Best Ditch Ever

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions December 1, 2012

20121127_BEAVER_DAM_709 — Beavers felled this tree along the Oligarchy Ditch, near North Shore Drive and Breakwater Drive. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call) ( LEWIS GEYER )

What’s being done about the Oligarchy Ditch Beavers?

Dear Johnnie: Can you tell me about the policy of handling the beavers in Oligarchy Ditch? I have loved watching the progress as they have built three dams in the ditch between North Shore Drive and Breakwater Drive. (Actually only two in that stretch, but one or two farther east). But they have taken several large trees down.

Is the ditch company glad to get the tree roots out of the ditch and they are waiting ’til spring to relocate the beavers? Is there a concern about flooding as the dams hold the water or is that also fine until spring? I love the open spaces, but I am also curious about how the city or the ditch company handles animals reclaiming their space. — Mary

Where to begin? Oligarchy ditch? Someone named it Oligarchy ditch? Does it contain members of the elite ruling class? Or is it waiting to receive them one by one like a mass grave? And a beaver advice column? Be still my heart! Just when I’m beginning to feel at loose ends I find a new calling! People could write in about beaver questions from all over the world. Move over Dear Abby! Auntie Castor wants to chat!

Tree roots are not the primary concern when it comes to beavers and irrigation canals. It’s the damming of the canals and bank erosion that are key problems, not to mention damage to trees and the loss of habitat those trees provide other animals.

That’s according to Bill Powell, customer service manager for the city’s Public Works & Natural Resources Department. The city, it turns out, is responsible for maintenance along the Oligarchy.

There is no policy in place for dealing with beavers in the city, but Powell informed me that the PWNR Department is preparing “a standardized procedure” for dealing with beavers, which should be “completed in a few weeks.”

Guess who needs a standardized procedure for dealing with beavers? I’m a little troubled by putting natural resources and public works under the same department, but since Sherri Tippie is about 45 minutes away I’m assuming they will be exposed to excellent advice. Estes Park (where they successfully saved Enos Mills great-great-great-great-great grandkits) is just up the road. So lets see them do the right thing.

“On the flip side,” Powell wrote, “the Forestry workgroup wraps those trees along the corridor that are targeted for preservation, (while) others are left unprotected and available to the beavers. The entire process is a balance between evaluating property damage and the intent of the ditch with living with and providing wildlife habitat.”

Excellent. In addition to having the best named Ditch in the world, Longmont also has very smart foresters!

Another dam(n) washout!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental November 28, 2012

Remember the historic home in Duvall Washington where a beaver dam washed out and flooded the home with mud and debris. Well the beavers rebuilt and the county thought that they could prevent a new washout by installing a “beaver deceiver” which was a noble effort but the wrong effort. Last night there was apparently ANOTHER washout and some 60 neighbors rushed in to pack sandbags around the damage.

DUVALL, Wash. — A dam built by beavers has broken for the second time this month and caused a mudslide in Duvall on Friday evening. About 60 people rushed to a Duvall neighborhood to help save a historic home, roads and a highway after neighbors noticed mud and water flowing towards a family’s 100-year-old house.

I wished at the time that they had taken a look at this instead.

San Francisco here we come…

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers November 23, 2012

1002_303983393040833_968912652_n — The audience at Megan's talk

One thing I was particularly grateful for this year I thought I’d share with you today. It has to do with our good friends at the River Otter Ecology Project. The brilliant and compelling Megan Isadore was able to give a very successful address recently at the Randall Museum for the San Francisco Naturalist Society. It’s the natural history museum in the city and very education focused and beloved.

Because they were interested in doing the same thing for the Rossmoor Nature Association we were able to swap contacts in a way that got Worth A Dam an invitation to present there next summer! Right before the festival our beavers will be featured in all their glory! I thought I’d better start studying up and put together this new species list.

(For those of you following along at home, that’s 15 new species (at least) since the beavers arrival in 2006.)Which reminds me of this prescient child’s contribution:

beavers under the bay bridge — Beaver under Bay Bridge: Flyway Festival 2009

Thank goodness!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 22, 2012

I’m going to start the morning right by offering your first full plate of the day. It all starts out with a little beaver-stupid from Massachusetts. This time in front of the incomprehensibly- named school “Pompositticut”.

