Tag: Brock Dolman

Seeing Eye-to-eye

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, Recent Sightings June 3, 2010

Our own Cheryl Reynolds snapped this lovely photograph a few nights ago. It is beautiful look at a beaver on his own terms. I am certain we are in agreement about this being an excellent picture but we differ in our thoughts of whether this is Dad or a yearling (Clearly with those wide eyes it’s not mom!) Cheryl was impressed with the overall size of the beaver and his somewhat cautious approach. I look at the smooth, ungrizzled lines of that narrow face and think this is a young dapper yearling ready to take life by storm. Dad must have seen six years now, and I think his face shows it more. Perhaps you’d like some beaver mysteries of your very own, so head down to the dam and find a few! If you see anything, write and let us know. Worth A Dam stalwart LB has recently taken on the sightings page, and has been updating cheerfully with the excellent detail.

Last night this fun read caught my attention. Beaver friend Brock Dolman sent Ashlee my way for an interview and I was hoping it would be a positive voice for beaver benefits. Whadaya think?

Leave It to Beavers?

Nature’s water engineers can restore river channels.

By: Ashlee Green

It can cost millions of dollars to restore a river channel with artificial ponds and bulldozers. Some ecologists recommend turning to beavers, nature’s water engineers, who will do that work for free.

Ahhh isn’t that a lovely beginning? Sigh. Get the popcorn and the throw blanket. This is going to be a cozy read.

Ecologists working in the Feather River watershed have unearthed evidence of beaver activity dating back more than 1,000 years. They say the animals were a natural part of the watershed, and restoration techniques like “pond and plug” resemble beaver dams, which clean up river water by trapping silt and organic material.

I actually gave her a very nice quote which she didn’t use, about having engineers “on site 24/7 to make repairs” but, still, I didn’t come out half bad anyway.

Dr. Heidi Perryman, president of the beaver advocacy group Worth A Dam, in Martinez, Calif., says beaver dams create habitat for fish and the insects they feed on. And when beavers chomp on trees, that stimulates dense regrowth, creating vegetation that’s appealing to birds.

She offers a nice collection of links to follow up with, which I helpfully directed her to. Sadly it doesn’t link to the single most useful beaver website on the entire planet, (ahem) but hopefully that was an oversight and people will use their google to come find us anyway.

Careful observers of this website will notice that there are two new flyers in the left hand column. (Click on the thumbnail to go to the pdf) The first is for the talk I’m giving Monday for the organization “Close to Home” in Oakland. I would love to see some familiar faces there, so if you’re not doing anything that night you might stop by! The second is the flyer for the beaver festival, which I just finished putting together yesterday. Looks like its going to be a dam good time!

No ‘seven maids’ update today. I am too depressed. Not just by the oil washing up in Alabama or the stupidity of Tony Hayward thinking he could apologize for his enormous narcissistic uncompassion by saying he was sorry for whining that he “wanted his life back”. No, I was depressed that the head of the NOAA is backing up BP’s denial and pretending not to see the mile long plumes of oil under the sea, even as she pays teams of researchers to study what isn’t there. Favorite part of the article?

“I’m not in denial” she insisted.

Do people actually say that?

Beaver Goodness Mid-Klamath

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental May 16, 2010

This guest blog is from Beaver Friend and Watershed expert Brock Dolman of the OAEC. Brock was our guest speaker at the JMA Earth day event where he charmed us by saying that everything he learned about helping watersheds he learned from beavers. Here’s an exciting tale of what happens when folks get it right.

I had a spectacular beaver discovery day yesterday on the Klamath on a tributary called Boise creek just downstream from Orleans. I went out with fish biologist and restorationist Will Harling, who is also the director of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council.

This location on private land, with pro-beaver landowners who run an organic vineyard/winery operation, has had a long history of beaver being there. But it appears that this season this family group really got their groove on! From the photos you’ll see that they have, for what appears to be the first time (?), made a full dam across the main channel of Boise Creek that was about 4’ to 5’ tall. Consistent with their well deserved reputation as genius hydro-engineers, the location of this dam could not have been better chosen or constructed! When the instream pool is full, it now sets up the capacity to laterally divert a significant amount of water towards either bank and directly into the upper portions of a series of old historic flood channels and back water basins. And yet, the diversion is not so significant at this time of year as to really affect the bypass flows as can be seen from the falls at the mouth photo.

