Category: City Reports

Where’s that Monkey again?

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, Environmental, New Species, pictures January 3, 2012

Moses Otter — Young Otter Grooming: Photo - Moses Silva

When Jon trotted down with the dog on New Years’ eve around 4:30 there was a crowd gathered around at the Escobar bridge watching this little fellow meticulously grooming his fur without any awareness of his audience. Moses Silva was there filming of course, and very kindly gave me some photos afterwards. What a fantastic way to draw attention to Mom’s memorial! Thanks Otter! The mayor walked by on his way to the creek monkey, but if he had any impulse to look at what his constituents were watching, he gamely resisted it.

As you can see, the dedicated grooming paid off, and The nibbler eventually fluffed himself into a very warm and furry young otter. Otters are born blind and helpless but are in the water by two months. They stay with the mother for most of a year, then straggle of on their own to make their way before the new pups are born in spring. Obviously this young one was introduced to Alhambra Creek as a prime fishing spot, and came back because it was easy and familiar.

Great egret gift — Great Egret: Photo - Moses Silva

This great Egret was jealous of the spot and came to check it out for himself when the otter retired. Wow, what a creek!

Speaking of memorials, did you spot the End of the Year Highlights in the Gazette? Along with a mention of August Events that gave the beaver festival top billing over the Peddler’s Faire there was this bit of reflection.

September ended on an ignominious note for City staff after a downtown, creek-side property owner complained about the inclusion of a beaver in a new mural being painted in Main Street Plaza. When staff directed the artist to remove the beaver illustration at the behest of the property owner, word got out and area media, including the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote about the latest chapter of the “city’s conflicted relationship with its resident beaver family,” as Chronicle reporter Carolyn Jones wrote.

Did you catch that? A creek side complaint! That didn’t make the earlier reports and I suppose the rumor eventually percolated to the surface. Good Ol’ Dave Scola, taking the heat for a powerful landowner’s petulant decision AGAIN. Well, we always knew how it happened. But it’s nice to see it in print. Thanks Greta.

And our Georgia friend wrote me that Sherri’s interview plays annoyingly with every page load if you are using Chrome, and doesn’t play at all if he’s using another browser. I tried several and realized he was right. I apologize for that and will work on the fix. Sometimes I forget to check how the website is working with other browsers. We’ll get the hang of this eventually! We’re on iTunes now, so GO SUBSCRIBE, avoid the hassel and never miss an episode! And while you’re there maybe you could rate beavers kindly?

Castorum Ministrari

heidi08 Beavers, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 2, 2012

Did you ever have a dream college? Where, if you were blessed with millions more dollars and thirty more IQ points and an SAT score you couldn’t see thru if you held it up to the light, you would have pursued a dream education as a dream co-ed under dream professors doing dream research? Maybe it was Notre Dame or Oxford or MIT, or maybe you were lucky enough to live the dream (or escape it entirely). But mine was always Wellesley College in Massachusetts. A Liberal Arts school for women started in 1870. Hilary Clinton went there, and so did Madeleine Albright and Diane Sawyer. The motto of Wellesley is “Non Ministrari sed Ministrare” (Not to be ministered unto, but to minister). Apparently they are especially happy to minister unto beavers, which if I had gone to my dream college I would probably be more able to translate.

So you can imagine how I felt when Cheryl sent me this this.

Wellesley beavers killed off

By bbrown | Published: December 31, 2011

Pretty wild story in the Wellesley Local Town Pages (you have to kind of scroll around to locate the story) about the Wellesley Health Department, DPW and Natural Resources Commission joining forces with a business to kill off some beavers whose dam or dams caused flooding in neighborhoods near the Wellesley Recycling & Disposal Facility.

Beavers causing problems for a low-lying town! That almost never always happens. So a business or two complains to Public Works, and they take it up with the Conservation Commission because you need permission to kill beavers in MA. It’s not an emergency, and the commission determines there’s no threat to people or property, YET, but they decide to wait a few months and then call in an expert. Hopefully, they assume, it will be too late to fix in December. Now this famous college town is not completely blind to its position and following in the world and has the presence of mind to bring in someone that would offer other solutions than just trapping – maybe think about installing a flow device to control the problem humanely and keep the vegans happy.

