The good, the kinda good and the ugly

heidi08 Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? April 24, 2017

There is a lot of beaver news to catch up on this morning. I got behind on earthday and let our usual beaver-ticker slide. It’s monday and I think we should start with the good news and grim our way down the ladder from there, okay? (And yes I know that ‘grim’ isn’t a verb, but it just seems right today.)

Long time readers of this website might remember that a while ago Washington passed a ‘beaver bill’ that allowed them to relocate problem beavers in the Eastern (driest) part of the state. (Our beaver friends Joe Cannon and Amanda Parish of the Lands Council worked on that.) It was a pretty big deal at the time and was a struggle to pass. Well, on Thursday the governor signed into law a change stating that beavers could be relocated in WESTERN Washington as well.

This is Chompski, a beaver relocated in Bodie Creek outside Wauconda, Washington in 2012. (Chandra Hutsel / Courtesy of state Rep. Joel Kretz)

Western Washington can have relocated beavers

Western Washington beavers who are trapped by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife can be relocated to a more opportune location west of the Cascades, a bill signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee Thursday says.

The department has had a program to relocate nuisance beavers it traps in Eastern Washington for several years, with the restriction that they can’t be shipped over the mountains to the “wet side” of the state. The program started when Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, thought some of the toothy rodents that the department was already trapping might be sent to land owners that were trying to improve their water tables by impounding creeks or streams.

This year, some Western Washington landowners decided they wanted to try it, too. The original bill took Kretz several tries to make it through the Legislature. This bill passed the House 98-0, and the Senate 45-1.

It was 2012 when the Eastern law finally passed – years after it had been promoted and voted down many times. In fact in 2005 a bill allowing it was vetoed by the governor of the state. What a difference 12 years makes, eh? I guess the state is finally recognizing the good things that beavers do for fish, water and wildlife. Now they just need to learn to leave the beavers where they are and change the people instead – making them use the tools that will let them to coexist.

Another dozen years maybe?

Meanwhile in Canada the “Beaver Whisperer” is teaching folks how to manage beaver conflicts using a ‘baffler’. Mostly good news, although we’re not thrilled by his protege’s statement that beavers damage water quality.

Learn how to manage beavers on your property from the ‘Beaver Whisperer’

Learn how to manage beavers and create a peaceful co-existence on May 11 at the Beaver Management Workshop, hosted by the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority (NBMCA) and Friends of Laurier Woods.

**NBMCA staff install a beaver pond leveller known as a “beaver baffle” summer 2015 at Laurier Woods Conservation Area**.

“Beavers can be a benefit and a bur

den,” explains Troy Storms, NBMCA’s Supervisor, Field Operations.

“They help maintain important wetland ecosystems. They create habitat for themselves, as well as several other species. But they can damage vegetation, farmland, municipal infrastructure and water quality,” he added.

This workshop includes a morning presentation by “beaver whisperer” Michel Leclair, followed by an afternoon field trip to Laurier Woods Conservation Area to see a “beaver baffle” in action.

Two steps forward one step back. I’m pretty sure that even if beavers are important to other species damaging water quality is kind of deal-breaker. That’s what we call very bad advertising. I’m sure he’s referring to the bogus concern that they cause ‘beaver fever’ which we all know MUST be true because it rhymes. I wish someone was on hand to talk about how much they IMPROVE water quality or how their dams act as a filter to remove toxins and nitrates from the water.

Is it too much to ask?

Finally a very ugly story from North Carolina where they believe they proudly have discovered that beaver dams can be destroyed with a machete.

Busting beaver dams solves flooding problem near Linden

LINDEN — Flooding across from a neighborhood near Lake Teresa has greatly diminished after members of the community and other helpers tore down beaver dams nearby. Bob Hathcock, who lives on Canal Street, said the swamp that had formed in a wooded area between the street and a field off Lane Road near Linden has gone down.

“I’d say it’s down two feet and still draining,” he said.

He described the work as a community effort that involved four neighborhood residents and three people who live elsewhere. “We got out there with axes, shovels and machetes, and started busting things up,” he said. “The people kind of enjoyed it.”

