Category: Creek Seekers Poetry Contest

Put up – Or shut up!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Who's saving beavers now? September 25, 2014

Government plans to capture ‘wild’ Devon beavers unlawful, says Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth has written to the Environment Secretary Liz Truss to warn that plans to capture a beaver family on the River Otter in Devon “may be unlawful”.

However Friends of the Earth claims that Britain forms part of the “natural range” of beavers and that removing them could be against EU laws governing protected species.

“Beavers belong in England, and are an essential part of our ecosystems – Government plans to trap them should be scrapped,” said Friends of the Earth Campaigner Alasdair Cameron. “Beavers bring huge benefits to the environment – reducing flooding and boosting fish stocks and biodiversity. Rather than try and get rid of them, we should be thrilled to have them back in our landscape.”

Nice! Friends of the Earth are are new best friends! (Bonus points: Their acronym and website is FOE.) This report was on the radio in the UK this morning and all over the press. Let’s hope it throws a little monkey wrench in the spokes of this dastardly plan. I mean another one. In addition to harboring evil intent, DEFRA appears to suck at their job. No beavers caught yet, and their success at badger killing is equally laughable. Fingers crossed the EU threat will just tip the scale into oblivion.

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Yesterday was full of last minute preparations trying to track down Mary Obrien to confirm that I am really honest-to-goodness going to Utah Friday to present at their “Leave it to beavers” festival on Saturday. She had said someone would pick me up from the airport but, in my usual precise way, I needed to know WHO and WHEN I was presenting. She hadn’t responded to my emails and I wasn’t sure I could talk Jon into getting into an airplane without more details.

Since I wasn’t able to get a hold of her, I called her friends and co-workers and generally sounded alarmed enough that I got a call back last night from a very exhausted Mary in the field. Everything was fine. Yes, it was really happening. Children had gotten notices at school and it was on the radio.

Oh.

I apparently am presenting at 11:00 and 2:00 on Saturday. Mary or Phil Brick will pick us up, and her students from Whitman will make us dinner that night and I’ll talk to them about our historic prevalence papers and how we did that research. Hopefully we’ll get to see a little of St. George before we fly home Monday, after spreading the beaver gospel in a third state!

So I guess that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Capture

ST. GEORGE – The Utah Department of Wildlife Resources is holding its annual festival, “Leave it to Beavers,” aimed at educating the community about beavers and other wildlife on Saturday at the Tonaquint Nature Center, 1851 South Dixie Drive, in St. George.

The event, which will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., will feature a myriad of family friendly activities and opportunities to learn about the benefits beavers provide to the local environment and ecosystem, said Lynn Chamberlain, conservation and outreach manager for the DWR’s southern region, Lynn Chamberlain said.

“There are more beavers on the Virgin River and its tributaries than most people realize,” Chamberlain said.

Previously held in Boulder, this annual festival has been moved to St. George to provide the local community a chance to understand and appreciate this industrious and charismatic river creature, Chamberlain said.

This is a free event for the whole family, she said, and everyone is invited to come out and spend the day.

Event details

Where: Tonaquint Nature Center, 1851 South Dixie Drive, St. George

When: Saturday, Sept. 27, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Cost: Free

Online: Leave it to Beavers

Something tells me the Martinez Beavers are going to be right at home in St. George.

Time Flies

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental January 10, 2014

Over the break I filled out the application for Worth A Dam to return to the Flyway Festival at Mare Island. (Their website is down for renewal so I can’t give a link just yet.) This will be our fourth visit to bird Mecca and we couldn’t be happier. This is a massive expo of everything and everyone you wanted to know about our feathered friends. There are tours and trainings and field trips. Plus beavers. Who could ask for more?

I’m always particularly interested in talking about the relationship between beavers and birds. Whether it’s blue heron’s nesting in flooded trees at a beaver pond, or wood ducks benefitting from beaver habitat, I’m thrilled to make the link. This year I want to really emphasize the Cooke and Zack study that showed that beavers make ideal nesting habitat with their chewing by promoting coppicing – which makes the trees regrow bushy and dense. Their study found that the result means that as the number of beaver dams go up the number of migratory and songbirds also go up.

But how to preach this gospel in a way that resonates? There are always a lot of smart children at the flyway festival, so I thought we’d put them to work on the idea. I’m imagining something like this. A large poster that explains:

Then get them to teach the concept for us! The idea is that first we teach about beavers providing habitat by promoting coppicing, and then we let kids ‘populate’ the trees with birds and nests!

This bare tree poster will be blown up on a cork board at our display. Children will be encouraged to make birds and nests using construction paper, tissue paper, yarn, glue, paper plates, cotton balls, patterned paper, then stick them on the tree wherever they like. I’m imagining it might look something like this when it’s finished. Only much, much better.

