Category: kits

Beaver Central

heidi08 Environmental, kits, Who's saving beavers now? September 24, 2016

Yesterday I received an email about beavers in New Jersey, and a distress call about beavers in Eugene Oregon. Coming a day after my beaver good wishes from New Hamshire, I can only conclude that Worth A Dam is the nation’s number one resource for beaver advocacy.

My email from Eugene included this video from Patricia and Greg McPherson concerned about the Island Lakes beavers in GoodPasture Island Oregon.

I put her in touch with Leonard Houston of the Beaver Advocacy Committee, Kaegen Scully-Englemeyer of the Welands Conservancy and Jacob Shockley of Beaver State Wildlife Solutions. I’m sure between the three of them those beavers will have a fighting chance. She wrote a nice thank you note that I thought I’d share to draw attention to a newish resource I put together while the beaver mania talk was still fresh in my mind. Look to your left and up on the screen for the link.

I watched your ‘Our Story” ….VERY HEARTWARMING, FUNNY AND EDUCATIONAL…..KUDOS! I’ve passed it on to city of Eugene, ODFW and others. That initial image of the beaver setting up shop in downtown….very risky, funny and ultimately—thanks to you——A VERY POSITIVE OUTCOME!

Thank you for what you do- patricia

Good luck Patricia! Public interest makes a huge difference in beavers lives and they are lucky to have yours!

Time for some adorable news from WildHeart Ranch in Oklahoma who didn’t even know about this story until I posted it on FB and tagged them. It’s a shame beaver orphans are so dam adorable, maybe if they were hideous and terrifying the world would make fewer of them?

Rescuers Wait For Sleepy Baby Beaver To Wake Up For His Breakfast

“Good morning,” Dan at Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center in Claremore, Oklahoma, said in a Facebook video on Friday. “I promised everybody I would send a morning video.”

The star of the video is a very sleepy baby beaver named Rocky. And Dan is using the time while Rocky is still groggy to update all his fans.

“Here he is waking up for his morning breakfast,” Dan explained. “Beavers are kind of temperamental. Rocky doesn’t want to eat yet because he’s not fully awake.”

Not cute enough for you? Check your pulse. You may be dead. Can you hear the awww noises coming out of your mouth? Hmm, watch Annette feed the little sleepyhead just to be sure before we call the coroner. Any spare change you might want to send their way will be put to good use. Remember this is Oklahoma and teach folks to care for Nature is important.

Now for our own local interests here at home, Jon saw Mom and Dad again last night. She wasn’t nearly as snugly as the day before and barked at Dad wen he wanted to cuddle. Which any just-delivered or about-to-deliver mom can understand. Still she looks great and she’s OURS.

And baby makes three…

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Dispersal, Educational, Environmental, Festival, kits, Who's saving beavers now? July 30, 2016

Meanwhile the folks in Olympic Village are worried where there beaver kits will grow up. And have apparently forgotten about yearlings entirely.

Baby beavers in Olympic Village may struggle to find a home in Vancouver

The struggle to find housing is a classic Vancouver dilemma and it seems even beavers in this city aren’t exempt.

A growing family of beavers living in a park by Vancouver’s Olympic Village may soon find themselves struggling to find a new habitat because nearby urban areas suitable for rodents are at capacity.

Based on public videos and photos, Vancouver Park Board biologist Nick Page believes up to three baby beavers are now are living with their parents in Hinge Park.

“The challenge is as the beaver population expands, that habitat isn’t large enough to support even a pair of beavers,” said Page.

Hinge Park, a man-made wetland, is considerably smaller than the usual habitats beavers tend to occupy — which means far less food. The baby beavers will likely live with their parents for at least another year before a new litter comes when he expects the trio will be forced to move out of its current lodgings.

Hmmmm that’s a head-scratcher for sure. Where the heck will those three beavers go to find their home? Obviously they won’t be allowed to stay in Hinge park. How can they POSSIBLY escape with all that concrete? I have a guess. Do you?

Apparently Canada has forgot A LOT of what they learned about beavers – including that yearlings stay with the family another year or two to take care of the new kits. And they forgot that beavers don’t need to live in small waterways and can be perfectly happy in larger bodies just like they are on the Carquinez strait which gets salt water from the ocean and fresh water from the valleys. There are a lot of bays and inlets in that Salish sea that will probably work and remember beavers can thrive in water as salty as 10 parts per 1000. IF all three kits live that long, which isn’t a sure thing in this world they’ll find a home.

Yesterday we worked on the prize wheel that was generously donated by Jeanette, shown with her niece working at prior festivals here. She was planning on being there to borrow one of the large ones from her corporation, but when that didn’t work out she bought one for us instead. This will be at the membership booth and donations of 20 dollars or more will earn a spin and win one of these fine treats! Hopefully the lovely clicking noise it makes when it spins will lure traffic to the booth and compel hard working folks to invest in some amazing beaver opportunities!

‘Roll that Keystone Away’

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, kits, Who's saving beavers now? June 18, 2016

Sad news yesterday in the field of ecology. Robert Paine passed away at the age of 83. If you don’t know why it matters, Paine was the one whose research originally coined the term “KEYSTONE SPECIES” in the late 60’s. Our friend the beaver would be called this without him! Thanks Robin of Napa for sending the article. I can only wonder what our bracelets would have looked like without him!

