“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

Take this article from Massachusetts for example, where a forest manager has been explaining his continual removal of beaver dams because the property should be classified as agriculture. You know, I grow trees! The headline says it all. It means I’m going to keep looking for information until someone tells me what I want to hear.

More research needed to control beaver

A request by John Mirick to continue to work to maintain existing water levels and flow on his Chapter 61 property, and clean, clear and restore existing manmade and natural management system for ongoing agricultural commodities, raised lengthy discussion among conservation commission members at their June 20 meeting.

The DEP advised the commission of a beaver dam breaching on the property. Commissioners visited the site in April and learned that sticks had been taken out of the spillway and were piled up in a field and eventually burned to maintain the natural flow of the brook. Beavers have constructed two additional dams on the brook.

“We have to come to a determination about what activities are permissible in the stream within the Wetlands Act,” said commission chairman Brian Keevan.

The property has been in the Forestry Program since the 1970s. The beavers moved into the stream in 2008 and property owner John Mirick has kept the spillway open since then by removing some of the sticks. An enforcement action was issued to put a time frame on the project and give Mirick time to file a notice of intent to manage the water levels or ask for a request for determination.

Mirick said he’d talked with Peter Mirick from Mass Fish & Wildlife and was told that forestry is agriculture and he could maintain the water channel to keep it open. About once a week we pull out sticks and once a year burn them, he said. It seems to me it falls under the regulations to maintain the area for agricultural use, to restore or maintain a man-made water system, and to maintain the flow on existing waterways, he said. “So it appeared to me to be exempt under the regulations. We’re just trying to maintain the water level, not lower it,” said Mirick. “If the water backs up it saturates the soil and kills the trees.”

“Breaching a beaver dam isn’t allowed,” said Commissioner John Vieira. He said there are devices that can be used to control water level when beavers are present. “We’ve been asked to look into this and render a decision,” said Vieira. When beaver activity has created a public safety problem there is a process you have to go through, he added. They can be trapped and the board of health is usually contacted and they work with the commission, said Vieira. Breaching a dam changes the hydrology of the surrounding area so it’s considered an alteration, he said.

 I didn’t destroy the building your honor, I just took out some of the concrete and a few of the girders, the rest fell down on it’s own! At least Commissioner Vieira has hear of flow devices before and knows this problem has a solution. I believe this particular forest is a whopping 2 hour drive from Mike Callahan and beaver solutions. You would think the word had trickled down by now. Apparently  Mirick will keep right on searching for answers until he finds the one that tells him to keep doing exactly the same thing over and over.

I realize I’m not being very patient here. But this man is arguably in the best place for solving beaver problems in the entire country, if not the world. And not only has he not gone to see Mike or bought the DVD or talked to a neighbor, he hasn’t even cracked open a website to read about it. Just a reminder the the city of Martinez brought in an expert from Vermont because everyone in our town 3000 miles away had done their homework and read about the solutions in 2007.

And we’re not exactly a university town, if you take my meaning.

More confusion from this article posted yesterday about famed photographer Rick Price of Canada. It’s quite a nice article about how he captures wildlife in their element, but it has one photo of a beaver I cannot comprehend. Maybe you can help me?

Hungry bears and busy beavers: Alberta photographer captures animals in their elements

This is a busy time of year for Alberta’s wild animals as they emerge after the long winter — even if we don’t get to see most of the action. But with skill, patience and some long lenses, nature photographer Rick Price recently snapped these great shots of beavers in Hinton and bears in the mountain parks. 

“The trick to beaver sightings is that they are only out at extreme dawn and dusk, and the other 95 per cent of the day you won’t see them,” he said.  

Okay, there are lots of photos like the one above that we totally recognize and understand but then there’s the one I can’t get my head around. It honestly doesn’t even really look real.  The caption says “don’t be fooled by this the fuzzy appearance, this is a ferocious rodent”. But honestly what puzzles me isn’t the ferocious part, or the larger bottom teeth, it’s the fact that those sets of teeth are two different colors.

Now we are taught that beaver teeth turn orange from the iron in their diet, and kit teeth are white until they eat enough solid food. But does this mean that all beavers only eat with their bottom teeth? Or that this particular beaver only eats with his bottom teeth? Jon doesn’t think the top incisors even look like teeth.

Has the evil hand of photoshop has played a part?

You, tell me. I don’t know. I just am well aware that it’s not what anyone would expect. Remember we have one shot of upper and lower teeth from our good friend Sylvie, and I believe they were all the same color. So is this a fake? Or a freak?