THIS LADY OF THE LAKE ISN’T WELCOME

When should you stop ‘trying’ to live with your neighbor and commit to violence instead. The first time his cat defecates on your lawn? The tenth? When his teenage sun drives the truck over your marigolds? When his son brings your daughter home drunk?

I mean there’s a time for reasonable people to meet and hash things out. And there’s a time for war. And who knows when one becomes the other?

Walter Scott: Tired of undoing springtime beaver activity

Spring is supposed to be the season of change, not just cold and snowy. The wildlife in the area are also showing signs of spring.

Geese on the lake are swimming around in pairs, looking for a good place to nest. Bluebirds are checking hollow trees and the houses we have put out for them. In the evening, we can hear the call of the wood ducks in the timber near the far end of the lake. We have also noticed an increase activity from our resident beavers.

Beavers are fascinating creatures. When we first built our lake, I thought it would be fun to have a pair of beavers to watch. At the time, Iowa State University had a pair of beavers move into a small pond in the center of campus. They were becoming destructive by removing the ornamental trees in the area, so the Department of Natural Resources was asked to re-locate them.

I contacted the DNR and offered a home for them, but never heard back. They must have found a home closer to Ames. A few years passed and one day I noticed some trees near the lake being felled by beavers. I excitedly told my wife we had new residents. A week or two later, I noticed the lake level had increased by more than a foot.

This starts out so promising. Walter actually WANTED beavers on his lake. He volunteered for the job. And he likes watching the birds and wildlife they bring. What could possibly go wrong? Oh. you know. The usual.

Our lake is fed by three creeks and the outflow is through a 36-inch concrete tube through the dam. I checked the tube to find dozens of pieces of wood neatly arranged and packed with mud almost totally blocking the outflow of water.

It is no small job to dislodge the carefully constructed plug in the tube. When all their building materials are freed up and sent through the tube and downstream, the beavers must cut all new building materials and start over. This takes them about a week.

After several times of fighting to remove their plug in my tube, I decided beavers were not as interesting as I first thought. They were cutting down every oak and hickory tree near the lake, leaving behind any Osage orange or thorny locusts. I finally gave up and had them trapped and removed.

When is it time to commit violence against your neighbor? When they chop down your hickory tree I guess, Then its time to bring in the big guns. Er traps. Problem is sometimes violence doesn’t work.

Things went along smoothly, even when I noticed new beavers moved in last fall. They were mostly cutting down willow trees, which was fine with me. They built a den at one end of the island and moved tons of willow trees to their site to use for winter food and building materials. They left the outlet tube alone and all was well.

You are a very foolish man if you think it will stay well. They didn’t bother plugging the tube in the winter because there was plenty of water. Now that we are seeing some sunny days they are going to want to keep all that flow. I predict they will start plugging that pipe. But hey, what do I know?

After a week or so, the water had not gone down and may have even risen more than when the snow first melted. I stopped by and checked the tube one day on our journeys and discovered the tube was plugged. Many small logs, sharpened on both ends, were lodged in the tube and the neat framework was sealed with mud.

I realize it is spring and the beavers are afraid all their water is going to go out of that tube if they do not plug it up, but I am getting tired of undoing their work. They need to get about their other springtime activities and leave the lake level where it is, or they will be forced to find a new home.

Or they will be killed. Isn’t that what you mean? I spent an hour looking for how to contact Walter and came up empty. He is a free lance columnist so the paper doesn’t provide contact info. He lives in the very bottom right hand of the state of Iowa, but I couldn’t find his name in any city records or Gun club. I posted it on the facebook management page in desperation and Mike Callahan wrote Chris Sorflaten who lives in Iowa and just did a beaver institute training in flow devices saying he should contact him and Beaver Institute might pay materials.

Fingers crossed good neighbors can get this right.

THE COPPER RIVER DELTA BEAVERS

The Copper River is in Alaska proper not far too far out of Anchorage. It got it’s name from the many copper deposits along it’s upper sections. The copper was used by everyone from the natives to the Russians to the settlers that came later. Now the river is most famous for its salmon, which is considered among the best in the world. The long river is the 10th largest in the nation, so salmon have to work hard to travel its length and stock up on extra fat reserves to survive the journey. That makes them a prime catch for any sportsman who travel to the Yukon region specifically for the chance.

