You cannot imagine with what glee the media is joyfully spreading the beaver-flinging story. It is in every conceivable paper and news station including CBS, Time, the CBC and the Guardian. I am not very surprised that beaver-haters find it amusing. But I am a little disturbed by the sporty good humor of the beaver crowd themselves reacting to this tale with [boyish] thigh-slapping hoots. They see humor where I see horror. I can’t be the only one, surely? Their response suggests I’m an animal-hugging worrywart who never has any real fun. There have even been hinted arguments on the beaver management forum about what a noble beaver-centric act this was, by good people who genuinely understood the value of beaver on the landscape.
Okay. History in every state is full of fish and game wardens who recognized almost too late that beaver matter on the landscape. This does not surprise me. To be clear, I am not questioning their motivations. They may have had the very best dam motives on the planet. I am reacting to their implementation. Which was barbarically ruthless and wasteful. The report points cheerfully to only ONE death by the beaver that leaped out of his box in mid air. But we know full well that even the very responsible Methow project says beaver relocation by LAND is only 50% successful – so what are the realistic possible numbers for flinging?
Tell me honestly now, do you think this story of beaver reintroductions would have gotten HALF the media attention without the bizarre cruelty? Beaver reintroduction in the twenties and thirties was happening all over California, not to mention all over the country. Have you ever seen a single news story about it?
I don’t know about you, but I got very distinct strains of the Laika story in this feverish beaver-flinging glee. There was a lot of humor when Russians shot the dog into space too, and some alarm from the hopelessly compassionate Brits which was to be expected.
Laika: The cosmonaut dog in 1957.
What if the newly recovered footage showed tossing wolves over Yellowstone? Or mountain lions over Yosemite? Then could you reasonably expect advocates to object? I’m going to guess that this footage was buried for a reason, and that even in Idaho people didn’t want to see beavers be flung from great heights and realize taxpayers paid for the trip.
Anyway they’re wrong about me not having a sense of humor. I have a robust one. Because I just found this very pastoral clip from Idaho public radio and even as I type I’m entertaining some most amusing ideas about what to do with the audio.
Bwahaha.
Long-Lost Parachuting Beaver Footage
CLICK TO PLAY
Here’s an alternate reintroduction strategy that produces slightly less alarm.
And on that fateful and long-awaited day that the weary world saw the very best beaver headline in the history of newsprint, you can probably guess whose photo it ran.
The beautiful image that accompanied the seminal article had been taken in this sleepy city in northern California, and featured one of our many yearlings grooming himself on the primary dam. It was placed on wikipedia in 2009 by our good friend and champion editor Rickipedia to better tell the beaver story.
And when the photo appeared in the widely read and internationally acclaimed Gizmodo more than 6 years later it was by-lined: Cheryl Reynolds of Worth A Dam.
We’ve already seen how beavers can save California from its seemingly endless drought. Now it looks like they can save the world from industrial farming by changing the chemistry of the water, making them natural biochemists.
Nitrogen fertilizers on farm land get washed into streams, where they fuel an algae population boom. The algae use up the oxygen in the streams, the rivers, and eventually parts of the ocean, leaving nothing for the fish and leading to large “dead zones.”
Biologists at the University of Rhode Island were studying the nitrogen content of streams and noticed something odd: whenever there were beaver ponds upstream, nitrogen levels dropped. Beaver ponds slow down river water, and they mix it with organic matter, which must have an effect on river chemistry, but scientists didn’t know exactly what was happening in that murky water.
So they made soda-bottle-sized “ponds” that let them study variations on the conditions the beavers set up in their real-life ponds. And they found a kind of reverse nitrogen fixation process was occurring — call it “denitrification.” Bacteria in the dirt and the plant debris turned nitrates into nitrogen gas. The gas bubbled up to the surface and mixed with the atmosphere once more. In some cases, the level of nitrogen in the water dropped 45%.
The effect was most pronounced in small streams, which lead to bigger rivers and eventually to the ocean. Beavers often set up their homes in these tiny streams—or they did before they were trapped or driven away. Re-introducing them might completely change downstream chemistry, make these environments more livable not just for the beavers, but for their fellow creatures, too.
