Just time to say that I observed this once at ‘marine world’. A trainer was vising one of the dolphins in the underwater viewing area. The dolphin was obviously happy to see him and showing off. (Never knew they could see us down there!). He ‘blew’ a water ring and then swam through it. It was amazing.
So this morning’s great escape story comes from Scotland where they’ve decided to round up and trap all the escapee beavers from that have broken loose from private farms over the years and bring them to zoos. They are calling them “feral beavers” to make them seem looming and dangerous and to ward off the inevitable wave of public opinion that’s likely to come their way.
Note that the BBC story says ’20 feral beavers’ have escaped over the years whereas the Guardian reports that there are more than 50 at large! (Why stop at 50? If we’re going to speculate wildly lets say a 100. How about a million?)
Some wildlife experts believe that more than 50 beavers could be roaming free: families of beavers, and evidence of their lodge building, have been regularly seen by villagers and naturalists around Invergowrie on the outskirts of Dundee, Forfar in Angus, Glamis in Perthshire, and Tentsmuir near the mouth of the river Tay.
Would a beaver without a family build a lodge? Yes. A single disperser hoping to attract a mate would build a lodge near a great food source and hope to get lucky. He or she would hope a LONG time. The fact remains that these beavers, all by themselves in a country where there ARE NO BEAVERS, are highly unlikely to find a mate and reproduce. Stop me if I’m going to fast for you. The will very likely wander the countryside, encounter zero beavers for their troubles, be unable to survive on their own, and die.
Ahh, but I can hear the fevered Scottish scientists now saying yes but what if a pregnant beaver escapes! Then introduces her feral brood into the countryside? Just so you know, pregnant beavers are very very very unlikely to roam. They have a family to think of and would rather stay where they are. Your ‘escapees’ are probably yearlings who took great pains to ‘disperse’. They have not bred and don’t have mates and aren’t likely to find one in your country. What if a male-female pair of disperers escape together? the ‘bonnie & clyde’ of beavers? I suppose its possible. Did anyone ever report losing two beavers at once?
Could they mate with something else? hedgehogs? wild dogs? members of the monarchy? No. Just calm down and realize that beavers without other beavers will live out some portion of their lives, eat a few trees, and die.
Sir John Lister-Kaye, a former president of the Scottish Wildlife Trust who keeps beavers at his Aigas wildlife sanctuary near Inverness, said the animals were once native to the UK and should be given protection under European conservation directives if they were breeding successfully.
“I think this is quite simply professional jealousy. Scottish Natural Heritage and the zoo have been quite hostile to those of us who have private collections or who know quite a lot about beavers,” he said. “I think the public needs to be in on this debate; they’ve voted 59% in favour of the beaver.”
Well, good luck trapping these 20 or 50 beavers and transferring them all safely to the zoo. i can’t imagine you have room for that many beavers in your zoo but I’m sure you’re counting on the fact that a) many will not survive and b) that there aren’t really that many to begin with. Ooh look the story gets better!
SNH said the trapping operation, which is being supported by Tayside police, was a matter of urgency because beavers were spreading so rapidly. A spokesman said: “The longer we leave it the greater the task will be. We are also urging all owners of animal collections to take greater care in keeping their animals captive.”
Spreading so rapidly? When the female enters estrus once a YEAR for 12 hours? And there are no males to breed with anyway? Is there a secret beaver fertility clinic in Scotland that we don’t know about? Well good thinking to involve the police. I’m sure that will go over well with the locals.
I wrote the Scottish National Heritage in Tayside and explained the risks of live trapping and put them in touch with Sherri Tippie. I can’t imagine they’re over worried about being careful with the animals, they certainly aren’t worried about bad press.
I’ was still working on the term ‘feral’ when Cheryl sent this lovely video. Wait until the end when the beavers make a decision what to do with the infrared camera in their lodge. I knew it!
Bounty is a highly evocative word, especially as we mark the steep descent to Thanksgiving and see the looming holidays rise in stark relief. It can mean richness, sufficiency, having more than one needs. It means there’s enough to share, enough to give away, enough to set some aside, enough to pace oneself. “Go ahead and take some, I’ve got plenty” or “That’s enough fish for one day, son, we can come back and catch more tomorrow”. Bounty means freely given or giving freely.
Bounty also has another meaning. As in “Bounty Hunter”. The state pays citizens for the death of an undesirable thing, ridding the commonwealth of a threat or a nuisance. Early days in the Wild West offered a bounty for criminals when the government was too young or too overwhelmed to catch lawbreakers themselves. Bounty hunters are pictured often as ruthless, loathsome, frightening characters. Usually their only alliance is to the dollar they seek and they left the niceties of society long ago. Every once in a while it is probably true to say that they are a little romanticized: a grizzled Clint Eastwood character relying on no one for help and handling the problem themselves for a fistful of dollars.
