YOU DON’T SAY!

heidi08 Beavers and soil May 10, 2018

Well, knock me over with a feather and color me surprised! This comes as a complete shock.

Beavers do dam good work cleaning water, research reveals

Beavers could help clean up polluted rivers and stem the loss of valuable soils from farms, new research shows.

The study, undertaken by scientists at the University of Exeter using a captive beaver trial run by the Devon Wildlife Trust, has demonstrated the significant impact the animals have had on reducing the flow of tonnes of soil and nutrients from nearby fields into a local river system.

The research, led by hydrologist Professor Richard Brazier, found that the work of a single family of beavers had removed high levels of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus from the water that flowed through their 2.5 hectare enclosure.

The family of beavers, which have lived in fenced site at a secret location in West Devon since 2011, have built 13 dams, slowing the flow of water and creating a series of deep ponds along the course of what was once a small stream.

Researchers measured the amount of sediment suspended, phosphorus and nitrogen in water running into the site and then compared this to water as it ran out of the site having passed through the beavers’ ponds and dams. They also measured the amount of sediment, phosphorus and nitrogen trapped by the dams in each of the ponds.

Their results showed the dams had trapped more than 100 tonnes of sediment, 70% of which was soil, which had eroded from ‘intensively managed grassland’ fields upstream. Further investigation revealed that this sediment contained high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are nutrients known to create problems for the wildlife in rivers and streams and which also need to be removed from human water supplies to meet drinking-quality standards.

Well isn’t that delightful! The research ran first in a Devon paper, and I’m sure everyone in the UK is on pins and needles hoping the farmers realize finally that beavers are good for them and stop trying to cut off their noses to spite their farming faces. You know, kind of like at the end of that movie where the old crabby sheriff decides that young debuty’s not so bad after all. And they shake hands and go out for a beer together.

Not to burst anyone’s bubble but we here at Beaver Central aren’t holding our breath, because we’ve had years and years to realize that opinions about beavers aren’t changed by good news. Even if God himself comes down from the mountain and says “Beavers are the second coming” folks will still fear and kill them.

It surpasseth all understanding and science.

Professor Brazier said: “It is of serious concern that we observe such high rates of soil loss from agricultural land, which are well in excess of soil formation rates. However, we are heartened to discover that beaver dams can go a long way to mitigate this soil loss and also trap pollutants which lead to the degradation of our water bodies. Were beaver dams to be commonplace in the landscape we would no doubt see these effects delivering multiple benefits across whole ecosystems, as they do elsewhere around the world.”

The research findings about beavers’ positive impact on soil erosion losses and pollution in water courses come at a time of growing concern about these issues. In 2009 a separate study estimated that the total cost of soil loss from the UK’s agricultural land was £45million, much of which was due to the impacts of sediment and nutrient pollution downstream.

Ahh as if logic anything to do with it! Sure they would reduce a 45million dollar problem, but hey, they’re beavers. And as rancher Alan Newport put it so well in his 2017 article of the same name.

“Beavers are the Cure we don’t want to take”

TOO MANY BEAVERS IN PEWAUKEE

heidi08 Who's blaming beavers now? May 9, 2018

Pewaukee Lake is a five mile fishing spot in Wisconsin. It is best known for it’s inland sailboat races. Not remote in any way, it is a popular summer visit for Milwakee residents, who once upon a time depended on ice harvested from its shores.

Oh and it has some beavers too.

The beaver population around Pewaukee is growing and that is causing some problems

VILLAGE OF PEWAUKEE – Beavers are among the many wildlife populations growing in Lake Country, and they are beginning to cause some issues at the Pewaukee River and around Pewaukee Lake.

“I like the beavers, but you have to limit the activity or they can destroy a place,” said Tom Koepp, manager at Pewaukee Lake Sanitary District. “I’ve never seen them come in as much as they have in the last five years or so.”

Koepp has witnessed their damage in an area near the lake where they have chewed down an entire stand of poplar trees.

You mean these beavers purposely didn’t starve themselves to serve your interests? The nerve!

“When I walked down the boardwalk by the river I thought ‘Holy cow, we do have a problem here,’ ” Koepp said.

Other entities, such as the village and snowmobile club, have also noticed issues with the beaver population, and have asked Koepp to terminate a few.

Koepp said he has trapped four since the beginning of this year. Koepp said beavers are more active in winter and spring, but he plans to continue to monitor them going into summer.

