Category: Educational

Pin the tail on the beaver!

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Festival, Who's saving beavers now? January 11, 2015

Let’s say, (and why not) that you’re an eager child at the beaver festival who wants to do the keystone project again. You’re thinking to yourself, I wonder what it will be this year, necklace? Bracelet? You march to the info booth and say that beavers eat leaves and build dams and that Heidi lady gives you something new.

“Everything changes, especially with beavers!” she explains. “We’re not doing the charms this year”, she adds. Instead she hands you a beaver tail made of burlap. “All around the festival at the different exhibits there buttons you can pin to this tail to fill up the Keystone arch and show how beavers make a neighborhood.” “You will earn the buttons by learning how beavers help each animal, because that’s what KEYSTONE SPECIES means. They make all this possible”.

Heidi passes you a laminated card. “This will help you learn how beavers help us, and if you have questions, the people at the booths can make sure you understand.” The card shows how dams lead to bugs, which get eaten by fish and birds, which get eaten by otters and mink and bigger fish. There are pictures so it’s pretty easy to understand. “We aren’t telling you where the buttons are this year. Think of it like an Easter egg hunt. You have to look in every booth and find them, but when you’re all done, you will know a lot! And your tail will look like this.

“The buttons are yours to keep. Bring the laminated cards back to me for someone else to use. Then we would love you to take a short quiz to help us show that this was a good idea and tell what you learned. Put the quiz in this box when you’re done with your mom or dad’s phone number. At the end of the day two quizzes will be chosen at random and the winners will get a beaver kit puppet to keep. Thanks for your help, go show off your tail and teach someone else what you’ve learned!”

Honestly, how cool is that?

This free activity for 150 children is the subject of a grant application to the Fish and Wildlife Commission of Contra Costa County. But don’t worry, even if they turn us down we are doing it. The genius behind those lovely button designs is this man, Marc Poulin from his downtown studio in Oakland. Go right now and look at his designs, because he has made a million things you will want to buy.

And before you ask, calm down. This project will be available for adults to do too, for a small fee.

What will we do with the other four hours?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? January 8, 2015

American Beaver Special for 20 Hours Straight

American Beaver Airs from 7 a.m. Monday,

Feb. 2, 2015, to 3 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – Jan. 7, 2015) The groundhog is a big player on its big day, appearing for a few seconds on Groundhog Day to tell us how long winter will last, then disappearing for an entire year. Now Nat Geo WILD gives another member of the rodent family its due, dedicating an entire day to the American Beaver. In the grand tradition of Bill Murray’s classic holiday movie Groundhog Day, Nat Geo WILD will replay its American Beaver special for 20 hours straight, airing from 7 a.m. Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, to 3 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 3. (For more information, visit natgeowild.com and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/NGC_PR.)

Just 20 hours? How will we occupy ourselves the other four? Oh, right. Follow that link on the left margin and watch Jari Osborn’s PBS documentary.

Twice.

It’s nice to see someone celebrating beaver. They certainly deserve it. And besides, we just found out that National Geographic has NEVER had a beaver on its cover. Ever. So they’re certainly due. If you’ve never seen “American Beaver” you’re in for treat. Here’s a glimpse but you can watch more snippets here:

You just know that they saw the PBS documentary and the NYTimes article and the AP article and thought, hmm how can we ride on these successful coattails?Well all I can say is it’s about time. Now if they would only cover this next kind of story. Too bad they don’t mean the OTHER kind of beaver bounty.

Increase in bounty brings more beavers

FOREST CITY, IA – More beaver tails have arrived at the Winnebago County Auditor’s Office the past several weeks since the county raised its bounty on beavers. Deputy auditor Kris Wempen said the county has paid about $600 in bounty since the bounty was raised to $50 on Oct. 28.

