You know how it is, you wake up and blearily check your inbox to see what beaver issue you’ll be writing about this morning, like a fisherman checking his line. Sometimes you get tiny little guppies and have to string together a couple to make a meal.
But sometimes you get a whale.
Report to cover wildlife damage management activities in CA
USDA, CDFA to conduct joint environmental review of agencies’ roles in wildlife damage management
WASHINGTON — The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is advising the public of the intent to prepare a Joint Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Statement (EIS) for wildlife damage management activities in California.
APHIS has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to develop a joint environmental review of both agencies’ roles in wildlife damage management in California. The scope of the analysis will include APHIS’s cooperative activities with Federal and State agencies, California counties, Tribes, and local municipalities managing human-wildlife conflicts caused by birds and mammals. Cooperative activities may include:
- Reducing damage to agricultural resources;
- Reducing damage to infrastructure and property;
- Reducing wildlife strike hazards at airports;
- Managing damage by invasive species;
- Reducing threats to human health and safety associated with wildlife; and
- Protecting threatened and endangered species
Did you hear that? Gosh did someone say beaver and salmon and wildfire? I’m sure I heard someone call my name. I know someone is calling yours.
.The Federal Register Docket will be available for viewing on September 9, 2020 here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=APHIS-2020-0081. Comments will be accepted September 10-November 10. Two virtual public meetings will be held during the scoping period on October 13 and October 27, 2020. Details for participation in these meetings can be found at www.CaliforniaWDM.org
–USDA APHIS
Hmmm. Hmmm. Of course I rushed to the website to see what I could find. It is very interesting to me that USDA & CDFA would enter a MOU to prepare and EIS about potential effects on wildlife. Why? Usually EIRs are things you submit after kicking and dragging your heels for a very long time. They are what people the courts make you submit when you’ve exhausted all other options or have lost the argument.
An EIR is like a root canal. Very useful when needed. but nothing you’d volunteer for.
For context, the huge lawsuit won at the appellate level in Riverside against CDFG and LA waterand LA water was ONLY requesting that they do an EIR before trapping beaver. It turned out to be a nuclear weapon that to my knowledge has never been used again.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and Wildlife Services (WS-California), a state office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS), intend to prepare a joint Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) to provide a robust and comprehensive environmental analysis of current and proposed future wildlife damage management activities undertaken across California. The EIR/EIS will evaluate impacts associated with wildlife damage management activities performed by CDFA and California Counties under CDFA’s proposed Wildlife Damage Management Program (WDMP) as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and by WS-California as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These activities would be undertaken in a collaborative effort between WS-California, CDFA, and California Counties to prevent damage to agricultural resources and infrastructure, protect natural resources and promote human health and safety. Additional information about the proposed WDMP and WS-California’s current wildlife damage management activities is provided be low.
Doesn’t it strike as odd that they are creating a impact report in advance of any action they are going to take for the year? I mean let’s say that there is an extreme unexpected drought that suddenly threatens all the wildlife in southern california. Wouldn’t the impact of any previously approved action vary according to current environmental conditions?
Maybe it’s something akin to the police damage waivers unions require cities sign. We’ve weighed the possible consequences and whatever outcome happens we pre-approved the risk. We are no longer liable for the results.
It’s the last one on the list that I think touches us most closely. Watercourses. protected species. and natural habitats means beaver if anything in the world does. It is practically their middle name.
They will accept 60 days of public comment on their proposal and there will be a public virtual meeting in October. I’m assuming that thy are planning to create an EIS for the impact of every species in every region of the state. That’s a bizarrely broad undertaking, but we can certainly give them an earful.
Anyway, we’ve all got a lot of reading to do. All the info can be found on the WDM page. It’s just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure that when they say “wildlife damage” they mean the damage wildlife does to YOU not the damage they do every day to wildlife.
My father was an avid traveler, mostly to far places you can never hope to name, but one of his favorite places to stop on his many trips up and down the pacific coast was the High Desert Museum in Bend Oregon. He was particularly enamored of the porcupine display – especially the adorable little noises he would emit in protest when one of the squirrels stole his carrot. Well recently we were approached by Louise Shirley who is working on a new exhibit for that VERY museum. An exhibit all about our favorite subject. I’ll let her explain,
The Beav was just 1-2 weeks old with no parents to be found.
To say that this blew all of my mind yesterday is an understatement. The idea that our father beaver had a family and home a decade before was every bit as shocking as if I had found out that my own father had had another wife, another family another life before I was born. This changes everything because it means that dad was so much larger because he was older than mom. And that mom was such a sweet young thing, which might explain why she was always more able to tolerate people than Dad, who valued his privacy.
The National Wildlife Federation, in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is taking steps to improve riparian conditions on prairie streams in north-central Montana, using low-tech methods that include beaver dam analogs (also known as BDAs) to imitate beaver activity and expand the diversity of flora and fauna. This 
Results are apparent almost immediately. After just one day of BDA construction, water that previously rushed down the narrow channel is already spreading onto the surrounding floodplain, glistening under bright yellow sunflowers and drawing leopard frogs out onto newly watered ground. As team members pack up to leave the site several days into the project installation, they watch from the hill as a muskrat wanders downstream and plops from the bank into a newly formed pool, swimming large circles in a channel that didn’t provided this habitat just a day earlier.
