Tag: Alex Hiller

Going deep

Two recent stories have new information that I’m grimly going to share. To start with the mayor of “Tom’s River” who was going to “consider humane alternatives to trapping” turns out not to have considered them very long. Times up! Beaver trapping season is open and no one should be surprised at his conclusion.

Activists angered by decision to trap Toms River beavers

TOMS RIVER — A state-licensed trapper has been hired by the township to remove beavers whose dam-building activities have led to complaints from neighbors who live near Lake Placid.

The township’s decision to hire the trapper — who began working in the area Dec. 27 — frustrated representatives from Gloucester County’s Unexpected Wildlife Refuge, who met earlier this month with Toms River officials in an attempt to convince them to use nonlethal means to prevent the lake’s beaver population from building dams that have flooded neighboring properties.

“Trapping is the only viable, long-term solution to provide a practical and financial means of responding to the presence of beavers on town-owned and managed lands,” a statement issued by the township reads. “Trapping ensures that property damage and human health and safety risks are minimized and that quality of life is preserved for residents.:

Township officials said that in spite of their efforts, more beaver dams have appeared in Lake Placid in recent years. Moving the beavers is not an option since the state Division of Fish and Wildlife does not allow relocation of the aquatic rodents, officials said.

The township says the beaver dams “alter waterways, destroy forests and threaten homes and roads.” Beaver trapping in New Jersey runs from Dec. 26 to Feb. 9.

Ugh. I’ve highlighted your “Proceed governor“moment. That’s where I’d start my response.

If I were there I’d try saying something like “I’m relieved to hear it’s a long term solution, Mayor.” Then follow up with “How long?” Brightly cheerful. “How long did you say the trapper is guaranteeing his work?” Wait a second, and then “Because Mike Callahan guarantees his installation for five years, I’m assuming that trapper will come back and do whatever is necessary for that long too?” See if you can get them to acknowledge that when new beavers move in the city will have to pay again. See if you can get them to talk about the payment for the trapper and how long it usually takes beavers to recolonize adequate habitat.

I agree that its rotten the city said they were pretending to look for solutions while the press was there. And then did exactly what they had always planned the second their backs were turned. But stop recommending compassion, because no ones listening. Talk about saving money. Talk about hiring a trapper four times in five years versus letting you install the culvert fence for free. And ask the mayor which he thinks is a better use of taxpayer funds.

Van Hof, of Unexpected Wildlife Refuge, said her group offered to pay for installation and maintenance of a trapezoid-style fenced beaver deterrent that she said has been proven to have “98 percent effectiveness in historically badly flooded municipalities.” She said the trademarked beaver deterrents suggested by the group, called either “Beaver Deceivers” or “Culver Clear,” require almost no maintenance.

She said the group offered to visit the site weekly to monitor the effectiveness of the beaver deterrent device. The longer beaver deterrent devices lead the beavers farther away from the culvert or pipe and prevent them from successfully damming it, Van Hof said.

Great work offering to do it yourself. Now follow up with the statement that “Rather than allowing us to carry this cost you’re saying its better make tax-payers do it?” And see if you can get that covered by the papers. They are being weasels, and not the pretty kind. Let slip the watchdogs of war. (In a very polite way.)

cooper crane — **Cooper Crane posing in Worth A Dam shirts after our legal challenge failed to stop the sheetpile was installed thru the beaver lodge.**

More news about the firecracker beaver from our longtime German friend Alex Hiller (posing here for photo with Skip Lisle at the beaver symposium a few years back). He researched the local papers and found that the tragic death really did happen about a week ago. He highlights that fireworks are illegal in Germany and these were probably purchased in Poland. He writes,

It is a sad story you forwarded to me. Unfortunately the incident is being approved by necropsy. The corpse of the female beaver kid of 6 months age was being discovered at the bank of a lake besides the castle of Koenigs-Wusterhausen. The wife of the local hunter had witnessed teens throwing firecrackers into the lake the day before. The incident happened about a week ago.