Hathcock said the destruction of three dams, including one that was about 200 feet wide, did not reduce the swamp near the neighborhood. When a fourth was tore down, the water started receding. It went down even more after a fifth dam was removed.

“Everything is flowing out now,” he said. “We are so relieved.” Hathcock said eight beavers have been trapped. Some weighed more than 50 pounds each, he said.

“We’ve still got traps out there,” he said. One person managed to catch a beaver the day after he put out a trap, Hathcock said. “He was like a kid at Christmas trapping that beaver,” he said.

Hathcock said several companies offered to deal with the problem, but were going to charge up to thousands of dollars. The USDA charged the residents $25, he said.

How much do I hate this article? Let me count the ways.

So Jimbob and Billybud got all their axes and pitchforks and ripped out 5 (five!) beaver dams to make the water flow again. (Just because he lives on Canal street, Bob never expected there to be WATER on it.) Remember that this is a state we gave countless FEMA dollars in drought relief a couple years ago, but never mind, because who needs to save water anyway? Now it’s free like aMurica! Never mind the dying fish, frogs or the wood duck hatchlings whose nests are now too far from the water to make the jump safely. What matters is that 8 beavers are dead, the folk had fun destroying their wetlans and someone celebrated Christmas early.

I am curious though, if folks ripped out the dams and trapped the beavers themselves, what exactly the USDA was charging 25 dollars for?

A Modest [beaver] Proposal

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's blaming beavers now? April 16, 2017

“A Modest Proposal” was published anonymously in 1729 by Jonathan Swift and shocked readers with the [satiric] suggestion that the problem of too many Irish poor children could be solved if their parents simply sold them as a food source to rich people.

A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.”^[1]

Long before Trump said Mexicans were rapists and murderers, Swift hated the way people were treating the poor Irish and more particularly the way that people wrote about their plight as if one single solution could solve everything. One of the subtle victories of the pamphlet was that it shocked and enraged the reader so much that they ended up hating the narrator and feeling sorry instead for the Irish.

Let’s hope. Because yesterday New Hampshire NPR podcast on beavers from “Outside In” centered on a thoughtful retired mid-wife who solved her pesky beaver problem by deciding to eat them.

No really.

“For seven years I said, you can’t kill them, you have to outwit them. That’s back when I thought you could actually outwit a beaver, but you can’t.”

The paradigm under which we currently operate is called the American system of wildlife management, under which wildlife is a commonly owned resource, and through regulation we decide how many animals we will kill. Are deer eating the shoots off of too many saplings out in the forest? Increase the number of deer hunting permits issued. Are farmers complaining about losing livestock to coyotes? Relax limitations on hunting them. Are there so many beaver that they are expanding wetlands until they flood wells and roads? Call in trappers to reduce beaver populations in that location.

This ensures that the population stays below what is called the “biological carrying capacity” which is a fancy science-y way of saying “how many beaver the land can sustain.” Pat Tate is a big believer in keeping animal density low, because he believes it makes the animal’s lives better.

Pat said, “As I’ve reduced numbers in the wetlands, and went back subsequent years to trap, the amount of scarring and bite-marks on the beaver decreases. So the individual animal’s health increases.”

And trappers I’ve spoken to hear a lot of hypocrisy whenever they hear people call trapping immoral. For instance, a trapper from Southern New Hampshire, Jeff Traynor, points out there isn’t the same outrage at housing developments or highways or parking lots: forces that have just as much to do with keeping beaver populations low.

“We are the most invasive species on the planet, there’s no doubt about it,” he told me, “As we encroach more we’re pushing them. So where is that overflow going? There’s only so many places that they can go. It comes to a point where you can say, well let’s just let nature take its course, or you can say, as human beings can we manage this creature with moral wisdom?”

Two things I’m SURE trappers possess an abundance of: Morality and Wisdom. P-uleeze! If you have time go listen to the whole thing, because it is actually stunning how often it is incorrect. The story didn’t get any better when he talked to our friends Skip Lisle or Art Wolinsky either.

