More goodies from the 7th Generation Institute Winter newsletter. These are previews quote of their interviews with ranchers which will appear in their upcoming film. Send this to your nonbelieving friends.
Aren’t those WONDERFUL? Honestly, I want to print them as post cards and mail them to every landowner in the west. Thanks for your great work, 7GI! It isn’t often that I closely read an entire newsletter and am disappointed to get to the end.
I really couldn’t resist the awesome broadcast earlier in the week, and had to let myself play. There honestly aren’t many things more fun for me than this, and I needed some cheer after the week I’ve had. Watch at least until the police come or skip ahead if you can. Just be grateful the good folk at Powtoon will only let me do 5 minutes for free, otherwise I would have kept going!
This morning I’m sharing a great article from the winter newsletter of our friends at the Seventh Generation Institute in New Mexico. This is the story of a workshop for ranchers they held in Nevada. It was enticingly called, “Making beaver work for you“, so you know it got my attention. The last paragraph reveals their true mission: “Keeping beavers in streams where they can work their magic! ” Enjoy.
This barn at the Winecup-Gamble ranch made a perfect shady place for teams to build flow device parts, learn about beaver behavior and share a few stories.
Of course , around here we would say “That’s BEAVER impact”. But that’s just us. Great work!
Looks like Frances Backhouse book has hit the Canadian market in time for the holidays and is making quite an impression. I hope she sells many, many copies! I’m imagining Christmas morning all around the hemisphere is filled with happy fathers, grandmas, CEOS and science teachers reading about beavers over their morning coffee.
(Mind you, it would be great if she had a few extra copies lying around left over to donate to the silent auction at the beaver festival.)
Backhouse plots an absorbing itinerary that takes the reader on a tour of beaver habitats, as well as stops at a fast and furious Toronto fur auction and a visit to Smithbilt Hats, the legendary Calgary maker of western headwear. Among Smithbilt’s creations is the “Gus,” worn by Robert Duvall’s character in the series Lonesome Dove. Today, you can buy a wool version of the Gus from the company’s website for $110, but the highly prized, incomparably durable, full beaver model will run you $1,000. Sounds steep until you consider the guarantee that, “Once you get one, you’ll never need another.”
Most importantly, Backhouse identifies the beaver as a “keystone species.” By that definition, the beaver is “central to how a particular ecological community functions.” As such, its “effect on other animals and plants is disproportionately large.” Looking forward, the beaver’s positive impact on hydrology and water conservation could lessen the impact of drought caused by climate change. While not presented as a panacea, a strong case is made for how a “détente” between Homo sapiens and Castor canadensis can work to the benefit of both.
Once They Were Hats is deeply, enthrallingly, page-turningly fascinating. Backhouse plays two roles in Once They Were Hats: narrator and historian; in one chapter she may be investigating the evolution of the beaver species — visiting the Canadian Museum of Nature’s warehouse to look at some whittled, wooden evidence of prehistoric beaver-like animals — and in another she is describing through dialogue her visit with a Native elder, whose Deisheetaan clan held the beaver as a crest animal. It’s in this way that Once They Were Hats is both a reliable source of scientific information and an interesting anthropological text, drawing two parallel lines through Canadian history: one human, one beaver.
Biologists began to redefine the beaver’s ecological significance — which is as or more interesting than its historical one. Beavers, like few other species, dictate their environments: their tendency toward deforestation has informed the evolution of many plant species, and the dams they build affect waterways and irrigation. They literally transform the landscape: One wetland scientist late in Once They Were Hats tells Backhouse that the near-extinction of beavers “fundamentally changed the way watersheds operate.”
How exciting for a beaver book to be heralded in this way! Congratulations Frances, and I hope it continues to generate adulations. I’m always especially thrilled to see folks talking about beaver benefits in the press. I would of course assume that this meant great things for beavers if I were not SO old that I remember the reviews of Glynnis Hood’s book that pronounced beaver as an “eco-saviour” and how dizzying that glorious inevitability seemed at the time. I was naive enough to write about it as “the New Gold Standard” in 2011, because I was sure the world’s attitude toward beavers was going to finally change at any moment.
Not so much. I guess Canadians are happy to celebrate beaver at regular intervals – just so long as they can keep killing them.
