldn’t be happier, although it was a little surprising to find this:

Skip Lisle offers that rare combination of “can-do” competence, creativity, and courtesy. He ably tamed our beavers with promptness and professionalism. Our California town, Martinez, still fondly remembers the man from Vermont, and his solution to save our Downtown!

Mark Ross

Vice Mayor

Martinez, California, USA

A testimonial from Mark Ross and nothing whatsoever from Worth A Dam? I suppose a vice mayor is slightly better advertising than a child psychologist, but it’s silly to overlook the beavers’ de facto press secretary. Well, the cat’s outta the bag now, I made sure everyone saw this yesterday, its on our beaver links, and in the future I will make sure that everyone knows your skills have a great website to promote them!

Too much good news?Guess what arrived in the mail yesterday. Approval from the Martinez Community Foundation for our grant application for the festival VIII art project! They paid 100% of the amount requested. No fooling, money from Martinez, for the beaver festival. I’m still pinching myself.

Thank you Martinez Community Foundation for helping us teach children about ecosystems at the beaver festival! And thank you artist FRO Butler who will be doing the lion’s share of the work, prepping and painting the canvas, purchasing the materials, and supervising the eager artists. I can’t wait till the whole thing comes together and we can use it at our displays in the future!