Uncategorized – Page 7

Brace Yourselves…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, In the News, Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 24, 2011

I got a few heads up on this report last night from Oklahoma. So lets look at this report out of Owasso. I’m going to preface this with a caution. This is a shockingly ignorant video, which we can handle and which I’m happy to talk about. But it is also a stunningly cruel one, and I say this as a woman whose watched barbaric behavior towards beavers for four long years. If you think of yourself as someone with a soft heart (Jean I mean you!) you should not watch it, and I’ll do my best to summarize the stupid so we can take it on together.

Alright. If you watched it I’ll give you a moment to recover and a baby duck to take your mind off it. Isn’t this adorable? If you’re skipping it you’ll probably enjoy this anyway.

Better? Basically this news clip shows a park where beavers are eating trees (horrors) and a manly trapper (Reginald Murray of Oklahoma Wildlife Cont rol) comes and saves the day. It shows him setting traps near their lodge, carrying and disposing of the bodies, and demonstrating their evil incisors. Reginald loves wildlife. He doesn’t hate beavers, of course not! Apparently he likes them so much he does the same thing with them that the Romans did with the Christians.

He also has shares some very colorful facts with an unquestioning media. Such as noting that “shooting beavers doesn’t work because they’ll just go underground for a couple months and start eating roots!” (No, I’m not kidding!) Beaver-moles! His website says they never tell lies, and never surprise customers with hidden costs. Hmm. Does that mean they talked with Owasso about the fact that trapping out beaver causes a population rebound? Gosh when I think about the 5000 beavers killed by USDA each year in Oklahoma, and the multitudes ‘redirected’ by Reginald, I think there must be one heck of a rebound! Apparently Reginald wasn’t totally happy with his beavers-as-christians footage because wildlife control has posted four times in already on the news discussion site.

When I despair that this maybe this is a incurable regional insensitivity. I see the comments and am comforted.

JoJo – 3/22/2011 10:13 PM

Jesus Christ,I changed the channel as soon as I saw that you sickos @ fox 23 showed a dead wild animal “hello” these animals are doing what they do and to show a dead animal on “live” tv could you have not at least said something along the lines of “the following maybe graphic” I will never ever watch your station again, your obviously catering to the rednecks of this state………..shame on you!!!!!!!!!!!

justin32 – 3/22/2011 9:32 PM

Just watched your story on beavers and was very disappointed. I am an animal lover and to continue to show the dead beaver was over the top. Not to mention the trapper’s response “a dead rat for a cat” then splat he threw it to a big cat at the sanctuary. Additionally, the comments at the end where your reporter stated the trapper had found car engines in a beaver damn, patio tables/chairs and even a rifle. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I beaver pulling a car engine into their damn. I understand they are doing damage but the report could have been put together much better.

The good folk of Oklahoma Wildlife Control have tried to respond to these spurious claims of inhumanity, claiming the news media got it wrong. The stunning thing is that any ‘Roman’ would allow himself to be filmed throwing the ‘Christians’ to the you know whats, and actually think that was good press. i can’t imagine what Reginald thinks the media got wrong. Was it his humanitarian side that was over emphasized?

Let’s hope this outrage prompts someone to take a chance on these new fangled flow devices that have been researched for 20 years and do this the right way. it could happen. I know it’s Fox news, but when I was watching this I couldn’t help but think that maybe someone holding the camera felt exactly the same way about Mr Murray as much as I did and was lulling him into revealing as much of his nature as he could on film. Kind of like I felt when I saw this…

The Magnificent Seven

heidi08 Uncategorized March 20, 2011

Unusual number of beavers killed along busy Mill Creek road.

By Eric Stevick, Herald Writer

Biologists speculate the animals were looking for a new home after their old one was destroyed by heavy rain. MILL CREEK — It was a gruesome scene that awaited morning rush-hour commuters. Seven beavers were struck and killed by cars Tuesday on a busy Mill Creek thoroughfare.

Mill Creek Washington had a beaver tragedy on Tuesday. 7 beavers were struck by passing vehicles along the 132nd street. Seven. By the time rush hour came around cars were already weaving among the bodies.This horrible story would hardly be worth a post, but it was brought to my attention by a fairly compassionate article and I guess maybe these beavers deserve a eulogy. Not to mention a ‘Caution: Wildlife Crossing” sign in their memory.

Each beaver was run over in a roughly 50-yard stretch near the intersection of 132nd St. SE and 35th Ave. SE.

