Category: Environmental

News of the environment or beavers impact on their ecology

WEBINAR WEEK!

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? October 18, 2017

Today is the day I’m letting you know that it’s time to sign up for your Compassionate Conservation webinars with Fur-Bearer Defenders. They’re free, easily attended from your computer and packed full of useful information. It is truly remarkable that FBD makes these webinars available world wide. They cover truly relevant topics like predators, presenter language and avoiding compassion fatigue, And oh, will you look at that! One of them will be about beavers and taught by yours truly!

Pragmatic Compassion: Teaching Martinez that Beavers were ‘Worth A Dam’

In 2007, Martinez California USA was surprised to find beavers living in the city creek. Officials were worried their dam would cause flooding and recommended trapping. Heidi Perryman worked to convince the city to install a flow device instead and started the beaver advocacy group Worth A Dam. Now she teaches other cities how and why to co-exist with the important ecosystem engineer.

Heidi is a child psychologist who became an accidental beaver advocate when a family of beavers moved into the creek near her home. Now she lectures about beavers nationwide and maintains the website martinezbeavers.org/wordpress which provides resources to make this work easier for others to do.

Click Here To Register

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit it’s not exactly a catchy title, but I really wanted to work the word “PRAGMATIC” into all that compassion, so it’s what we ended up with. Even though I’ve talked about our beavers a thousand times before this is different because a) I can’t use video and b) I want to emphasize the advocate’s role in saving wildlife. So it’s been an interesting challenge putting it together and re-including all the behind the scene things I usually leave out of my talk.

It would be SO nice to see familiar faces there, so sign up if you can, (assuming the formidable technology involved works and it actually happens) next tuesday at 1 pm!

More surprises? It turns out an Oregon Fish and Wildlife refuge is eagerly awaiting beavers too!

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge marks 25 with fanfare

Skeins of Canada geese overhead may be a common autumn sight at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, but it felt nothing less than extraordinary on Saturday, Oct. 14, as the community gathered to celebrate the refuge’s 25-year anniversary.

In the Riparian Room of the refuge’s visitor center, refuge staff, volunteers, Friends of the Refuge members and visitors gathered to share the story of the refuge’s beginnings and its goals for the future.

As part of the anniversary celebration, visitors were invited to meander through the wetland along the site of the refuge’s next big project. Starting next summer and finishing in 2019, the refuge will restore Chicken Creek, which currently flows in a straight path to the Tualatin River through an agricultural ditch, to its historic channel through the floodplain. By replanting trees and shrubs along the bank, the refuge hopes to attract American beaver, an animal architect that will in turn enrich the area for many other species.

What do you know? Planting trees to encourage beavers at a refuge, while here in Northern California at the Malhleur refuge in the delta we know they’re actively killing them. Sheesh. Baby steps, right? Let’s all appreciate wisdom when we see it. Thanks Oregon!

The other side

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now? October 16, 2017

Things are moving in a good direction in the wine country. Yesterday at the Napa community meeting they stopped talking about the crisis and started talking about recovery. (Which will also be a crisis, but of a different, long-term, unfolding kind.) I hear from the artist who wants to help us this year and she and her husband are safely back at their home home, which survived on the very edge of the burning on the Silverado trail. I can’t imagine what it’s like to return to a home that’s now in a charred ghost town, but I’m so happy they are among the lucky ones. The fire never reached downtown Napa, so I assume Rusty, Robin and our beavers are doing okay. The whole region will need lots of support and rebuilding for a long time to come.

Meanwhile the beaver campaign in Wales is going strong and they have successfully proposed a five year license that will give the animals a toe-hold in the country. They must be doing well because the big liars have turned out in full force, and are tweeking their arguments to sound convincing without appearing negative.

Opinions sought over beaver reintroduction in Wales

Members of the public will be asked to have their say on plans to reintroduce beavers into the Welsh countryside. Depending on the level of response and issues raised, a final decision could come before the end of the year. Supporters of the plan believe they will bring environmental and economic benefits, but others remain unconvinced.

Beavers were once native to Britain but were hunted to extinction for their fur in the Middle Ages. The animal has been reintroduced into Scotland and England in recent years and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) is currently considering an application for a licence to release ten pairs of beavers into the River Cowyn in Carmarthenshire.

