Of course I said as much at the time which prompted several very concerned and patient conversations about public perception being so abysmal in the region they are working hard to chip away at the edges. The design was Adrien’s based on Mike’s and they made things easier for fish at low flow conditions which climate change was making happen more often.
I listened and underestood some of it. But honestly if the problem is mostly PERCEPTION then wouldn’t it be a mistake to offer a solution that reinforces the idea that there us a problem in the first place?
I suggested at least changing the name to something that reminded people that under normal conditions it wasn’t needed.
Sorry about my silence yesterday. But one of the things I liked especially about Mike Digout’s tailslap video was that we have almost the exact same footage. Since I’ve become more of an expert I realize beaver tailslaps in the wild are MUCH MUCH FASTER and more intense. And I was always worried. Are our beavers delayed? Sick?
Seeing Mike’s video made me understand that our beavers are relaxed. That’s a tailslap from a beaver whose not so much alarmed as irked or making a point to friends. Isn’t that wonderful?
Meanwhile there’s some nice news from Calgary.
Residents upset about beavers being trapped in southeast community wetland
CALGARY — Jen Corbett discovered a dead beaver in a trap behind her home in the southeast Calgary community of Riverstone a few days ago, something she says has been ongoing since her family moved there last fall.
“For the past three years they’ve been trapping and killing them,” said Corbett.
“As opposed to finding other solutions that aren’t lethal, that would include maybe grates on the culverts or water levellers or other implementations that would allow us to co-exist with them.”
Hurray for Jen! And hurray for neighbors who care about wetlands! Apparently our good friend Adrien Nelson of FBD just installed a flow device not too far away so maybe the word is catching on. Stay tuned because this story could get even better!
Oh and I finally found peace after my disruption yesterday.
Adrien Nelson of FBD didn’t make it to the conference this year, because he had work to do in Langley. And reading this you can tell he does it so well.
Rather than trapping beavers — which according to Adrian Nelson, wildlife conflict manager with the Fur-Bearers, has only a 16 per cent success rate — a “long term solution” is using flow devices, such as pond levellers or exclusion fences.
Pond levellers are large pipes that allow water to flow through existing beaver dams, while exclusion fencing prevents beavers from accessing culverts or bridges.
“This is not new technology; they have been around for over 20 years, they are incredibly successful,” Nelson told Township council at its Feb. 20 evening meeting.
“When they are implemented properly we have a success rate of between 90 and 97 per cent, and that is over a 10-year period.”
The devices cost $400 to $600 in materials and take two people about half a day to install. They require maintenance twice per year, which usually consists of removing debris or garbage build-up. Nelson said the devices are much more cost-effective than repeatedly calling in trappers, or taking apart dams.
The Fur-Bearers also offer free training programs to municipal staff on how to implement and build the systems properly, having successfully worked with Mission, Coquitlam, Bowen Island, Surrey, Richmond, and even the Township of Langley.
Coun. David Davis, who has dealt with beavers on his farm many times, said he is concerned that during a rain event, a pipe through a beaver dam may not be able to handle the water coming through, and flooding would result, causing damage and costing the Township a lot of money. He believes in some cases, the beavers have to be removed.
Adrien is working hard in Langley to remind the city to do the right thing. Which they have done before but suddenly think might not work. And of course the council is making it as difficult as possible for obvious reasons. I feel these opponents have been well matched. And when I saw this letter to the editor I went so far as to say OVER matched. You will understand why.
Connect with Us Opinion Letter: Many humane options exist for managing beavers Melissa Oakes’ children, Ruby, 5, and Finley, 8, joined Earth Rangers along with 100,000 other children across Canada. Their art project involved learning about the beaver, including speaking with a First Nations elder about the hardworking rodent that has lately found itself at the centre of controversy. – Melissa Oakes submitted photo Melissa Oakes’ children, Ruby, 5, and Finley, 8, joined Earth Rangers along with 100,000 other children across Canada. Their art project involved learning about the beaver, including speaking with a First Nations elder about the hardworking rodent that has lately found itself at the centre of controversy.— image credit: Melissa Oakes submitted photo
Editor: I read the recent article in the paper (the Times, Jan. 18) about this wetland and the beavers, and thought I would send you this photo of my children Finley, 8, and Ruby, 5, with the beaver lodge in background and their art.
My children have joined Earth Rangers along with 100,000 other children across Canada and one of their missions was to speak with an elder about living with wildlife and do an art project.
We read about how the beaver represents wisdom. The beaver uses the gifts and knowledge it was given by the Creator to build a healthy and strong community.
In that process, it makes wetland habitat so we call them wetland superheroes.
This land was taken out of the ALR with the agreement that this area would be left as green space. With all the money that the government is putting toward wetland conservation, it would be a shame to lose this wetland and the beavers that made it.
I understand that there are many other management options that people could be using other than constantly killing them.
Well, all I can say is between Melissa, Ruby, Finley and Adrien, the stubborn city council doesn’t stand a chance. Keep it up! It takes a huge amount of protest to earn the right to inconvenience city staff, as we learned first hand in Martinez. They just hate being inconvenienced. Never mind, don’t let that stop you. There’s plenty of more child beaver artists where that came from if you need them. We should know.
One of the talks at the conference I wanted to hear the most was Lorne Fitch of Cows and Fish in Alberta. In fact we thought it was important enough that he be there that Worth A Dam paid his travel expenses and the Leonard Houston hosted him at the hotel. Unfortunately my fearless live recorders had to leave early yesterday to get back to Portland, but Journalist and soon-to-be author, Ben Goldfarb was kind enough to film the talk with his phone. This is an imperfect recording, but you can hear most all of what he has to say and see most of his slides, so I’m enormously grateful for the effort. Lorne represents the very best at involving the community and meeting disbelieving ranchers exactly where they are. If you have stubborn folk you want to persuade about beavers, (and who doesn’t?) he is the speaker you need to hear. I will try to get a copy of his ppt slides when he gets safely home. The first moments of the video are bumpy but it gets better so stick with it.
