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


One of the things I don’t get to read enough is other blogs that talk about watching beavers. Either there aren’t very many or my filters miss them, but I’m always happy when one shows on the horizon. And this was was a special treat written by Sara Wright.

Nature’s Most Industrious Builder

A wide slow moving stream meandered its way to the sea below the house on the hill and beavers had made a solid dam and erected a domed lodge in the center of the stream. Early in the summer the parents would swim up to me with their kits as I sat quietly on my bench by the water (a bench my father had built for his daughter.) Watching those furry little heads with bright beady eyes peer at me curiously as they swam next to their parents is a sight that I will never forget.

I soon learned the lodge was occupied by three generations of beavers. The beavers spent part of each summer “logging” the poplars at the edge of the stream. They created open mud slides that led to open water and every night I would sit on the little bench and watch these industrious creatures cut off the branches and swim with their small logs to the dam. Upon arrival they gnawed smaller branches off the logs divesting them of most of the leaves which they ate. They took some to the dam to shore it up and repair any leaks. As long as I sat quietly the beavers went about their work as if I wasn’t even there, but if I stood up suddenly or tried to rid myself of mosquitos by waving my hands, one beaver or another would slap his tail making a great fuss! By midsummer the little kits could be seen swimming with a slender stick or two towards the lodge imitating their parents. There was something about those bright-eyed little kits that stole my heart. Later in the summer the beavers began to disappear under water with tender poplar branches. Those tasty leaves and sticks would feed them throughout the coming winter.

Yup. We’ve all been there. Once your heart is touched by a beaver nothing is ever quite the same. Beavers change things. That’s what they do. I am remembering a certain magical morning lo these many years ago when Jon and I counted 4 kits munching willow branches,

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The first year I spent beaver -watching my father died suddenly on November 9th (the anniversary of his death is today, just three days before the full beaver moon). Just before I got the call I awakened from a dream that simply said:

“Your dad has become a beaver.”

I had to stop here and gasp. The first time I ever saw our beavers I was with my father crossing the escobar bridge. One of the profound coincidences that lurked in the PBS “Leave it to Beavers” film is that while producer Jari Osbourne was working on it her own father died. And her senior assistant’s father also died. And the morning they sent me this film to preview for my feedback I received the phone call that my father also had died.

A series of random coincidences attached profoundly to beavers.

After my father’s untimely death I thought a lot about the relationship between my father and the beavers. The one hobby that my father cultivated when he wasn’t working professionally was carpentry. He was what I would call an extraordinary builder and finish carpenter in his spare time. He and my grandfather built one of the homes we lived in and my father designed and engineered the entire enterprise.

To dream that my dad had become a beaver on the day of his death after I had spent an entire summer submerged in the beavers’ world seemed uncanny, prescient. After he died whenever I watched those beavers I also saw my dad, remembering how hard he worked, how generous he was to others in need, how loyal he was to his family. To think of my dad as a beaver brought me enormous comfort and gave me some hope that something of him lived on in a positive way.

As thanksgiving approached that first year I knew that I would be spending the weekend alone except for the beavers, who by this time, had disappeared under ice. I decided to honor my father and the beavers together by giving my friends a present. So on thanksgiving day I took my handsaw and chopped down two tender poplars after asking for permission to do so… Next I took a crowbar and bored a big hole in the ice not far from the lodge and stuffed the first poplars into icy black waters. Late that day I sat on my frozen bench and called to the beavers, telling them that I had a present for them. I stayed there until almost dusk half frozen – hoping for a sleek brown head to appear, but of course no one did. Yet, when I walked up the hill, I felt as if I had done something important that mattered.

Just this morning I sent Sara’s post to Jari who was very moved and thankful Today is Canadian remembrance day. And what a deep way to remember. One of my last carefree days with my father, before his illness, I spent making a manger in his workshop to use for the beaver family a friend had made me out of clay. I’m sure you’ve seen it before because I use it every holiday for a creche sceen and it always makes me remember our happier days with him.

The next morning I raced down the hill to the stream, and to my amazement and joy, the poplar branches had disappeared! For the next three days I repeated poplar gift giving after reopening the hole in the ice, though I never glimpsed my friends.

