Category: City Reports

Martinez Beavertising Campaign!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, featured, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, In the News, kits July 5, 2013

A steady stream of fire-works bound families crossed the bridge yesterday, maybe thousands. A good 300 got up close and personal beaver viewing with a Worth A Dam docent to explain what they saw and point out arrivals. Both kits were in evidence, as well as Jr and a bigger adult. When things got more explod-y the beavers ducked under the bank and hunkered for the duration. Here’s our two kits in tandem coming down from the primary dam.

Amazing how many folks knew about the beavers and had seen it on the news. Always fun to see people who were completely startled to see a beaver dam in town. “Is that a beaver dam?” was a not uncommon question from some mid-wester who was proud to show he recognized it. The best answer was always, “Yup, and that’s a beaver!” One man talked about loving beaver dams as a child in Oregon because that was always the location of the best fishing. There were watchers lined up with cameras along the parkside length of Alhambra Creek below the footbridge. That’s why this kit got a little spooked and gave what appears to be his first attempt at tail slap! This deserves a much better movie but I’m dashing out the door and it’s the most I have time for. Be patient and enjoy!

You can hear in this video what a rapt audience the pre-firework beaver-works drew. The children were awed and respectful, some of them recognized us from class presentations. I did my best to plug the festival and several folks were interested. One child asked if they were otters, and one adult asked if she could pet them. No and No, were my answers.

All in all, a good night. I don’t think there is another city in america that combined the celebration of independence day with the interest in beaver-nature as fine as Martinez did. Our ad is up on the Bay Nature website, and because its a little glitchy they’re supposed to offer us a profile. We’ll see what happens. In the mean time you and I both really need this. It’s from a freak hailstorm in New Mexico yesterday which dumped about two feet of ice!

Just the pound of cure for Warren

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, kits, Massachusetts Trapping Law, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 30, 2013

An aerial view of the problematic beaver pond. (Submitted Photo/MATTHEW DOMNARSKI)

Warren works to stay ahead of beavers

BREACHED DAM FLOODS HUMAN HABITATION

WARREN — When Sherry Rapisarda called 911 on May 25 to say water was rising around her family’s trailer home on Route 67, she was told to evacuate. “I looked out the door and I told (the dispatcher), ‘I can’t evacuate, I can’t even get to my car,’ ” she said, remembering how the Fire Department arrived with a boat and ferried her, her husband, their two grown children and two cats to dry land.

The two floods, which officials have said were caused by the breaching of a beaver dam on state property just west of Colonel’s Mountain, have left behind damage on Route 67 and around the Spring Street area, where cars were sitting in about 3 feet of water.

People whose homes and businesses are flooded should expect their town to protect them and do whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again. They certainly deserve to have the causes analyzed and carefully understood so that they don’t suffer the same fate 3 weeks later. Scapgoats, lazy finger pointing and pretend facts do them no favors.

Before the dam broke the first time, it was holding back a big pond. Mr. Boudreau estimated conservatively that about 3 million gallons of water came down the hill like a tsunami.

But with two floods in three weeks, people will likely remember this for a while, and they won’t let local officials forget, either. They’ve sent a letter to selectmen and want something done about the beavers.

Still, fixing the problem requires a process. First the Board of Health must issue an emergency trapping permit so the beavers can be removed. Health Board Chairman Kenneth Lacey said Mr. Boudreau is working on the permit now.

Since state trapping laws prohibit the relocation of beavers, they must be killed, officials said. So the town needs a licensed trapper to do the job and funding to pay that person. Trapping season, when the beaver pelts would have had some value, ended in April and won’t start again until November, so the trapper doesn’t benefit much unless he is paid.

The beavers have been at the site for at least 50 years. Officials know that because the dam and pond show up on topographical maps from 1956. Mr. Boudreau said there are four huts, which he guesses are home to about 20 beavers.