The application has been submitted by Wildlife Trusts Wales and the Carmarthenshire-based Bevis Trust, which has three families of beavers penned on its land ready to be released. Bevis Trust founder Nick Fox believes the experience of beaver reintroduction elsewhere proves that the animals will bring big benefits to the Welsh countryside.

He told BBC Radio Wales’ Eye on Wales programme: “Beavers have a key role to play in the ecosystem. They build dams in the slower-flowing small rivers – not in big rivers – and those dams act as natural filters for pollutants and sediment.”

Alicia Leow-Dyke, who oversees the Welsh Beaver Project for Wildlife Trusts Wales, argued beavers would help improve biodiversity.

“Many studies have shown that where you have beavers you have a much richer biodiversity, you have a mosaic of different habitats – and that’s possibly something we have lost in the United Kingdom,” she added.

That sounds pretty persuasive. Better bring in the big guns to refute it and smoke up their objections a bit so no one realizes their just stubborn babies who are upset when they don’t get their own way. Go!

But Mark Lloyd, the chief executive of the Angling Trust, is not convinced that now is the right time to be considering such a project.

“There are lots of other really pressing priorities for the water environment that NRW should be focussing on rather than pet projects that are really “nice to have” but it’s not clear what the benefits are,” he said.

That is a concern for botanist Ray Woods, who has visited the River Otter in Devon where beavers are now in residence under licence.

“I asked the question, “What are they eating” and they just said, “Sorry Ray, we don’t know”. What’s been the impact on all these masses of mosses and liverworts and lichens that are absolutely bang full of useful pharmaceuticals?“

My jaw is hanging open as I type this. You’re worried that the beavers will eat up the lichens and then you can’t use them for pharmaceuticals? You do know that lichens grow in trees right? And beavers don’t climb trees. Do you think there is ANY possibility on God’s green earth that Ray was honestly ever told “I’m sorry we don’t know” when he asked what are they eating? Literally everyone is eager to answer the questions and start a conversation about beavers. Either that is a baldfaced lie or the only person he actually asked was a janitor on the train en route. And I can guess which one. Grr.

NRW has completed its initial assessment of the licence application and asked for some further information for the Bevis Trust and Wildlife Trusts Wales. Once that has been received there will be a short consultation. Depending on the level of response and issues raised, a final decision could come before the end of the year.

I’m going to guess that they’re leaning in the “Yes” direction and everyone knows it, because those two special lies aren’t the kind you make from a position of strength. They are what you say when you know you’re losing and you want to frame the argument in a new way out of desperation. Keep pushing Wales, you’re on the HOME STRETCH.

Yesterday I started making a list of the items I plan to ask for at the silent auction this year. In doing so I came across a lovely image designed by Sarah MacDonald of Into the Wilds. Her original water color was so lovely I couldn’t resist ’embellishing’ it.

Saved by the beaver

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now? October 13, 2017

Yesterday and last night were not as bad as they feared. There was even a FB update from Safari West at 8:30 pm saying they spent the day feeding the animals and shoring up defenses. I can’t imagine how they’re survived because on the Cal-fire map there is just a huge red cloud from Healsburg to Santa Rosa. But somehow they persisted. The parts of Napa that were expecting to be told to evacuate didn’t have to because the fire turned a little. Which means our Tulocay beavers are okay. I read a story this morning about a 70 year old couple from Santa Rosa that survived by submerging for 6 hours in their neighbor’s pool while everything burned around them – hiding like beavers below the water until they needed to breathe. They made it through the night and are miraculously not among the 31 dead.

Speaking of beavers and resilience I wanted to share the wonderful letter I received Monday from Judy in Port Moody BC. .

Hello from Canada

I am writing from Port Moody, British Columbia, and I have been following your website for years. I am a member, and former board member, of The Fur Bearer Defenders. Last year two beavers moved into a creek just a few minutes from our home and I have been dedicated to making sure this family survives.

Pigeon Creek is a small stream located in the middle of the Klahanie development on Murray Street, Port Moody. The creek is part of a green easement that runs between two low rise condominiums. The population of Klahanie is about 2000.

The creek was originally landscaped by Polygon development but has slowly been overgrown by several invasive species including Japanese knotweed, Himalayan blackberry and some smaller plants such as bittersweet nightshade. However there is still a preponderance of Dogwood, Willow, Aspen and a large stand of mature Cottonwood trees.

