The agenda is out for the State of the Beaver Conference 2015 and it looks amazing. Starting with the Keynote speaker Lixing Sun, the co-author of the most famous beaver book yet written. (Books really, because it’s so popular there’s a second edition.)
Now maybe you’re thinking”why should I care” or “I hate Oregon in February” and “I don’t need to hear the latest beaver research”. But if you were thinking that you’d be thinking wrong. I’m going to assume that whoever you are you drink water, live on a rapidly heating planet, and are a citizen of a government with limited resources for fixing those things. The world needs beavers, and the only way it’s going to get them is if people like you stand up and teach people why they matter and how to live with them. This conference will make you better at that and you’ll hear from great minds like,
Instream Salmon habitat restoration and unintended benefits for west side beavers Robert Nichols, USDA Forest Service Fish Biologist
NWRC Beaver Research Update: From the Beaver State to the Heart of Dixie Ph.D. Jimmy Taylor,National Wildlife Research Center
Mathematical Ecologist, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center Ph.D. Chris Jordan
Flow Devices – Controlling Beaver Dam Flooding, and Facilitating Salmon Passage Michael Callahan, Beaver Solutions Inc
Beaver Restoration in Urban Creeks Ph.D. Heidi Perryman, Worth a Dam, Martinez Beavers
Not to mention that it looks like this morning I just managed to get Derek Gow from Cornwall on the schedule. So you’ll be personally updated on the most famous beavers in the world. As well as a watershed-beaver introduction by this persuasive gentleman:
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The conference is truly one-of-a-kind, inexpensive, and ecologically invaluable. The hotel is nice and beaver friendly, the casino thinks beavers are good luck, and you will meet amazing people that will become amazing friends. Register here and I’ll see you in Canyonville!
There can be fewer more-Canadian endeavours than sending a beaver to Mars, but a Canadian technology company with a Newfoundland connection plans to do just that.
I thought immediately of Laika, the stray dog captured by the Russian to stuff into Sputnik in 1957. They said she died painlessly in orbit, but it was recently reported in the BBC that she died just a few hours after blast off of panic and overheating.
There was NO WAY I was going to let this be repeated with a beaver. Before I chained myself to a missile, I decided to read the next paragraph.
“Beaver” is actually the name of a micro-rover that Thoth Technologies Inc. wants to send to Mars in 2018. The company and Northern Light Canadian Mission to Mars, as it is called, is being led by St. John’s native Caroline Roberts and her husband, Ben Quine. Roberts is the daughter of former lieutenant governor Ed Roberts, whom she says named the rover.
Well, okay then.
Actually it makes perfect sense, since Popular Science already reported in 1930 that beavers had dug the canals on the surface of Mars. I know because Michael Pollock gave me the article framed at our first working beaver meeting in 2011 and it proudly hangs in my dining room.
Now don’t you feel better?
Yesterday, I got an email out of the blue from Beaver friend and supporter Robert Rust. He said he had a bunch of old beaver books he’d like to give me and asked if he could drop them off. Just so you know who we’re talking about, Bob is the creative genius behind the mechanical tail-slapping beaver this year, AND the giant inflatable beaver a few years before that.
Bob taught science to lots of kids in Martinez, and kayaked the creeks for years cleaning out trash and tires. He is a complete indirecatable genius, smart enough to invent anything, connected to everything, but living entirely by his own rules. I expected him to drop off dog-eared copies from his youth or college days. Instead he bicycled up to my porch with three perfect first edition copies of beaver giants that left me speechless.
One was a copy of the 1937 Beaver Pioneers signed by both authors. One was the 1947 first edition of the several times reprinted “One Day at Teton Marsh” by Sally Carrighar (complete with gorgous woodcuts in every chapter) And the third was an original Grinnell’s fur-bearing mammals of CA. No I’m not kidding. There was also a fun copy of “the Beaver is eating my Canoe” just to round out the day.
How excited am I? Back when this all started someone bought me a signed first edition by Grey Owl and I thought I was in heaven. Now I’m sure of it.
I’m a sucker for old books. One time when Jon and I were in Norwich, England we visited an used book store and asked about older books. The grey-haired owner smiled and took us across the street down these stone stairs into a trove of 15th century manuscripts and said we could explore at our leisure, locking the door behind him on his way back to the shop. I swear there was a hand copied Iliad. Now thank goodness we were so poor that we could only afford three slim volumes or I would now be the proud owner of an entire book store. One of the books we bought was a personal almanac from the 1600’s that told you when to plant crops and had personal pages for notes that some grandson had scribbled on in the 1800’s. One of the books was a volume on how to raise a good wife from the 1700’s. I could not resist when I read how girl children should be praised for being compliant and dull. And frowned upon for any signs of creativity. Ahhh.
But these treasures PALE in comparison to original works about beavers! Thank you SO MUCH BOB for your generous contribution to Worth A Dam and beavers over the years. Everything you’ve done for us has been surprising, and this is no exception. You can bet I’ll be sending over a care package this afternoon. Right after I’m done re-reading.
