You’ve heard of a red letter day? Well yesterday was a red-beaver day. Here at beaver central we are good at picking up trends and regional changes. We’re usually at the front of the line when it comes to hearing good news. But I’ll be honest, I never expected this.

Draper Fight Centers On Beaver Dams, Wetlands, Flood Control

Two, small beaver dams lie at the heart of a quarrel in Draper. County flood officials are ordering residents to take them down. But the homeowners say the dams protect the wildlife and value of their homes.

Kelly McAdams says the notice of violation letter came on Christmas Eve.

“Inspection by Salt Lake County Flood Control,” he says, reading from the letter, “has indicated that fallen tree limbs and debris have been deposited in the form of a beaver dam into Big Willow Creek, a county-wide drainage facility, without authorization.”

Next month, McAdams goes before an administrative law judge and expects to lose, considering beavers and wetlands have no standing in county law. But he and his wife are set on preserving this patch of habitat for the beavers and all the other creatures that rely on this wetland wonderland.

Make sure you listen to the story which made NPR this morning and sign the petition, then check out SLTribune.

Leave it to beaver? No way, says Salt Lake County

Draper • Big Willow Creek bends and meanders behind Kelly McAdams’ Draper home and her backyard steps down into an urban wildlife preserve.

Thanks to a string of beaver dams, the creek pools into wetlands teaming with life. Ducks and geese nest on the banks lined with cattails; herons and pelicans visit to dine on the 18-inch carp and catfish. Neighborhood kids also fish the ponds.

But where McAdams, his wife, Kris Burns, and neighbors on Dunning Court see an ecological sanctuary, Salt Lake County sees “unauthorized modifications to a countywide drainage facility.”

The county Division of Flood Control has ordered them to remove the dams or face a $25-a-day fine, even though federal wildlife officials say these dams enhance the water quality, hydraulics and riparian habitat

The waterways and channels need to be clear and run and serve their purposes. There is a balancing act,” Graham said. “The county has demonstrated many times it balances wildlife habitat on creeks and waterways as they run through the city.”

Graham has overruled McAdams’ appeal, which is slated to go before an administrative law judge on April 26.

Because my life is just like that I had already heard about this case from the real estate agent representing them who contacted me on April 1 looking for supportive letters to the court on the issue of beavers, water storage, and biodiversity. I put out the usual appeal for help to our beaver friends in Utah but with this new flurry of news I heard this morning from Mary Obrien who is on it. Joe Wheaton is in Europe but I’m hoping he can contribute or at least assign a student to do so. I also heard from our retired attorney friend who won the famous Lake Skinner Beaver case at the appellate level that he would be happy to talk to them and has some ideas to pursue.

“You have all these ecosystem services that keep the entire stream corridor functioning as it should,” said Jones, with the Wild Utah Project. “Many other municipalities across the county are starting to allow beavers back to perform this critical engineering service.”

Meanwhile I know Worth A Dam will write something and mention how a Contra Costa County Flood Control Specialist was on our beaver subcommittee and approved the flow device that controlled flooding and washouts for nearly a decade. I have personally contacted everyone I can think of that might help ‘circle the wagons’ in this case, but more is always needed. If you want to help, email me and I’ll give you contact info. The entire Tribune article is excellent and even talks about flow devices but y requires a little persistent to get past their subscriber wall.

Meanwhile, completely independently but not unrelated, I heard from Michael Pollock yesterday about this prayer-answering article from the unlookedfor source of BeefProducer newsletter. No seriously. It is beautifully written by Editor Alan Newport and he starts out with one of the VERY best lines I’ve ever read. Send this article to every old curmudgeon you know who won’t listen to reason.

In defense of beavers

To reverse streambed erosion the hated beaver is the most likely candidate.

Beavers are the cure we don’t want to take.

No matter how much we improve our grazing, no matter how many water-control structures we build, our streams and other watercourses will cut deeper and deeper into the landscape, robbing us of soil and drying out our pastures and fields.

It took me many years of study and observation to come to this point in my thinking, but today there is no longer any question in my mind. Read on and you’ll learn why I say so.

I’m almost 60 years old and throughout those years I’ve watched the streams cut deeper and deeper into the soil near my home. On my uncle and aunt’s farm, the little rocky crossing we walked across and drove tractors across and rode horses across without a thought disappeared years ago into a gulch. The entire creek today is much deeper than it was, and so is every other creek, stream and wash I know of.

So the question, I reasoned, was what process had previously stopped this from being a natural course of events that outpaced the normal upturn of new soil through movement of the earth’s crust?

