Category: Creative Solutions

State of the Beaver 2017

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? November 2, 2016

The State of the Beaver Conference Website is up and running. They are still in the process of adding presenters to the agenda so the schedule isn’t filled in yet, but it is already looking fine.

The State of the Beaver Conference

This Year’s Theme: Beaver – Agents of Regeneration

From its inception the Beaver Advocacy Committee (BAC) has well understood that a lack of data, disinformation and a dearth of understanding regarding the benefits of beaver ecology has dominated many State agency policy making venues. There was also evident a deeply entrenched cultural intransigence and social stigma in local communities associated with beaver in western society. “Grandfather did it this way and so do I.”

In contrast to this, many valuable studies have been done by several reputable academic institutions and government agency employees making it clear that beaver ecology a significant component essential to threatened specie recovery.

As a result BAC began directing its efforts to gather as much current information that they could find to address restoration ecology issues. A cursory survey of contemporary individuals interested in the science and application of beaver ecology turned up an wonderful array of resources. The end result was the establishment of the State of the Beaver Conference regime. A strategy to consistently meaningfully gather new and old beaver ecology advocates was born.

The conferences are designed to be low budget. Though we value immensely the investments individuals have made to glean data and discover critical influences of beaver ecology, we wanted to make the conferences affordable to anyone that wanted to come. At the same time it was important to have the highest caliber of academic and professional standards possible for the purposes of disseminating worthy information and networking. The design was to have science and information meld with grass roots passion and commitment. What value is a published pier reviewed scientific paper if it sits on a shelf or remains in the ethereal realms of intellectual nuance?

Since then we have had the incredible experience of working with deeply committed scientists, academics and visionary advocating individuals at these biennial events. People from across the world have come to the State of the Beaver Conferences to contribute their expertise and passion. Through the awesome venue of world communication we have become a support network to move this critical ecology forward. We do this as people of place connected to our own ecosystem health. The idealism that drives natural science discovery is melded with practitioners of restoration ecology and human infrastructure/nature interfaces. We are grateful for this participation.

We especially want to thank the many individuals who have contributed to the conference successes. There are far too many to enumerate individually. The Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians has been particularly generous in supporting this work. Needless to say we want to extend our sincere gratitude to Leonard and Lois Houston for their tireless commitment to enhance life in our world.

The conference is truly THE place to hear and talk about new developments being done to cooperate with beaver and benefit from their hard work. If you’ve ever thought about going you really should plan on making the trip. It’s a pleasant drive and it truly exciting to be in a room full of these eager minds connecting and recharging off each other. I have heard that Cows and Fish’s Lorne Fitch is gratefully considering being there with Worth A Dam and Leonard Houston’s help. Obviously I’ll be there as well – so you’ll already know people.

Here’s the outline for my talk I just pulled together last weekend.

Surviving and Thriving with Urban Beavers

Urban streams boast the low gradients and comfortable conditions beavers prefer. Even more inviting, these neglected corridors often come decorated with appetizing trees. In 2015 alone 38 states reported beaver activity in urban areas. While trapping is still the most common answer to uninvited beavers, more and more cities like Martinez CA are learning to welcome these ecosystem engineers with surprisingly beneficial results.

Dr. Perryman formed Worth A Dam to defend the beavers in her home town of Martinez CA. Using outreach, resource coordination and the educational website ‘martinezbeavers.org/wordpress’ the group works to teach other cities how and why to co-exist with beavers. In 2016 the group won the John Muir Conservation award for education. Since 2008 it has organized an annual beaver festival that has inspired similar efforts in 5 states and Canada. Last year, the festival was formerly recognized and added to the national congressional record. As California faces more drought years, Perryman believes that it is more important than ever to coexist with these important ‘water savers’.

Skip Lisle made a flow device in the conference hall at the first meeting which I didn’t attend. I talked Mike Callahan into attending the second one where I was star-struck to meet Sherri Tippie, Mary Obrien and Glynnis Hood. I convinced Leonard that Brock Dolman of OAEC should talk at the third one and Mike Settell of Watershed Guardians on stage as well. I’ve played my little part in deepening the beaver bench over the years so to speak, and I sometimes get fed up of listening to talks were people are only thinking about using beavers as a means to an end but I always come back a little smarter and eager to work harder.

More wonders from Cows and Fish

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? October 29, 2016

Time for more beaver wisdom from our very impressive friends at Cows and Fish in Alberta.

