Category: Educational

ABC – A Beaver Cienega

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental December 27, 2015

New words alert! A Cienega is our friend at Flow Back in time describes as:

Cienega is typically translated as marsh, but this loses much specificity of meaning. They are found in the Mediterranean-climate zones of California and in the desert Southwest, where rainfall is highly episodic, and particularly in closed basins where stream channels lead to salt lakes or dry lakes. In these regions, rather than running all the way to the sea, creeks are likely to seep into alluvial fans as they emerge from the mountains. This water may resurface in the bottoms of canyons or other lowlands where the water table intersects the surface, but frequently there are not strong flows. A cienega is often a complex of individual springs, seeps, puddles, and wetlands.

The story behind a saved cienega in New Mexico

After Cole, a former Phoenix-area lawyer, retired in 2003, he and his wife, Cinda, searched for a patch of land to restore. They were tired of city life, and in a world threatened by climate change, they yearned for hope. They found what they were looking for in the 12,000-acre Pitchfork Ranch, which harbored remnants of a rare habitat: a sprawling, spring-fed desert wetland known as a cienega.

Cienegas used to be fairly common in Arizona and New Mexico; early Spanish explorers complained about the wide marshes, which festered with malaria and impeded travel. They didn’t realize that cienegas also mitigate flooding and encourage biodiversity, supporting all kinds of fish, birds and plants.

But since the 1880s, many Southwestern cienegas have disappeared. Dean Hendrickson, a fish biologist at the University of Texas-Austin and an expert on cienegas, believes that the most likely culprits are livestock grazing, groundwater depletion and erosion.

The Coles knew nothing about cienega restoration when they purchased their ranch. And the Burro Cienega had been transformed over the years by previous ranchers, who trenched and drained the land and evicted the resident beaver. The cienega now sliced deep into the landscape, more creek than meandering marsh, and much of the life it once supported was gone.

One day at a yard sale, a friend stumbled upon one of the first scientific papers devoted to cienegas and bought it for $1. According to the paper — which Hendrickson wrote — in order to restore the wetland, Cole needed to recreate the natural process that formed it, by trapping the thousands of tons of dirt that washed downstream with each heavy rain. If he could capture that dirt, the water would be forced to slow down and spread out, and aquatic species might move back in.

Employing his legal talent for argument and persuasion, he eventually obtained more than $600,000 in public conservation grants. “If I had a client in all of this, it would be the cienega,” he says. Now, instead of advocating to a judge or jury, “I advocate to members of the bureaucracy.”

The restoration struggled at first. Cienegas form naturally when a persistent source of water, like a spring, bubbles over a solid foundation of rock or clay. That attracts plants and animals, and over time, nutrient-rich sediment builds up and creates wide and biologically rich swamps.

But when the rains came, they blasted away the posts Cole had jammed into the stream to trap sediment. Rock structures crumbled. The creek and downstream flood channels kept deepening under the fast-moving water. But after a decade of work — organized by Cole, but carried out by graduate students, government employees, contractors and the Youth Conservation Corps — the wetland is coming back.

Yes that’s right, this hardy lawyer-turned steward received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money and countless hours of student labor to do what beavers do for free every day of every year in every place they’re allowed. And would have bravely continued to do for free if they weren’t killed outright. I am touched by Cole’s story but I can’t help being alarmed that an educated man, concerned by climate change, would need to stumble on an old paper which told him to SLOW IT. SINK IT . SPREAD IT. because otherwise he would have NO idea what was necessary to keep water on the land.

What are they teaching people in New Mexico?

The beaver cheer that we hold dear

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? December 26, 2015

After Christmas cheer from the Hartford Courant in Connecticut.

**The beaver dam separates pond from forest. The dam is impressive, rising 5-6 feet over the surrounding forest. (Peter Marteka / hc)**

Haddam Land Trust Busy As A Beaver Seeking To Preserve Parcel

Cowan had invited people from around the area to attend a “Walk About The Pond” hike last weekend to showcase the parcel the trust has an option to purchase. In the email he called it an “incredibly important conservation parcel” with “exceptional qualities.” The property lies just to the north of the Route 82 connector between Route 9 and the Tylerville section of Haddam.