It’s good to know that the problem is in such capable, thoughtful hands. I’m sure the beaver dam didn’t fail because of some other man-made problem upsteam or some trapping you allowed earlier. I’m sure that the 2012 study you reported almost exactly a year ago, entitled “Warren County study finds roads could be endangered by beaver dam failures“ couldn’t possibly have provided any information at the time that could have prevented this. I’m sure you know it was entirely caused by those verified 20 beavers and if they just kill them it will never ever happen again. I’m sure the trapper hire will give them a money back guarantee that the area will never flood in the future.

I can’t help thinking of this.

Looks like our two kits have moved back to their summer home by the secondary dam. This morning we filmed both of them coming back and downstream into the bank hole to settle for the night. I suppose the entire beaver section of Alhambra creek is like a giant ranch home where they spread out according to their own tastes. Here’s one swimming down under the Marina Vista bridge before ducking home.

And here’s the second high tailing the same distance, filmed from the footbridge.

And if you want to make sure they’re getting all the beaver training they need, check out this perfectly mudded dam.

two sleeping secondary 020 — Freshly mudded secondary dam

Fascinating beaver friday…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 28, 2013

Lots of good beaver news to get to this morning. Yesterday the Gazette very kindly ran my press release for the beaver festival in its entirety

Beaver Festival draws film crew from Washington

Six years after the Martinez beavers captured the attention of the Bay Area and challenged the city to try something new, the dramatic story continues to generate interest.

Just ask Semester in the West, a multi-disciplinary program at Whitman College that closely follows ecological and political landscapes. They were interested in the regional drama of the Martinez beavers. Sarah Koenigsberg, of Tensegrity productions, will bring a team of students to film the festival as part of her ongoing documentary, “The Beaver Believers.” The team will travel to Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah before stopping in Martinez, to look at some fairly famous urban beavers.

Go read the whole thing. Thank them for the coverage and see if you can ‘spot the compliment!’

Now there’s this delightful article from Michael Luntz of Canada who I connected with through Donna Dubreuil of Ottawa and found out he is about 6 months away from publishing a book of his 25 years observing and photographing beavers. His pictures graced the Beaver Whisperers Documentary which aired in Canada this March and will show in America later this year.

Beaver ponds are excellent habitats for seeing animals

Moose visit beaver ponds to acquire their sodium fix.

During my search, I encountered no fewer than eight Beavers and 14 Moose. Most of the Moose had shed their winter coats and looked quite sleek. The bulls were sprouting new antlers (these fall off every winter and grow anew in the spring) covered in velvet, soft skin that feeds blood to the bone growing beneath.

These huge animals were wandering into beaver ponds to feast on new aquatic growth. This food does not provide a lot of nourishment but is a rich source of sodium, an essential nutrient that Moose lack almost completely in their winter diet of dry twigs and coniferous needles. The sodium they glean is stored in the rumen of their stomach, and is used through the rest of the year. There were many other creatures active in the ponds I visited. Hooded Mergansers, Ring-necked Ducks, Mallards, and American Black Ducks were present, one Mallard was already leading around her ducklings.

Nice. The end of the article says he’s off to Norway to watch Castor Fiber so I of course asked if he was meeting Duncan Haley and he wrote back that Duncan has been enormously helpful but will be 8 hours away! I’m looking forward to his castor fiber photos and wonder if he’ll see the difference like I think I can?

BTW can’t you just imagine the city council’s face if moose showed up at our beaver dams?

Now you’ve been very good this week and deserve this. Click for major AWW action and donate here.

Dozens of wild animals rescued from deluge

I’ve been good too, so I deserve to be rewarded by sharing this story which made me laugh out loud. It obviously required a graphic.

Beaver blamed for disrupting Taos cell, Internet service

Ha ha ha. How does a beaver knock out cell and internet service? Excessive beaver bandwidth?

Obviously the service reps at TAO Cell graduated from the SAY ANYTHING school of telecommunications.

After offering conflicting explanations about what severed a fiber optic cable east of Eagle Nest, CenturyLink representatives now say the 20-hour cell phone and Internet outage last week was caused by an over-eager beaver chewing through the line.

