Category: History

The Best Laid Schemes o’ Men and Beavers…

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Creative Solutions, Environmental, History December 3, 2011

In proving foresight may be vain;

The best-laid schemes o’ mice beavers an ‘men

Gang aft agley,

An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!

Beaver friend Brock Dolman is getting ready for an address to the Wild Farm Alliance, and he wants to include information about how truly useful beavers can be to water and soil management, so he went surfing through the annals of history and look what he found!

That’s right, straight from the USDA a recommendation to start beaver farms along the Canadian border. That’s the father of APHIS who eliminated about 30, 000 beavers last year from California alone, not to mention all the ducks they shot at airports and woodpeckers they kidnapped from Rossmoor. Why on earth, you ask, would they recommend beaver farms? Let’s let the once-evident knowledge of USDA answer that question for us.

through storing water in the reservoirs along mountain streams, they would do much good by helping prevent floods and extensive erosion, by increasing the stream flow in dry weather, and by improving the fishing resources of streams and lakes.

Ahhh the former wisdom of the ages. Sniff. How we miss you. Don’t worry. It gets better worse. Nice to know they weren’t THAT smart about beavers….otherwise I’d get all depressed and wistful. Let’s let them keep talking. I’m sure we’ll get to something familiar eventually.

Beavers, the Survey has found, can be kept readily in a fully controlled if not a fully domesticated state. Because the animals are comparatively clumsy and slow walkers, they rarely go more than 20 or 30 rods from their home stream.To confine them to a narrow strip along a certain stream, therefore, it is only necessary to fence across the stream a short distance above and below their colony, running the fences at right angles to the stream about 30 rods on each side.

Now that I recognize! Expedient ignorance posing as research to reinforce the already foregone conclusion! Some things never change! “Don’t worry potential farmers! Beavers never wander! There’s no wind in the desert and we have pages of science to prove it.” I have to wonder what the a fore mentioned “survey” consisted of. Do you suppose it involved a researcher with a clipboard?

“On a scale of 1-5 how likely are you to walk overland away from your home stream? Choose 1 for Very Likely, 2 for Moderately likely, 3 Not Sure, 4 Moderately Unlikely and 5 Very Unlikely.”

Whoa. I’m having a Test Construction flashback. Give me a minute until the Likert dust resettles. Whew, that was close. Okay, let’s leave the cobwebbed shelves of graduate school and visit the halls of beaver research. First of all what’s a rod anyway? It’s an archaic measurement of distance that equals 16.5 feet. So 20-30 Rods would be about 300-400 feet. Hmm. That’s not very far. I thought beavers could go farther than that. What do beaver experts say?

or beaver can cross watersheds by overland travel of up to several kilometers. In a study of 46 dispersing beaver in New York, 74% initiated dispersal downstream, 35% moved to neighboring colonies, and females moved farther than males (Sun et al. 2000).

Baker, B. W., and E. P. Hill. 2003. Beaver (Castor canadensis). Pages 288-310 in G. A. Feldhamer,B. C. Thompson, and J. A. Chapman, editors. Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management,and Conservation. Second Edition. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Several kilometers, a bit imprecise but lets say that means between 5-7. That translates to about 4 miles. Or 21,120 feet. As opposed to 350 feet. Which makes USDA wrong by a power of 60.

That seems about right.

Anyway thanks for the delightful read, Brock and good luck taming the wild farmers! And btw if you’re having a hard time choosing that special gift for the beaver lover on your list, check out these adorable pillows. The knitted snugglers sold on Etsy in 2009 but there must be more out there.

Inferno beavers…

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, History November 25, 2011

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

This, in case you don’t recognize it, is the famous beginning of Dante’s Inferno, written in 1308, in which the poet is guided by Virgil into the underworld and devotes a couple thousand cantos to describe for the rest of us what kind of fate awaits our sins. The entire trilogy is called the Divine Comedy, not because its funny, but because it goes from despair to heaven, which is the old sense of the word where ‘tragedy’ begins in happiness and ends in ruin, and ‘comedy’ ends in triumph.

Though no theologian, I can announce with certitude that Dante was wrong about at least three things. Socrates, sodomites, and beavers. Given the topic of this website I’ll confine myself to the latter for the time being.

If your archaic Italian is a little rusty, allow me to translate. Dante is using a reference to the beaver sitting on his tail at the edge of the water as a way to describe how a monster is waiting at the edge of the void to carry them to the next level. ‘Lo bevero‘ is our friend, and he’s sitting there to ‘wage war’. Wage war? Who does a beaver wage war against? Not city council members or trappers or piles of willow leaves, according to Dante something very unsuspected. I’ll let the Scottish journal I was pointed to yesterday written for Lord Bute (who apparently had his own Scottish Beaver trial in 1878) describe it.

Isn’t that beautiful? This was the best Thanksgiving present ever and you might want to check it out yourself here. So thank you to Peter Smith (CEO of the WIldwood Trust in Scotland) who put me on to it and thank you to Lord Bute for inspiring this excellent excellent dressing down of Dante. A great bit of beaver lore and further proof that folks have been lying about beavers for 700 years!

Oh, and Happy Evacuation Day!

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Very Bored Mountain Men

heidi08 Environmental, History November 17, 2011

This just in: all those mountain men like Kit Carson and Caleb Greenwood and even Joseph Walker (buried in Martinez) that once traipsed around the Sierras looking for beaver were actually stunningly confused and misguided – with nothing whatsoever to keep them in shoe-leather once they left the central valley (which is obviously why they kept going back). The fact that beaver skins were used as currency in the 1800’s means absolutely nothing about their prevalence and all those sierra tribal words for beaver are merely a curiosity. Never mind that beaver in Colorado or New Mexico survive equally well at 10,000 feet or sea level and exist on both sides of the Grand Canyon. California is different. Our rivers were less hospitable than the other 48 states. Our rocks were pointier. Our hills were climb-ier. Our beavers were lazier. Fish and Game in its infinite wisdom has definitely spoken and of course since they have taken great pains to reference themselves, it must be true.