The Canadian Town of Langley, just outside Vancouver, is facing some beaver challenges. Lucky for them they’re close enough to the work of Furbearer DefenderTheres to be surrounded by smart advice. Let’s just hope their wise enough to take it.
Animal advocates are meeting with the Township of Langley council Monday night to chip away at policies focused on nuisance animals. Fur-Bearers Spokesperson Adrian Nelson says the Township is hiring trappers to come in and kill beavers because they’re causing floods in the wetlands when they build dams.
“You know, the issue’s persisted there for probably decades, you know if not longer, so it just seems like a poor approach to keep doing the same thing when clearly it’s not working.”
Adrien Nelson training with Mike Callahan
Nelson calls the trapping a band-aid solution.
“Having a beaver in the area really isn’t an issue in itself, it’s just the flooding that they cause, so if you could put in infrastructure to control that flooding, you know, stop that flooding from happening, than you really don’t have any problems with the beavers being there.”
Nelson says he’d like to see pipe systems and fences installed instead behind the dams to prevent flooding.
Hurray for Adrien and sensible Beaver policy! I have to say, the man is getting pretty deft in his comments. I mean tossing out the ‘sensible approach’ and suggesting that trapping is just wasting time and money. That’s smart. Adrien met Mike at the first beaver conference and they did some installation together after that. Think how many smart people there will be in the world after this week.
There is a lovely interview with author Judith Schwartz about water scarcity today published in drmsriram that mentions the work of several beaver friends.
We might ask what kept the water cycle functioning before we came in and we chopped down trees and plowed up land and built cities.
One answer was beavers. California had beavers throughout much of the state. Beavers are a keystone species. They’re known as nature’s engineers. They build dams, and those dams hold water. As water filters through, it creates very rich soil and wetlands, which hold water in the landscape. The driest state in our country is Nevada. There are projects in Nevada going on right now of inviting beavers back onto the landscape. They started with ranchers, restoring the soil, and then the beavers came. Now, they have much more water. They have rivers and streams that are now flowing year round. You get snow that falls from the Sierras, and then it gets held in the soil or it flows away.
Knowledge@Wharton: The same thing could very well happen in California because you’re talking about the same type of demographic where you have snow in the high elevations that’s coming down to the lower areas.
Schwartz: Absolutely. In California, there is now an organization called Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and their WATER Institute has a “Bring Back the Beaver” campaign. There are many beaver fans out there.
Well, yes there are, thanks for thinking of us. Obviously the program mentioned in Nevada is the one started by Carol Evans when she worked for the Bureau of Land Managment. And the OAEC is our friends Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist who come to the beaver festival most years. Beavers save water. And we need Water. Point taken!
I read this yesterday and smiled broadly. Are we surprised that eco hero Paul Watson got his start with beavers? No we are not. This is from a recently published Earth Island interview.
I was raised in an eastern Canadian fishing village right on the Maine border, called St. Andrews. I used to swim with these beavers in a beaver pond when I was 10. I went back when I was 11 and found there were no more beavers. I found that trappers had taken them all so I became quite angry and that winter I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps. So that was really my first venture into activism.
A beaver appears to be missing a paw from a trapping mishap in Fish Creek Provincial Park. (Ingham Nature Photography )
Calgary officials are trying out a new way to manage beavers that are causing problems in Fish Creek Provincial Park.
The rodents keep packing mud and logs against a culvert in a city-owned storm pond. If left, the dam would cause the pond to overflow and flood a popular pathway.
In the spring, the city’s water services department is going to install something called an exclusion fence — a trapezoid shaped fence made of wire that prevents the beavers from plugging the culvert.
The city used to deal with situations like this by trapping and killing the beavers, but it reviewed that policy after an incident in July. A beaver got caught in a trap, but didn’t die and was spotted struggling to free itself.
Fish Creek Park Beavers
The area in Fish Creek Provincial Park where city officials tried to trap and kill the beaver over concerns it would flood a bike path. (Carla Beynon/CBC)
Upset animal lovers launched a petition to stop trapping in the city. That prompted the review, which revealed that debris got caught in the trap, causing it to malfunction. Since then, the city has been working with the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals to come up with non-lethal alternatives.
“We want to go a different route so we don’t actually have to kill beavers,” said water services spokesman Randy Girling. “We don’t want to be known as killers or anything like that. We want to do the best we can for the wildlife in our parks.”
Hurray for Adrien and Fur-Bearer Defenders! They managed to convince the good folk of FCPP that it was better to try something new than claw their way out of any more bad press and public wrath. Adrien says it was hard, hard work. Like pushing a grand piano through a transom. But they persevered and were granted permission to install a beaver deceiver now. Gosh, I’m so old I can remember when Adrien installed his first leveler!
Sniff, they grow up so fast.
Speaking of the long arm of beaver defenders, I got an invitation this morning to present at the San Pedro Valley Park in Pacifica on beavers. A month after I’ll be talking in Auburn. That’s 133 miles apart for beaver defense. 1670 if you count Utah and Oregon. And Cheryl just visited Big Break in Brentwood where she snapped these videos of our work at the visitors venter!
A few days ago this aired on CBC radio -. the middle segment is about installing fish passage boxes so that salmon could get over beaver dams in Nova Scotia . Victoria Neville does a pretty delicate job with the interview trying tp explain all the good beavers do. but it still dumbfounded me that the WWF would be using donations to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
