HOP ON THE BEAVER TRAIN: SAN JOSE TO LONDON TO MARTINEZ

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?

[wonderplugin_video videotype=”mp4″ mp4=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/nancy.mp4″ webm=”” poster=”” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

BEAVER BENEFITS IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, saltwater August 14, 2019

Just when you were feeling like summer had gotten to that sleepy, not-much-happening stage, we find a glut of beaver news. Yesterday four prime articles dropped and they all deserve our attention but I’ll start at the top and let the others trickle out later. There are beavers again in National Geographic. Sadly not written by Ben Goldfarb, but quoting him. Does that count?

Beavers on the coast are helping salmon bounce back. Here’s how.

This tidally salty wetland might seem a strange place to search for beaver, which are known to settle in freshwater ponds, lakes, rivers, and wetlands throughout North America, but that’s what I had come for. The beavers’ presence is remarkable not just because they’re only typically found inland, but also because their ecosystem engineering is the suspected key to the remarkable Chinook salmon recovery that’s going on here.

These dam-created pools are one of numerous, well-documented ways beavers create advantages for fish. They provide havens during times of drought. They also create slower-water habitats that host many more insect larvae—which feed fish—than fast-moving channels. Beaver lodges offer physical refuge for young fish navigating the predator-rich waters.

Oh this is fun. Having the full force of NGO and its team of graphics specialists turned for the moment like a bright spotlight on the subject of beavers. Promise me you’ll go read the whole thing later, okay?

Got that? Before beaver very few salmon. After beaver very many more salmon. Are you even listening wildlife services?

In near-shore areas, where tides impact the lives of all animals daily or seasonally, low-tide pool habitats created by beaver dams allow juvenile fish to seek refuge from predation, says Greg Hood, a senior research scientist at Washington’s Skagit River System Cooperative, who has researched beavers there. “The pools beavers make are too shallow for diving predators like mergansers and kingfishers and bigger fish. But the pools are too deep for waders like great blue herons, and there’s too much shrub around the margins, so birds with big wings can’t get in there.”

In his research, Hood found that pools created by beaver dams in the tidal marshland channels tripled juvenile Chinook salmon habitat compared to similar marshlands without beavers.

I have a question. How do fish know to avoid predation from birds? What is their thought process? “A big beak comes when the waters deep sometimes and eats my friends so lets go somewhere shallow?” Do fish even know whether water is shallow or deep?

Despite this evidence, there has been resistance to beaver dams in salmon streams, the concern being that they might impede the salmon’s ability to swim upriver—after all, the reason human-made dams have been removed is to help salmon. “Beaver dams are nothing like human-built dams though—they are lower, semi-permeable, and due to their porous construction, fish can go over or around them,” says Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, who points out that beavers and salmon co-evolved in the same ecosystems.

HOORAY! A fine Ben-sert! Nicely done sir. And people who think beavers block salmon don’t do their homework. Everyone knows that.

Beavers have probably continuously lived in environments that are difficult for people to access, says Hood. Beavers in out-of-the-way places were protected from humans and other predators, so they were likely unknown—or forgotten. Hood blames “ecological amnesia” for some of our assumptions about where beavers are “supposed” to live. He found just as many beavers living in the tidal shrub marshlands at the mouth the Skagit River than in other non-tidal rivers.

[wonderplugin_video videotype=”mp4″ mp4=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Beaver_Engineering_ngc_1800.mp4″ webm=”” poster=”” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]

Back at the mouth of the Elwha, Shaffer shows me how the beavers here are trying different channel locations and building techniques for their dams, looking for just the right placement in this particular ecosystem. It’s this kind of adaptive flexibility to local environments that led to beaver’s widespread success in North America in the past—and is key to its survival in the future. Because beavers’ building naturally expands entire ecosystems, their triumphs are a boon for other animals too, including those in need of all the help they can get—like Chinook salmon.