In November, 2016, my husband, Jim, and I discovered the start of a small beaver dam. We are familiar with the activities of beavers because Jim has volunteered to help Adrian Nelson, the wildlife conflict specialist with The Fur Bearers, install beaver flow devices throughout the lower mainland and up along the Sunshine Coast to help mitigate the effects of flooding from beaver activities.

You can imagine how hooked and fascinated I was at this point. A knowledgeable beaver advocate in the making! With a husband who helped Adrian install flow devices! And who had followed our website for years! Be still my heart.

We soon spotted what appeared to be two juvenile beavers working to dam a portion of the creek. The work continued throughout the winter and the two beavers seemed to become more comfortable in their new environment and were seen by the residents on a more regular basis.

By April we were only seeing one beaver and assumed, rightly as it turned out, that the female may have been pregnant. During gestation the male built a separate bank den.

During this time I was approached by the new General Manager for the Environment with the city of Port Moody, who told me she wanted to relocate the beavers. I knew that the province of British Columbia was not issuing relocation permits and that her intention was to trap and kill the beavers. Adrian Nelson, Jim and I met with her and convinced her to take a different approach and manage the beavers “in place”.

Although we have an understanding with this General Manager, I am cautious and am taking every step to ensure that these beavers remain undisturbed. It has been very stressful for me because she has given me misinformation about the beavers that has led me to believe she is not knowledgeable about them.

Oh, yes the old “We want to relocate these beavers” trick. If we’ve heard it once we’ve heard it a thousand times. ‘You’re puppy went to live on the farm’. It’s a fairly common ploy (or maybe not a ploy). Maybe folks really think it’s possible until they start making the phone calls and then they just let the story cover their tracks.

We finally got the first glimpse of the two new kits, late in the summer, when they were about 8 weeks old, now weaned and starting to eat leaves.

What I find so remarkable about this entire storyline is how the residents of Klahanie have responded to this new family in their midst. We have a community face book page here, for residents only, and people are constantly posting pictures, videos, drawings and even hosting contests to name the beavers. The male is named “Brewster” and the two kits are called “Woody” and “Chip”.

Jim and I have been wrapping trees to protect them from beaver damage, tracking what they are eating and I am providing educational posts on the face book page. I have invited a local biologist to give an evening Wildlife Talk and we had a good turn out for that event.

I would never have guessed, when we first spotted the beaver dam, that this pair of beavers would turn out to be such an attraction in our community. Every day there are people who come to watch for the beavers and the easy viewing location and accessibility provides everyone with a window into the lives of these animals. Beavers are not common in Port Moody and this is the first one in the city for almost a decade. Our viewing area is similar to yours, a pedestrian walkway on the bridge over the creek.

My very favorite parts are in bold because I just LOVE the idea of beavers enlivening and educating the community and attracting attention. Just like they did in Martinez. Urban wildlife helps neighbors talk to each other. Especially beavers. It’s as simple as that.

I am including a link to a new you tube video that a resident of Port Moody just made about our beavers.

Turn your sound up for this, the train reminds me so much of Martinez!

Judy! We are so impressed by your letter and heartfelt interest in these beavers. We love the video. We think those beavers are enormously lucky to have you and your husband in their corner. Communities that watch beavers are the best kind of protection against over-eager general managers. I wrote her yesterday with lots of ideas and this website has a host of resources for folks wanting to keep beavers safe and energize the public. I also suggested she might want to sign up for the webinar I’ll be giving this month about how Martinez saved our beavers, and I’ll say more about that later.

Thanks Judy for writing and telling us this fantastic story.

Skipping to the rescue

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Fire Prevention, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 12, 2017

Well, the wine country fires are nearly as deadly as the Oakland Hills fires now, and have taken more homes and plenty more acreage. The entire town of Calistoga was evacuated last night and the two massive sidewalls of fire around Napa are probably going to meet up today, which is terrible news for our friends and the Tulocay beavers. To top it all off Cal-fire just announced a red flag warning for much of the entire state, which means the whole thing will get worse before it gets better.

(I was vaguely remembering this morning how much people said they hated 2016, but they are going to remember it with fondness after this horrible year.)

