Tag: Derek Gow

Guardian Beavers

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 17, 2017

Time for some UK praise of beaver gifts. I’ll be so wistful when they finally make the right decision. It’s wonderful to see articles like this in the Guardian.

Meet the latest recruit to the UK flood defence team: the beaver

Beavers could be put to work building dams to stop a village from flooding in the Forest of Dean, in what would be the first such scheme on government land.

The Forestry Commission has been an enthusiastic advocate for the release of a family of beavers into a large fenced area surrounding Greathough brook above the village of Lydbrook, on land owned by the commission.

Experts predict that the beavers will rapidly create dams, canals and ponds, slowing the stream’s flow and potentially holding back 6,000 cubic metres of water to prevent huge floods inundating Lydbrook, a village that suffered badly from flooding in 2012.

Villagers are mostly supportive, hoping the scheme will not only protect the village but boost local wildlife and tourism. “It’s a brilliant idea,” said Stuart Aken. “There were about 100 people in the village hall when they made the announcement and there wasn’t a single dissenting voice. People are in favour because of the potential to help against flooding and most are interested in the increase in wildlife that it will bring to the area.”

Everyone seems excited about the day, what’s the hold up?

But despite the beaver scheme not costing the taxpayer a penny – it would be funded by landfill taxes – it was abruptly postponed last month. A source close to the project said it had been blocked by a minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – and the Forestry Commission was “hopping mad”.

A spokesperson for Defra denied that the scheme had been blocked by a government minister and said that the Forestry Commission would announce the next steps in the coming weeks.

Derek Gow, a beaver expert who has worked on reintroductions in Scotland and England, said: “This is a tremendous opportunity. The science suggests these animals will hold back 6,000 cubic metres of water.

“This has the potential to prevent a once-in-30-years flood event. These animals will also open the forest canopy to light and create a biodiversity jewel in this forest.”

This “natural” flood defence works only in small streams in upland areas. In deeper rivers, beavers do not need to rapidly create dams. In lowland areas, beaver activity can also cause flooding.

But those in favour of their reintroduction to England and Wales say beavers can be returned to western river systems and will not spread to low-lying eastern areas, such as the Fens, where their activity could cause valuable agricultural land to flood.

Ahhh what a fine article! Where to begin? You have such great beaver advocates in the UK. But did someone really say that beavers would not spread and populate themselves into low-lying areas? I hate to break it to you but (ahem) beavers are very good at finding their way into new territory. It’s what they do. Their raison d’être , so to speak. I just don’t think it’s a great idea to tuck in the unsuspecting British population with cozy dreams of beavers who always stay where you put them. I agree about flooding. And I agree 100% with the lovely statement that “they’ll make a biodiversity jewel in the forest”.

But I wouldn’t say they won’t relocate. Never make promises beavers can’t keep.

I’m sure whoever said that it wasn’t Derek Gow, who is as fine an advocate as beavers could ever hope for. Looks like he’s giving a talk soon to spread the beaver gospel even farther.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust to stage beaver talk at Bickley Hall Farm

National beaver expert Derek Gow will be in Cheshire to give a talk on the how the animal’s re-introduction could impact the countryside. Cheshire Wildlife Trust is hosting the one-off talk at its headquarters at Bickley Hall Farm, between Malpas and Nantwich.

Several reintroductions of beavers are now either underway or being researched across the UK including in Scotland, Dorset and Wales.

A growing body of evidence suggests beavers have a key role to play in restoring nature in our countryside. They are a native species, which was hunted to extinction in the UK 400 years ago. They are a keystone wetland species, known for their dam building and tree-felling activity. This not only creates their home, but also provides the ideal habitat for many other plant and animal species and can play a role in flood prevention.

Derek Gow is at the forefront of beaver re-introduction and will be joining us to tell the story of the beaver comeback in the UK, sharing his experiences of the projects he has worked on along the way. His talk ‘The Return of the Beaver to the UK’ will be held at 7.30pm on Thursday September 28 at Bickley Hall Farm, Malpas, Cheshire, SY14 8EF.

Don’t you wish you could be there? I sure do! Derek is as fine a spokesmen as beavers could ask for and I know they have ever confidence in his work. Why just yesterday I found an awesome wetland illustration and was confused by one creature in the bottom right hand corner. He clarified helpfully that it was a water vole, and very common in England. Oh, and of course you know he came to Martinez after the beaver conference right? Because it turns out we are a kind of beaver Mecca too.

