Category: City Reports

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!

13 Reasons Why you should always film in Beaver Park

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, featured, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's blaming beavers now? June 13, 2017

Yesterday all of Martinez was a buzz with the excitement of Paramount pictures filming season 2 of the netflix series “The 13 reasons why” in our streets, courtyards and parks. The busy Perryman’s had to go to Vallejo yesterday and on our way out we saw maybe 7 huge white trailer trucks with equipment inside, the street blocked off at the financial courthouse, and beaver park blocked and barricaded. There were film crews literally everywhere and people running around with sound equipment, scene props makinglast minute touches.

It must of went on all day, because when we got home at 3:30 they were set up on main street filming in a restaurant with outside dining and there and watchers were lined up on the opposite wall across the street. Lots of cellphones photos were snapped of all the drama, including this lovely shot of them in Beaver park.

The production has made its share of news both because of the subject matter (a young girl leaves audio tapes to her classmates about why she committed suicide) the quality of the work, and the bay area-centric locale. Because major scenes have been shot in San Rafael, Sebastopol, Petaluma, Vallejo and now Martinez. We first heard about it when a note was left on our door asking if we would be interested in having our house in the filming, they might want to use both the exterior and interior shots over the summer, and we would be paid for our trouble. As exciting as it was to think about, my second life as a child psychologist probably wouldn’t have worked well with having my house filmed for a teen suicide production, so we politely declined.

Obviously, by cleverly filming in beaver park, they got me anyway. Smile.

Kinda fun story from Kitsap Washington this morning. I’m never horribly worried about Washington beaver stories, because even if they don’t always end well for the beavers, I know there are folks close to home pushing for the right solutions. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Road crews and beavers busy working on Brownsville Highway

BROWNSVILLE — Eager beavers — both real and figurative — are making life challenging for drivers on Brownsville Highway in Central Kitsap.

For some time now, hardworking road crews have been prepping that stretch of highway, filling dips and doing “grind outs” where the old surface is badly cracked, in preparation for putting down a new layer of asphalt, according to Kitsap County Road Superintendent Jacques Dean. The goal is to roll down the new layer towards the end of this week, “depending on the weather and completion of the repairs,” Dean said.

Curing the chronic flooding in the dip in the Brownsville Highway below the county’s sewer treatment plant will be more difficult, Dean said. Water over the highway there, in addition to damaging the asphalt and washing out the west shoulder, was also the cause of several accidents last spring.

“We were just out there,” Dean said. He explained that the problem is beavers building dams. The debris from their construction projects plugs up the inlet to the culvert designed to carry runoff from the uphill wetland to the east under the road to the wetland on the lower west side of the road.

Fixing the problem is complicated by several problems.

“[The dams are] on private property. It’s on wetlands. And we can’t work off of the right of way,” Dean said. To get permission to do any work, he said he is going to have to go through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, state Fish and Wildlife, and Kitsap County Public Health.

An added challenge to clearing the channel is that it is probably going to involve a lot of handwork. “You can’t get standard equipment in there,” Dean said. “It would sink right down into the peat bog and mud.”

Too bad your big machines don’t work in mud. Because beaver’s certainly do.

Now, if you’ll excuse me Vista Prints is offering me 50% off again and I’ve been waiting to make signs out of these graphics I put together for that Tattoo booth (Where Erika and the Watershed Steward Interns will be helping kids put the wildlife tattoos they earned on leather covers) and the journal-making booth (Where Jon will be helping the kids make nature journals with the covers). They generally tell the story fairly well and I’m pretty happy with them.