BEAVERS ARE CARVING A NAME FOR THEMSELVES

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver ecological impact, Beavers and Fire Prevention October 18, 2020

Time for an awesome letter to the editor from our friend author Judith K. Berg, You might remember she is the author of Otter Spirit and Conversations with a beaver and donated copies to our last silent auction. This was published in the Register-Guard in Eugene Oregon.

Well well well, she reads he national geographic too!

Smokey Beaver?

As devastating fires sweep across the American West, we thank firefighters for their diligent work. However, among them emerges an unsung non-human firefighter to which we also pay tribute — the American beaver.

Science, reflected in natural history, is on the move. A recent, timely publication by Emily Fairfax, in Ecological Applications, explains how our family-oriented ecosystem engineer adds another attribute to its vast repertoire. Fairfax’s results show that beavers’ canal-digging, dam-building and pond-creating endeavors irrigate extensive stream corridors, which, in turn, create fireproof refuges for plants and animals. In some cases, their engineered landscapes can even stop fires in their tracks. Wow!

Judith explained once that she was amazed how rich beaver habitat was and how much we owe them for their many good works. I couldn’t agree more, and am glad she published this letter locally. Maybe we all should be doing that.

With climate change upon us, the future holds more wildfire devastation. However, our willing beavers present us with a natural-based solution in areas where they‘ve developed enhanced waterways.

Yet humans continue to kill this special species to solve a few flood-control issues caused by beaver behaviors, even though there are proven non-lethal flood-prevention devices, such as “Beaver Deceivers,” that can be used.

Science continues to discover the many contributions bestowed on planet Earth by beavers. Now, we can add firefighting! Let’s thank them for that.

Oh my goodness. Let’s follow her lead and publish something similar in Napa and Sonoma and Santa Clara and LA. We are going to need a beaver army to fight this.

Looking for more accomplishments? How about carving the oldest wood idol in the world? Circa 11,000 it has held up to the test of time. On display in a museum in western siberia:

Beaver’s teeth ‘used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world’

Dating back 11,000 years – with a coded message left by ancient man from the Mesolithic Age – the Shigir Idol is almost three times as old as the Egyptian pyramids.

New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact.

Originally dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in the Ural Mountains in 1890, the remarkable seven-faced Idol is now on display in a glass sarcophagus in a museum in Yekaterinburg.

The faces were ‘the last to be carved because apart from chisels, some very interesting tools – made of halves of beaver lower jaws – were used’.

It’s not that remote of a history, because local tribes in Brentwood and Antioch were burried with beaver mandibles. Beavers change things. Its what they do.

This dropped yesterday and is my new favorite thing in the world.

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BEAVERS GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact October 17, 2020

It’s rare enough in the beaver biz to come across the good beaver article. I’ve done this every day for a decade so I know how rare. Even rarer to get a great one. When those happen they are usually written be someone we know and love OR they are made palatable to the editor with a luke-warm headline.

This is because the author of the article usually isn’t who writes the headline. That’s the job for some underling whose work is more about selling stories than saving beavers, So when the perfect beaver article also has a PERFECT HEADLINE that is very, very rare indeed.

Unicorn rare.

To engineer is human; doing it right might require beavers

Duck behind a seniors’ apartment complex and enter lush expanses of ponds, wetlands and forested creek bottoms that sponsor natural diversity, slow stormwater runoff so it can soak into underground aquifers, allow natural processes time to cleanse and clarify the discharge, and reduce downstream flooding.

One side of the road represents the worst of human engineering, maximizing one thing, water removal, to the ruin of all else. The other maximizes nothing, except life in all of its buzzy, croaky, splashy, winged wonder — water as resource. The latter represents a most hopeful collaboration between humans and beavers, the animals that once engineered the Chesapeake watershed with a thoroughness unmatched even by today’s 18 million people.

Guess who made it? Who am I kidding. You know who made it.