Beavers and Birds! What a combination!

Get ready for a new holiday special!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest October 13, 2013

Town disturbs wetland

The Town of Perry in Wyoming County is facing a fine from the DEC and the cost of the lots of man hours to restore what it damaged. Several acres of protected wetland were drained dry off of Beardsley Road when highway crews opened up a beaver dam while working on a road project.

Why not show this every Christmas? Seems the town of Perry in Wyoming county New York had a road that needed some repairs in a protected wetland. They wanted to get into the culvert to fix it but some hard working beavers had raised the water level and they didn’t want to get wet or install a diversion dam so the highway superintendent just ripped out the dam, killing thousands of fish and destroying the wetland with out ever getting a permit because it would take too long. Trust me, the story gets better. Now Perry has negotiated to pay a smaller fine and if they REBUILD THE DAM and fix what they ruined.

I don’t know about you but when I think of Dave Scola and the Martinez public works crew repairing a beaver dam after it has been ripped out I can’t stop smiling for the rest of the hour. Let’s hope this cautionary tale makes folks afraid of ripping out beaver dams next time.

Need more good news? How about a golf course that appreciates its beavers? Mind you this is in the Yukon where they cheerfully go out of their way to kil them.

Beaver family calls Yukon golf course home

Golf course owner Jeff Luehmann has welcomed a beaver family. (CBC)

A golf course in Whitehorse has a new group of visitors, and they’re not the types to just putter around.

“Well there’s at least four that we know of. There’s two dominant ones, a male and female that have been here on and off on the property,” Meadow Lakes Golf Course owner Jeff Luehmann says. The guests? Beavers. A family has built a dam in one of his ponds and now calls the water hazard home. The beavers moved in several years ago, and now there’s an entire brood.

Normally, the practice is for them to destroy problem animals. But Luehmann says the critters are doing him a favour.

“What I do is put poplar,” he says. “They feed on that. I also put metal mesh on the trees I want to keep.” “We just took the initiative,” he says.

Quick, somebody get 100 scouts to send Jeff thank you cards right away. I’m sure there are people in the enormity of the Yukon who appreciate beavers, but on a GOLF COURSE??? Wow. Just. Wow.

Only good news today from the Northern Hemisphere, so far covering about 5000 miles from the Yukon to New York, and now to the Bay Area adding another 3000. This is from the Beaver Restoration Toolbox which is being perfected by Karl Malcolm of USFWS. Or would be if the federal government would let people go back to work so he could make final adjustments. I can’t share the whole thing until its official but we were asked for input and I gave him lots of info and the Martinez plug. Ask how happy was I to see this on page 8.

Whew! That’s a lot of good news for one day. I will just end by saying some of the greatest beaver friends are out of work at the moment and living on savings. Michael Pollock of NOAA fisheries, Suzanne Fouty USFS, Jimmy Taylor USDA, Carol Evans BLM. There are a about a million more that have gone 12 days now without a paycheck.

Bad news for beavers. And humans.

Getting a beaver clue…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Environmental May 28, 2013

Excellent beaver news this morning, and I’m wondering if I should stop counting positive articles for the year. Maybe we’ve crossed some kind of ‘beaver rubicon’ where it is suddenly no big deal to say beavers help rivers.

Beavers: Nature’s first river restoration engineers

Sometimes the fact that beavers dam up water, cut down trees, and flood riverbanks is seen as a problem. Not everyone wants busy beavers in their backyard! But these same activities that beavers do so well are exactly what river restoration professionals have been trying to emulate for decades to improve habitat for Pacific salmon species, which co-evolved with beavers over millenia. Adding wood to streams, creating backwatered areas, and reconnecting a stream with its floodplain are frequently the very same objectives of river restoration projects. For this reason, beaver reintroduction is identified as a priority action in the multi-agency Upper Columbia Spring Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Plan. The Methow Beaver Project is relocating beavers from places where they are seen as a problem, and moving them to places where they can be part of the solution to salmon recovery.

My, my, my. It’s nice to see the beaver get the recognition he deserves, and the Methow project is a great showcase of his accomplishments. Of course beavers don’t need a massive re-introduction with fish hatcheries and federal grants to do their job, they just need humans to get out of the way and let them do it. Take Martinez for instance, where urban beavers famously proposed some additions to Alhambra Creek and the zoning committee objected and decided to kill them instead. Remember that?

Yesterday I was driving home listening to KQED and stunned to hear the work of beavers discussed on Marketplace – well not discussed so much as obviously left out of the conversation where they clearly belonged. Listen and tell me if you don’t think it’s an error to ignore their contribution:

Of course I took the liberty of writing Dr. Glennon about this oversight. Maybe it can spark a dialog?

