Category: City Reports

Disconnect

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 22, 2012

This colorful map was released by NOAA on Thursday. It show that 60 percent of the United States is under Severe Drought conditions and nearly 40 percent is in ‘exceptional’ drought. With unrelenting heat in many of our farm states, there is talk of a possible food shortage in the growing belt. Talk of the Nation devoted an entire program to the issue Thursday, and farmers called in to talk about hauling water, draining aquifers, and dying crops.

Guess what nobody talked about?

Of course the irony is that if we could superimpose a map showing the areas where the most beavers are most routinely killed I’m sure they would fit together PERFECTLY. I wrote the host and guest and NPR to let them know. Looking at that map it should be on everyone’s lips:

The not-so-surprising-update to Anita’s beaver lodge destruction in Stittsville is that she DID see a kit last night. The city has assured her there were none and they are busy ripping out whatever the beaver parents try to build so maybe you want to send word to the good mayor who says flow devices never work in Storm ponds? Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions says he’s installed plenty. Call 613-580-2496 or email is Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca.

Finally I thought OUR youngest hero deserved his first official movie release. Enjoy!

“Gow” it’s done…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational July 16, 2012

Why flooding means we must bring the beaver back to the South West

A wildlife expert says Britain should bring back the beaver to stop the growing menace of flooded homes and businesses. Ecologist Derek Gow says the water-loving creatures would gnaw through trees and build dams, holding back the floods when rivers get swollen by heavy rain.

Britain is lagging behind other European countries who have already re-introduced the beaver and studies in places like Belgium and Germany have proved they can help alleviate flooding, he says.

Remember our old friend Derek Gow from Devon Cornwall? He has beavers on his estate and really values their contribution, got some press because one ‘escaped’ a while ago and was ‘found‘ in a slurry pit. Only it turned out that the ‘found beaver’ was not HIS beaver but was some escapee/refugee/I’m-sick-of-waiting-for-England-to-bring-back-beavers-so-the-beavers-are-just-going-to-do-it-themselves kinda beaver!

I wrote Derek after that first lovely article where he extolled beaver benefits and he kindly wrote back. Turns out he and Paul Ramsay of Scotland know each other and he is very interested in reeducating the population about beavers!

Hi Heidi – thanks for your mail. Things are changing here but sometimes it takes a lifetime to turn round ignorance. Free beavers on the Tay and in Knapdale now and some breeding in England. Ironic that the country which did so much to destroy the species has been so slow to re-understand them.

BW – Derek

Derek Gow Consultancy Ltd

Upcott Grange Farm

Broadwoodwidge, Lifton, Devon

So Derek and his team have been using some basic ‘plug and pond’ techniques (beavers without beavers) to slow water in the study area, leaky dams, retained soil and the like. And how do you suppose all that is working? Of course its been excellent! But it takes a lot of time and effort. Farmers are busy men with only so much effort to spare. If ONLY there were some kind of creature that would move in and do all that work for free. Gosh.

“There is nothing about this which is novel – they’ve been re-introduced all over Europe, so we have blueprints on how we go about living with and managing this animal. The only thing that is new is that we here in England are last to do it.

“The real issues are likely to be pretty minor. They are going to block a few culverts, yes, but not stuff that’s unmanageable, and there are ways of resolving these things. You can put beaver guards in place over the culverts.

“You’d look at negatives and cost them, and then the positives. Do they have a significant influence on water retention? If you have a village in the catchment, do they prevent flooding? Do they help hold more water in upper catchment? Do their dams catch silt, nitrates, phosphates?

“If the answer is yes – and the European experience is that they do all these things successfully – you will have significant benefits.”

Derek! We LOVE you! You are changing hearts and minds and obviously know what you’re talking about! Maybe Cornwall needs a beaver festival. Did I mention that my grandfather was from St. Austell?

“For years farmers and others have been doing their best to drain land better, but that water has to go somewhere. If you imagine one million cubic metres of water going through a town quickly in the peak of flood, that’s much higher than you’d have had before the drainage was improved. What we are trying to do is spread that peak by slowing the flow.”

