Category: Creative Solutions

It was the best of beaver times, and it was the worst of beaver times

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, In the News, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 27, 2017

Traveling to Placer county and preaching the beaver gospel used to be like going to the lions to recommend vegetarianism. But yesterday was more like preaching to the choir. It was a positive, beaver affirmed or beaver-curious group, and our good friends Janet, Jeanette and Damion Ciotti of FWS showed up. They each had wonderful comments and questions, and I made sure Damion connected with the tribal liaison who might just need to be reintroducing some beavers soon and get the federal government to foot the bill for the flow device. I was also excited that Jeanette was interested in an Auburn test site and especially interested when I told her that PGE (where she works) in Auburn had received on of the depredation permits in 2013. Wouldn’t it be good for beavers, and correspondingly good for PGE to be all environmental and generate some press for installing a flow device instead and saving wildlife?

I felt great when we left but I came home to news that our opening band for the festival had dropped out, so I scrambled at a great rate to recover territory I had secured in March. Then before I went to sleep I had the great news that soon-to-be-beaver author Ben Goldfarb will be coming to the festival after all. Which is a relief because I would have been so sad if he missed it. He’s also coming next week to get the story and lay of the land. It should all work out well, fingers crossed.

I see that our good friend Rusty Cohn has his photos proudly displayed in the Napa register today. It’s a great photo essay that you will enjoy on every level – meaning the level where it’s just cool to see beavers and the wildlife they encourage, AND the other more important level where our lovely Napatopia is inches away from screwing with the habitat but good and needs to be reminded that save beaver streams matter.

Photos: Life at Napa’s Beaver Lodge at Tulocay Creek

The Tulocay Creek beaver pond is located next to the Hawthorne Suites Hotel, 314 Soscol Ave., Napa. At the creek, you’ll find river otters, mink, muskrats and herons as well as beavers. Here are some photos of the critters taken by local photographer Rusty Cohn.

I can’t figure out how to embed the entire album here, but you’re just going to have to go see it yourself. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.

Now, in the middle of all this there’s a wonderful article about urban wildlife published in the SF Gate and all over this morning. The original was published on The Conversation and it is written by Christopher Swan who’s a Professor of Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland. I’m sure ever single reader of this website will have some flat-tailed suggestions for Chris.

Urban nature: What kinds of plants and wildlife flourish in cities?

Biodiversity refers to the variety of all living things on Earth, but people often have very specific ideas of what it means. If you run an online search for images of biodiversity, you are likely to find lots of photos of tropical rainforests and coral reefs.

Those ecosystems are invaluable, but biodiversity also exists in many other places. More than half of the people on Earth live in cities, and that number is growing, so it is especially important to understand how biodiversity patterns occur in our man-made environments.

As an ecologist specializing in urban systems, I spend a lot of time investigating biodiversity in parks, residential areas and abandoned zones in and around the city of Baltimore. My main interests are seeing how urban dwellers invest in biodiversity, which species persist in cities and what kinds of biodiversity can thrive in green spaces.

In spite of the substantial environmental changes that humans have caused in cities, research shows that they still contain many forms of life. And we can develop and maintain habitat to support them.

It is common to assume that few other species remain in disturbed urban environments. But in fact, there are many pockets of biodiversity in and around cities, such as frogs living in stormwater detention ponds and trees in restored streamside forests. Landscapes that people create in and around their homes support many ornamental herbaceous and woody plant species.

Our research group works to understand the relationship between people and urban biodiversity patterns. The most prominent feature of the urban environment is that it is fragmented into many small zones. Human activity creates more patches of smaller size and greater edge lengths between types of habitats than we would expect to see in undisturbed areas.

This benefits species that thrive at edges, like white-tailed deer and nuisance vines, but harms others that require larger interior habitats, such as certain birds. As human activities create a more fragmented environment, it becomes increasingly important to create linkages between natural areas, such as preserved forests, to maintain populations and their biodiversity.