In North America, the only answer I‘ve ever found was … beavers! They once lived by the millions in every state in the union, and new evidence says their homeland stretched across much of Mexico and into the arctic tundra of Canada. I have more recently learned beavers also were common across Europe and Asia.

With all this in our knowledge base now, it seems if beavers were the agent of change and good in streams for hundreds of thousands of years before we arrived, then they could be and should be again. They work day and night, like the cow, without us lifting a finger.

I understand that beavers are a pain in the neck, but so is erosion and droughty land.

I have no particular love for beavers, but I do love the land and God’s creation. It’s my understanding we are to be stewards in His image. So here I stand, saying kind things about one of the most hated creatures in the world of agriculture.

Go read the whole article. And then read it again. It’s really well written and contains an impressive amount of research. It’s even more impressive when you realize that Alan is the editor of BeefProducer and lives in Oklahoma. Meanwhile I’m going to be busy thinking up a graphic for that AWESOME first line and writing my amicus brief to the court in Utah.

Then I may just lie back and smoke a cigarette. This has been an incredible morning.

Bullish on Beavers

While some cattle ranchers scorn the giant rodents, others are putting beavers to work Mellen is one of about a dozen ranchers in a four-county area of south-central Idaho who are bullish on beavers. While some folks scorn the big rodents for their propensity to choke culverts and clog irrigation ditches, ranchers are discovering that beavers can be a valuable tool for restoring riparian areas, the green strips of vegetation that border waterways and provide most of the habitat for wildlife along Rocky Mountain streams and elsewhere in the West.

Mellen and his neighbors are not alone. Ranchers in Colorado, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada are also working with federal officials to rejuvenate riparian areas with beavers. “Beavers are now looked upon as an integral part of stream recovery,” says Wayne Elmore, a national riparian restoration expert for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Prineville, Oregon.

Slowly, public-land officials, along with some ranchers, are working on ways to reverse a large part of the damage. In 1990, the BLM and Forest Service developed tougher regulations for riparian areas on public lands. And last year, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced a plan for range reform on most public lands that includes higher grazing fees and penalties for land abuse.

In practice, to restore riparian areas, federal range managers must gain the cooperation of ranchers who hold grazing permits-and that’s not always easy. Ranchers often harbor a distrust of the government; some consider public grazing allotments to be their own land. And ranchers often detest beavers. “I don’t know why some people have such contempt for beavers,” Pence laments. “It’s hard to get people to let loose of that. Heck, there’s even some people in my agency that think I’m crazy.”

Probably no one can convince a cowboy of anything as well as another cowboy. Retired Colorado rancher Bill Barnard has won numerous awards for turning the Cathedral Bluffs BLM grazing allotment near Meeker, Colorado, into a shining example of range stewardship. He gives beavers a heap of credit for his success. He says of fellow ranchers, “Maybe they don’t like beavers, maybe they don’t want beavers, but I tell them maybe they’d better try beavers or they’ll be out of business.”

Fantastic! Getting a cowboy to talk sense to other cowboys. BLM has the sense to use a trusted voice to promote a very suspicious product! It seems like there is a real recognition that human psychology is the biggest obstacle to our seeing beaver as a resource. How exciting to come across such an encouraging article. I guess we can expect many more to come!

There’s just one little problem.

Read the date again.

If you were reading this article in the delivery room after just having a beautiful baby girl she’d be sipping her first chardonnay by now. Bill Clinton was president. Friends had its first season. Whitney Houston was winning the grammy for singing the song you never need to hear again. And everyone who didn’t go to Two Weddings and a Funeral was watching Pulp Fiction.

In other words, this was a long fucking time ago.

Now I’m fairly used to finding brilliant remarks about beavers from 100 years ago, in the writings of Grey Owl or Enos Mills. I’m even used to reading them surprisingly from Fish and game in the 20’s and thirties. But reading something THAT smart from our recent past makes me realize that we’ve been ‘turning the corner’ on beavers for such a ridiculously long time. Frogs, salmon, water, carbon. We’ve turned ‘more corners’ than the media reporting on Iraq. We’ve turned ‘more corners’ than an octagon riding a tilt-a-wheel. We’ve turned all the corners. There are no corners left to turn.

Which doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Just taking a slightly longer-term view. It’s not about getting better science. It’s not about telling better stories. It’s not about proving that we can. The next time I’m inclined to hold my breath because ‘its finally happening!’ I’m going to make myself watch this.