“Believe it or not, this was just a big, soggy meadow before the beavers came,” Cowan said.

But like the popular phrase, the beavers have been busy. And they haven’t been busy gnawing down all the trees. The brilliant animal engineers have created several dams out of mud, effectively blocking up the former meadow’s outlet stream beds. A 6-foot-high dam is at the northern end of the pond. There is also a series of smaller dams that block other outlets. Simply amazing.

“Beavers always seem to get a bad rap,” said one woman on the tour. I couldn’t have agreed more. The transformation of this low area in the middle of the woods to a pond filled with water lilies by North America’s largest rodent was an impressive engineering feat.

Ahh thank you Hadam Land Trust, and reporter Peter Marteka. There is nothing like some beaver appreciation to start the day off right. I love to read the joyful recognition at what a well placed series of dams can do. Even if Martinez doesn’t get any at the moment. Sniff.

How about some more beaver appreciation, this time from just outside Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Dog sledding, beaver habitats draws for visitors to Armstrong County trails

There have always been plenty of reasons for local folks and out-of-towners to visit the Armstrong Trail. But now, with an uptick in wildlife activity — and an offering of dog-sled rides — visitors have more of a reason to hit the trail.

ARTA supports and helps maintain about 30 miles of trail stretching from Rosston to East Brady.The volunteer organization recently gave permission allowing Allen Dunn of Rayburn to give dog-sled rides along the trail.

Recently, trail users have noticed a lot of evidence of beavers at work in the Madison Township area. On Tuesday, as rain dripped from bare branches and rushing water tumbled over rocks down a hillside, Owen stood near a section of trail between Rimer and Hook Station. Mist drifted through the valley and spilled over the Allegheny River.

Owen stooped to examine the trunk of a young birch tree that had been gnawed to a teetering point by the furry river-dwelling critters. More than a dozen chewed-up birch branches lay on the mossy ground near the river bank. The beaver dens were well-concealed and tucked out of sight far below the tree line near the water’s edge.

“We don’t consider them a nuisance,” Owen said. “They are a part of the natural world, and there’s no fear of them damming up the Allegheny.”

Ron Steffey agreed. He’s the director of the Allegheny Valley Land Trust, which owns the trail. “We’re the ones coming into their domain,” he said.

He joked that he trained the beavers to notch the trees so the trunks would fall toward the river rather than across the trail path. And he noted that because the beavers had thinned out the birch, young oaks growing in the area will have more of a chance to gain a foothold.

Wonderous. I would certainly be willing to take a sled dog ride to see beaver habitat in the snow. Wouldn’t you? And now we have evidence of positive regard for beavers from the state whose nickname happens to be “The Keystone State”. How appropriate!

Best beaver present yesterday came from Knob Creek Metal Arts in Kentucky. How’s this for a pair of book holders?

Finally a, proud photo snapped by Rusty yesterday at the Tulocay beaver pond which proves, once and for all, that Napa wins Christmas.

woodduck — **Wooduck in Tulocay pond: Rusty Cohn**

Good cheer for all!

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? December 22, 2015

More goodies from the Bay Journal. This one with a familiar ring to it.

Critter Number 5 — The Beaver

Shall the year of the buck-toothed beaver be upon us soon?

Beavers in this country happen to have their own fan club. I’ve heard from a few of its members this past week after my story about beavers was posted online.

“We were so happy to see it here in Martinez, CA,” Heidi Perryman, president and founder of an organization called Worth a Dam, wrote in an email. In her town, “we worked to coexist with beavers nearly 10 years ago by installing a flow device to control flooding. Now because of our safe, beaver-tended wetlands we regularly see otter, steelhead, wood duck and mink in our urban stream! And celebrate every year with an annual beaver festival.”

That’s right, folks, an annual beaver festival.

What’s unusual about that I ask? It’s always weird to discover my own words on someone else’s web page, but I’m really happy I wrote Whitney after her Urban beaver article last week. She wrote back that she had come across information from our website but felt it was too far away to be relevant to her article.

I guess we just got relevant.