Ooh lala. Beavers are adaptive ecological swiss army knives that get the job done. I love this article! And that video. Isn’t it amazing? NG doesn’t allow it to be embedded so I tried a workaround with a new tool. If a team of attorneys come lock me up and throw away the key just remember I tried to spread the beaver gospel.

Now go read the whole thing, and make sure it’s open in all the waiting room coffee tables later this month.

CITIZEN SCIENCE AND BEAVERS

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Beaver ecological impact August 13, 2019

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted.

Endangered Species Act gutted, salmon sold out, and the wrong criminals dead makes me tired before I even start the day. Good thing for us beavers aren’t endangered. And every single nasty thing they’re doing to the water and soil can only be improved by their presence,

At least their are still pockets where the federal government can do the right thing.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Citizen Science Competitive Funding Program—now in its second year—promotes community engagement and encourages partners and volunteers to work with the Forest Service to gather valuable data that furthers land management. The USDA Forest Service recently awarded funds to 13 diverse citizen science projects at three levels of development: Ideation, Development, and Implementation and Ongoing Projects.

“The projects are exciting because they are happening across diverse landscapes all over the country,” said Susan Stein, acting Assistant Director for Adaptive Management and Resource Information. “Citizen scientists of all ages will be exploring exciting topics such as eDNA techniques, beaver habitats, cemetery landscapes and traffic impacts on wildlife.”

Now that sounds great! Partnering with the community to help USFS get important things done for the environment. Tell me more about one of the winners. I’m interested in one in particular.

Implementing a Citizen Science Beaver Assessment Program & Protocol for Lolo National Forest

Location: Lolo National Forest, Montana
Partner Project Lead: Lily Haines, Education Clark Fork Coalition
Forest Service Project Lead: Traci Sylte, Soils/Water/Fisheries Program,
Funding Award: $25,000

This project engages volunteers in compelling conservation work centered around the charismatic beaver. Evidence indicates that beavers increase water storage, which could help decrease wildfire risks as valleys become water-saturated. A comprehensive beaver inventory and understanding can help inform wildlife management as well as improve timber stand resilience and restore streams. Land managers want to know where beavers are and why they are there, as well as where more populations can (or should) be established.

In 2018, the Clark Fork Coalition (CFC) teamed up with the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) and the National Wildlife Federation to recruit middle schoolers as citizen scientists and address the lack of capacity for gathering this important data on beaver habitat in the Lolo Creek Watershed.

The program will expand in 2019 with funding from the CitSci Fund. Teams of youth and adult citizen scientists will document beaver presence, inventory current/historical beaver signs, and create high-resolution assessments of beaver habitat on priority streams on Lolo National Forest and adjacent lands.

Volunteer tasks are intentionally designed to involve them in multiple aspects of the scientific method (asking questions; collecting and interpreting data) and the application of knowledge (design review, identifying problems, discovering solutions) in order to develop the full spectrum of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that lead to deeply-meaningful engagement in the management of public lands and pathways to STEM careers.

Good work Montana! You have done a fantastic job of beaver education in the last five years, and folks are really catching on! I’m so happy to know that the forest service knows whats good for them and is actively seeking beavers on that land. And here’s hoping all those middle-schoolers grow up remembering why they matter so that when they show up on their farms or ranches or city creeks someday, they’ll remember.

And when we’re done helping with that citizen science project I want to sign up for this course, don’t you?

Blu Zoo: A weeklong workshop with art and animals

SARANAC LAKE – From Aug. 12-16, BluSeed Studios will offer a different creative experience combing art and science for children ages 8 to 12.

BluSeed Studios will be partnering with the Utica Zoo to bring area youth a hands-on art and science integration program. This year’s theme is all about water and the incredible journey from glacier to cloud. Campers will have the opportunity to create art and meet animals through projects that revolve around the water cycle.

Artist Carol Marie Vossler will offer instruction along with Utica Zoo’s Mary Hall. “It will be an amazing experience for the children to meet animals face to face and seamlessly integrate science and art through this unique learning experience,” Vossler said.