Dr. Swanson! Have I got a story for you! You can bet I’ll be writing the good man just as soon as I finish finding a band to open the Urban wildlife festival that is observing its TENTH year. I love this article and love even more that folks are paying close attention to this topic, because it can only be good news for beavers and humans.

Now yesterday I got some designs from artist Deborah Hocking about our awesome bookmark she is designing very generously for the festival. Look how frickin’ cute this is going to be:

Deborah! That is sooo adorable and perfect for the occasion. I love where your design is going and can’t wait to see the finished project. I know this has been a crazy post of uneven tone. I can’t even see the line from the beginning of my day to the end, it was so full of ups and downs. On the whole I guess there are more ups.

But I still think it’s time to start calming my frazzled nerves by watching this over and over again:

Too many good things for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Chewing, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 16, 2017

Some days I just can’t keep up with the hot number of good news stories reported about beavers. I’m already over the moon because Jon picked up the generous puppet donation from Folkmanis yesterday and we received our posters back from the printer. Didn’t this illustration of Alex Riley’s quote, my design and Coyote Brush Studios‘ beautiful artwork turn out extraordinary?

The plan is to sell these at the festival and by mail, although we haven’t settled on a price yet and technically they’ll be thank you gifts for donations, not sales! They are 18 x 24 and would make a wonderful classroom or visitor’s center poster!

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, this morning there’s a fantastic story out of Alberta about the always inspiring Cows and Fish teaming up with the Miistakis institute to undertake a massive survey an beaver education project, to learn how best approach the landowners.

Is Canada’s national animal a boon or a pest?

Beavers: love them, hate them or ambivalent?

A recently launched survey seeks to learn Alberta landowners’ attitudes about one of Canada’s national symbols. Alberta’s Cows and Fish society has partnered with the Miistakis Institute, a non-profit research group associated with Mount Royal University, on a survey to assess landowners’ knowledge and perception about beavers, their habitat and their management.

There are benefits and drawbacks to having beavers on the property, and survey results will be used to further develop education and outreach on the role of beavers in the ecosystem.

“Beavers are a really important keystone species in our ecosystems and they provide some really critical function within our watersheds, and people don’t know a lot of that,”said Miistakis executive director Danah Duke. “We recognize that beavers cause a lot of damage. They take down trees, they flood areas. We recognize that and we recognize that in order for people to be able to coexist with beavers, we need to be able to manage beavers.”

Duke said she suspects many people don’t realize all the benefits beavers provide, such as raising the water table, slowing stream flow, creating habitat for biological diversity and making stopgaps against drought.

“Beaver ponds retain water 50 percent longer than stream sections with no beaver activity, so in times when water is scarce, we find places that have beavers and beaver ponds, water stays on the landscape longer.”

Anyone in Alberta is welcome to take the survey, but the project is aimed at southern Alberta for the moment, said Duke. Organizers are hoping to receive at least 400 responses so that they have statistically significant results.

I am so beyond impressed with the good work Cows and Fish is doing and has been doing since long before Martinez started to play. You can check out the great survey here, I was already their outlier this morning. It’s well done and obviously sneaks in a little education at the same time as it asks questions. Just check out this question which must come as close as a beaver survey can to being a push-poll.

I sure hope during their data analysis they recognize me and wave hello!

A final burst of good news just came from author Ben Goldfarb who is writing the newest book on beavers. He just found out he is the winner of the Aldo Leopold Mi Casita fellowship which means he gets to write his book at Leopold’s home in Taos. It’s a huge honor and beavers and Ben couldn’t deserve it more.

Leopold’s ‘Mi Casita’ residents focus on environment projects

Wolves, beavers and the land ethic are the areas of interest for this year’s participants in the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program, which is now in its fifth year. The residents will spend a month in late summer at the Leopolds’ first home located on U.S. Forest Service land in Tres Piedras.

Ben Goldfarb, a science and environment writer from New Haven, Connecticut, will continue working on a book project about the ecological and hydrological benefits of North American beaver restoration.