Beavers on the radio

heidi08 Beavers, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? January 25, 2015

This is half of a great interview from CBC and half an ad campaign for the trapping industry. The best part is with Michael Runtz, who’s book is coming out any minute. The whole thing is an interesting study on the unlevel playing fields between people who know what they’re talking about and people who make stuff up with regards to beavers. Here’s B.S. central:

“If we could find a way to keep beaver away from those roads, we wouldn’t have to destroy them. But there’s no way they have found that they can do that yet,” said Barnes.

My posted comment

“If they could find a way?”

The ways of coexisting with beaver are known and documented, and expert Glynnis Hood located in his own province can install them. That makes as much sense as saying “If there were some way to look up for sure how to spell a word correctly, I would do it.

Anyone smarter than a beaver knows how and why to live with them.

Beavers impact on forest and industry ‘dam’ complicated

Balancing the impact of beavers and their dams on the ecosystem and industry is a complicated process, according to a retired Lakehead University biologist.

The comments from Don Barnes come after an Alberta mining company was fined $1,500 for destroying a dam near Savant Lake in northwestern Ontario.

‘It creates water’

“It creates water, where there wasn’t water before so ducks get in there, muskrats. And all those dead trees that are flooded, they become homes for the woodpecker and pine marten,” said Barnes

Michael Runtz said the beaver pools are also vital to the health of moose.

Runtz is a wildlife photographer and lecturer at Carleton University.

His latest book, ‘Dam Builders: A Natural History of Beavers and Their Ponds’, will be published in Feb. 2015.

Runtz said the edges of beaver ponds are the preferred habitat for many sodium-rich plants.

He said moose are particularly drawn to these salty treats.

Michael Runtz has written, and provided the photographs for the new book “Dam Builders: The Natural History of Beavers and Their Ponds.” It will be available on Feb. 1, 2015. (Carleton University)

“And I dare say, if we didn’t have beavers and beaver ponds in the boreal forest, we’d have a paucity of moose. Moose get most of their sodium from plants growing in beaver ponds.”

This is Michael’s book which Amazon assures me is coming out ANY DAY NOW. He is a good friend of Donna DuBreuil of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre, and we’ve corresponded in the past. It makes me insane that this article didn’t talk to a single person who knows how to solve the problems beaver cause. It makes me insane that Michael didn’t say it himself or that if he said it they edited it out.

But I am very picky about this subject, and I guess having the discussion is dimly better than not having it.

In case you missed it last night, Leonard Houston gave a great beaver interview on KMUD’s Environment Show with Kelly Lincoln. I thought her questions were remarkably water-astute and realized she must have some Brock-Dolman based permaculture training in her recent past. She’s interviewing Kate Lundquist next week.

Oh and there was a special surprise caller you may recognize.

Beavers & the Public Trust

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental January 5, 2015

Back in September Suzanne Fouty sent me an article from the Oregon Quarterly about the work of Mary Christina Woods and the concept of Natural Law and the Public Trust. I read through it and about the work of the Children’s Trust with fascination and saw clearly how important that argument might be for beavers down the road, but I couldn’t figure out how to begin sharing it with you. The bookmark stayed uselessly on my computer while I tried to think of where to start.

Bill Moyers, in the final show of his very consequential career, figured it out for me.

When we think of climate change, the idea seems so big and unfixably hopeless that most stop thinking very quickly. Mary Wood challenged that lethargy dramatically with her dynamic work, and it’s even more exciting to hear described in person. Find an hour in your day for this program and watch the entire thing. Really. It’s that good. But here are some money quotes from the transcript that will give you the basic platform.

Well, the heart of the approach is the public trust doctrine. And it says that government is a trustee of the resources that support our public welfare and survival. And so a trust means that one entity or person manages a certain wealth, an endowment, so to speak, for the benefit of others. And in the case of the public trust, the beneficiaries are the present and future generations of citizens. So it is a statement of, in essence, public property rights that have been known since Roman times.

