Next Stop: Beavers!

Beaver Druthers

heidi08 Beavers December 18, 2013

Recently I received an email from Dr. Duncan Halley. a researcher in Norway who is very interested in beavers. He’s the author of several papers on beaver population settlement. Duncan was the scientist on the recent beaver fieldtrip in Scotland teaching anglers about how and why to live with beavers. One of the facts he reported was that beavers ‘prefer to be in large bodies of water’ where they don’t need to build dams. I scratched my head at this and asked him to explain his thinking. He wrote back,

Left to themselves beavers prefer to settle where damming isn’t necessary; but of course, especially later in the process of population development, all those places will be taken. It’s a bit like the first farmers in a district using the fertile valleys, and some of their grandchildren opening up the stony hillslopes – not because they prefer them, but because you can make a living there and that’s all that’s left.

Now mind you, he’s talking about Castor Fiber, not Castor Canadensis. But I’m not sure the behavior would be that different because of 2 genes. What makes me curious about this is whether a big body of water like the Carquinez Strait is really a better place to be a beaver than our cozy Alhambra Creek. Did our beavers ‘settle’ for this habitat because there were too many beavers in the big water to make a living? How would something like the strait (which the Benicia Bridge passes over) ever be ‘too full’ of beavers? I suppose the banks could run out of food, but we know our beavers go into the strait every night to feed, so doesn’t that mean there’s more food in the Strait than there is in the creek?

I like Duncan very much and am very interested in his research. But I’m going to have to say I consider this observation ‘suspect’ and not supported by what we’ve seen over the last 6 years. Since the Carquinez Strait is not ‘thick’ with beavers, I have to think that our beavers settled in Alhambra Creek because they wanted to, not because they had too. If anything the behaviors we have seen suggest that beavers prefer small damable creeks where it’s easier to mark their territory and protect a family. They settle for large bodies of water when that’s not possible. I’ve always thought it was kind of like the difference between being adopted by a family or staying in a large orphanage.

I can’t even imagine how we could design a study to figure this out. Can you?

How beavers plug pipes - Cheryl Reynolds — How beavers plug pipes – Cheryl Reynolds

Follow-up Friday…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Educational, Environmental March 8, 2013

I thought today I would catch up on the back stories that trickled in as a response to this week’s news. Maybe Friday should always be a behind the scenes look at what happened after the post aired, but it’s definitely necessary today. We’ll start at the end and work our way backwards, okay?

Regarding the volunteer-built beaver deceiver in yesterday’s post, I heard first from Jake that he does not know Mr. Stoll but he has passed on a lot of his information and materials to neighboring public works crews. Then I wrote the North Kitsap trails Association and they forwarded my letter to Evan. He very gratefully wrote me back and said that he had been looking all over for beaver information and had to figure out how to build a beaver deceiver on his own! And he would pass our information along to his friend who was thinking about installing a Clemson Pond Leveler!

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The day before that post, you will remember I talked about meeting the couple from Barcelona at the beaver dam and wrote about the complicated history of beavers in Spain. I sent that post to Duncan Halley since I had linked to his dispersal research and he wrote back that he was very involved with the beavers in Spain and had been following them closely.

I’ve been involved with the beavers on the Ebro watershed in Spain now and then since 2005. I was sent photos by ecologists working on European mink at that time, asking if these were beaver signs. The photos showed a group poplars clearly felled by beavers. I visited the area (the confluence of the Aragon and Ebro) later that year, and concluded that beavers were well established and that the river system was mainly fringed by good to first rate habitat throughout. The natural carrying capacity would be measured in thousands.

He went on to explain that the introduction had NOT been through the proper channels even though Spain was generally good about that process and had reintroduced BEAR for goodness sake. As a result they were officially illegal and they were trapping beavers. He thought it really wouldn’t get rid of the population which had such a good start. He also said people’s concerns with the ‘subspecies’ issue was very unimportant and that it wouldn’t make a functional difference whether you had a beaver from Bavaria or Norway.

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Since our promotion of the Beaver Whisperers documentary there have been 132 plays of the clip and a ton of forwards and shares. And if you personally haven’t watched the clip yet, what on EARTH are you waiting for? Our friends with family members in Canada are already setting up their DVDs to record when it airs in 20 days. Fingers crossed.

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Now my post monday which asked folks to recommend beaver for a Surrogate Species produced some amazing responses. I received many copies of comments submitted, from locations ranging from Maine to Michigan to Oregon and everywhere in between. I will wait to gather more and then put some together in a post as we get closer to the deadline. If you haven’t submitted your comments yet there’s still time, they still matter, and you can send a copy to me too if you like. Folks tell me the form itself is confusing, but you can send your remarks directly here.

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Good news from our beaver friends in American Canyon, who recently met with Fish and Wildlife and got the go-ahead to install a flow device of their very own. Thanks to everyone from Worth A Dam who helped out, including Jon, Cheryl and Igor who assessed the site. Mike Callahan who reviewed the plan from afar and donated the DVD we gave to them. And watershed contacts that helped us find good people to approach in the rank and file. Yeah, team beaver!

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And finally, a follow-up for my personal post February 25th.This happens to have been written by another Perryman. My mother.

Dispersal Information and Information Dispersal!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental February 26, 2013

The Agdenes peninsula, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway

Suffice it to say, whenever you are shown stunningly beautiful photos with mountain ranges bisected by water, it is usually Norway you are looking at, whether they mention it or not. This matters to beavers because Duncan Halley is an avid researcher there, (From Scotland originally) and a noted beaver devotee. He sent me a note yesterday announcing a new paper about population dispersal.

Why should you care about beaver dispersal of Castor Fiber in another country? Because one of the findings was that beavers travel for long distances (25 km) over saltwater and across continental divides to colonize new habitat. Which means that the world is pretty much their oyster, and California has been insane to insist for years that they weren’t in the Sierras because the hills were too steep.

Social Hour at the State of the Beaver Conference. Duncan is the vested man in the middle looking at the camera. On the far right is Adrien Nelson from Fur-bearer Defenders, then Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts. In the background are conference champions Lois Houston and Stanley Pietrowski. And to Duncan’s left is Paul Henson from FWS, the source of the very apt suggestion that we consider beaver as a surrogate species.

Which brings me to this morning, where I am trotting off to Rona Zollinger’s Habitats and Cultural Change Seminar at Vicente High School to talk to the students about why beavers are useful and how it could be smart to designate them as one of the important Surrogate Species identified by FWS. I’m thinking 30 essays from some ecologically savvy 15-year-olds, (and hopefully 10 from some genius silicon valley 8 year olds from Helios the school that did a field trip a few months ago) just might sway the judges.

Wish me luck!