Tag: Ellen Wohl

There goes the neighborhood!

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Friends of Martinez Beavers February 26, 2016

Poor France. They are too busy eating nice food and rejecting refugees that they haven’t any time left to finish a complete thought. The harried things can only have half-ideas and not carry them thru to their logical conclusions. Descartes would be so disappointed.

Beavers threaten water supply

A BEAVER colony is threatening the water supply of the 40,000 residents of a town in the Ardennes.The animals, who have lived in the area for two years, set up their first dam in November across the River Audry.

Since then they have added another six to their roster, across tributaries to the river.

Their work means that during heavy rain the rivers frequently burst their banks, taking detritus and pollution on a new course into the local reservoir – the water supply for the 40,000 people of Charleville-Mézières.

That’s right, those 6 dams block sediment and pollution from getting into the reservoir for most of the year – but when they wash out all that bad stuff whooshes down stream at once. What the article doesn’t say (because of their unfinished-thought-affliction) is that if only the beavers weren’t there the waterway could release gradual toxins all year long into the water supply. You know, like they’re supposed to.

Dam beavers!

Out in Napa the beavers are so busy ruining things that they are cramming the waterways with fish, which attracts other nuisances who gut and shit their fish into the water without any respect for the reservoirs. Take this photo from Rusty Cohn and this short video from Robin Ellison: classic examples of the many troubles beavers bring!

Mr and Mrs HM — Hooded Merganser pair: Rusty Cohn

And it gets worse. Yesterday, Dr. Ellen Wohl send me this video taken by her student documenting beaver activity at Crystal Creek in Yellowstone National Park. I know you’ll be SHOCKED to see all the riffraff beaver bring to that pristine wilderness! Thank goodness France, Martinez and Napa will probably be spared these particular visitors!

Urban beavers

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? December 2, 2015

I invited a new team member onto the urban beaver chapter because they told me I could. I felt we needed more water weight in our cluster, and first thought of good friend Ann Riley who is too busy with her third book to help. That of course meant I needed to ask Dr. Ellen Wohl who was surprisingly interested and willing to assist. In case you’ve forgotten who she is, shes a professor of geo sciences at Warner College in Colorado who has written a great deal on beaver, rivers, and climate change. This audio is a great introduction. It’s taken from a few moments of her interview on Santa Fe Radio, and happens to be the smartest most tightly packed summary of beaver benefits I’ve ever heard.

Ellen suggested we consider using a tool for analyzing the likely role of a beaver dam risk and contribution of woody debris. Her paper on the topic is coming out soon and she attached a copy for review, with sections about the value of woody debris to invertebrates and fish that immediately translate to beaver dams. I thought for sure it would interest Michael Pollock and sent it along to him. He got very excited and thought it was a great idea to inform our paper.

Which just goes to emphasize that they are all super smart in their relative fields. And I just make connections. Because its what I do.

building the dam — Beaver building urban dam: Cheryl Reynolds

Beaver Spring

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? April 3, 2015

We need a real beaver update first off. The secondary dam (name to be changed soon) is HUGE. And one of our new stakes is already sprouting! Jon spied a mother with 12 baby ducks yesterday and we went down to beaver watch this morning. Our kit (almost yearling, birthday in May) was swimming back and forth in front of the hole where they live, and a parent swimming up from down stream after a night feeding. She had to CLIMB up over the monumental dam before heading to sleep for the day. A great beaver morning.

I’ve been waiting forever to share this great new research from Dr. Ellen Wohl. There is so much happening lately there’s never time to catch up. If you want to remind yourself who she is listen to this short clip. It remains the single most pithy description of beaver benefits I’ve ever heard. Photos courtesy of Worth A Dam, of course.

See how she just slips in the good news about beavers along side the already largely accepted news about wood??? Her research has made a huge difference in the way folks look at beavers, and I’m sure there’s more where that came from. Go read the whole thing here:

It’s Cherry Blossom Festival time which reminded to share an old story. A while ago some patriotic beaver started chewing down the National trees, and the decision of whether to kill them or not caused a bit of a stir. Now the trees have their own mascot to protect them. Paddles the beaver, which reminds visitors not to pick blossoms.

There’s a new resource for beaver restoration in the world, compiled by Rebecca Haddock of the Miistakis Institute of Alberta. She attended the state of the beaver conference and liked what she learned. This is what I would call a great start, although it is missing info on several key players like the Lands Council and/or Methow Project in Washington, The Beaver Advocacy Committee in Oregon, Sherri Tippie in Colorado, even more locally to them Cows and Fishes in Alberta! -)Not to mention you know who in California…) The full report is online at OAEC here.

And as our beavers get more visible, the ones in Napa do to. Here’s footage Rusty shot yesterday of Mom and Dad swimming together.

Lastly, I just got a request from Mountain Lake in NY to use Cheryl’s photo in a podcast they were releasing about beavers. They gave us a very nice plug, Go see for yourself.

What if a beaver blogged?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational, Environmental December 24, 2013

On Christmas eve, the Perryman family rules were that we were allowed to open one present. So I will pass on this fine tradition to you. This is the best Christmas present you are ever likely to receive from a beaver website. It was sent to me yesterday by Dr. Ellen Wohl, the fluvial geomorphology professor at Colorado State who has written some of the most important papers on beavers and rivers. She is in the front row on the left, and one of these scrubbed, smart outdoor types around her is responsible for this clever work. This blog is written by one of her graduate students. Enjoy!

