Category: City Reports

Wonderful things…

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Festival, Who's saving beavers now? June 14, 2014

Fantastic new promotion this morning for the beaver festival from our friend Sarah Koenisberg of the Beaver Believers. It will get your toe tapping and your incisors chomping at the bit for this year’s festival. Feel free to share.

Martinez Festival 2014 promo from Tensegrity Productions on Vimeo.

Another great article this morning from Cows and Fish in Canada

Beaver dams can slow the flow of water and cool it for fish to spawn. Sediment can also reduce the speed of water during a flood. | Mary MacArthur photo

Beavers can help protect waterways

Natural water management | Studies show that ponds with beaver dams had more water during periods of drought

PRIDDIS, Alta. —

Rempel helps manage the 4,800 acre Anne and Sandy Cross Conservation Area. He said beavers should be part of a holistic conservation plan on the former ranch south of Calgary.

The ecology groups Miistakis Institute, and Cows and Fish, collaborated to reintroduce beavers to the watershed in 2011.

“Wherever habitat is suitable, beavers change the watershed,” said Lorne Fitch with Cows and Fish, the Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society.

The change can be good when beaver dams and ponds increase groundwater, slow the flow of water and cool it for fish spawning, he said at a May 29 workshop in Priddis.

Sediment captured by beaver ponds broadens stream valleys with rich soil deposits over time. Up to 6,500 sq. metres or 382 tandem truckloads of sediment can be stored in each pond.

Beavers build ponds in a stair step style that can change the land gradients and reduce the speed of floods.

Good job Western Producerr! But honestly do we really require any more research to know that beaver ponds have more water in drought conditions? Honestly? Maybe we should also do some research on it being harder to see through a doorway when the door is closed? And children preferring jellybeans to green beans? And the canine inclination to rely on olfactory stimuli for information rather than social media?

Oh never mind. It’s a good article and we all start somewhere. Go read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, did you hear the great news in downtown Martinez? We were one of the 20 winners in North America of the Benjamin Moore contest to repaint downtown. Sauciey’s bakery made a cake-sized replica of main street to celebrate. Guess what they included?

Martinez one of 20 cities in North America to get Benjamin Moore free coat of paint

MARTINEZ — It really is exciting to watch the paint dry on Main Street. That was the consensus when a crowd gathered to celebrate a colorful face lift for downtown.

Martinez is one of 20 cities across North America chosen for a free, fresh coat of paint by Benjamin Moore & Co.’s Main Street Matters program.

The public, local notables, business owners and shopkeepers joined Benjamin Moore executives for a full-blown party with music, balloon bouquets, drinks and a remarkable cake.

Saucie-cake — Martinez News Gazette – cake and baking team.

See that little ally in between the buildings? It’s the best part:

“It is the pinnacle part of the celebration,” Theresa Doolittle, owner of Saucie’s Bakery & Cafe said about the eight-foot long cake replica of Main Street Martinez, garnished with edible wetlands, a beaver and trees.

How delicious! I hope you save that piece especially for the mayor!

Come to think of it – maybe it would be better if he didn’t even notice. He just might send down Dave Scola to re-frost it?

(WGN in Chicago no long has this clip in their archives- but don’t worry. Heidi always will. Do yourself a Saturday morning favor and listen again.)

Great beaver viewing last night – but no baby sightings. At one point we were closely inspected by three beavers who came to the other side of the flow device near our bank to investigate!

Full Circle

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 11, 2014

Apparently Channel 7’s news agreed that Moses footage was the cutest thing ever. I shared it with the reporter who interviewed me on the bridge earlier this year, and she passed it to the team. Good credits for Moses! I can’t embed it but click below to get to the story – and tell me btw another feel-good story that has a shelf life of 7 years?

Apparently it took a team of engineers to solve the problem! Who knew? I thought it was one shirtless man with a shovel?

A series of lovely ponds created by beaver dams in Alberta is shown to us in “Hiking with Barry“, a breath-taking blog about the trekking adventures of a hardy Canadian.

