Category: featured

Feisty Beaver Firsts

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Newsletter, Shameless Self-promotion, Urban beavers, Who's saving beavers now?, Why We Care January 3, 2017

Let 2017 be a year of firsts. Our wildlife friends in New Hampshire worked on a bill to make beaver depredation a last resort. They asked me to weigh in on language and used Cheryl’s adorable kit photo for the petition. As far as I know this is the ONLY state where ‘last resort’ has ever even been considered.

Blackberries, beavers and plastic bags: Taking a look at some bills for 2017

Rep. Carolyn Matthews, R-Raymond, wants to boost the protections for beavers in state law. She explained that Voices for Wildlife, a conservation organization, asked her to sponsor a measure that would make killing the animals “a solution of last resort.”

“Right now, anybody, in order to prevent damage to their property, can have a beaver trapped and killed,” she said. “And the group wants to really rearrange the emphasis in the existing law so that people take an honest look at other options before jumping right to destroying the beaver.”

Matthews said her town has had success using dam flow devices to manage beaver ponds.

This is momentous and we should all be extremely grateful to Rep Matthews for carving the way. She’s a new republican in the house. The reference to flow devices is referring to Art Wolinsky’s wonderful work! I can’t really imagine that this will pass, but I want this law considered and discussed in five more states next year. And five more the year after that. Obviously what this article doesn’t say is that the reason to try something else before you trap beavers is that it makes a huge difference to your state’s waterways, fish and wildlife. Removing beaver is like an amputation. The law is asking you to try first to save the leg.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

More firsts. This takes up a lot of space and it should. Because it took a lot of space in my brain to finish. This is our one and only newsletter celebrating our decade (yes decade!) of beavers in Martinez. I will be printing some too. It is wonderful that we get to read some other voices in here, so be sure to read Fro and Jon’s column and Cheryl’s interview. But the very best part are the quotes in the left margin which I am beyond grateful for, so make sure you use the slider at the top to zoom in on those. Thank you to everyone who helped get us here, and to Jane Kobres who painstakingly edited my gibberish with enormous patience. Give it a second to load and then click once to make it full screen. I am really pleased with this.

Santa comes early for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2016

Around this time of the Holidays everything starts to seem like “too much”. There are too many presents to wrap or cookies to frost or ravioli’s to make and there is barely enough time to squeeze them all in. Add to this that there is now a SURFEIT of beaver news to share. But I take my job seriously so I’m going to start with this, even though I’m saving the selfishly best for last.

How’s this for a headline? You gotta love Scotland.

Tree felling by beavers may save millions in flood repairs

CONSERVATION experts predict the controversial felling of trees by beavers will help save millions of pounds spent on flood damage and defences after the animals were spotted for the first time on National Trust for Scotland property.

The creatures are often blamed for causing flooding on farmland by building dams. But conservationists said their habit of gnawing down trees also encouraged multiple new younger stems to grow, which could help to prevent flooding by reducing erosion.

The nation’s largest conservation charity believes the beavers will play a key role in cutting its multi-million pound bill due to floods as they continue to spread across the country following the Government’s decision last month to grant them protected status as a returned native species.

That’s right, the country’s largest charity is excited that beavers are cutting down its trees because the coppicing will help prevent erosion. (And no, I didn’t just make this up in a basement with my beaver fantasy 500.) Follow the link and see for yourself. It’s for real. Never mind that in our silly country the Nature Conservancy is paying to kill beavers to save trees because they’re stupid. Imagine if our largest conservancy was excited about beavers!

Speaking of EXCITED (yes, I know I’m shouting), I heard from photographer Suzi Eszterhas that her beaver photo shoot is officially approved and can be shared by us. The Ranger Rick article will come out in the fall and in the meantime she generously arranged for allowing me to use her amazing photos in presentations and the website. There are 274 and at the moment I’m just like a happily confused child sitting in the middle of the candy store wondering which to enjoy first, but I thought I’d share a few beauties today.

Seeing these images is of course, bittersweet because it was that year that our kits died and our beaver family disbanded. There were no answers and few comforts. But every time you start to feel misty-eyed, I promise you will be cheered by the crazy curved tails of the Napa beaver kits. So you have to keep looking.

Most of the photos are of our Martinez beavers, including some wonderful images of our human children helping out, some are Napa images or rehab in Washington and Lindsay Museum (not ours). It is enormously special to have this record and I am so grateful for her remarkable work. If you want to browse the entire collection you can check out her website here.

There’s never enough time, I know.

Mysterious Beaver Ways of Yore

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, History December 11, 2016

Our retired librarian friend from Georgia, Bob Kobres, is always finding us interesting tidbits. Whether it’s hot off the presses new beaver research in phys.org or some historical gem that the world has long overlooked. This comes from a letter to the editor of Popular Science magazine in 1884. And it’s a whopper.

The author, one Samuel Aughey of Lincoln Nebraska, is responding to the May issue in which Dr. Stockwell wrote about Henry Morgan’s seminal book, “The beaver and his works“. He begins much in a familiar manner, saying it was a fun read but just because some researchers never saw something doesn’t mean it never occurs.

Rickipedia used to quote, “Absence of Evidence, isn’t evidence of absence“.

And then goes on to tackle the thorny debate about whether beavers use their tails in construction. Dr. Stockwell apparently said “No way”, but Samuel had other ideas.

Okay, did you get that? Samuel is minding his own business when he suddenly sees a group of beavers work together to move a trunk – some pulling some pushing. Already I’m intrigued because we never really saw beavers working together on a single log.

So there’s a little rut in the hill and the beavers can’t get the log over it, no matter how many times they try. Time for a new strategy.

