Tag: Devon Beavers

Blame the Beaver Bombers!

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, Who's saving beavers now? December 11, 2014

Back from the brink: See European beavers at work

Their destructive reputation seems to belie them, but beavers are now recognised as significant resources for carbon sequestration – the wood locked up in their dams and ponds accounts for a surprising amount of carbon.

This may or may not influence a shadowy group of people known as “beaver bombers”. These, apparently, are eco-vigilantes who release beavers back into Britain.

Believe it or not, that phrase was used earlier in the year in a National Geographic article. Apparently no amount of mocking and derision can discourage it because here it is again in NewScientist, a global service housed in the UK. This, along with beaver raising temperatures for fish and beavers causing beaver-fever, and “You can’t get pregnant the first time” is the kind of totally inaccurate falsehood that we at Worth A Dam recognize as sadly incurable. We are never going to eliminate the rumor that fans have carpeted the land with beavers. We just aren’t.

How do I know it’s not true anyway?

In all the world, on all the continents, in all the cities, in all the land, have you EVER met any single human more insane about beavers than I am? Go ahead, I’ll wait while you think about that. Finished? Now I know for a fact that I haven’t ‘bombed’ or reintroduced beavers anywhere. So if the craziest beaver fan on the entire planet hasn’t done it, who could have?

Community support builds for wild beavers

As community support builds for Devon’s wild beavers, an oil painting of a Devon beaver has raised £700 for Devon Wildlife Trust’s work to keep the animals on the River Otter.

The canvas, by renowned east Devon wildlife artist Emma Bowring, was donated to the charity’s Devon’s Wild Beavers fundraising appeal. Support has also been forthcoming from Ottery St Mary schools, Exeter businesses – and even TV presenter Chris Packham.

The aim of the appeal is to keep the wild beaver population on the River Otter by securing a licence from the government for a five- year monitoring project to assess the beavers’ impact on local landscapes, wildlife and communities.

That really is a nice painting, very luxurious fur. I was thinking last night about where beavers groom themselves when it’s pouring rain. Obviously there isn’t enough room in their lodges or holes for everyone to do it there. I was happy to remember that our beavers have plenty of bridges they can groom under which will give them cover for a few minutes. There’s something to be said about urban life.

The presence of these animals might even influence artistic tastes. Dan added: “Emma Bowring told us that the most popular British animal for her commissions is the otter. If the government grants Devon Wildlife Trust the licence to keep Devon’s beavers in the wild, perhaps Emma will begin receiving requests for beaver paintings.”

Well, duh. Come look at the artwork in my dining room?

The agenda is out for 2015 Salmonid Restoration Conference in Santa Rosa. You should check it out. Just look at this workshop on restoring urban streams?! Maybe you want to come?

Beavers Make New Friends

heidi08 Beavers October 27, 2014

beaver_itv_interview — Claire Wright giving itv beaver interview

The Devon beavers have all kinds of allies. They have farmers, and shop keepers, and school children, and politicians. And their number is growing. When the people lead the leaders will follow and Martinez knows first hand that is true about beavers.

Claire Wright is the Independent (unaffiliated) member of the Ottery County Council. I assumed she’d be pro-beaver until the day she was elected, but apparently I misjudged her commitment, because she won the election and she’s still advocating beaver sanity. Here’s her blog post today:

Why DEFRA should abandon plans to capture our beavers

On Friday I received a letter from Lord De Mauley via Mr Swire, confirming that DEFRA intends to capture them this year.

Friends of the Earth has launched a legal challenge on the basis that the animals are protected by EU law and so cannot be lawfully captured. So now, the government, with its massive financial problems could face a huge legal bill, on top of the capture and testing programme bill, which is likely to cost tens of thousand of pounds….. and for what?

To remove a group of native animals that local people have fallen in love with and that are living happily and harmlessly on a local river.

Our beavers are the only wild beavers in England. Leave them alone!!

The freedom of the beavers is now so popular in England that the East Devon MP has also asked for them to be returned to the Otter (albeit after first testing them to make sure the don’t have the parasite no one is really worried about).

Hugo Swire: Return beavers to the River Otter

East Devon MP Hugo Swire has called on Defra and Natural England to process a licence that will allow beavers to return to the River Otter, providing that they prove disease free after their capture and testing.

In July, Mr Swire held a meeting with Defra Minister Lord de Mauley along with representatives from the Devon Wildlife Trust to discuss this matter.

Mr Swire said: ‘The logical way to proceed now is for Natural England to capture the beavers and test them for the dangerous Echinococcus multilocularis (EM) parasite.