12.50 a tail, to be exact.
The bounty is $12.50 per tail individually wrapped in clear plastic and frozen until collection day. Landowners may trap the beavers themselves or use the services of a trapper. Bimonthly collection days will be scheduled beginning in January.
Remind me not to have a glass of iced tea when I visit friends in Alcorn, Mississippi. Their freezers will be stuffed with beaver tails until the collection days and god knows what else after that. Let’s just hope little Jimmy doesn’t mistake his popsicle. Apparently the bounty is a cheap way to get beaver problems to take care of themselves.
Last year’s demonstration program was considered a success with 126 landowners participating and 605 beavers eliminated on more than 9,200 acres
Now that’s a deal! A mere 7500 dollars to get rid of 602 beavers! That means landowners killed around 5 beavers each and made a cool 60 bucks for their effort. Heck that almost pays for the freezer space and the electric bill to keep it going! I guess it really isn’t very lucrative, but it takes care of a problem and it gets the kids outdoors. Maybe the families all gather around while Pa cuts off the tail. Wonder what they do with the rest of the beaver? I guess I probably shouldn’t ask.
I read an article this weekend on the troublesome beavers of Saskatchewan, Canada, where adoption of a beaver bounty was narrowly rejected. The agriculture minister was bemoaning the population rise and saying that this was unfortunately because “No one was trapping anymore”. (There are apparently three websites for trappers associations in Saskatchewan, but maybe that doesn’t matter.)
“If fur prices were a little higher it’d solve our problem on the coyote side and the beaver side,” Bjornerud said. “They’re not worth much right now and that’s our biggest problem.”
Ah, no, Mr. Bjornerud. I really don’t think that’s your biggest problem. I would rate your lack of imagination, your knee-jerk problem-solving skills and your failure to think humanely as three bigger problems that spring immediately to mind. Not to mention the complete ecological blind spot your vision is shadowed by when you fail to think about the trickle down effect all that beaver killing will have on your entire region. Well, why bother thinking ahead and planning for solutions that will take care of your farmlands and your watershed? You can always blame it on the rodent.
I can think of only one fitting response to these tail-paying plans.
Yes, you read that read that right. Not depredation but ERADICATION, as in kill every beaver under every circumstances everywhere in the entire state. This is what the state of Arkansas enacted in 1993, and with a little revision it in 1997 it still has a policy of setting aside $ 150,000 for counties to buy into a ‘tail collecting’ bounty, providing that they do the following:
So kill all the beavers in your county and we’ll pay you for doing it. Oh and make sure to notch the tails because we don’t want to pay you twice for killing the same beaver. As far as I know, Arkansas is the only state with a ‘kill ’em all’ policy. Other states wait until they blink or cause what appears to be the whiff of the suggestion of a problem before exterminating. Arkansas leaps to judgment.
Allow me to say that I have read hundreds of beaver killing articles, and it takes a lot to shock me. This series of articles left me open mouthed and gaping. Beaver Eradication Program. The only other eradication programs I could find was for small pox and cholera. There isn’t even a rat eradication program, or a cotton mouth eradication program.
Just beavers.
One can only wonder how the wetlands in Arkansas and the population of trout and wooduck are faring. It looks like there’s been a couple years of drought conditions in the state. No matter. I’m sure they can just get their hard working ‘global warming deniers’ to disbelieve the drought too.
But if that doesn’t work you might try letting a few beavers live.
When I’m done being stunned by this a bunch of somebodies will get letters. In the mean time I will let you now that Lory discovered all three kits coming over the primary dam today at noon. After some mulling and consulting we think that what happened was that the high tide made life in their lower lodge too uncomfortable and required a midday relocation to the upper lodge. We’ve been wondering whether tide impacts where they end up sleeping for the night, and certainly the bank lodge below the primary dam has fewer options. All three went over and headed for the main lodge, so at least they know where to turn.
Yesterday’s conference was a revelation on so many levels. I met powerful, persistent creek advocates who cheerfully personified Brock Evans phrase ‘endless pressure endlessly applied’. I saw the results of advances in political circles and environmental lawyers elected to water districts. I saw friendships and alliances that have endured across decades and watched as new important contacts were developed. And I sensed, rather than saw, the simmering impatience of the people who’ve done this constant, prodding stewardship – pushing, pulling and nudging their officials into more responsible treatment of water, fish and wildlife.
The story was excellently represented by the drama of the Searsville dam.
