Category: Creative Solutions

Beaver Nature in the City

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Urban beavers March 2, 2016

Vancouver wildlife returning to the city

That someone created a social media handle for “Downtown Deer”, who was known to roam through the park and adjacent West End streets, shows just how rare it is for a large animal to make its home within the city limits.

And yet the city has recently become a haven for a variety of wildlife that have reestablished in the most urban parts of Metro Vancouver, from the ubiquitous coyotes, raccoons and skunks in every neighbourhood, to small but thriving populations of beavers in several city parks.

“We have this affinity for nature. We really do. Whether it is a whale in English Bay or beavers in Olympic Village, there is something very captivating about wildlife in the city,” said Nick Page, the resident biologist for the Vancouver Park Board.

Could it be that what we LOVE about wildlife in the city is the HUMANITY with which it tinges those many anonymous faces with which we are forced to share our sidewalks and hallways? How many people did I talk to about the beavers that I never would have spoken to without them? Even in the days before Worth A Dam. How many places would I have stopped and chatted with strangers on the street if it wasn’t to ask if there’s a beaver on their side of the bridge yet?

Earlier in February, the park board unveiled a new “biodiversity strategy”, aimed at restoring or enhancing 25 hectares of natural areas in the city over the next four years. Concerned about continuing threats to the city’s natural environment — from habitat loss to climate change to environmental contamination to invasive species — the city is trying to create more natural spaces in which animals can thrive.

A broad range of animals once found in Vancouver are now listed as “extirpated” or locally extinct: deer, elk, bears, chipmunks, red-legged frogs, the spotted skunk, cougars, martens, grey wolves, red fox, bobcats, the short-tailed weasel. The park board says the populations of many species of native birds, insects, frogs, fish, plants and small mammals are in decline. It lists at least 20 species at risk, including the western painted turtle, Johnson’s hairstreak butterfly, the Vancouver Island beggartricks, a wetland sunflower, and the western bumble bee.

Hinge Park itself has become an unusual gathering spot for urban wildlife. Created just seven years ago at the western edge of Olympic Village, the narrow park encompasses a creek that empties out in front of man-made Habitat Island. The small park has become home to a pair of beavers, coyotes, river otters, raccoons and waterfowl.

“How cool is it that you can say you live in Olympic Village and have beavers in your backyard,” Page said. “I think in the last few years we’ve seen more diverse wildlife move back into the city.

I like having beavers in my city, but I’d REALLY like having biologists like Nick Page working here. Good lord, they are lucky to have him. And I’d like to think he’s read this website a time or two. It’s striking to remember how many conversations I’ve had with strangers that were about wildlife. If it wasn’t one of us asking for directions, it was one of us asking what bird that was or if those were beavers.

As a young tween my parents toted me to on a trip to Italy once they had fantasized about and saved for for years. I, of course being barely 13 was busy fantasizing about Shaun Cassidy or Star Wars, but amused myself while they fawned over masterpeices by feeding pigeons. Without any respect for the enormity of where I was I would tuck the role from breakfast into my purse at whatever historic hotel we were staying in at the moment, and stroll into the squares or gardens while they listened to tour guides and amuse myself by feeding pigeons.

One time, a little Italian child joined me and we had a great time encouraging them to come closer and closer in St. Marks Square. After the pigeon-enticing bread was gone she turned to me in all seriousness and spoke the urgent words, “Que lingua parla?”. When I stared at her without understanding she repeated them again more slowly, until I had enough bad spanish and foreign movies to guess that she was asking “what language do you speak?” When I answered ‘English’ her five year old face hardened with concentration as she reached around in her mind for any phrases she might have learned.

“Thank you.” She finally said, proudly, and ran back to the elder gentleman waiting for her in the plaza, I always imagined it was her grandpa.

On our trip to Italy I saw the statue of David, the Coliseum, and the Sistine chapel. But what I remember is feeding pigeons with a little girl who bravely broke the culture barrier.

Nature in the city, indeed.

What John Muir thinks about beavers…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? February 25, 2016

I’m officially allowed to announce our good news today, so of course I’m thinking of John Muir’s friend Enos Mills, who was invited to his house and came to Martinez in 1908. One of the many books he wrote was the very famous “In Beaver World“, all about our favorite subject matter, and whose very last chapter is titled thusly.

