Tag: Ben Goldfarb

THE FOREST SERVICE NEEDS BEAVERS

I am tempted to think beavers have reached ‘critical mass’ in their renaissance story. Public opinion has swung recently in their favor because of Ben’s book and this article the journal Natural Resources and Environment makes it look like the entire forest service has voted in their favor.

It’s about time.

Restoring Beavers to Enhance Ecological Integrity in National Forest Planning

Got that? Seven years ago our Forest Service was mandated to incorporate principals of sustainability and ecological environments that would last and replenish themselves. The directive is that forests should sustain more than just trees. And in fact take care of the wildlife that uses them if they want to promote healthy growth for the long term. And guess what does that really well?

Oh yeah, You just read that right. These are some senior Montana thinkers and writers saying that the number one thing public lands need to keep them and the wildlife they sustain going is – pinch me I’m dreaming – BEAVERS!

You see what happened in that paragraph? They referred in the same sentence to Ben’s article and the Restoration Guidebook that I wrote part of!! Later on they quote the article by our other friend Rob Rich! Put that on my tombstone and tuck me in for the night. Beavers are finally starting to get the respect they deserve!

Okay way more Ben’s credit than mine BUT still!!!

I just LOVE thinking that Ben’s wonderful book is getting read by the scientists and policy makers than can direct the use of national lands to protect beavers!!! Isn’t that wonderful?

Oh quotable Ben. I’m so glad that if it was time for this book to be written they chose YOU to write it. You ol’ phrase-turner you!

Next the article discusses how beaver reintroduction has been occasionally used by the forest service but it needs to be much less haphazard and done on a regular basis. Not only moving problem beavers but PLANTING for future beavers. Yes you read that right.

Oh oh oh. I don’t ever ever want this article to end. I’m going to post the entire PDF at the end and you really should read it, For now lets just find one more jewel to savor. Finally it ends with a discussion of the recent lawsuit against USDA for removing beaver in salmon habitat and says, hey, the forest service has ESA rules too. We shouldn’t be doing that either.

My my my. You better read the whole thing and send it to everyone you know. Some day beavers are going to be on everyone’s lips and you’re going to be able to say you knew them first, back before they got famous. I snagged this great photo from a facebook friend Alan Law from a drone in Canada but I think you’ll understand what it illustrates.

Beavers are on the rise to stardom. And it’s no wonder why. It couldn’t happen to a nice ecosystem engineer.

NR&E article (1)

BEN AND BEAVERS – REPEAT AS NECESSARY

What matters it how far we go?
His scaly friend replied
There is another shore, you know.
Upon the other side.

When I read these credits on this article the other day, I was certain they had made a typo. A quick consultation with our friend the Spokane author reassured me that everything was perfect as it was written. There is, in fact, another Ben who writes nice things about beavers upon the other shore. Well, okay then,

The triumphant return of the British beaver

Ben Goldsmith

There is a particularly magical West Country woodland that I know, through which a sunlit stream meanders, braided by a series of neatly dammed pools that hum with life; dragonflies and mayflies, swallows, swifts, kingfishers, amphibians and small fish teem here in numbers rarely seen in Britain. The birdsong is cacophonous. The water’s edge is lined with the fresh growth of willow, hazel and alder, artfully coppiced as if by a skilful gardener. This wood happens to be home to a family of reintroduced beavers.

You see my confusion. “Cacophonous”? “braided?” Sure sounds like the Ben we know writing big flowery big words about beavers. But no, it’s another Ben entirely! A British Ben! (No, not the clock.)

Streams engineered in this way by beavers play a critical role in protecting us from flooding, as well as from seasonal drought. Without beaver dams, winter rainfall brings a torrent of water that rushes downstream, causing flash flooding. That gives way to dry, lifeless gullies in the summer once the water has gone. Beaver dams slow the flow of water, giving nature time to sift it of sediment and impurities, and release it evenly through the year.

The return of beavers to Britain, along with all that they do to bring life into our landscapes, is truly a marvel.

Two continents of Ben’s praising beavers! I’m liking this! Can there be more? I like the idea of being surrounded by Ben-beaver wisdom. No matter what direction you embark you could find a Ben to tell you why beavers matter. Let’s work on the idea of asia-Ben.

In areas where beavers do present a problem, such as in man-made ditches designed to keep low-lying arable land from being flooded, they must be managed, preferably non–lethally. But opposition to the return of beavers mostly arises from misunderstanding. There are worries that migratory fish such as salmon and trout might be unable to make it past beaver dams, which ignores the fact that they co-evolved over millions of years with beavers. And some people object to the ‘mess’ created by beavers along the water’s edge. Considering that the majority of our land is stripped, cultivated, tidied and managed by humans, surely we can we allow nature a bit of free rein along our watercourses.

The return of beavers to Britain, along with all that they do to bring life into our landscapes, is truly a marvel.

I suppose, somewhere in the annals of history, there is an American writer who noticed beaver were reappearing on the landscape in 1912 or 20 and observed how wonderful it was to see them back on the landscape. It’s hard to imagine now, but I sure wish I had been there, to see the streams spark to life again. Of course by the time the beavers were coming back we were already ruining their waterways with unchecked American industry of our own, so I guess for a long time they cancelled each other out.

Still its fun to watch others discover what you already know and love.

And just to make sure you get both your daily-Ben doses, there was a nice interview on the “Down to Earth podcast” out of New Mexico yesterday. I think you’ll enjoy this listen to “The little Rodent that Could“. It’s a smart discussion of why beavers matter to an arid state, and the interviewer is both surprised and curious about the right things.