“I was wondering, ‘What in the world happened?'” said Matt Posivio, who spotted the dead beavers while driving to work. “To see so many of them. My first thought was, ‘I hope this isn’t foul play.’ “The sheer size of the beavers, which average around 40 pounds as adults, made it look like a road strewn with dogs, he said.

Foul Play indeed. Drivers on a deadline with their attention divided between their cellphones, lattes and traffic reports. Very foul. I can’t imagine seven family members moving in a cluster. Maybe the lodge was getting more and more flooded, and they were cramping together for dry space, and a yearling went first to look for other digs. Then a brother followed. Then the parents, then the kits. A horrible ‘ten-little indians’ massacre unfolds in my mind, but I’ll spare you the details. As violently as I hated the drivers of those vehicles when I read this article, it is true that it was dark, beavers are dark, and are very low to the ground. Also reader comments from the article make even the guiltless drivers sound pretty traumatized by the sea of tails on the road, which in a oddly comforting.

It is clear from reading the article and reviewing the lovely graphics that were created for it that the incident caused quite a stir in Mill Creek. As it should be. It’s a horrible story and no one should drive through that intersection in quite the same way anymore. I’m thinking that residents and commuters might pitch in for a “Caution sign” in their memory. I’ll personally throw in the first 20 bucks.

In the meantime, let’s hope that the sight of seven accidentally killed beavers will prevent the next seventeen beavers that Mill Creek decides to kill on purpose. Let’s hope it raises awareness of beavers in general, reminds people that they exist in family units, and generates more patience on the roads for wildlife. Let’s hope the community remembers the morning of the magnificent seven.

Knut No More…

heidi08 Uncategorized March 20, 2011

Rest in Peace, Ice Bear Extraordinaire…

Pull Up A Chair

heidi08 Uncategorized March 19, 2011

Maybe not that chair….

Joe Cannon of the Lands Council sent me a note about this lovely article yesterday, so I would highly recommend sitting somewhere cozy and enjoying it.

Beaver Fever – How Spokane’s Lands Council is Deploying Nature’s Dam Builder to Help Save Water

by Paul K. Haeder

It’s pretty compelling to hear that a Spokane-generated and managed program is catching the notice of scientists and state agency environmental wonks. That is what is happening with a local relocation program called the Beaver Project. This is a story about nature re-invigorating the land that humanity has so deftly razed, dredged, paved over and cemented in.

“I hope people agree to look to nature for low cost and low impact solutions to manage our environment,” says Amanda Parrish, one of the Beaver Project’s aficionados and leaders. She’s had a direct hand in putting those sentiments directly to work in remote forests and soggy riparian areas in our neck of the woods.

How’s that for an overture! The article is delightful to read and, what’s more, says that beavers live for 7 years instead of 50 which is always appreciated. Never mind that it also says females are larger than males (?) — its mostly accurate and well worth your time.

With 90 percent of the animal’s number reduced, so were the dams they constructed. This near extirpation caused the first major shift in the country’s water cycle. Let’s follow the numbers—if each of those pre-Columbian beavers had built a measly acre of wetlands, then an area of more than 300,000 square miles—a tenth of total land area of the country—was once beaver-built wetland from sea to shining sea.

Now that’s a stand alone paragraph. Let’s just savor it for a moment. I wish it was included on every water bill mailed in the United States. Ten percent of the beavers we once had, and USDA still killed 28000 beavers in 2009.

The 24-year-old Parrish, who grew up in San Diego, ended up in Spokane two years ago, with a degree in environmental sciences from University of San Francisco, to try her hand as an AmeriCorps volunteer attached to the Land’s Council, the well-established Spokane-based environmental group dubbed TLC for short.

Now she’s leading the effort of live-trapping beaver families, tending to them temporarily in her South Hill yard where she fusses over mothers, fathers and their young with water and fresh cut alder and aspen branches while waiting to get an entire family unit reunited to then be “relocated” to a stream on land at four relocation sites outside of Republic, Chewelah, Newport and Valley.

Honestly, don’t you wanna go to Amanda’s house? Twenty Four. I dimly remember 24. Maybe Worth A Dam needs to pay for Amanda and Joe to spend a fortnight with Skip Lisle and Mike Callahan so they can learn first hand about installing flow devices. Hmmm with the understanding that they would do the same for other 24 year olds in ten years. Joe just posted photos of his first attempt on Facebook the other day. He couldn’t find any 12 inch pipe so he had to make do….

The Lands Council does good work, and I’m particularly happy Joe & Amanda are part of it. I’ll finish this post by suggesting you watch this video again, which was produced a few years back. It’s an excellent piece of beaver gospel.