It’s wonderful to imagine beavers having all this space to themselves. This particular adventure goes through old beaver habitat in pristine country and pieces together what must have been a multi-family beaver operation. What we know is that beavers are smart enough to use the bitter-tasting furs for building material and the leave the delicious Aspens for dinner!

But maybe it wasn’t entirely left to the beavers, because there’s a gravel road, a near by research facility and he finds this rusting near a pond:

Looks to me like a ‘beaver baffle’ which is a Canadian invention meant to protect culverts from beavers. Maybe that gravel road needed some protecting. Then again, maybe the fact that it’s lying here and there are no more beavers left with a pristine road means someone gave up on the baffle idea and took matters into their own hands.

Oh.

Still its a lovely look at lovely habitat. Go check it out here:

Last night’s beavers did not disappoint – although they are clearly thinking we don’t yet deserve to see the baby head at a reasonable hour. I think we counted all 6 beavers. At times it was hard to know where to film. There were beavers to the left and right and more emerging and diving every moment. Nancy Jones from the Blue Heron Preserve in Georgia was enormously impressed. She is a former high school art teacher who created the preserve after a particularly ill-intentioned developer lost the land, (which is a story I love very much).

The Lake Emma Wetlands property was added to the Preserve due to an EPA action in 2002. The developer owner, filled the original stream channel, a violation of the Clean Water Act and also diverted the water flow into a new hand dug channel. The Army Corps of Engineers permitted him to lower the level of the dam that held the original lake waters and all of these actions combined accelerated the demise of the wetlands.

She is dedicated to the health of her slice of ‘nature in the city’ and has the good sense to realize that beavers are a big part of that. She wanted to come to Martinez to see how we managed. She and her friend were amazed to see beavers swimming right under them, and even hear them at times. Her preserve is right in the middle of Atlanta but she has been thrilled and excited to watch their progress. She showed me the photo of the beautiful island lodge they have and talked about wanting to make starter dams to encourage them to build in more of the preserve. She couldn’t believe how anti-beaver all of Georgia was, but she was loving learning about them and trying to get others to do the same. Did the beavers need trenches dug for them through the channels so they could be sure of more water?

I smiled, hardly believing that such beaver benevolence could happen in that particular state. Remember, this is the state where I first read about the shocking tail bounty when I was a young and tender-hearted beaver reporter. I was so upset by the story I sent the original children’s drawings from our very first Earth day event directly to the commissioners who made the decision. (Even better, I arranged for the friend of a friend who lived in Georgia send them herself, so I could be sure they would be opened!) Remember these?

Now here I was, talking to a woman from Georgia on our bridge who was asking me if the beavers she cared about needed trenches dug for them?

Trust me, I smiled. If the beavers need trenches they will dig them all by themselves.

Good news and a goodbye

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 8, 2014

Natural flood engineers

Some say beavers are a cheap alternative for mitigation

In the midst of frenzied flood prevention work throughout Alberta, some river ecology specialists are looking to the beaver to protect the province’s watersheds. A group of wildlife management organizations including the Alberta Habitat Management Society (known as Cows and Fish), the Miistakis Institute and the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area are working together on a series of projects to demonstrate how beavers are integral to natural flood and drought prevention and riparian health.

I think I finally understand how Medicine Hat got so smart about beavers! I also realize I’ve been in the beaver biz for so long I re-discoved my comment about how they mistakenly used the muskrat photo from High Country News. (Let’s give credit where credit is due – it was a GREAT article. But lousy photo). I like everything else about this video except the part where it implies humans are needed to determine the appropriate beaver population. Sheesh.

Cows and Fish riparian specialist Kathryn Hull has been involved with beaver management for the City of Calgary since 2007. She says that although Calgary will still trap destructive beavers and break up dams, the city is still quite progressive in managing the animals.

“Sadly for beavers, many of our urban riparian landscapes are really no longer functional ecosystems that can sustain or be resilient to beaver impacts,” she says. “There’s a lot of rock, a lot of rip-rapping being put in along the banks to protect those banks from erosion…. That’s of course a choice and consequence of developing within the flood plain. We’re now having to do this to protect our infrastructure, but of course it doesn’t offer much habitat,” she adds.