A RAP FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Book March 16, 2019

Wait until you see this fun video beaver rap as poet Steve Schmidt of Connecticut serenades author Ben Goldfarb at a presentation of Eager. Wonderful poetry and some really fun gangly Ben rap appreciation that will start your weekend right. Steve had the odd fortune of reading “Eager” around the same time he happened to see the musical Hamilton, with delightful results. What everyone needs on a Saturday morning from our soon to be VERY GOOD new friend.

Rap for Castor

––for Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager

You got problems out west, you’re runnin’ out of water
Temperatures risin’ and the world’s gettin’ hotter
Tryin’ to mitigate floods and stop runaway fires
You got water in quantity but not where you want it to be

You gave us no respect, so what did you expect?
You thought a buck-toothed rodent would be better as a hat
So you trapped us and snapped us until you’re all that
Too stupid to see that you were fracking up your habitat

You exceeded your need until greed was your creed
Had a shizzle vision of your mission, to speed
a landscape raping you should have been arresting
Now I guess your destiny is manifesting

They call me The Beaver
No, not the one by Ward Cleaver
Castor canadensis
Genus? I’d say genius

We shaped the contents of the continents
Masters of geology, ecology, hydrology, topology
Our diligence, intelligence, experience, and innate sense
could handle any consequence

Now you need us more than ever, brother
If you want to last forever and recover
Looks like you could use a furry god mother
Give you pristine streams, replenish all your aquifers
A salmon run replacin’ all the damage done
Another keystone species where there isn’t one
Just keep in mind the beaver battle cry:
Wetlands Are the Best Lands, and that’s no lie

With us it’s just pond to wetland to meadow to forest
And day or night, oh, the concatenatin’ chorus
So we’ll find a dam spot just where you needed one
Now leave it to the beavers, man: We’ll get the job done

THE BEAVER KILLING FIELDS

heidi08 Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 4, 2019

Today is a mixed review of a beaver day, a triumph and a tragedy. Or rather 146 tragedies, made possible by a California Department of Fish and Wildlife that still believes that it’s a reasonable thing to report under past attempts that you had diligently tried “Hazing and debris removal” before requesting a permit. If you were asking for a permit to give up on your children you might just as easily write that you tried “loud music and making collages” as a earnest attempt at parenting. Because it would be exactly as useful.

All of the awarded permits combined add up to an allowed take of 2,626 beavers in a mere 23 counties in the state. They are generally where we’ve come to expect, surrounding the delta and wicking out from that center. The majority of permits was once again issued for Placer county, but the majority of beavers was authorized for take in Sacramento which I suppose is what we should expect.

Interesting to me in a grim kind of way is all the regions we used to see beaver permits issued and now don’t. Like Kern and Riverside and Mendocino. Places where the beaver population was starting I guess to rebound, and then they were depredated and progress stopped. Of course CDFW would say that just because 2626 beavers were permitted to be killed it doesn’t mean that many were actually killed. Except there were still 6 permits given for unlimited beaver, so for all we know it the actual tallies could even be higher. Plus there is no official with a clipboard coming to check that if your permit was good for 17 beavers you actually didn’t kill 18 by mistake. Or 118.

So I think it’s reasonable to assume that California kills at least 1500 beavers a year, maybe more like 2000.

What does that mean? It means that all the salmon those beavers would have helped, all the fires they might have prevented, all the drought they would have averted is lost in a pile of bones and fur. Some in the name of development and some just to preserve someone’s rosebush in their front yard. It continues to be a hard world out there for a beaver. And there are so many places where the light still doesn’t reach.

Thank you to Robin Ellison for obtaining the permits and to Molly Foley and Jon Ridler for helping me process them. It’s been a grueling 4 days. But there is a small comfort in that many many more permits in 2017 reported or recommended wrapping trees or painting them with sand as a defense and 11 of those permits discussed the use of a pond leveler. I guess that’s something.

Baby steps for babies.

Meanwhile Ben Goldfarb continues to fight the good fight and received a Pen award for his efforts. In case you want to see what a big deal the ceremony was (like the Oscars for writing) and hear his hopeful acceptance speech I have cued up his award and acceptance which is a fairly optimistic look at the differences we can make. Enjoy.

FLOODED WITH FEELING

heidi08 Beaver Book, Beavers February 28, 2019

The Russian River has been flooded for several days now, and it just keeps raining on our friends in the North. The Napa beaver pond is flooded under several feet of water and their lodge isn’t visible anymore if it’s standing at all. One of Worth A Dam’s most gracious and courageous members evacuated from the house her grandparents built on the river whose lower story is now underwater. The level was supposed to crest at their doorstep last night. My own sister in Forestville is sequestered on an island, cut off from the road and all civilization until dryer days. Last night I thought of the old saying

Nothing is a soft as water,

But who can withstand the raging flood?

Fingers crossed the waters recede today and everyone survives to pick through the mud and start over again. Of course beavers will be fine in their watery world, but we as usual will have a much harder time.

They say there is no great loss without some small gain, and it’s not small at all that Ben Goldfarb’s book “Eager” won the Pen award for outstanding science writing last night.

Since 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature across diverse genres, including fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, and drama. With the help of our partners, PEN America confers over 20 distinct awards, fellowships, grants and prizes each year, awarding nearly $370,000 to writers and translators.

Aside from being good news to beavers, it is great news for Ben, who will take home a tidy prize of sum as a result.

A $10,000 science writing prize was given to Ben Goldfarb’s “Eager.”

Congratulations Ben! We beaver lovers knew from the very start that you’d make the right kind of waves. Here’s hoping that this award makes MORE people read your book and MORE people understand beavers. Here he is accepting the award in New, York New York.