Tag: Beavers and Flooding

A FLOOD OF BEAVER INFORMATION

heidi08 Beavers and water November 23, 2017

This busy morning, before we do the stuffing, feed the cat or straighten becky’s hair for the grand family palooza we’re expecting this afternoon, let’s stop and be thankful for this letter to the editor. Even if does appear paired with a photo of a nutria which I will not be reposting here for obvious reasons.

Reader’s letter: Beavers can prevent flooding

I read with interest about Green Party deputy leader Amelia Womack’s visit to England’s first beaver reintroduction in east Devon this week. The River Otter Beaver Trial is a five-year project, led by Devon Wildlife Trust in partnership with Exeter University, running until 2020.

The trial is monitoring the beavers’ impact on the landscape, other wildlife, water resources, water quality, local communities and infrastructure, and local farms. Initial results reveal strong evidence for the role beavers might play in reducing flooding downstream, even during prolonged wet periods.

The trial is already producing promising results that indicate the role beavers can play in helping to protect our towns and cities from floods, while giving us a richer, more exciting natural world.

Floods are devastating for communities, as we have seen in Stroud – they destroy our homes and belongings, damage our economy and disrupt our daily lives. Without serious action to tackle climate change, the floods we face every winter are only going to get worse.

But just a small number of beavers can have a disproportionate effect on the environment around them, influencing water flow, improving water quality and increasing biodiversity and bringing great benefits to other wildlife.

Successful flood prevention means working with nature starting with our soils and land management which hold huge capacity to absorb intense rainfall, through to allowing more space for rivers and floodplains to behave more naturally, not covering it in concrete. This is about working with the grain of nature and not battling against it.

But there are potential challenges ahead, not least the possible impacts these industrious creatures could have on farmland. The trial is looking at all the possible impacts, and exploring how we can maximise the positive and minimise the negative ones.

I have heard of attempts to get salmon back to Salmon Springs, so why not introduce the beaver to the River Frome? It may well complement the great work that Chris Uttley at Stroud District Council has been doing with Rural Sustainable Drainage in the Stroud Valleys.

Tracey Fletcher: Ruscombe Stroud

Nice work Tracey! You covered all the basics and then some! If only every letter about beavers was equally well prepared I could retire and move to Florida. I’m sorry about the photo of the nutria and I wish that I could promise that once beaver re-acquaints itself with beaver they’ll know better and these kinds of mistakes won’t happen, but America is living proof that’s not true. It still happens all the time, to our small papers, or nonprofit cousins, and even our scientists from NOAA or the Forest Service!

But the letter was EXCELLENT!

We at Worth A Dam wish you a fine feast with family and friends today. Mine will have a new baby on scene (born a month early, like me!) from my niece and four generations of Perryman’s arguing over who gets the drumstick. I am thankful my sister is hosting it and I don’t have to, Also thankful that we have beavers in Martinez again (even if we can’t see them), that we have will have another festival in a new park, and that Amy Gallaher Hall will be donating her talented chalk art. I am also grateful for the shiny new website (thanks Scott Artis) that I am nearly starting to get the hang of, and that I heard this week from author Ben Goldfarb that he has just completed his first draft of the wonderful new beaver book and is planning on a much better title.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are bringing stuffed cherry tomatoes. How about you?

Just the good beaver news

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and water, Mike Callahan, Who's saving beavers now? May 7, 2017

We had a great day yesterday and were especially happy to meet four separate people before 1 who started out by explaining that they attended “that big meeting to save the beavers way back when.” I was especially happy that the four strangers all said they didn’t speak because everyone there was doing such a great job already. I am always very happy to meet people that didn’t speak at that meeting. Because it means there were so many more people there that I even knew about.

No wonder the city council looked pale!

More good news about the Beaver Institute, still in it’s formative stages. Director Mike Callahan wrote me this week that he had just finished the first grant application.

Yesterday I sent in our first grant application for the Beaver Institute. Hopefully we’ll be awarded $10K from the Animal Welfare Institute, with us providing an equal amount for a big website, training webinars, getting the DVD on-line, and training and certifying flow device installers in 5 states, with a 5 year goal of a network of certified installers in all 49 beaver-inhabited states. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.

I love love LOVE the idea of certified installers. That means no more lying public works employee saying they installed a beaver deceiver because they inserted a broken pipe or half a straw. Will it be like a drivers test? Will their be a written portion?

I heard yesterday that Worth A Dam was awarded our grant from the CCC Fish and Wildlife Commission for the beaver festival activity that will let children earn their wildlife tattoos. Hurray!!! That’s 1000 dollars we won’t have to pay for. Something in me must have wanted to educate the commissioners as well, because this was the opening paragraph of the application:

The importance of beaver and their dams to salmonids, biodiversity, nitrate removal and water storage is becoming ever more widely recognized. In a recent article about restoring beaver populations in the United Kingdom, science writer Alex Riley aptly observed, “A beaver is not just an animal. It is an ecosystem.” This quote starkly illustrates how dramatically beaver presence enriches our creeks, and conversely, how severely beaver removal depletes them. Despite this, and despite the success of management techniques demonstrated for a decade in Martinez, beaver depredation remains common. Last year in this county alone, the 7 beaver depredation permits issued included three for an unlimited take. We do not emphasize enough that every time beaver removal occurs there are significant consequences for fish and wildlife, something that ecological education should strive to correct. With this in mind, our project was designed to teach children the importance of beavers’ role in the ecosystem, highlighting the direct impact they have on other wildlife.

