Category: City Reports

The other greatest story ever told!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? July 30, 2017

Yesterday was an unbelievably delightful and challenging journey through the year’s accumulation of goodies getting everything ready for today’s meeting with Leslie and Deidre for the important ‘bagging and tagging’ of items for the silent auction. We were reminded how many, many unbelievable treasures we received courtesy of enormously generous souls from as far away as Rhode Island, Kent, Calgary and Melbourne. Here is our small and precious collection of beaver jewelry which we were eager to display. This year we were given less jewelry and more art. Far more. There are 38 stunningly creative images this year in the auction, with everything from beaver ballerinas to otter notepads and avocets in flight.

The hardest job of pulling and sequencing is done. Believe me when I say some colorful language was spoken yesterday. Today will be reviewing, oohing and ahhing, and sticking numbers on items. 89 in total. Not bad for a beaver charity!

In the meantime there is PLENTY of good news this sunday, starting with a fairytail report from Calgary where folks are protesting the removal of a beaver dam and subsequent loss of habitat because of a proposed road building. I like every single thing about this story, but especially the name of the town, which sounded almost like candid camera was trying to see how I’d react.

Construction of southwest ring road will destroy popular beaver pond, protesters say

Protestors concerned about wildlife habitat loss due to construction of the southwest ring road led a walk to a popular beaver pond in the Weaselhead area Saturday.

The biggest issue is the realignment of the Elbow River and construction of a bridge overtop, which could mean the loss of a popular beaver pond, said Diane Stinson, a bird watcher who regularly frequents the area in the southwest corner of Calgary.

“They’ve proposed to fill in 24 wetlands between Highway 8 and Highway 22X,” she said.

“Four of those wetlands directly impact the beaver pond and the beaver pond is a local treasure. People go there all the time to see the wildlife and if the wetlands are filled in as the contractor has applied, the beaver pond will cease to exist.”

Ahh the chills up my spine when I read a sentence like that! You can’t imagine. Or when I see a photo like this:

“People are obviously concerned,” he said during Saturday’s protest organized by the group, YYC Cares. “Any damage that might happen to any wildlands, we compensate it three-to-one. We work with Ducks Unlimited and other organizations.

“In the original plan, our project would have come much closer to the beaver pond, but we’ve actually moved the road and changed the plan, so we’re going to have a pretty wide buffer between the two.” Johnson said trees and other vegetation will also be planted to strengthen the buffer between the road and beaver pond.

That’s right. We work with Duck Hunters to trade the destruction of habitat by our bulldozers for some more wetlands for duck hunters. That seems fair, right?

The $1.42 billion southwest ring road project will link Highway 8 with Highway 22X and is slated to be completed in the fall of 2018. The resident group has also filed letters with the province’s Environmental Appeals Board about the design, without success.

“We’ve had two different levels of appeal and our first appeal was dismissed,” Stinson said. “We just heard [Friday] that our second appeal was rejected. They’re saying we’re not directly affected by this.” The style of bridge being used to cross the Elbow River is also a problem for some members of YYC Cares.

“We were never aware until just recently that instead of an open-span bridge like Stoney Trail in the northwest, this is a cut-and-fill earth and berm dam,” Stinson said.

Something tells me there’s a reason you weren’t informed about this, Stinson.

Founded in 1965 by Grant MacEwan, the Weaselhead is one of three protected parks in Calgary — the other two being the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Griffith Woods Park. The Weaselhead is a source of Calgary’s drinking water and is “incredibly biodiverse,” said Paul Finkleman, president of the Weaselhead Preservation Society.

“We at the Weaselhead Society call it Calgary’s largest outdoor classroom,” he said.

“We have thousands and thousands of kids every year learning about water ecology, forest ecology, water biology and environmental stewardship. It’s just such a wonderful place, not just for families to enjoy, but for children to learn… right within city limits.”

Thousands of children, and some very wealthy-looking protestors. My odds are on the beaver dam. Great work friends of the beaver pond! You have all our support and spirit! Send your happy thoughts to the plucky folks of WEASELHEAD which, in addition to being the kind of name a newspaper loves to write over and over, is also about 3 hours over the border from Montana.