Kudos also to our good friend Robin Ellison from Napa whose lovely photos from the Tulocay beaver pond graced not one but two months of 2016 RCD calendar! A fine kit and a very regal pond turtle. You realize of course, that once adorable beaver kits adorn the watershed calendar the birds and otters are going to have to fight for space. Expect more grand beaver photos next year. The calendar isn’t for sale, but if you make a donation I’m sure they’ll let you pick one up at the RCD office (1303 Jefferson St, Suite 500B, Napa).
Bonus points for putting the beaver on my birthday month.
To say the UK is ‘flirting’ with beaver reintroduction is a vast understatement. The relationship has moved way beyond the blushing sideline gaze phase and now moved to furtive groping under the table. We have an film crew coming from the UK to film beaver stories next week as evidence, and I wanted to share this little bit of excitement as well from New Scientist.
It seems that beavers’ dams might help prevent flooding, cleanse water as well as help boost fish populations and wetland ecosystems.
The dams regulate the water flow both during heavy rains and droughts. “When it rains, more water gets stored in ponds behind the dams, and when it’s drier, water is gently released to keep rivers flowing,” says Richard Brazier of the University of Exeter, UK, head of the study of half-a-dozen beavers confined to an isolated woodland in Devon.
If reintroduced, they could be of most use in narrow tributaries and headwaters near the sources of major river systems where holding back water could potentially have most impact on preventing floods.
Brazier’s study, due to finish next March, also found that the staircase of dams filtered pollutants washed off farms. “We found that on average each litre coming in contains 150 milligrams of sediment, but only 40 milligrams on the way out,” he says. Likewise, nitrates arrived at average concentrations of 6 milligrams per litre, but left at less than a milligram per litre, and phosphorus levels dipped from 0.16 to 0.02 milligrams per litre.
Well, well, well. So beavers control water, help biodiversity and reduce toxins eh? You don’t say. I always suspected as much, but of course I wanted to be absolutely sure that things didn’t work completely differently in the UK than they do in every other country on the planet. You know, the way chips mean fries or having your landlord ‘knock you up’ in the morning doesn’t mean he impregnated you, – so you’re saying beavers might not destroy the ecosystem there?
Believe me, no one is more surprised to learn that the laws of nature operate the same way across the pond than the chief researcher himself who notes;
His preliminary findings compare brown trout populations from two similar streams that drain into a loch near Inverness, one with reintroduced beavers and one without. “There were more than double the number of trout on the ‘beaver stream’, and they were bigger,” says Kemp. He says that like beavers, trout prefer deep water so they luxuriate in beaver ponds.
Only Elaine can adequately express my shocked response to hearing that the habits of anglican fish parallel the habits of every other fish on the globe. I should send this to NOAA right away, because Michael Pollock is going to be so relieved that his decades of painstaking research haven’t been casually disproven in by a boy scout in Scotland.
Sheesh.
For something truly fresh and surprising, lets finish with this nice article from Illinois on beaver sculpture.
Sure enough, not far from the front pond at Delnor Woods, a 20-foot-tall elm tree lay by the asphalt path. A helpful visitor had come along and lugged it out of the main thoroughfare, but it still needed a little cutting to be completely out of the way.
As I dragged my trusty bow saw back and forth across the 5-inch diameter trunk, I once again, as I always do, marveled at how beavers can cut down trees using nothing more than their really strong jaw muscles and four sharp incisors.
I was bent, at a somewhat awkward angle, over the tree and saw and thoughts of beavers occupying much of my attention. But I happened to look up, for just a second. And that’s when I saw it. Delnor Woods’ answer to Sculpture in the Park.
Perhaps it was the way the sunlight was hitting it. Or maybe it was the fact that I was somewhat sleep deprived. At any rate, I positively was awestruck by the beauty of the creation before me.
Readers of this website should not be surprised to know that author of this charming speculation, Pam Otto, is not the first person to consider the idea that beaver chews were art. This topic has been much discussed over the years, and our beaver chews are among our most precious items for display. In fact one has even been stolen!
Pam’s right to be impressed, but that’s hardly the best we’ve ever seen. Check out this offering from a friend on the Beaver Management Forum a few years back.