In fall 1912, Aldo Leopold, then the newly appointed supervisor of the Carson National Forest, married Estella Luna Otero Bergere, a prominent daughter of Santa Fe. They moved into their new house, called “Mi Casita.”

It was at Mi Casita that Aldo Leopold found his footing as a leader in forestry and conservation. He once described conservation as “the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.”

The U.S. Forest Service restored the Leopold house in 2007 and has joined with other residency partners to make it available for the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency Program.

The sponsors of the residency program aimed to promote a transformative “unfolding” by inviting conservation-minded writers, artists, teachers, professionals and practitioners to Mi Casita. Each resident receives a stipend of $500 to help defray travel and living expenses.

Ben says the residence committee was certain Aldo would approve, and we of course agree. He notes that Aldo’s son Luna who wrote so much about fluvial geomorpology never mentioned beavers. But here’s a secret fun fact. Luna was the dissertation chair of Ann Riley who’s recent book on restoring neighborhood streams has a chapter on the Martinez Beavers.

So I think this was all meant to be, don’t you?

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.

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.

Marching towards victory

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? June 10, 2017

Yesterday was a VERY good day. We had three thrilling pieces of very good news, consisting of 1) for the very first time we get a US Forest Service exhibit at the festival which we never did before, 2) that the Alhambra Valley Band is confirmed in some variation, and 3) that Brock Dolman is going to appear in beaver costume to talk about beaver benefits on stage. I am so happy when things fall into place that I start looking immediately on the horizon for the dark cloud (or piano) that will inevitably follow.

But things are going in the right direction. I’m definitely happy for that.

Meanwhile, in the world of false beaver accusations, cranky old men are still saying crazy things about beavers, just in case you were curious.

Critter built impoundment beneath railroad bridge spurs Tom McDonald to action.

Over time, he sold most of the 11 acres. Other developers created the Portland Fairview RV Park, and a cozy cluster of single-family homes sprung up around Palisade Drive, Heartwood Circle and other residential streets. McDonald owns just a sliver of land between the RV park and Northeast 217th Court. Fairview Creek runs right through the tract, and Union Pacific’s railroad trestle is just a stone’s throw away.

That’s where the problems began, and McDonald had what he described as a “Holy cripes!” moment.

“We were out talking (and) walking around, and beavers were popping up around our feet,” McDonald relates. “They put a delay on our deal because it was so wet.”

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

During the prep period before any sale was possible, McDonald discovered that his land had experienced some heavy flooding. The culprit appeared to be an industrious beaver clan that had built a 6-foot-tall dam across Fairview Creek under the railroad bridge. While the Multnomah County Drainage District No. 1 could technically lower the waterline at Fairview Lake, this wouldn’t remove the dam or solve the long-term problem with flooding.

“Looking at the situation from a layman’s view, it appears that area is ‘honeycombed’ with beaver burrowing,” McDonald said.

Because you know how beavers like to burrow in wetlands. Dig Dig Dig, that’s what beavers do. And destroy train trestles, like in those silent movies.

Honestly, is the crazyoldmanvan coming for you soon? I mean what would be the POINT of a beaver digging in flooded banks? They obviously aren’t making a lodge inside them. Now I suppose they theoretically could be making a canal to drag supplies through, but do you honestly think the metal and cement pilings and steel girders of the modern train trestle are going to be troubled by a bunch of beavers?

I’m a little doubtful about the 6 foot dam myself. I mean our dam was assessed by PWA once as 7 feet tall but that was because they were lying and measuring with sticks of terror. You can tell it’s not 7 feet tall because the man in the front filming is Moses Silva of sturdy Mayan frame and just over 5 feet. Assuming his mystery dam was as high as ours that means those beavers had a lot of resources to choose from.

Looking at this it’s kind of amazing to think that mom and Dad made this whole thing by themselves back then, because there were no yearlings to help.