Nice. Check out the schedule for the week. Pay special attention to number three.

The BluZoo Camp Schedule at BluSeed Studios is as follows:

Day 1: “A drop in the bucket.” Art project: marbling.
Day 2: “All downstream from here.” Rivers and Streams. Art project: Forest in a jar — rock painting.
Day 3: “Dam! What is living in that Beaver Pond water!” Art project: Beaver Stick Sculpture.
Day 4: “Sea Urchins and Starfish!” Salt & Seawater. Art project: Watercolor.
Day 5: Tarantulas & Tortoises: Desert Oasis–Art Project: Desert sculpture

Well well well. That looks like a fine line up. It’s almost like the entire activity list could have fit into a beaver festival! I like the idea of a beaver stick sculpture. I’m pretty sure it won’t be actual beaver sticks though. That’s only in Martinez. As this fine photo of my neice demonstrates:

BEAVER MEMORY LANE

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, Video August 12, 2019

Lately I’ve been browsing through some very old files trying to find what I can of my original beaver footage on the newish computer. I first filmed father beaver in January of 2007 when I accidentally got lucky enough to stumble upon him at the bridge. I could not believe what I’d seen and wanted desperately to share it. Just around the time I bought a new mac and thought it would be a great idea to store my beaver footage there. Eventually I used that footage in my very first video about the beavers, but sadly the original footage got corrupted and I have no actual record of seeing the beavers until May of that year.
It wasn’t without some labor that I managed to make a short video and stick it on youtube. I knew NOTHING about these things back then, In fact You Tube itself was barely two years old which should blow your mind. It was so little used that during the first year I actually received a couple ‘most watched animal video‘ notices, which thinking about in today’s standards was a complete impossibility.

Here was the maiden voyage.

Things happen, I realize that computers come with hazards, but I was especially sad to lose that original footage. In those days I was filming with a very very old camera so those movies were stored on .avi files which my windows 10 PC now is not friends with. I thought the best moment I ever shot was lost to the wind and only available on a squished youtube upload.

Yesterday I found out that wasn’t true

Please enjoy this footage taken June 15 2007. It will still be squished by Vimeo but not as much. Pay special attention to the narrators dialogue which indicates how very little Jon and I knew at the time about these foreign beavers who were just starting to introduce us to their lives. In those days I thought the kits might be born at different times. Like chickens apparently?

I guess I can sort of understand the confusion. One kit was filmed by itself a week earlier (also lost) and seemed to be fatter than the others. In hindsight I would say he just happened to be the most pushy. But the point is that we were completely smitten. And we that turned out to be a very good thing.

Hopefully I will turn down some dark corner one day and find the missing footage that I remember as vividly as my first day of school. For now I’m pretty grateful for this much.

And a special shout out to the man whose been my partner in beavering for more years than I even spent in college including graduate school and who’s voice you hear in the discovery. Happy birthday to the partner in all things beaver and otherwise.

MONEY FOR BEAVERS AND YOUR FISH FOR FREE

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers, BDA's, beaver myths, Beavers and Birds August 11, 2019

Well it looks like someone’s getting a nice fat grant from NOAA to help fish by helping beavers. Ain’t it funny how life works? I mean in Wisconsin you could probably get a grant for destroying beaver dams because you said it would help fish.

Location. Location. Location.

National Marine Fisheries Service grants $15 million for salmon habitat

SALEM — Oregon’s salmon and steelhead bearing streams will benefit from $15 million recently allocated by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund money, along with Oregon Lottery proceeds, are granted to the state’s soil and water conservation districts and watershed councils by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to improve habitat for species listed on the federal Endangered Species List.

In Wheeler County, Chase Schultz, the soil and water conservation district manager, said the grants he’s received through the Watershed Enhancement Board are used to cool stream temperatures and improve water quality with streamside planting and fake beaver dams.

“Beaver dam analogs are a hot button topic,” Schultz said.

