Tag: Beavers

Peanut Season

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits June 6, 2013

This morning at 4:45 I staggered onto the Escobar bridge to see a raccoon milling about in the water. Uh-oh, if he was there the kits might not be allowed to come! Mom swam protectively by and the raccoon skedaddled. And then a little peanut with a beautifully light underside floated into view. And then another. Mom swam up and appeared to be taking them to the annex. Then raccoon appeared on the other side of the bank and SLAP!!! I was worried I wouldn’t see them again, but I waited anyway.

The raccoon again appeared on the first side of the bank, and tiny kit number one popped out of the water and made a bee-line for him. Curious about everything the raccoon seemed to do or touch. The raccoon started to look around nervously for the adult, like we might if a cute bear cub started to approach. Mom swam by and the raccoon vanished again. This time the brave kit climbed onto the mud bank where the raccoon had been, right below me. The other kit never returned after the tail slap. In the streetlight I could see him clearly, not a foot long – about twice as big as when I saw him in May. He was much more skilled at swimming and diving. I thought how this was the 7th year I’ve sat watching new kits emerge, and how it never got less amazing.

The funny thing is that it never gets less terrifying either. No sooner had I gotten a good look at him that I was suddenly afraid the raccoon would eat him, suddenly worried there appeared to be soap suds in the creek, worried that raccoon feces would give the kit Baylisascaris, and then suddenly worried when the tide turned and it looked like all the water was going to flush away at once. (UPDATE: Found out it was a water main breaking and not the tide or the dam. As Jon says “good clean water” so go ahead, Martinez. Leak all you want) There are a million things that could go wrong in a beaver’s life, and in my 6 years as guardian I’ve seen most of them. Honestly, when I watch those little faces, part of me just melts, but a large part of my thinking is dedicated to this running inner monologue trying to talk myself out of whatever terror I’m currently imagining.

And still…and still…in the middle of a tiny urban creek…our beavers manage to bring new lives and raise children and carry on the family name. And they do it without midwife’s or healthcare or electricity. And their babies have fingers and toes and tails and learn to be beavers and have babies of their own. It’s all pretty amazing.

Looking about when the kit swam out of sight, I could see the memorial of mom and I thought of what a grand thing she had started. The first time I heard about the beavers it was on the street and a woman I didn’t know and never saw again told me about them. She said she had seen them many times, but that morning she had finally realized there were three, a slightly smaller beaver out on the bank. I never saw three and wasn’t sure I believed her, but thinking back now I am sure she meant a yearling, which means when the parents settled in Alhambra Creek they had already had families before someplace else. Where? We can know for certain that mom was at least 6 at the time – probably even older because she had 4 kits in 2007. (Beavers can reproduce at 3, beaver fecundity goes up with age.) Remember our current mom had one kit last year and two this year. The original mom had 4 the first year they were here, which suggests that it was probably the third or fourth time our old mom had kits.

Maybe they relocated because something happened in their old territory, which meant that they had no kits and only one yearling left. It’s a dangerous world for beavers, and their are few safe havens. Martinez was going to trap them until we stopped them. Now San Jose, American Canyon, Sonoma, Santa Rosa. Come to think of it, I guess there are a few more havens than their used to be.

mom — Mom beaver 2008: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Grafton Redefines “Sanctuary”.

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 3, 2013

David Bryson stands at the dam where he discovered the traps and a dead beaver.

Beaver trapped, killed in natural sanctuary

GRAFTON – Despite efforts to save a family of beavers at a local wildlife sanctuary, the last of the four beavers was found dead on Thursday evening.

David Bryson, a member of the Nawautin Sanctuary Association (NSA), and Debbie Kilmer wrote a letter to the group’s executive on May 20 pleading with them to look for other alternatives to removing four beavers from the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary south of Grafton along Lake Ontario.

The fear was the beavers would be killed. “Is this not a nature sanctuary in which the beaver, as an indigenous species deserve the right to co-exist?,” stated the e-mail.