This “headworks” dam becomes the key to allowing the beaver to manage an ideal volume of diverted flow, which has created three major parallel contour terraces (each 1000’ or more long) that are made up of several dozen ponds and/or long linear sloughs and swamps. As these travertine type terraces, which make one visualize Balinese Rice Paddies, drop their elevation over smaller dams made of mud, grass and twigs it all ends up at roughly three primary discharge points that reconnect with the mainstem of the Klamath upstream of the Boise Creek confluence about an 1/8 of a mile or so.

From the fishery perspective this system was rockin!! With the use of my binoculars Will was able to peer into many pools, especially in the lowest terrace pool complexes that parallel closest to the Klamath, and see many hundreds of juvenile salmonids, with chinook, coho and steelhead all present!!! Besides their abundance, based on Will’s field experience, he felt that they all looked really healthy and comparatively extra large for their age class. In this area – it is hard to imagine a better rearing and refugia system for these threatened fish than what we witnesses yesterday! The MKWC and Karuk fisheries folks around here survey upwards of 60 tributaries for fish and finding places like this that appear to be able to hold so many fish, especially coho!!, appears to be critically important to a vision of coho recovery in this part of the system?

The coolest (literally) part about each of these points of river-reconnection is that they are low gradient and very easily passable slow water situations for juvenile salmonids that are rearing in the beaver pools above to head out or, hopefully allow entry for summer juv., salmonids looking for cold water refugia to escape from the hot mainstem? In essence they have created a braided series of delta channels with varying depth and velocity, which would appear to optimally allow for in and out migration passage of varying sized/aged juveniles?

See the one photo that shows the Klamath on the left with some sandy bottom and open willow areas with a small flow moving amongst them. This creek to river mouth access stands in stark contrast to where the primary Boise Creek mouth meets the Klamath which is a raging whitewater torrent over bed rock falls that is absolutely impassable to juvenile fish! See that photo for comparison.

Interestingly, from where the primary headworks beaver dam is on Boise Creek to the raging creek mouth is less than 100 yards of creek that appears to provide very little functional habitat for fish. But with the beavers pulling this proportionately small flow off the main creek and Slowing It – Spreading It – Seeping It for Salmon!!!, the actual total amount of newly accessible, way more productive and functional habitat that has been creating by the beavers is likely many orders of magnitude greater!! Ooh yeah- the neo-tropical migrant breeding bird songs and frog songs were thick around us the whole time as well! We need a grad student to work up & publish this whole beaver-re-storyation situation…anyone got such a eager student???

I want to say thank you to Will for being willing to spend that much time with me out of his busy life to go and witness such and inspiring and reinforcing situation. Always nice to find a place to enhance the feeling of more confident that our efforts to restore the reputation of beaver in CA as a friend of fish and people is a good path to being walking right now!!

From the front lines of Beaver-landia – over and out,
Brock

Dickens Beavers

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, History October 18, 2010

One of the signature characteristics of a Charles Dickens novel, (beside the rich characters, accessible dialogue, and fearless portrayal of class), is the number of coincidences that occur over the course of any story. He is famous for reintroducing the lost child to the searching mother; reconnecting young lovers severed through circumstance at a wealthy dinner party, (with one as a guest and one in service) and so on. While some have speculated that his use of coincidence was a plot convenience, or a lazy way to wrap things up, it more reflected his belief in the world. His friend John Forester said;

On the coincidences, resemblances, and surprises of life, Dickens liked especially to dwell, and few things moved his fancy so pleasantly. The world, he would say, was so much smaller than we thought; we were all so connected by fate without knowing it; people supposed to be far apart were so constantly elbowing each other; and to-morrow bore so close a resemblance to nothing half so much as yesterday.

I offer this by way of introduction to the surprising connections beaver supporters have made. For those following along at home, let’s review; last summer we held our largest and most successful beaver festival. it was attended by the coordinator of the girl scout extravaganza for northern california, and she invited Worth A Dam to participate. At the Flyway Fiesta we offered a charm bracelet activity that was enormously popular, and that lead to Worth A Dam being invited to two-day Flyway Festival.

At the Flyway festival we met the hydrologist from USFS who introduced us to the archeologist from the Bureau of Indian Affairs who had carbon-dated a paleo beaver dam at 750 years old. The dam was in Red Clover creek, at 5400 feet in plumas county. He had wanted to publish a paper challenging Tappe’s assertion that there “were no beaver in caiformia over 1000 feet” but he wanted a co-author.

Meanwhile my work with the beavers had lead to an invitation to be on the board for the john Muir Association. I’m in charge of entertainment for earthday this year and needed to secure a keynote speaker. Our wikipedia historian friend (who found us through the website) suggested Brock Dolman, so i tracked him down and we started a conversation. His very broad connections include a group of what I will call ‘beaver-curious’ folk who across the state who are interested in the restorative effect they have on the watershed. Brock was especially interested in the beaver-salmon connections and was able to convince the salmon conference people to add Michael Pollock to their line up this March.