Could there be a better headline? I especially appreciate the use of the phrase “more reasons”. As if we already knew there were SO MANY REASONS which (of course) we do. And I’m wild-crazy about the word only too. Only beavers can save the world – not nuclear power, solar energy or mechanical bees. But BEAVERS. Yeah!
Will nitrogen be the seismic force that shakes up the old “nuisance” ideas about beaver? It has certainly shown up many many times on my google alerts. When this story broke I was alternately hopeful and wary, prompting our librarian friend BK from Georgia to write that he thought we were closer to the beaver-tipping point than I understood, and adding,
“don’t despair that people in general will never properly respect beaver. I think we’re getting pretty close and your persistent blogging has no doubt served as a major catalyst for generating interest and continues to be inspirational!”
Which was a very nice and undeservedly gratifying thing for him to say, but I freely admit that I’m more pessimistic by nature than Bob. (I’d like to blame the fact that I live in a city like Marmeenest, but it probably goes deeper than that.) In the meantime I am going to see the glass half full and appreciate that our Martinez beavers produced what has become the [second most] recognized beaver photo in the world.
Not to mention that glorious fact that the name “Worth A Dam” appeared on Gizmodo during a day in which it received over 75,000,000 views.
I sometimes like to think of this website like a big spiders ‘web’ in the corner of a very active barn. Everything that flows through beaver-related breezes winds up passing thru here in one way or another.
First, I’d like to thank you for featuring some of our videos from Oregon Public Broadcasting on your website. That’s very kind. I’m a reporter with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Oregon Field Guide.” My latest story is about urban beavers.
We are in search of video of beavers in Oregon, especially in urban areas. Might you know who would have some? Or could you please share my inquiry with your members in the Portland metro area? I saw one video on line which credited Heidi Perryman and Worth A Dam. Could you put me in touch with her?
Thanks for any help you can lend!
Vince Patton OPB News Oregon Field Guide Producer
What do you think, could I put him in touch with Heidi Perryman? He was working on a piece about urban beavers and wondered if I had any footage he could use. I put him in touch with lots of local resources because I was having lots of conversations with local folks at the time about the Tiger and Greenway beavers. He didn’t really need footage from here, as you can see. But was grateful for the contacts.
You never know if projects are going to amount to anything. So you can imagine how happy I was to see this:
Isn’t that wonderful? Don’t you want to meet all those people who are cooperating with beaver in their own yards? Don’t you want to buy those houses and live there yourself! Vince did an EXCELLENT job telling this story and, go figure, when I hear city officials saying why its good to live with beavers I instantly tear up.
I am pretty certain that line “beavers change thing. It’s what they do.” is a direct quote from me. But don’t worry. I don’t want credit.
I just want my own way, and obviously I’m getting it in Portland.
More stunning video was released yesterday with such fanfare that, in addition to beaver experts, my niece and cousin sent it along excitedly! This from 1950 by the Idaho Fish and Game commission showing the reintroduction of muskrats, beavers and fisher. The muskrats are tossed by their tails, but the beavers are thrown from a plane and dropped by parachute.
This has been a story from the beaver history books for years now, and it’s nice to finally see the [mostly cruel] footage. I’m sure they were thinking it was a win-win for them. Either the beavers thrived in the upcountry and improved conditions, OR they died on impact and they got to get rid of a nuisance once and for all.
Either way, it was worth spending government money on.
Some people are excited about beaver because of their role in water storage. Some because they protect frog populations. Some because of salmon/steelhead habitat, water fowl range or sediment removal. There are A LOT of reasons to get excited about beaver.
Looks like we just added another to a very long list.
Nitrogen levels have been increasing in Northeast waters for years. The use of nitrogen fertilizers has risen and urbanization has brought in influences such as septic systems. This nitrogen is released into small streams and ponds and eventually travels to estuaries, where rivers meet the sea.
High levels of nitrogen in these areas stimulate algal blooms. As these organisms die and decompose, oxygen is consumed from bottom waters, creating low oxygen levels that can generate fish kills. While many know of these dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, they are also becoming a problem for the plentiful estuaries that comprise the coastline of the Northeast U.S.
Arthur Gold at the University of Rhode Island, along with his colleagues, studies how the presence of beavers affects nitrogen levels in these waters.
