Category: beaver myths

MONEY FOR BEAVERS AND YOUR FISH FOR FREE

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, beaver myths, Beavers and Birds August 11, 2019

Well it looks like someone’s getting a nice fat grant from NOAA to help fish by helping beavers. Ain’t it funny how life works? I mean in Wisconsin you could probably get a grant for destroying beaver dams because you said it would help fish.

Location. Location. Location.

National Marine Fisheries Service grants $15 million for salmon habitat

SALEM — Oregon’s salmon and steelhead bearing streams will benefit from $15 million recently allocated by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund money, along with Oregon Lottery proceeds, are granted to the state’s soil and water conservation districts and watershed councils by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to improve habitat for species listed on the federal Endangered Species List.

In Wheeler County, Chase Schultz, the soil and water conservation district manager, said the grants he’s received through the Watershed Enhancement Board are used to cool stream temperatures and improve water quality with streamside planting and fake beaver dams.

“Beaver dam analogs are a hot button topic,” Schultz said.

Built from untreated wooden posts driven perpendicularly into the stream and woven with willow whips, the analogs simulate a beaver dam by spreading a stream’s water out into the floodplain, benefiting adjacent wetlands, Schultz said. The analogs also increase stream flow later in the summer, slowing water down that is released longer into the summer and early fall.

The hope, Schultz said, is to create the habitat to attract beavers to move in and maintain the dams.

The best part, he said, is the dams quickly create desired results. Immediately following the 2017 installation of a dam on Bear Creek, a tributary to the lower stem of the John Day River, Schultz said water started backing up and extended a wetted reach almost 2 miles.

You know how it is. Everyone wants the popular kids to sit at their table. Sometimes you get lucky and a family of beavers moves right in and starts doing your work for free. It’s a pretty fine day when that happens, I can tell you.

<span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>There’s more good news on the beaver bandwagon because our Idaho friends will be hosting their SIXTH beaver dam jam. Wonderful!

6th annual Beaver Dam Jam to raise Money for watershed guardians

POCATELLO — The 6th annual Watershed Guardians Beaver Dam Jam to support beaver conservation will present music and other activities from 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Mink Creek Pavilion.

The pavilion is located in the Caribou National Forest at the Mink Creek Group Camp Site on South Mink Creek Road outside of Pocatello.

Besides live music, the event features food, a silent auction and a super raffle featuring a boat and boating gear among other items. There will be games and demonstrations.

All of Idaho should thank the heavens for sending Mike Settell to Pocatello and getting this started. He had the vision to find friends and make this happen. It seems a very long time ago indeed that I first read about Mike getting a grant from Audubon to help in his beaver count. Now he does it with a team of volunteers in snowshoes every winter. And rocks out at the beaver dam jam every summer.

That’s a busy man!

“The event is in (a) great setting with great music and food,” said Mike Settell, founder of Watershed Guardians, the organization sponsoring this event. “We are doing this because beaver do more to help preserve healthy native fisheries than perhaps any other factor, and Watershed Guardians is the only beaver conservation organization in Idaho working to ensure they remain.”

See what I mean? Beavers seem to get the best champions.

Oh and lets throw out one more beaver shout to Jennalee Larson Naturalist Intern at Good Earth State Park in South Dakota. For some reason the Dakotas have always been smarter about beavers than lots of their neighbors. Well, mostly.

Just for Kids: SD Children in Nature

Beavers are known as ecosystem engineers. Ecosystem engineers are animals that create, change, and maintain a habitat. These animals strongly affect the other animals living there.

Beavers make small changes that can really impact their ecosystems. They create dams by removing living trees and using them as a part of the structure. Once they create their dam, a pond often forms which brings an abundant amount of new biodiversity (variety of life). Some birds are unaffected by the destruction of trees while other decline or increase in number. Because the dams create ponds, there is a wading area for birds to thrive in as well as a place to lay their eggs if a dam happened to be abandoned. Reptiles benefit as the beavers create a basking area for them on logs. They also benefit from the loss of trees because the forest then grows new early vegetation and the dam creates a slow moving water which some animals prefer. Invertebrates that prefer slow-moving water start to increase in number

Create a yummy dam out of pretzels for a snack: Use peanut butter spread, marshmallow, or chocolate spread depending on preference. Add stick pretzels to the spread of your choice. Once it is all mixed, give each kid a scoop and have them shape it into their own dam.

