“OH NO YOU DIDN’T!”

This morning’s title is the actual header of the mortified email sent to me yesterday by famed and familiar author Ben Goldfarb who had always considered Ted Williams a kind of conservation legend.

Ahh, how the mighty have fallen. Over beavers, of course.

Thinking Like a Trout Stream

A case in point is its inability to accept biological realities of beaver overpopulation.

The causes of ecological damage by deer and beaver are identical. Wolves, the major predator of both species, have been extirpated or severely reduced in most deer and beaver range. Heavy logging in deer and beaver range has replaced poorhabitat old growth with deer and beaver candy such as aspen and willow.

Beavers in natural abundance have usually been good for native ecosystems, trout included. In much of the Pacific Northwest, beavers are depleted, and managers are rightly attempting recovery.

You can see right away where this is going. The argument is that numbers of beavers when controlled by wolves and mt lions are helpful. But the number we have NOW! Oy vey! He starts by quoting the praise of beavers given by Oregon and Washington fisheries.

Beavers .. . create reservoirs of cool water that salmon need to survive,” report the Northwest Treaty Tribes of western Washington State in a news release titled “Beavers Relocated to Improve Salmon Habitat.”

Such assertions are accurate in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, at least on most high-gradient streams. But when they’re cited as alleged evidence that all beaver populations are great for all species in all states, they’re flat wrong; and they hurt the cause of native ecosystems. Do a Google search for beavers and trout, and almost all you’ll find are effusions about the alleged value of beavers everywhere and excoriations of fisheries managers who attempt to modestly control gross irruptions.

Oh those little NOAA scientists and their crazy ILLUSIONS! Obviously what you do in the Pacific states doesn’t matter because they’re already insane anyway. But what here in Wisconsin or Massachusetts we’re OVERRUN with beavers.

BUT BEAVER BLIGHT IN THE EAST IS MILD COMPARED TO THAT IN THE MIDWEST. Angler/photographer Len Harris of Richland Center, Wisconsin, describes the pre-hangover high that comes with the discovery of a new beaver pond: “It’s smile-producing at first because of bigger trout. But the flooding cycle cleans out that dam and all the barren bank. The streams widen and increase in temperature. . . . My home waters have warmed by at least four degrees in the last twenty years. This is from a combination of beavers not being kept in check and climate change. Warmer water, resulting gill lice, and resulting competition from brown trout have stacked the deck against the natives. Humans need to limit beaver expansion near our brook trout streams. Thankfully, a new regime is in place in Wisconsin as of 2019. Science will be back on the books, and our DNR will once again be staffed with caretakers of the streams, not climate-change deniers.”

So wait a minute. You’re equating beaver believers with climate change deniers? Because they’re both on teams you dislike? That’s so entirely provoking I’m not even sure what to do with you. Ben says you’re revered and I’m sure [Brutus is an honorable man} so I won’t write what I’d like to. But maybe you could spend five minutes in an actual trout stream with an actual beaver dam before you accept funds to write something ridiculous like this again? Or hey maybe snorkel in it and see all the baby trout swimming around? He goes on to describe several “misguided” environmental groups that think beavers have any value. I’m just sorry he didn’t mention US.

“There are a lot of people in our organization who really value the beaver ponds as something that attracts wildlife and increases biodiversity,” the group’s chair, Corlis West, told the Lake County News Chronicle. “Not just beavers, but for moose and mink and waterfowl and frogs and turtles.”

“They [beaver ponds] provide special habitat,” added retired University of Minnesota Duluth geology professor John Green. “They’re wildlife magnets for breeding and migrating birds. All kinds of wildlife like them, and people enjoy those.”

Notice how he goes after the little guys like beaversprite not NOAA fisheries and their years of data. He knows exactly what he’s doing here. When a giant like Ted Williams writes a giant amount of BS like this, it’s going to take another giant to knock him down. David and her little GIFs aren’t going to do it. But good LORD this is irritating. Does he really truly believe that there are MORE beavers now than there were in 1730? Even knowing the numbers of pelts reported? Really? Even knowing all the economies they funded?

Does Ted secretly know a story about the great native american salmon famine of 1630 that all of us don’t?