What was being discovered by necropsy were ear drums on both sides destroyed and ripped open. Its liver and brain had clogged blood vessels resulting from shock. Death was caused from drowing, because lots of water was found in its lungs and stomach. It was assumed that firecrackers could have caused an underwater shockwave resulting in the beaver kid`s death.

Alex is a trusted beaver researcher with boots on the ground. He even found a grisly article from B.Z. showing the ruptured eardrums. (Because German papers are like just that.) So this means it really happened and that when people blow up dams they occasionally blow out beaver eardrums. . (Which is quite upsetting to think about.) It makes me worried for our little beavers in retrospect. And now I’m thinking that maybe that ‘mourning beaver’ recorded by Bernie Krause also had his own hearing loss and couldn’t tell how loud he was being?

You can watch that if you dare, I never will again because it is just too sad. The bright spot in this gloomy follow-up is that Worth A Dam still has a generous beaver friend in Germany who is willing to do some research and translating for us when needed. Thank you Alex, for your valuable aid, and hopefully the next story I ask you to sniff out will be a more beaver cheerful one!

Beavers: The future and the past

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? June 10, 2015

Let’s start out with some momentous news. Last night in Napa they almost certainly saw three kits. HURRAY THREE KITS!!! One appears to charge off with the adults to feed, so missed his photo opportunity in his rush to maturity, but they are pretty sure it’s a brave little kit they’re seeing. Congratulations Napatopia, we’re excited for you!

Now its on to some inspiration from our great friend Camilla Fox who lent full ‘Project Coyote‘ voice recently to the Bobcat hearing in Santa Rosa. Great work team bobcat!

Finally an update and a short poll. I know you all recognize the fellow on the left, but the gentleman on the right might be less familiar to our new readers. This is Alex Hiller a beaver supporter from Germany who once came to america to visit a beaver family with Hope Ryden of the famed Lily Pond book. Alex was an early and dedicated supporter and attended the beaver symposium in Lithuania, shocking the heck out of Skip and Glynnis by wearing his Worth A Dam t-shirt shown here.

I hadn’t heard from Alex in a while and I thought I’d send him the Geo article in case he hadn’t seen it and wanted to help with a translate. This morning he wrote back sighting an old German saying, “Some people you assume to have perished only got married.” He announced that he met and married a wonderful woman from Sri Lanka who was passionate about elephants so they were focusing their energies there for the time being. How cool is that? Congratulations Alex! We wishing you every happiness but we will miss our reliable foreign correspondent!

Lastly. if we were offering recycled bags for sale at the festival would you prefer a green bag with a logo or a khaki bag with this in brown? I like them both so you’re vote is needed. Let me know here. Thanks!

What do you do…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions May 29, 2011

Do you know this delightful book? A series of increasingly bossy animals appear in this hardy child’s life and she works pluckily to remove them one after the other.

What do you do with a kangaroo

who hops through your window and

jumps on you bed and says,

“I never sleep on wrinkled sheets,

so change them now and make them smooth,

and fluff up the pillows if you please?

The heroine isn’t at all discouraged.

You throw him out that’s what you do!

“Get away from my bed, you Kangaroo”.

This fairly amusing encounter is followed by a series of other increasingly unrealistic demands – an opossum hanging on her towel rack who requires a new toothbrush, a llama who wants her pants tailored, and finally a menacing bengal tiger who sits on her bicycle and orders she push him all the way to the circus before being eaten. She blithely dispatches every single one of these unreasonable requests with a no non-sense pragmatism and goes about her business doing what she always does.

Give that tiger a push, if that’s what he wants. You push him right off, and that’s all there is to it.

Until bedtime.

What do you do if it’s late at night but all snuggled up

where you always sleep is a Camel, a Moose, a Llama, an

Opossum, a Tiger, a Raccoon and a Kangaroo?

“We’re very sorry if you want to sleep but as you can see

there is no more room. So make some warm milk and bring

us a glass and find some more blankets- it’s chilly in here and

remember the chocolate chip cookies.”