First let me praise your very fine attention to beavers and their impact on the environment. Good job, Jennalee. And sure, have the kids make a their own frosted dam or whatever. Mmmm disgusting. And now that we have established our support. um, can you maybe tell me more about your idea that birds can nest in abandoned beaver dams?

I assume this means you are thinking beavers live INSIDE the dam? And if they move out birds can move in? Or are you thinking that birds can lay their eggs directly on top of the sticks in a beaver dam? I’m not sure that would work out too well, even if they didn’t get predated or roll off into the water….

THIS JUST IN: BEAVERS DON’T EAT BUGS

heidi08 beaver myths June 11, 2019

I’m sure you all played the game of “Telephone” as a child, where one kid whispers a secret into the ear of a classmate seated in a ring and they pass it to the next one and it eventually makes its way all around the circle to the very last person who tells outloud what garbled message they heard.

Usually its transformed by them from something benign like “Emily is very smart” to something incomprehensible and outrageous like “He has manly farts” or something similarly hilarious. And everyone collapses in a heap of giggling.

Well, I think that might be how this article got written.

There are beaver myths that hardly raise an eyebrow, like saying they eat fish for instance or that they aren’t native to California. And then there are beaver myths that really get your attention – that stop the train in mid tracks and just make you scratch your head and go “huh?”.

This nice article from sonoma had one of those.

Threatened beavers return to Sonoma

When a Sonoma Valley woman saw a tree in her yard felled and chiseled by V-shaped gnaw marks, she was surprised and not quite sure what had caused the damage. Soon she learned it was the work of something she never expected to find near her home: a beaver.

“I really now understand the phrases ‘busy beaver’ and ‘eager beaver.’ We wake up in the morning and look out and think ‘wow’ look how much they did overnight,” she said. Every day that passed more of the tree disappeared developing into an hourglass shape where the beaver noshed, and late last week the tree was down.

The woman asked not to be identified by the Index-Tribune in order to protect the beaver and their habitat from the beaver-curious.

What a nice beginning to the article about our neighbors getting the very best kind of neighbors. I’m surprised she didn’t know what was eating her tree but I’m happy she is glad to have beavers back in Sonoma. So far so good. This is where it starts to get dicey.

Beaver are prey animals and easily spooked, said Richard Dale, executive director of the Sonoma Ecology Center. He said he’s seen beaver in the daytime, but as soon as they detect his presence they slap their tails and disappear.

Well I guess is some areas. They can also become habituated to human presence as we well know. I guess Richard will find that out soon enough.

Indication of their activities are usually more evident, such as the gnaw marks the local woman found. Dale said they make diagnostic V-shaped marks on trees, which they eat and use to build lodges where they hide for safety. They’ll use pretty much anything to build the lodge but typically they are made of sticks, rock and mud.

V shapes on trees? I mean I know they nibble trees before feasting and they sometimes make prominent V shapes in the water when they swim, but V shapes on trees? I guess if they try tilting their heads this way and then that way that would make a V?

It gets better. Brace yourselves.

They eat bugs, deciduous tree bark and cambium – the soft tissue under the bark – and are partial to willow, cottonwood, maple and a couple other tree species.

They eat BUGS?

Bugs and Cottonwood trees? What kind of Bugs exactly? Lady Bugs? Worms? Mosquito larvae?

I read that and thought maybe it’s a typo, maybe they meant to say “Buds” like new juicy flowers shooting up from the ground. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any animals that eat both bugs and the cambium layer of trees. Maybe honey badgers?

Sonoma clearly needs to come to the beaver festival and learn from the smart people who have been living with them for a decade. Oh and bring Mr. Dale along too. I can give some clues about talking to the media.