“What motivated us initially to study this process was that we were aware of the fact that beaver ponds were increasing across the Northeast,” he said. “We observed in our other studies on nitrogen movement that when a beaver pond was upstream, it would confound our results.”
Oh those darned confounding beavers! It was their sneaky tricks that ‘ruined’ Dr. Glynnis Hood’s dissertation by saving water on the driest year on record in Alberta. She had to completely change her whole paradigm. Remember that? And Dr. Suzanne Fouty’s dissertation too! They were planning one thing and found another, and look at what failures those slacker-researchers turned out to be!
(Sometimes the confusion that comes from finding what you don’t expect IS the dissertation, Julia.)
The researchers realized the water retention time and organic matter build up within beavers’ ponds lead to the creation of ideal conditions for nitrogen removal. They then wanted to see how effectively they can do this.
The researchers tested the transformative power of the soil by taking sample cores and adding nitrogen to them. These samples, about the size of a large soda bottle, were large enough to incorporate the factors that generate chemical and biological processes that take place in the much larger pond. They were also small enough to be replicated, manageable and measured for numerous changes. Researchers then added a special type of nitrogen to the samples that allowed them to be able to tell if the nitrogen was transformed and how.
Bacteria in the organic matter and soil were able to transform nitrogen, specifically a form called nitrate, into nitrogen gas, removing it from the system. This is denitrification. Thanks to the conditions brought about by the beaver ponds, this process can remove approximately 5-45% of the nitrogen in the water, depending on the pond and amount of nitrogen present.
“I think what was impressive to us was that the rates were so high,” Gold explained. “They were high enough and beavers are becoming common enough, so that when we started to scale up we realized that the ponds can make a notable difference in the amount of nitrate that flows from our streams to our estuaries.”
Nitrogen is one of those things, like carbon for instance, which is totally necessary for life. In certain amounts it helps make everything grow – but when you have too much of it messes everything up in horrible ways. Its heavily used in fertilizers so that crops produce the maximum bang for the minimal buck. Ideally nitrogen gets removed by bacteria thru a process called denitrification. But lately the bacteria can’t keep up. Then nitrogen from farmer Joe’s fertilizer washes down stream and mixes with farmer Ted’s and on down river with everyone else’s – until it gets to the ocean causing huge dead zones near river mouths. You’ve read about this, right?
Well, it turns out the nitrogen problem might have an interesting furry solution.
The research has some interesting implications. Julia Lazar, who conducted the work as part of her doctoral dissertation and is now working as an environmental consultant, said it might change the way people think about beavers and their ponds.
“Most of these beavers are in areas with smaller streams, not big rivers,” Lazar said. “These smaller streams are usually the first to be developed, causing a decrease in beaver populations. So, it may be important to keep these areas from being developed so they can have effects on nitrogen levels downstream.”
Smaller streams like Alhambra Creek in Martinez?
Gold hopes to study the ponds over a longer period and to study abandoned ponds to see if the nitrogen retaining qualities remain after the beavers are gone.
“It’s noteworthy that the beavers have such an impact on improving nitrogen downstream,” Gold said. “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.”
GO BEAVERS!
In a rational world, one that was capable of using new information to actually change behavior, farmers would LEAP at the chance to have beaver on their land and control their nitrogen runoff. Everyone would welcome these nitrogen-removing heroes and the world would be one step closer to recognizing that beavers do very important things for us and should be protected as more American than bald eagles.
Yesterday I and much of the beaver world, were really excited about this research.
But today I have come back down to earth and remembered that for nine years now I’ve been thinking THIS is the thing that will tip the scales in favor of beavers: salmon, water, frogs, nitrogen. And it never is. Whatever magic property beavers are found to have next, they will STILL be beavers and people will still see them as pests. Beaver benefits have been a cover story in Phys.org two times in the last 5 days. But it really doesn’t matter. It could be every day, or twice a day. Researchers who depend on industrial dollars will keep saying “Oh, yes they can do good things in some regions, but not here in special-circumstance-land. More research must be done.”
I don’t mean to sound hopeless. But people are VERY robust in their prejudices, whatever they are. They are sure what they believe is entirely justified, and aren’t really interested in having their beliefs challenged.