SALMONIDS BENEFIT FROM BEAVERS IN MUCH OF THE WEST; but beaver irruptions are nuking lots of coldwater habitat even there.

Wildlife advocates need to keep two different thoughts about beavers in their heads simultaneously. Beavers in moderation can be good for coldwater species. What’s bad for coldwater species is not beavers; it is too many beavers—unnatural proliferations caused by human activity, such as clear-cutting and wolf eradication. “Letting nature take its course” doesn’t mean sitting on our hands after we’ve disrupted natural balances.

The funniest part of this ENTIRE article, and believe me there are several, is that he presents the “pro-beaver” lobby as if we were SO powerful. As if we had frightened Fish and WIldlife in Nevada and California so that they’re afraid to do all the killing that’s required. As if we had scared people away from killing all the beavers they need to kill!

As a woman with her toes on the very front lines of beaver defense allow me to offer a counterpoint after reviewing 10 years of depredation permits in California alone:

You’re so funny, Ted. I think maybe you and Ben are going to have a dynamic discussion some day soon. And maybe Michael Pollock will want in on it. Worth A Dam will pay for the beer. I’ll just be over here. Trying to get over the giggles.

“It’s unlikely that managers will ever be able to restore more than a tiny fraction of trout streams destroyed by beavers. But, as Leopold wrote in a 1946 letter to his friend Bill Vogt: “That [a] situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”

Just a final thought. The famous Leopold and his famous son who inspired this article was famously ignorant about the importance of beavers. Neither of them had any idea how important beavers are to streams or fish. And I’m quoting two of the most knowledgeable voices I know on this matter. Aldo was a visionary voice who knew and understood many, many things. But beavers wasn’t one of them.

So it’s perfect that you frame this entire argument around him,

A WILLING ALLY IN A DRYING WORLD

heidi08 Beavers and Wetlands March 13, 2019

How did we miss this story? Well, know how. I was just out of the hospital when it broke but still. I let you all down. I am so disappointed in myself. You will probably leave and read some other website about beavers that is updated daily. And you should.

Except there is no other website like that. In all the world. For better or worse I’m still the only person insane enough to do this every morning. So you’re stuck with me for now. Sorry and you’re welcome.

What a great title!

Beaver: A Willing Ally in a Drying World

Taos, New Mexico was once a vital link in the beaver fur trade, linking the streams of the Southwest to markets in St. Louis and further East. Today, however, beaver are not part of the local economy, though some landowners and other interest groups might be changing that.

Aaron recently visited Taos speaking to the Rio Fernando de Taos Revitalization Collaborative — a collective of elected officials, agencies, groups, and individuals working to bring a New Mexico river back to life — about living with beavers. Why? Because beaver are vital to healthy and resilient ecosystems. Where there are beaver, there are plenty of other native wildlife. Beaver, North America’s largest rodent, are truly an ecosystem engineer, creating wetlands, ponds, and meadows, filtering water, trapping sediment, and mediating flashy streams into more consistent flows. All they need is water, trees, and time to be busy, as the saying goes.

Well, well, well, so we talked to folk in New Mexico about living with beavers. A fine idea, how did it go? We all know places that need water are places that need beaver.

Fewer beavers on the landscape means a lot of things, but mostly it means fewer wetlands and habitats for other species, more boom and bust water flows, and lower water quality. There are countless studies showing us how beaver alter their world and benefit other species, including humans. For example, in the arid intermountain west, 80% of species depend on wetlands during their lives, even though wetlands cover only 2% of the landscape. With their numbers at a small fraction of historic abundance, the many benefits that beavers provide are dramatically reduced.

Ain’t that the truth.

Landowners in the Taos, NM area are realizing the potential benefit of beaver, but also know that there are possible downsides. Beaver are busy, and part of that busyness includes felling trees to use in their construction projects and as a winter food source. This also includes flooding areas which humans may or may not want to be flooded. This conflict is sometimes problematic and often results in beaver being killed and removed. Defenders’ goal is to work with interested groups, such as the Rio Fernando de Taos Revitalization Collaborative in Taos, to promote more beaver on the landscape through mitigating their impacts. Trees can be fenced, flow devices can be installed to minimize flooding, and education and outreach can help promote positive attitudes about beaver, water quality, water quantity, and habitat for other species such as fish and amphibians.

