KUOW: BEN(s) DISCUSS BEAVER BENEFITS

heidi08 Beavers November 1, 2023

I’m very pleased to think that the youngest generation of Perrymans also have beavers on their radar. For a change this was sent to me by my niece and not my 94 year old great uncle.

Broadcast: Leave it to beavers

On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan, Chris explores the mighty beaver and its role in reshaping our landscapes and entire ecosystems. Then we plunge into the waters along the pacific coast to follow a sea lion’s journey from California all the way up the Columbia River in search of salmon, in what has become a controversial story of survival between two protected species.

THE WILD is a production of KUOW in Seattle

It’s a rerun but obviously Seattle could still use a refresher course so that works out. Enjoy!

BEAVERS JOIN THE RESISTANCE

Chris Jones is one of the major players of the Beaver Trust in Cornwall and has been instrumental in the work to get beavers on the landscape in Cornwall. He is also my FB buddy and a generally pleasant guy. He recently completed this interview with Derrick Jensen of Resistance Radio. One of the fun parts of this interview is the very English sounding truck horn occasionally in the background. He then recommended that I do an interview with him so we’re scheduled to record on March 10th. Let’s hope we can stir up some interest in Beavers and the California Summit.

Resistance Radio – Guest: Chris Jones

Chris Jones leads the river and beaver restoration programme for Beaver Trust, helping communities to develop projects that will recover biodiversity and build climate resilience. He is a farmer and ecologist based in Mid Cornwall. He has worked as a policeman in Africa, as a forester in SW England, as a drilling fluids engineer in the North Sea, Middle East and Africa, and as a theme running throughout as a farmer in Cornwall. He has been interested in the idea of reintroducing beavers to the UK for many years, and has been practically involved setting up and running the Cornwall Beaver Project with Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Exeter University since 2014.

Eek! I just heard my name dropped by a Cornish farmer I have never met in an interview I knew nothing about. Well then.

“INVENTING PONDS”

heidi08 Devon Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? July 15, 2020

I’ve been staggering with shock lately at the viral firestorm that will clearly be with us long after the NEXT festival is cancelled. There will certainly be no donations to the silent auction ever again. Because zoos and restaurants and museums will be clinging by their fingernails if indeed they manage to survive at all. It’s a dark and terrible time with no hope in sight.

So I comforted myself on working with Chris Jones poem yesterday and was fairly happy with how it came out. Amazing what they let you do with free tools on the internet. I was even happier when he responded overwhelmed and grateful this morning. That makes a nice way to start the day.

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I’m sure this will be used by the good folks at the Beaver Trust some way soon. It’s a funny thing. I first began to communicate with Chris when I saw Derek Gow berating him affectionately on FB. Then I learned that his farm is very near where Jon went to school in Cornwall and where his grandfather retired. There are something Facebook is horrible at, but it has a few salient uses.

I was shocked to read Chris’ bio on the beaver trust. Besides being a farmer who also writes poetry he has had an impressive resume, He must be a horse of VERY MANY COLORS indeed.

Chris Jones

Chris Jones is a farmer and ecologist based in Mid Cornwall. He has worked as a policeman in Africa, as a forester in SW England, as a drilling fluids engineer in the North Sea, Middle East and Africa, and as a theme running throughout as a farmer in Cornwall. He has been interested in the idea of reintroducing beavers to the UK for many years, and has been practically involved setting up and running the Cornwall Beaver Project with Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Exeter University since 2014.

ACCOLADES ACROSS THE BEAVER POND

heidi08 Devon Beavers March 17, 2020

I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny,
but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.

Dr.Seuss

Oh sure 7 million Californians have just been ordered to shelter in place but there is still lots of fun to be had if you’re us. Heck, who knows, beaver readership might go UP in this crisis! There’s no great loss without some small gain.

In the UK at least, beaver comeback has been greeted with good cheer in some quarters. They even grace the new National Geographic which celebrates the return of several lost species.

Welcome home: the lost English species making a comeback

The reintroduction of native species, lost for decades or even centuries from the British countryside, is at the heart of the Government’s 25-year Environment Plan. Alongside the recovery and restoration of wildlife-friendly habitats, the plan explicitly states that the reintroduction of native species is key to nature’s recovery.