Derek says that natural dams built by beavers across the rivers can do the “slowing-water-down” job effectively and it costs nothing.

Maybe if Derek is spouting beaver benefits in Cornwall and Paul is reciting them in Scotland and Duncan is shouting them in Norway and Glynnis is enumerating them in Canada, California will eventually come plugging along? A girl can only hope.

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Beaver Festival Alert: This weekend I assembled the good work by our friends at Folkmanis and Wildbryde to make basket with 50 of these. Honestly there should be some kind of criminal action taken against anything this cute.

Surprises

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 12, 2012

Remember the washout tale from Spring Farm Cares a month ago? Well things are looking up and Matt Perry is continuing to carefully observe their robust recovery. Four kits were born in his very healthy colony this year, and he’s enjoying their nightly interactions. He hasn’t seen Dad since the washout and that’s very familiar since our patriarch left after the big washout too. Actually some biologists suggest that this wandering is looking around at p0ssible suitable territory in case the family needs to move. Anyway, he’s a lovely writer and watcher, so you’ll want to go read for yourself.

Great news from the beaver festival: we just found out director of the OAEC Water Institute and winner of this year’s ‘Golden Pipe Award‘ Brock Dolman will be joining Kate Lundquist to host their booth. Brock is a permaculture expert and educates landowners, laypeople, politicians, and anyone who will listen about the benefits of beavers and better water storage. He is a dynamic and coveted speaker all over the country where he uses his uniquely curly, rhyming, thesaurus-laden, language stream that you have to hear first hand to believe to change minds and waken sleepers. In fact he would never say ‘educate’. He’d say something like ‘watershED-ucate, faciLACTate, permaCOAXE the Re-inVENTture map-italism of land-escape artisTRY. Really. If you don’t believe me come be dazzled in conversation with him yourself. You’ll never look at storm drains, beavers, or salmon the same way again.

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And for your daily dose of snark I will just add that last night we heard a rumor that someone who should know better [meaning everyone should know better, but this person REALLY should] was talking to Moses at the dam and actually asked if “This was all the kits we were going to have” or if we thought “they’d LAY MORE”.

We’ve been giggling about it all night. Lay more? Since beavers are MAMMALS, born live, nurse on their mothers and don’t actually hatch from an egg, the kindest explanation I can possibly offer is that they mixed them up with these. I guess the bill looks kind of like a beaver tail.

Stittsville Eviction

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 1, 2012

Let’s say, (and why not?) that you’re the mayor of a nice little suburb to the west of the nation’s capital in Canada. You are generally well liked, get free lattes and get an excellent parking place. When the note crosses your desk that there are some pesky beavers in a drainage pond you barely register as you pass it along to public works to take care of it. Then you go back about your business, ribbon cutting the new showroom or securing school lunches or what have you.

Then SHE pops up in your email. Anita Utas. One of those animal-hugging artists. On your phone. In your paper. On your evening news. “Save the beavers” she starts saying, spouting nonsense like wrapping trees and flow devices. A neighbor says “kill the beavers” and since its one against one and one of them agrees with you, killing wins out. You hire the trapper and that’s that. Then she’s back with friends. SAVE THE BEAVERS! They repeat! Louder! If this story sounds familiar, it should. You can reread about the Stittsville beavers here to refresh your memory.

Imagine the mayor’s surprise when they returned with the media and cameras!

You start getting mail from all across Ottawa, then all across canada, you even get something from some crazy town called Martinez California 2300 miles away! You get tired of answering the phone to angry people complaining about killing beavers. You do what any normal man would do under the circumstances. You’re no fool. You know better than to blow against the wind. You save the beavers.

For a while.

You show up for the photo op with the rodent. You accept the gratitude and adulation from the animal lovers. You post a sign over your office that says “move along, nothing to see here” and you write back all the letter senders and say ‘don’t worry’. Then you wait and bide your time until early summer when the kits have been born, pick a national holiday long weekend when everyone will be out of town, and send your goons in on a friday afternoon to rip out the lodge.