Perhaps we are entering into a new age, the age of the interminable beaver. These buck-toothed, fluffy (when dry), flat-tailed tumblers of trees and engineers of our ecosystems are beginning to get a little more recognition rather than sheer derision in neighborhoods where they were once considered a nuisance.

When I told our editor Karl Blankenship that I wanted to write this story about beavers — spurred by a study out of the Northeast that looked at the nitrogen removal attributes of their dams — he sent me a trove of notes he’d collected about the critters. We’ve been watching beavers for a while, waiting for the pendulum to swing back in their favor, I suppose. Other comments on the story indicate the Year of Beaver might not be far away for our Bay area as well:

“Let’s hear a cheer for the eager beavers and clean water!” writes one commenter.

I like everything about this, but I disagree with Whitney and Karl in one respect. We can’t wait for the pendulum to “swing back”.We have to push it there.

Here’s just on reason why:

Climate models forecast significant changes in California’s temperature and precipitation patterns. Those changes are likely to affect fluvial and riparian habitat. Across the American West several researchers and civil society groups promote increased beaver (Castor canadensis) presence as a means to moderate such changes. Where beaver dams are persistent, they may sequester sediment and create wet meadows that can moderate floods, augment early summer baseflows, sequester carbon in soils and standing biomass, decrease ecological problems posed by earlier spring stream recession, and potentially help cool early summer and post-wildfire stream temperatures.

Go read the entire article here. Like any good researcher he spends a long time explaining why its true, then says it might not be true in other areas and more research is still needed. He also ends with the gloomy paragraph that beaver damage to infrastructure might be too expensive for most areas to manage. Hrmph. But I like any article that clutters the journal of fish and wildlife with more beavers, and Jeff’s a good beaver friend. So maybe they made him add that last paragraph.

Finally, a lovely 5 minutes from our friend Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust.

Tempting Fate

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? December 17, 2015

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of
Hamlet Act III: Scene 1

Apparently I’m not the only one who uses this ominous threat when people are thinking about getting rid of the beavers on their land. Deal with the beavers you have, I always say, because the one’s that come next might be even more problematic. Meanwhile Dr. Peter Busher at BU is busy researching it.

Beavers vs. Humans

CGS prof studies the socially monogamous mammals

Peter Busher has been studying beavers for four decades. A College of General Studies professor and division chair of natural sciences and mathematics [at Boston University], Busher was the first person to track the animals by tagging them with radio transmitters. He examines beaver population dynamics and behavior, including mating habits, birthrates, group structure, and how the animals migrate from one area to another. His findings could inform decisions about how communities respond to beaver activity and manage the animal’s populations, both in Massachusetts and across the country.

Busher says an influx of beavers in a community can raise alarms, causing heated discussions about whether trapping should be broadened to control the population. But he points out that some behaviors can be beneficial. Beaver dam building expands the wetlands, whose functions include filtering toxins from water, supporting biodiversity, and mitigating floods. (Busher notes that wetlands loss contributed to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.)

It’s important to understand how the animal’s population naturally develops, Busher says, and how its family dynamics work. Beavers are territorial, live in family groups, and are selective about which sites they inhabit permanently. These factors mean their populations spike when they move into a new area, but generally drop and stabilize over time.

Knowledge of beavers’ mating habits—which can vary based on their environment—could influence how communities manage the rodents and their “nuisance activity.” Although beavers are known to be among only 3 percent of mammals that are “socially monogamous,” raising their young exclusively with one partner, researchers do not know much about their pairing behavior. Do the parents also mate with other beavers and raise a mixed brood, or are they sexually exclusive? Busher wants to find out.

He believes genetically monogamous beaver populations—those that tend to mate with one partner—increase more slowly and may stay in an area longer. If one of these populations were removed because of nuisance activity, he says, the area would likely be free of beavers for a while. But if the population were more promiscuous, new beavers could move into the area at any time; communities would need to develop a long-term animal removal plan.

Hats off to Dr. Busher. Even I wouldn’t have the cajones to make a threat like that. “If you kill these beavers the next ones you get might have more babies and reproduce even more!” Last I heard research was saying that our beavers were ‘opportunistic monogomists’ and Castor Fiber was loyal and true. Apparently, now he thinks it has to do with individual variables which is pretty fascinating.

