Tag: Beavers and Salmon

Breaking omelettes to make eggs

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, pictures October 6, 2012

So Taylor Creek in Tahoe is celebrating its non-native kokanee salmon festival this weekend by ripping out some beaver dams to “PROTECT THE SALMON”. Apparently they ripped out one that the beavers rebuilt overnight. (You see its getting cold in the sierras and that pond is their very important food pantry so mom and dad and the whole family worked all night to fix it so that they wouldn’t starve in the frozen winter.) Never mind. Our stalwart forest stewards ripped it out AGAIN after the photographer left.

Look at the unscalable heights of that dam! Those wheel-chair bound Kokanees surely couldn’t contend with that mammoth structure! They aren’t rabbits for Chrissake! it’s not like the two species co-evolved and thrive together naturally. It’s not like salmon pass dams typically in high flows anyway when the dam is already flooded. And it’s’ not like there’s a peer-reviewed scientific paper in this issue of fish and game proving once and for all that beaver are NATIVE to the sierras! Well- okay maybe there is.

But they made a sign! And took the time to draw a mouse with a hotpad and everything! Ahh, that’s adorable! Every expense must have been spared to pull together that breath taking artistic rendition to explain your strivings. Obviously their resources are stretched to the bone, what with ripping out dams, lying to the press and drawing on cocktail napkins. All these beavers won’t kill themselves! I thought I’d help them out. How’s this?

Speaking of beavers and making sense, our local family has shifted again back to the bank lodge near the footbridge. last night we saw Dad first, coming out from the bank before 6:30. Mom followed before 7:00 and took some willow back into the lodge. It had been more than a week since I was at the dam, and I was a little worried about Jr who usually always came out first. Why was mom bringing food in the lodge? Was he sick? Unable to feed himself?

At 7:15 junior swam proudly out to get some branches. Dad followed him down stream and stayed by his side until he was back in the lodge. Not sure why they suddenly decided he needs a chaperone but maybe he got into some mischief during the week that we don’t know about. He was obviously alive and well now, and very supervised, so we were relieved and headed home. Here’s a shot of Dad, who no longer seems as massive but easy to spot by his unique hair do:

Oh and according to our stats, 347 of you read this website yesterday, and only 51 of you watched this video, which I think is a very small percentage considering junior had such a hard week. Let’s try that again and see if we can get him the recognition he clearly deserves.

Beavers and Heroes

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, History, In the News April 11, 2012

UPDATE:

Ian Timothy makes beaver waves in Kentucky. Out of state voices rattle the council and leave a lasting impression. Go read the whole article, you will love every syllable!

The Great Beaver Massacre occurred in the city of St. Matthews sometime in early March. That’s really the only fact everybody agrees upon. (OK, so even that isn’t an agreed-upon fact by all parties involved.) Like so many government-sponsored atrocities before it, the alleged savagery is shrouded in secrecy and official denials of knowledge. In fact, Robert Tonini, a member of the St. Matthews City Council, claims he didn’t know anything about it until mid-March when emails started pouring in. St. Matthews officials have received missives from as far away as California, Maine and New Zealand. All of them with the same claim: Someone had embarked on the demolition of beaver dams in Arthur K. Draut Park.

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Then check out the other good beaver tidings! My article as published in the spring newsletter of the John Muir Association. Click on the image for a fun read linking the city’s famous conservationist to a famous beaver advocate!

And stay tuned for some very good news for beavers in California!

At the annual conference we have an award ceremony to recognize and honor leaders in the watershed restoration community. The Golden Pipe award is an annual award presented by the Salmonid Restoration Federation for innovators in the fisheries restoration field. Usually this award is bestowed upon a pioneer in the habitat restoration field who has been a leader or unique thinker in fish passage design or innovative restoration techniques.

On March 7th, 2012 in Davis, CA the Salmonid Restoration Federation presented this award to Brock Dolman, the Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s WATER Institute for his leading role as a proponent of “working with beavers” to restore native habitat. Brock helped co-found the ad hoc California Beaver Working Group, networked with groups utilizing beavers from all over the country, and made strategic contacts with state and federal agencies that oversee wildlife and fisheries conservation and recovery efforts.

Brock has been a Paul Revere for the Beaver, shouting its virtues and mobilizing communities to consider working hand and paw with these creatures who naturally know how to restore habitat and protect instream flows.