Just to be clear, the Nawautin Wildlife Sanctuary is a lovely jewel of a place in rolling Northumberland between mutiple wetlands and on the shores of Lake Ontario. Its 13 acres sit just across the pond from New York State. Residents serve on an advisory board to protect and promote the preserve, where motor vehicles are not allowed and folks are just encouraged to observe nature. Bird watchers, dog walkers and photographers enjoy walking its trails every day.

Because there was water, willow, gravity and oxygen, the area attracted beavers. (Funny how that works and will continue to work.) And folks enjoyed watching the many birds who came to their ponds, and the turtles on the banks. On the other side of the pond a property owner got anxious that the water level had risen and picked up the phone to call the city administrator, Terry Korotki, to complain. He did this in much the same way as you might tell your wife to get the fly swatter, and with sadly similar results.

Mr. Korotki ran it by the mayor who told him to call the trapper they always used in these situations. Meanwhile two advisory members wrote letters and begged the city not to trap. They contacted Fur-bearer Defenders who told them about solutions and they were actually hoping someone might listen because they were, after all, on the board. Lesley Fox of FBD wrote a letter to the mayor explaining about better solutions. No matter. By Thursday night four beavers were dead from a leghold trap.

In an emergency meeting at the Grafton Library on Friday night, frustrations boiled over as a number of people were upset by the NSA executive’s decision to kill the beavers. “There is nothing that says that we need to hold a meeting first,” executive chair Ray Bowart said during the meeting. The executive said its reasons for trapping and killing the beavers included the strong possibility of flooding on private property.

At one point during the meeting Bowart made the comment, “the reaction to this (e-mail Bryson and Kilmer sent) caused the beavers to be taken out.” Shortly after tempers flared, which resulted in Bowart resigning from the Executive and leaving the meeting.

Did you catch that? When Bowart was challenged about his decision to kill the beavers he blamed those who objected saying “The fact that you made a fuss about these animals was the reason they had to be killed”. Really? So I guess Grafton better be careful about protecting senior centers or day cares from now on. Consider yourself warned.

This was particularly rich.

Secretary / treasurer Meredith Coristine said he regretted the comment was made about the reason the beavers were killed. “If we made an error, we apologize.”

Well, okay then.

Why on earth do people think that’s an apology? And why didn’t I think of it when I was five?

“If I broke that lamp when I was swinging my baton, I apologize.”

” If some of those cookies were eaten by me, I am sorry”

“If Timmy was accidentally scratched while I hugged him, I regret it”.

No wonder administrator’s are so fond of the passive tense.

Thank god for this:

Bryson put forth a motion that was accepted unanimously that any matter regarding wildlife existence in the sanctuary will require a meeting by the membership to discuss options.

I must be tired today because I find this article deeply upsetting. Of course cities kill beavers all the time and people are often upset by it, so that’s not really new. It’s that they were so close to winning on this. Two very strongly placed and vocal advocates on the front lines and an agency at the ready to help. And we still get four dead beavers and god knows how many orphaned kits. I think its the nature (pun intended) of this particular setting and its designation as a SANCTUARY that really upsets me. I know that if I lived there this might be the new sign.

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Maybe you’re depressed too after that article and need good news. VERY GOOD NEWS. Absolutely fantastic news!

Jon went down to take the dog for a walk before day shift this morning at 5 and saw at least TWO KITS. They were swimming about by the Escobar bridge and an adult beaver was in protective attendance. One scrambled onto the bank by the old lodge. It was still dark so there are no photos. Jon flew home and woke me up but by the time I got there at 5:30 they had gone in. Still, we will start seeing them now, and we will have at least two so that means we will start HEARING them soon as they talk to each other.

I hope no one needs me to spell or do math any time soon because I’m going to be sleepy every day for a month now.

Two 2008 Kit tails: Photo Cheryl Reynolds

Finally!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Creative Solutions, Educational June 1, 2013

Beavers are born to bite wood, not people

May 2013 by Simon Jones

The headline “beaver kills man” is not one you will see very often. It appeared recently after a wild beaver attacked and killed an angler in Belarus – an event that is both tragic and highly unusual.