Remember, this is MA so you can guess who they called. He dutifully examined the problem ten days before Christmas and advised the powers that be that the odds of fixing it humanely weren’t stellar. They could try an installation but the wetlands were very shallow, no pond could be tolerated and the beavers might just rebuild somewhere else. I was curious why the commission meeting minutes reported going to the Health Department, (which means permission to trap any way possible) before they brought in Mike. He says that although the article says Beaver Solutions did the trapping, that isn’t true. He gave them his feedback but didn’t know until he read the article that they hired someone else for that step.

My guess is the tossed the name “Solutions” around to make them sound slightly more humane than they were feeling. Fortunately the Executive Director of the town’s Natural Resources Conservation Commission said some astonishingly distracting things to the media to justify her decision.

Why do people say stupid things like “in my 14 years with the town this is the first instance of beavers causing a problem”? They just provoke me to start the new year with a morning’s research on the Google tempting me into using a compass pencil to identify all towns with beaver conflicts in the last 14 years within a 10 mile radius of Ms. Bowser’s front door. (How’s that for a name, btw?) You know, towns like Needham, Wayland and Natick, to name a few. I’m a busy woman, I don’t have time to waste wondering how it is that the town could have a “Beaver Street”, “Beaver Creek” and “Beaver Meadows” without any history of EVER having a problem with beavers?

Don’t tell me that there aren’t 100 strong and compassionate young women on the campus willing to steward the wetlands if the flow device failed. Or a host of environmental science instructors that could lead their class into learning how to install another while studying all the wildlife that appears because of the beaver dams. Don’t tell me there aren’t enough bleeding heart’s in those ivory halls to keep the beavers from flooding or eating begonias by painstakingly unclogging the drains or filters or pipes or whatever it takes. This is Wellesley for Chrissake!

It heartened me that that on my morning of research I found (count them) 63 references to this story in everything from real estate listings to local blogs. At least it will get attention. If I didn’t know better I’d assume that this is the grand lesson they teach at Wellesley.

Always do the right thing. Unless it’s hard.

East Side, West Side, All Around the Town!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers December 22, 2011

Remember that nice article I posted about a few days ago regarding Beaver reintroduction on the West Coast of Oregon? Well here’s the compliment from the East side courtesy of Suzanne Fouty.

A task that’s flat-out perfect for beavers

Beavers can help restore streamside ecosystems.

By JAYSON JACOBY

The Whitman Ranger District has laid out a big job, and one that’s tailor-made for beavers.

But first the district has to entice these industrious, but relatively finicky, rodents to the work site. In theory, attracting beavers is pretty simple. What you need, mainly, are water and trees. Deciduous trees, in particular — aspen, cottonwoods and willows being among beavers’ favorite species. Leafy trees lure beavers in the way candy calls in kids.

Except beavers not only enjoy munching on trees.

The animals also use trees as the building material for their dams. Beavers — and specifically those dams — can confer considerable benefits on streams and the surrounding land, said Fouty, who is the hydrologist for the Whitman Ranger District and developed the beaver project.

Streams with a stable network of beaver dams and ponds tend to flow more reliably, being less susceptible to the boom-bust cycle of spring flood and summer drought that’s common in beaver-deficient creeks in Eastern Oregon.

Ahh sweet music to my ears! Lets start this new solar year with a tale of light and hope. And lets make sure that the year has LOTS of other tails, if you know what I mean.

Other laudable effects, Fouty said, could include:

• Lowering water temperatures, a boon for trout and other fish

• Raising the water table

• Widening the zone of lush streamside vegetation that’s valuable habitat for wildlife as well as domestic livestock

“Beavers are a tool, and one with huge potential to improve stream conditions,” Fouty said. “Basically you let the beavers do the work.”