Hmm. I know a particular city with sheetpile, rip-rap and concrete where beavers fit in just fine! We should talk.

Another kindly beaver read this morning comes from Charelston. It isn’t as positive as the one from Alberta, but remember, it’s from West Virginia and we’re grading on a curve.

Scott Shalaway: Beaver tales

Though large and common, beavers are seldom seen unless you know where to look. The best time to see beavers is at dusk on a summer evening. And the best place is on quiet water from a kayak or canoe.

Or a bridge in Martinez. This is basically a ‘beavers are fun to watch’ article, but I never discount the value of paying attention, with a very minor tweak interest can turn into caring, and caring can turn into advocacy.

Remember, that’s how I got started.

As the pond grows, the area’s soil chemistry changes and water tolerant trees such as willows and alders, invade. Not surprisingly, the bark and tender twigs of these trees are favorite beaver foods. The pond itself invites wood ducks, black ducks, muskrats, otters, mink, and trout. Fly fisherman value the locations of secluded beaver ponds.

See what I mean?

___________________________________________________

Speaking of beaver advocates, I got word this week that friend of this website and general wildlife advocate Donna Richardson died after a riding incident near the iconic Hollywood sign. You may remember Donna was instrumental in pushing the Los Angelos Department of Water and Power in Owen’s Valley to respond to beavers in other ways than trapping. Donna discovered they had been ripping out dams with a helicopter and a grappling hook, inspiring one my favorite graphics of all times. As we strategized about various effective approaches, Donna would often jokingly refer to me as her Best Beaver-Friend Forever. Ultimately her dedication made a huge difference in the outcome. As a thank you for her heroic deeds I sent her a very small beaver chew from one of our many samples. Her partner Alan wrote me this week and said;

One of Donna’s proudest moments in her life came from her successful effort to persuade the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to end its practice of trapping and killing beavers in the Owens Valley. She was inspired by your earlier success in Martinez and she could not have accomplished her mission without the encouragement and support you gave to her. The card you sent to Donna with the wonderful beaver photo and the wooden icon you gave her still remain in the place where she put them, on a small table close to our dining area. They meant a lot to her and they mean a lot to me.

Sniff. Oh, Alan we are so sorry for your loss, and so grateful our beaver paths crossed. Thank you for your beautiful words, and I’m so glad those simple treasures can continue to mean a lot to you. Under other circumstances I might be surprised that I feel such sorrow about a woman I never met, but I have never forgotten this essential truth:

Beavers change things. It’s what they do.

Rest now, BFFF. In your honor I’m adding a new category to the post classifications. I call it “Who’s saving beavers now?”

Blame the Beaver: The Trilogy

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports June 6, 2014

KTEN.com – No One Gets You Closer

Beaver connected to cause of four alarm fire in Sherman

“The property owner reported to us that for the last couple of days they had some electrical issues within the building itself,” said Sherman Fire Chief JJ Jones.

Those issues reported include power outages, surges and even noticeable sparks within electrical panels along the walls. Sherman crews had help from twelve different fire departments across Texoma as well as help from Sherman Public Works, Red Cross and Oncor.

“During fire fighter operations one of our officers reported that there was still power to one of the areas so Oncor came back out my fire investigator went back out with the Oncor representative,” he said, “and they did find a tree that had fallen by a beaver- very recently.“

Doesn’t this look like a beaver-chewed tree to you? You know how they always make those nice even blade cuts right before they start a fire? They obviously stuffed themselves on that delicious tree, got exhausted, and went to sleep it off in bed.

While smoking.

______________________________________________________________

Officials had plan to clear beaver dam under Sunset Harbor Road before washout

Before a beaver dam caused part of a Brunswick County roadway to collapse late last month, state transportation officials knew they had a furry problem inside a pipe running under Sunset Harbor Road.