Sure, there are times that beaver come into conflict with the human-built world of tidiness and organization. They do not abide by our rules and regulations, they do not read our stormwater plans, review our landscaping designs, or give a second though about flooding a low-lying bike path. They are acting like beaver should act, modifying the environment to suit their needs, and in the process the needs of many other species. Our beaver work is a win-win, promoting the huge benefits of beaver and encouraging humans to learn to live with them!

If you, like me, wish you were a fly on the wall for Aaron’s talk for this presentation, we’re in luck because at least part of it is available on video.

This seems to stop early after talking about flooding but he does a nice job of describing how to protect trees and I’m glad Aaron’s on the case. I wonder what kind of officials were in attend

And a final hearty good luck to Mr. Jon Ridler who gets sworn in this morning as an AMERICAN citizen! Just in time to regret the grand democratic experiment and what we’ve become. Congratulations. Jon, we’re all lucky to have you. (I made this for him yesterday just before our power went out all evening.)

UNWILLING BEAVER RECRUITS

heidi08 Why We Care March 12, 2019

The term “Press gang” applies to the British custom of seizing unsuspecting eligible men with force and depositing them on ships to work as hostage-sailors. It was used largely in war time but regularly through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. It represents the very opposite of the term “All volunteer army.” And usually happened to poor or unimportant men that no one was likely to miss.

I often think that at it’s most extreme edges, animal advocacy operates the same way. Something hijacks your attention and then your will and before you know it you’re hopelessly at sea, saving beavers even when that was never anything you set out to do.

Diane Stopyra’s recent article in the Washington Post appealed for this reason.

I never meant to be a birder. But the birds didn’t give me any choice.

I’ve never been able to tell the difference between a warbler and a wren, and I never was compelled to try. I endured one oppressively humid birding tour a few summers back and quickly grew frustrated by the difficulty of locating an osprey through my loaner binoculars. Plus, I’ve never felt like I fit in with the birder crowd. Even as the birding community has expanded to include a younger, hipper set — which makes generalizing based on age, socioeconomic status or propensity for fanny-pack-wearing difficult — there are commonalities I don’t share. Seemingly limitless patience is one. A remarkable preference for the Prius is another. (Common bumper stickers in my town include: “Bird nerd,” “I always tern up for birdwatching” and “Birding gives me cheep thrills.”) Then there’s the impressive, almost terrifying commitment on display. Every spring, this place is home to the World Series of Birding, a 24-hour competition that kicks off at midnight. Midnight! I don’t care how special a scissor-tailed flycatcher is, I’m horrified if I have to stay up past 10 p.m. to see it.

I share Diana’s sense of horror at the patience necessary to tell one warbler from the next, but I was never adamantly against it, I just had much more important things to do. I went to college for 10 years to be able to do them after all, and glancing at nature was a pastime, a flirtation, never anything remotely like a calling.

But I could never be a real birder, I tell myself. I don’t have a field guide, and I don’t keep a “life list,” birdwatcher-speak for a personal catalogue of sightings. My hobby is an unconscious sort of thing, less about studying wingspan or beak shape and more about passing the miles of a long run or dog walk mindlessly comparing birds to the humans in my life. That leggy egret with the long neck that weighs two pounds? Totally a Jennifer. That stocky merlin with a square head? Just like the rugby player I dated in college. And that aggressive peregrine falcon that goes after anything that moves? Okay, wait, that’s the rugby player, too.

Of course there is a series of well established traits you must possess to be a real birder. The path is well understood and easy to trace. The road to becoming a beaverer is much more murky. You never know when you’re going to slip from the blithely casual observer into something more alarmingly committed. It happens so gradually at first.

Noticing birds means you’re just a short step away from admiring them; not because they’re so exotic but precisely because they’re not. Birds — vulnerable and territorial and grumpy and affectionate and curious — are a lot more humanlike than we probably care to admit. Oystercatchers decorate with seashells, and there’s a quahog in my bathroom. Empathetic magpies hold grudges against mean people, and I’m working on that. Parrots have temper tantrums when sleep deprived, and who doesn’t?