A protester, left, speaks to Ian McColl with KGL, the company building the southwest ring road, during an event Saturday organized by YYC Cares. The group says construction of the southwest ring road will negatively affect wildlife in the Weaselhead area. (Julien Lecacheur/CBC)

There are two more prizes this sunday, the first will be adored by all, and the second might mean nothing to anyone but me. Here’s the first, which was posted on my FB page by beaver buddy Lee Lawrence of Oregon. No back story provided, but honestly, none needed.

There are cute babies an there are oh-my-god-I-wanna-die cute babies. And I believe you know how I would classify this one.

Now onto the Heidi amusement, which comes because I stumbled across this nursery rhyme in the context of our current presidential administration. Everyone knows the first line but few remember the poem it comes from.

Birds of a feather, Flock Together
And so do pigs and swine
Rats and mice shall have their choice
And so will I have mine.

There were two things that struck me about this jingle. The first was that it should obviously be about beavers, which I’ll get to later. The second was that its rhyme is SO off. Obviously there’s an internal rhyme scheme in the first line with feather and together, but what happens to that in line three? In what crazy world do ‘mice’ and ‘choice’ rhyme?

Jon and I brainstormed a bit about this mystery and he thought there was a chancethey rhymed in the Cornish dialect. So of course I marched straight to beaver expert Derek Gow and asked him. Guess what he said?

“Here in Devon and Cornwall there is a tendency to pronounce things like mice as moice. Same applies to the other words so maybe the connection is there.”

Ah HA! Mystery solved! Rats and Moise will have their Choice! Heh heh heh…Thank you, Derek! Now for the other problem.

Birds of a feather, flock together
Both closely and beyond
Bugs, frogs and fish, are all they wish
Beside a beaver pond.

Leggy Matters

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and water, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? July 29, 2017

A week to go! Can you believe it? Tomorrow Leslie comes over to tag and process every item for the silent auction, and our living room starts to look like a festival way-station as we bring everything down we need to remember. I found out yesterday that the electrical has been laid in the park but the wifi boost installation has been delayed until wednesday, which matters because people can’t use credit cards at the auction without it. Wednesday? Two days before the festival. Do you think they could be cutting this any closer?

Knowing our city maybe they mean the wednesday after the festival.

Be that as it may, we stumble onward. There’s nice letter published this morning in Scotland from a Mr. George Murdoch of Laurencekirk, whom I don’t believe we know.

Beavers help reduce downstream flooding

Sir, – What a shame Mr Milne’s attack (July 26) on Jim Crumley led him to ignore the positive influence beavers have on the surrounding environment and focus only on the inconvenience they may have helped cause through helping raise the water level by an inch or two.

In a long-term (2002 to 2016) study conducted by Stirling University it was found that the presence of beavers increased the number of species found by 28%, improved pollutant levels, increased the retention of organic matter by a factor of seven, and almost halved phosphorous and nitrate levels.

By strange coincidence they also reduce downstream flooding in addition to helping restore degraded streams.

These measures, in turn, aid our avian community no end and attract and sustain an increasing number of birds.

If I may remind Mr Milne, Kinnordy is primarily a bird reserve managed by the RSPB.

The Alyth Flood Report, compiled by The Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, concluded that beaver activity made little or no significant contribution to the flood there, contrary to the subtle claim made in his letter.

If he wishes to look for a constructive response to his criticism, he could do worse than offer to lend a hand with any measures the RSPB might deem necessary to help him keep his feet dry.

George Murdoch.
Auchcairnie Cottages,
Laurencekirk.

Nice job, George! Excellently written. Of course it takes a hundred smart citizens to force a city to make 1 modestly less ignorant decision about beavers, and that’s in America. Probably more in a land where they’ve been extinct for 5 centuries it will take a thousand. But it’s good to know that folks are getting the message.

Even MassWildlife seems to understand about beaver-biodiversity. I just couldn’t help but notice where they chose to install their tail cam to get this fine footage. It makes sense.

Watch: Bull moose, then swimming bear on Westhampton trail cam

WESTHAMPTON — Nearly a week after we picked up trail cam footage of a cow moose and her calf, a good-sized bull came wandering by.