Sometimes I get the weird feeling that getting a PhD in child psychology was the perfect training for doing a kid’s education beaver festival grant. Maybe it was destiny after all?

More good news, there was an excellent article in the Sunday Times yesterday in the UK. The paper is mostly behind a subscriber wall but I could tell from the first two paragraphs I wanted to see the rest. I of course went begging from my friends for help and the Scottish professor from Edinburgh was happy to assist. Thanks!

Busy beavers shore up our defences

If only someone in authority had had the foresight to call for beavers, thousands of flood victims across the country may not have ended up forced out of their homes with nowhere to go.

A new report by Devon Wildlife Trust uses scientific data from a pilot scheme to reveal that the rodent engineers are able to staunch floodwater by using their dams to store it in pools and canals, thereby lessening the impact downriver. The dams, constructed from mud and sticks, leak a continuous stream of water, which allows the ponds to refill during heavy rainfall. Beavers constantly adjust their water systems, increasing the number and size of dams, pools and canals to accommodate the volume of water.

The statistical data, gathered in what is believed to be the only scientific study of its type in the world, reveal that beavers could also be an alternative to hosepipe bans in times of drought because the dams continue to leak water downstream, even when upstream ponds have run dry. In dry parts of America, Coca-Cola has successfully used beavers to replenish water. The trust’s report also found that as water progresses through the beavers’ dams, it is purged of contaminants such as farming fertilisers and silt.

Isn’t that wonderful? Just in case you don’t have a Scottish professor friend, you can go read the whole thing here. But the upshot is that beavers make water better, and we need them in the places where we live because they will help waterways behave better. Ahh!

Finally a wonderful donation to the silent auction came from the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation this week. I originally glimpsed this wonderful 50th anniversary shirt on photographers Tom Rusert’s FB feed, and then asked friend Susan Kirks for an introduction to the group producing it, who was able to introduce me to the director, who in addition to promising one was kind enough to introduce me to the artist, Molly Eckler, a local artist in Sebastapol that has done amazing work for Point Reyes, The Laguna Foundation and others. Molly was kind enough offer a slough of posters as well. In fact we’re picking them up this weekend on our way to Safari West and I can’t wait. It’s kind of incredible how the intricate path we have walked these past 10 years links everything so seamlessly together. Thank you to Everyone!

Surviving the Storm

heidi08 Beavers January 9, 2017

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Yesterday it rained and rained, so much that we parked across the street on a higher curb to avoid the runoff. Folks armed their driveways with sandbags and there were no beavers in Martinez to blame for the flooding. Just the sky, which decided we needed a two-day dousing.

Rusty in Napa was undaunted and boldly went to see how their soggy beavers were holding up in all that rain. Of course the broken dam was topped, but the lodge too was underwater in the worst of it. Remember if there is water over the lodge, there is water IN the lodge, and the beavers were rudely awoken out of their days slumber and had to find another bed.

drybeaverflooded — *Beaver atop lodge in flood: Rusty Cohn*

Sometimes they crouch in a cluster of trees, or have a little bank hole they can reach. Sometimes they decide to use the lodge like snoopy uses his dog house. And that’s what Rusty was hoping to photograph.

The amazing part to me, is that not only does this beaver look wonderfully calm and composed –

Dry yearling in storm: Rusty Cohn

(Nothing like we would look if we were flooded out of our home in the middle of the night) but he is also completely DRY. Look at his fur and consider the wonders of beaver weatherproofing.
On days like these we remember the countless worried storms we trudged down to our own beaver dam to see how our beavers were faring.

together — *Beaver sleeps on bank while beaver swims below: Rusty Cohen*

I remember the only beaver ‘swear word‘ I ever heard, watching a kit come out of the old lodge during very high current and immediately getting washed downstream in the flow. He was so surprised and alarmed he tailslapped loudly before swimming back. Which I’m sure has got to be the forensic equivalent of honking very loudly at a snow storm.

I’ve seen our beavers swim effortlessly upstream in a torrent, and move aside as terrible debris washed thru their ruined pond. Rain doesn’t hurt beavers. Snow doesn’t hurt beavers. Drought doesn’t hurt beavers. Really. Only we do that. Rusty had to work hard to protect his camera in the storm. But he was able to capture this later in the day so you could see for yourself that they are coping.

Sleepy and soggy, this beaver handles things just fine. Cue the “I will survive” soundtrack will you?

Santa comes early for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, featured, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2016

Around this time of the Holidays everything starts to seem like “too much”. There are too many presents to wrap or cookies to frost or ravioli’s to make and there is barely enough time to squeeze them all in. Add to this that there is now a SURFEIT of beaver news to share. But I take my job seriously so I’m going to start with this, even though I’m saving the selfishly best for last.