>Noticing anything is the beginning of a commitment. You know well that once you notice that not-unattractive young man in your chem class changed his hair you’re doomed to the certain crushing behaviors that inevitably follow. So it is with watching beavers. Noticing the bonds in a beaver family or the way siblings steal from each other without resentment speaks of a similar fate. You can’t just stop noticing. It just isn’t an engine you can turn off once it’s been revved.

That’s the thing about this place. It forces even the most reluctant to confront the natural world in all its beauty and drama and comedy. (Try Googling a yellow-crowned night heron, or at least its mohawk, without cracking a smile.) Will I ever be the kind of person who’s toting a spotting scope, chasing birds at midnight or working to identify a muffled call while eight miles into a tempo run? Nah. But I do know this: Resistance is futile. Sooner or later, that natural world grabs you by the shoelaces and doesn’t let go.

You can probably see from the last line why this article appealed. Well done, Diane. Although I wouldn’t say beavers grabbed me by the shoelaces. More by the heartstrings, which are easier to tangle and harder to take off. Maybe it’s the city’s fault. Maybe if they hadn’t plan to kill them I would have been free to get over my crush and move on to something else, like knitting or basketry.

But that’s the way of press gangs. They keep you cruelly occupied and never let you find out what life would have offered up instead.

BEAVERS AROUND THE WORLD

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers and turtles March 11, 2019

You know a lot of wonderful things are said about beavers, that their ponds help salmon and frogs and water storage and remove nitrogen and fight fires BUT is it enough? Could there be more wonderful things said about beavers that we haven’t even begun to discuss? Are we hiding their bright beaver lights under a bushel?

Enter the blanding turtle.

The challenge of beaver dams in Blanding’s turtle habitat

I had no idea that destroying beaver dams threatened Blanding’s turtle survival. I must confess that I find beavers adorable, but I learned that they can cause serious headaches for landowners and municipalities that have dams on their property. That’s why NCC has come to their rescue with a series of awareness workshops to help ensure the survival of Blanding’s turtle.

Beavers build dams, which create wetlands, to increase their food resource area and protect themselves from predators. In addition to regulating, filtering and purifying runoff water, these wetlands are also useful for other species; they promote the nesting and feeding of waterfowl, and also benefit several types of fish, amphibians, reptiles and even some mammals. A few years ago, a study on the movement of Blanding’s turtle, a species designated threatened in Quebec since 2009, revealed that more than 90 per cent of their habitat is in ponds created, maintained or regulated by beavers.However useful they may be, these dams can suddenly give way, flooding land and infrastructure. This is why they are sometimes destroyed by local residents. The option of destroying dams, besides being effective only in the short term (since beavers will return to rebuild their dam if they find the environment favourable) is a threat to Blanding’s turtle’s survival.

This was explained during a presentation given by NCC biologists Milaine Saumur and Caroline Gagné in Clarendon, Outaouais, last fall. They discussed alternatives dismantling beaver dams, including preventative structures designed to protect culverts and the installation of a water level control system upstream of a dam.

Well,now that’s very interesting, but if this author believe that the only thing that makes landowners fear beaver dams is the threat of the potentially washing out, she isn’t being creative enough. As we know all too well. beaver dams are removed because people are afraid they won’t wash out, they’ll cause flooding, they’ll bring mosquitoes, they’ll block fish passage, they’ll cause an eyesore, and any other possible reason you an dream up in your head.

Blanding’s turtles were once common in much of Canada but are now endangered. They happen to be of interest in longevity research, as they show little to no common signs of aging and are physically active and capable of reproduction into eight or nine decades of life.

But now THAT’s interesting. Don’t destroy beaver dams and you have a chance to live and breed forever! Hmm, that might get some traction!

Beaver viagra!

Another great photo this morning from our favorite Austrian photographer,

Leopold Kanzler is such a talent. The beaver in this photo looks like a windswept James Dean gazing off into the sunrise. Obviously anticipating the delicious cottonwood leaves that await him, or his children as soon as he slips back into the water.

