Look what showed up in the comment section for Gary Bogue’s recent article on the Martinez Beavers! A guide to living with beavers from the Born Free Foundation. Click on the thumbnails below to read it or on the logo to download your own copy.
This was a collaboration with Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife and does a good job introducing concepts about flow devices and beaver benefits. I’m not sure the “frequently asked questions” are the three I would have chosen. (What about smell? Really? I’ve read well over three thousand beaver complaints and honestly the issue of smell has never really comes up.) I would have stayed with with FISH PASSAGE, mosquitoes, flooding, trees and overpopulation.
But that’s just me.
Still its another excellent resource to distribute and I’ll add pile.
I sent the article in the East Bay Express Blog to the Niels Udsen, co-owner of Castoro Cellars and 2010 ‘wine industry person of the year’. He made a generous donation to the Silent Auction last year and I wanted to let him know what we were up to. He wrote back, “Dam, that’s fine reading!”
Oh! Look what just arrived in my email! Wow, Tom that’s really lovely and impressive looking. No pressure.
Environment Nate Seltenrich — Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 4:55 PM
Beavers: Nature’s wunderkind. That’s the message likely to be heralded at the State of the Beaver conference, scheduled for February 2-4 — only a week after President Obama’s State of the Union address: coincidence? — in the hallowed halls of Seven Feathers Convention Center and Resort in Canyonville, Oregon. There, the story of the East Bay’s most famous beavers — those who took up residence in downtown Martinez’s Alhambra Creek in late 2006 and have since become the focus of much civic conversation and controversy — will be shared as an example of how the crafty rodents can play a critical role in reviving aquatic ecosystems.
Martinez’s Heidi Perryman, president and founder of local beaver advocacy group Worth a Dam, will deliver a 45-minute presentation titled, appropriately, “Can Urban Beavers Be Worth a Dam?” It will address, Perryman said, the extent to which Martinez’s beavers (and their Alhambra Creek dam) have created habitat for a variety of native species. Since the beavers moved in, she said, otter, mink, wood ducks, herons, and hooded mergansers (a small, fish-eating duck) have followed, taking advantage of the wetlands and slow-moving waters created by the beavers.
“All this new wildlife, because of habitat the beavers created,” Perryman said. “I’ll be talking about the ways beavers in an urban wetland can be restorative.” Beyond birds, beavers have been shown to also be beneficial to salmon by providing spawning habitat. Beavers have even been credited with fighting global warming: The wetlands they create through damming can be capable of significant carbon sequestration.
The downtown Martinez beaver population is currently comprised of a dad, a two-year-old juvenile, and three nine-month old babies, called kits. Mom was euthanized last June after suffering a life-threatening injury. But the beavers’ bigger family includes thousands of Martinez residents who’ve accepted the critters as their own. Perryman’s presentation at the State of the Beaver conference will throw some scientific weight behind that sentimental connection. “It’s a pretty exciting time to find all this research about how good beavers are,” she said. “Beavers are good for just about everything that you can think of.” Dam well said.
As proof of the article’s environment theme, a certain county recorder told me yesterday that he saw three otters and 6 wood duck around the secondary dam yesterday. Not bad for a Wednesday!
Oh beautiful, for damless streams
For culverts flowing free.
For cotton wood and alder rights
Don’t let them eat a tree!
America, America!
Kills beavers by the score
30,000 fine in 2009
And this year they’ll be more.
Reader GTK sent me this today. It’s the USDA death stats by species for the entire country. The entry for beavers reads that 27,289 were killed in 39 states. For mammals, beaver deaths trail only Coyotes and feral pigs. Can you believe that? Only a Coyote or wild pig is less popular than a beaver! 700 beavers in each state, about 100 colonies, less in some and lots more in others. And mind you, this doesn’t count local trappers when land owners can’t be bothered to bring in the feds or grandpa goes out with a shot gun.
If Martinez had killed our beavers by hiring a trapper that statistic wouldn’t even be part of the 27,289. After following beaver death stories for four years I would say that USDA is involved in less the 1 out of every ten cases I read, and there are probably five cases for everyone that makes it into the paper. That means its not a stretch to guess that the US kills more than a half million beavers a year. And this happens routinely in states with droughts and salmon shortages and wildlife loses and erosion problems and states without adequate wetlands.
There are 11 states that didn’t use USDA to kill beavers in 2009. Some of them are probably just flukes. Hawaii has no beavers and doesn’t really count. For some of them like Alaska and Montana we have to assume they just killed them themselves and didn’t bother USDA. With others, like Vermont and New Hampshire, we can guess our friend Skip Lisle had something to do with it. I’m not sure I have any hypotheses about West Virginia but I’d be very interested in yours. Mostly it just means that beaver advocates have a LOT of work to do in the coming years.
I just want to say one more thing about this chart. Over the years I’ve given USDA a fairly hard time, what with the beavers and the acorn woodpeckers and the bird shooting on Christmas near the airport. I have come to realize, in my learning curve of beaver advocacy, that there are truly good wildlife-loving souls working for large beaver-killing agencies and that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I try to give USDA the benefit of the doubt, and not act stunned that the trapping of 27.289 beavers is considered ‘euthanization’. (Were they all in pain?) But LOOK at the fourth column in this chart. “Relocated/Destroyed.”