Footage of a bear, which came by that same trail cam two days later, is included at the end of the video. That bear, as a friend pointed out after watching the clip, was clearly on a mission. That mission apparently included a quick dip in a small beaver pond a short distance away. Footage of that swim, taken by our second trail cam, follows the first video.

I bet our city is grateful they never had these visitors to their beaver pond!

Beavers welcomed in Maryland park

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Who's saving beavers now? July 3, 2017

It’s nice to see beavers greeted in Maryland with anything other than alarm, but here’s proof that it sometimes occurs.

Off the Beaten Path: Busy beavers create ponds near Ritchie Highway in Severna Park

Along Cattail Creek large trees are being cut down near the water’s edge and used for development nearby. The trees have been felled by the teeth of beavers, and the development is two beaver dams, built inside Cattail Creek near Ritchie Highway in Severna Park.

Over the past two years, the beavers’ work has transformed the area from an emergent wetland to that of a flooded wetland, said Magothy River Association President Paul Spadaro. The beavers have created nothing short of ponds and a shoreline in the area.

Interested residents can check out the beavers’ craftsmanship for themselves — the site is accessible by public property, the county-owned Cattail Creek Natural Area.

The first dam built by the beavers is close to Ritchie Highway where it passes over Cattail Creek. The dam is at least three feet tall.

Farther upstream is a second dam, which Spadaro said has been built recently. He noticed a lot of activity this winter. The beavers did not apply for construction permits, so a precise construction date wasn’t available.

They’re active from dusk to dawn, so the best shot at seeing a beaver is likely in the early morning. That’s exactly what Magothy River Association intern Campbell Jones and volunteer Charles Germain did Tuesday.

The pair caught the critters in action Tuesday around 5 a.m. and made a video available on YouTube and posted on the Magothy River Association’s Facebook page.

Assorted beaver goodies

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 15, 2017

More good news for beavers. This time from our own Mt. Diablo Audubon, where we’re a lead story in their newsletter the quail and a the top ‘community event’.

quail-2017

We also learned that the Forest Service will be bringing their very adorable and functional ‘mobile ranger station’ to the festival. Won’t this look the part?

More news is that I was notified by Dr. Duncan Haley that they are offering a Ph.D. candidate paid position at the University College of Southeast Norway in functional ecology. He wanted to make sure we passed this along in case any of you beaver scholars were sufficiently tempted. You can go read about it here: Duncan also notes

In Norway PhD students get paid properly – the pay code translates to 436 900kr/year or c. 51 500USD. For US citizens there is also an amazing tax treaty provision, which applied to Rachel Malison when she did her beaver/fish postdoc here. She didn’t have to pay income tax to anyone, US or Norway. Plus you get a year off on full pay if you have a baby and other social benefits. Please circulate.

And it’s not like the science positions in the US will be doing much for the next four years, right? You might get to see the Northern lights! Norway is a beautiful country. Take a look.

Starved for information

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Dispersal, Environmental, Mike Callahan, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? June 14, 2017

Why is it that folks in the county library complain about having nothing to read? I guess for the same reason your teenager opens the fridge and says there’s nothing to eat. Certainly the state of New York has blinders on when it comes to solving beaver problems, other wise they would have called on Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife years ago. The answer to their question is a whopping 130 miles away.

Spencer Trying to Fix Nuisance Beaver Problem in Nichols Pond

As the Spencer Village Board of Trustees continues to ponder the beaver problem that has been plaguing Nichols Pond, they sought input from expert Scott MacDonald, who has had to deal with the industrious critters in his capacity as executive director of the Waterman Conservation Education Center in Appalachin.

For years MacDonald has been trying to figure out the best way to curb damage by the beaver population at Brick Pond in Owego. He found an effective method, though it involved installing two bulkheads that control the water level at a cost of $80,000 taxpayers’ dollars. The Spencer Village Board is seeking a more cost-effective way to prevent damage in and around the village-owned pond.

MacDonald agreed that it was also probably a beaver that chewed through the underwater electrical line that powers the fountain in the center of the pond. Goodrich said he’s not sure whether or not the fountain will be repaired in time to turn it on this summer.

I want to meet the man who sold them the 80,000 dollar solution, because he’s a genius and should work for the federal government. Clearly no kind of flow device or beaver deceiver was ever installed because they have a crew of volunteers pulling out debris on a daily basis.