In a few days the cold set in for good and a light covering of snow covered the lodge. I loved the fact that the beavers were warm and toasty in their house under the ice. For some reason just knowing they were there brought me an amazing amount of comfort, and all that winter not one day ever passed when I didn’t think of my dad with love.

Me either. Beautifully written Sara Wright. And than you for a morning of remembrances.


Such weird beaver news today. To start with there is a new research article proudly touting that trained sniff dogs can spot the difference between castor fiber and castor canadensis. As if that as an important role that just needed filling?

Scent-sniffing dogs can discriminate between native Eurasian and invasive North American beavers

The invasion of a species can cause population reduction or extinction of a similar native species due to replacement competition. There is a potential risk that the native Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) may eventually be competitively excluded by the invasive North American beaver (C. canadensis) from areas where they overlap in Eurasia. Yet currently available methods of census and population estimates are costly and time-consuming. In a laboratory environment, we investigated the potential of using dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) as a conservation tool to determine whether the Eurasian or the North American beaver is present in a specific beaver colony. We hypothesized that dogs can discriminate between the two beaver species, via the odorant signal of castoreum from males and females, in two floor platform experiments. We show that dogs detect scent differences between the two species, both from dead beaver samples and from scent marks collected in the field. Our results suggest that dogs can be used as an “animal biosensor” to discriminate olfactory signals of beaver species, however more tests are needed. Next step should be to test if dogs discern between beaver species in the field under a range of weather conditions and habitat types and use beaver samples collected from areas where the two species share the same habitat. So far, our results show that dogs can be used as a promising tool in the future to promote conservation of the native beaver species and eradication of the invasive one. We therefore conclude that dogs may be an efficient non-invasive tool to help;

Hmm. Has there ever been a paper that claimed that American beavers were out chewing or outdamming their european counterparts? I mean I’ve seen plenty that prove that the pair can’t interbreed. And some that claim that American beavers build bigger dams. But do they actually compete? Probably not.

I’d be more interested in whether beaver scent marking intended for castor fiber translates to castor canadensis, so to speak.

Of course what they’re interested in is the word INVASIVE which means “We get to kill it”. There are laws in the EU about killing beavers but you can kill invasive species with free reign. Now dogs can help them do it more.

Our results, taken with the broader literature, confirm that dogs can be used as an “animal biosensor” in a laboratory setting to discriminate between scent samples from similar species (same genus) of many different taxa. Our study results show that dogs can be used as a promising tool to promote conservation of the native beaver species and eradication of the invasive one.

Yay?

Okay the beaver news gets even weirder because I was asked to tell folks that this will be happening this week, at the wednesday night  winter meeting. A Thousand Friends of Martinez is an environmental-civic group that does a lot of good for the city, mostly in opposition to really bad ideas the city leaders have on their own. Jon’s accepting it for me on behalf of beaver friends everywhere.

Let me just say that if you feed orphans or sell tickets to the chamber of commerce mixer you might get named woman of the year by the city of Martinez. If, on the other hand, you are a huge pain in the city’s ass doing something that is ultimately good for them but they don’t want, like saving beavers or demanding redistricting, you get named “Citizen of the year” by Thousand Friends of Martinez.

Call it the civic underground.


Just when you think you’ve seen  it all you get a sudden boost of good news from Georgia of all places! I mean the salmon treatise in Oregon we’ve all come to expect – but GEORGIA?

Once absent in Georgia, beavers have made a big comeback

November’s full moon, which will rise Tuesday night, is known as the beaver moon, according to the Old Farmer‘s Almanac. It’s supposedly called beaver moon because this is the time of year when industrious beavers are laying in a supply of food and making their dens, or lodges, snug for the winter.

Whatever the name’s origin, this seems an appropriate time to note the 75th anniversary of the beaver’s return to Georgia. Prior to the 1940s, the beaver had been virtually eliminated from Georgia as well as from most of its range throughout the United States, primarily because of unregulated trapping and loss of wetlands due to logging, agriculture and development.

It’s so interesting to think of this restocking happening all across the united states. Do you think that means it was a Roosevelt policy that pushed state offices to do the right thing? It makes sense if we can than him for both beavers and social security. Shhh we’re almost getting to the good part.

Ecologically, the beaver’s return has been an enormous success. Numerous studies show that beavers and the dams — often more than 240 feet long — and ponds they build play critical roles in helping wildlife thrive. For one thing, the presence of beavers in a stream significantly increases the diversity of native birds, fish and plants.