Last night’s visitors from San Francisco were 30 high school students with backpacks and notebooks who came to see the beavers.They were accompanied by their energetic and fearless teacher/handler Catherine Salvin. I gave a little talk on the footbridge about beavers as ecosystem engineers and described their physical adaptions to life in the water. Then Jon took them on a tour of the dam and up to ward street to look for the kit. On the way she made sure they sketched the dam, the flow device, and the chewed trees.
There were some great questions, some appreciative listeners and a few who predictably couldn’t have been more bored. They had read the New York Times article beforehand, and were fairly schooled in the basic story. (Someone couldn’t exactly remember the word and said they were ecosystem technicians, which I loved.) I’m happy to say that not one student thought beavers eat fish or live in the dam. That’s Catherine right front below.
After their tour our smaller yearling made several appearances, swimming obligingly and foraging for them to watch. When it first emerged 30 noisy bodies trampled for a closer look and it dove immediately. I was surprised how quickly they learned to watch silently so they could see and sketch the beaver at leisure. A second beaver appeared later on and a great egret fished ostentatiously at the bridge during the quiet moments.
All in all it was a good night, for beavers, for ecological education and for Martinez. Thanks WALC!
This morning I heard from Robin that the second wave of depredation permits for beavers (the not-computerized ones that had to be scanned by hand) had arrived. She wrote,
“Yes, we have Region 4 well represented with counties Kern, Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Madera. Also Region 6 with Mono county. Nothing in the Southern coastal region- Los Angeles to San Diego.”
What does this mean? 4 – Central Region Serving Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. Region 6 Serving Imperial, Inyo, Mono, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That means permission to kill the water-savers in the driest regions of the state. Robin will generously donate her weekend to get the stats together. But she can’t possibly go fast enough for me.
I recently was talking to a reporter from the guardian about depredation in California, and she wanted to know if the numbers were going up or down. I realized we couldn’t know for sure, but might glean something from earlier records. I don’t have access to earlier depredation permits, but I do have the stats from a FOIA request by reporter Thomas Knudson on beavers killed by the USDA in 2010. Comparing the two is kind of like apples and oranges, because one is ‘permission given’ and the other is actual beavers killed, and just because a permit is issued the beavers could be killed by someone else and never wind up in the USDA stats. Think of it like “All mothers are women” but “not all women are mothers” grouping problem. Remember the column on the left is the actual number of beavers killed by USDA. And the column on the right is the number of depredation permits issued (which might valid for an unlimited number of beavers).
However you slice it, we still have our grim winner:
So Placer county is still the leading beaver killer in the entire state. No surprise there. Even more interesting to me is second place. USDA killed 108 beavers in Colusa County in 2010. But in 2013 the entire county got only got 4 permits. What gives? Did they suddenly have a change of heart and think that killing beavers was wrong? No indeed. Those 4 permits were issued for the incredible number of 94 beavers PLUS one unlimited wildcard of dead beavers. And they were all awarded to USDA. Let’s assume that those US killers are good at their job and always get their beaver. 94 + X (make that at least least 10 probably a lot more) and that puts them right back in their number 2 spot.
I think it was 2008 when I first wrote Catherine Salvin of the WALC school at Balboa High in San Francisco. WALC stands for Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative and is an outdoor-immersion-ecologically-minded splendor that is accessible to both continuation and Balboa students. As you can see it is definitely not your typical school.
Last year Catherine wrote that there was FINALLY money to get the kids here and they would like to make a visit to see some urban beavers. I told them the viewing was better before November but this is the first chance they had to make the trek. Jon and I are meeting them tonight down town for a beaver tour, and I’m hopeful that the beavers will cooperate. With any luck they will inspire some essays or artwork and I will get to post it here! (Not to mention fostering a healthy respect for urban beavers and their contributions later in life.)
WALC student artwork
Fingers crossed that we will see actual beavers in our beaver habitat!
In the meantime I’ve been thinking some pretty fanciful thoughts. Bear with me. (Remember my day job is a child psychologist so it’s an occupational hazard.) These thoughts are about mermaids. No seriously. Now everyone has seen the little mermaid and knows about mermaids in the ocean but did you also know that there are old stories that say some mermaids travel up estuaries to fresh water lakes? Estuaries like the Carquinez Straits? (Humphrey did it!)There is even some indication that they go to fresh water when they’re pregnant and give birth in fresh water. Which makes sense, considering salmon and steelhead go out to sea and come back to breed and lay eggs. Can’t you just imagine a mermaid tagging along beside a salmon and finding herself surrounded by cattails?Mermaids have also been described as being able to swim up rivers to freshwater lakes.
And since you already agreed to come this far with your imagination, can’t you imagine how mermaids would enjoy swimming around with beavers in their murky splendor? I mean, you’ve seen paintings of them with seals, and dolphins, so why not beavers? Visiting their underwater houses, helping with a repair or two and playing with the kits? There are numerous stories about mermaids helping humans so it’s not unthinkable to imagine they would even warn beavers about trappers or underwater snares.
In the vast entirety of the internet, where one can spend days and months looking through every possible crazy idea that is dear to someone, there is not a single thing written or drawn about beavers and mermaids.