You know how it is. They’re asking him to “thin out the herd”. Of course Mr. Koepp has no earthy idea how many beavers are there and doesn’t realize they don’t travel in herds.. He can only count how many trees have fallen. And does he even mention wrapping trees in his complaints? No he does not. Because the only solution he has learned about is the final solution.

For the record, wrapping a few trees would save those trees for the long haul. Killing a few beavers will work until the remaining beavers get hungry.

Which reminds me of the new activity we’re planning for the festival this year. There’s one corner of the park with three small trees and we plan to wrap them with (A) plastic fencing, (B) chicken wire and (C) welded wire and ask folks which is the correct way to protect them.

The right answers will have a chance to win this.

BEAVER: THE HAPPY WARRIOR

heidi08 Beavers and Ice May 8, 2018

The first day of any beaver conference I attended I always just hummed all over with a sense of comfort and well-being to be surrounded by smarter people than I who knew why beavers mattered and could carry the message forward. On the morning of the second day I would feel a little like I had just joined a really important ‘club’ and together we were going to make a difference.

But by the afternoon of the second day I was invariably getting frustrated by people who looked at beavers as a “Means to an End“. These biologists and hydrologists valued the service of beavers – not the animals themselves. They surely hadn’t spent 100 mornings alone with them over a decade and learned how they explored, talked, argued and played.

There are few actors in this drama that understand that aspect of how I came to care about beavers. So I was delighted to come across this photo yesterday, which I think tells the beaver drama story better than any data ever could.

*Beaver Breaking through the Ice: Edward Episcipo*

I know we all think anthropormorphism is a thing to be avoided, but you truly cannot avoid attributing the feeling of PROUD to that amiably hard-working beaver who emerged from the dark frozen world by skill of his claws and teeth. For days and months he has sat alone in the dark with his family, nothing to do but groom and nothing to eat but old gnawed twigs. And now he’s FREE!

This photo was inexplicably the second prize winner of the recent Chesapeake Bay Foundation contest for 2018. The first prize went to a paddle boarder shot which I guess is explained by the fact that they are more interested in humans using their waters than beavers.

But I love this photo as I have loved no others. I feel that it explains in a single wordless image what the hell I have been doing with my life since 2007. Beavers are mellow even when they do amazingly difficult things. Even when they face challenges like busting through the ice ceiling or living in an urban creek. They work cheerfully to get what they need and they don’t give up until it’s clearly time, and then they just move on to some other effort.

Beavers are cool.

Which brings us to this second photo today posted in the humbly-named periodical “Vancouver is Awesome”.

Disoriented beaver gets washed up onto B.C. bridge deck amidst flooding

Road superintendent Jay Shumaker sees a lot of interesting stuff on the job for VSA Highway Maintenance, and he shared a story with us from yesterday over the phone.

It happened last night around 7:30 while he and his crew were monitoring a bridge about 10 kilometres west of Merritt, where you’ve likely heard there’s been flooding.

Out of nowhere, a large beaver got “tossed up onto the bridge deck” after floating from somewhere upstream.

The creature looked disoriented and began walking around in circles, trying to figure out what had just happened to it.Eventually it found its way over a berm the crew had put into place and back to the edge of the creek, where it jumped into the water and continued to get hauled downstream.

While people are being asked to evacuate by the government as water levels rise, the beavers also seem to be getting displaced – albeit a little more aggressively – by Mother Nature.

Why did the beaver cross the bridge?

To get to the other side, of course.. Because even when it’s flooding and you get thrown onto the cement you just keep going. That’s just what beavers do.

BIBERFEST 2018

heidi08 Beavers May 7, 2018

Beaver supporters had an exciting festival planning meeting yesterday. I’m starting to feel that the year our event is going to be really dynamic. There will be more things for kids to do and more exhibitors and more excitement that we’ve ever had. FRo brought her sketch for the curtain panels kids will be painting, which will be wonderful and useful to us for years to come. (I’m thinking they’ll make an awesome backdrop for the stage). Kids will get to their own chalk alongside Amy on the ‘chalk walk’. And Amy’s unfolding art will dominate in the center all day long.

At the same time, kids can come to my booth to start building their very own beaver ponds. They will pick up a lovely empty pond version on a card and then go around to all the exhibits to fill it in by learning how beavers help those species.Then getting three stickers from each exhibit which will show three parts of that animals life. The back of the card will have an illustration to help them.