I’m very very proud to imagine that Worth A Dam has possibly been considered as good a educational conservationist as the beaver is. Congratulations to everyone and all of Martinez who made Worth A Dam happen in the first place.

Speaking of the many species beavers assist in their award-winning Keystone capacity, here’s an awesome photo from the Tulocay Napa beaver pond taken yesterday by Rusty Cohn.

rusty turtle — *Turtles at Tulocay Beaver Pond: Rusty Cohn*

Now I think we should all write than you notes to the Scottish Goverment for being so enormously stubborn the world keeps getting headlines like this over and over again.

Give beavers permanent residence – we’d be dam stupid not to

Beaver benefits

None of this is about nostalgia. Beavers are often referred to as “ecosystem engineers” and herein lies much of the reasoning and controversy behind their reintroduction. There is extensive evidence from Europe and North America that wetlands created by beaver dams benefit everything from water plants, dragonflies and amphibians to fish and ducks to song birds and bats. In Knapdale, damming by beavers transformed a small pond into a wetland of a type and complexity probably unseen in Britain for centuries.

Beavers can also restore habitats without the need for a bulldozer or planning permission. On the Bamff estate on Tayside, we found that grazing by beavers trebled the number of wetland plants over a nine-year period. Where raised water levels saturated a meadow thanks to damming of ditches, the number of plant species increased by 49% and the multitude of habitats created increased the total diversity of aquatic invertebrates by almost 30%. Indeed the benefits were even further reaching. We found that the beaver dams also acted as a sink for agricultural pollutants, and may also help to reduce the risk of flooding. Individually these findings are not that surprising, though it is unusual to demonstrate them all in parallel.

Go read the whole thing. And thank the famously stubborn scots for needing a lot of convincing on the subject!

White House Protects Beavers

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? February 23, 2016

So yesterday I was strolling blithely through the internet(s), minding my own business and expecting to see the usual array of appetizers and grandchildren on FB when I suddenly caught sight of this and became immediately interested. Something tells me you will to…

White House aims to put a value on ecosystem conservation

The White House has issued a directive (PDF) to point federal agencies toward building ecosystem-services valuation into their plans, investments and regulations. The directive, released late last year, will help agencies synthesize conservation’s ecosystem benefits with its value to society.

“For too long, we’ve thought of conservation as separate from society,” said Ken Elowe, assistant regional director of science applications for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Northeast Region. “What’s actually needed is a more landscape approach, one that doesn’t segregate people.

Like say, for instance, allowing beavers to work their magic in urban areas.

Of course I immediately marched off and looked for the memo they were talking about. And verily, I say unto you, it was much, much better than I ever expected. Truly.

Read that title again: INCORPORATING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES INTO FEDERAL DECISION MAKING!!! Do you realize what a presidential memo about this means? It means EVERY federal agency that works with nature, habitat or wildlife is advised to put special value on these services. NOAA. BLM. USFS. FWS, APHIS. They are all directed to consider the ecosystem services of any species they manage.

Now mind you, it doesn’t actually SAY the word beaver in this memo, but it might as bloody well have. It goes on to describe in detail every single service they provide and their irreplaceable value. Don’t believe me? Just read for yourself.

And why wasn’t there a parade for this memo? What is wrong with me that you didn’t read about it on October 7th when it was released? The truth is NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT. Or if they did they weren’t allowed to talk about it. I heard from Suzanne Fouty yesterday that she never heard about it at the Forest Service. And Brock Dolman said OAEC didn’t know about it either. This was a SLEEPER memo, obviously uncelebrated to risk upsetting as few people as possible, the same way you might transition your father to decaf without telling him. But I’m ringing and ringing the bell. And you can help. Here’s my news flash of the memo. With the exception of a single word it only contains actual text of the memo. You should be able to hit the plus button to make it bigger.

You can probably guess that single word.

headline-1

After that extreme gratification, you should lie back and enjoy the virtual smoke of Beth Pratt’s recent TED talk at Yosemite. She does a great job describing the importance of Urban Wildlife and the book she mentions will have the photo by a certain Martinez beaver defender you might recognize. I’m guessing this is going to make a difference for a host of beavers.

