Beavers and Steelhead – Worth A Dam

About Friggin’ Time!

Beavers might be the ticket for wild steelhead survival

Depending who you ask, beavers can be a blessing or a curse. Considered shadow rodents because we don’t hear much about them unless their building activities create some public safety issues, it is a known fact beavers and their dams play an important role in nature’s big picture, and because of the dramatic effects their dams have on surrounding ecosystems, beavers are considered a keystone species. Today, biologists, scientists and naturalists are embracing the beaver’s ability to create wetlands and other natural habitats.

That’s right. The day after the SF gate announced that salmon could become extinct and painfully ignored the role of beaver, Washington says gosh, beavers sure are good for steelhead, and when are we going to start using them to build habitat? The timing could not be better and I hope it at least makes the reporter of the gate article idly curious. Look at this, for example!

Beavers, salmon returning to Los Gatos Creek

Mind you this is a different location on Los Gatos Creek than our previous beaver sighting! You have to sit through a comercial to watch this clip but it’s worth it!

Nice work team San Jose! Remember if folks can start to clean out the creeks, beavers can make them salmon-friendly!

Lots of good beaver news today. Here’s a part where residents are begging for beavers to be removed and officials say they can stay. No, really!

Locals to Golden Gardens beavers: Please leave

Ballard locals say beavers have cut numerous trees and devastated two scenic ponds at Golden Gardens Park. It’s their natural habitat and they can stay, parks officials respond.

You could stand on a footbridge between the ponds and gaze out onto this peaceful preserve. Chirp, chirp.

Then two or three years ago arrived one beaver, or maybe it’s up to a dozen beavers — depending on which irate leisurely stroller you talk to.

Seattle Parks and Recreation estimates the rodents have downed 65 to 75 trees so they could eat the bark, and build a dam and a lodge.

The parks department says their tree cutting is just part of nature. It’s not going to relocate the beavers.

Ahh Washington State! Even when you’re being stupid about beavers you are still smarter than the other 49! Why aren’t people telling them that beavers make habitat for more birds? Here’s the sign those park officials need to display. Or heck, just give them my email. I’ll talk to those bird lovers!

Yesterday a lovely silver ball chain necklace arrived in the mail from Cecile Stewart in North Carolina of Partsforyou. She makes necklaces and earrings out of really beautiful old coins. I can’t find a photo of the one she sent so this must have been her last, but it is awesome and happens to be dated the year of my birth. I wouldn’t bother bidding on this at all because you will never, never win. Thanks Cecile!

A new [John] Day is dawning…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Why We Care January 11, 2014

“Beaver” dams aid fish restoration in John Day River drainage

Ecologists and biologists working in a tributary of the John Day River in northeast Oregon are encouraging the building of dams to restore degraded stream habitat – beaver dams, that is.

The stream recovery operation has already significantly increased wild juvenile steelhead survival in Bridge Creek as opposed to the control tributary Murderers Creek.

The researchers from NOAA Fisheries Science Center in Seattle did this by increasing the local beaver population’s ability to maintain long-term and stable beaver dams. The outcome is a healthier stream habitat that is less channelized and has less annual erosion from floods.

Here’s a lovely article about our friends working at John Day, who are making ‘starter dams’ to increase the staying power of beaver dams along this watershed with significant results. Maybe you’re thinking, ” I don’t have any friends at John Day” – but you’d be wrong. Click on the video in the left hand margin (or below) and you’ll recognize the players, including Dr. Michael Pollock who will be presenting on this very topic at our beaver seminar at the salmonid restoration federation conference. He actually grew up in Walnut Creek so he’s an old local. Here he is visiting with me and the dams in Martinez:

Biologists will continue to monitor both the stream’s health and the health of the threatened steelhead in the stream. They are also considering expanding the techniques used in this project to the remainder of Bridge Creek. In the meantime, Pollock is fielding phone calls from interested agencies throughout the West, his crew is producing a how-to manual and they will hold workshops on their techniques in the winter of 2014-15.

“It’s been exciting to see the number of agencies interested in using beavers for stream habitat recovery,” Pollock said. “It’s an affordable technique and very effective.”

Pollock is one of the key players that was so famous and busy he never wrote me back after all my many emails until our own wikipedia Rick tracked him down and got him to be a reviewer on our Sierra paper. When I was invited to speak at the state parks conference in Yosemite I asked him and Rick to come as well. They both accepted and we drove in Rick’s Range Rover up and back in 24 hours. We drank too much wine and had a glorious dinner at the Tenaya lodge with some overly attentive waiters. The best part of the entire trip was when he showed a photo of a nutria in his talk instead of a beaver. Cheryl and I said nothing but exchanged THAT LOOK which he did not miss. (I dare say he will never, ever make that mistake again.) Here he is with Cheryl and Rick in front of my house after our marathon drive.

What a good article to wake up to! I can’t wait to hear the updates in Santa Barbara. All people should care about beavers for their own sake. They’re fun to watch, good at what they do and helpful to wildlife. Bur even if they don’t – we might be able to get them to care about beavers for steelhead’s sake.

Join us for Earthday!

heidi08 Earth Day April 21, 2012

And if you can’t get there in person, get there in spirit by reading this:

Partnering With Beavers To Restore Degraded Streams Aiding Recovery Of Wild Steelhead

On Bridge Creek, a tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon, scientists with NOAA Fisheries’ National Marine Fisheries Service are installing a series of structures as part of a unique, low-cost approach to stream restoration.

The simple structures provide footholds in the degraded stream channel where beaver can build stable dams and establish colonies. By partnering with the beaver, the scientists hope to accelerate stream recovery and improve production of the creek’s wild steelhead population, which is part of a larger steelhead population listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The simple, cost-effective treatment being applied on Bridge Creek could have far-reaching applications in the Columbia River Basin.

“Bridge Creek is typical of many degraded streams in the western United States,” says Michael Pollock, biologist with NMFS’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. The creek has been confined to a narrow, incised trench, and high flows rarely reach its former floodplain. One of the main ways to improve habitat conditions in this situation is to reconnect the stream with its former floodplain. This helps restore basic geomorphic, hydrologic and ecological functions, and, in turn, create better habitat for steelhead.”

Make sure you go read the whole thing! Be kind to the earth today, and for the second anniversary of the gulf oil spill, and the soul crushing burden of how depressing it is that we now have shrimp born without eyes, let’s watch this again. When I couldn’t sleep last night I was trying to imagine how columns of this elixir under the ocean could help pick up all that missing oil two years later.