I almost forgot, there are two gifts from friends that I wanted to share this morning, the first is chckle is from Napa’s Rusty Cohn:
And the second is from our old friend Ian Timothy, whose illustrious academic career at CalArts has clearly not dampened his beaverly Holiday Spirit:
Here’s a nice article from last month’s Freshwater Magazine. It’s a sweet piece of writing with some delicious frosting added yesterday that I’ll tell you about later. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
When a group of five scientists in the Pacific Northwest began advertising for workshops on the science of beaver restoration, they didn’t anticipate a few things.
The workshops would be filled to capacity within a week. There was so much interest they needed to increase both the workshop size and the total number of workshops offered. There would be a waitlist, followed by phone calls and emails from people clamoring to get in.
“People are starting to see the value of beaver for more than just their pelts or more than just pests, but how we can work in concert with them to fix more rivers and streams.”
Regulatory agency staff, nonprofits, tribal representatives, private landowners, members of the general public and others paid the $50 fee for one-day intensives on the science behind how beaver restore streams.
But the sharing of knowledge and best practices would live beyond the day-long events. Workshop discussions were captured in an official guidebook on beaver restoration, published this past June.
“The publication is meant to be an accessible resource for anyone using beaver to restore waterways,” said Greg Lewallen, a master’s student at Portland State University and the research assistant for the project. “With enough educational outreach, the perception of these animals will start to change. That’s why it’s critical we continue to spread the word about the large role that these animals play in ecosystems.”
This article does a great job of emphasizing how thrilled they were by the response they got. Waiting lists are a reminder that the west was hungry for this information. You probably remember this publication from the delightful cover that featured Cheryl’s photo. People were really excited by this information. Now the crew was so estatic by the response they got that they want to work on volume II.
Only in this second version they want to include a chapter on the topic dearest to my heart. Are you sitting down? They want to include a chapter on this:
Did you know that 81% of all Americans live in urban settings? So if most of us are going to deal with beavers its going to be someplace next to sidewalks and parking meters. And if the fact that they were including a chapter on the topic was all the news for this morning, that would be enough. I’d be in heaven floating on a pink fluffy cloud.
But that is not all. No, that is not all.
Now if you want to study tortoises you go to the Galapagos, if you want to see the works of Michaelanglo you go to Rome, and apparently if you want to learn about Urban Beavers you contact Martinez. Greg wrote me this week and we arranged a fantastic phone call for yesterday, where I told him the long and winding story of our beavers and the tireless work the people of Martinez had done to save them.
I was so flattered to be asked, and thrilled to think that before our city the topic of Urban Beavers was never even discussed. (In fact the words were probably only paired as an obscure reference to leggy females that drank Manhattans and smoked black cigarettes.) But now the words actually existed. And Urban Beavers were a THING, like open space or two-way traffic. And they wanted to include them in the next edition!!!
My excitement could only be described with this video short.
So I was as excited as little Madeline here during our conversation, and kept missing words and skipping over myself. But, since this was a story I had told a thousand times before, I found my way well enough. And before the conversation was over, a little moth of a thought started fluttering wistfully in my mind. I shushed it away many times but it came only back stronger.
What if I could be a co-author on this chapter. Was it even possible?
All through the hour long conversation I waived the fluttering thought away and tried to imagine whether I was qualified for such an auspicious venture. It’s true I had already co-authored two papers on beavers that were published in scientific journals. And a few in my trained field of psychology, where I had even been sole author. So maybe it wasn’t a crazy idea. But was it impossible? This was NOAA, Fish and Wildlife and the USFS; did my scrabbling, back room beaver-tactics really belong there?
Well, some dreams never see the light of day, and some apples fall to the ground before they ripen.We can never know what would have happened if I had summoned the courage to ask Greg if I could be a co-author of the chapter.
Because HE ASKED ME FIRST.
Guess what I answered. Go ahead, guess, I can wait.
Aren’t those WONDERFUL? Honestly, I want to print them as post cards and mail them to every landowner in the west. Thanks for your great work, 7GI! It isn’t often that I closely read an entire newsletter and am disappointed to get to the end.
Looks like 
Hot dam! Beavers — extremely weird, and essential to who we are