Of course you know any great river with that many salmon must also have a very healthy beaver population.

The furry ecosystem engineers of the Copper River Delta

The Copper River Delta is dominated by a coastal marine climate, making both the summer and winter seasons mild and wet. The climate is maintained by the Alaska Current, which delivers warm ocean air and low-pressure systems to Alaska’s Gulf. The climate, mixed with the natural history of the Copper River Delta, provides an ecosystem that is dynamic and thriving. Whether it is summer, or winter, you will be sure to find a furry animal, scurrying off on a mission. One of these furry animals, has picked a luxurious career as a landscape architect. Due to their ability to cut large trees and turn streams into ponds, they have rightfully received the title of ecosystem engineers.

Okay, you got our attention. What will you have to say about these architects?

On the Copper River Delta alone, they have left a noticeable signature that can be seen when driving the Copper River Highway. Since the 1964 earthquake and geologic uplift, they have expanded their range southward, to new areas of uplifted marsh on the delta. After many years, the dams created by these furry engineers have created new habitats for other plants and animals.

Of course they have. It’s what beavers do. But its interesting you can track changes since the earthquake.

When the spring ice melts, the search for the perfect “home” is on. Beavers will examine the landscape, honing in on steady sources of water and mapping out potential areas to construct a dam. The dams they build are strong enough to hold back the force of a stream that will flood to become a pond. Once the area is flooded, they begin floating larger branches to the construction site. Once the dam is satisfactory, the beavers switch their attention to building their huts.

A hut is an essential part of a beaver’s life, like a house for us humans. Their huts provide shelter from predators and severe weather (e.g., the wintry delta). When building a hut, beavers must gather tons of branches, debris, and aquatic vegetation. Once the materials are gathered, they form them into a cone-shape. Most of the structure is then coated with mud, leaving the “peak” open for ventilation. This peak is the equivalent of a chimney. Within the hut is a chamber that has been dug out. This chamber typically has two underwater tunnels with openings

above the water level. These openings are the entrance and exit to the hut. The main chamber is divided into two levels. The first level is a platform just above water level that is used for feeding and drying off. The second is a higher, drier platform cushioned with shredded wood fibers and grasses, used for sleeping. The chamber walls are thick (2-3 feet at the bottom) keeping the beavers warm. The snow that covers the hut in the winter also acts as insulation, keeping the temperature, inside the hut, relatively stable. This makes for a rather warm and cozy living area, compared to the cold, stark, windy conditions of Mother Nature, just outside the hut.

It’s nice to read some explaining this like we were hearing it for the first time. I love the idea of beavers keeping warm inside their ‘hut’. Obviously lots of other people do too.

To make the icy water more comfortable, beavers have thick fur. Beaver fur is so thick that a stamp-sized patch of skin is carpeted with over 125,000 individual hairs — this is more than the average human has on their entire head! This thick, fuzzy coat helps insulate them from the cold. To give their coat extra waterproofing, beavers will groom themselves with natural oil. The oil is produced from glands beneath their tails. When grooming, a beaver will use a modified toenail on each hind foot, to coat themselves in the waterproof oil. Once coated, they can comfortably swim beneath the frozen surface. Grooming also creates a thin layer of air near the skin. This air pocket acts as another insulating layer while underwater. Historically, however, having this beautiful, thick fur coat was not always very advantageous. When Europeans arrived in North America, as many as 400 million beavers swam the continent’s rivers and ponds. Between the 1700s and 1800s, most beaver populations were decimated by fur trappers, primarily to support the European fashion for felt hats. Because of this, beaver populations in the eastern United States were largely removed and the continent’s population was estimated at only about 100,000. Fortunately, these declines caught public attention. Concern for the beaver eventually led to regulations that controlled harvest and methods of take, generating a continent-wide recovery of beaver populations. Although pristine beaver habitat has been heavily reduced in the lower 48 states via human land-use practices, beaver have proven to be a highly adaptable animal, able to occupy a variety of human-made habitats.