A tiny corner of Cornwall is showcasing the huge potential benefits that could stem from the reintroduction of beavers to the south west of England. Hunted to extinction for their valuable fur, beavers are a keystone species with the power to transform local landscapes and provide natural solutions to major problems, such as flooding, water quality and declining biodiversity. A series of trials are currently assessing the impact of reinstating the tree-munching animals to areas of the south west, including Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

A lactating female beaver in the Cornwall project gorges on some brambles. Photograph by David Parkyn

Hurray! The comeback kid! That’s a great photo but honestly I can’t look at it without thinking that the photographer saw Cheryl’s iconic tree carrying photo and decided he needed to take his own. Of course this is slightly better because it proudly displays the renewable generations to come.

Carefully fenced in a two-hectare (five-acre) enclosure of plantation woodland alongside Nankilly water, near Ladock, three Cornish beavers have built effective flood and drought prevention infrastructure, cleaned water, and recreated wetland habitats rich in biodiversity. Their dams, for example, have reduced the peak flow of the stream by 30% after heavy rainfall, says Cheryl Marriott, head of nature conservation at Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

With climate change leading to more frequent extreme weather events, the opportunity to trap water upstream in areas where flooding is less of an issue, rather than let it accelerate downstream to areas where flooding is a major issue, is a huge win. Elsewhere in England, a pair of beavers reintroduced to Yorkshire’s Cropton Forest in 2019 have been suggested as a factor in preventing local flooding during Storm Dennis last month.

Yes beavers can do a whole lot of good things for you, and I’m glad England is recording every step of the way. Chris Jones really became a legendary pioneer when he agreed to try offering his farm up for beavers.

Three years into the five-year trial, Chris Jones, the farmer hosting the Cornwall beavers, said that his farm had recorded six new bird species, including water rail and green sandpiper, and three new mammals (water shrews, harvest mice and polecats).

“This has all happened on a stretch of land that is just 200 metres long, which begs the question of what would happen if we had 2,000km of beaver habitat in the south west,” he says. Jones would be delighted to see the beavers freely released, arguing that on land like his, and along the banks of many rivers and streams, the animals cause precious little, if any, loss of productive land.

Aren’t you proud of every single one of these brave pioneers pushing the beaver conversation forward? Chris Jones and Mark Elliot, Alan Puttock and Derek Gow and Paul Ramsay. They forced this into being and we are all the better for it.

And the advantages of stripping the energy out of rivers and streams brings other advantages too, adds Marriott. “Scientists have been really surprised at the reduction in agricultural pollutants in the water, such as phosphates and nitrates, as the stream leaves the beaver enclosure,” she says.

Water backed up in ponds behind beaver dams slows to such an extent that its pollutants can sink and percolate into the soil, rather than float downstream. These ponds are also creating an environment where algae thrive, kickstarting a food chain that rises through invertebrates to birds and mammals.

Oh yes, beavers kickstart it all. They are the original catalyst. We couldn’t agree more.

YOU OUGHTA’ BE IN PICTURES

heidi08 Video November 9, 2018

Work and play.

Both are important, and necessary for a healthy life, (Or a healthy website). And both are inspiring in their own way. A video that requires work might have difficult subject matter, or subtitles that take a moment for your brain to translate. But a video that inspires a playful spirit gets itself shared and is just fun to watch over and over.

That’s what on the menu today. Work and play. Only the “work” video is very, very good and will be teaching us until far into the future. It’s excellently made and good for us. And I know we’ll turn to it time and time again.

And the “play” video is just really, really cool. Like the coolest thing you have seen all month, all year, or maybe ever. It’s that good.

My puritan upbringing says the order should be work before play. But you are free spirits all. You may not have time for work right now and want to come back for it later. Which is totally fine and up to you. Just please make time for it someday because its really, really good.

I love the local volunteer groups in Germany that help folks manage beaver problems peacefully. I could watch that part over and over again. I love seeing Gerhard Schwab and thinking of him coming to Martinez two summers ago looking up our beaver habitat. I physically winced when they said beavers could have “positive and negative effects” on fish. And I’m still scratching my head about that flow device. So curious!

Now, if you’ve been a good child you can have your dessert. Or if you’re a wild child just have it first. Either way it’s good. This was posted by Robert lles on the Save the free beavers of the River Tay FB group. I have no idea where its from, but I love it as much as any 26 seconds of beaver life I have ever seen. To me it represents the very adaptive character and unflappable quality I like best about the animal. The ability to persevere and float or waddle on whatever life throws at you and come out the stronger.

Plus it’s really cute.

You see what I mean? I mean even if you were trying to be clever and do a human voice-over for this video all you could come up with is “It’s stiff….then “It’s noisy“….and finally “It’s wet” Because that’s what beaver life is like.