Category: Environmental

News of the environment or beavers impact on their ecology

Sticking Place

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver-themed merchandise, 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, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 14, 2017

Lovely letter this morning from Caitlin Adair of Vermont about how property owners can help save water and mitigate storm damage. When I looked her up I saw that she was friend and neighbor of Patti Smith, which makes a lot of sense. (Patti is the wonderful artist and writer behind ‘the beavers of popple’s pond.) Caitlin’s letter is full of great suggestions that you should read and implement, but obviously the last one is my favorite.

Individuals can help make area more flood-resistant

What can we do, as individuals, to turn all the rain that a big storm brings into an asset rather than a disaster? You can look at your property or backyard and see what you might do to stop or slow the flow of water into nearby rivers. A few sandbags placed along a natural pathway for water runoff could prevent erosion and slow flooding. A more permanent solution might include building earth berms in these places or directing roof or driveway runoff into a rain garden.

Finally, beaver dams and beaver ponds also help rainwater to stay where it falls, soak in slowly, and restore aquifers. Beavers are the original wetlands engineers. Let’s support their work for the benefit of all.

Well said, Caitlin! And a great time to say it when folks are thinking about the effect of storms. From now on you are officially a friend of Worth A Dam.

Yesterday I was asked by Michael Howie of Fur Bearer Defenders to do a webinar presentation of our story for their Compassionate Conservation Week at the end of next month.

This unique event replaced our traditional Living With Wildlife conference by utilizing webinar technology that can bring together speakers from around the world, with audiences from around the world. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can attend or participate as a speaker (though speakers will need a microphone, which is quite inexpensive). Each day we will showcase two to three webinars from a variety of speakers, all of which help wildlife advocates, researchers, students, and animal lovers get their communities on track with the concept of compassionate conservation.

We talked about my doing it last year but the timing was a problem. This year things look better so I agreed. I haven’t done a powerpoint presentation since my early days on the subcommittee, so I will need to do a little work to get ready, but I’m happy to help. We are heading for a vacation at the coast next week and I’m hopeful that some ideas can come together along the way. If it all works out, I’ll give you the specifics so you can attend or listen later. Stay tuned!

Every now and then some new gadget or technology catches my eye and I can just see how this could be incorporated into a wonderful activity. Two weeks ago it was the sticker books from Moo printing, which I must have seen on another website looking for information about children’s crafts. Each book contains 90 stickers printed according to your instructions. Everyone could be different if you like. And the entire set costs just 10 dollars.

I thought I’d try one out just to see if I liked it.

How remarkably cute is this little book? The stickers are the size of postage stamps. I know what you’re thinking. How does this relate to beaver education? I’ll tell you how. Suppose each sticker book is a different species, birds, fish, dragonflies, frogs etc. And suppose kids had to ‘earn’ each sticker from the exhibitors by learning how beavers helped that animal. And suppose kids were given a card printed with an inviting keystone image on which to place their gathered stickers. A ‘Keystone Keepsake’ let’s call it. Like this for instance.

The physicality of placing that sticker on the card does a lot to really make the ecosystem connection. As you can see the possibilities are practically endless. I talked with Mark Poulin last week about reusing his very fun images he did as buttons one year. He gave permission and thought it was a great idea. Then I pulled together a keystone image with the fun illustration of Jane Grant Tentas, and it all came together. We could do 15 species for 150 dollars for 90 children, and I bet if I poke Moo a little bit I might get a bit of a donation because look how I’m plugging their adorable product!

Unusual for Utah

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Do beavers live in the dam?, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 6, 2017

This is footage of the hard working Utah DWR group installing BDA’s in the higher elevations of Utah. They make little beaver dams to save water and hope it will help out the wildlife and lure beavers to move in. Up until this VERY moment I always thought Utah was smarter than us about beavers. Not anymore.

Updates from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

At first glance, it appears the wrong species has been building dams in Miller Creek. DWR habitat crews have taken on the beaver’s usual role, dropping in support poles, weaving in tree branches and packing mud on the structures they’re building. The goal of this unusual project is to re-flood the floodplain and create pools for the river’s sensitive and endangered fish. Having more water in the area will also benefit the mammals and birds that use the stream corridor.

So far so good. But now comes the CRASH! Feet of clay indeed!

Biologists hope that beavers will eventually move into the structures and continue the effort.

For just a moment I’m going to amuse myself with the absurd thought that all the biologists of Utah (and not a few confused reports) really believe that beavers live in dams. In my fantasy they are truly standing by with clipboards and befuddled looks on their faces wondering why the animals don’t move IN to these lovely solid walls they built. Heh heh. Do they also wonder why bird nests have those ridiculous holes in them, and aren’t just solid twig bricks too?