Hmm if I didn’t know better I’d say that someone has been reading Ben’s book. Stamp-sized? That metaphor just randomly sprang to mind? I wonder how.

Beavers now occupy much of their former range in North America, although habitat loss has severely restricted population growth. Since the 1830s, about 195,000-260,000

square kilometers of wetlands have been converted to agricultural or other use areas in the United States. Many of these wetlands were most likely beaver habitat. Beaver are adaptable, being marginally able to subsist above timberlines in mountainous areas and occupy very cold regions. Beaver have yet to colonize Alaskan or Canadian arctic tundra, possibly due to the lack of essential woody plants for winter food and lodge construction, or because thick ice limits surface access in the winter. However, in milder areas of Alaska, beavers thrive. The Copper River Delta supports a healthy population of beavers due to their low natural mortality and an abundance of suitable habitat. Because of their large size and limited amount of time away from the protection of water, adult beavers have relatively few natural predators! Young beavers, also known as kits or yearlings, on the other hand may be eaten by black bears, coyotes, bobcats, and even great horned owls.

Come on, sir. You’re in ALASKA There are plenty of predators that would enjoy a nice juicy beaver. Like bear or wolf or mountain lion. For goodness sake we’ve seen footage of it.

Next time you are out on the Delta, look for signs of beaver including newly cut alders or a hut on the edge of a pond or slough. Take note of the area, see if you can find aquatic plants and insects in the water, look for waterfowl and fish. Take a minute to count how many different species you find and think about the natural relationships that might be happening. You might not have to ask scientific questions or consider the ecological richness that beavers create in order to enjoy them! Maybe sitting and soaking in the serene area, while beavers motor across the pond is enough. But while enjoying the vast, lush landscape, be sure to thank the furry ecological engineer that is the North American Beaver.

Well said, we certainly will.

BEAVER TRAPPER HAD THE O.J. TRIAL OF HIS DAY

heidi08 beavers and otters, History February 3, 2023

Our beautiful website has a virus. Nothing fatal don’t worry. But the lovely colored background that used to offset the text disappeared yesterday and no one from BlueHost was in the office to help us get it back. I tried, I won’t say valiantly, but desperately to get it back, and am able to set the deep blue again and match frame it for a moment but alas, I cannot ‘save’ it. It can’t be done by the likes of me. So for now we will have white space.

Sigh.

Let’s hope its not just the beginning. There’s plenty more mischief to be had where that came from I can assure you. And lets be cheered with this lovely video from Roxanne Gunn new to the Beaver Management Forum from Massachusetts. I especially like the camera angle.

Looking for distractions I’ve been playing researcher looking for historic reference to beaver in the San Luis Obispo, where they are still claiming beavers don’t belong. Well I got started reading about Isaac Graham. the beaver trapper of great fame who settled in the region and was famously the subject of what is called ‘the first trial’ of California. Seems Graham lead the ‘coup’ that over threw the Mexican Governor at the time. His subsequent capture, trial and imprisonment were said to be the thing that drove Washington to annex California in the first place.

Graham was a curmudgeon who took two wives and started a distillery in Monterey and another in Santa Cruz. He was by all accounts a greedy and difficult man. And not likely the kind of man to make a fortune from a single species and then decide to settle in the one lone region of the state where that species didn’t exist.

One of Graham’s buds was father Luis Martinez who ran the local mission that everything seemed to hinged on in those days. It is so fascinating to spend any time at all among historians, but two things especially jumped out out me. Always history teaches us dismissively that the Spanish/Mexicans who owned our state before we did weren’t interested in the fur trade. And didn’t partake of the quest for pelts. That always sounded odd to me because honestly, who isn’t ‘interested’ in money? And pelts were basically 20 dollar bills lying around just waiting to be picked up.

So father Luiz taught his indian flock to trap otter and ran a trade up and down the coast from SLO to Santa Barbara. He even deal with HBC. And you might be thinking yes for SEA OTTER not beaver, but what we have seen over and over again is that the names used for pelts were pretty interchangeable. Russians were famously trapping what they called ‘sea beaver’ in Russian River. And we all know there were references to river otter described as beaver and visa versa.

