Tag: Beaver Deceivers

Beavers and Drought

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? October 4, 2016

We’re an equal opportunity employer here at beaver central. Yesterday I wrote about Mike Callahan of Massachusetts and today I’m writing about Skip Lisle of Vermont. There was a nice article about the current drought with him (and beavers) featured.

The Ecological Impact Of The Current Drought

Scenes from the West’s five-year drought are striking – the cracked mud at the bottom of a dry reservoir, forests in flames. Wonder what a drought would look like in the Northern Forest? Just look out the window.

This is the first time that any part of New Hampshire has been in an “extreme drought” since the federal government began publishing a drought index in 2000, said Mary Lemcke-Stampone, the state’s climatologist. “Using state records, you have to go back to the early ‘80s to get the extreme dryness we’ve been seeing in southeastern New Hampshire.”

Other parts of the region have been abnormally dry for some time. New York State has issued a drought warning for the Southern Tier and Western New York, which is an extreme drought, while the Adirondacks remain “abnormally dry” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceiver International, a beaver-control company that uses non-lethal means, said that beavers have droughts covered. “All those little dams and reservoirs keep water on the landscape,” he said. They have floods covered, too, as those same dams and reservoirs release peak flows slowly.

Intact ecosystems, Lisle said, have a way of coping. “Droughts are good. Floods are good. Dynamism is good. It’s been going on forever.”

Yes beavers are good for drought and Skip is good for beavers! Keep doing what you do saving the water-savers and we’ll do our best to write about it here. I’m curious about our own beavers at the moment. Will the arrival of autumn prompt them into starting an actual dam? They have no yearlings to help them so it much be a harder job. Although I guess all beavers everywhere have started thus at some point in their furry lives.

I hope I’m not jinxing anything by making them a video but I think we have to behave like Martinez has beavers because last time I checked it does. And it rained all day yesterday so what’s a girl to do?

The very good, the pretty good, the slightly good, and the ugly

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 27, 2013

First we should give MORE kudos to our beaver friends at Fur-bearer Defenders who have strewn a path of beaver deception around the municipality of Mission in British Columbia just outside of Vancouver, installing 9 beaver deceivers to control flooding in culverts.

Beaver deceiver prevents dams from being built

A beaver deceiver being installed in Mission. Each unit saves the municipality thousands of dollars annually. Submitted phot

Gosh, I’m so old I can remember when Adrian Nelson had just gotten married and nervously installed his very first one after chatting a lot to Mike Callahan and scouring his DVD. And now these installs are practically a piece of cake! Delicious, effective cake that they actually talk an entire city into paying for!

The non-profit group approached the district with a simple, non-lethal alternative for managing flooding concerns associated with beaver activity: build a wire fence around the culvert intake, interrupting the beavers’ natural instinct to build where there’s current and the sound of flowing water. “They work awesome,” said Dale Vinnish, public works operations supervisor. “We don’t have to trap beavers. They moved elsewhere. They’re not causing a problem.”

The nine “beaver deceivers,” at $400-$600 apiece and built in one day, save the district thousands of dollars, because workers no longer have to pull apart dams. Previously, the municipality would break down two to three dams daily, several days a week, in addition to paying for the capturing and killing of about a dozen beavers annually.

“If we weren’t trapping, we were going in continuously to break apart the dams,” said Vinnish.

Great work Fur-bearer Defenders! We are entirely impressed that you are easily giving Washington State a run for it’s money as the beaver-management champion of the northern hemisphere. Go Mission!

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New footage from our famous San Jose beaver friends. Love the ‘urban safari’ feel of this video. Sadly if this is momma beaver, I’m not seeing any teats, and that means no silicon valley kits this year!

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Next, a nice column on ‘Extinction Events’ from Minnesota. His point is climate change, but my point (as always) is beavers!

For instance the pond created behind a beaver dam becomes the habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal species. Remove the beaver engineers and the entire ecosystem collapses.