“They’ve been part of the ecosystems for thousands of years. Many systems are dependent on them,” said Dale, who has been studying them for about 25 years. Dale said beaver sightings in town are rare, but he recalls hearing of occasional sightings north of the city since the early 1990s.

“I was blown away when I saw them,” he said of the recent sightings.

While some people consider them a nuisance, beaver are called “keystone species” or “grassroots conservationists” and are considered vital to riparian habitats. They will build lodges in three different ways – open-water lodge, bank lodge or bank den, or burrow – and one colony may have several lodges scattered around their home range.

The lodges extend wetlands, elevate water tables and allow for recharging of aquifers and wells, and provide “habitat for other critters,” Dale said. In areas where there are beaver lodges vegetation and watersheds stabilize, and downstream flooding and silt runoff is reduced.

Well sure beavers are valuable to the landscape. They clean up all those BUGS no one else wants around. And their lodges extend wetlands. Because you know how beavers always build those LODGES to block the water.

Geez Perryman, cut them some slack. It’s not like there have been beavers on the landscape for the last 150 or there are any expertly maintained websites where they could learn better. Right?

For those times when a beaver is destroying valuable plants – such as vineyards – there is “beaver deceiver” technology out there, Lundquist and Dale said. Wrapping trees with wire will protect the bark, and if the lodge is in a place where too much water is backing up, there are simple cost-effective ways to release some of the water from the pond beavers have created.

You all know how a beaver deceiver protects trees and vineyard right?

Oy.

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NO, BEAVERS DON’T USE THEIR TAIL FOR SELF-DEFENSE

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, beaver myths December 27, 2018

Looks like the Wisconsin Zoo is getting a new beaver in their display. Trouble is that the state is usually so busy killing them to protect their introduced trout that they haven’t spent a long time actually learning about them.

What makes me say that? JEFF THE NATURE GUY says that they can use their tail for self defense and the zoologist states they pretty much hibernate all winter.

Baraboo zoo welcomes beavers

Leave it to beavers to find themselves in the middle of a predicament.

The Ochsner Park Zoo was set to acquire a beaver family from Zoo Montana in the spring. But a surprise otter pregnancy at the Billings facility created a space crunch, prompting Baraboo Parks Director Mike Hardy to drive six hours each way last week to meet handlers halfway in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to pick up the trio.

Renovations planned for 2019 will bring a new beaver habitat, featuring a pond and lodges, to the Baraboo zoo. In the meantime, the parents — Huck and Finn — are bunking indoors next to a pig. Their daughter Shiloh has moved into the zoo’s new otter exhibit. There she was reunited with otters Curly and Moe, who also came from Zoo Montana.

On Friday, hours after arriving, the parents nervously remained inside their carrier compartment. Meanwhile, Shiloh was already busy arranging — and nibbling on — sticks and straw. Better that than the cage door. “We’ll have to keep her extremely busy,” said zookeeper Tori Spinoso.

The parents are about 9 years old, and are on loan from Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department. Finn, the father, was raised in a private home and seized. Huckleberry, the mother, was orphaned when her mother was killed by an excavator.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks reportedly “fixed” the pair, but Huck and Finn nonetheless brought Shiloh into the world three years ago. Shiloh was born dead and revived by a zoo veterinarian, and since has become something of a celebrity. She’s the subject of several YouTube videos.

“We will have limited public viewing until they are settled in to their new exhibit, but plan on some opportunities,” Hardy said.

Did you catch that? Shiloh was born to parents that were “sterilized” by fish and game. And born dead so she had to be revived by vets. (Come to think of it I guess that is a kind of sterile if you still have children but they’re all born dead?) Thank goodness they were on hand because they had to step in and care for the “zombeaver” after her mother rejected her, according to Jeff.

Spinoso noted there won’t be much to see at first, as beavers don’t move much in winter. “Beavers in general seem to be calm,” she said. “They’re going to get very sleepy all winter long.”