All I can say is this gives me memories of Obi Wan.

Go read the entire article and think about our beavers who stayed in on place for 9 years and appeared pretty loyal. We had the unique remarriage after mom died and I wouldn’t say the birth rate changed much with a new partner. 4,4,0,3,1,3,1,4. But what do I know. I never tagged beavers. I just watched them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Now wish me positive vibes because I’m off for my very last day. Tomorrow we are moving out of the office and I’ll be a retired child psychologist. I’ll be donating my toy collection to the agency where I completed my post doc and the next four days have all the tightly planned synchronized moves of a beaver festival. I’m bracing myself for the personal and clinical chaos that may ensue in the new year. But I’m trusting that I will still find many meaningful ways to contribute!

It’s always darkest just before the dawn

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 16, 2015

Things were looking might grim for the beavers of Tom’s River in New Jersey a couple days ago. Residents had taken all they could stand of the animals blocking the outflow of the lake, which meant creeping water lines into their gardens. Trapping season doesn’t start until the day after Christmas, and we all know how hard it is to wait until Christmas. They were chomping at the bit to get rid of the animals once and for all.

Toms River’s dam dilemma

Leave it to the beavers.

Township Engineer Robert Chankalian points out a clogged drain. Beavers are wreaking havoc for residents along Lake Placid Drive and Oak Glen Road by clogging the drainage systems along the lake between the two roads. Toms River, NJ Wednesday, November 18, 2015 @dhoodhood (Photo: Doug Hood/Staff Photographer)

The industrious, brown-furred rodents have been building dams in Lake Placid here, and some residents say that flooding caused by the busy beavers threatens their yards and homes. Beavers have become a big problem in this part of Toms River — so much so that it’s already cost Toms River some $75,000 to $80,000 to put in drainage facilities to dissuade the beavers, but the efforts aren’t working, said Business Administrator Paul Shives.

“For the past three years, the width of the stream has widened four to five times,” Lake Placid Drive resident Anthony Gural said at a recent Township Council meeting. “It’s approximately seven feet from my property.”

Come on, just 75,000 to 80,000 to dissuade the beavers? They are very hard to dissuade. Is that ALL you can manage lying about? In Martinez we said beavers cost the cities hundreds of thousands, $375,000 to be exact. We even got a gullible reporter from the LA Times to repeat it. I mean its just a made up number. Why not make a big one?

Regardless of how much the oddly named Tom’s River has spent valiantly hiring backhoes or throwing keg parties to discourage the beavers, it just hasn’t worked. Awww. Lucky for them New Jersey happens to be the home of the Unexpected Wildlife Refuge. So newly minted director Veronica Van hof called her many beaver friends to the plate. This morning she announced that Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions will consult for free. And Owen Brown of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife will pitch in if he needs a helper.

Their local Patch reports:

Beavers Vexing Toms River Resident

An animal group that operates a sanctuary was meeting informally with township officials on Monday in an attempt to convince officials not to kill the animals.

“More humane, compassionate and ethical methods of discouraging beavers from damming waterways and causing flooding exist. In the long run, these preferred methods are more successful and actually save money,” a member of the group Unexpected Wildlife Refuge, which takes particular interest in beavers.

I’d say they take a particular interest in beavers. The refuge was started by Hope Buyukmihci and her husband, with a special dedication to the animals. Here’s a favorite photo of Hope that should make her feelings fairly clear.

I would caution that the battle isn’t over yet, I mean just because the solution is offered there’s no telling if it will be accepted. And the rights of property owners versus the rights of beavers is never a fair fight. But I’m hopeful with all these good players involved there’s at least a chance for a Happy New Year.

In the mean time there was a LOVELY look at beavers on Wild Canada the other day, which I think I can share with you for a while. And before you say to yourself, beavers hrmph, who needs to see more of them, let me tell you that the beautiful documentary contains a NEVER BEFORE SEEN DISCOVERY of muskrat behavior in the beaver lodge. You will NOT believe it. The whole thing is excellent and the clip starts with great wolverine footage, which is pretty rare too. I’d watch it all the way through when you have time before it ceases to be available.