Beavers are coming back, even to the inimical conurbation that is most of northern Anne Arundel County. Michelsen, acting deputy director of the county’s Bureau of Watershed Protection and Restoration, is my guide to what is no less than a demonstration project, with beavers themselves doing much of the construction.

For Michelsen, it was good news around 2015 when beavers started showing up on the county restoration project that enhanced the north branch of Cypress Creek here. It drains to the Magothy River and then the Chesapeake Bay. What humans began, the beavers enhanced, impounding the whole stream with a series of dams and ponds.

Until recently, the beavers would not have been embraced for their ecosystem contributions. They’d have been removed, meaning trapped and killed. That’s still too common around much of the Bay watershed.

Beavers are compelled to chew, to control their marvelous, self-sharpening teeth that never stop growing; compelled also to dam, annoyed by the sound of flowing water.

The beaver dams here were raising water levels, with a potential to flood Ritchie Highway. The county responded by installing a simple, low-tech device called a pond leveler. A sturdy metal cage toward the lower end of the pond protects one end of an 18-inch diameter plastic drainpipe.

Be still my heart. This article has the perfect content, the perfect headline AND it mentions a successful flow device? Is such a thing even possible. I need to sit down. I’m feeling faint.

Michelsen estimates there are hundreds of beavers now in Anne Arundel County.

Complaints about beavers typically run about “50/50, flooding and chewing down peoples’ trees,” said Peter Bendel, with the Wildlife and Heritage division of the state Department of Natural Resources.

“So now it’s a matter of education, teaching co-existence, offering solutions, explaining beavers’ benefits,” Michelsen said.

More fainting! Teaching coexistence and emphasizing education! Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

The shift toward an ecological beaver ethic remains slow and uneven across the watershed. Tools like pond levelers, abrasive paint and other techniques to protect trees are available, notably from Mike Callahan’s Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts. Callahan’s companion Beaver Institute provides both hands-on and do-it-yourself training for organizations or individuals working for a peaceful coexistence with the beavers.

We’ve scarcely begun to plumb the potential of beavers to restore water’s rightful way throughout Bay landscapes. But Michelsen has high hopes. “I am convinced that, even in a highly urban watershed, they can do wonders,” he said, “if we just allow them to work.”

Erik Michelsen is the acting deputy director of the county’s Bureau of Watershed Protection and Restoration and my new favorite human. Just imagine if such a thing existed in every county; In every watershed.

I’m getting faint again.

THE BEAVER SHUFFLE

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, Beaver relocation October 16, 2020

If you’re like me, you can see right away what’s wrong with this headline. Of all the neighbors I’ve had in my life, with their noisy parties, weed-smoking teenagers and squealing tires, beavers by far have been my favorite.

Beavers: Good environmental stewards, but lousy neighbors

EVERETT — In the Lake Chaplain watershed, beavers help ward off the impact of climate change and make streams more suitable for salmon.

But in the guardian of Everett’s water supply system, the creatures’ love of blocking running water is problematic.

The beavers stuff culverts with sticks, blocking water flow and fish passage. They build dams along the city’s service roads, flooding them. The wild, semi-aquatic rodents leave their mark well beyond Everett’s boundaries.

All over Snohomish County, beavers clash with the human-built environment when they set up shop on private properties or next to roads, causing flooding and damage to homes.

I’m so old that I can remember when Snohomish county was famous for resolving beaver conflicts by installing flow devices and protecting culverts. Now they just whisk the animals away and hope it will last for a few pages on the calendar. Jake Jacobsen used work for public works in Snohomish. He went on to collaborate with Skip Lisle and Michael Pollock and was my guiding light during my time on the subcommittee telling me how to deal with our beavers.

Well now the Tulalip tribe just takes them away.

Since 2014, wildlife biologists working with the Tulalip Tribes have moved beavers from areas in the Snohomish River watershed, where they’re considered nuisances, to new homes in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Last month, the national forest signed an agreement with the tribes to expand that work to the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River watershed — a critical habitat for endangered fish like Chinook, steelhead and bull trout, Tulalip chairwoman Teri Gobin said.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying the tribe does anything wrong or isn’t careful about the beavers. I’m just saying that the fact that new beavers come back year after year means that you are better off actually SOLVING the problem than simply moving it.

