Restoration project seeks to outwit beavers; volunteers fence trees near Strawberry Creek to deter rodents
Jessica Cejnar/The Times-Standard
”About three months ago, they [beavers] took down a couple hundred to 300 trees in two nights,” said Bob Pagliuco, a habitat restoration specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “So we banded together to come up with a solution.”
Some people wanted to remove or relocate the beavers, Pagliuco said. Others wanted to kill them. But beavers are important to the ecosystem and to coho salmon, Pagliuco said, so they came up with another solution.
About 30 volunteers descended upon Strawberry Creek on Saturday for the AmeriCorps’ volunteer day to help fence off the trees, which include willows, alders, spruce and redwoods. The volunteers come from the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, the California Conservation Corps and the non-profit group Pacific Coast Fish, Wildlife and Wetlands Restoration Association.
We first heard about this tree wrapping project from our beaver friend Eli Asarian at Riverbend Sciences in Eureka. He said that there was originally a request for a depredation (kill) permit and that it was denied. DENIED! The California Department of Fish and Game (North Coast) said “NO” you can’t kill the beavers until you tried another way to solve the problem. Wow! The mind reels! The jaw drops!
At that time the plan was to wrap the trees with chicken wire because they couldn’t afford much fencing wire. I contacted the project and explained that chicken wire would only work reliably on those beavers that were the same size as chickens! And thought that if they were going to undertake such a huge project and use all those volunteers it needed to be successful or otherwise folks will say its a wasted effort! I talked about the benefits of sand painting, which they could consider for the larger trees.
The volunteers will also apply a latex-sand paint to the trees to try to dissuade the beavers from eating them, said Todd Carlin, a member.
Well, okay then! Seems like folks at Strawberry Creek have all the right idea. Apparently they get this whole beaver benefit – keystone species – thing – and the Coho salmon message has hit home hard!
”We’re trying to keep mindful of the importance of beaver in the ecosystem, especially with coho salmon,” Carlin said. “We jumped on (the project) to serve as an example that you don’t need a depredation permit; you don’t need to relocate the beaver — they can cohabitate here. We’re just trying to see if this will be successful, and then we can apply it to other projects.”
”These dams they build back up water and create a pond environment,” he said. “What we’ve been finding in the winter and in summer, these pond environments are extremely productive. There’s lots of fish growing in beaver ponds, and they’re found to grow significantly faster than the fish growing higher up in the tributaries.”
In the withered desert of public opinion where minds are made up and nothing new grows, the hardened soil surrounding attitudes towards beavers has been hard packed for 50 years – but in the northern reaches of state the salmon message at least is starting to SINK IN. Good job all! Now trickle down here to the bay area, will ya?
And since you did such a good job here’s a ‘strawberry’ present for you!