The other greatest story ever told!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? July 30, 2017

Yesterday was an unbelievably delightful and challenging journey through the year’s accumulation of goodies getting everything ready for today’s meeting with Leslie and Deidre for the important ‘bagging and tagging’ of items for the silent auction. We were reminded how many, many unbelievable treasures we received courtesy of enormously generous souls from as far away as Rhode Island, Kent, Calgary and Melbourne. Here is our small and precious collection of beaver jewelry which we were eager to display. This year we were given less jewelry and more art. Far more. There are 38 stunningly creative images this year in the auction, with everything from beaver ballerinas to otter notepads and avocets in flight.

The hardest job of pulling and sequencing is done. Believe me when I say some colorful language was spoken yesterday. Today will be reviewing, oohing and ahhing, and sticking numbers on items. 89 in total. Not bad for a beaver charity!

In the meantime there is PLENTY of good news this sunday, starting with a fairytail report from Calgary where folks are protesting the removal of a beaver dam and subsequent loss of habitat because of a proposed road building. I like every single thing about this story, but especially the name of the town, which sounded almost like candid camera was trying to see how I’d react.

Construction of southwest ring road will destroy popular beaver pond, protesters say

Protestors concerned about wildlife habitat loss due to construction of the southwest ring road led a walk to a popular beaver pond in the Weaselhead area Saturday.

The biggest issue is the realignment of the Elbow River and construction of a bridge overtop, which could mean the loss of a popular beaver pond, said Diane Stinson, a bird watcher who regularly frequents the area in the southwest corner of Calgary.

“They’ve proposed to fill in 24 wetlands between Highway 8 and Highway 22X,” she said.

“Four of those wetlands directly impact the beaver pond and the beaver pond is a local treasure. People go there all the time to see the wildlife and if the wetlands are filled in as the contractor has applied, the beaver pond will cease to exist.”

Ahh the chills up my spine when I read a sentence like that! You can’t imagine. Or when I see a photo like this:

“People are obviously concerned,” he said during Saturday’s protest organized by the group, YYC Cares. “Any damage that might happen to any wildlands, we compensate it three-to-one. We work with Ducks Unlimited and other organizations.

“In the original plan, our project would have come much closer to the beaver pond, but we’ve actually moved the road and changed the plan, so we’re going to have a pretty wide buffer between the two.” Johnson said trees and other vegetation will also be planted to strengthen the buffer between the road and beaver pond.

That’s right. We work with Duck Hunters to trade the destruction of habitat by our bulldozers for some more wetlands for duck hunters. That seems fair, right?

The $1.42 billion southwest ring road project will link Highway 8 with Highway 22X and is slated to be completed in the fall of 2018. The resident group has also filed letters with the province’s Environmental Appeals Board about the design, without success.

“We’ve had two different levels of appeal and our first appeal was dismissed,” Stinson said. “We just heard [Friday] that our second appeal was rejected. They’re saying we’re not directly affected by this.” The style of bridge being used to cross the Elbow River is also a problem for some members of YYC Cares.

“We were never aware until just recently that instead of an open-span bridge like Stoney Trail in the northwest, this is a cut-and-fill earth and berm dam,” Stinson said.

Something tells me there’s a reason you weren’t informed about this, Stinson.

Founded in 1965 by Grant MacEwan, the Weaselhead is one of three protected parks in Calgary — the other two being the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Griffith Woods Park. The Weaselhead is a source of Calgary’s drinking water and is “incredibly biodiverse,” said Paul Finkleman, president of the Weaselhead Preservation Society.

“We at the Weaselhead Society call it Calgary’s largest outdoor classroom,” he said.

“We have thousands and thousands of kids every year learning about water ecology, forest ecology, water biology and environmental stewardship. It’s just such a wonderful place, not just for families to enjoy, but for children to learn… right within city limits.”

Thousands of children, and some very wealthy-looking protestors. My odds are on the beaver dam. Great work friends of the beaver pond! You have all our support and spirit! Send your happy thoughts to the plucky folks of WEASELHEAD which, in addition to being the kind of name a newspaper loves to write over and over, is also about 3 hours over the border from Montana.

A protester, left, speaks to Ian McColl with KGL, the company building the southwest ring road, during an event Saturday organized by YYC Cares. The group says construction of the southwest ring road will negatively affect wildlife in the Weaselhead area. (Julien Lecacheur/CBC)

There are two more prizes this sunday, the first will be adored by all, and the second might mean nothing to anyone but me. Here’s the first, which was posted on my FB page by beaver buddy Lee Lawrence of Oregon. No back story provided, but honestly, none needed.

There are cute babies an there are oh-my-god-I-wanna-die cute babies. And I believe you know how I would classify this one.

Now onto the Heidi amusement, which comes because I stumbled across this nursery rhyme in the context of our current presidential administration. Everyone knows the first line but few remember the poem it comes from.