‘In the event of the beavers testing negative, I believe that they should then be released back into the River Otter, under licence, and monitored for a specific period. This, of course, must be done in close consultation with the local landowners and farmers’

Otherwise known as the “In the event that people do exactly what we want, I think we should let them” answer. This wan support was not good enough for the robust Ms. Wright who responded with:

It is encouraging that Mr Swire is doing something to put pressure on the seemingly paranoid DEFRA, however, the answer is surely to abandon the expensive and unnecessary capture plans, rather than risk the animals becoming ill or dying in captivity either before or after they are operated on and tested for a disease that Public Health England are apparently unconcerned about them having.

If the kits are separated from the parents, they will probably die, either in captivity or on the river. They rely on their parents for warmth and food.

I have asked Mr Swire twice now if he will urge DEFRA to abandon the plans, to no avail.

I’m trying to imagine Rob Schroder and Mike Menesini scrambling to show that they defend our beavers more than their opponents. (Give me minute, that’s a nice image and it makes me giggle.) The beavers in the river Otter must be really, really popular. More popular than the the beavers in Martinez. More popular than ice cream in July. I mean like Beatles popular.

Back in California I’ve been hard at work on a grant for our 8th festival. Yesterday I heard confirmation from artist Marc Poulin that he is excited to make buttons for our event and going to hand design the images himself, offering us an amazing deal. Each child will get a burlap tail where earned pins can be displayed, and since the price is lower we can offer 20 designs and involve more exhibits.Marc has generously donated to our auction in the past and is excited about coming on board. You’ve seen his creativity in boutiques, cutting edge shops and pet stores across the country. His designs are made here by his team at his warehouse in Oakland California and no one ever looks at his artwork without smiling. Here, I’ll prove it.

If I were you I would find a child to bring along with me on August 1st, because you are going to want one of everything. Thanks Marc!

Time Travel and Beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 20, 2014

Believe it or not, this program aired this very Saturday on the Children’s BBC program “Wild”. It was obviously filmed before DEFRA had made up its mind to ruin everything so there is no mention of beavers being illegally released or carrying parasites. It’s just an irresistible story of beaver adventure. I’m guessing someone at the BBC got a memo Monday morning and scrubbed it because if you search for the program online you get this.

Fortunately for us, stalwart beaver protector Peter Smith had already uploaded it to Youtube and we get to watch it first hand. I think I have a crush on host Naomi Wilkinson, because her enthusiasm for beavers is entirely infectious. Meanwhile pay attention to the language. This is alarmingly accurate for beaver-TV! If I were you I’d watch it today because tomorrow British government television might come lumbering along and swallow the youtube version next.

Wasn’t that amazing? The other amazing thing that came across my desk this weekend (besides a memory card problem, did you know your computer can actually send telegraphic messages and beep to tell you why it broken? Me neither!) was the Moorhen Marsh Study done in 1998 on the beavers at Mt. View Sanitation. For years we’ve been running into the odd person at displays who has mentioned that they were on the volunteer beaver study group between the Lindsay Museum and Mt. View Sanitation. I was fascinated by this and stunned that no information or observations about this study existed or ever found its way to our beaver sub-committee. That is until Kelly Davidson was cleaning out her desk and sent us this.

There’s a description of their methods and the some 15 volunteers who participated, as well as an excellent species list of 26 in all. It doesn’t say much that is startling about beavers and sadly there are no photos attached, but it did have a description of the behaviors they observed, all but one of which we see in Alhambra Creek. See if you can spot they outlier?

Beavers were observed swimming, chewing, diving, eating reeds, laying on their backs to eat, carrying stick or weeds in their mouth, patrolling or circling the ponds, shaking their heads, wiggling their ears, rubbing their faces with their paws and splashing.

Those beavers built a full lodge in the marsh and two kits were observed at the site. What I love best is thinking that one of those kits was probably one of our original parents. Bear with me here, but those beavers didn’t live in the bank and none of our 22 beavers have ever built a lodge but our original mom. In fact she built two in the span of three years and no one has done it since she died. This would make her 12 when she died, which is a nice life span for a wild beaver. So I’m going to assume it was mom that grew up in Moorhen Marsh. I’m reading this report as if I were looking at her baby pictures, which is a lot of fun. I will upload it to the website or you can read it here yourself.

Plot Thickener

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 9, 2014

We haven’t heard much from Devon lately on the great beaver trapping from DEFRA. If you’ll remember, a slew of citizens and farmers came to the meeting asking that they be allowed to remain.

DEFRA took this opportunity to blow off the meeting and pick up the traps instead. We heard they haven’t been too successful at catching any quarry, and it is looking like the good guys were winning this round. At least by default.

I guess DEFRA thought it was time for this.

Don’t allow beavers to upset our freshwater ecosystem

There seems to be a movement in this country to re-introduce species that have long been extinct, of which the beaver is one of many. These people will support their argument by declaring the beaver has only been extinct for 200-300 years. Not so. It became extinct in this country in the 12th century. As Derek Gow says they are great engineers building dams and constructing homes in rivers and streams from trees they have felled. Derek says they create wetlands. I do not think so. The likely outcome is more floods. Surely we have had enough floods in the last two years without additional problems caused by beavers.

