Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Who’s defending beavers now?


What do you know. The California Beaver Summit made Wildfire Today. I thought I only dreamed that would happen. Along with one of my favorite old stories about beaver lawsuits.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled in favor of beavers — in 1939

When Paul Stewart bought his rangeland in Eastern Oregon in 1884 it included a meadow with “stirrup-high native grasses”. The sub-irrigation provided by Crane Creek was amplified by several families of industrious beavers who had built numerous dams across the stream to form ponds for their homes.

In 1924 he left his farm for a year and upon returning found that poachers had trapped and removed the beavers. The dams had washed out and over the next 12 years the meadow and the creek was transformed. Uncontrolled flood waters eroded the banks, cutting into his valuable crop land. The stream was flowing 15 feet below its original level and the water table had dropped. The meadow was drying up and a well was barely producing any water.

Do you know this story? IF not you should DEFINITELY go read the whole thing. Is the old chestnut of beaver tales that keeps giving again and again. Anyway, the article by Bill Gabbert concludes the retelling with this fine paragraph:

If you’re still starving for more information about beavers, Heidi Perryman, Co-Chair of last month’s California Beaver Summit, tells us that their website has information about presentations made at the conference, including the effects on wildfires, managing the challenges beavers can cause for landowners, and the value beaver engineering can have for the drying state of California. She said two of the researchers mentioned in our May 5 article, Dr. Emily Fairfax and Dr. Joe Wheaton, gave keynote talks at the conference. There were also speakers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management.

AND a link to the summit website because as we know it’s allllllllllllllll about the links. Thanks Bill Gabbert for the mention.  Hopefully the Sierra Club will follow suit and we’ll get something in the Bay Nature Website soon. Carolina Cuellar has been working to put something together since her story on San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade. Recently she and a photographer made it to Fairfield to snap some photos of beaver dams for the article.

 

 

 

 


Sometimes I fall behind in the news. I admit. Either because I’m giving a zoom talk the next day or because I forgot to pay attention and started to work on something else, like the exciting new project I’ll be showing you later. This had all the elements of a good story too. But as its in Oregon I’m going to assume it found its way without us.

Beaver battle

There is a beaver stirring up trouble in Ochoco Creek.

At one end of town, near the local skate park, a flat-tailed critter has chewed up several trees, causing some to come down. Closer to Main Street, a tree with incriminating chew marks lays across the creek next to a jagged, pointy stump.

Prineville Police Officer James Young is aware that beavers have settled into Ochoco Creek at different times through the years. They seems to prefer the skate park area.

“If you go through that area, there is actually years of different beaver chew through there,” he said. “There is old stuff that is grayed over.”

But since about January, the problem has worsened and created a safety hazard.

Ochoco creek is in the middle of the state and the fact that this problem existed for 5 months means the skate park isn’t really located anywhere important. In fact if you tried to evaluate which species most Americans hate more, beavers or skateboarders you’d have to really think about it, And use charts and nano-scales. It’s that close.

But city officials usually like the parents of skaters more than beavers. So they are unlikely to let trees fall on their head.

Something had to be done, Young decided, so he did some research and learned about a Bend-based organization called Beaver Works Oregon, which provides mitigation services for people dealing with beaver problems.

But before contacting the organization, Young decided to reach out to local stakeholders like Ochoco Irrigation District, City of Prineville Public Works and Crook County Parks and Recreation District to find out how they would like to handle the situation. They all encouraged him to contact Beaver Works.

Young connected with Program Director Reese Mercer.

“We did a walk of the path and I showed her the areas that were of concern,” he said. “I ended up having a couple of conferences with them. Then COVID-19 hit and that pushed things back.”

He has continued to communicate with the organization by phone and the group is not putting together a proposal with different options, which could include anything from tree protection or fencing to beaver relocation.

Wha-a-a-a-?

A beaver group I do not know about? Do such things exist in the world? Have I lost my cutting edge?

Yes, I have. And that’s a good thing. It’s like having too many chickens to know each ones name. That’s a good place to be. We are HAPPY when we learn of new beaver efforts in the world. Not far away. We celebrate the good news even i we weren’t including on the mailing list.

Beaver Works Oregon is the growing vision of dedicated volunteers working to build this effort and activities as a program under Think Wild (Wildlife Hospital and Conservation Center), in Bend.

Here is their website: Beaverworks.org


There’s lots to explore on the website AND they’re doing a showing of the beaver believers on May 28 that you can sign UP for! Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other soon. Click on the image if you’d like to register.


Happy New Year! Does your head hurt? I’m going to boldly assume it doesn’t and march us straight into new business. It’s time for a little Oregon news, don’t you think? Let’s talk about Jakob Shockey for a change.

