Time Flies

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental January 10, 2014

Over the break I filled out the application for Worth A Dam to return to the Flyway Festival at Mare Island. (Their website is down for renewal so I can’t give a link just yet.) This will be our fourth visit to bird Mecca and we couldn’t be happier. This is a massive expo of everything and everyone you wanted to know about our feathered friends. There are tours and trainings and field trips. Plus beavers. Who could ask for more?

I’m always particularly interested in talking about the relationship between beavers and birds. Whether it’s blue heron’s nesting in flooded trees at a beaver pond, or wood ducks benefitting from beaver habitat, I’m thrilled to make the link. This year I want to really emphasize the Cooke and Zack study that showed that beavers make ideal nesting habitat with their chewing by promoting coppicing – which makes the trees regrow bushy and dense. Their study found that the result means that as the number of beaver dams go up the number of migratory and songbirds also go up.

But how to preach this gospel in a way that resonates? There are always a lot of smart children at the flyway festival, so I thought we’d put them to work on the idea. I’m imagining something like this. A large poster that explains:

Then get them to teach the concept for us! The idea is that first we teach about beavers providing habitat by promoting coppicing, and then we let kids ‘populate’ the trees with birds and nests!

This bare tree poster will be blown up on a cork board at our display. Children will be encouraged to make birds and nests using construction paper, tissue paper, yarn, glue, paper plates, cotton balls, patterned paper, then stick them on the tree wherever they like. I’m imagining it might look something like this when it’s finished. Only much, much better.

Beavers and Birds! What a combination!

What if a beaver blogged?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational, Environmental December 24, 2013

On Christmas eve, the Perryman family rules were that we were allowed to open one present. So I will pass on this fine tradition to you. This is the best Christmas present you are ever likely to receive from a beaver website. It was sent to me yesterday by Dr. Ellen Wohl, the fluvial geomorphology professor at Colorado State who has written some of the most important papers on beavers and rivers. She is in the front row on the left, and one of these scrubbed, smart outdoor types around her is responsible for this clever work. This blog is written by one of her graduate students. Enjoy!

Dr. Ellen Wohl and the 2013-2014 FLUVIAL GEOMORPHOLOGY TEAM
Colorado State University

About Chewy:

I joined the fluvial geomorphology group at CSU in 2010. They were finally starting to recognize the worth and, I might say, critical importance of beavers in all aspects of the natural world. I decided that they needed professional guidance. It can be tedious being stuck in that nearly-windowless office day after day, but occasionally I get to return to the spacious outdoors and inspect the work of other beavers (see photo below). Someday, when my task here is finished, I’ll move on to another group and enlighten them in turn.

Ellen said this was written and posted very recently, and she didn’t tell me who was the genius behind it. You need to read it all the way through so I have to share it. It’s nearly Christmas and there is no alternative. I’ve decided to risk great copyright wrath and re-post it all here. Except for my very favorite part, which is the last lines. I know they will be your favorites too, so mesmerized by great admiration for the first 300 words, I am sure curiosity will compel you to click the link for the last 15.

This clever author deserves to know how truly appreciated this column was by folk who love beavers.Then they will realize their work was adored and also be able to tell that the link came from www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress, and everyone will be happy.

Okay? Get ready….

Research:

Research may not be the right word to describe my primary activities. I do, after all, know all that I need to know. Education is really my higher calling. Judging by the sorry state of beaver populations across the northern hemisphere, humanity clearly needs to be educated regarding the critical need to restore beaver habitat and protect beaver populations. After all, there are more than 7 billion of you, and far fewer of us. The Canadians have the right idea, putting us on their currency, although I do think we should be placed on something of much higher monetary value than a nickel. You people are all so (rightly) worried about the mess you’ve made: dwindling water tables, declining water quality, compacted ground and flash floods, and loss of wetlands and associated habitat, biodiversity and carbon sequestration (didn’t think I knew those words, did you?). Well, I’ve got the answer for all your problems: beavers. We deserve our title of ecosystem engineers, and if you give us half a chance, we can clean up a great deal of your mess. Just stop cooing about our cuteness in one breath, and then dismantling our dams and running us over with your cars in the next.

CLICK HERE FOR THE BREATH-TAKING LAST 2 LINES.

Isn’t that wonderful! Have the merriest of eves. And tomorrow I’ll have some appropriate Christmas tunes for your entertainment. A millennium ago, when I was a child I used to fall asleep fantasizing about drifting down a secluded river on a raft that carried everything I needed. Not any more. Now I’m going to fantasize about being Ellen Wohl’s graduate student.

Here’s the description of her most recent book, which you can buy here:

Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up, all in efforts to harness their power for human needs. But these rivers have also undergone environmental change. The old adage says you can’t step in the same river twice, and Ellen Wohl would agree—natural and synthetic change are so rapid on the world’s great waterways that rivers are transforming and disappearing right before our eyes.

