MR. & MRS. BEAVER: DIRECTORS OF SUSTAINABILITY

heidi08 Attitudes towards beavers February 22, 2024

There are letters to the editor and then there are LETTERS TO THE EDITOR that deserve to be in the hall of fame. This is in a catagory all of its own. From Andrea Knuston at Oaklend college in Michigan,

Letter to the editor: What Beaver?

Recently the Oakland University community was informed that a beaver had moved into the campus’s biological preserve and made itself at home. Indeed, since that announcement, we’ve been able to confirm that we are now host to a pair. And it’s now likely that OU’s population will grow, come spring, with baby beaver, known as kits. OU’s pair of beaver have offered the OU community their life-giving brilliance and have constructed a dam on Galloway Creek (which creates a pond) and a lodge, where their kits will be born.

It’s ironic that a beaver family would move into Oakland’s campus at the exact moment that we’re doing a search for a Director of Sustainability, and I would like to propose that Mr. or Mrs. Beaver would make an excellent candidate for the position.

Can I say how much I LOVE that idea? If beavers ran the sustainability department things would be a LOT better and wetter around here! There’d be more fallen trees and more birds and more birds and bees! Cleaner water and lots more otter! You know how it works.

One of the priorities that OU has listed in its job description is for the Director to “play a prominent leadership role in integrating academic programs, research projects, campus operations and strategic community engagement sustainability initiatives with communities throughout the region.” As a member of the campus team that has been monitoring water levels at the dam and tracking beaver activity, I can tell you that Mr. and Mrs. Beaver have already brought departments and offices and broader communities together. In order to even begin to think about co-existing with this ecosystem engineer, we’ve had to rally quickly and collaboratively with a variety of experts and communities to understand what their impact is and to act to accommodate them. And that’s just the human community. In addition, 85% of wildlife depend on the ecosystems that beaver create. Beaver are world-builders. And because they moderate floods and droughts and sequester greenhouse gases and increase landscape biodiversity, they make sustainability. No human can create a culture of sustainability (another priority for the Director position) faster than beaver. They’re a keystone species that have had a powerful role in co-evolution. Because of their dams, they taught salmon how to jump. What will they teach us? How can we co-evolve with them?

I am literally IN LOVE with this letter. It is the finest one I think I have ever read. The author needs to come to our beaver festival right away. Honored guest status.

The job description for the Director of Sustainability also lists the work of laying the foundation for a “‘living building’ to be located on campus.” Living buildings are regenerative and connect people to light, air, food, nature, and community. Living buildings are also defined by their self-sufficiency and their ability to create a positive impact on the human and natural systems around them. That is the definition of a beaver dam. If we learn to co-exist with beaver we allow them to make our world one giant “living building.” We wouldn’t need to assign it to the human Director; we would just let beaver be beaver, which is to say, let them make sustainable worlds.

The Director job posting emphasizes “highly collaborative working relationships” with every conceivable staff, faculty, and administrative person on campus and throughout the region. We are, as a culture, I hope, finally in a place of understanding that the nature of sustainability work is collaborative, and, again, beaver are uniquely qualified. In Anishinaabe stories and worldview, beaver, known as “amik” in the original language of this land, is a world-builder because they’re experts at building consent and diplomacy. They are elders who teach humans reciprocity. Beaver are excellent neighbors who open their lodges to their biodiverse ecologies, letting muskrat, mink, and mice dwell and sleep with them. Muskrat, in turn, will help beaver with repairs and upkeep to their dam. They don’t just create new worlds of water, space, and land; they practice sharing and invite others into a world without want. Everyone has what they need. There is no “conflict.”

I swear this letter was not written by me. But if any letter could have been boy this sure qualifies. This paragraph literally made me swoon.

We recently experienced a large snow melt in tandem with (and caused by) a large amount of rain. Those of us monitoring the water levels in the pond and surrounding wetland recorded the event and responded under the supervision of a consultant, who can help us make our beaver family permanent members of our campus. There are many options for controlling water levels and therefore flooding. While the recent floods from the spring melt and rainfall didn’t threaten the campus, the golf course, or any human neighbors, we can use best practices that have proven successes and choose to implement simple solutions to mitigate any fears about those scenarios. There are consultants who know how to install flow devices, diversion fences, and dam analogs. Beaver dams no longer need to be considered threats. Ask the residents of Martinez, California, who decided to celebrate the beavers who moved into the middle of their town. They learned not only how to co-exist but to love their beaver.

Obviously, Oakland will hire a human for its Director of Sustainability, but I hope this human understands how important our beaver family is to the work they’re doing.

And I hope that we, as a community, can learn how to co-exist too.

Oh my goodness. Oh my Goodness. Well I knew this writer was fully acquainted with Ben’s book. Now I can she has visited the website too. We love Oakland University! And especially their sustainability directors!

SALMON SMOLT AT BEAVER DAM

heidi08 Beavers February 21, 2024

I really enjoy these glimpses into underwater at a beaver dam filmed by Pamela Adams of Beaver Insights. Check out this view of whose enjoying the currents upstream of a beaver dam.

WATER-HEROES AND FIRE-FIGHTERS

heidi08 Beavers February 20, 2024

Finally! Audrey sent photos of the two new beaver signs in San Luis Obispo. Very informative and nice to look at. Enjoy.

TOO MANY PEOPLE CARE ABOUT WILDLIFE

heidi08 Beavers February 19, 2024

Sometimes scientists seem very very stupid about the most basic human interactions. Like this recent article about about how wildlife celebrity is making studying and managing wildlife difficult. Raise your hand if you can guess what part of “management” gets particularly difficult for them.