Built from untreated wooden posts driven perpendicularly into the stream and woven with willow whips, the analogs simulate a beaver dam by spreading a stream’s water out into the floodplain, benefiting adjacent wetlands, Schultz said. The analogs also increase stream flow later in the summer, slowing water down that is released longer into the summer and early fall.

The hope, Schultz said, is to create the habitat to attract beavers to move in and maintain the dams.

The best part, he said, is the dams quickly create desired results. Immediately following the 2017 installation of a dam on Bear Creek, a tributary to the lower stem of the John Day River, Schultz said water started backing up and extended a wetted reach almost 2 miles.

You know how it is. Everyone wants the popular kids to sit at their table. Sometimes you get lucky and a family of beavers moves right in and starts doing your work for free. It’s a pretty fine day when that happens, I can tell you.

<span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>There’s more good news on the beaver bandwagon because our Idaho friends will be hosting their SIXTH beaver dam jam. Wonderful!

6th annual Beaver Dam Jam to raise Money for watershed guardians

POCATELLO — The 6th annual Watershed Guardians Beaver Dam Jam to support beaver conservation will present music and other activities from 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Mink Creek Pavilion.

The pavilion is located in the Caribou National Forest at the Mink Creek Group Camp Site on South Mink Creek Road outside of Pocatello.

Besides live music, the event features food, a silent auction and a super raffle featuring a boat and boating gear among other items. There will be games and demonstrations.

All of Idaho should thank the heavens for sending Mike Settell to Pocatello and getting this started. He had the vision to find friends and make this happen. It seems a very long time ago indeed that I first read about Mike getting a grant from Audubon to help in his beaver count. Now he does it with a team of volunteers in snowshoes every winter. And rocks out at the beaver dam jam every summer.

That’s a busy man!

“The event is in (a) great setting with great music and food,” said Mike Settell, founder of Watershed Guardians, the organization sponsoring this event. “We are doing this because beaver do more to help preserve healthy native fisheries than perhaps any other factor, and Watershed Guardians is the only beaver conservation organization in Idaho working to ensure they remain.”

See what I mean? Beavers seem to get the best champions.

Oh and lets throw out one more beaver shout to Jennalee Larson Naturalist Intern at Good Earth State Park in South Dakota. For some reason the Dakotas have always been smarter about beavers than lots of their neighbors. Well, mostly.

Just for Kids: SD Children in Nature

Beavers are known as ecosystem engineers. Ecosystem engineers are animals that create, change, and maintain a habitat. These animals strongly affect the other animals living there.

Beavers make small changes that can really impact their ecosystems. They create dams by removing living trees and using them as a part of the structure. Once they create their dam, a pond often forms which brings an abundant amount of new biodiversity (variety of life). Some birds are unaffected by the destruction of trees while other decline or increase in number. Because the dams create ponds, there is a wading area for birds to thrive in as well as a place to lay their eggs if a dam happened to be abandoned. Reptiles benefit as the beavers create a basking area for them on logs. They also benefit from the loss of trees because the forest then grows new early vegetation and the dam creates a slow moving water which some animals prefer. Invertebrates that prefer slow-moving water start to increase in number

Create a yummy dam out of pretzels for a snack: Use peanut butter spread, marshmallow, or chocolate spread depending on preference. Add stick pretzels to the spread of your choice. Once it is all mixed, give each kid a scoop and have them shape it into their own dam.

First let me praise your very fine attention to beavers and their impact on the environment. Good job, Jennalee. And sure, have the kids make a their own frosted dam or whatever. Mmmm disgusting. And now that we have established our support. um, can you maybe tell me more about your idea that birds can nest in abandoned beaver dams?

I assume this means you are thinking beavers live INSIDE the dam? And if they move out birds can move in? Or are you thinking that birds can lay their eggs directly on top of the sticks in a beaver dam? I’m not sure that would work out too well, even if they didn’t get predated or roll off into the water….