The good news is that we heard from Rusty Cohn of Napa yesterday who is not missing but on vacation. We also heard from Susan Kirks of PLAN who said that Petaluma is terrified but holding steady. And our plucky little Martinez beavers have decided to forge ahead and rebuild one of the dams that were recently ripped out. Since there is fresh mud on the smallest dam, we can assume they must have repaired the larger too, even though we can’t see it. So we will take heart from their resilient spirits and fiddle on while Rome burns.

How one man tricked beavers and saved them — and roads — in the process

Knee-deep in muddy water, Skip Lisle wrestled with a metal fence, a key component of his invention, the Beaver Deceiver. On the morning of Sept. 29, deep in the woods of northeast Maine, Lisle pieced together the simple, durable device that he designed with one goal: trick the beavers, and in doing so, save the beavers.

Constructed on the upstream end of a road culvert, the device would prevent beavers from damming up the culvert and flooding the gravel road, something that is extremely common problem throughout the state.

“You hear about beavers being industrious and loving to work,” Lisle said. “That’s a myth. They’ll always choose the easiest damming site.”

Where humans see a gravel road with a culvert in it, beavers see a dirt dam with a tiny hole in it. As water rushes through the culvert, it calls to these natural builders, and their instinct is to “repair the dam,” block the culvert with sticks and mud so the area will flood, expanding their habitat. It’s what beavers do … unless you can somehow stop them.

That’s where the Beaver Deceiver comes in.

Maine is really a hotspot of beaver IQ at the moment. In the past two years I’ve covered stories as progressive as I’ve ever seen, and several that are equally backward – with hunting and trapping listed as the only solution. There is clearly some controversy going on there. But I’m hopeful with articles like these that beaver attitudes are moving in a good direction.

Growing up in rural Vermont in the 1970s, Lisle witnessed how beavers can rapidly change a landscape to benefit many other species of wildlife. On his family’s land, beavers constructed a dam across a waterway, creating a pond that expanded over the years, attracting a wide variety of animals to his backyard.

“There were so many animals using it, different species, and that stuck with me my whole life,” Lisle said.

When Lisle was bout 15 years old, the local beavers started damming up a culvert on a town road that ran through his family’s land. He realized that he needed to stop them or the road would soon be flooded. If someone else took action, the beavers would likely be killed. So he took charge and got creative.

“I actually stole some of my father’s old garden fence,” Lisle said, “and just built a crude fence in the culvert. And that’s when it all began.”

Constructing a fence around a culvert is the first step in building what Lisle would later call a Beaver Deceiver. But that invention was years in the making.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in geography from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, Lisle worked for ten years in construction, mainly doing painting and carpentry work. He then returned to school to earn a master’s degree in wildlife management from University of Maine in Orono. His thesis was on beavers, and more specifically, the wetland habitats they create.

“[Wildlife management] has always been my calling,” Lisle said. “I just didn’t answer it at first.”

Ahhh Skip! What a great article about a great man with a vision. Thanks for giving Maine such a lovely view of how and why to do this. And thanks for being our hero when we needed it. If folks need proof that it works, give us a call. Martinez was happy to function as a ‘test case’.

Now there are two more fantastic beaver stories on my waiting list I’m eager to get to. Assuming I’m not too stricken by fire-grief tomorrow to do my job, tune in for a great story of saving urban beavers in Port Moody BC.

Beaver Guide

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Educational, Environmental October 8, 2017

Lovely but slow yesterday at Wild Birds Unlimited. Plenty of folks were dam interested to find out there were beavers living just one block up! We left the sign with Mike so he could continue to pass on the word. There were lots of interesting people and conversations but my favorite has to be the man who said he lived on a lake one summer in Illinois and would canoe every day. Whenever he’d show up a beaver would surface along side him and swim beside him as long as he paddled slowly around. He said it happened nearly every day in the month he stayed there, and showed it was an adult beaver in describing its four foot length. Isn’t that a wonderful and rare story?

It made me think of Grey Owl and this striking video.

When I got home Bill Leikam sent me this from a buddy doing sound recording in the Catskills at a beaver pond. What you are hearing is coy-wolfs, geese and a flying squirrel chittering. If you feel any stress at all after listening to this, I’d be very surprised. Enjoy.