Moving the problem in Wyoming

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? September 12, 2015

Sherry Guzzi of the Sierra Wildlife Coalition sent this yesterday. Her sister lives in Jackson Hole where the documentary will be having its American debut.

Nature club to screen movie about beavers

55e612e68b74c.image — Drew Reed of the Wyoming Wetland Society releases one of two beavers into a wetland in the Gros Ventre in 2009. The film “Beavers Behaving Badly” documents Reed’s catch-and-release work. It will be screened tonight by the Jackson Hole Bird and Nature Club.

On Tuesday the club will present wildlife filmmaker Jeff Hogan’s one-hour documentary “Beavers Behaving Badly,” a BBC production. The screening is in conjunction with the club’s regular monthly meeting, 6 to 8 p.m. at Teton County Library.

The film explores the importance of beavers in the area’s ecosystem. Valley biologist Drew Reed is documented over the course of a year relocating beavers from private land where they were a nuisance to public land where they can create wetland habitat that is vital to wildlife and people.

“The film shows an ecological project come full circle,” said Bernie McHugh, a dedicated birdwatcher and secretary for the club. “Once the beavers are relocated to public lands all throughout Teton County they can help restore wetland, notably for trumpeter swans.”

Ah another feel-good solution! Move the problem out of our creeks and streams and throw them into the mountains! Maybe they’ll survive and do some good and maybe they’ll die or get eaten by a coyote but either way it’s a win-win for us. Because nothing is going to be nibbling our hedgerows.

Drew seems like a nice enough fellow, and his intentions seem of the right kind. But I’m a little worried that a grown man whose job it is to solve beaver problems that doesn’t spend any time building flow devices or protecting culverts. He also shockingly says that he’s never seen a beaver chew through “netting” before (???) or eat grass (!!!). So I’m going to assume his beaver information has room to grow. Here, I’ll help get him started. This is a yearling chewing grass.

If you can’t make it out to Jackson Hole for the premiere, you can watch the whole thing online here. The title alone set my teeth on edge for most of it, but there’s some lovely video and footage of a beaver making a scent mound which is worth the price of admission by itself. Another attempt to copy Jari Osborne’s hard work, I’ll warrant. Drew is no Sherri Tippie, that’s for sure.

BBC.Natural.World.2014.Beavers.Behaving.Badly… by i-teach-U

Let me know what you think. My strongest impression is that Jackson hole is an insanely beautiful place with a lot of beaver sissies for residents. But that’s just me.

I worked longer than I should on this yesterday but was very happy with the result. I really thought Enos Mills’ great writing needed to be revisited, so I selected a few choice lines from my favorite chapter, along with a handful of select photos. I gave up on the idea of having a better voice read this because the timing needed was a little weird anyway and I’m not smart enough to change it. I really hope you watch this. Or at least read the chapter.

A final selfish note urging us all to wish for rain, or at least cooler temperatures to help calm the fray. The Butte fire is burning the hell out of Heidi’s favorite place, and grew so rapidly yesterday the firefighters actually lost ground. The land my parents brought when I was 7 and built a home to retire on for the last 25 years isn’t out of the woods yet. As a child I built and maintained a coral there to keep in my imaginary horses, and it is the place that Jon and I escaped to the snowy night we were married, lo these many years ago. The fire is mostly expanding away from our property but there is one wicked lick at the back that is marching up the canyon towards the wild place I know best in the world, so keep your fingers crossed.

It’s been a year for catastrophes, and sometimes that is contagious.

The dog that didn’t bark…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental February 27, 2013

Grand Tetons National Park is just ten miles south of Yellowstone in Wyoming and is one of the few places that boasts roughly the same wildlife population it had historically. The famous Snake River flows through it vertically and there are countless lakes formed by glaciers. It was bordered at the edges by private ranchers who were given ‘grandfather permission’ to continue to graze their cattle on park land, for their lifetime and the life of their heirs.

Apparently Wyoming is worried that it doesn’t have enough beavers in the park, and has noticed that the population is going down, not up. Beaver friend Sherry Guzzi has a sister in Jackson Hole who sent her this article.

Grand Teton Beavers Take Unexplained Dive

Number of colonies cut in half since 2006 professor says.