At the end, every child’s empty pond will go from this to this!

The curtains will be amazing, I can already tell. The children’s chalk on the sidewalk will be excellent. And everyone who built their own beaver pond can take it home with them!

Stay tuned, this is going to be fun.

HOW ABOUT CHANNELING ACTUAL BEAVERS?

heidi08 Beavers and turtles, stupid solutions May 6, 2018

I know it’s only-good-news Sunday, but the world is mostly devoid of unreservedly positive beaver news at the moment so we get two stories that come very close to being good news. Let’s call them good-beaver-news-adjacent. The first is from Alberta Canada and does a pretty awesome job of talking about how beaver impoundments save water – it’s just missing the actual – you know – beavers.

Producer channels inner beaver to keep water on his farm

As a keystone species in North America, the beaver is so much more than just a hat with legs.

It is indisputably one of the most important and influential species, responsible not only for biodiverse ecosystems, but also for drought prevention. Takota Coen, a fourth-generation farmer, educator, and carpenter, has been channelling his inner beaver since he was a child.

“Every spring, all I did was throw sticks in creeks and try to build dams with weeds and mud,” the 25-year-old says. “Children have an innate sense of trying to slow water down.”

And all that play has made him a pro.

Now if I were in charge this realization that beavers save water and it makes a huge difference to available groundwater on a farm would lead Takota to tolerate the actual beavers on his farm and work with them to allow them to help his work. But sadly, I’m not in charge. So he doesn’t have any.

In the spring of 2014, Coen harvested enough water to meet their farm’s water needs for 40 years — 10 million gallons — in just 10 days.

A couple years earlier, when Coen decided to move to his parent’s farm, Grass Roots Family Farm near Ferintosh, Alta., the farm had a water problem: they’d already had two wells dry up on the property, a third that was dry right from the beginning, and a fourth that only pumped two gallons per minute.

“We had no choice but to look for water elsewhere,” he says.

Using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) maps of the property, Coen found the longest and highest valley on the farm, rented a Caterpillar D3 for a day and dug a 1.5 kilometre long, 1.2 metre wide, 0.3 metre swale — which he calls a “wetland on contour.”

That swale enabled Coen to catch all that runoff, and eventually, more.

Ahh so you made yourself a beaver pond and the rain filled it up! Great idea. I wonder how much that LIDAR and caterpillar rental coast you? Gosh, I know something that would have done that for free! Suddenly this graph springs to mind.

Onto Maine where we’re very happy they’ve decided to live trap a beaver rather than kill it. But honestly.

Catch & Release: Stalking the Wild Beaver

As state-certified Maine Animal Damage Control Cooperators, Maynard Stanley Jr. (pictured) and his wife Norma catch and release wild animals and help solve problems and conflicts between people and animals. This beaver (pictured) was building a dam in a culvert with sticks and mud, which, if left unattended, can cause a road to wash out, sometimes just overnight. So, Rockland Public Works Department called “Critter Catcher” Maynard Stanley Jr. on Tuesday to trap the beaver. The beaver is about four years old, Stanley said, and, after trapping it, he relocated it to a Maine Wildlife Management Area far away from people.

Oh okay.

You sent Mr. Critter catcher out to get ‘a beaver’ because obviously there was only ONE right? And he determined this bachelor is 4 years old by reading his kinder page? Something tells me this story is going to get more provoking. Just wait.

Before releasing the beaver, he and his wife stopped by Owls Head Central School for a quick Show and Tell. “The kids had lots of great questions,” Stanley said. “They love to see wild critters up close, smell the different trapping lures, and I enjoy sharing my experience and helping others understand wildlife and how to coexist. I give wildlife talks and have shown critters at other schools and never pass up a chance to talk with kids.”

Never mind that the poor beaver is confused frightened and isolated from his family. This morning we’re going to a brightly lit schoolroom full of noisy children who will poke at you and ask questions. Do you think that beaver was still in the clamshell trap? I’m going to guess he was because I doubt critter control moved him to something more comfortable. So five hours in that trap and then another five to drive him to his destination and then released without family or safety into some strange stream somewhere.

Poor little beaver.

The good news is that at least that culvert will NEVER get blocked again, right? I mean no other beaver is going to plug it tonight, or next month, because this story has a happy ending rof course?