Oh how I miss those mornings of gleefully watching beavers!

A final wistful article from Canada which is even sadder when read with thoughts of our recent beavers failed rescue at Lindsey. I’m not sure if this hospital is more patient or just less practical.

A beaver tale: Here’s what happened after the Mounties found this guy at the mall

Hope for Wildlife has been caring for the animal, which likely has a head injury from a car crash It’s hard to picture a more Canadian start to a news story: the Mounties getting called out to help an injured beaver in a Lower Sackville, N.S., mall parking lot.

And yet there’s as much of our national spirit — that urge to help — to be found in the news of the beaver’s recovery.

Little Nacho, as his caregivers call him, is in rough shape. An injured tail, road rash on his feet and missing fur suggest he was hit by a car, according to the founder of Hope for Wildlife, the rescue group that’s treating him.

He’s also showing signs of a head injury.

”Head injuries do take a long time to heal, but that’s OK, we take whatever time is needed for these animals,” Hope Swinimer says. “We’ve got three others in now so we might actually match him up with one other young beaver.”

Sigh. Add that to the list. Apparently even Canadian beavers get better health care than we do. But at least it give me another reason to post one of my very favorite photos EVER.

You’re welcome.

HAMPTON FALLS IN WITH THE RIGHT CROWD

heidi08 Who's saving beavers now? March 10, 2019

It’s good to have friends. I’ve been in the beaver biz for so long that when I read a great article like this from Hampton falls I have a beaver rolo-dex that I can scroll through and think, hmm who do I know in New Hampshire? Can they help?

And of course they can.

Teen Works to Tackle Hampton Falls Beaver Dam Problem

HAMPTON FALLS — A local teen is working on an Eagle Scout project to alleviate the flooding problems beaver dams are causing to the town’s culvert system.

Boy Scout Joel Pontbriand said he plans to construct four Clemson Beaver Pond Levelers to stop beaver dams from backing up the flow of the town’s culverts. A Clemson Beaver Pond Leveler is made mostly from PVC pipe and allows water to flow through a beaver dam or plugged culvert.

″(Clemson Beaver Pond Levelers) are suspended in the water at the desired water level of the pond,” he said, “and they mask the sound of flowing water, which is how beavers find drainage points. Consequently, they confuse the beavers and render their dams ineffectual.”

To raise funds for the project, he is hosting a pizza fundraising dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. March 8 at the First Baptist Church. Admission is $8 per person and $25 per family of four.

Hurray for Joel! We LOVE eagle scouts who help beavers, and thoughtful people who realize that there are better solutions with longer term benefits than just trapping. I wish Joel had access to some more modern tools though than the Clemson, which is expensive, unwieldy and frankly not nearly as successful as the many inventions that have come along 20 years since.

So of course I immediately emailed the story to our friend Art Wolinsky who says he wrote the reporter and lives about 20 minutes away. He’d love to help out. I’m hoping this can all take place. It seems to me a retired high school science teacher is the perfect kind of help for this valiant pursuit.

The pipes will also eliminate the creation of unwanted wetlands, as well as minimizing flooding by promoting continuous water flow of the Taylor River. Furthermore, he said, this method of dealing with beavers is “conservation-minded” and has proven successful nationwide.

“I chose to do this because I was looking for ways to help a local institution or the town itself, in a manner consistent with the guidelines of an Eagle Scout Service Project,” he said. “When I heard of this potential project, it struck me as an opportunity to do something different and possibly overlooked by many residents of Hampton Falls. The idea of implementing something unconventional but certainly needed was exciting to me.”

Eagle Scout projects mark the culmination of a scouts’ career and customarily includes providing a public service that improves their local communities.

Wonderful! This is a great project to take on and it will have great results if you use the right tools. I know Art will be happy to help. Of course if we’re really talking about protecting four culverts a beaver deceiver is much more suited to the job, and I also happen to know a selectman in Vermont who will be the right man to consult.

Now let’s just hope that Joel spends a little time using the internet to find out why beavers matter and what kinds of good things they can bring to his town if he just helps them not cause problems. We’ll be more than happy to help that story get told!