“The Thursday before this blew out we were meeting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” said Trevor Carroll, division bridge engineer for the DOT’s Southeastern division.

The plan was set. Trap the perpetrator and set off a small pack of dynamite to clear the 72-inch pipe.

“Word is out that beavers contributed to this,” Carroll said

Boys with toys. If only they’d had time to use the dynamite, none of this would ever have happened! Of course they couldn’t have installed a beaver deceiver to protect that culvert. Why do you ask? Honestly, Brunswick might want to rethink their media management policy. The entire article basically reads, “We knew it was there, we knew it’d would be a problem, we came up with a solution, but decided to do nothing.”

Never mind that their ‘solution’ wouldn’t have worked anyway. Lets just use their own logic to point out their negligence.

______________________________________________________

Letter: County should look into beaver contamination

I would think that looking into the beavers camping out and backing up the water would be a good place to start investigating the bacteria in Strawberry Creek. On the East Coast there is absolutely no swimming in beaver ponds due to a condition commonly called “beaver fever.”

Since there is no other real logical explanation I would hope the county looks into that as a possible source of contamination.

You see this Humbolt County beach got a bad grade from the water advocacy group because it had bacteria. And this letter advices them to STOP looking in the problem and just blame the beavers.

Heal the Bay gave Clam Beach County Park near Strawberry Park the low water quality rating for “potential bacteria sources,” which include “onsite sewage treatment systems, wildlife, domestic animals and vegetation,” according to the annual Beach Report Card. The beach also made the organization’s annual “Beach Bummer” list for the second time, ranking No. 6.

Right. I wouldn’t worry about that “onsite sewage treatment”. I’m reminded of one of my favorite old jokes where the woman sees her husband on his hands and knees in the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” She asks.

“I lost my contact lenses” he explains, and she starts to help.

“Wait, didn’t you lose them in the living room?” she wonders

“Yes, but the light’s better in here.

____________________________________________________________

Don’t you ever have any good news about beavers? I’m glad you asked. I’ve been saving this lovely treat from our retired engineer beaver friend in New Hampshire. He has been lovingly engaged with a battle with some beaver blocking the culvert in his condominium. He installed a flow device upstream, but now they plugged the pipe downstream. He retaliated by fencing the pipe. And just look what happens.

Awesome footage Art, and I don’t want to bore you with too much psychology but there are very detailed and advanced procedures used for measuring empathy and awareness of point-of-view in toddlers, that if applied to the “helper beaver” would dramatically improve the social IQ of beavers in general. (Not to mention the fact that the adult probably came in the first place because the kit was whining). Someone call the Smithsonian!

Diversity and Biodiversity

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 5, 2014

A couple of folks have drawn my attention to the upcoming 10th annual beaver pageant in Durham North Carolina this weekend. It’s organized by the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association with tongue firmly in cheek.

The purpose of the spectacle is to raise awareness of our community’s waterways and pockets of nature, and to raise money to help protect and restore these precious resources for all to enjoy. The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA) is grateful for the support it has received from the Pageant over the years.

The Beaver Queen Pageant is one of Durham’s marquee events and is rich in the history and culture of the community. Started in 2005 by members of the Duke Park neighborhood in order to protect beavers from a potentially harmful road construction project; it has grown into a large scale event that attracts hundreds of people from all over the Triangle who are interested in protecting wetlands and want to give a helping hand to beavers. It is a free, family-friendly beaver ‘beauty pageant’ that is a creative outlet for both the contestants and the audience.

I just adore their slogan. “Peace. Love. Beaver.”

————————————————–

A newly released paper published in the journal Ecology of fresh water Fish has been causing a bit of a stir because it says beaver dams promote non-native species of fish, especially in dry areas.

Beaver dams shift desert fish assemblages toward dominance by non-native species (Verde River, Arizona, USA)

Overall, this study provides the first evidence that, relative to unimpounded lotic habitat, beaver ponds in arid and semi-arid rivers support abundant non-native fishes; these ponds could thus serve as important non-native source areas and negatively impact co-occurring native fish populations

I was very alarmed by this report and sent out a ‘bat-signal’ alert to beaver experts around the globe who might be able to argue with it. I got these comments back from Michael Pollock, who gave me permission to re-post them here.

