Devon is worried. They haven’t seen their famously uninvited beavers since September. (Well, neither have we.) Hopefully they’ll be lucky and they’ve just moved downstream or are taking a vacation. But surely there are as many people who want them dead in Devon as there are in Martinez.
Fears are growing for a family of England’s only wild beavers – which haven’t been spotted for nearly TWO months. Researchers monitoring the group are growing concerned after one of the families went missing – believed to have been scared off by dog walkers.
The 10-strong collection of beavers, discovered by amateur wildlife cameraman Tom Buckley, are the first breeding wild-beavers in Britain since the 17th century. Initially it was feared they would damage the environment around their home, but a license was eventually granted to a research group to monitor their progress. But now the group from the Devon Wildlife Trust are growing concerned after cameraman Tom reported that one of the three families has disappeared.
Tom has been by the beavers side since he first spotted them in February 2014. But he now fears for one family of beavers, after they went missing in September from their burrow close to a public footpath.
I’m sorry for Tom, because worrying about beavers is very hard work. And would be troubled by that odd headline if the first comment hadn’t clarified its purpose, but allow me to say, as a woman who has watched beavers fairly steadily for nearly 9 years, they are harder to see in the winter months. They always area. Even our friends in Napatopia have been complaining lately. This is partly because they have longer hours without daylight and more options – which means they choose not to come out when folks are around. If you check our sightings pages for the past few Novembers and Decembers you will see barely two sightings per month, although of course there are exceptions.
All I’m saying is don’t panic, but keep looking, because beavers are good at surprising you.
Here’s what I worked on yesterday, which seems appropriate for Devon now too. A friend sent me the idea about rabbits and thought it would be better with beavers. (Well, isn’t everything?) I am very proud. Especially of the toes.
You have probably seen this logo around. It stands for I Fucking Love Science, which is the brain child of British Blogger Elise Andrew. Since its release in 2012 it has awakened wild new interest and promotion, and beyond its visits on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, was slated this year for a TV spot on the Science channel.
Elise (who does all her own posts) uses a cheery engaging series of infoblasts, relying on her many million followers to get the messages shared around the world. How successful is she? This year Forbes magazine rated her as one of the 30 under 30 to keep an eye on.
Beavers are proving to be quite the helpful little creatures: First, they proved themselves to be awesome engineers in the California drought. Now, they’ve found a new vocation as biochemists. A recent study has shown that beaver populations are helping to remove nitrogen from waters in northeastern America.
Despite the ecological importance of beavers, they still face threats from fur trading and the stigma of being viewed as a pest by salmon farmers.
Arthur Gold, a natural resources scientist who worked on the project, said in a statement, “It’s noteworthy that the beavers have such an impact on improving nitrogen downstream. We have a species whose population crashed from wide-spread trapping 150 years ago. With their return they help solve one of the major problems of the 21st century. I don’t want to minimize that. We have to remember that those ponds wouldn’t be there without the beavers.”
Thank you Elise! I am always eager to get the word out and your voice is an especially great way to do that. Scientists everywhere are thinking about the need to work harder to make their messages understandable around the globe. And you changed an entire conversation for the better.
It naturally raises again the issue of allowing profanity on this website, which I know has over the years rattled some readers. Back when Suzi Eszterhas was planning to do the entire article on the Martinez Beavers story she mentioned that Ranger Rick would link to the website as a resource. So I went dutifully back and took out evey swear word. (Well, within reason. I left the ‘dams’). But since our kits died, she sadly won’t have enough material to do the story entirely about us. In a literal illustration of adding insult to injury, that means we won’t get to be a link either. Boo.
But every loss has its bright spot somewhere. There is always a silver lining if you look hard enough I guess. And I’m pretty sure this is it:
The Grey lodge Wildlife Area is a richly maintained 9100 acre wetland in Gridley CA managed by CDFW. It is a sweet spot for thousands of migrating birds; bringing birdwatchers, fishermen, duck hunters and wildlife enthusiasts. Visitors and groups of school children take wildlife tours of the area. They even have a drive-through viewing loop for the less active visitors. But you won’t be at all surprised to learn that they have a constantly uninvited guest that gums up their waterworks and causes less than joy.