And as if all that wasn’t exciting enough, this morning Rick sent me hot off the presses the paper we are submitting regarding historic range of beaver in coastal california. It tracks physical and indirect evidence of beaver in 5 regions from northern to southern california in what I can only describe as a series of successful 1-2 punches that knock the wind out of every silly objector. But shhh, his head might explode if he were to find out I shared this but I can’t help passing along this delightful paragraph from the discussion section.

Studies conducted and reviewed by Pollock et al. (2003; 2007) in semi-arid Western habitats, have found that re-introduction of beaver can rapidly aggrade stream sediments, elevating incised channels and reconnecting them to their floodplains, ultimately converting formerly incised xeric valleys into gently sloping ones with more abundant riparian vegetation. As ecosystem engineers (Johnson et al. 1994), beaver increase bird, fish, invertebrate, amphibian and mammalian abundance and diversity (Naiman et al. 1988, Rosell et al. 2005). There has been a tendency to underestimate the influence of beaver on ecosystems (Pollock et al. 1994), and the impact of this aquatic mammal on threatened species in California may be more important than previously realized.

To which I can only reply, (laughing and wiping my eyes) it’s about frickin’ time.

‘Team Beaver’ Triumphs – II

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers April 11, 2013

Okay, where were we? So things have been brewing and churning in San Jose and on Monday Greg Kerekes of the Urban Wildlife Research Project sent the footage I shared previously showing that there were three beavers, probably a mother and yearlings and the mother looked pregnant. I was a little worried that the swelling under the mothers tail might not be pregnancy related but I checked it out with beaver knowledgeable rehab friends from Ontarioto New York who assured me mom looked fine and stop worrying.

Okay, sigh of relief – that was quickly indrawn when Leslee Hamilton of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy said that she had gotten word from the Santa Clara Valley Water District COO Norma Camacho that the beavers weren’t going to be allowed to stay. They were saying relocation, but even if it were allowed that was not likely to be possible for mom, since moving a pregnant female might be lethal anyway, certainly to any children born without a safe, cozy home.

That was Monday night. (Worry, worry, worry).) On Tuesday morning I started the keyboard and wrote the board a very nice letter about what we learned, then wrote KCBS that they needed to follow up on their friday announcement since there were VERY new facts in play. I wasn’t exactly hopeful because its not like the Martinez Beavers have a direct line to the news desk any more, but I got a response from the producer who wanted to chat. Meanwhile I heard from Leslee that she was meeting SCVWD two staff members at the site, and this eventually turned into three to talk about the situation.) She invited me to come (but that day-job demanded I put down my beaver-woman cape…) Instead I relayed news of the meeting to the producer who wanted to know where and when. I told her to contact Leslee and hoped she wouldn’t be annoyed at my blabbing this news to the media, (which she wasn’t). Meanwhile her volunteer coordinator (who is a laid-off park ranger) talked to regional CDFW warden who said the beavers weren’t hurting anything and they were unlikely to issue a permit even if asked. (!)

The producer arranged an interview with KCBS and CBS for that afternoon. And Lo! It came to pass as if by magic the reporter met with Norma Camacho and Marty Grimes of SCVWD to discuss the issue and Marty said that they had no intention of removing the beavers. In fact the board of directors later assured Leslee that the beavers were causing no problems and they would notify them in the unlikely event that they ever wanted to take that kind of extreme action in the future. Shani from Audubon, who meant to join Leslee and Greg but ended up at the SCVWD office instead, talked to Rachel Gibson in Gov’t Relations, who ended up issuing this statement: “I thought you would be pleased to know that after staff assessed the situation at the river today, they determined that there is no reason to relocate the beavers. Staff agrees that beavers have been observed in the Guadalupe River for years, and this latest colony to establish itself is evidence that our efforts to restore and protect the watershed have paid off!”

One member of the SCVWD called me at home personally and wanted to talk excitedly about the good beavers had done in Martinez, and this morning a San Jose city council member (who had seen it on the news) wanted to congratulate us and find out how to help. All of which makes yesterday the very, very, very Best Day in the history of saving beavers.!!! Period. I am still having trouble wiping the smile off my face. Thanks to Leslee and Greg and many, many others, whose secret hands made this heaviest of slow moving tankers pull a most surprising U-turn. I am SO proud that whatever it took us two years and a lawsuit Martinez to learn, could be applied to San Jose’s learning curve in little more than half a day.

(This report was edited for content by Leslee!)

Now think of this amazing back story when you listen to the news report, and check out that photo because I bet you recognize it!