This sounds like a certain person’s master’s thesis. This poor graduate student was sent out to sample beaver dams in remote regions of Arizona and didn’t really have time to come up with a good study design. There were all kinds of sampling, methodological and logistical problems with their approach and they really didn’t end up with much in the way of data that was very analyzable.

There are a lot of exotics throughout the system and little to suggest that beaver dams are responsible for that problem. Beaver have been part of natural stream and riparian ecosystem in that region for a long time and the native species have adapted, and potentially benefited from their presence. To conclude that beaver dams “could” negatively impact native fish populations is misleading. It would be just as reasonable to conclude that beaver dams “could” positively impact native fish populations, since that is what we see everywhere else, but that the timing and very low frequency of data sampling didn’t occur during the times of year that native fish might use beaver ponds.

The reality is that this was a poorly designed study that produced little in the way of meaningful results, but perhaps will guide future research efforts. Pretty typical for many Master’s thesis in natural resource fields-a good learning experience, but not a lot of useful information applicable to management.

Michael M. Pollock, Ph.D.

Ecosystems Analyst

NOAA-Northwest Fisheries Science Center

FE Division, Watershed Program

I believe the words “So” and “There” are in order.

_____________________________________________

A stunning report out from Medicine Hat Alberta this morning which you will have to read to believe. I couldn’t possibly find the words to describe it.

Beaver activity has resident calling for action

Beavers are active in Riverside taking down mature trees that beautify the landscape and at a least one resident feels the City should be taking some action.

Guess what action? If you (like me) assumed that the proposed action involved trapping or shot guns, you’d be wrong. If you assumed it involved bringing in hand-wringing experts who looked at the situation and studied the issue, and THEN advised you to kill them you’d be wrong. If you thought maybe it meant moving the beavers to another location you’d STILL BE WRONG. Read the remarkable action for yourself.

“Wrapping the base of most of the trees in a wire mesh would at least help to mitigate the damage,” said Lorine Marshall. “I would like to see some wildlife management.”

Wrapping trees with wire mesh and cleaning up flood debris has already taken place in Kiwanis Park.

While most would rather the beavers leave established trees alone there are ways to re-direct their interest and/or encourage them to choose willows growing closer to the water which are quickly replaced with new growth, said Corlaine Gardner chief park interpreter for Police Point Park Interpretive Centre.

She says there has been a recommendation that painting the base of trees with a paint and sand mixture is a deterrent because beavers dislike the grit in their teeth.

Gardner says beavers can also be a great protection in managing the flow of water naturally.

Medicine Hat is in Alberta, Canada: about 5 hours away from Glynnis Hood and 13 hours away from Fur-Bearer Defenders. I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine how they got this smart about beavers, but I have a vague recollection of reading that city’s name before. However it happened, we’re impressed. As in free tee-shirt, name a kit after you impressed. Worth A Dam honors the remarkable beaver management skills of Medicine Hat.

_________________________________________________________

Finally, here’s a fun new problem to have. We just bought a new couch and had a consult to make sure it would fit through the old victorian doorway. The designer peered through with her tape measure and then asked quizically, “I just have to ask. What’s with all the beaver photos?” Which we dutifully explained. After the deal was made she went joyfully back to the showroom and everyone was thrilled to be selling a couch to the ‘beaver people from the news’.

So I thought, maybe I should ask if they would be willing to give retired fabric samples to us for tails?

Ethan Allen thought that was a lovely idea and gave us big beautiful squares of several different kinds of amazing leather. Now I’m wondering if these aren’t too nice for tails. Maybe they need to be stuffed beavers, or beaver bracelets, or beaver pins. Maybe you have some ideas? And just maybe you or your relative is a retired seamstress or craftsman and would love to donate some help to Worth A Dam?

Let’s talk. Oh and there’s a new “”Like” button on the website. Feel free to use it. A lot.