Lake Wylie is a man-made lake just south of Charleston in South Carolina. Every now and then it has sightings of alligators and snake fish, and is the product of a 1904 hydroelectric dam made by the power company. Guess what kind of dams it doesn’t want?
LAKE WYLIE — Al Morey says there’s “one heck of a nuisance” on Lake Wylie, and he isn’t sure anyone is doing anything about it. Lakefront resident Ed Lindsey wants to do something about it.
“We’ve had beavers for a while, but they’ve always kind of been in the water,” Lindsey said. “They’ve never done any damage.” Until now. Lindsey had three small plum trees taken down on his property, and six larger tree. A neighbor lost a couple more trees, he said.
“They would chew the bark all around a tree,” Lindsey said. “They’re really destructive.”
Morey works at Clawson’s Pile Driving & Construction. He estimates he has seen 80 or 90 trees in a 10-mile area with beaver damage.
“Lately what I’ve been seeing is they’ve been coming out in broad daylight,” Morey said.
The most extreme damage he has seen has been in Crowders Creek, Morey said. He’s seen five or six dams from the island beneath the S.C. 274 bridge, upstream.
Oh those destructive beavers, coming out in broad daylight to eat your trees for no reason! Better call the trapper right away. Or your pretend lake could get altered by real nature! I wasn’t at all surprised by this article from SC but I was surprised by the final paragraphs.
Nonlethal options for beaver management include water flow control devices and wire barriers or fencing around trees to prevent gnawing. The state department also provides information on those routes.
According to the state, a beaver colony can be as large as 20 to 30 acres. They help produce habitat for waterfowl, fish, reptiles, amphibians and furbearers such as minks and otters.
The wood duck, which nests in large numbers in South Carolina, often is attracted to beaver ponds. Beavers are located in every county in South Carolina.
Remember, we’re grading on a curve. So any mention of beaver benefits, wrapping trees and flow devices is a big win for South Carolina. I don’t have much hope for these beavers, but I’m pleased that the reporter included options, and have some hope for him.
As the weather picks up, more beavers are being blamed for power outages. This one in Colefax, Washington. (I guessed they plugged in too many devices?)
COLFAX, Wash. — Avista Utilities says a beaver is to blame for a power outage at Colfax.
The utility says a beaver chewed through the tree that fell on a line about 2 a.m. Monday, cutting electricity for about 600 residents. Service was restored by 7 a.m.
I mean, it’s not like power companies are responsible for trimming and removing trees around power cables or anything. Mark my words, when Colfax moves the wires underground they’re going to blame gophers.
And here’s a story celebrating salmon and their glorious triumph over those ruinous, obstructing beavers.
For me, the bright spot in this time of year is the Coho Salmon. Theirs is the last of the salmon runs in our area, and they choose the cold autumn waters for their spawning beds.
That’s why I consider these fish heroes. They have come through so much. Even the creek itself presents challenges. Winter snows sends trees crashing down across the creek and the fish have to negotiate tangles of logs and branches. Beaver have constructed dams along the creek, lowering the water in places to where it is just a few inches deep and the salmon have to thrash over rocks and pebbles as they make their way to pools to rest.
The creek twists and turns, some bends so narrow that the water gushes through and the fish fight their way along, always driven to go farther. At last they reach the final obstacle-a large beaver dam across the west end of the pond, laying west of the lake. In the years when the beaver have been in the valley, they have kept the dam tightly constructed, repairing any breeches immediately. a pair of male Cohos head upstream. In those years the salmon have not been able to leap over the high dam with its many sharp-ended logs and branches bristling against their assault. In those times the salmon have to spawn in the pool below the dam, and along the creek west of that.
But this year the beaver left the pond and moved up to the lake and a breech opened in the dam and was left open. I walked out onto the old dam and stood watching for salmon in the pond and was glad to see some had made it over the dam and were swimming near it. I just caught glimpses of them before they moved into the deeper water of the pond. There were still many salmon in the pool-those who just couldn’t leap up the breech in the dam. And many were spawning in the creek itself.
Of course I posted a comment to Kristin, explaining how that beaver dam would also make deep pools for eggs to grow up in, not freezing in the winter or drying in the summer, and how it would be rich with invertebrates because of the beavers digging and mudding. But my comment must not have been poetic or honor-y enough, because its not there this morning.
And if you woke up like me and looked at the wasteland ashes of the election you might be comforted by this quote from Churchill, who famously said;
“Democracy is the worst form of government.Except for all the others”
The agenda is out for the State of the Beaver Conference 2015 and it looks amazing. Starting with the Keynote speaker Lixing Sun, the co-author of the most famous beaver book yet written. (Books really, because it’s so popular there’s a second edition.)
Now there is lots more to say, including beavers being threatened in BWW’s home town, (if you can believe it) and moderately good news from DEFRA about the Devon beavers. but I wrote this post this morning at 7am, worked on the graphics for leonard and promptly lost it the entire column in the ether so had to do EVERYTHING again.
I thought immediately of Laika, the stray dog captured by the Russian to stuff into Sputnik in 1957. They said she died painlessly in orbit, but it was recently 