Recently Grey Lodge contracted local filmmaker Jay Goble to do a wildlife management film. They had lots of information they wanted him to include on the pesky visitor, (because messages of intolerance won’t promote themselves). Jay needed some footage but their haunted beavers are pretty hard to see. So he thought he’d come to Martinez and contacted me. Here’s one of Jay’s recent films for CDFW.
We had a nice chat and I filled him in on our absent beavers but also the other places they could be viewed, (although from now on is grim winter invisible-beaver time everywhere). We agreed that summer would be a much better time to film. We also talked about the negative earful he had gotten about beavers from GLWA and some of the research about how important they are to water, salmon, frogs, nitrogen removal, invertebrates and all the wildlife that relies on those species. He was really surprised to hear the OPPOSITE of what he had been told. And intrigued.
I made sure I told him about managing beaver challenges with flow devices and how ours had worked successfully for nearly a decade. I told him about looking for beavers in Napa, American Canyon and Winters. And said we would be happy to help with 8 years footage if he needed it.
Afterwards I thought of the (by comparison) nearly infinite resources of CDFW which can pay top notch filmmakers to spread their “beavers are bad” message. And the little mouthpiece of this website, which has such a short range and narrowly finite budget.
And I thought, if he’s calling ME for advice on how to film beavers, I guess we’re doing okay.
Strategically reintroduce native beaver populations back into the dwindling watersheds around LA County, using modern techniques where beaver are “trained” to engineer dams where we want them to, yet leave our infrastructure intact. Beavers are proven to be highly effective at mitigating drought, flash floods, and erosion. As the first major metropolitan area to embrace this cost-effective solution, we would be ensuring a lasting, positive impact on the economy and ecology of our whole region.
Britt Sheflin is a private chef committed to zero waste in the kitchen that uses leftovers to feed homeless on skid row daily. She loves the outdoors and thought that beavers should be part of Southern California’s drought solution. She’s smart, compassionate and forward-thinking.
Britt has a bold, sweeping idea for the drought affecting all of Los Angeles County. BEAVERS. She wants to introduce beavers on a broad metropolitan scale to the polluted waterways of the LA story. And LA2050 could give her the money to do it. Your vote will help her take this project to the next level. And voting is easy.I’m doing it now. Click on the link above or at the vote link at the 2050 site, and signup to receive the email. Then send a response from that email to confirm your vote. And help move beavers one step closer to LA. Here’s the request in her own words.
“Please vote for a grant from the Goldhirsch Foundation and LA 2050 to make Los Angeles County the first major metropolitan area to embrace beaver reintroduction.” work? The proposal page itself covers the details of how we plan to go about reintroducing beaver to LA County, if we win. Any help on the public awareness front is greatly appreciated! We are currently ranked 30th out of 72 in votes and 8th out of 72 for “most discussed”. With a little help, winning this grant is very doable!
I found out about Britt’s formidable plan from Kent Woodruff at the Methow Project in Washington yesterday. We had never exchanged emails or spoken before that, so you can imagine how excited I was to come across this project. Even more so when I read the project description and saw it begins with a quote from ME.
“Any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver!” -martinezbeavers.org/wordpress motto
I’m realizing now what a difference it makes to have beaver voices from outside the regular community. People making a powerful difference in their own front yard and changing the conversation in a dramatic way. People without ‘biology degrees’ or forestry backgrounds. People like chefs (or child psychologists) who stumble upon this issue and use their unique background and skill set to make a difference. If only our old friend Donna Richardson, who worked SO hard to save the Owens Valley beavers, were alive to see this today!
Britt is the ‘wildcard’ Martinez once use to be. Lets welcome her beautiful idea into the world with a hearty round of VOTES, shall we?
