Category: City Reports

Cody Considers Castor

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 11, 2012

Male lifestyle not so unlike beaver’s life

DAVE DONLEY

I first detected the beaver’s presence early one morning before dawn. I was walking the dog around the pond and heard boulders falling out of the sky, pounding the water with a great splash. Looking up, however, I saw no boulders or meteor shower or frozen effluent streaking off an airliner. We all were delighted our small pond would seem fit for a beaver. In fact, the pond attracts an abundance of waterfowl, including a recent sighting of snow geese. Having a beaver-in-residence raised the stature of the pond from fowl worthy to mammal friendly.

Ahh the old story. Boy Meets Beaver. Boy enjoys watching beaver. Boy can’t believe there’s a beaver. Boy says “we never have beavers HERE”. Boy muses “where did they come from?” If I’ve heard that story once I’ve heard it a thousand times since we first told it to ourselves in Martinez in 2006. The truth is beavers have always strolled up our creek and checked to see if we were fit quarters to raise a family. It’s just that they did so when we weren’t looking and the explorers were routinely and quietly dispatched.

After just a couple of weeks, the consensus decreed the beaver had to go. The options for removal appeared to be few. The default position for invading beavers seems to be its removal by a licensed trapper.

Like that… and like they would have done in Martinez if it weren’t for some very special circumstances.

Then there’s the notion, promoted by any number of beaver hugging websites, that man and beaver can peacefully co-exist. This research taught me that in special cases this may be true and worth a shot.

Beaver hugging websites? Do you think he means us? (Blush) I’m so proud! Tell me about those special circumstances? Is there something particularly rare about the watershed or the stream shape? Or the stream flow? Or the weather? Is it something unique about the beavers themselves?

No. It’s not the beavers that were special. It’s was the humans.

In Martinez we had very rare and special humans who could use the google, crack open a book, open their eyes and actually see that beavers improve streams. . We knew how to watch Nature specials on National Geographic or Animal Planet and saw that Flow Devices could work. And we talked, to our neighbors, to the news cameras, and to our officials.We had very special humans with ears and brains who realized that sometimes city officials exaggerate dangers and don’t tell the truth

That’s REALLY rare!

In some mystical way, I connected with this beaver and was not willing to give up finding a compromise. As an engineer, I can personally relate to the incredible focus possessed by the beaver, almost to its detriment.

The beaver has a plan forged by evolution and is determined to fulfill that destiny. The beaver builds its lodge, makes and takes care of the family, and tends to the maintenance of the dam. My life in a nutshell.

I had thoughts of grabbing the beaver, reforming it of its ways, then getting him cast in a Disney film. He would live out his days blissfully on the pond. My research abruptly ended after my Internet search for “domesticating your beaver” turned up empty.

Too bad.

Very Rare Indeed.

Tribal Velvet Brick

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental December 10, 2012

Kahnawake Mohawks get Cree help with beaver boom

The Mohawks of Kahnawake on Montreal’s South Shore have called on Cree trappers to help them grapple with an overpopulation of beavers that is wreaking havoc on the community.

“They’ve been a nuisance, chopping down trees,” said Mohawk Council chief Robert Patton. He said the beavers’ dam-building habits have caused floods and blocked roadways.

The Mohawks were key players in Canada’s fur trade, but the descendants of those early trappers and merchants have lost their trapping skills. So the Mohawk Council called on the more experienced Cree from Waskaganish on the southern tip of James Bay.

Isn’t this touching? Native peoples working together to kill native animals? A chance to teach the young ones the old ways. (Of course when the old ways were in their heyday there were millions more beavers to go around. That is, until those HBC folks started coming and paying us per skin and we found out about alcohol and things got a little crazy.) But that’s blood under the bridge. Now we just do it to help our friends.

And make some slippers.

Three Cree trappers drove the 1100 kilometres from Waskaganish to Kahnwake late last week to lead a four-day hunting blitz, culling dozens of beavers. Gordon Weistche, a Cree trapper, was happy to share his knowledge with his Mohawk students on his first trip to Kahnawake.

“We set traps along their routes, there’s routes under the water,” he said. Once caught, the beavers were skinned, boiled and made into a meal.”

Never mind that beavers left in the stream would create more habitat for trout and game animals and raise the water table and purify the water and give the Mohawk more to celebrate. Never mind that beaver dams would filter some of the arsenic and mercury in their water and slow down some of the toxicity of the area. Never mind that understanding the Cree and Mohawk idea of wasting nothing means not wasting the talents of the best ecological engineer Nature ever provided.

Don’t think that the Minister of the Environment isn’t sitting happily back in his green leather chair brushing his palms together and chuckling. When one problem takes care of another problem, bureaucrats are always happy. They wanted a cull anyway, it’s their favorite solution for beavers, deer and rabbits. But all those PETA folks make it damn tricky to sneak it past the voters. If they can wrap the whole thing up in a moccasin and get some elder to chant over it they can do what they wanted all along!

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the using-Natives version of what I like to call “The Velvet Brick“.

Slow Learners

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 6, 2012

Kevin Ellis has been keeping an eye on beaver activity during his daily walks in and around the Welland Recreational Canal.