Okay, I’m done. I do not for a moment believe this comment is the work of a biologist. Once again Heidi will explain kindly to reporters that beavers don’t live IN the dam. The dam is solid. Like a wall built to hold back water. It doesn’t have an inside. Think of it like a mattress. You don’t sleep inside your mattress do you? Beavers live in the lodge. I realize this requires you to learn two words instead of one, but I truly think you’re up to it. (Most of you.)

Honestly, Utah is too good for rookie mistakes like this.

Projects like these help raise the water table and restore natural floodplains, improving habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife. A special thanks to ConocoPhillips and Trout Unlimited, who have been great partners on this and many other projects!

I received the grant application for 2018 from the Fish and Wildlife Commission and have been thinking a little about possible projects when I came across this lovely drawing by Jane Grant Tentas of New Hampshire. I love the inviting curiosity of the girl, the crisp vibrancy of the colors and the rich duality of the world. My goodness if this were only a freshwater habitat it would be so valuable to teach kids about ecosystems above and below water.

ca663334f7be916f5b55533b0bcd908e — *Beneath: Jane Grant Tentas*

As it happens, Jane teaches high school art about 20 minutes away from our beaver friend Art Wolinsky. So I’m hoping he puts in a good word for beavers, and maybe we can persuade her to go fresh?

Salmon stories and a surprise

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now?, Why We Care September 4, 2017

Today is day of revealing salmon mysteries, which is handy because saving salmon is motivating for far more people than saving beavers, (present company excepted). We start with this fine article from the North Delta in British Columbia where a volunteer group spent the weekend making little dams for salmon, because ‘beavers can’t be allowed to do it anymore”.

Delta’s Cougar Creek to get five weirs for spawning salmon

The Cougar Creek Streamkeepers have spent a week doing construction down at Lower Cougar Creek to make it a better place for spawning salmon.

The streamkeepers have constructed five weirs, horizontal barriers across a waterway, along Lower Cougar Creek to increase depth of the pools behind the weirs and oxygenate the water passing over them.

“Back in the old days, it was the beavers who often made impoundments in the water,” streamkeeper Deborah Jones said. “But now we don’t have enough trees to allow beavers to just be cutting everything down.”

Yes it’s true. Mother beaver used to be allowed to do her job, but now the are so worried she will eat one of the few remaining trees we left after building that parking lot that the Streamkeepers have trapped her away and agreed to do the work for her. No word yet on whether they’ll also be putting out willow shoots for bird nesting, small pools for amphibian rearing, filtering the water for toxins and laying out feeding tables for waterfowl. Mother beaver really did a lot for nature, so the job replacing her is a big one.

There’s more about it on KTNA’s next installment of Glacial Rivers.

The Ecology of Glacial Rivers–Su River runs of humpback, sockeye, and coho

The seventh in a series from the Susitna Salmon Center. This segment by Jeff Davis deviates from the ecology theme to tell about the runs of the other four species of salmon in the Susitna River drainage. From tagging studies, Department of Fish and Game biologists have information about when the runs are, where most of the salmon spawn, how long they spend in freshwater habitats, and other details of the spawning season. Chinook salmon were covered in the previous episode.

So be kind to beavers fishermen or ELSE that salmon gets it, I think this means.

Speaking of kindness, I found this yesterday and thought it was the most truly adorable creation I had ever seen. It the brilliant work of Polish illustrator Emilia Dziubak for the children’s book “Hug me, please“. I believe it fully captures the oafish delight I feel upon having our beavers finally returned, don’t you? I especially like the beavers eyes because I’m pretty sure that is the very same enduring expression I have made nearly every time I was unexpectedly hugged. The timing of this couldn’t be better, so I adopted it for our beaver announcement too.

bear hug — Illustration by Emilia Dziubak

Beavers International

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational, Environmental August 25, 2017

Another wonderful beaver film from our friend Willy de Koning of the Netherlands. She also wrote me a note about the different origins of the brown and black beavers. Looks like we have some fruits of diversity growing in the beaver tree too!

I’d like to sent you a new film of the beavers in Limburg, the south part of The Netherlands where I live. There also live a lot of beavers, more and more during the years. It’s not difficult to see them. In this part of the country live brown and black beavers. De black beavers were reintroduced in the Eifel in Germany and came originally from Poland. In Poland they were in earliyer years held fot their fur and specially selected for that
From the German Eifel they came to he south part of The Netherlands by small rivers. Now we have beaver families with brown, darkbrown and black beavers.

Wow, thanks Willy. That is really fun to see. I assume on smaller rivers these guys are still building dams every now and then? It’s wonderful to see the population recovering. Although maybe everyone doesn’t share our excitement.