This pushes beavers a long way into the forefront on the salmon campaign and moves us all closer to the inevitable day when any city ripping out a beaver dam will need to pay a fish – fine – and I couldn’t be happier! Congratulations Brock and keep up the good work!

Beavers and Salmon: Part MMMDCCXXIX

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental October 11, 2011

Beaver friend Matt Stoecker of Beyond Searsville Dam sent me this lovely article from the High Country News and Patagonia’s Adventure Journal. Here’s an excerpt but you really should go read the rest for yourself:

In the mountainous West, swift, cold, snow-melt streams such as Pennock Creek support relatively little aquatic life, and fish are usually few and small. The calm, warmer waters of beaver ponds are biologically richer and support more and larger fish, although global warming may be changing this.

Studies in Washington’s Puget Sound Basin by Michael Pollock of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that in streams populated by beavers, Coho salmon are larger and more plentiful than in streams without beavers. Pollock believes restoring salmon runs will require restoring beaver populations.

Beaver-salmon- beaver- salmon- beaver- salmon….what will it take until people get the connection?

I like Chuck’s article almost entirely, although he gets a little passive at the end.

What if they flooded my bottomland or cut down my trees? Would I still yell, “Go, Beavers!” as I do at Oregon State football games? Not likely.

What if your puppy got hit by a car in your front yard? Does that mean that neighborhoods shouldn’t allow driving anymore? Or that we shouldn’t build houses near streets? Or people shouldn’t be allowed to have pets? Hmmm, how about you wrap the trees and install a flow device to solve your problem because you realize these inconvenient beavers are fixing problems we’re not even prepared to tackle. Then you can keep yelling “go beavers” all you like.

Radio interview with Susan Allen of Open Range this week, I’ll keep you posted.

Beaver Goodness Mid-Klamath

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental May 16, 2010

This guest blog is from Beaver Friend and Watershed expert Brock Dolman of the OAEC. Brock was our guest speaker at the JMA Earth day event where he charmed us by saying that everything he learned about helping watersheds he learned from beavers. Here’s an exciting tale of what happens when folks get it right.

I had a spectacular beaver discovery day yesterday on the Klamath on a tributary called Boise creek just downstream from Orleans. I went out with fish biologist and restorationist Will Harling, who is also the director of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council.

This location on private land, with pro-beaver landowners who run an organic vineyard/winery operation, has had a long history of beaver being there. But it appears that this season this family group really got their groove on! From the photos you’ll see that they have, for what appears to be the first time (?), made a full dam across the main channel of Boise Creek that was about 4’ to 5’ tall. Consistent with their well deserved reputation as genius hydro-engineers, the location of this dam could not have been better chosen or constructed! When the instream pool is full, it now sets up the capacity to laterally divert a significant amount of water towards either bank and directly into the upper portions of a series of old historic flood channels and back water basins. And yet, the diversion is not so significant at this time of year as to really affect the bypass flows as can be seen from the falls at the mouth photo.

This “headworks” dam becomes the key to allowing the beaver to manage an ideal volume of diverted flow, which has created three major parallel contour terraces (each 1000’ or more long) that are made up of several dozen ponds and/or long linear sloughs and swamps. As these travertine type terraces, which make one visualize Balinese Rice Paddies, drop their elevation over smaller dams made of mud, grass and twigs it all ends up at roughly three primary discharge points that reconnect with the mainstem of the Klamath upstream of the Boise Creek confluence about an 1/8 of a mile or so.

From the fishery perspective this system was rockin!! With the use of my binoculars Will was able to peer into many pools, especially in the lowest terrace pool complexes that parallel closest to the Klamath, and see many hundreds of juvenile salmonids, with chinook, coho and steelhead all present!!! Besides their abundance, based on Will’s field experience, he felt that they all looked really healthy and comparatively extra large for their age class. In this area – it is hard to imagine a better rearing and refugia system for these threatened fish than what we witnesses yesterday! The MKWC and Karuk fisheries folks around here survey upwards of 60 tributaries for fish and finding places like this that appear to be able to hold so many fish, especially coho!!, appears to be critically important to a vision of coho recovery in this part of the system?