This attractive slab of concrete is in the Jasper Ridge preserve on San Francisquito creek. It is owned by Stanford University and the sight of one of the oldest field stations in the country. The dam was built over over 100 years ago and is part of the enormous water reserves for the university. Pesky steelhead-hugging types point out that its an old structure located directly on top of a major seismic fault and it prevents perfectly healthy steelhead from living their anadromous life. Stanford says the dam is essential because it traps tons of sediment that would otherwise be a problem for the residents of Palo Alto, is perfectly earthquake proof and note that its adjacent wetlands support the richest bird and bat habitat in the state.
So yesterday started out with a presentation by the suits – literally. Stanford sent its emissaries to explain how they needed the dam and they understood that some people didn’t like it but they were going to study the issue very carefully for the next ten years to see what were the alternatives might be. They had developed an HCP (Habitat Conservation Plan) to protect threatened species in the area. A woman explained the HCP carefully outlining the endangered species on the rare property and the definition of ‘Take“.
Are you familiar with this concept? concept
‘Take‘ is defined in the Fish & Wildlife regulations as
“Take means to pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect or to attempt the foregoing. 50 C.F.R. §10.12.If you are building a shopping mall or digging a gas line or laying a new road and you kill 35 ground squirrels and crush some burrowing owls that’s considered ‘take‘. If an animal is listed under the endangered species act there is ZERO acceptable ‘take‘ without a plan to show how your activities are going to benefit that species eventually – hence the HCP. (Of course with beavers the acceptable ‘take’ is infinity.) So a hearty portion of the Stanford presentation was focused on ‘take‘ and what they are doing to make up for the rainbow trout they prevent from going out to sea and becoming steelhead. (Steelhead listing on the ESA was upheld recently in a major ruling from the ninth circuit)
So that’s the ‘take‘. What about the ‘give‘?
Meet Matt Stoecker: Steelhead Champion Extraordinare. He has been waging a David’s battle against the Stanford Goliath since the Clinton years, and has an endearing habit of donning his scuba gear or snorkel to photograph the steelhead he defends underwater. He is the force behind the group “Beyond Searsville Dam” and a remarkably cheerful, reasonable, and unassuming guy. His generous, inspiring speach was sprinkled with olive branches and toe-holds for the Stanford Folk, but he also didn’t hesitate to challenge their misstatements and point out where they were being less than genuine. He was, in short, the perfect advocate: passionate, cooperative, confrontational, and ready for a marathon.
Of course, I invited to come film our steelhead swimming with beavers and he was very keen to consider it. He said he got charged by a beaver once underwater for following the fish too close to the underwater entrance to the lodge. He was suddenly presented with a flash of fur and teeth! Matt backed off and the beaver, (who is more accustomed to charging than follow through), allowed him to leave unscathed. (Of course, he noted that beaver dams provide some of the best steelhead habitat, which came as no surprise to us!)
I can’t even begin, on the smallest ‘smolt’ of a scale, to imagine how much patience, courage and tenacity it takes to fight a battle like that. When I think of the many faces at the conference, the people who tirelessly protect their little stretches of creek from plastic bags and commercial runoff and grazing cattle; when I think of people like Jeff Miller working to overcome the Calaveras Dam on Alameda Creek and picking up steelhead on the way to work where they were trapped on one side of the bart station to drop them into the water on the other side; when I think of the conference organizer who pulled together all these unique creek powers and knew enough to include a few politicos who wanted credit-points; I realize how profoundly these people have ‘given’ of themselves. They give their time and their attention and their passion and their resolve. They give their funds and their friends and their energy day after day. They hold their tempers when the situation requires it and light fires when nothing else will work and learn from each other how on earth to tell the two circumstances apart.
I realize, in all this, that we are just infants.
Worth A Dam was very well received by the Santa Clara Creeks Coalition. Beavers were the unspoken elixir of the day for much of the time, a knowing wink or elbow. If we get rid of dams what will trap silt? (Beavers) If we get rid of dams what will slow winter flow? (Beavers) If we get rid of dams what will raise the water table? (Beavers) If we get rid of dams what will create wetlands? (Beavers) If we get rid of dams how can we possibly manage California’s ‘flash’ rain cycle where we get too much rain some years and nothing at all in others? (Beavers. Beavers. Beavers!) And by the end of the day, Rick’s presentation on historical prevalence and where beavers belong was the perfect lead-in for my talk about the effects of beavers in Martinez.
Suffice it to say there are some new believers out there tonight. Just another day in the endless ‘Give‘ and ‘Take‘ of advocacy.
Richard Tesore, Director of the marine fauna reserve ‘SOS Fauna Marina’ holds a baby doplhin in a pool in Punta Colorada, department of Maldonado 100 km east of Montevideo on November 5, 2010. The little dolphin of about 10 days, was found by tourists, apparently showing marks of a fishing net. (MIGUEL ROJO/AFP/Getty Images)