Mike Koshmrl: Jackson Hole News

I put the article on our website here if you want to read for yourself. It speculates that the population decline may have something to do with drought, but I’m not wild about that idea. I think if you had beavers you wouldn’t have had those streams dry up in the first place. The article described several folks scratching their heads about the population decline, but I’m inclined to wonder about their ‘wonder’.

Let’s look, for example, at the USDA beaver trapping numbers for 2009, which I happen to have access to. 58 beavers were killed in Wyoming, with methods ranging from snares to firearms. 67 beavers were killed in nearby Idaho that same year. 189 in Colorado and 10 in Utah. (The stats for Montana say that zero beaver were killed by USDA in 2009, but since it also lists 493 bison killed by helicopter I have to those doubt that beavers fared much better.)

That’s 324 beavers killed in a single year in the states surrounding Grand Tetons. Which is about 64 colonies more or less. And that’s just USDA stats, and doesn’t count the permits issued or folks who eliminate beavers on private lands. I’m not saying that all those missing beavers were killed, but adding up the impact when every stream feeding the park is trapping beaver, AND cattle are grazing on the riparian border, AND climate change is forcing them to work harder, the collective impact adds up.

I wrote Dr. Glynnis Hood about the article this morning and this was her response:

Beaver populations can fluctuate due to drought, disease, poor resource availability, and increased predation. In our area, I’ve seen cases of tularaemia cycle through following a drought – mainly because dispersal can be repressed and the lodges have more beavers in them for longer periods of time than they would in the good years. Just like with people, crowding and disease can go hand in hand. The population I’m studying right now decline to a third of what it was prior to the most recent drought (2008 -2009), but is beginning to make a comeback.

Which I’m sure is true, and I’m very grateful that I can send a question to a great mind like Dr. Hood and get an answer back, but I have to wonder. What if beaver populations are on the decline everywhere and we don’t notice because we all stopped counting? What if Wyoming is just this?

Beaver Deceiver in Wyoming!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere August 11, 2012

From left, Woodbury Preserve caretaker Jared Genzer, Dave Dunlap and Drew Reed of the Wyoming Wetlands Society work to place a 12-inch-wide pipe into an opening in the beaver dam on Cache Creek in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The pipe will allow water to flow through the dam and out of the fields that have been flooded on the Woodbury Preserve.

Er, well not really a beaver deceiver per se, more of a flexible leveler or castor master, without a round fence, but hey the story was picked up by the AP and is now running everywhere so I guess the point is ‘Beavers can be controlled without trapping” and that’s a pretty good point to make. Yeah!

Even if it doesn’t mention Skip’s name with his invention

The “beaver deceiver” is exactly what it sounds like. Reed’s contraption, pioneered in Maine in the 1990s, regulates flow out of beaver ponds via a 12-inch-wide pipe that penetrates the dam.

There, there. Regular readers of this website will know of course that a BEAVER DECEIVER actually protects culverts and this pipe ain’t it. But that’s okay I guess. A TYPE 1 ERROR (See this article for a reminder of the error types.) I wish there was filter. Then again, maybe there is a filter and the reporter just didn’t understand.

On the upstream side of the dam, Reed extends the pipe about 10 feet so the outlet isn’t obvious. He also drills a bunch of holes into the pipe. “Even if the beaver figures out the pipe, water still flows through the hundreds of holes,” Reed said. “They really can’t block the pipe.”

Which takes the wind outta my beaver-savin’ sails a little since it deserves only one response, “huh?” but hey, saving beavers in Wyoming. That’s pretty cool. I’ll write Drew and make sure he knows about the filter around the end of the pipe to keep the beavers out and that the holes the base of the pipe are to keep it submerged.The article goes on to talk about the dangers of relocation, which I appreciated.

…a 2002 study from the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit analyzed just that. The findings were grim. Only 23 of the 234 Wyoming beavers transplanted eventually built dams in the drainages where they were released. Without lodges to use for escape, many died quickly, whether from grizzly bears, coyotes or humans. The mortality rate for beavers younger than 2 years old was 100 percent within six months. Beavers, it seems, just have it tough.

Yes they do. They really do. Repeat that in every AP feed around the country a few times. In the meantime, congratulations to the Wyoming Wetlands Society whose web page has a section specifically on beavers! Give us a shout anytime you have questions!

Oh and I found this yesterday and like very much the idea that one might stumble upon beavers and find they become a huge hidden influence over much of your life. The painting is by someone named Gabe Wong and he posted it on his website for Canada Day. Enjoy!