“Like beavers that pass in the night…”

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? February 22, 2016

This video shows a young European beaver being released back into the stream. It was posted by Bob Smith of Nature Nuts on the occasion of his retirement from the board of trustees on Scotlands Wild Beaver Group. The best laid plan of mice and men gang aft a’gley I guess.

Most likely you know of him from this program which was very delightful and well received. He lead hundreds of tours and field trips over the years. And was a staunch defender of the beavers. But wildlife advocates don’t always make the best team players. I assume there were personal reasons for the resignation. I’m aware there were factions on the Tayside beavers too, just as, over the many years, there were reasons for Worth A Dam to shuffle its membership.

The funny thing is, I always expect beaver relationships to last forever, you know like marriages, and am always surprised to learn that people get frustrated, grow apart or decide to do their own thing, (you know, like marriages).

I guess you never know who is a friend-for-life and who is just passing through. I wish we did. I wish people had clearly marked expiration labels on their foreheads so that you’d know “this person is going to provide a valuable service and then move on and you will never see them again.” Or “don’t get too annoyed about this person because they’ll be gone in a month”. I can’t tell you how many friends and strangers have helped with the beaver festival over the years, and I thought Oh good! Finally, we connected and now I can ask them for help again next year, only to realize they had passed on to other shores.

Clearly they weren’t married to beavers. Just dating.

Well, odds are, if you’re still reading this, you’re married to beavers too. So I can tell you the good news. Worth A Dam has been named the Environmental Education group of the year by the John Muir Association. Which is a nice acknowledgment of all our hard work and much appreciated. It means we get recognized at the upcoming Earth Day event and can carry the title proudly. Technically I don’t have the blessing to make this public yet, so I won’t broadcast on FB or press releases. But only friends read this website, so I can tell you, right?

I kept it secret for three whole days, though. That’s a lot for me`.

“She Sure Shot down the Sheet!”

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental February 20, 2016

So yesterday was another long meeting for the urban beaver paper that is squeezing past its deadline. We are mostly assembled with some tweaks and shuffles, and I am happy many Heidi remarks will remain, at least for consideration by the big wigs at NOAA. I was told that my section with painstaking references to news articles (and assembling those references was such a pain I cannot describe) may not survive as they are considered “Grey Literature” and unworthy in a scientific paper.

Grey Literature is written for the general public (Like this website) and not subject to peer review (Like this website). News articles are Grey Literature, even though if the thing you’re talking about is the fact that the issue was reported in the NEWS I don’t see how much more valid a reference could be.

Anyway, one exciting part of the conversation was about this reference from the Portugal et al 2015 article from the beaver management plan they prepared for Walmart. I loved SO MUCH of that article I never really got around to thinking about this part, which they had recommended cities try using in the strategy section.

Alright, I know not everybody took the time to read that so basically it advises that if you notch the dam to lower the water level and want to keep beavers from rebuilding it you can thwart them by hanging a sheet from fence posts so it flaps in the wind and scares the beavers sooo much they don’t rebuild the dam. Apparently it was recommended by a trapper who, oddly enough, happens to have family in Martinez, which is a strange coincidence but not part of the story.

I read it and felt a host of responses. First customary shame that I wasn’t informed about this wonderfully proven new technique, then wait-a-minute scrutiny as I narrowed my eyes and read it more closely, then doubt when I thought of our beavers getting used to trains and garbage trucks, then frank disbelief, as I picked up the phone and asked Mike Callahan what he thought.

Consider this an illustration of his response.Suffice it to say our opinions were well matched and I marched into the conference call and said for goodness sake, if my newspaper references were going to be thrown out as “grey literature” then the un-researched bed sheet notion should be hung out to dry too. Beavers habituate to noise, light, people and even linen. They would figure out how to get around it, or rip it down and use it in their dam. Eventually I succeeded in making it sound so ridiculous they were chagrined and agreed with me too.

So, just remember, out of all the many things I failed out and failed to do, change the world, change Martinez, implement a national beaver holiday, I at least bravely succeeded at shooting down the sheet.

And that’s something to be proud of.