Beavers are friends of the environment

Beavers were promoted as friends of the environment and property owners during Beavers in Our Landscape workshop Oct. 12 in High Prairie.

Lesser Slave Watershed Council and Peace Country Beef and Forage Association co-hosted the event with presenters from Cows and Fish – Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society.

“Livestock producers usually consider beavers as pests,” says Jen Allen, agri-environmental program co-ordinator of the beef and forage association.
“The workshop showed that we can work and live with beavers.”

Currently the critters seem to be rampant in the northern parts of Alberta.

“Beavers will always be prevalent here, so more people need to know about them better,” says Kaylyn Jackson, watershed co-ordinator for the water council.

Cows and Fish presenters urge property owners and livestock producers to be friends with beavers, that help sustain and enhance water supply and provide many benefits to the environment, habitat and people.

One of the most remarkable things about this Alberta organization is that it marches straight into the heart of the greatest possible beaver conflict and teaches “It is in your best interest to keep beavers on your land”. Even the name itself conveys how unafraid of conflict they are. They understand that you will never convince folks to work with beaver if they feel it is not in the interest of the two things held most dear to them: so Cows and Fish is a fearless name for this fearless organization.

Earlier this year they released their very impressive publication on beaver ecosystem services which you should go read again here and resolving conflicts. It happens to have some of the VERY BEST teaching illustrations I have ever seen on the subject, crafted by their brilliant artist Elizabeth Saunders.

And my personal favorite:

Back to the article which does a less outstanding job at describing this:

“We encourage people to work together and have conversations about where beavers fit into the watersheds and landscapes and how we might expand our tolerance for them,” says Kerri O’Shaughnessy, riparian specialist.
“We want to give people a better understanding of beavers so we can look at ways of living with them and reducing the conflict.”

A pond leveler maintains the capacity of water that suits the landowner and the beaver.

Wrapping the trunks of large trees with wire mesh deters beavers from cutting them down.

Other tips are offered in the section Beaver Solutions in the booklet Beaver – Our Watershed Partner, published by Cows and Fish in 2016.

-For smaller areas, excluding beaver with a mesh fence is an option to protect valuable trees and shrubs in yards.
-Fences can protect young trees, often the most targeted age classes of woody vegetation by beavers and many other animals.
-Circular wire mesh extending upstream of a culvert may prevent beavers from damming the flow.
-The most effective deterrent is fencing coupled with moving the intake of water far upstream of the culvert with a pipe system.
-Greater success will occur by increasing the area blocked from beaver upstream of a culvert. Beaver may create a dam upstream but the culvert will remain unplugged.

Honestly, I love seeing any article with their name in it because I always know I’ll be delighted by what is said. I made sure to invite their director, Lorne Fitch, to the state of the beaver conference and he said he was very interested but didn’t think he could afford the flight. Sad face. We need to hear more from them. You do such great work, Cows and Fish!

Now, if only they could start a sister organization in Saskatchewan!

Save

“Ohhh the beaver and the rancher should be friends…”

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 15, 2016

The Seventh Generation Institute in New Mexico does remarkable work on a pretty fierce landscape. They’ve been interested in the role beavers can play repairing water systems for a long time, and now they are working with Jon Grigg and the ranchers in Elko to release this new film on the subject. I for one can’t wait to see it. They are using CROWDRISE to raise funds for a screening tour around areas that need it most: Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and oh yes CALIFORNIA.

Maybe after you see the trailer you’ll want to help get them started?

Trail Center presents film on ranching and beavers

ELKO — The California Trail Interpretive Center will present a free screening of a one-hour film that explores the pros and cons of beaver on ranch lands. “Rethinking Beaver: old nuisance or new partner?” will show at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

The film features local ranch manager Jon Griggs of Maggie Creek Ranch. It draws from real life experiences and unscripted interviews with him and other ranchers.

“Rethinking Beaver” explores the use of beaver as a tool to repair erosion, increase forage and overall productivity, and improve wildlife habitat on ranches.

The film was produced by Seventh Generation Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

If Elko Nevada doesn’t have the highest beaver IQ in the state -let alone the entire west I’d be very surprised. It was where I first read about the remarkable work of Carol Evans of the BLM which introduced me eventually to Susie Creek and Jon Griggs. Carol has since retired from her BLM job but is still interested in creeks and beavers. I was trying earlier to tempt her into hitching a ride to the State of the Beaver Conference in Oregon.