Beaver just meant I want that fur. So the term ‘otter’ may not mean strictly otter as we know it. Remember that the word ‘Nutria’ is spanish for ‘otter’. It’s a tangled mess out there.

Anyway, since Isaac had the OJ Trial of his day there is LOTS written about him, both at the time and since. I will keep sniffing and let you know what I find.

WHO’S DECEIVING WHOM?

heidi08 Beavers and Culvert Protection March 20, 2020

Well, it looks like all of California has now gone the way of the Bay Area. From Sacramento to Santa Barbara people are being asked to shelter-in-place. Hello! Good time to read about beavers, I say.

We are all adapting. Yesterday I heard from Michael Pollock who is still doing well even at ground zero. And I heard from our artist Amy Hall who has now created a virtual Yoga Studio where people can log in to follow their favorite teachers. Mike Callahan sent some photos of the speaker dinner at BeaverCon 2020 and I thought you’d like to see them. I recognize about 30% of their familiar faces. Maybe you can spot some too. Click on a photo for a closer look.

Meanwhile, a park in Vancouver thinks they are installing a Beaver Deceiver and I for one am dying to learn what it actually looks like.

New ‘beaver deceiver’ designed to protect Beaver Lake from beavers

Park planners are hoping a “beaver deceiver” will counter the busyness of beavers in the lake named after them in Stanley Park. Chad Townsend, senior planner for Environment and Sustainability, said four to six resident beavers regularly work to block the grated culvert that leads to Beaver Creek and Burrard Inlet. Every two days or so, they gather enough logs and plant material to block the culvert, which park board staff have to remove to keep water flowing.

They hate this sound,” he said, referring to how beavers regard the sound of flowing water.“They dam it, we pull it out, they dam it, we pull it out.”

He called the new culvert a “beaver deceiver” because of the way it will be designed to allow water to flow but stop beavers from being able to dam it.

Now call me crazy, but I’ve read more than one article where people say proudly they are going to install a beaver deceiver with no consultation and no expert and it actually turns out to be a PEOPLE DECEIVER because it convinces folks officials are “trying” to coexist when in fact it’s almost surely going to fail and justify trapping very soon. That’s the point.

Maybe I’m wrong. Stanley park has been doing some pretty smart beaver management over the years. They are famous for their urban beavers, and not that far from Ben Dittbrenner if they need consultation. Hmm. I’ll cross my fingers for now.

Maybe you should too.

CELEBRATING ‘BAD’ BRITISH NEWS

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Devon Beavers March 19, 2020

I tend to be a glass-half-full kind of girl. And who can blame me? I’ve always been comforted by air bubbles underwater. Hear me out. It strikes me as kind of advice from the universe that says “when things look bleak, and you’re completely turned around, follow the bubble UPWARDS. Not Downwards. That little ball of floating oxygen will tell you exactly the direction you need to go to find the surface and fill your lungs with sweet air. Follow it closely and do what it does.

So remember to keep the glass half full when you see this headline,

England’s beavers move from ‘extinct’ to ‘critically endangered’

The reintroduction of beavers to parts of England has led to the species being formally recognised as ‘critically endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, where previously they had been classified as extinct.

Well sure, it’s no heartfelt wedding vows or national anthem. But we’ll take it. I’d rather be endangered than extinct, wouldn’t you? In these dark days we have to take our good news where we find it.

Following research commissioned by wildlife regulators Natural England, Natural Resources Wales and Scottish Natural Heritage, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) last week accepted the presence of beavers in Britain.

According to the study’s lead, professor of environmental biology at Sussex University Fiona Mathews, shifting the IUCN’s status has been “highly controversial”.

“There are lots of people who would rather not see them have any sort of listing, because once you start recognising that something is threatened, then there is an obligation to actually start doing something about that,” said Mathews.

The new status puts an onus on the international community to see these species restored, according to Mathews. In England and Scotland, introduced beaver populations are doing well, but remain small and very fragmented.

Isn’t that great news? Sing it with me now. “

I once was lost, but now am found. Was extinct, but now I’m threatened!“

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