Of course the heroine continues to solve the problems as she always did, which is try to haul the intruding animals away and get her own bed back – to claim her territory and return to her normal routine. She tries like the Martinez City Council tried and like New Jersey tried, and like Kings Beach tried and like Latvia tried to get rid of the unwelcome animals, stop the disruption, prevent further damage and return things back to normal. There are a series of adorable illustrations by Mercer Mayer showing again and again how gallantly she persists in an effort that is rapidly becoming futile.

But in the end, it’s late, she needs to sleep, the odds are clearly against her, and she suddenly realizes the rules that she once played by have changed.

What do you do if you can’t throw them out?

You let them stay.

Cue adorable illustration of plucky little girl snuggled comfortably with a camel, a tiger, a kangaroo, a moose, a raccoon and an opossum. Aww. This story is offered by way of an introduction to the remarkable update from Latvia that was sent by our famed foreign correspondent, Alex Hiller. Remember beavers had taken over the canals and the city council decided to have a contest to see who could best [fail] to solve the problem and decide what to do with them? Alex traveled to the region and had lunch with the environmental minister to talk about wire wrapping trees and flow devices.

Yesterday he sent this:

In case you can’t make out the translated headline, it reads

“ENCOUNTER BEAVERS IN RIGA!!!”

The city council received a wide range of proposals – hunting them, scaring away with vuvuzela sounds, setting up 24h patrols, or even domesticating them. Finally the officials decided to put fencing around the trees and to feed the animals.

dscf0992[1] — Alex in Worth A Dam t-shirt in Riga

From all of us a at bossy kangaroo-opossum-raccoon-moose-llama-camel-tiger-BEAVER central – thank you, Alex. Very nice work.

Croatia?

heidi08 Educational, Environmental February 9, 2011

One of the things Dr. Hood asked me in the airport was whether I was planning on coming to the 6th annual beaver symposium in Croatia. I laughed aloud and said that I had a day job that didn’t allow me to talk about beavers all the time. But I did approach Alex Hiller, our beloved ‘foreign correspondent’ in Germany to see if he’d be there next year. Guess what I got back?

Indeed I`m planning to attend the 6th Int. Beaver Symposium in Croatia as your foreign correspondent. Glynnis Hood must have been impressed by your presentation and what else you contributed in talks among the participants and become a strong voice in beaver advocacy and research. The Damlet story touched my heart. Best Alex

Gee thanks and that should be fun! We are so lucky to read Alex’s brilliantly composed (and translated!) notes. Let me say that it is much harder to do in person. If the talk is transportingly inspiring and memorable you are too distracted to write down what you love. And if the talk is awsomely tedious and dull, I find i’m too deeply in a coma state to form complete sentences. Alex on the ground works the best for all of us.

I just received word that I’m to ‘call in’ to Ken Brown’s “Mornings in Sonoma” radio program when Tom Rusert will be the guest and discuss the upcoming presentation in Sonoma. (Gulp) The goal is to sound so intriguing that everyone listening will have to come Thursday night to find out more. The best part is that the host is also in his 4th term on the city council, so getting him to be a beaver believer would be a major accomplishment. If you’d care to listen in on the 22nd at 9:30 am go here or if you’re in range, tune into 91.3.

It’s a little bit beaver crazy around here at the moment. Oregon. Sonoma. Yosemite. Thank goodness they lost our application for the Flyway festival and we can take the weekend off. The beaver mapping tool idea has produced some very interesting conversations amongst the conference attendees. I apparently am the sole voice of disclosure, which is interesting. I just heard from Stan Pietrowski, president of SURCP, that he’d be willing for his complex, intelligent email on the subject to be a guest blog if its okay with everyone else. Stay tuned.

Keeping Promises

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Recent Sightings, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 12, 2010

I promised I would offer Cheryl’s adorable otter picture from Friday night, when he snorted at her and demanded she leave the area in his “I’m an otter” manner. Look at the teeth on that charmer and tell me he isn’t eating well! With our kits long past danger-size its easier to just enjoy this unexpected visitor. Lots of water movement. Lots of noisy eating and satisfied crunching. Otters are fully prepared to enjoy everything they do — and you just ruin it. They make sure you know.