When SGI isn’t making movies it’s talking directly to ranchers, relocating nuisance beaver or leading workshops teaching how to install flow devices. They are a front lines organization with smart work and good intentions. Congratulations Catherine Wilds and our friends at Seventh Generation! We can’t to wait to see the positive effect this has.

Gentlemen of the night and early morning

heidi08 Creative Solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? October 13, 2016

Even if I was abducted by aliens this very moment, the following article would pretty much write itself. The column was written by Ben Gruber for the Hub -City Times.

Attending the Wisconsin Trappers Association Convention

Sept. 9 and 10 was the 54th annual Wisconsin Trappers Association Convention, held every year at the Central Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in Marshfield. A rainy start was unable to dampen the enthusiasm of trappers and outdoors enthusiasts from across the state and region that came to Marshfield to take part in the convention.

The buildings were filled with the latest innovations to hit the market for trapping, booth after booth of both new and used products available to those looking purchase, upgrade, sell, or trade equipment. Attendance appeared good despite the weather, and I was excited to see a fair share of younger folks here, although admittedly the demographic of trappers is headed the same way as that of all outdoorsmen: aging.

Nothing taught me more about wildlife behavior, wetland biology, and stream ecology than trying to outwit those raccoons, muskrats, beaver, and mink. I did that until I was about 18 when fur prices bottomed out and gas was expensive.

By his own admission Mr. Gruber hasn’t learned anything about stream ecology in many decades. Stop and think what your perspective on anything – cars, politics, sex, your parents – would be like if you had learned nothing since you were a teenager. This is what he knows about the role of beavers in streams and their importance theirin.

But I’m not a PETA fur-painter opposed violently to all hunting and trapping. Rather, consider me a pragmatist who gets frustrated when people don’t ‘read the label’ and make smarter decisions. The real problem isn’t the trappers of America whose numbers are so small they could fit in half of a roll of toilet paper. The real problem is US – you and me – who have expanded into every crevice of open space and get upset when the wildlife we displaced chews our begonias.

If America didn’t hire trappers to get rid of nuisance wildlife that little girl in the picture would never grow up to follow the trade.

I guess I think of trappers like prostitutes. Not my favorite profession, to be sure, but if the Johns stopped hiring them there would sure be fewer on every corner. The market demand creates the trapper just like it creates the hooker. If we alter the demand with education about flow devices and wrapping trees and teaching why beavers matter we have a better shot at reducing the numbers of grim night-walkers than if we arrest a few or spray paint their vehicles.

Don’t believe me? Let’s change this first and then we’ll talk.

Beavers and Drought

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 4, 2016

We’re an equal opportunity employer here at beaver central. Yesterday I wrote about Mike Callahan of Massachusetts and today I’m writing about Skip Lisle of Vermont. There was a nice article about the current drought with him (and beavers) featured.

The Ecological Impact Of The Current Drought

Scenes from the West’s five-year drought are striking – the cracked mud at the bottom of a dry reservoir, forests in flames. Wonder what a drought would look like in the Northern Forest? Just look out the window.

This is the first time that any part of New Hampshire has been in an “extreme drought” since the federal government began publishing a drought index in 2000, said Mary Lemcke-Stampone, the state’s climatologist. “Using state records, you have to go back to the early ‘80s to get the extreme dryness we’ve been seeing in southeastern New Hampshire.”

Other parts of the region have been abnormally dry for some time. New York State has issued a drought warning for the Southern Tier and Western New York, which is an extreme drought, while the Adirondacks remain “abnormally dry” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceiver International, a beaver-control company that uses non-lethal means, said that beavers have droughts covered. “All those little dams and reservoirs keep water on the landscape,” he said. They have floods covered, too, as those same dams and reservoirs release peak flows slowly.

Intact ecosystems, Lisle said, have a way of coping. “Droughts are good. Floods are good. Dynamism is good. It’s been going on forever.”

Yes beavers are good for drought and Skip is good for beavers! Keep doing what you do saving the water-savers and we’ll do our best to write about it here. I’m curious about our own beavers at the moment. Will the arrival of autumn prompt them into starting an actual dam? They have no yearlings to help them so it much be a harder job. Although I guess all beavers everywhere have started thus at some point in their furry lives.

I hope I’m not jinxing anything by making them a video but I think we have to behave like Martinez has beavers because last time I checked it does. And it rained all day yesterday so what’s a girl to do?