How’s this for a headline? You gotta love Scotland.

Tree felling by beavers may save millions in flood repairs

CONSERVATION experts predict the controversial felling of trees by beavers will help save millions of pounds spent on flood damage and defences after the animals were spotted for the first time on National Trust for Scotland property.

The creatures are often blamed for causing flooding on farmland by building dams. But conservationists said their habit of gnawing down trees also encouraged multiple new younger stems to grow, which could help to prevent flooding by reducing erosion.

The nation’s largest conservation charity believes the beavers will play a key role in cutting its multi-million pound bill due to floods as they continue to spread across the country following the Government’s decision last month to grant them protected status as a returned native species.

That’s right, the country’s largest charity is excited that beavers are cutting down its trees because the coppicing will help prevent erosion. (And no, I didn’t just make this up in a basement with my beaver fantasy 500.) Follow the link and see for yourself. It’s for real. Never mind that in our silly country the Nature Conservancy is paying to kill beavers to save trees because they’re stupid. Imagine if our largest conservancy was excited about beavers!

Speaking of EXCITED (yes, I know I’m shouting), I heard from photographer Suzi Eszterhas that her beaver photo shoot is officially approved and can be shared by us. The Ranger Rick article will come out in the fall and in the meantime she generously arranged for allowing me to use her amazing photos in presentations and the website. There are 274 and at the moment I’m just like a happily confused child sitting in the middle of the candy store wondering which to enjoy first, but I thought I’d share a few beauties today.

Seeing these images is of course, bittersweet because it was that year that our kits died and our beaver family disbanded. There were no answers and few comforts. But every time you start to feel misty-eyed, I promise you will be cheered by the crazy curved tails of the Napa beaver kits. So you have to keep looking.

Most of the photos are of our Martinez beavers, including some wonderful images of our human children helping out, some are Napa images or rehab in Washington and Lindsay Museum (not ours). It is enormously special to have this record and I am so grateful for her remarkable work. If you want to browse the entire collection you can check out her website here.

There’s never enough time, I know.

Some beaver-love for Valentine’s day

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Chewing, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? February 14, 2016

Great news this morning in the Guardian, who happily picked up the Devon story. You will like every part of it, so I recommend reading the entire thing yourself. It starts with Dr. Brazier surveying the ‘damage’. Enjoy!

Beavers at work … Devon dwellers reveal their flair for fighting floods

The devastation is part of a scheme that backers hope will provide a template for a more balanced approach to flood prevention. The government is spending £3.2bn on flood management in the course of this parliament. As flood events such as those seen in Cumbria at the end of last year become more common, so attention has turned to flood management, with a call for resources to be allocated not to building flood defences to deal with the water when it arrives downstream but prevent it getting there at all.

The beavers resident on the three hectares of woodland near Okehampton in Devon could be part of the solution. In the five years since they moved there, they have toppled trees, gnawed bark, dug channels, constructed dams and made a rather impressive home for themselves.

“Prior to working with beavers we’d never really come across animals that would disrupt your work so much,” says Brazier, a hydrologist at the University of Exeter, as he surveys the tangle of branches and tree trunks.

But there is hope, too. New shoots are sprouting from the felled willows and a closer inspection reveals that beneath the devastation lies further evidence of new life promoted by the beavers’ work. “They are a keystone species who are obviously engineering the environment to their own benefit,” says Brazier. “But what’s interesting is all the other benefits.”

The Devon project targets three key indicators: water storage, flood attenuation and water quality. The beavers are, they believe, helping in all three. The 13 dams they have built along the 150 metres stretch of water have increased water storage capacity, evened out the flow of water and improved the quality of the water that emerges from the dams.

Oh its good when science evaluates beavers. Because even when the scientists don’t like us the results are ALWAYS our friends. I can’t imagine another incidence of a three hectare study getting reported in the Guardian, but I’m very happy England has had 500 years to get surprised by things they used to see every day. I especially loved this section.

Mark Elliott, who leads the beaver project for the Devon Wildlife Trust, pulls a large stone from the water. On the underside, a small community of grubs and larvae writhe and squirm: they are caddisflies and mayflies. “What’s happened here is transformational,” he says. “You have this incredibly complex mosaic of a transitional, dynamic habitat. There’s now a complex braided stream providing a habitat for orchids, watermint, bog pimpernel, herons, kingfishers, water beetles and damselflies. Five years ago when we started out, we didn’t know where we were going to get.”

They’re called ecosystem engineers for a reason! You could have asked me what you were going to get and I would have told you. But it’s better for the news cycle if you’re surprised and think you’re the first one who discovered this. Well done! There is only one section I enjoyed more – and I’m assuming that’s a valentine gift especially for me.

Perhaps the most common misconception about beavers is that they will eat all the fish in the newly clean rivers, a charge repeated by Labour MP Mary Creagh during a select committee hearing into the government’s response to flooding. It was pointed out that beavers are actually herbivores.