Beaver dams also help filter pollutants from water and help mitigate flooding.

For these reasons, wildlife mangers now consider the beaver a “keystone species,” meaning that the animal’s presence in an area is a key to helping others species thrive and flourish.

I’m so old I remember when the director of the Atlanta based Blue Heron Preserve came all the way to Martinez to learn about our beavers and how we lived with them. I can even remember when Bob and Jane Kobres of Georgia came out for the beaver festival. Clearly they have all been busy spreading the word,  because this article is everything we’d hope for from the peach state! Great work! And Happy Beaver Moon on tuesday, everyone.

Now onto salmon and Oregon.

Natural salmon restoration solutions

Across North America, rivers have been simplified and degraded by the systematic and widespread removal of beaver and large woody debris. Many streams are now no more than deep channels that don’t spread out floodwaters or create good salmon habitat.

Consequently, one of the major goals of the MidCoast Watersheds Council’s work and that of other similar groups and agencies is to restore the natural processes that large wood and beavers used to create. To effect meaningful salmon restoration, it is important to learn how to do this work over a large scale and lower cost. NOAA’s Research Fisheries Biologist, Dr. Chris Jordan, will discuss low-tech, “process-based” restoration methods at the Nov. 7 MidCoast Watersheds Council Community Meeting in Newport.

Ahhh MidCoast Watershed. We love you and your beaver vision!

Historically, beaver dams and large woody debris were ubiquitous throughout North American rivers. Beavers often built their dams on large logs that would be stable even through winter storms. Their dams exerted a major influence on streams by elevating water tables, capturing sediments and slowing waters so the stream channels could overflow the banks into wetlands and floodplains to reduce downstream flooding, and conversely increasing flows during periods of drought. Large woody debris has been shown to similarly influence water flow and sediment and erosional processes. Salmon evolved under these conditions, with both the wood and beaver dams creating ideal fish spawning and rearing habitat.

Jordan will emphasize two types of efficient low-tech structures that are being installed in streams to achieve restoration goals. Placing multiple structures in complexes within a stream system in ways designed to mimic natural processes begins the process of rebuilding and sustaining good habitat. These simple structures are called beaver dam analogues (BDAs) and post-assisted log structures (PALS). BDAs are channel-spanning, permeable structures, constructed using woody debris and willow or tree branches, to form ponds that mimic natural beaver dams and to attract beavers to maintain them. PALS are woody material of various sizes pinned together with wooden posts driven into the substrate to simulate natural wood accumulations and that capture additional wood over time. The goal of both structure placements is to achieve dynamic, self-sustaining and resilient habitat conditions.

Did you know about PALs? Neither did I.  That sounds interesting and I wonder what use beavers make of them. They are famous for using anchor points in streams as part of their dams to make their work easier – rocks, tree stumps, old car engines,  you name it.

Jordan is a research fisheries biologist with NOAA/NMFS’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Program Manager for the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program.  Trained as a mathematical biologist, he has worked on a wide range of biological topics. Recent work has focused on the design and implementation of large-scale monitoring programs to assess anadromous salmonid freshwater habitat and population status.

Chris is the NOAA face I never seem to meet. When ever I’m at a conference he doesn’t show or when he’s at the conference highway 5 gets flooded and I don’t show. We are beaver ships that pass. But I’m sure glad he’s on the front lines working the crowd.

A final shout out to my partner in crime these 34 (count them!) years of crazy young wedded courage. In this auspicious year alone he became a citizen, started collecting social security and had his car prius a total loss! Never a dull moment. Happy Anniversary, Jon. None of this would ever have worked without you!


Goodness gracious. Where is my brain these days? What kind of husband am I to forget our anniversary entirely after only 12 short years! Yesterday afternoon it hit me that it was November 7th as in the fateful day when back in 2007 the Martinez High School Performing Arts theater filled to the rafters with 200 people who had very strong opinions about whether our downtown beavers should be trapped. Everyone was there. All the teachers and the shopkeepers. Lots of neighbors I didn’t know and some that I did. Some who have since died and some who have moved away, The Humane Society. The Sierra Club. I even saw the parent of a patient from another city there and she came just because she heard about it on the news.