Of course we in Martinez know. The killing part,

Managing Wildlife Tricky When They’re Worldwide Celebrities, Like Grizzly 399

Ask that question to many people in distant parts of the country, and even around the world, and their answers might just as likely be Grizzly 399 or Limpy the coyote.

Wildlife has always been one of Wyoming’s biggest draws. But the rise of the social media and instant, global sharing of images and anecdotes from wild critters’ lives have taken the profiles of Wyoming’s celebrity wildlife to a whole new level.

It’s no longer a matter of entire species being gloried, as in “the majestic grizzly.” Now individual animals, such as 399, have a social media presence that many human celebrities might envy.

So, what does that mean for biologists who engage in serious research and wildlife management? In the immediate sense, wildlife scientists don’t think much about it, said biologist Frank van Manen.

Oh I can tell you about it. Having celebrity status makes it hard for all kinds of behind closed doors decisions that get made to manage wildlife, like trapping or thinning the herd or even relocating a trouble some animal.

“From a wildlife research perspective, the well-known status of bears such as 399 — or bear 264 in the Swan Flats area of Yellowstone National Park back in the late 1990s — does not really affect our science,” said van Manen, who is the supervisory research biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department large carnivore specialist Dan Thompson said he worries that the celebrity status of certain animals might distort the public’s views.

“As with human beings, celebrities aren’t always the best role models for how to live one’s life,” he said.

Well duh. Did you think we thought all beavers should act like our famous mom beaver who broke a tooth and died in captivity?

Emotional Reactions

Celebrity animals evoke strong emotions, for sure.

All the way back in 2012, there was widespread outrage when a famous Yellowstone National Park wolf, known as Wolf 06, strayed into a legal wolf hunting zone in Montana and was shot.

Last October, fans far and wide waited anxiously after Grizzly 610 – a grown offspring of 399 – was struck by a vehicle and languished beside the highway in pain. (She later rejoined her cubs and appeared to recover fully.)

More recently, 399’s throngs of admirers joyously hailed her turning 28 last month (the exact date of her birth isn’t known).

And many get a good laugh out of the sly antics of Limpy, a coyote who lives in Yellowstone and how he suckers tourists for pity snacks by exaggerating his leg injury.

Yes people get emotionally attached to wildlife. DUH! In fact even when wildlife isn’t famous people can get emotionally attached to it. You just don’t notice until a gazillion people do it at once.

While all of that might tug at people’s heartstrings, it can detract from a deeper appreciation of bears and wildlife as species playing an important role in ecosystems, Thompson said.

People might project their idealized image of one particular animal onto the entire species, he said.

“I think they (wildlife celebrities) create a false image of the rest of the population, potentially,” Thompson said. “I think it’s amazing that people have had that opportunity to follow that particular bear or other particular bears, and other wildlife species. But that one individual is not necessarily emblematic of all of those bears.

“I’ve actually met some very interesting people over the years that I wouldn’t have without that particular bear (399). But I do think that it takes away from the larger story of that particular bear, or particular bears, when we assign celebrity status to any mammal.”

Moreover, people who know a lot about a particular bear might not understand the larger picture of grizzlies in general, Thompson said.

“Following that particular bear for 28 years doesn’t make you an expert of all bears,” he said.

And the relatively “controlled” setting of Teton National Park (where 399 lives), or Yellowstone might not give celebrity bear watchers a clear picture of grizzly behavior, Thompson said.

Well DUH again. That old woman who brought her grandchildren to see the beavers and told them that their tails start out round and don’t get flat until they grow up was wrong and doesn’t know as much about beavers as Duncan Haley. Big Whoop. People being interested and engaged by wildlife is what starts them getting informed.

It’s a journey.

Even so, the public’s observations can sometimes help bear research, van Manen said.

Grizzly 399 has been on researcher’s radar most of her life.

“Our scientific focus is to understand the dynamics of the overall population, which involves collecting data on a sample of bears across the ecosystem through research captures,” van Manen said.

“Bear 399 is one of those research bears, which is where her number originated when she was initially captured in 2001, representing the 399th bear that was radio-collared by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team as part of the long-term research and monitoring project,” he said.

She hasn’t had a tracking collar on for years now, so it helps to have many eyes on her, van Manen said.

“We have not monitored her via radio telemetry since 2018. Because she resides in an area of the ecosystem where she is very observable, we know a lot about her life history beyond our own monitoring and that has been informative,” he said.

But 399’s celebrity shouldn’t detract from the importance of other grizzlies, he added.

“While there is much focus on these well-known bears, it is important to remember that there are other bears in the population with similar life histories, a few of which we know about and probably more that we don’t know about,” van Manen said.

A New Field Of Study

Social media platforms have created so much attention for grizzlies 399, 610 and other animals, it might have spawned a whole new field of research, van Manen said.

“I’m not aware of specific studies that have addressed the pros and cons of social media attention for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. However, the influence of social media on wildlife conservation in general is a growing field of academic study, and so far the findings are mixed,” he said.

A 2022 study in Canada found that there was “no tangible benefit” to wildlife through social media fame.

“Interestingly, one of the recommendations (from the study) included how scientists and experts can improve their messages and focus on positive outcomes and solutions, a point well taken,” van Manen said.

I’m sorry. I know you liked it better when it was just you nerds tracking wildlife with your clipboards and a few camera men for nature programs but people care about wild spaces and the things that live in them. I’m sorry if that makes your number crunching harder but they do.

Too bad.

BEAVER WONDERS

heidi08 Beavers February 18, 2024

I have two treats for you today, the first is the recorded webinar about beavers and agriculture I so enjoyed last week,

And the second is an article from 18991 North Carolina proving that trappers have always told tall tails about beavers…
Enjoy!