Lots of beaver news today. Lets focus on or friends, first! Mike Settell in Pocatello Idaho is doing another beaver count! How can it be that his volunteers look frozen but he looks young and cheerful after all these years!

Watershed Guardians to hold their 9th annual BeaverCount

On Feb. 1 and Feb. 8 Watershed Guardians will hold its 9th annual BeaverCount, a free snowshoe event to raise awareness of the important role beaver play keeping the Portneuf River watershed healthy.

On Feb. 1, volunteers will meet at the Mink Creek Nordic Center at 10 a.m. where a training will be held for anyone interested in counting beaver activity. The training will include winter outdoor preparedness and censusing techniques for beaver. Participants will also learn about their watershed. This training is for newcomers and BeaverCount veterans, known as “Flattailers.” Flattailers are encouraged to attend the training to update their skills.

Man that’s smart! I wanna be a flat-tailer! Don’t you?

Snowshoes and food will be provided by Watershed Guardians for both weekends. Participants must pre-register, which they can do on the Watershed Guardians Facebook page or at the website, www.watershedguardians.org. Should conditions warrant on Feb. 7, the count will be rescheduled for Feb. 15. Please check Facebook and/or the website for updates on weather conditions during the week prior to Feb. 8.

Watershed Guardians is a 501c (3) non-profit whose mission is to, ” Protect, maintain and restore the Portneuf River Watershed, one beaver at a time.” Data collected from BeaverCount is used to influence management decisions with regard to trapping regulations.

Brave beaver-loving Mike has been at this work nearly as long as us. On a tougher landscape where fur-trapping abounds. Thank goodness he’s willing to snowshoe every year and share what he knows!

Let’s stop by our local Sonoma beavers next and see what they’re up to, shall we?

Bill Lynch: Frankly, my beaver, we don’t give a dam

The Sonoma Index-Tribune recently published a couple of articles about beavers and otters in Sonoma Creek (“Otters Join Beavers in Sonoma Creek,” Dec. 27).

It’s a good sign, not just because it’s nice to know that Sonoma Valley’s main waterway is actually clean enough to support wildlife, but also because beavers can actually improve life for other critters, including my favorite, rainbow trout.

Our Sonoma Valley creeks used to be home to a healthy population of steelhead/rainbow trout and spawning areas for king and Coho salmon. In my boyhood here we could fish for trout in most of our streams through the spring and early summer.

Since those days, our creeks have lost more than half of their water and many completely dry up by June and stay that way until the fall rains return.

This kills any chance for salmon fry and steelhead trout fry to survive.

I don’t understand the headline. Shouldn’t it be “We should all give a dam?” But the column is excellent! That’s what we need. A few more beaver friends argue that saving salmon and trout depends on them. Thanks Bill! Have we met?

About a year and a half ago, I visited the Scott River valley were local residents formed the Scott River Watershed Council (SRWC) and are working with Dr. Michael Pollock, eco-system analyst for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In this little community people are doing something about bringing back their creeks.

The river, no bigger than our own Sonoma Creek, was once a prolific salmon and steelhead spawning resource, before it was ruined by past gold mining. Then climate change and other factors caused it and its tributaries to dry up during most summers.

But in 2014 SRWC began constructing “beaver dam analogues,” which are human made structures that mimic natural beaver dams, store water and create habitat for all kinds of local species, including steelhead trout and Coho salmon. Over time, these naturally appearing dams create pools where fish can survive.

Dottie and I met with Betsy Stapleton, chairman of the SRWC, who showed us some of the work her group has done on the creek. The results are impressive. They were able to preserve large areas of fresh, clean water in which Coho and trout fry are surviving. Every season, the fish count goes up.

Real beavers are helpful, but when there are not enough of them, small grassroots projects like those in the Scott River Valley can really help. Perhaps something like that would work here.

Oh yeah. Now that’s what I like to see. A beaver friend we don’t know yet talking about a beaver friend we already know! The stage is filling up. Soon you won’t be able to swing a dead salmon without hitting someone who knows why beavers matter!

Even in Silicon Valley there are friends looking out for beavers. Take this excellent photo taken by Erica Fleniken of the Southbay Creeks Coalition yesterday morning on the Guadelupe. She says she was watching two beavers swim and snapped this beautiful photo.

Two beavers in January mean kits in June. Big smile.

Park City Municipal Will Euthanize Trapped Beaver: Flooding And Damage From Dams On Poison Creek

Park City public works has hired a trapping service to capture and euthanize a couple of beaver that have built dams on the stream along the Rail Trail. Residents have complained to the city that the back up of water from a couple beaver dams is causing flooding and property damage.

Lots of beavers on NPR this week. I particularly liked this quote. He sounds almost sad.

On McCleod Creek, we have 13 pond levelers and these pond levelers are constructed to where the beavers will build a dam and we put a pond leveler in, and they quit building, so they don’t make it bigger and bigger. And the beaver does well, and we’ve been successful at those.” They use devices called pond levelers on McCloud Creek to encourage beaver habitat and dam building but Dayley says the ponds close to town on Poison Creek along the Rail Trail are too shallow. “

Remember the City Manager of Martinez told a resident that the KNEW about pond levelers but felt they wouldn’t work in Martinez. And uh, 11 years of safe beaver habitat says they were wrong.

Just saying.

Beaver friend Ulrich Messlinger sent me a copy of the new beaver book they are publishing in German “Entdecke die Biber” and wondered if I thought a translated version would be appreciated by American youth. I had fun reading it and told him yes of course. but couldn’t help sharing this one swiped image from it about beaver rehab. I have no permission to share this but couldn’t resist because I believe it is the sweetest beaver picture in the known world.