Dr. Ellen Wohl and the 2013-2014 FLUVIAL GEOMORPHOLOGY TEAM
Colorado State University

About Chewy:

I joined the fluvial geomorphology group at CSU in 2010. They were finally starting to recognize the worth and, I might say, critical importance of beavers in all aspects of the natural world. I decided that they needed professional guidance. It can be tedious being stuck in that nearly-windowless office day after day, but occasionally I get to return to the spacious outdoors and inspect the work of other beavers (see photo below). Someday, when my task here is finished, I’ll move on to another group and enlighten them in turn.

Ellen said this was written and posted very recently, and she didn’t tell me who was the genius behind it. You need to read it all the way through so I have to share it. It’s nearly Christmas and there is no alternative. I’ve decided to risk great copyright wrath and re-post it all here. Except for my very favorite part, which is the last lines. I know they will be your favorites too, so mesmerized by great admiration for the first 300 words, I am sure curiosity will compel you to click the link for the last 15.

This clever author deserves to know how truly appreciated this column was by folk who love beavers.Then they will realize their work was adored and also be able to tell that the link came from www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress, and everyone will be happy.

Okay? Get ready….

Research:

Research may not be the right word to describe my primary activities. I do, after all, know all that I need to know. Education is really my higher calling. Judging by the sorry state of beaver populations across the northern hemisphere, humanity clearly needs to be educated regarding the critical need to restore beaver habitat and protect beaver populations. After all, there are more than 7 billion of you, and far fewer of us. The Canadians have the right idea, putting us on their currency, although I do think we should be placed on something of much higher monetary value than a nickel. You people are all so (rightly) worried about the mess you’ve made: dwindling water tables, declining water quality, compacted ground and flash floods, and loss of wetlands and associated habitat, biodiversity and carbon sequestration (didn’t think I knew those words, did you?). Well, I’ve got the answer for all your problems: beavers. We deserve our title of ecosystem engineers, and if you give us half a chance, we can clean up a great deal of your mess. Just stop cooing about our cuteness in one breath, and then dismantling our dams and running us over with your cars in the next.

CLICK HERE FOR THE BREATH-TAKING LAST 2 LINES.

Isn’t that wonderful! Have the merriest of eves. And tomorrow I’ll have some appropriate Christmas tunes for your entertainment. A millennium ago, when I was a child I used to fall asleep fantasizing about drifting down a secluded river on a raft that carried everything I needed. Not any more. Now I’m going to fantasize about being Ellen Wohl’s graduate student.

Here’s the description of her most recent book, which you can buy here:

Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up, all in efforts to harness their power for human needs. But these rivers have also undergone environmental change. The old adage says you can’t step in the same river twice, and Ellen Wohl would agree—natural and synthetic change are so rapid on the world’s great waterways that rivers are transforming and disappearing right before our eyes.

There’s no ‘wrong reason’ to care about beavers

heidi08 Beavers September 11, 2013

A million years ago, when the earth and I were both younger, I started filming a family of beavers near my house because I thought they were ‘neat’. I didn’t know anything about them or their role in the environment, but I still climbed out of bed and went to spend the morning with them because I liked their tails, and the way they swam and dove, and especially their voices. I didn’t start out understanding why beavers were important, and even now I can get rankled when I realize that for the salmon lobby they are just an “means to an end” and not important in their own right.

But one of the things I have learned on this epic beaver campaign, is that a central tenent to finding support and making new friends is that there is no WRONG reason to support beavers. Even though there may be some that make me less thrilled. Duck hunting for example, does not appeal to me and generally makes me uncomfortable. But Ducks Unlimited does a massive amount of work for wetlands and when hunters are smart enough to appreciate beaver help improving duck population, I have to appreciate it.

Aiming beavers at the leviathan of Global Warming seems to me like throwing beans at a charging buffalo, but I’m very happy that Ellen Wohl’s study is making the rounds.

Busy Beavers Battle Climate Change

(WILDLIFE/ANIMAL SCIENCE) We all know beavers have heavy workloads. But scientists have found that beavers also play a prominent role in cutting carbon emissions. Approximately eight percent of carbon is reduced by the carefully crafted beaver dam, which is 18 percent less than the potential reduction rate if it were not for human disturbance to beaver environments. The recent study suggests these animals sufficiently help keep the environment resilient against climate change, drought, and wildfires. Read on for more on North American beaver populations and their significant impact on the ecosystem. — Global Animal

Beavers play an important role in keeping the ecosystem resilient against climate change, drought and wildfire, the study notes. Wohl found that the abandoned beaver dams she studied made up around 8 percent of the carbon storage in the landscape, and that if beavers were still actively maintaining those dams, the number would be closer to 23 percent.

I have to assume that Ellen Wohl is a not-so-secret beaver believer, shaping her research interests to let the world see how important these animals are. She is a fluvial-geomorphologist in the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State. I would love to meet her and have invited her to the beaver conference but she was always too busy. When I see on article like this on Global Animal or CARE it kind of irks me that large, funded save-the-planet organizations who have entirely looked away from beaver effect on salmon, birds, water quality, wildlife, suddenly say OH NOW ITS IMPORTANT to save the beavers because of carbon, (before I was too busy protesting Mansanto or occupying Wall Street), but I remind myself that there is no wrong way to get to the right place. And this is another very powerful argument in our quiver. If a few new people notice that humans interfere too much with beaver habitat we’ve come to the right place. Period.