Now from Canada we have the most polite article I have ever seen about a beaver dam washing out the road. Considering how much damage it caused, it’s amazingly good hearted. I guess it’s true what they say about those nice Canadians?

Builder beavers can obliterate roads when dams collapse

Two cars on Highway 141 in Muskoka, Ont. plunge into a submerged crevasse drivers believed was simply a flooded roadway. Though each road was damaged by a mad rush of water, the flood could be traced to a single cause — the collapse of a dam built by beavers.

No foul to the beavers. Their diligent dam building helps create beneficial wetlands and encourages bio-diversity. However, like all real estate, the location of dams is critical.

“Beavers are very industrious and love to stop the flow of water,” says John Potts, maintenance superintendent at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s (MTO) Bancroft office. “We often have beavers working alongside our highways.”

Potts says he admires the industriousness of beavers and respects the impressive force of water and sediment released when a dam bursts.

“Typically we experience one dam break per year and some of them are not very significant,” he says. “But I wouldn’t want to be driving through the area at the moment a big dam lets loose.”

I’m sure we all wish we had beaver-wisdom in our road crews but seriously? You can’t blame the beavers for trying? I think I need to sit down. I’m feeling a little weak around the knees. Usually transportation crews are not friends to the beaver, but this is one for the history books.Thanks for the eye opener, Ontario!

As a naturalist.com

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now? August 22, 2017

Now if you all had a question about beavers you’d ask me, right? And you know even if I didn’t know the answer you’d trust me not to make it up or pretend that I knew but take the trouble to find the right person who did. You know I’d never ask someone who knew nothing about the subject matter just because he’d say what I expected to hear because that would be foolish. Nature specializes, and if you want to know about jaguars you go to the jaguar expert, right?

We’re not quite as confident about the beaver education of “Ask a naturalist.com” run by Tom and Kate Pelletier. They maintain a fairly glossy website where they answer questions from readers in mostly accurate ways. Tom is a writer and Naturalist and Kate is the editor of the site and Operations Assistant for the Nature Conservancy. I believe at one time they lived in Massachusetts not very far away from Mike Callahan, but I’m thinking their beaver knowledge is not exactly top notch, based on the answer to this recent question:

Can I swim with beavers?

Common knowledge associates giardiasis and beavers so closely that people often call the disease “beaver fever.” However, it’s not clear that beavers very often contaminate people with Giardia. In fact, it seems that Giardia species tend to specialize. So the Giardia that most commonly infects beaver is different from the one that infects people. However, most Giardia have some ability to infect organisms other than their primary host, and you can find human-type Giardia in beavers. But the evidence suggests that when it is found in swimming waters and in beavers, the most common source of the human-type Giardia is not the beavers but people. Typically, it’s from untreated sewage that gets into the water or from fecal matter washing off people when they are in the water. For that reason, health officials recommend that people with diarrhea stay out of swimming waters.

When I asked Lihua Xiao, who is Chief of the Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory/WBDP of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases for the United States Centers for Disease Control, for his opinion about swimming with beavers, he said flatly “I would not swim in a pond where beavers are active.”

First of all, just because it rhymes doesn’t mean its true. Yes beavers can cause Giardiasis just like any other mammal, and most mammals, as it happens, aren’t too particular about not pooping in the water. But they don’t carry it MORE. To be fair, he does go on to describe a study which showed that muskrats carried the disease far more commonly than beavers. BUT he accompanied it with a photo of a nutria which he only just recently changed when it was pointed out to him in by a reader in May two years after this article appeared. Which begs the question, naturalist?

If you do decide to swim in your beaver pond, you should, as much as possible, avoid swallowing the water, and you should never drink untreated surface waters. The recommendation is to boil or use filters that specifically say they will remove Giardia. The cysts of Giardia and Cryptosporidium are somewhat resistant to chlorine, so don’t count on that. Boiling and filtration will also kill or remove most other waterborne diseases and parasites at the same time, including any worm-like parasite.

Do you think Tom has read any of the humorous articles from beaver researchers in other countries that point out that it’s only ENGLISH speaking nations that associate beavers with beaver fever because of it’s only in our language that they rhyme? Do you think he knows that the biggest risk of swimming is for dogs when folks let them swim too close to their families in June and July when they are protecting kits? Do you think he’s ever seen this photo of beaver expert Sharon Brown doing this?

I’m going out on a limb and saying the answer to these questions is NO. He does end the article with a reference to a Washington state website on living with beavers, but that is small compensation after talking to the foremost researcher on infectious diseases who, last I checked, knew bunk about beavers.

Might I suggest that the NEXT time someone asks you a question about beavers you talk to a beaver expert? Oh and here’s a helpful way to tell muskrats and nutria apart.