And beavers, unlike engineers and construction crews, don’t draw a salary.

Now why aren’t more news stories like this? I was so happy to read this article it reminded me to ask Suzanne for an interview for Agents of Change, which she graciously accepted and we are currently arranging. I have never met her, but have been reading her name for upwards of three years, and she is usually involved in whatever good beaver work is ongoing at the moment. By all accounts she is a lovely person as well as being a fiercely good natured beaver advocate, so I’m very excited!

As for the third tactic, the Forest Service in 2009 planted 5,200 willows along a 1.7-mile reach of Camp Creek, and in 2010, Whitman students planted several hundred willows along Gimlet Creek. More planting is planned for 2012. Besides serving as a source of food and dam-building material for beavers, the willows shade the streams, lowering the temperature, and their roots stabilize the banks.

Fouty acknowledges that a burgeoning beaver population can lead to problems as well as benefits. Beaver dams can plug culverts, leading to road washouts, they can damage irrigation ditches, and the rising water table can inundate streamside campsites. But she points out that there are proven techniques for dealing with such problems — a device known as a “beaver deceiver,” for instance, can control the level of a pond and prevent localized flooding, or discourage the animals by continually draining the pond behind a dam.

Ultimately, Fouty said, the presence of beavers has the potential to help farmers and ranchers who depend on streams for irrigation. Unlike manmade structures, beaver dams constantly leak, so even a stream with several dams will always flow. Moreover, by temporarily storing water, and thus raising the water table, a stream with plentiful beaver dams tends to maintain a higher flow in summer and early fall than an undammed stream.

Ahh. It occurs to me that when the rare (but increasingly less rare) good beaver articles appear, I quote them more and tend to write less. Hmmm. Go read the whole thing, and there’s something to look forward to! A day when you hardly have to read me on this website at all and my role is reduced to just pointing you to examples of beaver gospel from around the world!

Beavers and Badgers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 21, 2011

“The Badger State” has decided to update its beaver policy. See in the 80’s they counted a beaver population of 200,000 and did some research that found that removing beaver dams from streams was the single best thing Wisconsin could do for its trout, so they’ve been doing so at such a great rate that there are only about 80,000 beavers left in the state. Is that too few, they wonder? Did we do TOO good a job? Mind you, they’re review of the policy isn’t prompted by any new reading of the research, or comprehension of the trickle down effect of fewer beavers on wetland ecology – but because (this is a quote, I’m not kidding)

“Certain user groups are concerned that the recreational opportunity provided by beaver is not what they’d like to see,”

“User Groups” as in TRAPPERS. There aren’t enough beaver to enjoyably kill. Maybe we should change our regulations to encourage a few more so that our sporty sportsmen have fewer empty snares. They are busily having meetings with the public to get input about attitudes towards beavers and soothe the ruffled feathers – er, scales – of the Trout Unlimited folk who are certain the beaver mean harm to trout.

Steve Avelallemant, of Rhinelander, is the fisheries supervisor for the DNR’s Northern Region, and he admitted that beaver dams can be a problem, especially on trout streams in northern Wisconsin.

“They (beaver and trout) just cannot exist together for a host of reasons,” said Avelallemant, who helped shape the state’s original beaver plan. “Out West, beavers are a good thing for trout streams. In Wisconsin, not so much.

Beaver and trout just can’t exist together! And since trout are non-negotiable, beavers must be limited! Never mind that up until they were eradicated before the 1800’s the state used to have millions more beaver. Interestingly, before we eliminated the local natives they had lived off plentiful trout streams for 2000 years and never complained of the shortage. Never mind history. Never mind about all that “fancy-pants” research that says beavers are good for trout. This is WISCONSIN. Our streams are different. Our trout are different. We have our OWN research. Just look.

Well, this looks interesting. Go get some coffee. That’s a pretty long study period. Let’s take a look at what it says, shall we?

