Again with the good news. You must find me redundant. I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell you three very good things today. Again. You’re going to think I exaggerate or make stuff up. I swear its all true.
And I swear the last one is the very very very best.
The first comes from the Estuary magazine and stars an article written by a very good beaver friend. Talk about bringing in the big guns!
Two long-scarce freshwater mammal species are staging a comeback in Bay Area waterways.
By Joe Wheaton
Beavers are expanding in Santa Clara County. Steve Holmes of the South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition found a pregnant beaver on the Guadalupe River in 2013; others have been spotted in San Jose, Campbell, and Sunnyvale, and this spring De Anza College student Ibrahim Ismail discovered a den on Los Gatos Creek.
Nineteenth-century records place beavers in the South Bay before their local extirpation, but CDFW does not issue permits for beaver relocation because of their nuisance potential. Although there are beaver colonies in Martinez and a few other Bay Area sites, the origins of the South Bay colonies are not known; the beavers may have moved downstream from Lexington Reservoir, where they were reportedly introduced in the 1990s under unclear circumstances.
Hurray! A shoutout for urban beavers, beaver nativity and the Martinez beavers in particular! I knew this was coming because Joe contacted me on the nativity angle a while ago. I’m happy the brought him in to write this, but not quite so happy about this paragraph.
Holmes welcomes the return of the furry ecosystem engineers, whose activities have been shown elsewhere to improve habitat for salmonids. However, Santa Clara Valley Water District biologists Doug Titus and Navroop Jassal note that those studies may not match South Bay conditions, and explain that dams could affect threatened steelhead by blocking migration, increasing water temperatures, and providing habitat for exotic predators. However, they say that so far no negative impacts from dam-building or other beaver work have been observed.
Say it with me now. “That research doesn’t apply to these very specialized special conditions”. “We’re the silicon valley for pete’s sake. Nothing in the world comes close. Google it! In our habitat beavers actually HARM steelhead. So we better kill them.”
Well Steve is watching out for them, and Rick is too on the RCD, I’m going to assume good things for now. As we found, by the time you make it into Estuary magazine you’re already home free.
Onto some great mews from London. No not THAT one. This one is in Ontario just across the water from detroit.
Conservation authority baffles beavers to save city infrastructure
Some call it a beaver baffler. Others prefer beaver deceiver. In the simplest terms, it’s a pond-levelling contraption, made up of a pipe and a cage, that not only controls unwanted flooding but also tricks a beaver into thinking everything is just fine.
On Wednesday, the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority installed one in the Pincombe Drain, a tributary of Dingman Creek near a subdivision at Southdale and Wharncliffe roads in London.
It’s true enough. Some people use the proper names for things and some just make them up as they go along. But heck, I shouldn’t criticize. Not only did they do the very right thing here, they also did it for the most very right reasons.
“As we encroach on the rural landscape and farmers take back more land and they make more drains rather than creeks, beavers are coming back to the city,” Williamson said. “We’re creating all these green spaces and the beavers come in and form these wetland niches.
“That’s a positive thing and it’s an amazing habitat. The only thing is the wildlife is competing with infrastructure and human activity — things like flooding on roads, culverts, storm water management ponds and hazard trees. Those are really the only issues we have with beavers.”
Okay then, we can all see you obviously are installing a pond leveler and were trained either by Mike’s visit to London a few years back or his videos, but you’re doing it right and for the right reasons. And we just love you for it!
Okay now for the really, really good news. This was filmed yesterday morning by Nancy Fleischauer at the Ward street bridge in Martinez. Can I get an Amen?
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