In fact, this was articulated by the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a landmark public trust decision last year. And the decision basically overturned a statute that the Pennsylvania Legislature had passed to promote fracking. And the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Chief Justice Castille, said this violates the public trust. And he began his opinion by saying that citizens hold inalienable environmental rights to assure the habitability of their communities.

And that these are ensconced in the social contract that citizens make with government. They cannot be alienated. They are inherent and reserved. So they are of a constitutional nature. And the point of the public trust is that the citizens hold these constitutional rights in an enduring natural endowment that is supposed to support all future generations of citizens in this country. It is so basic to democracy; in fact, the late Joseph Sax said the trust distinguishes a society of citizens from serfs.

Did you catch that? The people of this country are entitled to clean water and clean air and a liveable climate. Without these fundamental rights civic society as we know it becomes meaningless. This is the basic doctrine of the Public Trust, and what she has used so successfully in working with the Children’s Trust in Eugene OR. You don’t have to have a vivid imagination at all to immediately understand how this is important to beavers.

…environmental law held a lot of promise but that it’s not working, and that agencies have basically used it to allow almost unfettered destruction of our natural resources.

BILL MOYERS: What agencies are you talking about?

MARY CHRISTINA WOOD: Agencies that span the full realm of natural resources. So the US EPA, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Corps of Engineers, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service; you name it. There are dozens of agencies at the federal and state levels that control environmental resources. And they are supposed to represent the public interest and not corporations or moneyed interests in making those decisions. And we the public assume that the agencies are doing the right thing when they’re implementing environmental laws. Whereas in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Agencies have become politicized creatures that largely serve industry.

Climate is not just an environmental issue. This is a civilizational issue. This is the biggest case that courts will get in terms of the potential harm in front of them, the population affected by that harm, and in terms of the urgency. Climate is mind-blowing. It can’t be categorized any longer as an environmental issue.

Remind me again why climate change has anything to do with beavers?

And Eugene Oregon is about an hour away from the State of the Beaver Conference. Just sayin’.

You otter see this…

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? December 16, 2014

Our beaver-watching friends in Napa are keeping a close eye on the pond to see what the rain does to the beavers. I got this yesterday from Rusty.

I was checking on the Beaver Pond today around 2 p.m. and was excited to see what at first I thought were two beavers. Turned out to be two river otters which wasn’t so bad,

otter Rusty — River otter fishing Napa beaver pond.: Photo Rusty Cohn 12-14

I told him our mantra and suggested he send it to the paper.

Beaver ponds increase invertebrates
More Bugs mean more fish
More Fish mean more otters and mink

I also told him to make an otter spotter report since he caught this video:

This morning our retired librarian friend from Georgia sent me new research for the “Blame the Beaver Campaign”. This one about Methan Emmissions.

Beaver-mediated methane emission: The effects of population growth in Eurasia and the Americas

Abstract

Globally, greenhouse gas budgets are dominated by natural sources, and aquatic ecosystems are a prominent source of methane (CH₄) to the atmosphere. Beaver (Castor canadensis and Castor fiber) populations have experienced human-driven change, and CH₄ emissions associated with their habitat remain uncertain. This study reports the effect of near extinction and recovery of beavers globally on aquatic CH₄ emissions and habitat. Resurgence of native beaver populations and their introduction in other regions accounts for emission of 0.18–0.80 Tg CH₄ year⁻¹ (year 2000). This flux is approximately 200 times larger than emissions from the same systems (ponds and flowing waters that became ponds) circa 1900. Beaver population recovery was estimated to have led to the creation of 9500–42 000 km² of ponded water, and increased riparian interface length of >200 000 km. Continued range expansion and population growth in South America and Europe could further increase CH₄ emissions.

Did you catch that? By recovering after we killed them earlier, the rebounding population of beavers are making dams and creating wetlands that emit CH4. Methane is the most prevalent Green house gas. Greenhouse gases cause global warning Because lord knows its not the cows, or the landfills or the cars or the power companies that are causing global warming.

It’s the beavers!