Let’s see what else. Well, the city of Oshawa promised their beaver-saving residents they’d find a non-lethal solution. They pointedly ignored the names and suggestions of every single professional we sent them and went back to the same environmental firm that said killing them was the best option in the first place. Then they awarded them a contract of 60,000 dollars to do a few tweaks and monitor the situation. 60,000 dollars! You could bring Skip, Mike and Sherri in dancing costumes for that kind of money! (Hmmm…that sounds kinda fun. Next years festival?) The paper is calling it a ‘temporary solution’ which it may well be. (I of course wrote and asked if they used the same headline when they recommended trapping, which is also a ‘temporary solution’.)

Oh and the council did keep their promise and try to find out the gender of the beaver that was ‘accidentally’ trapped after the trapping had been halted. Guess what they learned? The trapper, a seasoned and pragmatic animal culler with years of experience, told them that “you couldn’t know the sex because beaver sex parts are all on the inside.” No, I’m not kidding. (Mind you, I’m fairly certain that delicate condition describes half of any species ever discovered). He means of course that even male beavers have no external sex characteristics. They do have a different anatomical structure but it takes a moment (and an ounce of training) to identify and by then the body was already tossed in the incinerator and he was off for his next job. For the record, I am wholly certain that sexual organs would be of no use to any species whatsoever if they all remained inside…just saying.

Which brings us to Riga, Latvia where the city kept its promise to hold a ‘contest’ to solve the pesky beaver problem which gave them an excuse to let maintenance slag while tires and crates clog up their culverts. It rained a massive amount a while back and now their streets and parks are flooded and of course its the beavers fault. Go watch the video and tell me whether you think a few beaver dams created that problem. Apparently 90% percent of the population thinks they did, which was obviously the point of this machiavellian delay. One article says that the items seen here, ripped from a culvert were “used by beavers in their dam making”. (Ahh many’s the morning I’ve watched mom and dad beaver painstakingly laying tires on the dam. I just start to worry when they take them directly off the cars.)

Now before we in Martinez get full of righteous indignation at those Northern European Neanderthals, I must keep my other promise, which was to talk about sheetpile and what I learned from Alex’s Riga photos. The city park has a series of canals that are lined with sheetpile for stability. Alex sent some lovely pictures for us to ponder including this one:

Click on the picture to see it larger. Look at those lovely manicured banks. Gosh, I would like to go there. Look at that even line along the waters edge. It almost makes the sheetpile invisible. I wish our sheetpile ended at the waterline like that. Wait a minute. Wait just a worthadam minute! Why doesn’t it? Why on earth does the sheetpile wall in Martinez continue 8 feet up the bank? Um, because of the beavers? Nope. Beavers only dig holes they started under the waterline, not into the bank like badgers. Are you sure about that? I mean they are pretty darn destructive. Yes I am sure. When beavers dig their massive caverns under the ground they enter from below the water line. Look it up.

So what’s all that sheetpile there for? Why is their concrete poured behind it? Why doesn’t ours end at the water or a foot above it (to account for tides) like Riga’s? Why isn’t it like the historic sheetpile wa ll at the waterline Worth A Dam discovered in historical photos? Because, dear readers, the sheetpile wall was never put there to stop beaver damage. It was put there to stop water damage. So that in the high flow months, when water pours down the gutters and streets and floods the creek like it did last winter (when the beaver lodge was completely under water), it won’t erode the bank and cause damage to the property. This is what the city of Martinez promised to do way back when they made creek businesses pay a special assessment into the flood abatement project 10 years ago. This is what Martinez ran out of money for by the time they got to Escobar Street. This is what that particular property owner always resented and why he wanted meeting after meeting about the beavers. And this is how the beavers gave them all an excuse to solve the problem once and for all.

(Beavers change things. It’s what they do.)

So we get 8 feet of sheetpile, lose half a million dollars, turn one of our most visible and visited stretches of creek into a scene from “cannery row” and the floods are averted.

I guess cities do keep promises – just not in the way you’d expect.