I’m excited to share this video of the performance at OAEC of Robin Eschner’s song “Memory of Water”. This was performed last month to a very appreciative beaver believing crowd. Enjoy.
Memory of Water by Robin Eschner
Sung by The Acorn MusEcology Project, as one of 12 songs in the BEAVERS Program, directed by Sarah Dupre.
Occidental Center for the Arts, Occidental, CA.
October 6, 2024 ~ Yolande Adams on piano
Maybe you, like me, have been swamped with electoral mood swings as we await the future with baited breath. I was actually happy to see this headline from the Harvard newspaper. Our small civic acts [and beavers] can reshape the world. Makes sense to me.
Driven by the allure of their “manifest destiny,” 19th-century settlers brought livestock – and an inadvertent ecosystemic upheaval – to what we now know as Yellowstone National Park. Encountering native predators, they sparked a clash between agricultural ambition and the region’s delicate ecosystem. As farms expanded, wolves, deprived of natural prey, turned to domestic animals. In response, humans embarked on a systematic campaign of predator control, employing a lethal combination of poisoning and hunting. Bears, cougars, and coyotes were also targeted in the effort to protect livestock and promote “more desirable” wildlife, such as deer and elk. By 1926, the wolves had been entirely eradicated from Yellowstone.
Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Without wolves to keep them in check, the elk population surged, setting off a cascade of unintended consequences. The burgeoning elk herds overgrazed young trees along riverbanks, leading to erosion. As the trees disappeared, so too did nesting sites for birds. The loss of trees also decimated the beaver population, which in turn meant no dams to regulate stream flow. The exposed waters grew warmer, leading to a decline in fish populations. In short, the entire river ecosystem suffered, transforming in ways few could have predicted.
For decades, the ecosystem continued to deteriorate. It wasn’t until 1995 – in the face of significant skepticism – that biologists began considering the idea of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. Transported in what could only be described as the ecological equivalent of “the Beast,” eight gray wolves from Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, made a celebrated return. Now, three decades later, the still-unfolding cascade of knock-on effects is nothing short of remarkable. Willow stands along streams, once in dire straits, are now thriving, even with elk populations at three times their 1968 numbers. Why? The wolves’ predatory pressure keeps elk on the move, preventing them from lingering long enough to devastate tree populations. Where there was just a single beaver colony in 1995, there are now more than nine, with even more expected to emerge.
Well now, we all know that wolves are the handmaidens of beavers in this story, allowing them to make the real differences we know they can. Still the point of complicated ecosystems relying on each other hits home. I liked how the author drew the line forward.
While individual votes are singular actions with wide-ranging effects, to reduce societal outcomes to the actions of elected officials alone is to absolve ourselves of our shared responsibility. Casting a ballot, while crucial, is table stakes – it is what we do between elections that shapes our future. At their best, nations function as unifying systems that bring people together under shared values, culture, and institutions. Nations are fragile constructs that are powerless without their citizens – that’s what gives us true agency.he seemingly mundane acts that sustain our communities – raising families, supporting local businesses, building trust – are what ultimately determine a nation’s prospects. In this sense, a nation is the sum of its parts. The true work – the day-to-day labor that keeps a nation whole – happens not in brutalist buildings or capitals, but in our local communities. Nations are built bottom up, not top down.
I like that. It’s the small connections that lead to the big changes. Beavers could have told you so.
As Americans head to the polls next Tuesday, they should understand that their role within this vast system is more consequential than it may seem. Real change is not sparked by dramatic, headline-grabbing events, but through the steady accumulation of small, deliberate actions by those who recognize that their choices, however minor, ripple outward. This election may be critical, but it leads to a larger question: what comes next? The decisions we make – to vote, to speak up, to resist complacency – compound over time. Even the most damaged ecosystems can regenerate when each part acts with purpose. And so it is with societies: we are the system, and our choices are the foundations of the future we aspire to build.
Beavers will be better off if we move forward. Not Back. But you knew that.
While California pats itself on the back for changing its policy and reintroducing two beaver families, Project Beaver in Oregon has been quietly marching forward. Yesterday Jakob Shockey and his merry band released a manual for protecting trees and shrubs that is truly a white paper worth sharing.