But this “moral wisdom” argument, just doesn’t do it for many beaver believers. Skip Lisle, founder of Beaver Deceivers International, has heard this argument for years in his line of work, and doesn’t buy it. “You know, you always hear, we have to kill the beavers so they don’t get hungry. And if you were an individual beaver, you can imagine which choice they would choose if they had one to make, right? Would you rather be hungry or dead?”

The proponents of restricting beaver trapping often point out that while some management decisions are based on ecosystems science—with government biologists going out and to try to estimate how many animals the land can sustain— other times, the decision is based on our willingness to tolerate animals. This is, almost euphemistically, what we call the “cultural carrying capacity.” And for beavers, it’s often that cultural limit, and not the actual limits of the habitat, that they bump up against.

Skip and his disciples argue they can increase society’s tolerance for beaver by keeping the two species from coming into conflict. Beavers’ damming instinct is triggered by running water, and by using a clever arrangements of grates, culverts, and drainage pipes, Skip keeps beaver far enough away from the running water that they don’t get the urge to start building a dam.

By putting in this type of “fixed protection” whenever a conflict arises, Skip argues we can have the best of both worlds: a growing beaver population and an infrastructure that isn’t submerged under beaver ponds. For him, the argument that trapping leads to a healthier population is beside the point.

Good for you Skip, I’m glad you tried valiantly to elevate this beaver HIT piece. But of course the narrator visits next the plight of Massachusetts where the mean compassion-isitas outlawed body crushing traps in 1996 and the beaver population exploded, because no trappers! (Never mind that no one IS or WAS counting the beaver population in MA or anywhere and any time threats to human property is at stake the same traps can be used anyway.)

Then he trots faithfully back to the beaver-eating midwife who bemoans that she tried installing a beaver deceiver AND a beaver baffler and they didn’t work! So the plucky gal picked up her fork and got to work.

Carol Leonard, who started off our story, spent seven-years trying to figure out how to fool the beavers on her property. “In my naivete I said oh well we’ll try these beaver deceivers and these beaver bafflers and all these do-hickers,” she recalled. But eventually she gave up and apprenticed with a trapper, and started to trap out the animals that threatened her property.

“We are meat eaters, you know, we are hunter gatherers, it’s part of who we are. And so to be able to turn a blind eye to that is just a blind eye,” she said. She applauds animal rights activists, but says she thinks their efforts are better spent protesting concentrated animal feeding operations, or other places where animals live short and miserable lives before heading to our plates. “I think the traditions of hunting and trapping in New England are good, healthy traditions. And I can’t talk against hunters… I can’t. I’m a meat-eater.”

Carol says she has trapped somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 beavers from her property, and while many still remain just downstream, the pond that was threatening her septic setback is no longer growing. In 2015, she and her husband were able to start construction and their home, now completed, is gorgeous, judging from a recent photo spread done by Down East Magazine.

That’s right, You know the old saying: if you can’t Beat ’em – Eat’em.

I don’t know about you but I’ve reached my CULTURAL CARRYING CAPACITY for stupid-ass reporters like this who repeat beaver bullshit even though they have the real answers RIGHT at their fingertips. A reporter with access to talk to experts like Skip Lisle or Ben Goldfarb but still clings to the bitter laments of trappers and fish and game instead. Ben told me in an email last night that in his interview with Sam Evans-Brown, the reporter said that he had been told “flow devices only work 10% of the time”. So of course, when midwife said it didn’t work, he believed it. Why would he read any of the articles citing their success OR interview Dr. Glynnis Hood who has been using them with great success OR talk to someone Skip had done an installation for a decade ago and ask whether it actually worked.

Details Details.

It’s all comes down to real estate. Beavers are in our WAY and we deserve to kill them, didn’t you realize? And besides who needs clean water anyway?

“I grant that this food will be very dear and therefore more proper for the landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have best title to the children.”

Can a ‘planned community’ plan for beavers?

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, stupid solutions, What's killing beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? February 18, 2017

Reston Virginia is one of the first and most well known ‘planned community’ in the world. It has libraries and swimming pools and gutters all in the precise location for the maximal living experience. And now it has made sure it will have designated beavers as well.

Yesterday they launched a swanky new beaver page on their website and today this article was released. Because these things shouldn’t be left to chance. Not sure exactly where posies and butterflies fit in on a beaver web page, but I think we need to grade on a curve here.

