Tag: Glynnis Hood

STILL BEAVER AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

heidi08 Flow Device Installed June 2, 2024

After dropping the news of the 15th beaver festival yesterday its nice to remind ourselves of how it all began. With this handsome gentleman and all the secretaries pushed up against the glass in the county recorders office to get a closer look. (And maybe Steve Weir too,) I never heard that but I remember our Gazette editor joked about making a calendar out of all the great photos taken of the day.

Check out this cottager’s ‘beaver deceiver’

To humans it’s a culvert. But for beavers living near Todd Weiler’s Emsdale, Ont., driveway, it’s a poorly built dam with an 18″ hole, just begging to be plugged
with mud and sticks.

That’s why, on and off for almost two decades, when Todd cleared his blocked culvert, a new dam would soon appear. Trapping didn’t work, because new beavers replace the old ones. “If you’ve got the right geography,” Todd says, “beavers are going to find it.”

Rushing water is a trigger for the powerful dam-building urge in Castor canadensis, explains Glynnis Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alberta and the author of The Beaver Manifesto. Plugging leaks is so instinctive, young beavers raised in captivity assemble dams near speakers broadcasting water sounds. When these compulsive putterers find a culvert, “they think we just didn’t finish the job,” Hood says.

Hood and Lisle together again, just like old times. If there’s a culvert to protect Skip is your man.

Todd ultimately fended the critters off with a homemade version of the “beaver deceiver,” invented by Skip Lisle in the 1990s for the Penobscot Nation in Maine. Similar to the “pond levellers” used by parks and transportation authorities, Todd’s version is a 4″ PVC pipe running from the mouth of the culvert to an area upstream, guarded by mesh cages at both ends. Hood recommends heavy-guage mesh—not chicken wire, which beavers can chew through—with 4″ to 6″ holes. The pipe channels water into the culvert, while the mesh keeps beavers from damming the culvert or plugging the pipe. Because the intake makes no sound, beavers don’t notice it. Meanwhile, water trickling into the culvert keeps them focused on the protective cage. “They can block up that downstream cage as much as they want, and as long as the pipe is flowing, the water goes through,” Todd says.

The Parks and Transportation Authorities in Ontario install pond levelers? Why doesn’t California? What the hell are we waiting for?

The system requires occasional maintenance, including clearing silt from the pipe and ensuring dam materials don’t crush the cage. During the culvert wars, “dam wasn’t the only expletive I used on the beavers,” Todd admits. “But now, it’s nice to see them.”

Todd seems like our kinda guy. I’m glad that Skip was able to fix your problem. He fixed ours too and it lasted for a decade.

MISSED BEAVER OPPORTUNITIES

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact May 15, 2021

Beavers may not be ready for a maskless festival full of unvaccinated children but they still have a few tricks up their furry sleeves. They were clever enough to chew through the Mendenhall beaver cam yesterday, or at least fill it with mud so that it stopped working. No cute beaver sleep for me or you at the moment, sigh.

‘Beavers are just being beavers’: friction grows between Canadians and animals

At first, the theft of wooden fence posts seemed like a crime of opportunity – amid soaring lumber costs, stacks of wood have gone missing from construction sites across North America.

But officers in the Canadian prairie community of Porcupine Plain, Saskatchewan, soon identified the culprit: local beavers had stolen the posts to build their dam.

The semiaquatic rodents were also recently blamed for an internet outage in British Columbia, which left an entire town without access to the web after beavers chewed through a cable. Adding insult to injury, the animals had also pilfered the telecom company’s marking tape to line their dam.

The beaver is often seen as emblematic of Canada, but the two incidents – and a third episode in February when a beaver wandered into a Toronto metro station – expose the growing friction between the country’s humans and its booming population of the animals.

That’s right, first the stolen fence posts, ruined internet and now THIS! A beaver in the subway station. How much can one nation take?

Never you mind that beavers are ALWAYS turning up strange places in February, and the other two complaints are just whiney par for the course. I’m pretty sure it’s not just the Canadians that have to cope with dispersal. This picture is from someones backyard pool in Dallas.

“Beavers just have such a tremendous influence on everything around them,” said Glynnis Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alberta who has long studied beavers and their effects on water systems.

Few animals can have as profound an impact on the natural world as beavers, who excavate thousands of cubic meters of soil each year to mud their lodges, build dams and dig channels.

And for a species often blamed for its destructive tendencies, research continues to show their profound effect on ecosystems. Beaver dams not only help restore valuable wetlands and recharge groundwater, but also filter out sediments, nitrogen and phosphorus from water and create havens for species like fish and frogs.

Hi Glynnis! We knew a bunch of reporters commenting on the glut of beaver stories would come looking for you to comment. Is it like the rain of toads? Is it a sign?

Collectively, communities across the country spend millions annually to offset the impacts of beavers.

While effective mitigation tools like pond levellers are increasingly common, experts say it isn’t always fair to blame beavers.

“There’s too much weight sometimes put on the beavers, but they’re really just reacting to how we change environments,” said Hood. “Where we place our development matters. And how we envision nature interacting with our built structures also has to come into play when we design them.”