Birds of a feather, Flock Together
And so do pigs and swine
Rats and mice shall have their choice
And so will I have mine.

There were two things that struck me about this jingle. The first was that it should obviously be about beavers, which I’ll get to later. The second was that its rhyme is SO off. Obviously there’s an internal rhyme scheme in the first line with feather and together, but what happens to that in line three? In what crazy world do ‘mice’ and ‘choice’ rhyme?

Jon and I brainstormed a bit about this mystery and he thought there was a chancethey rhymed in the Cornish dialect. So of course I marched straight to beaver expert Derek Gow and asked him. Guess what he said?

“Here in Devon and Cornwall there is a tendency to pronounce things like mice as moice. Same applies to the other words so maybe the connection is there.”

Ah HA! Mystery solved! Rats and Moise will have their Choice! Heh heh heh…Thank you, Derek! Now for the other problem.

Birds of a feather, flock together
Both closely and beyond
Bugs, frogs and fish, are all they wish
Beside a beaver pond.

Beavers to the Rescue?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? February 27, 2017

Right before the glorious beaver conference, this article appeared discussing the benefits that beavers provide to manage flooding. It stars Derek Gow who was one of the headliners in Oregon’s first days. It’s pretty hard to argue with solutions that promise to save you laying sandbags. Even the fisherman hate to clean up after flooding, I bet.

Wild beavers could be brought in to stop flooding in the Forest of Dean

Beavers could make a return to the wilds of Gloucestershire for the first time in hund of years to help environmentalists stop a village flooding. The Forestry Commission are considering releasing the large toothed animals into a brook above Lydbrook in the Forest of Dean as part of efforts to protect the village which was badly flooded in 2012.

Trials have shown that beavers can create dams capable of retaining about 1,000 tonnes of water which would otherwise cascade down to villages like Lydbrook which runs along a natural valley leading down from the Forest of Dean to the River Wye.

As well as holding back water, the beavers are also said to increase biodiversity in woodland areas with some claiming their activities can help many rare species thrive.

Forestry Commission chiefs have invited expert Derek Gow to tell residents in Upper Lydbrook and Lydbrook how experts believe putting beavers into Greathough Brook in the Forest could help halt water gushing down the hillsides.

Mr Gow told the Financial Times: “For years, the whole idea of reintroducing beavers has been bogged down by myth and nonsense. It’s not as though we are looking at reintroducing a Tyrannosaurus rex that eats children. “People have the idea that because beavers have huge teeth they chop their way through forests like furry chainsaws, but they’re a creative, not a destructive, force.

“They open up the river banks to many other species: plants, butterflies, beetles, amphibians and fish. These are the building blocks of life, the species that support others.”

“Beavers have been managing water for millions of years; they’re adapted to do a far better job than us,” he said. “We can no longer pay to maintain flood walls and flood defences so beavers are a rational option when it comes to water management and flood control.”

There has been a proliferation of plants, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs birds and Devon Wildlife Trust say the only wild colony allowed in England has encouraged tourists to flock to the area to see them.

Newly elected Lydbrook councillor Sid Phelps supports the idea of putting beavers in the brook which runs down to Lydbrook and said: “They have not been wild in the UK for hundreds of years but I understand that they can support the ecology and wildlife of an area and are very effective at alleviating the fast flow of water which can lead to flash flooding.

“I’m not an expert on hydrology but I’m very interested to hear what the Forestry Commission have to say about what it would mean for Lydbrook.”

Residents have been invited to a meeting at Lydbrook Memorial Hall on March 9 2017 at 6.30pm. Officials at Forestry Commission declined to comment or give details of the scheme saying they wanted to talk to local residents and parish councillors first.

The paper is already in your favor, Mr. Gow. I suspect the townspeople to be at least open-minded to your suggestions. I, of course, get nervous about promising beavers can slow down floods because, despite what the engineering report told Martinez a decade ago, dams aren’t concrete and they function best when helped by many many other dams dotted along the stream. Which reintroduced beavers won’t have after 500 years. They still washout and need to be rebuilt after the water settles. Which could all take enough time to inconvenience a homeowner.

(In fact one of the talks I eavesdropped on at the conference was by Vanessa Petro from Oregon State University talking about their research on beaver relocations. She observed that “beaver dams were ephemeral” and in dynamic areas like Oregon were shown only to last around 2 years.)

Hmmm 2 years? Alhambra Creek is a pretty flashy stream, and our own primary dam washed out frequently but was rebuilt religiously for 6 years. The secondary dam (which became the primary) was rebuilt for 8 years. I wouldn’t classify either of them as ephemeral. I asked Vanessa whether her study addressed the washout and rebuild of dams, or just classified all washed dams as ‘ephemeral’. She said that their data did not cover the history of the dam or its destruction and rebuild, which is what I suspected.