The handful of volunteers who clean the debris out of the pond’s culverts are becoming fed up, according to Goodrich. “They want to move onto other stuff,” he said of the volunteers, “but they’re so busy with the beavers they can’t do anything else.”

“I don’t blame them,” he added,” because they’re out there every day.” He said that most if not all of the volunteers are older and that the physical labor of clearing out sticks and packed mud can be hard on them.

Therefore, Goodrich said, the board needs to come up with a solution sooner rather than later. The beavers cannot be trapped and relocated because they are considered a “nuisance” species in New York State, the logic being that it’s not fair for people to release beavers elsewhere and pass on the burden to other landowners.

Goodrich said that he is not opposed to having the beavers killed, a resolution that none of the other trustees were very enthusiastic about supporting.

Most of the trustees said they believe that if the beavers are killed another family of beavers will move in. Goodrich argued that trapping the beavers that live in the pond currently would at least give the village time to come up with an adequate solution before new ones decide to make the pond their home.

MacDonald said he considers having the family beavers killed the one “black mark” on his record as caretaker for the pond, even though it was necessary to secure the state funding necessary to save the pond after the flood.

“It was very bad,” he said. “The public got very upset about it.”

We learned so much from that incident. We still don’t have a clue how to solve beaver beaver problems.

Since that time, he has learned how to raise and lower water levels at certain parts of the pond. If he pays attention to what the beavers are up to, he can often dissuade them from building in problematic places because beavers won’t build dams where the water is not deep enough for them to float the big logs they need to start their shelter. Beavers, he told the board, do not like to drag heavy logs.

Even with the bulkheads, MacDonald said there is some manual labor involved. There’s one culvert he has to dig out himself every once in a while or it becomes a major project — over the last winter he let it go too long, he said, and a few weeks ago he had to go out in a wetsuit with a backhoe to clear the stopped-up water flow.

Some level of manual labor seems inevitable if the beavers are to stay, but Spencer Village Trustee Nicole O’Connell-Avery said that she disapproves of setting kill traps.

She said the traps would likely be set underwater and would catch the beavers by the leg, holding them until they drown. She said it sounds like an awful way to die, and questioned whether or not the traps could endanger swimmers, pets or boaters who fall overboard.

O’Connell-Avery was enthusiastic about the idea of installing heavy-duty fencing in strategic areas that would prevent the beavers from building at the pond’s intakes and outtakes. Mayor Christine Lester said she thought this was worth a try.

O’Connell-Avery also offered up the unique but untested idea of population control: catching, neutering and releasing the pond’s male beavers. O’Connell-Avery works at Cornell University, and she said she would ask around to see if her colleagues would be interested in using the pond as a case study.

Beavers live in families of eight to 10, and usually only one family will live in a body of water as small as Nichols Pond. When the family has about eight offspring, the parents kick out the two oldest, who then seek new habitats at neighboring ponds, according to MacDonald. O”Connell-Avery said that this structured family setup might make for an ideal situation in which researchers could trap the males and keep track of the results.

When the family has about EIGHT OFF SPRING THEY KICK OUT THE TWO OLDEST? Really? And you work at Cornell? Are you the frickin’ janitor?

Good lord this riles me. I’m too old for this sort of nonsense. Considering that Cornell already HIRED Mike Callahan to install a flow device, every one of these folks should know better. That was just over an entire year ago, I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t be up on such ancient history.

I guarantee you Mike didn’t charge the university 80,000 dollars for his installation, by the way. Heck even when we brought Skip Lisle 3000 miles out from VERMONT to solve our problem it didn’t cost us 80,000.

ACK! Someone get me a paper bag to breathe into. The Cornell website tells me that Nicole is a supervising vet Tech at the wildlife animal hospital at the university. She could really make this happen. We can only hope that before she picks up the scapel to neuter these beavers she cracks open a book and reads that beavers enter estrus once a year and young disperse at two years regardless of the family size. Surely she will listen to a reasonable argument?

Given Spencer’s track record so far, I’m not counting on it.

I need to calm myself by sharing the beautiful new sign that arrived yesterday for my beaver booth. Isn’t this lovely? It will hang out from my booth like one of those Ye Olde Shoppe signs!