Do not upset the status quo – the freshwater habitat in this country is a fragile ecosystem. Much damage can be done by reintroducing an alien species which the beaver is. We as humans do not have to feel guilty just because we were instrumental in the destruction of the beaver all those years ago. The world has moved on, so has our country and our rivers.

The beaver should be considered an alien in this country just like the grey squirrel, coypus, mink and Japanese knotweed. The damage they can do is too great to take the chance.

Those who put these animals in the River Otter should help the Environment Agency trap them – act now before it is too late.

Alien beavers! Thank goodness the West Morning news printed this ANONYMOUS letter before it was too late! I wonder who penned this thoughtful treatise? (Mr. George Eustice, don’t be so modest!) You should go read the whole thing because it contains a lovely passage from HBN Hynes which makes beaver restoration sound very heroic – and then argues ‘we can’t STAND this much repair in our rivers’! I especially like how it warns us of what’s to come and ends with the recognition that the government trappers have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and need assistance.

(The good news is that I see this morning another very popular badger cull is coming so they’ll have something else to keep them busy for a while.)

Your pro-beaver comment is needed now. I’m particularly of mine.

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And just so you know not all of Europe is ignorant of beavers, I got this from Duncan Haley this morning.

The Voronezhsky Biosphere Reserve is pleased to invite you to take part in 7-th International Beaver Symposium! The symposium will take place in Russia, Voronezh, September 14-17, 2015

Organizers of symposium:

MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Department of State Policy on Environmental Protection

Voronezh Region Government

Russian Research Institute of Game Management and Fur Farming

Voronezhsky Biosphere Reserve

The seventh symposium! And before you start thinking this event is exactly as old as our beaver festival, it’s actually much older, since it’s held every two years. You might remember back when Skip Lisle was invited to the one in Lithuania and our beaver friend Alex Hiller met him there.

Can’t wait to see the lineup for this one!

Goliath, meet David

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 3, 2014

Ottery Town Council pledges support for wild beaver family to remain in the River Otter

OTTERY Town Council has pledged its support for a family of beavers, whose future hangs in the balance, to be allowed to remain on the banks of the River Otter downstream.

At the full council meeting on Monday, September 1, there was a unanimous vote among town councillors for the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) to leave them be.

Ottery ward member, Councillor Roger Giles had requested that the council discussed and gave its backing to the beavers and proposed that the council ask East Devon MP Hugo Swire, to insist that DEFRA return the beavers to the river as soon as they have been tested.

Defra say catching East Devon’s beavers could take months after rumours the wild animals are now in Honiton

Pass me the popcorn. Something tells me this is about to get very, very interesting. Just imagine the kind of civic pressure it would take to get the Martinez City council to give a unanimous vote to support the beavers. They never even voted to tolerate the beavers. Devon must be a hotbed of public beaver-protection about now, with farmers keeping an eye on their lands and hurrying beavers along when ever the government trappers lumber into the area.

Councillor Claire Wright, independent member of East Devon District Council, said there was “general bafflement” in the area as to why they should be removed.

She said: “Human beings were responsible for the extinction of beavers in this country several hundred years ago because they were hunted for their fur, so it is now our responsibility to do what we can to support beavers’ reintroduction to our rivers.

“And they are good for rivers too, helping with water purity and they are completely vegetarian, so are no threat to small animals.

“The decision to let them stay should be made by the community, not by officials from London. There is a lot of support locally for them remaining on the river and general bafflement about why Defra would want to remove them. There needs to be a full consultation before any decisions are made.”

Someone pinch me, I think I’m dreaming. City government fighting the feds over the benefits of beavers. I hope I don’t wake up before it gets to the good part. Even if, God forbid, this doesn’t end well for these particular beavers, it’s put the issue in the public eye and dramatically made a point. Beavers are good for creeks. And Anglers are wrong.

The Angling Trust has been campaigning against moves to introduce beavers to England because of the damage that they can do to rivers, migrating fish runs and the potential spread of diseases.

Mark Lloyd, chief Executive of the Angling Trust, said: “Nowadays too many people seem to want to see ‘rewilded’ mammals introduced to our landscapes, but we must re-build damaged river ecosystems from the bottom up, not from the top down.

“Urgent and concerted Action is needed to restore habitats and fish populations in our rivers rather than irresponsible re-introduction programmes.”

Of course you know what’s really happening. The UK can’t protect fishermen interests from dams or culverts or sewers or water quality or power plants. They can’t keep fish alive by reducing pollution or human waste or global warming. But dammit they CAN get rid of those pesky beavers. That’s something right?

Obviously Worth A Dam offers all our support to the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories that are doing the actual trapping. Here’s some helpful advice for your hunt.