NPR’s Scott Simon was kind enough to provide the audio, so I added my own finishing touches. I especially like the first slide and the fifth slide. But it’s all fun, and will only steal 65 seconds of your valuable monday morning, so enjoy!
I LOVED making the flying beavers. I could do that all day. That’s worth every second of labor it took to put together. Onward and upward. This morning there’s some assorted beaver news, with beaver bemoaning, beaver barometers and beaver benefits.
An industrious beaver has been wreaking havoc at Yellowknife’s Northern Frontier Visitor Centre lately. “This beaver has totally changed the appearance of our landscape, having removed an entire area of trees,” says Tyler Dempsey, a staff member at the centre.
The beaver started building his (or her) lodge in Frame Lake, in downtown Yellowknife, about a week ago, using vegetation from the property of the visitor centre to do so. The underwater lodge is about three metres from the lakefront building.
Dempsey says while visitors, and even staff members, have enjoyed watching the busy beaver at work from such a close proximity, they couldn’t ignore the amount of damage it was doing to the property.
“An entire area has almost entirely been cleared out resulting from the beaver’s behaviour,” says Dempsey. “The rapid pace and productivity he’s been able to do this with — we would see massive changes, even overnight.” Chicken wire around tree
When enough was enough, visitor centre staff wrapped their remaining trees in chicken wire to prevent the beaver from using them as lumber.
Dempsey says that seemed to help, but admitted that he and other staff at the visitor centre probably wouldn’t be that sad if the beaver chose another locale altogether.
“If he did go for greener pastures, I think we would probably welcome that move.”
(I know what you’re thinking. Yellowknife has a visitor’s center?)
Even though it’s 2500 miles away in the remote Yukon, I would remind readers that ‘reluctantly wrapping trees’ is pretty massive progress for YK where a trapper as recently as 2012 reported in the paper that beavers could “Bounce from their tails and leap to attack you.” (That got a letter from me which was published locally). I’m going to count small blessings and be happy that people in this remote Yukon province are enjoying watching the beavers work at all, even if they are using the wrong materials to protect trees. Maybe this bit of beaver instruction will teach itself.
Onto the beaver as barometer article from Nova Scotia.
Want to know what’s in store this winter? Chest-high snowbanks or rivers of rain? Joe Googoo of Wagmatcook First Nation in Cape Breton thinks he knows. Googoo was taught by his father and grandfather to read clues in the natural world.
Googoo said he has noticed beavers building their dams in lakes instead of streams.
“Yes, the beaver are the best indication right now,” he said. “I went to around 20 or 30 streams. There were beaver in there last winter. There’s nothing there now. They all went down [last winter] because the streams are so shallow, they’re easy to flood.”
Googoo predicts the water will be high in streams next spring, indicating a lot of precipitation over the winter.
Um, okay.
I guess its not worth considering any other variables that might be at play regarding beavers building in streams versus lakes. Food, predators, or trapping for instance. I remember as a child pointing at woolly worms and exclaiming that it was going to be a cold winter. And we celebrate groundhog day on a national level.
I guess if we’re going to believe a man whose last name is literally baby noises we might deserve what we get?
This last bit of beaver chivalry is generous even by beaver standards.
Thank beavers for a cleaner Catawba River, Charlotte’s water and sewer utility says. Charlotte Water initially reported that 3,660 gallons of sewage overflowed into the Catawba in northwest Charlotte on Wednesday night.
Thursday, the utility corrected the report: “The spill last night did reach a Catawba River tributary but did not reach the Catawba River. A beaver dam strategically located contained the spill.”
Pumping is underway to suck the spill from the tributary. No word on the health of the beavers.
From a city that kills so many beavers it has been regularly featured on this website, I’m going to say that it’s mighty kind of beavers to save your asses when you’ve been trapping them for years and years. No word on the health of the beavers? Do you really need word to imagine their fate after living and working every in your filth?
Just watch, after Charlotte lets the beaver soak up their sewage spill they will say they need to be eliminated because they spread Giardisis.