Although beavers were native to California’s Central Valley in the early 19th century, they were not generally known from the Sierra Nevada except where introduced by humans (Tappe 1942, pp. 7, 8, 13, 14, 20). Native beaver populations experienced great declines during the early exploration of California by traders and trappers (Tappe 1942, p. 6). Subsequent reestablishment and introductions have extended their original range (CDFG 2006, p. 1). In the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain ranges, beavers inhabit streams, ponds, and lake margins from Modoc County south to Inyo County (CDFG 2006, pp. 1, 2). Beavers commonly inhabit riparian areas of mixed coniferous-deciduous forests and deciduous forests containing abundant beaver forage and lodge-building material, including Salix spp. (willows), Alnus spp. (alders), and Populus spp. (cottonwoods) (Allen 1983, p. 1; CDFG 2006).

Oh and in case you wonder. They also go on to say that beavers interfere with Native trout but its mostly not a problem.

At Golden Trout Creek, a single beaver dam had been maintained since 2003. No negative impacts from the beaver populations were documented. Therefore, we conclude that beaver activity does not currently constitute a threat to the California golden trout, nor do we expect it to in the future.

To which I can only reply, that’s mighty white of you CDFG!

Alabamy Bound

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, History November 14, 2011

Huggin’ Bear brings history to life at Nature Center

It’s not every day you meet someone who has impressed Charlton Heston with his survival stories, had a $1,000 beaver hat custom made to help teach hunter safety and is convinced the current deer population is a result of social change.

Ahh, huggin’ bear! What a national treasure! You obviously know exactly what you’re doing and need no help marketing your rare services from me. Just look at how the juxtaposition of ‘hugging’ and ‘bear’ soften you into a cuddly object of reverence? And dropping that pesky ‘g’ adds a touch of the common man (which isn’t nearly as common as it once was). I for one am relieved to learn that the nature center in Alabama has full recourse to your sizable array of skills, but tell me this.

Exactly how does a 1000 dollar hat help you teach hunter safety? I’m asking seriously. I want to know. What kind of hat was it? Did it look like any of these?

Or maybe this?

A Fireside Tail/Tale

heidi08 History November 13, 2011

Of course Griepenkerl’s original shows Prometheus sneaking up to steal fire from the sleeping Zeus which he then gave to mankind and was punished by the Gods for eternity for his kindness. (Odd fact: German painter Christian Griepenkerl is weirdly famous for deciding not to admit the young Adolf Hitler to art school. Considering what he grew up to do instead might that have been the worst decision ever?) But laying aside Prometheus, the Nez-Perce indians had another very different idea of where fire came from. Let me show you what I mean.

Once, before there were any people in the world, the different animals and trees lived and moved about and talked together just like human beings.

The pine trees had the secret of fire and guarded it jealously, so that no matter how cold it was, they alone could warm themselves.

At length an unusually cold winter came, and all the animals were in danger of freezing to death. But all their attempts to discover the pines’ secret were in vain, until Beaver at last hit upon a plan.

At a certain place on the Grande Ronde River in Idaho, the pines were about to hold a great council. They had built a large fire to warm themselves after bathing in the icy water, and sentinels were posted to prevent intruders from stealing their fire secret.

But Beaver had hidden under the bank near the fire before the sentries had taken their places, and when a live coal rolled down the bank, he seized it, hid it in his breast, and ran away as fast as he could.

The pines immediately raised a hue and cry and started after him. Whenever he was hard pressed, Beaver darted from side to side to dodge his pursuers, and when he had a good start, he kept a straight course.

The Grande Ronde River preserves the direction Beaver took in his flight, and this is why it is tortuous in some parts of its course and straight in others.

After running for a long time, the pines grew tired. So most of them halted in a body on the river banks, where they remain in great numbers to this day, forming a growth so dense that hunters can hardly get through.

A few pines kept chasing Beaver, but they finally gave out one after another, and they remain scattered at intervals along the banks of the river in the places where they stopped.

There was one cedar running in the forefront of the pines, and although he despaired of capturing Beaver, he said to the few trees who were still in the chase, “We can’t catch him,but I’ll go to the top of the hill yonder and see how far ahead he is.”

So he ran to the top of the hill and saw Beaver just diving into Big Snake River where the Grande Ronde enters it. Further pursuit was out of the question.

The cedar stood and watched Beaver dart across Big Snake River and give fire to some willows on the opposite bank, and re-cross farther on and give fire to the birches, and so on to several other kinds of trees.

Since then, all who have wanted fire have got it from these particular trees, because they have fire in them and give it up readily when their wood is rubbed together in the ancient way.

Cedar still stands alone on the top of the hill where he stopped, near the junction of the Grande Ronde and Big Snake rivers. He is very old, so old that his top is dead, but he still stands as a testament to the story’s truth.

That the chase was a very long one is shown by the fact that there are no cedars within a hundred miles up stream from him. The old people point him out to the children as they pass by.

“See,” they say, “here is old Cedar standing in the very spot where he stopped chasing Beaver.”

(Does that make this the oldest ‘chasing beaver‘ story?) (Probably not.) So beaver was rewarded for stealing fire by ruthless trapping for 400 years and now gets killed whenever possible. What happened to Prometheus? Well according to legend he was chained to a rock and punished by having a giant vulture peck out his liver every day. The liver replenished at night so his torture would be eternal. Hmm…which one do you think got off easier?