The coolest (literally) part about each of these points of river-reconnection is that they are low gradient and very easily passable slow water situations for juvenile salmonids that are rearing in the beaver pools above to head out or, hopefully allow entry for summer juv., salmonids looking for cold water refugia to escape from the hot mainstem? In essence they have created a braided series of delta channels with varying depth and velocity, which would appear to optimally allow for in and out migration passage of varying sized/aged juveniles?

See the one photo that shows the Klamath on the left with some sandy bottom and open willow areas with a small flow moving amongst them. This creek to river mouth access stands in stark contrast to where the primary Boise Creek mouth meets the Klamath which is a raging whitewater torrent over bed rock falls that is absolutely impassable to juvenile fish! See that photo for comparison.

Interestingly, from where the primary headworks beaver dam is on Boise Creek to the raging creek mouth is less than 100 yards of creek that appears to provide very little functional habitat for fish. But with the beavers pulling this proportionately small flow off the main creek and Slowing It – Spreading It – Seeping It for Salmon!!!, the actual total amount of newly accessible, way more productive and functional habitat that has been creating by the beavers is likely many orders of magnitude greater!! Ooh yeah- the neo-tropical migrant breeding bird songs and frog songs were thick around us the whole time as well! We need a grad student to work up & publish this whole beaver-re-storyation situation…anyone got such a eager student???

I want to say thank you to Will for being willing to spend that much time with me out of his busy life to go and witness such and inspiring and reinforcing situation. Always nice to find a place to enhance the feeling of more confident that our efforts to restore the reputation of beaver in CA as a friend of fish and people is a good path to being walking right now!!

From the front lines of Beaver-landia – over and out,
Brock

It must be the weather…

heidi08 Environmental September 7, 2009

I thought I’d start out with some images this morning of varietal feeding demonstrated by the Martinez Beavers: this is a yearling eating grass. And don’t worry, it’s not because he’s starving or can’t reach the high branches. Beavers eat a variety of plants, shifting their diet with the seasons. We’ve seen them enjoy tule, fennel, sow thistle, blackberry, and now grass.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=yha7cgsnMRI]

Now for the real news…

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association is the respected name in news that is too big to ignore. When there’s a hurricane approaching or a tornado warning or a sudden snowfall in the sierras, NOAA is the best predictor of what’s to come. It was report from NOAA that indicated to Louisana that Katrina was making her angry way to the coast. It’s NOAA that’s tracking newly formed “Bill” now and whatever Carley or Catherine that comes next.

I was surprised, then, when beaver friend Lisa Owens Viani sent me their new report on restoration measures for creeks. Its slick online tool “River rat” has everything you need for getting your tired, littered creek back to “Ship-shape” standards. It has advice on all the various tools you need to repair your watershed, and talks about the multiple hazards for our dwindling salmon population,

Guess what the NOAA recommends for increasing the numbers of salmon in an urban or rural creek? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a “B”. It’s those crazy dams that everyone’s talking about! Apparently they make habitat for juvenile salmon in the winter, and the more salmon that survive early life to try their tails in the open ocean, the bigger crop your likely to have down the road.

Guess what they DON’T say is a problem for salmon? Beaver dams! NOAA is no fly-by-night, crazy beaver-luving organization. They are the arguably the single most trusted government agency in the world, so if they say beaver dams don’t hurt salmon I think we should probably isten. Apparently our very smart salmon can wait until high water periods and hop on over. Hmm, I think we might know this tune. Hum a few bars and let’s all join in! Afterwards maybe we can play a drinking game and do a shot for all time times we heard someone pretend to be worried that saving beavers will “hurt” the salmon population.

The loss of beavers, and subsequent degradation and failure of their dams and associated wetlands, has dramatically affected the hydrology and sediment regimes of many western streams. Impacts associated with beaver decline are particularly pronounced in semi-arid regions and likely contributed to impacts associated with grazing, resulting in accelerated channel incision and associated lowering of groundwater levels and loss of summer base flows (Pollock et al. 2007).A recent comprehensive literature review of the effects of beaver impoundments on fish (Pollock et al. 2003) illustrates that loss of beavers in all probability was directly related to significant population declines of virtually all native fish species cohabiting with beaver.

pg 70: Science based tools for evaluating Stream Engineering Management and Restoration Proposals. Prepared for NOAA Fisheries and US Fish and Wildlife Services. April 2009

Scratch that idea. No drinking game. We need to be sober to spread this good news. Who wants to break it to Scotland?