Dam beavers!

The training officer with Welland Fire and Emergency Services takes almost daily walks along the waterway on Canal Bank St. during his lunch break, and recently he began noticing distinctive markings on area trees. After inspecting several trunks, both large and small, along the water, it became apparent to Ellis that Welland is now home to a colony of beavers.

Several attempts have since been made to remove the lodge and makeshift dam that has been backing up water, but the beavers are persistent in rebuilding their home, Bering said.

“They’re pretty industrious.”

Beavers have made their presence known in Niagara more prominently over the past five to eight years, said land management director Darcy Baker of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

“They’re really expanding their territory,” he said, with sightings coming in from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Fort Erie.

Dam removal can be tricky, he said, as beavers are tenacious and will work to repair their damaged dams, whether patching or rebuilding entirely. Dam removal should be done in consultation with the Ministry of Natural Resources, Baker said, to ensure it’s done properly.

You might remember the amount of angst and outcry caused when nearby St Catherines sought to remove some beavers a while back. Now Welland wants in on the beaver-killing action. Don’t worry though because the article gives helpful comments like “Discourage beavers on your property by removing trees and brush.“

It’s that time of year again, when every day gives a smorgasbord choice of beaver-killing stories. You can literally search on the Google and find complaints from PEI to Arizona and everywhere in between. Sometimes it wearies me, especially when I’m sent an email thread between CDFG and Caltrans about the Weaver Creek beavers being extirpated on the Klamath because their dams were causing problems for Coho.

Honestly, have we learned NOTHING?

The Greatest Beaver Story Ever Told

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental December 5, 2012

Cary looks for peace with beavers

The town of Cary is trying out a new answer to an age-old question: How do you stop a beaver damming? It’s a challenge that’s dogged town staff since the summer before last, when the rodents flooded a new wetland on the southeast side of Bond Lake in mid-western Cary.

Got your coffee and slippers? This is the kind of story that brings families round the fire with shining faces and children ask to be retold every Christmas. Honestly, I am as fond of Cary, North Carolina as I have ever been of any city not named Martinez. Just look at this:

First the local government tried the traditional method: A contractor in February set traps for the beavers, but the town had them pulled amid outcry from residents and birders, who liked the new beaver pond.

Cary, Cary, Cary! I think I’m in love! Go Birders! Go Beavers!

Next came a non-lethal show of force, with the town destroying the beavers’ dam in the hopes that they’d just go away. Castor canadensis was back within months.

Wait, wait don’t tell me. I know how successful that plan was. Why do humans think tearing down dams works to discourage beavers? It’s not like humans even leave when they’re work and home is destroyed? Why would beavers?

Now the town is trying a new tactic that staff hope will subvert those natural instincts.

In foreground, the pipe that the town of Cary hopes will pass water undetected through a beaver dam at Bond Park. Andrew Kenney

The idea of the $3,500 project is to let the beavers think their dam is working better than it really is. If it works, the “flow control device” will allow water to pass silently through the dam, keeping the water levels in check without alerting the beavers to the leak in their dam.

Not only is Cary very nobly doing the right thing, their reporter is even using the right language. Way to go Cary! It doesn’t say who’s doing the install but I’m going to guess Stephanie Boyles is involved because she was involved in the other South Carolina case and no one is saying ‘Castor Master’ (Skip) or ‘Flexible Leveler’ (Mike).

However, the town’s not out of the swamp yet. Installation of the pipe damaged part of the dam, by necessity, and drained the pond. The contractor did all the work by hand, hoping not to traumatize the beavers, but the semi-aquatic rodents haven’t yet returned to the site.

Lewis isn’t surprised the animals haven’t rebuilt their old stomping grounds yet.

“Not only have we unearthed their dams, but we’ve also exposed the holes in the side of the wetland where they stay,” she said. “We knew it would take weeks before the very first one would show up.”

Hmm. Who was this contractor? When Skip took our dam down by three feet it exposed the holes to the lodge and it took about seven hours before we saw the beavers come out and start rebuilding. I’m hopeful that they’re just not watching that close, because beavers have more than one sleeping spot in anticipation of water level changes.

Caroline Morgan, a local birder, is anxious for the repair of the little ecosystem tucked at the edge of the park. “It’s pretty unique, just because of all the diversity,” she said, pausing from her photography near the dam. “The fact that the beavers turned this area into a swamp brought all kinds of animals here.”

Now that sounds familiar!

Martinez Beaver Dam-age

heidi08 City Reports, Friends of Martinez Beavers December 4, 2012

Watchful eyes have been checking on how the storm has hit our beavers. Last night Worth A Dam watched little Jr come out and groom on one of the banks, with a larger beaver in the vicinity. We know he wasn’t washed away with all the rain, even if the dams need some major repairs. This morning Jon says that a night heron is perched at the biggest gap in the primary dam and just chowing down on whatever crosses his path!

photo (2) — Primary Dam and Flow Device - Photo: Lory Bruno

Bob Rust (of the inflatable beaver-fame) filmed our beavers Sunday morning during the hardest rains. I’m so grateful for his effort and to be able to see how they gamely swim upstream in even the strongest current.