Okay, no skimming allowed. you HAVE to read this. Beaver dams raise the water temperature, and ruin channels and bring in riff-raff fish that eat up all the insects AND attract wildlife that eat up all the trout. Wow. And most of the research cited is from the Eisenhower era. So we know it must be true.

The study goes on to review several different methods of stream restoration and to compare these methods by region around the state. Marinette county seems to be the segment designated as the no-beaver zone and USDA kindly removed all the dams (and beavers) in these areas. Then the measures were taken again after the streams had time to get used to their new no-beaverness. Guess what! The beaverless streams did better!

I know I’M excited! Don’t I look excited? I was so excited I wrote them a four page paper in response, which if you’re the kind of person that cares you can read here. In the meantime I will tell you that I got very interested in this particular “region” which was the only part of the study devoted to beaver killing and showing stellar results. Since I’ve read beaver research in the post-Eisenhower period, I was very curious about their findings. I hunted around the internet looking for possible confounding variables – and found that the nearby Menominee River was the proud home of the Ansul chemical company that made Sufur Dioxide and was sued for releasing Arsenic into the water for around 50 years. Around that time of this study the EPA busily was forcing them to clean up the ground water and build protective berms over the poisonous sediment. Hmm.

Could THAT have anything to do with trout health ya think?

So while I was busy smacking my forehead and reliving the plot of Silkwood, Rick went hunting for data on trout and beaver. He found this lovely restocking guide from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife conservation group. See Vermont’s worried about its native trout too, so they’re encouraging watershed groups to put in some baby ones (called fry) to keep the streams going. They have some GREAT advice about how to do it. Check it out.

So apparently if you live in opposite ends of the country in Washington or Vermont beaver dams are good for trout. But if you have the misfortune to live in Wisconsin they’re just AWFUL. So awful in fact that only scientific papers from 50 years ago are courageous enough to trumpet their disaster. DNR has a lovely little survey asking for public input on beavers, with searching, unbiased questions like to “how badly do beavers ruin your fishing season? very badly – not sure – or only slightly badly” And “on a scale of 1-5 how much do you dislike beavers when they viciously chew down your trees and flood your property”. Not a push-poll in any way, they are respected scientists! Perhaps a few readers of this website will give that survey the careful responses it deserves.

How does California feel about beaver dams and trout or salmon? Well Brock Dolman sent this picture yesterday of the fourth annual release of 170 adult Coho into Salmon Creek Watershed in Sonoma County which he made sure to photograph along side a beaver puppet to make his point.

Could Wisconsin possibly maintain its stubborn position in the face of all this data to the contrary? You know badgers are famous for not giving up even losing battles. Reportedly, their skeletons are sometime found with their jaws still locked together in combat. I guess they don’t call it the “Badger” state for nothing.

Oh and Happy Solstice, by the way! Since today’s another no burn day you can’t have a fire all night to keep up your spirits on the longest night of the year, but light a candle anyway and dream about new possibilities for beavers coming soon!

Beaver Contraband

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental December 20, 2011

Belorussian beavers became accidental vigilantes when a haul of smuggled cigarettes became stuck in their dam.

This is a fun story but almost nothing about the report is comprehensible to me. See if you can figure it out.

The rodents felled a tree to form the foundations for their new home. By chance it also served as a barrier to a consignment of GPS-tracked cigarettes, whose progress was halted just 15 meters from the Lithuanian border. The small raft was visible to border guards, who are currently investigating the origin of the contraband.

I assume the reporters are operating under the false assumption that beavers live in the dam, and that the dam prevented a floating raft of contraband from getting to its destination. And this is news exactly why?

This is not the first time the four-legged creatures have made international headlines. Back in 2008, the furry animals nearly caused a diplomatic row between Belarus and Lithuania.

A family of beavers had constructed a dam that threatened to flood part of the border area.

Specialists were arguing over whether the beavers come from Belarus or Lithuania: in Belarus beavers are a protected species and it is illegal to hunt them.

SUBspecies, but okay. I have an idea. Since they’re impossible to tell apart let’s not kill either one, okay? What happened to the cigarettes anyway?