Okay! Beavers in a huddle form two teams, the pull team and the push team! The pull team LAID THEIR TAILS OUT FLAT and the log was rolled onto them. Then they hauled that log forward hoisted, as it were, by their own petards.

Oompf! After that big log gets moved the pull team examines their tails to make sure they weren’t injured in the line of duty. Nope, all fine here.

Samuel ends with “Just because they didn’t go to your fancy schools doesn’t mean what they saw didn’t really happen”. And by the way who is this wacky Samuel Aughey of the obvious “tinfoil hat” beaver brigade?

Samuel Aughey Jr. was a minister and naturalist/ geologist in Nebraska and Wyoming from 1864 until 1886. He graduated from Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) in 1856 and then attended seminary there. Aughey came to Dakota City, Nebraska, in 1864 as a “home missionary” for the Lutheran Church. After resigning this position in 1867, he worked for the Dakota County government from 1866 until 1869 as superintendent of public instruction and county surveyor. He was named the first professor of natural science at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1871.

Well okay, professor of natural science, superintendent of schools and county surveyor. But still we’re talking Nebraska and anyone that could read would be called a scholar there, right? Here’s a partial list of is publications:

Which all goes to leave me scratching my head in wonderment. Surely when there were millions more beavers they might have worked together differently. But did they use their tails differently? Samuel thinks that some beavers have better ideas than others. Not just any beaver could do it. Go read the whole letter to the editor here and puzzle for yourself if it could possibly be true.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act I: Scene 5

Magic Mornings

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, featured September 14, 2016

This is a magical article from Michael Runtz of canada speaking about his recent visit to an Algonquin beaver pond.

A day of nature revelations

It was a cool and misty predawn when I arrived at Algonquin Park’s Argue Lake. Soon I was watching a large Beaver groom itself atop a feeding bed a mere 30 feet away. It was too dark for photographs but I was content just to watch.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the howls of wolves, emanating somewhere near the far end of the lake. I waited a few minutes after the magnificent chorus ended, and then I howled. The pack replied immediately.

I wanted to wait until sunrise before looking for the wolves. Half an hour passed and then dawn broke.

I quietly paddled my canoe to the far end of the lake, still shrouded with mist. Once there, I scanned nearby slopes for wolves, but saw none. I howled from my canoe and soon the wolves replied, but to the east.

With adrenalin coursing through my body, I watched to see if one might make an appearance. Excitement peaked when two dark forms scrambled down a nearby hill. But the animals were black, and Eastern Wolves are rarely that colour.

A Beaver slapped its tail, informing me that the dark animals had entered its space. Moments later, four Otters came snorting and huffing past my canoe, sticking their heads out of the water like giant periscopes to get a better view of me.

Half an hour passed and no wolves, so I paddled back to my car. I then struck out on foot, following an old logging road that ran parallel to the lake. I walked slowly and quietly, stepping on moss whenever possible.

After a while I left the road and bushwhacked eastward, moving slowly and avoiding stepping on sticks.

Eventually I came to a large pond. After several minutes of scanning, I spotted the head of a large wolf sticking out from Bracken across the pond from me. It stared in my direction, but I was hidden.

I howled, and it stood up and walked into full view. It howled back and began to bark, an indication that it was the pack’s dominant leader telling the intruding wolf to leave their territory. I barked back, and the wolf responded even more aggressively. After several minutes of exchanging vocal affronts, the beautiful animal walked away, content that the impudent intruder was not going to cross the pond.

It has been 26 years since I last had a chance (unsuccessful) to photograph a howling wolf. Thus, I was ecstatic to finally achieve a long-standing goal.

I was also delighted over my encounter with Otters, plus getting a picture-perfect shot of a Ring-necked Duck taking off in the mist. I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming; it was indeed a morning when Nature revealed herself wonderfully to me.

Ahhh we’ve enjoyed many a magic morning at our beaver pond, though we never got to see wolves. I am sure Mr. Runtz sleep-clock is broken too, and we probably both wake up at 5 even when we aren’t planning too. The very first beaver I ever saw was from the front seat of this canoe where I spent many a magic morning over the past 25 years. Fate and my cerebellum have decided I don’t get to enjoy the quiet paddle anymore so you can imagine how happy I am at this arrival to my porch, under which I will be able to enjoy magic mornings on forever more.

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Calling all Girls

heidi08 Creative Solutions, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers September 12, 2016

Granddaughters? Nieces? Cousins who love wildlife? Read this and get really excited.

I wanted to let all of you conservation superstars know about a FREE wildlife photography workshop I am offering for teen girls. If you know of any girls, age 13-18, in Northern/Central California (or farther, if their parents can get them here), that are interested in wildlife photography, please share the attached flyer with them. Of course, the girls don’t have to be local to attend. I already have a couple girls signed up that are lucky enough to have parents willing to fly them out for the weekend.

It is my hope that this free workshop might spark a few young girls to make the dream of being a wildlife photographer into a reality. Making it in this field takes confidence and persistence, which teenage girls don’t always have. When I was a teen, my life took many crazy turns – boys, family instability, etc – and there were a few landmark moments with professional women in various fields that helped to keep me from becoming totally lost and stay the course. Plus, we need more female wildlife photographers out there!

A few details: The free workshop is on November 6th, 2016 in Moss Landing, CA. There are 15 spaces available. All girls must have their own transportation to Moss Landing, CA, and must bring their own camera (this can be an SLR, point and shoot, or even a tablet or phone), EXCEPT for 2 low income spaces (in which we have camera gear and transportation provided). Applications are due by Oct 15th.