And beavers making a difference in the greenbelt in residential areas is GOOD news for cities. Increasing biodiversity, reducing erosion, improving water quality and a creating social cohesion for residents.

In the Snohomish watershed, the tribes have relocated close to 200 beavers.

The animals don’t always stick around permanently — but that’s not the tribes’ main focus.

Even if beavers abandon their new homes, they usually build a dam first, benefiting the surrounding habitat and hydrology. And the next beaver family might build on what’s already there.

The relocated beavers can create over 61,000 gallons of new surface water storage along a 328-foot stretch of stream, according to Benjamin Dittbrenner, who completed a dissertation based on the project for Northeastern University in 2019. The groundwater table can nearly double in size, as well.

Yes, Ben took over for Jake when the new boss decided flow devices were a mistake. That was 200 beavers ago. Let’s say 40-50 beaver families in 6 years.

In the Lake Chaplain watershed, the city of Everett has taken a different approach with persistent beaver residents.

“We have a lot of really great habitat and we normally welcome them,” senior environmental specialist Anna Thelen said. “But we do need to keep some roads clear of water for employees, trucks and what not.”

So staff do their best to mitigate the negative impacts beaver damming has without entirely removing the structures. If the beavers build a dam along a service road, staff will make a notch so water can get through.

“Sometimes (the beavers) are OK with the compromised water level, so they don’t feel the need to put the sticks back,” Thelen said.

It’s a delicate balance — and sometimes staff end up notching the same dam again and again. The work has gone on for years, and the city just received another five-year permit to continue.

Now THAT is work I admire. A commitment to coexistence. Deal with the beavers you have and prevent the issues that might arise. I feel the influence of years of Jake in this policy.

“They are determined little guys,” Thelen said.“… And we’d like to encourage them to stay.”

BEAVERS ARE A HOT TOPIC

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 2, 2020

Tuesday night was beaver night in the city council in Oakley. Their meeting started with a presentation from Flood Control about the pesky beavers that built the dam in Marsh Creek and were subsequently shot. They assessed the dam as raising the water by a whopping 7 inches and restricting their 50 year flood plan for a particular segment of creek 400 feet upstream of the dam. You can watch the whole thing here, and the presentation is the very first part after the pledge of allegiance, but this was my favorite part of the meeting.

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It’s nice to know Martinez made some ripples in the world, although clearly the head of flood control thinks beavers live IN the dam. Sign. Our work is never done.

Yesterday a new buddy Jorge Echegaray, on the beaver management forum posted the first beaver booklet released in Spain explaining to landowners about their new odd flat-tailed neighbor. I took a look through and thought you’d be interested. My retired spanish-teaching sister very kindly translated the chapters for me which get me very interested.

Robin grabbed this as her favorite photo for obvious reasons.

I was intrigued by the range of questions, especially ¿Para qué sirven los castores? (What good are beavers?) and the even more intriguing ¿Son los castores un icono de conservación y educación ambiental?

Are beavers and icon of conservation and environmental education?

Let me save you some time gentlemen. YES. Yes they are.

SOME COUNTIES DO THEIR OWN KILLING

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Urban beavers October 14, 2020

The public meeting of USDA and CDFA last night was a pretty massive yawn, but I thought this was just fascinating. Who knew that Placer had their own beaver trapping, coyote killing bear baiting program? I wouldn’t have guessed but that makes the 7 times higher stats for that county VERY interesting.

Other than that it was a bunch of pale whites apologizing for their audio and extolling people to be civil about all their murders. I’ll attach my comments at the end. And I hope you still send yours.

Meanwhile Stephen Colbert wants beavers to vote. And I couldn’t agree more.

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EIR EIS Public Comment