This is the email I received from Anita Utas yesterday:

Ottawa – Today, Friday, June 29th, around noon, about a dozen City workers descended on the beaver lodge at Paul Lindsay Park Pond, home of Lily and Lucky and possibly two kits that were born in May. City workers tore out the lodge and removed the branches. Nothing remains.

The beaver had not been blocking pond culverts or taking down any trees. Many people enjoyed seeing them at dawn and dusk, eating the overabundance of lily pads, which is their favourite food.

One lone beaver is trying to rebuild the home. It is not known whether the mother and possible kits escaped unharmed, or whether they were killed during the destruction.

She was away when it happened. Someone called her to the scene where there was no lodge, no sticks, and a struggling beaver trying to rebuild. What an outrage! For the first time it almost makes me feel sorry for public works. City officials make the heinous decisions and send the dirty-work-crew out to implement it and get all the blame. Somebody knew this was the lodge, and it was a great way to get rid of the beavers after you persuaded Anita to wrap all the trees so they couldn’t possibly build it again. Who ever passed along this order knew did it to get what they wanted, avoid bad press and save what matters – the drainage ditch.

For the sake of our younger readers I’m going to assume that everyone sleeping in that lodge leaped safely into the water when branches started moving. I’m going to reassure myself that those beavers, like most all beavers, had bank holes nearby they had scoped out previously and retreated there and are taking their time while they think over what to do next.

Then I’m going to write letters. You should to. They deserve massive public shame for this underhanded eviction which is so cowardly and cruel it almost makes Martinez look saintly by comparison. You can email mayor Watson here (jim.watson@ottawa.ca) and councillor Qadri here (shad.qadri@ottawa.ca). Really. I know you’re busy, and it’s the weekend, but take 5 minuts and do it. Beavers may be nocturnal but apparently the constant application of daylight is the only thing that saves them.

Send them my regards.

Jealous?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 29, 2012

Dam man’s beaver behavior

by Johnny Boyd, Aspen Daily News Columnist

Beaver ponds catch silt, keeping it from our gold medal trout streams. The silt rebuilds our meadows — a renewal process man can’t wrap his mind around since we seldom renew anything. Beaver ponds retain water. Drive up Brush Creek Road this week and you will notice the only green areas in a sea of brown grass surround the beaver ponds. It’s insane to allow all that water to escape simply because a beaver cut down a few aspen trees.

I spoke with Dr. Werner von Heineken about the beaver and why it is so persecuted. “Ze beaver iss a creature that causes jealousy in man,” he explained through a thick Vulgaristani accent. “Man doesn’t like competition when it comes to engineering nature.”

This clever article from Johnny Boyd gets right to the heart of the matter and with the device of “Dr. Heineken” quickly exposes our inexplicable reluctance to share with beavers. I thoroughly enjoyed most of its 10 paragraphs although that last two left me a little pale. I wrote him my appreciations but said that he forgot to mention salmon, birds, wildlife and all the creatures that depend on beaver-created wetlands. Oh, and also climate change!

The good doctor has a point. Man considers himself to be the smartest animal in the forest. Still, we love to do dumb things. Worse, even if we know what we are doing is idiotic, we continue as if we can’t do anything else — like that carcinogen spewing thing. Nature evolved the beaver to do exactly what is needed in the habitat it is indigenous to, and our inability to coexist with the creature is more about our shortcomings than the beaver’s.

Since the article’s from the Aspen Daily News he shouldn’t really waste his time with Dr. Heineken. He should drive 150 miles to visit with Sherri Tippie in Denver and she’ll tell him everything about beavers he needs to know and then some. Of course I would add that “Dr. Perryman” has noted that men also dislike beavers for being so thoroughly domestic – going home every morning to the same woman year after year. By killing them they feel they have touched the mustang wildness missing in their own lives.

But that’s just the shrink in me talking, I’m sure. I can’t compare with Dr. Heineken.

Kingfisher Update

Your kingfisher has a fractured mandible. Shannon was performing surgery yesterday. If she wasn’t brought in she would have died as she can’t eat on her own. Other than that her weight is good and she should survive. Lindsay is participating in the beaver festival this year.