Friends in High Places

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental December 12, 2013

Jimmy Taylor has to be the most pro-beaver member of Wildlife Services in the entire United States. (This might not be as much of a compliment as you think…) But this morning his lecture for Oregon Wildlife showed up on You Tube. The most exciting parts come at the end discussing what his graduate students have learned in beaver relocation studies. The beavers they relocate have radio tagged tails so they can learn about dispersal and mortality but it’s surprising how many findings from all this advanced science are consistent with what we’ve learned by just watching here in Martinez.

Beaver NIMBY

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental December 10, 2013

Yakima is having some more good press for their beaver relocation program. I met a few folk from their program and think their hearts are in the right places. But I can’t help being frustrated that moving beavers out of town is accomplished with such fanfare, while the long hard slog of teaching a city to LIVE with the beavers they have hardly gets a blurb. Think about it, the beaver battle in Martinez was covered in the media excitedly, the money spent on sheetpile is still heralded to this day, the plan to rip out the dam with an anchor was on national news, but Skip’s flow device and its success was never ever mentioned once.

(Once in an interview with a KTVU anchor she reminisced fondly, “Oh I remember being here during all that uproar! I was pregnant and my daughter is three now! Someone put in that pipe right? I guess it didn’t work because I never heard anything else about it”. To which I replied “It worked so well that no one ever talks about. If it hadn’t worked you would have been back to report on the story!)

Well the KQED program dedicated to “sustainability” has an interesting take on this short-term solution.

Putting Nuisance Beavers to Work

With their strong buck teeth and flat tails, beavers are the engineers of the natural world. Their craftsmanship, however, sometimes impacts man-made environments such as houses, roads, and farms. As a result, beavers are often considered to be nuisance animals and killed for the trouble they cause.

Now, beavers throughout central and eastern Washington State are being saved. In March 2011, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) established a three-year pilot project to relocate troublemaking beavers from homes and farms and move them to upper river tributaries. WDFW biologist William Meyer has been working on the Yakima Basin Beaver Project since its inception.

“I originally got the idea for this project from the Methow Valley Beaver Project,” said Meyer. “I thought, ‘I need to apply for a grant and do this project in the Yakima Basin.’” Meyer received funding for the project from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board.

Clearly KQED’s quest is smitten with this ‘problem relocating project’. (Never mind that they never reported on our beavers OR responded to the press releases about the six Beaver Festivals. Do I sound bitter?) It is indeed better to move a problem than to kill it, but remember the original plan in Martinez was to move OUR beavers, (well two of them anyway – they’d still have killed the rest).We found an successful alternative. And the success rates for the Methow Project on which this is based is about 50%. Which means that half the beavers are dead or eaten the following year.

“I think this is a win/win,” said Meyer, “These little ecosystem engineers can restore habitat, and [by moving them] we can solve someone’s problem.”

Those are some “Hunger -Game-Odds” but I guess its better than being killed outright. Still, let’s be honest, sometimes its a win/lose right? And since the property owner will face the same problem next year and will have fewer fish and birds, more erosion and a lower water table, I guess it can be a lose/lose too.

Tell me how a plan to move beavers is sustainable, QUEST? Is there could be a conveyor belt of some kind involved?

In Good Company

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental December 6, 2013

The lineup for the Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference was just published and I had to share a slice. Don’t you want to be there? You know you really should.

And as IF that wasn’t exciting enough, look at the team I’m playing for!

In case you need reminders, the first speaker is ‘Wikipedia Rick’ the senior author on both our Historic prevalance papers, and the second name is Eli Asarian who did the maps and graphs for both papers. Then that crazy lady from Martinez who probably needs no introduction. And after me is Michael Pollock who did pretty much every research on beavers and salmon EVER. Then Tim Robinson who is running the whole show and invited me to speak. Then Kate Lundquist from the OAEC who many of you met at this year’s beaver festival and finally the only person I don’t know but am very excited to hear! (And for us non-fish-scientists in the room, “thermal refugia” means moving to a hangout place that has colder temperatures. I looked it up.)

Wait, there’s more:

Ann Riley is the author of the most famous creek restoration book ever, and partner of Lisa Owens Viani who has been a Worth A Dam supporter since way back in the beginning. You might also recognize the name of Mike Vukman who used to be on the Urban Creeks Council and was a big help during our sheetpile fiasco. Now he’s in the private sector working for Stantec, but still a friend of beavers. Ann and Lisa are regulars guests at our Worth A Dam New Year’s ravioli feed and Ann asked me to talk about what beavers have done in our urban stream. (They are sitting together at the back.)

Oh and the best part of all this? I found out that the conference program had been released by a woman I don’t know from Napa RCD who saw it the beaver workshop and thought I’d be interested! Turns out the folks in Napa have used this website to help with beavers the growing beaver population in Napa and she’s happens to be a friend of Ann’s.