I don’t know about you, but where I come from those two concepts are really, really different. (Although I guess if the federal government doesn’t recognize the distinction it might help explain the FEMA response to Katrina victims).
Come to think of it, I changed my mind. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about the USDA. I can’t spend 5 minutes on their website without getting physically sick to my stomach. I just stumbled upon the regulations for pain levels in experimental animals (not counting mice and birds mind you) and was completely horrified.
Not much time to post today. Just a quick note to say we got some stirrings out of Truckee saying “we don’t wanna kill the beavers just rip our their dams and move them out while we do our magic creek work so don’t be mean.” and an update from Rick hot on the trail of an Southern Pomo word for ‘beaver’ which puts them historically in the Russian river, which, you know, they ‘weren’t’.
We here at Worth A Dam we aren’t just focused on our own selfish needs for local beavers, what about other lands? Don’t all free peoples have the right to enjoy beavers? Not according to the Scottish National Heritage which is still dead set (and I mean that literally) on their plan to put the free beavers of the river Tay in zoos, and spend millions of dollars on the fancy radio-tracked beavers. The Tay beaver travesty is getting greater and greater attention. Paul Ramsay and his wife had a meeting with the Minister for Finance who was a little more thoughtful than the confounding Minister of the Environment in this case. They also had a meeting on Tuesday of interested folks, and I asked Paul if he wanted to give me a rundown.
(His wife too the minutes and wrote “Paul summarised the recent history of beavers in Scotland and drew our attention to the fact that the SG is going against its own legal advice of September 2005 when they stated that “the release of European beaver in Scotland would grant the species full legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside act. 1981” He summarised the success of this campaign so far in attracting support, journalistic articles, web presence, letters to SNH and to politicians etc etc.”)
We were lucky to have three members of the North Tayside badger group with us. These folk have a lot of experience of checking on badgers and their dens to see that they are not being persecuted, which is just the sort of skill that we need to develop, along with the organisation.
We agreed to form a company limited by guarantee to give us an organisation through which we could, if necessary, initiate litigation against the Scottish Government in the fullness of time. There was a bit of sucking of teeth when I described this, but we gained the general agreement of the meeting.
I forgot to take a photograph of those present.…Aaaaargh!
Louise and I met John Swinney, our Member of the Scottish Parliament, this afternoon. He confessed himself bemused by the action of the minister for the environment, Roseanna Cunningham. John is Minister for Finance in the Scottish Parliament and thus second only to the First Minister. His advice to us was to press on with our campaign.
As you will see from the attached minutes we are to meet again on 8th February, just after I return from the beaver conference in Oregon.
With best wishes,Paul
If you read the notes you see that they decided to take some brilliant advice and get the children of Perth involved, adopting Eric the beaver at the zoo. You can also see the support given by the ‘badger folk’ which made me smile since Susan Kirks has been such a dynamic friend. You will discover what I believe might be my favorite sentence ever, “ES said it worked for the hedgehogs.” Which is such a profound nonsequitur that I might just start using it in daily conversation. Certainly it sounds like the title of a play EVERY one could enjoy at next years fringe festival! There was some disagreement about whether to pursue legal means or just to threaten the pursuit and a second meeting date was set for after the conference. When you read the notes I think anyone should be forgiven for being reminded of this of this famous civics passage:
Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.) `I’m glad I’ve seen that done,’ thought Alice. `I’ve so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, “There was some attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court,” and I never understood what it meant till now.’
Since Paul couldn’t provide photos of the meeting, I thought I’d add some of the beavers themselves. These were mostly taken by Ray Scott who forwarded them to our wikipedia editor in hopes of getting a great Tay article. This is Castor Fiber. They don’t look all that different do they? They have more chromosomes than our beavers so the two can’t reproduce, but they are equally skilled at causing panic and forcing politicians to do stupid things apparently.
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Beavers at Bamff: Ray Scott
Aren’t those nice? Are you ready for the ‘wow that’s a weird coincidence’ punchline? When Paul told me about meeting with the Financial Minister I remembered that I had met an Environmental Minster, Paul McLellan of East Lothian. He came to California for a vacation and wanted to visit the Muir site and strengthen the bond between us and Muir’s birthplace in Dunbar. I mentioned this contact to Paul thinking maybe he would know someone with some pull in Perth, and he wrote back very surprised saying he hadn’t realized John Muir lived in Martinez and he was actually ON the Muir Trust!
Look what showed up in the comment section for Gary Bogue’s recent article on the Martinez Beavers! A guide to living with beavers from the Born Free Foundation. Click on the thumbnails below to read it or on the logo to download your own copy.
I sent the article in the East Bay Express Blog to the Niels Udsen, co-owner of Castoro Cellars and 2010 ‘wine industry person of the year’. He made a generous donation to the Silent Auction last year and I wanted to let him know what we were up to. He wrote back, “Dam, that’s fine reading!”