Beavers are famous for cutting down trees and shrubs, a persistent behavior that often frustrates humans who have planted special trees or crops near beaver habitat. Beavers find many of the annual crops we grow tasty, like corn and beets, and can eat a large area down over the course of a season. Trees and shrubs that are native to waterways in the Northern Hemisphere have a long history with beavers and will re-sprout after being cut.
Make sure you tell all of your friends about it. Beavers eating trees and crops is the number one reason given why beaver depredation permits are sought. It is also the easiest problem to fix with the right resources.
Pass it on:
2024_10+ProjectBeaver_TreeCropBMPsIowa is worried about climate change. They are afraid the marshes might be too dry for the next trapping season. Gosh darn it no matter how many beavers they kill the streams still seem to dry up!
Outlook good for trappers this seasonIowa’s furbearer season opened Saturday and the outlook for trappers is positive — most species populations are steady, and there are some early indications wild fur pelt prices could be trending up this winter.
The challenge, however, could be that fewer marshes and streams have good water levels.
“Our water levels are similar to last year in some regions, even with a wet spring,” said Vince Evelsizer, state furbearer and wetland biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
“These wet/dry-dry/wet swings within a year can have an impact on aquatic furbearers — otters, mink, beavers and muskrats. But the upland species — bobcats, red fox, coyotes — are much less impacted.”
Oh darn. We killed too many beavers last year and for some darn reason our marshes all seem dry. Why is that? We better trap more next year!
Evelsizer encouraged trappers to do some preseason scouting as marsh water levels vary by location with many either dry or drying by the day.
The furbearer season is Nov. 2 to Feb. 28. Beaver trapping closes April 15.
A regulation change allows youth age 15 and younger to go trapping with a licensed adult trapper without purchasing a license. This change brings trapping in line with hunting.
Hurry you better kill more this year. Those dam beavers keep stealing all your water.
Beavers are notorious for slipping out of their tracking devices. The Houdinis of the animal kingdom it is super hard for researchers to tell if they stay put where they were relocated. Of course researchers are busy people. They don’t have time to go back and look.
You know I’m so old that I remember a lady who saw her beavers every day for a decade and knew right away if a new kit was added to the family or a yearling had dispersersed and understood right away if a stranger was trying to move in on their territory.
But that was a very long time ago and the story might be apocryphal. Researchers need something they can analyze.
A small vial of water collected two kilometers downstream is enough to reveal the presence of beavers in a waterway.
“It’s pretty promising that they are very easy to detect,” said Jesse Burgher, a PhD candidate at Washington State University Vancouver.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife had been translocating beavers around the state, either for conservation reasons to boost numbers in some regions or to remove problem beavers in others. But they didn’t have a good way of tracking whether beavers stayed in the places where they were translocated. VHF tracking devices attached to their tails didn’t stay on for very long, so they didn’t give a great picture of where translocated beavers were going.
I got really excited when I first saw this article. I am so naive that I assumed it meant they could track SPECIFIC beavers and see how they were doing. But no, that’s sentimental crap. They aren’t looking for a particular beaver.
Just the essence of generic beaver.
In a study published recently in Animal Conservation, Burgher and his colleagues turned to environmental DNA—or eDNA—techniques, to track the presence and absence of creatures in the wild.
Environmental DNA, which wildlife researchers are using in an increasing number of situations, involves taking environmental samples from soil, water or even air in some cases. Researchers then analyze these samples in the lab using DNA detection methods to determine the presence of the species they are looking for.
Can eDNA analysis find beavers?
In this case, the team used water to sample for the presence of 10 beavers that they released, split between 2020, 2021 and 2022. Before releasing VHF-tagged beavers in Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Washington state Cascades near Leavenworth, the researchers first took water samples downstream from the planned release sites to make sure there weren’t any beavers there already.
They sampled the water again the day after each release, the following week, and after a month at various distances from the release site, up to 2 kilometers away. They continued to take samples for two subsequent months after the first month, as well.
In almost all cases, the researchers were able to detect beavers in the water samples the day after they were released. Regardless of the time and distance from the release site, they detected beaver presence 93% of the time. “[Environmental DNA] was fairly reliable at detecting them if they were upstream,” Burgher said.
Oh I guess that is fairly useful. To know if you helicopted 20 beavers into a stream that they are still hanging around that watershed.
Hey have you ever tested the water in public drinking fountains to find out if the city council members who voted to banish the beavers are still around? Because that would be plenty interesting too.