Are you still with me? So Pollock gives his talk to a packed group who are very, very interested and he meets up with this Plumas county biologist from DFG who has a remarkable story to tell. Turns out he was the protege of the F&G old timer who was responsible for putting beavers in the the shasta region in the 1930’s. He of course, having read Tappe many times, thinks he was introducing them, and of course they thrived and did wonders for the watershed just as he expected they would. Touchingly, he said it was the ‘best thing he ever did’.

So the protege spent time looking at the hydrology and the terrain and began to get the sneaking suspicion that beaver had been there before; a reintroduction, not an introduction, but he didn’t want to argue with his mentor so he kept his suspicious to himself. Then he attends Pollock’s talk and afterwards an informal lunch discussion and learns about the archeologist and the carbon-dating and he announces that one of the creeks his old mentor had placed beavers was:

Red Clover Creek. The very place where the carbondated structure had been found!

Not enough coincidences for you? How about this little added tidbit. Way back when Martinez was talking about relocating our beavers to live on a reservation, guess where that offered asylum land was?

Plumas county.

Sounds Fishy to Me!

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers March 15, 2010

Beaver friend, Brock Dolman of the OAEC (and featured speaker at John Muir Birthday Earth day!) rushed back from Redding to breathlessly describe the electric salmonid restoration conference he helped host which featured some surprisingly familiar faces. A shining star of the event was our new pal Michael Pollock talking about–you guessed it–the relationship between beavers and salmon. I don’t exactly have Brock’s permission to share the email but he didn’t exactly say not to either and I can’t be expected to keep news like this to myself. It’s THAT good!!!

Just back from an amazingly successful Salmonid Restoration Conference, where I moderated a 1/2 day session titled “Instream Flows for Salmonids” which had Michael Pollock as the final speaker. Over 200+ people packed into the room and filled every available space to hear his talk. There had been a lot of buzz being generated leading up to the session about beavers, and so lots of folks came to see & hear!! We then had an impromptu casual lunch time discussion that was open to everyone and over 60+ folks came to that as well!! All across the board there is a feeling of a swelling moment to bring beavers to the forefront of restoration!!!

Wow, think about what that means. There are watershed organizations across California worried about the salmon population. If a third of those tireless advocates became beaver believers we would be sitting on a beaver-boom town! There really could be beavers in Sonoma and Marin and Los Angelos. We really could see a day when a city or property owner has to pay a “salmon tax” to get a permit to exterminate beavers! My fondest dream is that it becomes more cost effective to live with beavers than to kill them, and the funds for that “tax” go to a public account from which cities and property owners can take out loans to help pay for the installation of flow devices and culvert blockers. Ahhh a girl can dream. You can bet Worth A Dam will be happy to play a part in the process.

“The rain it raineth every day”

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental January 19, 2010

Worth A Dam reporting for flood duty, sir! The dams were topped and the flow device held steady at 1:00, 4:00 and 8:00 pm yesterday. I’m sure our beavers are not at all interested in starting repairs, especially after this mornings downpour. Here’s a weather update from our trusty field advisor:

WET!!! Last night we had a break, but it is supposed to start again in the wee hours of the morning and intensify around dawn. This break will let the creek go down a bit. Trouble is the ground is soaked now so the creek will respond quickly to any rain. Rain is supposed to quit around noon and then showers, same thing on Wednesday. I think we could flood either day, but hopefully not, we dodged the worst of the last storm, it went South, let’s hope the next storms do too!

Apparently the soggy beaver dam made some news cycle last night, but I imagine things will get far too interesting in the next few days to make way for beavers! We’ll keep you posted.

In other news, beaver friend Brock Dolman writes that he presented at the Scenic and Wild Film Festival for SYRCL over the weekend. the citizen group protecting the Yuba River. After his talk about watersheds and basins, a man approached from the audience and said “Hi, I want to talk to you about beavers!”

Whereas this would be a fairly typical greeting in my life, it was a surprise to him because his talk hadn’t even mentioned beavers! Turns out the man had relocated from sweden where he grew up appreciating castor fiber, and this sparked a dialogue between many members about beavers, salmon and reintroducing beavers into the Yuba where they could do the most good. Brock had read about Tahoe’s “non native” nonsense, and encouraged nearby Yuba supporters to take up the beaver mantel.

Meanwhile we have a host more friends for the “Beaver Boosters Club” and a few more important voices advocating for their presence. Hooray!

Stay dry, and stay tuned!