Beavers living large in Pompo

Felled trees that are clearly visible at the front of Pompo. Inset: Square teethmarks are evident on this tree trunk, along with the wood shavings the beaver left behind. Ann Needle

Yes, even as humans have vacated Pompo, beavers are snapping up prime real estate, tax-free, around the building. Told of the potential activity, Animal Control Officer Susan Latham wrote off the notion that lack of humans would have anything to do with an increase in the furry tenants. Instead, Latham explained, “Beaver go where beaver go — they are not shy animals” (easy for an animal possessing fangs). “This is the time of year when beaver are chomping and storing away food for the winter. And the pond is pretty deep [in back of Pompo]; I assume there must be beaver dams in there somewhere.”

Assistant Superintendent of Streets Scott Morse agreed that it is not an empty Pompo calling to the rodents. “We’ve been trapping out of there a lot of years.” Beaver possess cute snoods and appear on the class ring of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — but all of this failed to impress Morse, who apparently knows what it takes to keep the creatures under control and, thus, Stow’s drains working. He estimated that beavers have been a town-wide problem for about a decade, a timeline he maintained coincides with changes in the state trapping regulations.

Now here is something to be thankful for and we should all pause a moment to reflect. Often in my daily forays into the rocky terrain of beaver-stupid I worry. What if there’s nothing left to write about? What if everyone has learned better? What if, after nearly 2000 columns I have said everything there is to humanly say about beavers? And then something like this comes along. Something that I, in my infinite capacity to mock, could not have made up. A cornucopia of stupid, if you will, and I realize I have been chasing a deeply renewable resource.

Where to begin? Killing beavers at a school? Snood? Fangs? Low-hanging fruit I say. Let’s go right for the top.

Pompositticut

Need I say more?

Now onto some inspiration:

County Hopes beaver deceiver will help prevent breach near Duvall

County workers hiked in Wednesday to a beaver dam that breached two weeks ago. A dam that beavers had already rebuilt in the last week.

They brought in mesh wiring that will be part of a contraption called a “beaver deceiver,” a 20 foot, 18-inch wide pipe installed in the dam. It will allow water to flow out, and maintain the water level. It was installed with the help of the Washington Conservation Corps.

“The assumption is that the beavers will try to build right on top of the beaver deceiver,” said Don Althauser, emergency response supervisor for King County Stormwater Management. “But they won’t block the pipe we put into the damn.[sic]”

Ahh Kings County! Ahh Washington! You are the most noble beaver pragmatists on the planet and we admire your cheerfulhard work and civic effort. An impossibly long time ago their excellent webpage about beavers was just about the only information to be found on the subject. Now we’re grading on a curve so we’ll forgive them calling their installation a “beaver deceiver” (which it clearly is not). Obviously there’s beavers and deception of some kind involved so I guess that’s close enough for government work.

I am, still, a little mystified that someone at the news copy editing department feels the need to swear in this story.

“we put into the damn.[sic]”

Are there really people who spell Hoover Dam with an “n”? Or is it just because everyone gets so mad about beavers?

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Room for pie? Finally I thought I’d keep tradition and remind myself of some beaver things I’m grateful for this year. Feel free to add your own!

It could happen to you…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental November 19, 2012

Remember the beavers in Amherst New York that were chewing down memorial trees? They city voted to kill them (of course) and brought in the DEC who accidentally reported in front of a news camera that conibear traps drown the beaver. (I’m quite sure that his second day of ranger school he was told to never, never say that even if its true.) As a result tons of concerned folks poured into the city meeting and saved the day. Volunteers would wrap the trees and beavers wouldn’t be killed.

For Now.

Apparently it turns out that those selfish beavers still want to feed their families throughout the frozen winter and they think your ornamental birch would help nicely, thank you very much. Having a tree removed from your front yard apparently makes reasonable home owners postal because this lovely woman can’t see how her lawn’s rights aren’t worth an animals life. Go figure.

Never mind that there are volunteers that would have wrapped that tree for you if you picked up the phone and asked. I’m guessing you have WIVB on speed dial so its much easier to call them and whine about the damage than it is to bother and prevent it.

I’ve already heard from one of the volunteers this morning reminding the highway superintendent that they can help protect trees and that spending time wiping out beaver dams is not a very good use of public funds. Sharon and Owen Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife went out and toured the area personally, telling folks what steps to take. I guess they must have known that beavers cut down trees but they never thought they’d cut down THEIR trees.

You never think it will happen to you.