Beavers are shy, nocturnal rodents, ungainly on land, that avoid immediate threats from natural predators or humans by quickly entering the water and swimming or diving to safety. If this means of escape is not open to a beaver and it is cornered, then, like many wild animals, it will attempt to frighten off its attacker or defend itself or its young with a sudden lunge and bite.

Beavers are herbivores that often feed on woody plants, so they have evolved powerful jaws and incisor teeth that can inflict deep puncture wounds should a person get too close to a stressed animal.

If accurate, the story from Belarus suggests that the beaver was cornered and fell back on its last line of defence, with fatal consequences for the man who approached it, reportedly to take a photo.

The world has become so entirely insane over the repeated Belarus story that this tepid defense from the leader of the woefully bureaucracy-laden Scottish beaver trial looks like something from a modern day Robert the Bruce – swinging into battle over the moors to defend his highland trial. No he never mentions that the story is a rerun and was exhaustively reported 6 weeks ago , and yes he inexplicably omits the part about the fisherman trying to pick UP the beaver for the photo. But any port in a storm, right?

Benefits of beavers

For the beaver, the last few decades have been a success story as ecologists increasingly recognise the benefits they can bring. Over-hunted for their high-value fur, both species of this tubby, spaniel-sized mammal were driven to the verge of extinction in many areas by the 19th century. However, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a remarkable reversal in fortunes. Legal protection and numerous reintroduction schemes have allowed populations to rise dramatically in much, but not all, of their former ranges.

Beavers are a keystone species: the dams they build and the ponds they create help to improve biodiversity, because they provide the conditions for many other wetland species to flourish. Beaver dams can also trap sediment, pollutants and regulate water flow at times of flood or drought.

I’ve corresponded with Simon in the past about the illicit Tay beavers that refused to die and mucked things up for the proper beaver channels. His heart is in the right place but his head might be weighed down by suffocating meetings and research I think. I know one attendee sent him photos of our beaver festival a few years back but he apparently wasn’t tempted to try one of his own! I’m glad someone respectable wrote a hearty response to combat the increasingly terrifying headlines. (Yesterday I read ‘residents on edge as beaver population grows.’) But the well-meaning article goes on to make the apparently necessary effort to soothe folks by promising that if beavers create problems we can always kill them later. Which is an argument that never sits well with me.

In the longer term, culling and hunting to control populations are also important for ensuring that people and beavers can coexist. This can be a sensitive issue in countries where the animal is officially protected and there is public opposition to culling.

Yes, there is.

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Oh and in case you don’t recognize that beaming face behind all those medals, that’s Ian Timothy our beaver friend from Kentucky at his last EVER trip to Carnegie hall for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Ceremony. Day Shift won another gold, his entire portfolio of won a silver. He has been a winner every year for four years. He’ll be too old to enter again next year.

I guess he’ll have to content himself with Oscars.

The very good, the pretty good, the slightly good, and the ugly

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 27, 2013

First we should give MORE kudos to our beaver friends at Fur-bearer Defenders who have strewn a path of beaver deception around the municipality of Mission in British Columbia just outside of Vancouver, installing 9 beaver deceivers to control flooding in culverts.

Beaver deceiver prevents dams from being built

A beaver deceiver being installed in Mission. Each unit saves the municipality thousands of dollars annually. Submitted phot

Gosh, I’m so old I can remember when Adrian Nelson had just gotten married and nervously installed his very first one after chatting a lot to Mike Callahan and scouring his DVD. And now these installs are practically a piece of cake! Delicious, effective cake that they actually talk an entire city into paying for!

The non-profit group approached the district with a simple, non-lethal alternative for managing flooding concerns associated with beaver activity: build a wire fence around the culvert intake, interrupting the beavers’ natural instinct to build where there’s current and the sound of flowing water. “They work awesome,” said Dale Vinnish, public works operations supervisor. “We don’t have to trap beavers. They moved elsewhere. They’re not causing a problem.”

The nine “beaver deceivers,” at $400-$600 apiece and built in one day, save the district thousands of dollars, because workers no longer have to pull apart dams. Previously, the municipality would break down two to three dams daily, several days a week, in addition to paying for the capturing and killing of about a dozen beavers annually.