The Business of Beavers: Biologist speaking about a vital animal

ASTORIA — Beaver play a critical role in riparian and wetland systems, often creating better habitat in a site than humans can construct with big money and machinery. Beaver also can cause issues when in close proximity to the built environment. Wildlife biologist Jakob Shockey will touch upon these topics in a free presentation about beaver biology and management at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15 at the Astoria Library.

Hurray for beavers and they’re critical role! Now the picture made me briefly anxious that he has a ‘display beaver’ but the photograph says this picture was provided to the paper and probably shows a moment of successful relocation or something, since this is Oregon where its legal.

Shockey will talk about what beaver do and why they do it, their keystone role in our ecosystem and the historical context of beaver and humans in the Pacific Northwest. He will discuss tools for addressing common conflicts through natural science and design, and why predictive management of beaver at a site is worthwhile. Finally, Shockey will look at emergent trends in beaver management and strategies for partnering with beaver for habitat restoration and water resiliency.

Shockey has worked professionally in Oregon’s streams, rivers and wetlands for over seven years. He manages the restoration program for the Applegate Partnership and owns Beaver State Wildlife Solutions, a company that specializes in responding to frustrating conflicts with wildlife in a new way. He co-founded The Beaver Coalition, an organization working to address the factors that limit the return of beaver to the drying watersheds of the northern hemisphere.

The beaver coalition? Do I know about the beaver coalition? Do you? Ha, you know I just googled the phrase and the ONLY place I can see it used is on that Crazy website. You know the one, But I’m sure it’s a good thing and I’m sure he didn’t snag the name from our headline. (To be fair, I  have written a headline every day 350 times a year for more than a decade so that’s 3850 titles that mathematically just must be the name of someone’s nonprofit). I sure do wish I knew more this coalition! I will write Jakob and ask him to fill us in.

The funny thing is I got an email two days ago from some folks who said they worked with the Corvalis Beaver Strike Team and wanted to get in touch with someone named Rob Walton, who I didn’t now. For the record, I didn’t know about the strike team either. Here’s their website:

The Beaver Strike Team is a local volunteer citizen action group composed of federal, state, and university biologists, experts in beaver-human conflict resolution, watershed council and wildlife center staff, and other wildlife advocates.

They work with cities to install flow devices, protect trees and educate. How did we not know about them? Cool huh? I don’t know how, but somehow they knew about us, thank goodness. When I went looking for their missing contact I found this: and then they reminded me that I actually wrote about Rob already. One day before the beaver festival so no wonder I forgot.

ROB WALTON:

Started New Job at The Beaver Coalition

The Beaver Coalition supports the benefits that beavers can provide to combat climate change and restore salmon runs.

Rob retired from NOAA in 2018 and presenting at BeaverCon on salmon. He has been working with Jakob to get the beaver coalition up and running last month. Pretty amazing they were organized enough to be a Patagonia matching recipient already! Here’s what a friend of his wrote on FB,

Jakob Shockey has founded a brand new, baby non-profit utilizing beavers for ecological health. Beavers = Salmon and today they are having matching donations IF you are motivated by this work and what to help start the Beaver Coalition From the gr und up here is an opportunity to double your donation.

What does this all mean? We’re SURROUNDED by beaver supporters! Or at least Oregon is. And Washington. Good gracious maybe someday they’ll be a beaver strike team in California and I can finally hang up my keyboard for good.

What an exciting beaver world 2020 is going to be!


Here we were enjoying our riches and feeling a little smug with the discovery that just like us Lassie tried to save beavers, and then I find THIS episode.  An episode where honest to God Lassie invents the very first BDA – and now I’m thinking – goodness what else is out there that we don’t know about?

 

You have another wonderful 21 minutes to look forward to. This episode is dated 1964 and features a member of the USDA noting that beavers help with flood control and trout habitat. Because why the heck not blow our minds completely? I ask you.

Amazed yet?

Let the record also note that that angry little old lady “Maude” was actually incredibly spry for any age and wants to be a member of Worth A Dam. It’s also worth pointing out that she had her heart changed by actually watching beavers. Something we know all about in Martinez. Seeing them at work and play literally makes all the difference.

And hearing them?  Ohh boy.

Along those lines Rusty sent this footage of his catch last night. He was out walking the dog and just had his cell phone on hand, but what true adorableness he managed to capture. I am gnawing my fingertips with envy as I type this, but I’m very, very happy for him. And you, because you get to watch this.

Thank you for that wonderful glimpse of beaver life.

I wanted to show you another passage that leaped out at me from Ellen Wohl’s wonderful new book “Saving the Dammed“. (Not to be confused with the Harry Potter fan fiction of the same name). I wonder if you can spot the obscurity that caught my attention.


Three people I barely know wrote me about this article yesterday. So you know it’s making a splash. This is a great time to be a beaver, The syndicated ‘hits’ just keep on coming! It’s almost like some crafty publisher somewhere was cleverly rolling out an upcoming book to create a wave.