Bob Paine, ecologist who identified ‘keystone’ species, dies at 83

Bob Paine, an ecologist who conducted seminal experiments along the coast of Washington state in the 1960s, pulling starfish from the rocks and tossing them back into the ocean to demonstrate the consequences of disrupting an ecosystem with the removal of a single “keystone” species, died June 13 at a hospital in Seattle. He was 83.

Dr. Paine was regarded as one of the most significant ecologists of his era, a scientific adventurer who trekked across wave-battered shores of the Pacific Northwest to observe, document and explain the forces that govern and sometimes upset the complex network of creatures in an ecosystem.

His concept of “keystone” species, named after the stone at the apex of an arch that supports the other blocks in the structure, refers most strictly to predators such as sea otters, wolves and lions with outsize influence on their communities. A groundbreaking idea when Dr. Paine introduced it in the late 1960s, the “keystone” species is today a fundamental of ecology textbooks.

Dr. Paine published his findings of the event, which he called a “trophic cascade,” in a now-classic article in the journal the American Naturalist, “Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity” (1966). Three years later, he introduced “keystone” species as an ecological term.

I actually had no idea that the concept of ‘trophic cascades‘ came first and from the same bright mind. Nearly everyone I meet trained recently goes out of there way to explain that the term ‘keystone species’ isn’t used much anymore and the field is more interested in ‘trophes’. Which, as it turns out, are all courtesy of Dr. Paine. Thank you so much for showing us the world and teaching us how it works!

Now I know we’re all feeling the burden of kit-season-without-kits of our own for the first time in a decade. So I thought I’d share a little Mountain House comfort with you for cheer. Caitlin was surprised that the beaver kit was out early an braver than his family, all of which Martinez has come to understand well over the years.

How to get attention:

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, kits February 18, 2016

When you’re riding a news cycle wave, try to smile, grip tightly and hold on!

Beavers: Boon for the Environment

Whenever beaver news gets reported in a financial paper we should all be happy! Congratulations tiny 3 hectrare study out of Exeter. You may have become the widest reported beaver news of all times! HURRAY for Devon beavers!

Speaking of the biggest broadcast, I posted this photo on FB yesterday and was stunned to get over 500 likes, 200 shares, and forty comments. You will understand when you see it and share it on your own facebook page. Please look carefully at the evidence. Exhibit A – the tail. Exhibit B – the perfectly formed web back feet. And exhibit C – the tiny smile.

This is a new born beaver and I am certain it is the most adorable thing in the entire world.

Forestry Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, kits, Who's saving beavers now? October 11, 2015

Our Georgia-based beaver friend BK sends this 1906 forestry text on beavers. He is looking for reference on the amount of water stored by beaver ponds, so send anything you have my way. I love reading this lost wisdom. It has so much hope for the future and a mistaken faith in our recognition of doing the right thing. Here’s the awesome conclusion:

How touching the author wants a closed season for beaver. Ahem. Let me be the first to tell you that’s never going to happen. Actually, I don’t worry about beaver trappers. I worry about depredation. At least recreational trappers have to COUNT the number of beaver they kill. Property owners and cities don’t.

All I want is for the number of inconvenient beavers killed every year to be COUNTED. Is that so much to ask?

In honor of the flow device removal and our 3000th post, I finally got around to making a video about this year’s kits. It was hard work editing through all that weeping. But I’m glad the monument to their brief lives is done. A few folks sent comments and were willing to share them, so I thought I’d pass them along. If you want to add some email me or post them directly to the website. I guess the lesson of all this is that loving anything means you let yourself risk the pain of losing it. I’m sure there’s wisdom to be gleaned from that somewhere.

At the moment I pretty much just think it sucks.

Oohh, just beautiful, Heidi. Can’t speak, can’t type. Wishing you lots of pennies from heaven. Oooh those sweet babies…If I could wave a magic wand and bring them back, I would. I don’t know how you have made it through, Heidi, but that is the sweetest little film ever. RE of Napa

Thank you so much for making this for all of us. Many tears fell but I agree it needed to be done. LB Martinez

Yes, thank you, too ….you do such great work for both man & animals! Tears tears tears. CB Martinez

That was very beautiful, Heidi. Thank you. Please, let’s hope Alhambra Creek becomes home to more beaver families in the near future. Once this drought is over and the creek flows normally again, the willows grow, and the tullies flourish, and the homeless have homes, we will sit together again at the creek side and marvel at how magnificent the beavers are. I know this isn’t the end, even though it feels like it might be for awhile. Because of your initial interest and attention those many years ago on our wonderful Martinez beaver family; and subsequently, your stewardship and your educating the world about them, more beavers everywhere are being appreciated and saved. I’m so sad as I know you and Jon are too. But what a beautiful tribute you made to them, and for us all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Know I love and appreciate you and Jon, and all your hard work for our Martinez beavers, and beavers everywhere. I will educate anyone, anywhere about the beaver, and their incredible engineering for the environment. Yes, they are definitely Worth A Dam, and much much more.
JO Martinez