I guess sometimes, sometimes there are still surprises.
Author unknown: I saw this on Facebook and thought it worth sharing.
This is a pretty exciting study. Especially for us here in beaver-forlorn Martinez. There are a lot of things it doesn’t do, like emphasize the ecological cost of removing beavers from creeks. But the part that I know will interest Worth A Dam is the fact that when she went back and analyzed this historical data, beavers favored maintaining their ponds in pretty much the same dam area.
Many of its engineering feats are still evident on the landscape after more than 150 years — longer than such other engineering marvels as the Eiffel Tower, the Mackinac Bridge, the Trans-Siberian Railroad and Toronto’s CN Tower have stood.
The proof is visible in the continued existence of dozens of Ishpeming-area beaver ponds first mapped in 1868, according to newly published research.
“This study shows remarkable consistency in beaver pond placement over the last 150 years, despite some land use changes that altered beaver habitats,” ecologist Carol Johnston wrote in the study. “This constancy is evidence of the beaver’s resilience and a reminder that beaver works have been altering the North American landscape for centuries.”
And in an interview, Johnston said a major lesson from the study is that beavers come back to the same spots on the landscape and reuse them time and time again. That means wildlife managers and public lands managers can expect beavers to return.
There are SO many things I love about this article but that last sentence is the money shot. If new beavers are drawn to ideal landscapes then getting rid of them every time isn’t the answer. Installing a working flow device will prevent family A from flooding your road. And family B, C, and D. Why don’t people realize that beavers chose those spots for a reason and, just like the thickly accented ex-govinator, “They’ll be BACK.”
Dr. Johnston misses a few details along the way, like here where she contradicts Michael Pollock’s earlier work and ignores his most recent work. For some reason, the region is CONVINCED that Western findings don’t apply to their unique special dams (or trout), so I’m not surprised she said this. Hmmm, maybe we could trap her and Pollock in a jar, shake it up and make them fight it out?
I know I’d watch.
Obviously the most important thing about this study is that it suggests that if beavers come back to the same area time and time again, this probably wasn’t the first time that beavers moved into Alhambra Creek. And it won’t be the last. In fact the odds are their dam was in nearly the same place! I can’t tell you how happy that makes me!
Now another word on the previously mentioned beaver genome project. This time from our friend Vanessa Petro in Oregon. She’s the assistant to Dr. Jimmy Taylor at USDA working on the project. She writes:
“Here’s why folks should “give a dam’” about this project:
1. This is the first to ever sequence the beaver genome! 2. It would greatly contribute to our existing knowledge of this species and aid in their future management worldwide! 3. We may gain insight into the beaver’s complex dam-building behavior. 4. Researchers would be able to examine the small scale genetic differences between individuals across various spatial and temporal scales. 5. We can make scientific history together! Please support and help us spread the word about this campaign! If you’re looking for a chuckle, check out our recent campaign video (located on our website link) taken at a local dam site with our beaver expert and some very special guests.
Thanks for your support!
Folkmanis to the rescue! Support Vanessa and her adorable beaver helpers by going here and donating to this important work. They have 70 donors so far and need about 200 more. So pass it on, because beavers lives matter.
Vanessa Petro Faculty Research Assistant Dept. of Forest Ecosystems and Society Oregon State University 321 Richardson Hall Corvallis, OR 97331
And give it up for our delicate city workers who removed all the silt in the creek that was easy to reach. You can see from Lory’s photo here how much they left under the bridges where it was harder to use their toys. I’m sure that’s fine, because its not like our creek constricts around bridge areas during flooding anyway. Right?
Yet another reason to be happy about Dr. Johnson’s historic research. It means our city will only need to coexist with beavers another 142 years! They’ll be so relieved.
and fisher. The muskrats are tossed by their tails, but the beavers are thrown from a plane and dropped by parachute.
Arthur Gold at the University of Rhode Island, along with his colleagues, studies how the presence of beavers affects nitrogen levels in these waters.
The researchers realized the water retention time and organic matter build up within beavers’ ponds lead to the creation of ideal conditions for nitrogen removal. They then wanted to see how effectively they can do this.