It’s about time we start to realize the number of species that are displaced or wiped out when beavers are removed. Trickle-down economies work both ways. I wasn’t happy with this later sentence “Without the stream, there could be no beaver dam” because that’s not exactly true. I’ve heard of beaver creating ponds from tiny springs, so that the big beautiful pond becomes the only water in a desert. Certain ephemeral streams (like we have here in California that dry up in the summer) wouldn’t dry up if we had enough beavers. I kindly sent him this Chumash legend:

Author Jan Timbrook who is a curator for the Santa Barbara museum of natural history described this in her book ‘Chumash Ethnobotany” has some very interesting things to say about beavers:

“A willow stick that had been cut by a beaver was thought to have the power to bring water. The Chumash would treat the stick with ‘ayip ( a ritually powerful sbustance made from alum) and then plant it in the ground to create a permanent spring of water.”

Jan Timbrook, Chumash Ethobotany p. 180

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And on to the ugly. I’ve been sitting with this story a couple of days, but its fairly unavoidable and we better deal with it. This is the kind of negative advertising I hate, even more than I hate the Belarus story. Ultimately Americans value roads much more even than we value human life. Now every city will be more tempted to tell property owners they’re liable for beaver dams. Call me crazy, but it seems like if you’re worried about the stability of a dam, the smart thing to do is to reinforce it!

Flooding damages road in West Warren MA

People Deceivers

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational May 18, 2013

I thought I’d dedicate today to the spectacularly bad attempts made around the country to ‘deceive’ beavers without actually reading any instructions or talking to an expert. Let’s be charitable and assume that at least some of these attempts are truly efforts by well-meaning folks who just don’t know any better, but I am certain that others are purposeful fails: so that DOT or DPW can throw up their hands at those awful ‘compassionistas’ and say ‘see we tried your way, but it doesn’t work. Now we have no choice but to kill them.’

: Beaver deceiver helps reduce flooding but preserves habitat:Seattle Public Utilities and the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation are putting the finishing touches on a “beaver deceiver” on Thornton Creek near Northgate.

Any discussion of faulty flow devices must of necessity include two categories: the first is simply an error in nomenclature – meaning someone installs a flow device and calls it a ‘beaver deceiver’ when its really more of a flexible leveler or castor master – these labels refer to a protected pipe that controls dam height. This is the most benign of offenses and much slack must be cut to those who wield this effort or the media who simply mislabels it or misquotes. If the device works what do we care if it is named correctly? Maybe I’ve been grading on too much of a curve for too long, but I say if it appears that there’s a batsqueak’s chance in hell that it will solve the problem, they can call it anything they want and we should classify this as a Type I error and give the installers a cookie anyway.

It’s likely the DPW intends to inspect the integrity of the “beaver deceiver” system once the water recedes and make repairs if needed. Thus they’re clearing the nightly dam installed by the beavers around the pipe. (Photo 2)

Which is not to say that the naming issue isn’t important and any beaver management expert is likely to get fairly hot under the collar if you call the wrong thing by the wrong label. (Trust me, I know.) Even now Jimmy Taylor of USDA in Oregon is fiercly working to write a paper that clarifies the different labels and puts definitions in print so that there will be some consistency in the terms. Still, a rose by any other name….Beaver beggars can’t be choosers.

Of course not all cases of mistaken identity are so benign. More egregious cases of deceit occur with Type II Errors, where we can only drop our jaws in a WTF homage. These are almost certainly deliberate attempts to fool the public, or harm the beavers, or sometimes both. Here are a few breath-taking examples of Type II Errors.

I believe there actually is a kind of Type III Error which I’ve seen more often recently. I would define it as ‘trying a little bit’. In a Type III error there seems to be some recognition of the tools for beaver management and some acknowledgment that these sometimes work, but a failure of commitment to the concept so that the tools are haphazardly employed. A perforated pipe through a dam might be a Type III error, or a short pipe with a tiny fence around it. These attempts are difficult to catagorize because it isn’t immedilately clear whether they are attempts to fool the public or the beavers or just the actions of very lazy installers. But they do deserve their own label for now. An example of this is very near by in Cordelia with a beaver colony we’ve been watching out for. And if our city staff doesn’t get out and put the filter back on Skip’s flow device soon, Martinez will become another one!