Reston Association Working to Manage Beaver Population in Glade Area

Beavers have long been a part of the Glade Stream Valley, but Reston Association is working to make sure they don’t cause destruction for nearby residents in the form of damaged trees and flooding.

“It would be hard to find a better example in Reston of a healthy, diverse, native ecosystem than the two beaver wetlands (Glade Valley and Bright Pond),” reads information provided by Claudia Thompson-Deahl, senior environmental resource manager. “Reston’s beaver wetlands are one of the few places in Reston where nature is able to thrive despite all the surrounding suburban pressures.”

Beavers, however, bring a “dramatic change” to the surrounding environment, so Reston Association has developed a beaver management policy.

Oh those pesky beavers and their darned ‘changes’. How’s a city of 58,404 to cope? Planning is the operative word here. It was planned by Robert E Simon, named for his initials and launched on his birthday in 1964. (I’m not kidding.) You can imagine how some unplanned beavers just throw a big monkey wrench in their best laid plans – making them gang aft agley, as it were.

According to Thompson-Deahl, additional fencing is being installed to keep Glade beavers out of residents’ yards and off wooded slopes, and many individual trees have been protected with wire mesh to safeguard the pathway.

In the long term, Reston Association staff, with input from residents and wildlife experts, has developed and implemented guidelines for beaver management in the area. The primary goal is to find methods to preserve and protect substantial portions of the stream valley from beaver activity. To do so, staff plan to divide the valley into two sections.

Section 1, designated as a “Beaver Management Area,” will consist of stream valley that runs from Twin Branches Road to the bridge behind Leatherwood Drive that leads to the Hunting Horn Lane Tot Lot.

Section 2, running from Hunting Horn Tot Lot to Soapstone Drive, will be managed as a wooded stream valley.

Section 1 contains residential property, utility easements and recreational facilities. With that in mind, according to Thompson-Deahl, fencing and pipes will be used to protect those areas. Three-foot wire-mesh fencing will protect and areas threatened by beaver activity, in the attempt to ensure continuous tree cover between Twin Branches Road and Soapstone Drive. In addition, over 100 Bald Cypress trees have been planted, with wire-mesh caging around each one.

In Section 2, beaver activity will be discouraged with fencing and stream gates. According to provided information, beavers in that area “will be removed” by a licensed trapper if the discouragement fails.

According to Thompson-Deahl, beavers provide positive attributes to the ecosystem including a reduction in stream erosion, reservoirs of water during period of drought and freeze, and the creation of wetlands that support a large amount of plant and other animal life.

Don’t get us wrong, we like nature. In the appropriate areas and as long as it goes according to plan. We are a civilized people, and wild things just need to behave less wildly. You know how certain home owners associations won’t let you plant purple zalia’s or put up a flag on any day besides the 4th of July. We just want our beavers in sector 1 to stay behind the fence.

Is that so much to ask?

Which makes me think of the unplanned joys of beavers and their many trials and benefits. Even in Martinez where we worked harder to live with the animals than anywhere it’s not like we ever “asked” for beavers. Or wanted this to happen. It’s not like my life had a big open space that I was hoping beavers would rush in and fill.

But that’s just the way it is, I think.

A right way and a wrong way to teach about beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Ice, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Should I pet beavers?, stupid solutions, Who's saving beavers now? February 10, 2017

I have given myself a strict Sunday rule for only posting good news about the silent auction. But this is soooooo good I can’t wait, and also relevant. So I’m busting it. I was crazy impressed by Jen Richmond’s beaver painted on a saw for the exhibit. I had contact information for the curator so I found out how to write Jen right away my plea for the auction. Wednesday, she kindly wrote back and said she’d love to support us and wanted to donate a small saw, which would be easier to ship. Then this morning I saw this in the papers. I just hope I tugged her heart strings successfully before everyone lines up to tug her wallet strings. This is smart work and it will SELL.

Beaver Tales art exhibit supports conservation

Beavers are more than just the mascot of Oregon State University. The beaver is also Oregon’s state animal. And with the help of SPARK, OSU’S Year of Art and Science and The Wetlands Conservancy (TWC), the animal who carries a negative stigma will be brought into a new light in a traveling exhibit called Beaver Tales.