Baraboo’s free zoo may be the only one in Wisconsin with beavers on display, Spinoso said. The staff was eager to bring them in, even though it meant scrambling to prepare temporary quarters.

“This creates a little more work for our staff, but I believe this will be a very popular exhibit once completed,” Hardy said.

So generous to care for the animals they bothered to rear and orphan. It’s good the state can learn little about beavers, because there are definite gaps in their knowledge.

When I sent the video to Ben Goldfarb he speculated that Jeff might think beavers are….scorpions? But I think I figured it out though, how beaver defend themselves with their tails, which is a relief. I had to research long and hard to find this.

You’re welcome.

A GIANT BEAVER TALE TO TELL

heidi08 beaver myths, castoroides, History December 7, 2018

I know you read this website every day, but you’re probably thinking, wait, there aren’t enough folktales or origin myths about beavers being the beginning of everything. Heidi should write about the big stories once in a while. And I agree! So we’re grateful Frances Backhouse shared this.

The Hero of the Dene

Long ago, giant beasts roamed the Earth and people were lawless, and the Dene of the Northwest Territories tell of two brothers who set the world straight. “Many old medicine stories talk about giant animals—bats, dinosaurs, beavers, monkeys—which once roamed the earth,” wrote the late Dene elder George Blondin in his book Yamoria: The Lawmaker. “Storytellers say we came from animals and long ago there were many half-animal/half-human life forms. It seems during this period that genetic forces as we know them today were out of control.” People were starving and ate each other, he writes of this “terrible period.” But Yamoria and Yamozha came from the west to be humankind’s salvation.

People were lawless? Well, that I believe. How do beavers come into the story?

“My grandfather says, as the story goes, that people were really, really scared when they paddled, because at any time they could encounter a beaver,” says Sangris. “And beavers, they don’t have any natural enemies. They’d come to anything that’s moving on water and if they feel threatened and if they don’t feel comfortable, they’ll capsize the canoes and break the canoes. So the Dene here, the Yellowknives Dene were afraid of them. They were afraid of the beavers so they’d paddle right on the shoreline as quietly as they could go. And they would tell the children not to make any noise.”

Shhhh watch out for beavers!

Sangris says no one knows what happened to them after the fight, but perhaps where they ended up is not as important as the legacy they left behind. “It’s always said that Atachuukaii corrected things. He made things better,” Elle says. For ridding the world of giant animals, Sangris says the two brothers are heroes to the Dene. “The Dene were free after that. There were no giant beavers swimming around anymore and no big birds flew in the sky and no big animals walked on the earth that could harm them anymore.”

Well, I might be scared of a 300 lb beaver too.

Giant beavers (Castoroides ohioensis), the key antagonists in many Yamoria legends, actually existed in the swamps and lakes of the North around the time humans first arrived, between 40,000 and 16,000 years ago. And like the legends say, they may not have been all that easy to deal with.

The North of that time was host to a wide diversity of large mammals, including horses, camels and woolly mammoths. But around the end of the last glacial period, about 12,000 years ago, the giant species began disappearing.

But were the giant beavers hunted? Were they around the same time as the humans?

Theories of over-hunting by humans would back up stories of Yamoria shrinking or killing off many of the giant mammals that threatened humans at the time, but Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon government, has his doubts, saying there’s little evidence of over hunting and no evidence that humans preyed on giant beavers at all.

“A beaver the size of a bear with eight-inch teeth. I don’t know. If I was a hunter back then I would probably go with the horse or a bison.”

So how did giant beavers make their way into Dene stories? Zazula’s theory came to him the first time he did field work in Old Crow, in Northern Yukon.“If you go along the Old Crow River in the summer, and you float down in a canoe, there’s piles of bones of ice age animals on the riverbanks. They’re just all over the place.”

So the beavers themselves might not have been around, but their bones were. Native saw those bones and came up with some pretty exciting stories to keep their grandchildren warm at night.

I remember the first time I saw a castorides skull my eyes grew bright, I immediately conjured a fantasy of sitting at a city council meeting with that giant head in my lap.

Wouldn’t that be awesome?