Beaver dams are ‘ephemeral’ in the same way that mowing lawns is ephemeral. The work done has to be repeated over and over for long term effect.

Which still is no guarantee that rebuilt dams will necessarily prevent flooding. But, (to quote the famous-chicken-soup offering-Jewish-mother) “It can’t hurt“. I wish Derek every luck at his upcoming talk, and am so sorry I had to miss him this year. In the end, it’s kind of like cleaning your room because you are looking for a misplaced 20. There’s no guarantee you’ll find the missing cash, but I really don’t think there’s a bad reason to clean your room or re-introduce beavers.

“Gnawty or Nice?”

heidi08 City Reports, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? December 13, 2016

“We’ll have to figure out if this is the handiwork of an animal of interest or “primal” suspect.”

Oh Oh! I know! Call on me!

Beaver: Gnaw-ty or nice?

A sign posted to a tree in Broadhead Creek Park warns visitors “Use of property, streams and ponds at own risk.” That same tree now presents a hazard. With a section of a trunk gouged out, only a narrow piece of wood holds the tree upright.

“That tree may have to come down,” said Stroud Township Supervisor Daryl Eppley. “It looks pretty far gone, and we don’t want to put the public at risk.”

The damage was discovered by recent park visitor Bill Sine. Township officials have one suspect already – a beaver. Sherry Acevedo, executive director of Stroud Regional Open Space and Recreation Commission, said preliminary evidence shows signs of an animal preparing for winter.

“Beaver activity does occur naturally along the stream,” she said, “and they do typically chew on trees.”

Stroud Township could decide to remove the tree as early as Tuesday, said Eppley. A public works crew will investigate multiple factors, including the direction the tree might fall.

“Even if it falls into the stream,” he said, “it can cause a dam – something beavers are notorious for.”

Full credit to the author of the article for using an actually new pun. “Gnawty or Nice” amuses me. Stroud Township is in Monroe county in Pennsylvania. It is one of the counties stricken by drought, although they apparently don’t want any beaver dams saving their remaining water though. Beavers are rascals. Any amusement leftover from the very rare new pun in this story is directed to the public works crew who will be “Investigating multiple factors”to determine which way the tree is going to fall. I can just see our DPW crew now out with their tape measures and plumb bobs using calculus to determine the trajectory.

Yesterday I showed you the trail cam video of Michael Forsberg which showed a beaver doggedly protecting his home from intruders. Turns out Michael’s a renowned wildlife photographer with extensive background in prairie wildlife. His glorious work has been featured in books and shown in National Geographic and PBS.

Lots of cranes, foxes and stunning night skies in his portfolio, and you should check out his website. But surprisingly few beaver. Obviously his resume has some beaver gaps that he is hoping to fill. We friended on facebook yesterday and I’ll do what I can to nudge him closer to beaver greatness.

capture — *Sadly, this is Mr. Forsberg’s only beaver photo featured on his website.*

Don’t I always save the best for last? Yesterday I read about the first episode of Autumn Watch in Cornwall which stared the river otter beavers. So of course I went looking for it. I wrote my buddy Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust in Kent and he directed me to this. You should really watch the whole thing. But first I’m going to tell you what made me very, very happy.

The interview with scientist/naturalist Derek Gow shows him wearing the Worth A Dam hat we gave him at the beaver conference a few years back. Martinez in Devon! Worth A Dam around the world! Isn’t that WONDERFUL?
I’ve cued up the segment so you really need to watch!

Learning by Loss

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Insects, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? August 16, 2016

Yesterday I stumbled across this wonderful interview with Derek Gow about beavers in England. I admit that I was originally drawn by the amusing photo which of course readers of this site should recognize right away. But let’s make allowances for the fact that they haven’t seen beaver in 400 years and cut them some slack.

It might take a moment to adjust to his Cornish accent, but the whole 15 minute interview is very, very good. I got especially fascinated by his discussion of the species that suffered when beavers were removed from the landscape. At around 2:13 he talks about the Large Copper Butterfly that relied as catapillars on the coppiced willow trees at the edge of forests beavers once provided that never really recovered from their removal. Next he talks about the Bearded Tit which feed their youngsters on the larvae from flooded reed beds that rarely occur in the absence of beavers. It made me realize what an incredible numbers of species beaver ponds affect that we never even consider.

The entire interview is the work of Open Learn and you might want to register and peek about to see what else they have. I’m very impressed with the work Derek has done to educate his countrymen about why beavers matter. It’s an uphill job but he points out that if we want folks in Kenya to coexist with truly destructive animals like elephants and Lions, we should be able to tolerate a little beaver interference!

Amen.