It was the meeting that changed history. Certainly our history. And the lives of the then 6 beavers we had living in Alhambra Creek. What would I be doing now if that meeting had never happened? It’s hard to even imagine.

And if you have three hours and nothing to do and want your mind totally blown you might try clicking on the photo to watch it for yourself. You will need a player to do so, the city recommends silverlight which is a free download. I know all the lines already. But there are some good ones!

Click to watch Video of Meeting

The reason I remembered I forgot our anniversary is that I heard again from the grad student who IS doing his thesis on the Martinez beaver story and all its implications for wildlife and social psychology. Whoa. I thought he had moved on to easier topics. But apparently he’s coming this summer to interview folks, review microfiche and do focus groups and he wondered if I had a better copy of the meeting, which I don’t unfortunately. Then I looked at the date and looked at the calendar and said OMG!!!!! – slipped out the back door to buy some roses at the gas station and pretended I knew it all along like any good husband.

Happy Anniversary, Honey!

Enough of that for now. This morning there’s an excellent report on the Logan River in Utah and how much it changed when its very important beavers were trapped out in the fu-rush.

A Short History Of Utah’s Logan River on ‘Wild About Utah’

During this time the flow and movement of the Logan River was much different, in part because of the beaver families who built their homes and dams up and down the waterway. The dams created ponds whose waters seeped into the valley bottoms raising the water table and saturating the sponge.

Joseph Wheaton, associate professor of the Department of Watershed Sciences in the Quinney College of Natural Resources explained, “the saturated ground increased resilience to drought, flood and fire.”

In the early 1800s trappers arrived in the valley.

Michel Bourdon was one of the earliest trappers to see Cache Valley around 1818. The river was, for a short time, named after him. A few years later, Ephraim Logan arrived in Cache Valley. He and many other trappers attended the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous along the Bourdon River in 1826. Shortly thereafter, Logan died during one of his outings and the area’s trappers decided to rename the river Logan, in his honor.

Trapping for the fur industry severely impacted the beaver population and the Logan River. The dam building beavers were almost trapped to extinction because of the European fashion demand. Luckily, fashion trends changed before beaver were extinct. However, the virtual elimination of beavers fundamentally changed the character of the Logan River to this day.

Yes. The Logan river and EVERYWHERE else. And hi there Dr. Wheaton! I knew this was gonna be good when I read your name. Did you know Joe Wheaton’s mother lives in Napa? And he went to local high school? His sister surprised me very much by showing up to a festival an announcing cryptically “Joey says Hi!” And I scrunched my face in confusion and said “Joey?

“You know, Joey of Utah!” She explained impatiently and it started to dawn on me.

“Do you mean Dr. Wheaton of Utah State?” And she nodded happily, explaining that he always talked about the festival and so she had to bring her kids and see what it was like. They had a wonderful time and she came back again last year.

You know, because all roads lead to Rome. And all beaver roads lead to Martinez.

 


We’re just in time for another edition of “Flinging Beavers from airplanes”. Seems like you can barely get in a good visit to the library between episodes these days, Thank goodness, though, that this episode has actually useful information in it and a fantastic new hero. Watch all the way through so you meet the new star of Beavers Weekly. Chris Black is perfect in the role.

What can you learn from a flying beaver?

 

BRUNEAU, IDAHO — Chris Black knows a lot about ranching. And he knows a little bit about wildlife habitat. That’s why he has been wanting to attract beavers to his ranch in Bruneau.

“I’ve wanted to get beaver in here for years,” said Black.
That’s why Black was happy when a cooperative effort chose his ranch for one of the first beaver dam analogue projects.

A beaver dam analogue is a man-made structure that mimics a dam naturally made by beavers. After a very short time, frogs started to thrive, and eventually biologists believe other species will benefit, including sage grouse.

You see before the news is going to tell you something actually USEFUL about beavers (or anything really) they have to tell you something very, very stupid. Because that’s just the way its done,

The  dams will also benefit water users, not only in Lemhi County, but here on Chris black’s Bruneau ranch as well.

“It’s gonna help my cows, cause the secondary effects will be more grass on the hillsides and all of that,” said Black. “But holistically, what helps my cows will help all other species too.”

I want to be best friends with every rancher that uses words like “holistically”. Don’t you?

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