The coordinator for Beaver Tales through The Wetlands Conservancy, Sara Vickerman, hopes this traveling exhibit helps bring awareness to beavers and their importance to the environment.

“We hope to raise awareness of the ecological importance of beavers, increase the public’s appreciation of them and get people involved in conservation,” Vickerman said. “Where beavers cause conflicts, we hope managers will look for solutions that benefit both people and beavers.”

“Our goal is to learn more about how we can coexist and work with beavers to conserve and restore natural systems,” Lev said.

The curator Sara Vickerman sounded familiar so I ran back thru my files and found out that she used to work for Wildlife Defenders. In fact she was the good soul that gave us 50 copies of the issue featuring Sherri Tippie the same year that Sherri donated all those clay beavers, which you may remember. I introduced Sara to our councilman Mark Ross who was interested in a local showing of the collection. She said this exhibit was the single hardest thing she ever did, taking many more hours than she was ever paid for, coaxing artists into making beavers plus making sure it would all come together. It was also the thing she loved doing the most and was the very proudest of. She really feels it will lead to beavers being seen in a new way. But advised Ross that she didn’t think the collection would travel well and recommended we do one of our own, instead.

Sara, I really, really believe you about the amount of work this took. You did an amazing job. And Mark, good luck with that, is all I can say. As my beaver dance card is filled.

Meanwhile Quebec has a new beaver for show and tell at Science North.

Young beaver latest addition to animal family at Science North

A young male beaver is the latest addition to the level three Northern ecosystem at Science North. The yet-to-be-named animal was born and raised at the Zoo Sauvage de St-Félicien in St-Félicien, Quebec. He can’t be released back into the wild.

“This new addition will give our visitors the opportunity to learn more about young beaver behaviour and experience a brand new personality. We are excited to have both beavers at Science North for guests to visit with and learn about,” says Henson.

Science North is now asking for the public’s help in choosing one of three possible Innu names for the animal ambassador. The names pay respect to the traditional territory the young beaver comes from. They are: Kashkuan (cloud), Kashkuanashku (it is foggy), and Kashkuanapan (it is a misty, foggy morning).

Obviously if the kidnapped sacrifice beaver was going to be ANY use at all, you would want to educate the public by naming him the Innu word for WATER. And teach children how essential saving water is in these days of climate change. But whatever. Go ahead and name him fog and teach that the other beavers have big teeth like the cartoons but his just haven’t grown in yet.

Hrmph. If you really wanted to educate the public about beavers, you have an open air exhibit of a working flow device on the grounds with an active beaver colony living in peace. And instead of using a cute gimmick to give a nod to the natives teach by naming him ‘fog’ your program would show how they understood the beaver was an asset.

But hey, I’m pretty sure I got more native wisdom from my computer game.

Dendrophobia

heidi08 City Reports, Environmental, stupid solutions, Who's blaming beavers now? February 10, 2017

Dendrophobia is described as the fear of trees, from the Greek root dendro meaning tree + Phobia meaning irrational fear. Martinez has long suffered from this difficult-to-treat condition. And yesterday we were informed that the transported willow shoots laid down by our noble volunteers Saturday were being dug up. Because of concerns that they would cause flooding.

No, I’m not kidding.

Now disappointing a bunch of beaver supporters is no big deal, and the city is free to do it with impunity. As they have shown, over and over again. But these trees were planted with the authority of the SF waterboard with a grant through the California Urban Streams Partnership. And it is a slightly bigger deal to disrupt their work. And to exhume the trees they have planted. I’m not sure what will be the immediate outcome, but I’m sure they’ll be another shoe, and I’m sure it will drop. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, this is what they were not alarmed about on the very same day, filmed by Bonnie Logan up where we saw the beavers last by the Junior High.

If you’ll notice the stiff trunks in the middle of this flow are NOT willow. And are NOT bending with the water. In fact, some of them broke and washed downstream creating further hazards as they went. Willow has actually been shown to bend in high flow and increase the velocity of the water. But that only matters if you care about facts.

Which the Dendrophobes obviously don’t.