“If we weren’t trapping, we were going in continuously to break apart the dams,” said Vinnish.

Great work Fur-bearer Defenders! We are entirely impressed that you are easily giving Washington State a run for it’s money as the beaver-management champion of the northern hemisphere. Go Mission!

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New footage from our famous San Jose beaver friends. Love the ‘urban safari’ feel of this video. Sadly if this is momma beaver, I’m not seeing any teats, and that means no silicon valley kits this year!

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Next, a nice column on ‘Extinction Events’ from Minnesota. His point is climate change, but my point (as always) is beavers!

For instance the pond created behind a beaver dam becomes the habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal species. Remove the beaver engineers and the entire ecosystem collapses.

It’s about time we start to realize the number of species that are displaced or wiped out when beavers are removed. Trickle-down economies work both ways. I wasn’t happy with this later sentence “Without the stream, there could be no beaver dam” because that’s not exactly true. I’ve heard of beaver creating ponds from tiny springs, so that the big beautiful pond becomes the only water in a desert. Certain ephemeral streams (like we have here in California that dry up in the summer) wouldn’t dry up if we had enough beavers. I kindly sent him this Chumash legend:

Author Jan Timbrook who is a curator for the Santa Barbara museum of natural history described this in her book ‘Chumash Ethnobotany” has some very interesting things to say about beavers:

“A willow stick that had been cut by a beaver was thought to have the power to bring water. The Chumash would treat the stick with ‘ayip ( a ritually powerful sbustance made from alum) and then plant it in the ground to create a permanent spring of water.”

Jan Timbrook, Chumash Ethobotany p. 180

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And on to the ugly. I’ve been sitting with this story a couple of days, but its fairly unavoidable and we better deal with it. This is the kind of negative advertising I hate, even more than I hate the Belarus story. Ultimately Americans value roads much more even than we value human life. Now every city will be more tempted to tell property owners they’re liable for beaver dams. Call me crazy, but it seems like if you’re worried about the stability of a dam, the smart thing to do is to reinforce it!

Flooding damages road in West Warren MA

Massachusetts comes to Martinez

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Massachusetts Trapping Law February 12, 2013

So that tall guy in the middle is Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts. He came out for some fish passage seminars and went to check out some beaver habitat near Napa and then came to Martinez for a tour and dinner. It was one of those meetings that mean so much and still seem so familiar that afterwards you are saddened to remember that he doesn’t live across the street and won’t be coming back any time soon.

I first wrote Mike in October of 2007. In case you didn’t realize that was a long, long time ago. Before Worth A Dam and before Obama and before our beaver mom died. Our contact armed me with information, made me hopeful and sometimes made me smile. It was often the thing that sustained and fortified me for the battle with the city, and gave me direction and a sense of purpose after we won.

Or, to put it another way; Mike recognized the sheetpile.

So it was entirely fitting to see him reviewing our beaver habitat. Have him scope out Skip’s installation. Spot the new lodge where our beavers are living and drive to our house for dinner. We of course handed over Alaskan Amber and a t-shirt so he would feel at home.

Lory and Cheryl and Jon enjoyed his visit and thought he was an easy-going, affable, force to be reckoned with. We swapped stories about beaver battles, massachusetts law, and flow devices. He had met Sherri and Ted Guzzi of the Sierra wildlife coalition the night before and had made good contacts at the conference.

He talked a little about his ideas for adapting flow devices to make fish passage in very low flow easier. We discussed one way gates and counters that will track the number of fish that use them. The social science side of my brain forced me to suggest that his study should include a control group so that the fish that make it over a flow device with no modifications could be counted too, and he thought that was a good idea.

And now, sitting on this side of the meeting, I notice I am wistful, and feeling like I came to the end of some chapter in my life. Mike was the first glimmer of support that I looked to for our beavers, though he certainly wasn’t the last. The story of the Martinez beavers and the teaching role they had on other communities will continue in ways I can’t even imagine today, but this part of the story is completed. The circle that I never dreamed of starting, that caused me to work harder than I ever had and do things I never had never attempted before, that took me places I could never even dream, that part of the circle has been closed.