Beavers, rebooted

n 1836, an explorer named Stephen Meek wandered down the piney slopes of Northern California’s Klamath Mountains and ended up here, in the finest fur trapping ground he’d ever encountered. This swampy basin would ultimately become known as the Scott Valley, but Meek’s men named it Beaver Valley after its most salient resource: the rodents whose dams shaped its ponds, marshes, and meadows. Meek’s crew caught 1800 beavers here in 1850 alone, shipping their pelts to Europe to be felted into waterproof hats. More trappers followed, and in 1929 one killed and skinned the valley’s last known beaver.

The massacre spelled disaster not only for the beavers, but also for the Scott River’s salmon, which once sheltered in beaver-built ponds and channels. As old beaver dams collapsed and washed away, wetlands dried up and streams carved into their beds. Gold mining destroyed more habitat. Today, the Scott resembles a postindustrial sacrifice zone, its once lush floodplain buried under heaps of mine tailings. “This is what we call ‘completely hosed,’” sighed Charnna Gilmore, executive director of the Scott River Watershed Council in Etna, California, as she crunched over the rubble on a sweltering June morning last year.

Thus begins another excellent article by Ben Goldfarb talking about recovering some of that lost habitat by using beaver dam analogues. You have to go read the whole fine thing yourself, but it’s paragraphs like the one above that are the true gift of his upcoming book in my mind – describing the desecration of the terrain that followed the speedy and avaricious trapping of beaver in the fur trade.

Gilmore’s group is just one of many now deploying BDAs, perhaps the fastest-growing stream restoration technique in the U.S. West. Federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, nonprofits such as The Nature Conservancy, and even private ranchers have installed the structures to return life to deeply eroded streams and, in some cases, to help re-establish beavers in long-abandoned territories. In Wyoming, BDAs are creating wet meadows for a vulnerable bird. In Oregon, they’re rebuilding salmon streams. In Utah, they’re helping irrigate pastures for cattle.

Part of the allure is that BDAs are cheap compared with other restoration techniques. “Instead of spending $1 million per stream mile, maybe you spend $10,000,” says Joe Wheaton, a geomorphologist at Utah State University (USU) in Logan who’s among the leading proponents of beaver-based restoration. “Relying on the labor of a rodent helps a ton.”

 

The article goes on to talk about folks using BDAs in California, Washington and Idaho, and the differences they see when the man-made repairs encourage actual beavers to move in and take over the operation themselves. But my favorite parts are the recurring ode to how different beavers made America, and how different it looks without them.

FROM OUR 21ST CENTURY vantage, it’s hard to conceive how profoundly beavers shaped the landscape. Indeed, North America might better be termed Beaverland. Surveying the Missouri River Basin in 1805, the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered beaver dams “extending as far up those streams as [we] could discover them.” Scientists calculate that up to 250 million beaver ponds once puddled the continent—impounding enough water to submerge Washington, Oregon, and California. Castor canadensis even paved the way for agriculture: By trapping sediment in their ponds, beavers “produced the rich farm land … of the northern half of North America,” paleontologist Rudolf Ruedemann wrote in Science in 1938.

But Beaverland could not withstand the fur trappers who arrived in New England in the 17th century and quickly spread west. By 1843, naturalist John James Audubon found the Missouri Basin “quite destitute.” At the outset of the 20th century, researchers estimate, just 100,000 beavers survived—less than 1% of historic numbers.

The slaughter transfigured North America’s waterways. In a healthy, beaver-rich creek, dams slow water flows, capture sediment, and counteract erosion. But after beavers and their speed bumps disappeared, streams eroded into their beds, cutting deep gullies in a process called incision. These steep-sided, straitjacketed streams lost the ability to spill onto their floodplains and recharge aquifers. Some groundwater-fed streams dried up altogether.

How lucky are we to live in the very time where this book is being published and have the author at our festival no less!

Even here, however, the rodent revolution is gaining allies. Last year, state officials showed signs of warming to BDAs after the council invited them to a workshop. And once-suspicious local ranchers have shifted their views, persuaded in part by water tables that have risen by as much as a meter, helping improve water supplies and reduce irrigation costs.

Even 5 years ago, says Gilmore, her colleagues “were like closet beaver people,” so fearful of antibeaver sentiment that they wouldn’t so much as wear T-shirts decorated with the rodent’s portrait. Her group even dubbed BDAs “post-assisted wood structures” to avoid associations with the controversial animal. Today? “We have a lot of landowners that would love for us to put [BDAs] up,” she says. “Now, people see me in town and they’re like: ‘Oh, you’re the beaver gal!’”

I love the line about “Closet beaver people”. (It makes me smile to think how far out of the closet we have been.) The hour might very well be upon us where the tide will shift dramatically and keep shifting in favor of beavers. I’ve said before that this may not be the beginning of the end – but it’s definitely the end of the beginning.

Just in time for the finest beaver festival ever.

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