Thanks guys, that goes in the scrapbook. Beavers blamed for flooding, fires, mosquitoes, disease and now service blackouts. Perfect.

Three good things

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 25, 2013

More and more when I stumble towards the computer in the bleary hours and try an decide what to write about beavers, it is like being a raja sorting through a pile of rich jewels and deciding which to wear for the party. This morning I feel positively indulged with treasures. Let me assuage my Catholic guilt at having too much good fortune by sharing all of it with you! The first is from Melanie, who I met at the beaver dam Sunday night, and got her permission to post this morning. This is an example of how nurtured kits are by family members. We couldn’t even say if this is mom, because that’s a pretty big tail for our little mom. It might be dad or uncle for all I know, but I am certain beyond any doubt that beaver kits are loved.

Kit-adult nuzzle — Photo by Melanie 6-23-13

Many of you may be following the rodenticide-raptor problem which is killing and sickening hundreds and thousands of birds around the world and even prompted the EPA to rear its head in response. Our friend Lisa Owens Viani started the organization RATS {Raptors Are The Solution} to help educate and get cities to ban the poisons that are killing hawks an owls at an alarming rate. She has been hard at work to get the word out an asked me a while back if I thought Ian Timothy might be interested in helping and would I introduce them? So it turns out that Ian’s first natural passion was raptors and he was VERY interested. In the midst of going to Carnegie Hall and graduating from high school he agreed to work on this which was just released. Remember that telling the story is the most important thing we do, and Ian just made Lisa’s job a lot easier!

Isn’t that amazing? One of the things I love about his work, besides his delightful humor and artwork, is his compassion. He has the judgement not to show the dying hawk on camera just like he had the wisdom to show the teddy bear [and not its owner] get stuck in the trap. He gets the point across without shocking the viewer, which is very, very rare. I can’t wait to see what he does to improve Pixar!

A final jewel in today’s crown of beaver activity is this. The Beaver Whisperers aired in Canada in March this year, but the International Version is still being finalized. It will include a great segment on Sherri Tippie and have less of a Canadian focus. The producer has promised to generously donate a copy for the silent auction, but she let me watch the entire thing yesterday, which is where I saw this. I can’t tell you how irrationally happy this makes me.

Ecosystem Services

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental June 23, 2013

Nature’s Benefits: The Importance of Addressing Biodiversity in Ecosystem Service Programs

Defenders of Wildife (who in addition to making a HUGE difference, was kind enough to donate 200 copies of their magazine on Sherri Tippie for our last festival) has a fantastic paper on ecosystem services and how we should factor the services of wildlife when discussing what to do. I mention it because you-know-what provides excellent ecosystem services, and is offered as their final case study in Yellowstone.

The recovery of the ecosystem is still in the early stages. (Ripple and Beschta, 2012). However, beaver activity has the potential to provide the following benefits:

• Reduce water temperatures and improve habitat foraquatic organisms.

• Improve habitat for fish by providing a source ofdetritus and woody debris.

• Increase riparian plant diversity and songbird habitat.

• Increase waterfowl, amphibians, reptiles, muskrat and river otter populations.

• Reduce excess amounts of sediment and organic material in surface runoff.

• Reduce steam bank erosion.

• Increase carbon storage in plant biomass and soils.

• Recharge the water table, increase water storage and wetland acreage (Gilgert and Zack, 2010)

Nicely done! The beavers in Yellowstone are getting some excellent press, that’s for sure. Lets hope there’s a interpretive ranger on hand that is equally committed to showing off flow devices too. You can check out the entire report online here.

Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife posted this video yesterday of their annual meeting in April. It’s a presentation performed by their intern Susan Hendler. Enjoy!

And today is the auspicious occasion of the very first EcoFest in Komoko Ontario! Aspen Valley Sanctuary will be on hand to talk beavers with lots of other displays and vendors. We wish everyone a sunny, festive, well-attended exhaustion of a day!