Dammit!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits, Video May 14, 2011

This morning one of our just-barely-yearlings came back with the typical branch at 6:00. I expected him to toss it hap-hazzardly in the direction of what was once a dam as he’s been doing, but them I noticed there was an actual DAM at the secondary and I started to pay closer attention. I didn’t know if an adult had done this during the night after despairing of JR’s abilities but I didn’t expect much from the little one. They haven’t show many ‘busy as a beaver’ qualities just yet. I have an unproven theory that GQ is near by but not residing with our three, and every now and then he dumps off a bundle of willow and does some real building in the hopes that he’ll inspire some action. Looks like he succeeded.

Bob Arnebeck told me once that beavers find work ‘irresistible’, and that when one’s doing it the others are compelled to join in. I think that it might be true that another beaver working is irresistible, but also that a single beaver can find his OWN work irresisitible! So that once a beaver does it once, mudding or carrying or pulling, they are likely to do it again. That was certainly true this morning, as this pattern happened several more times with blackberries, willow, reeds and mud before he finally picked his way back up to the primary dam to sleep for the day.

With all the new willow around I figured something must have been taken during the night. A homeless man pointed me in the direction of the nearest target, one of the willow we planted behind Bulldogs BBQ. I had thought they were all gone already but the cut trees are all coppicing like crazy and there is tons of new growth. I know our three are old enough but I can’t help but wonder proudly whether one of our ‘babies’ took this down? Sniff. They grow up so fast.

It’s supposed to rain this weekend. I swear if it floods out this little dam I will personally march down there with a sump pump, an umbrella and sandbags. I guess that’s pretty extreme. They’re beavers after all. Okay, maybe not the umbrella.

The First of Many!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 13, 2011

Our friends Mary and Sherry at the newly-formed Sierra Wildlife Coalition have developed such a taste for saving beavers they installed their first-ever flow device in Truckee while there was still snow on the ground. This is the group who received our first -ever beaver management scholarship, and it looks like we couldn’t have chosen a better recipient! I received these last night:

Here, finally are a few photos from our flow device installation last Monday – and yes, the white dots are snow… It went very smoothly, thanks to all the good info from Mike. Ted’s in the green hat, Patrick (who arranged this with his wife Elaine) is in the yellow, and Bill, Forester for the subdivision, has the red hat. Bill is ready to install more, as needed! Tahoe Donner is the largest residential subdivision in California, and they have 2 creeks with active beavers.

Mary and Sherry went from casual involvement to full-bore beaver saving with a road trip to Oregon for the conference! They sand-painted trees in the snow and made tails with children on earthday. They swooped a community along with them and this is the result in a neighboring town. I honestly couldn’t be more pleased or proud, and reading the remark from the subdivision forester that he’s ready to install more may very well be the best news I read all month.

All this was possible because of the clear guidance from the installation DVD produced by Mike Callahan under a grant from the Animal Welfare Institute. I think this kind of beaver heroism is exactly what they had in mind!

I’m hoping the success of this installation leads to a domino of flow devices all across the sierras. Oh and I’m hoping that someone from Fish & Game owns one of the subdivisions and notices how WELL this worked!

MARTINEZ BEAVER UPDATE:

Cheryl saw two this am and snapped this liquid picture.

High Tide

heidi08 kits, Video May 9, 2011

This morning’s high tide made the creek look like old times. it was 50 degrees at 5:45 and less in the wind. I watched silently as this furry sea monster floated out from under the bridge. You can actually see his feet under the water. I was hoping for a long languid beaver watch but someone crossed the bridge at JUST that moment and made him swim away. Grr. Some times I wonder if our kits aren’t confused by the tides. One morning the creek is full, and they are comfortable in watery luxury, the next it’s empty and they need to build a dam ASAP, then its luxurious again .

Cheryl was able to get this picture last week, look at his beautiful beaver body under the water! I have often said that our kits get ‘wide’ before they get ‘long’. The 2010 batch is clearly no exception.

Just in case you’re still confused about telling muskrats and beavers apart, here’s a lovely comparison. This little fellow is even carrying a reed like a beaver! But look at all that tail action:

We also saw a very stealthy beaver (adult?) carrying a big branch who dove like a navy seal and wouldn’t let us watch him much. I got some video I’ll try to enlarge and see if it’s worth posting. Hmmmm…..

Let’s end with a hearty CONGRATULATIONS to some COURAGEOUS BEAVER FRIENDS who will be installing their first ever flow device today. GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!

Et in Arcadia Ego

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Educational April 23, 2011

Arcadia National Park celebrated National Park week in the second best possible way imaginable: Teaching children about beavers! Click on the link for a short video from the local news. (Mind you this is Arcadia in Maine, not California, and they need some positive beaver education.)

Through the Schoodic Education and Research Center these kids can learn about how beavers adapt to their “The kids like to look at the parts and learn about how the beaver eats and swims and protects itself,” said Kate Petrie, Supervisory Park Ranger for Education. Beavers are creatures these kids may encounter on a daily basis so organizers believe they should know how to act around them.”We live near a big pond and we have across the pond there’s a big beaver house.”

Children Learn About Beavers

Of course the FIRST best possible way to celebrate is to teach ADULTS about beavers and how to live with them. Maybe that will happen next week? Worth A Dam has three teaching events coming up, two at separate preschools and one at a kindergarten. We will show some video, talk about beavers, and have the children paint tails. Just in case you wondered, we will probably not be bringing beaver body parts for the children to pet. Go figure.

A Mixed Blessing

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 22, 2010

Elizabeth Lee wrote an article this weekend that was not quite advocacy, not quite pragmatism, not quite derision. She begins by talking about the flooded swamp in New York that the beavers used to maintain, allowing families to iceskate through the trees when it froze. She notes, almost incidentally, that even though it has no beavers anymore it still provides excellent birding.

In the Webb Royce Swamp in Essex there were beavers that kept the swamp flooded until the 1990s. Local families ice-skated among the trees that remained standing and the hummocks that bulged from under the snow. In recent years, the beavers moved out. Stories vary as to how and why. Now the swamp is dry except for rainfall. The birding is still excellent and the groundcover is habitat for a new mix of plants and animals.

She then goes on to talk about a very humane neighbor who was forced to shoot a beaver whose dam was flooding his property. He had apparently tried trapping but it was just ‘too big’. I guess this very ‘humane’ neighbor didn’t know that it was very unlikely that this monster-beaver was living alone, so even if Papa was shot the other beavers would still tend the dam. Elizabeth then rounds off the article with a hearty discussion of how much beaver pelts go for at auction and how the castoreum sells well also.

One gets the feeling, reading this article, that Elizabeth thinks beavers benefit the land once they leave it and that its useful to have places where they once were. Okay. I don’t disagree with that. But you know what else is useful? Having places where they are RIGHT NOW!!! I wrote her about the documented effect on bird and fish populations near beaver dams and I wrote her that any article that spends three paragraphs on the subject of trapping should devote at least a sentence to the benefit and technology of flow devices: the only long-term solution to beaver problems.

One thing her article taught me that I didn’t know? One of the buyers for castoreum is Phillip Morris, who uses it as a flavoring agent in cigarettes.

Perfect.