: Almost Clemson Pond Leveler in Cordelia: Cheryl Reynolds

Still learning? Here’s some basics: Flow devices noclemature.

The Future of Beavers

heidi08 Creative Solutions December 29, 2009

So yesterday I had a chance to meet with new beaver-friend Brock Dolman and walk him around the dams. He had fascinating questions and things to say about the flora and fauna in the area. One thing that has him particularly motivated at the moment is the reintroduction project for beavers in the Russian River Area. He would like to work with the salmon people to spread the news about beavers helping salmon, and use that as a foothold to get them viewed in a different way. Potential rather than Pest.

He obviously didn’t have to do much convincing with me!

Still, I wanted to make sure to show him the flow device and talk about its value, because after three years of following these stories, it is clear to me that the future of beavers is inextricably tied to the future of flow devices and culvert fences. People are going to complain and worry about water height. They are going to get upset about road flooding. Even if the salmon personally swam onto their doorstep, there will be no way to convince them to keep beavers without some proven management tools. The techniques may be out there, but having someone knowledgeable implement them makes the difference between a device that works and pays for itself many times over, and a failed installation that allows beaver-foes to say pedantically “those things never work”. (See Mary Tappel and the Entire Department of CA Fish & Game!)

So where are the professional installers? Well first and foremost is Skip Lisle of Vermont. He is the inventor of the “beaver deceiver” and learned his trade back with the Penobscot Nation where he discovered that beavers dislike trapezoidal shapes and won’t build dams against fences in that shape. Skip travels around the country and around the world doing installs, and training. He installed our successful flow device which will be 2 years old on Saturday.

In the late 90’s, Mike and Ruth Callahan attended a Humane Society workshop on beavers and formed the Pioneer Valley Wetland Volunteers. Mike trained with Skip Lisle and learned the ropes, gradually building a great demand for his skills around the State of Massachusetts. Eventually he quit the day job and started the business of Beaver Solutions. Mike Feels strongly that the best way to increase the beaver population is to teach more people about successful beaver management. He received an AWI grant last year to do just that. His DVD will be launched in the Spring.

Jake Jacobsen is the watershed steward for Stillaquamish county in Washington State. He teaches local property owners in his jurisdiction the ins and outs of beaver management. He also works with several non-profits around the area to teach the installation of flow devices and culvert blockers. In his spare time (?) Jake manages his own, international nonprofit, dedicated to protecting watersheds. Meanwhile, the savvy Washington state also boasts The Lands Council, with not one but two Vista Corp trainees learning the skills of beaver management. They are responsible for the Beaver solution video, and boast the very best beaver site on the web. (sniff)

Mary O’Brien is the Utah Forests Manager for the Grand Canyon Trust. She was the powerhouse behind the “Working Beaver Conference” and a major force for beaver advocacy in Utah. Remember, Utah’s State Department of Wildlife is introducing a state wide beaver management program this year, so they know their flow devices.

Ned Bruha (AKA: The Skunk Whisperer) is a rockstar of wildlife rescue out in Oklahoma where he uses humane methods to manage all kinds of wildlife problems. Ned has been particularly interested in communicating with Worth A Dam about beavers, and we recently put him in touch with Mike Callahan to get some flow device pointers.

Sharon & Owen Brown, of Beavers Wetlands & Wildlife, are trustees of the beaver sanctuary bequeathed by famous advocate Dorothy Richards in New York State. They are connected to all the beaver developments around the nation and are a wealth of information about flow devices and their installation.

Sarah Summerville is the trustee of the Unexpected Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, which is the inherited organization and lands of well know beaver advocate Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci. Sarah is a great beaver friend herself and has learned a thing or two about flow devices.

Last but certainly not least, Skip Hilliker is a former trapper and new found beaver management advocate in Connecticut. He is an employee of the Humane Society for that state, and spends the year doing beaver installations.

Okay, that should be a basic introduction. Here’s some footage to give you the idea.