I agree Glynnis but I think you missed one line. You should have talked about all the money communities SAVE from their ecosystem services. Maybe mentioned the cost of drought, or what farmers pay to bring in hay for their cattle when there’s no green grass for them to eat. Maybe mentioned this article.

“I think beavers are just being beavers,” said Hood, pointing out that they are, by their nature, burrowing creatures. “And if you have a cable that is only 3ft down in the soil, there’s a chance things like this happen.”

Of course the real problem is that HUMANS are just being HUMANS. And if they have a chance to blame something else for a problem they let happen, we all know that they’re going to do it.

THE BEAVER CLUB CELEBRATES EARTH DAY

heidi08 Earth Day, Flow Device Installed, Who's saving beavers now? April 23, 2021

Here’s a beaver origin story for you. Stop me of you’ve heard this one before.

In the beginning Skip Lisle taught Mike Callahan to install flow devices. Skip later taught Jake Jacobsen of Washington public works, Glynnis Hood of University of Alberta, Amy Cunningham of Wyoming and Sherri Tippie of Colorado. In between all that Skip came to Martinez, saved our beavers and made this story possible.

Meanwhilewhile Glynnis taught her students and did research proving that flow devices work and save money, Sherri taught Jackie Cordry who was working in Colorado Park District at the time. and Amy taught her friends at the wilderness federation in Montana.

At the same time Mike taught Mike Settell of Idaho, Jakob Schokey of Oregon, Ben Dittbrenner then of Washington, and went on to found the beaver institute which teachers many students from many states and four countries every year.

This interview tells you something about how far their efforts have gone.

Earth Day Special: The Beaver Coalition

As we honor Earth Day 2021, the theme running through today’s KBOO programming is the impending climate crisis, and its affect on our home planet. And we’ll be introducing you to people and organizations who are working to protect our environment, and all its inhabitants.

On today’s show, we focus on one of those inhabitants, a species of great importance especially here in the Pacific Northwest. I’m referring to Oregon’s official state animal, the beaver.

HOW YOU TALK TO REPORTERS ABOUT BEAVERS REALLY MATTERS

heidi08 Who's blaming beavers now? September 17, 2020

Yesterday was an exciting dejavu with some calls to Fairfield public works and the local paper that had the familiar echo of history to them. I ended up having a great conversation with a reporter who is now meeting with Virginia at the dam site this morning. It was strange to have all the urgency of our Martinez story but have it be less personally upsetting to what me. When I dealt with our beavers talking to the press was always breathlessly terrifying that I would say something wrong and they would suffer because of it. This was someone else’s beaver so I could be calmer, focused and more clear-headed.

We talked a long time and as he knew nothing about beavers or the Martinez story I later had the distinct feeling of helping somebody up a mountain a little bit at a time. I would explain what dams were for and then wait for him to catch up. Then explain why beavers mattered and help him along a little more. In the end it felt like he had a pretty great vantage point onto why beavers matter and why removing a dam would alter the ecosystem. Maybe I’m explaining it wrong or exaggerating but it felt important, and I was both hyped up and exhausted afterwards: ready for battle or a long nap.

In the end I connected him to Sonoma Water Agency who had just installed two flow devices and talked about how our success in Martinez. We learned that it HAD been the city that ripped out the dam but didn’t figure out whether the beavers had been harmed already or whether there was a permit to do so in the future.

I’m imagining that quite a few people got phone calls or emails yesterday that they weren’t expecting. And I expect we’ll hear more on the story soon. We wish all good things to Virginia this morning. Good thing beavers can manage in fairly shallow water. This is from the Wenatchee project in Washington.

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In the end how we talk to reporters about beavers really matters. Yesterday this rather strange article starring Glynnis Hood was published. It is from the very tippy top of Canada that is almost Greenland.

Meet Nunavut’s newest arrival: the beaver

A recent beaver catch in Baker Lake, along with this summer’s earlier beaver sighting near Kugluktuk, more than 1,000 kilometres northwest of Baker Lake, have some wondering whether beavers are expanding their range into Nunavut.

The short answer is yes, said Glynnis Hood, a beaver expert and environmental science professor at the University of Alberta.

“What you’re seeing is the start of a frontal movement of animals that are ready to explore, and if it works others will come,” Hood said.

Okay so I’d rather a friend like Glynnis talks to the press about the scourge of beavers ruining the permafrost than anyone else, but sometimes scientists are trying so hard to appear unbiased that they err on the other side.

Case in point:

“Beavers are great colonizers,” she said. “They build on their past successes. They will build a dam and pond system and then, of course, they can successfully reproduce and their young will disperse.”

“Think of how coronavirus spreads, Hood suggested as a comparison: one person can infect two people, and those people can each infect two more people, and “so the spread does get to be fast.”

Good Lord Glynnis. Pick another metaphor, will you? Corona Virus? Yes, beavers are EXACTLY like a crippling plague that’s killing our way of life. You know one that we are spending all our money and time avoiding.

Various articles on beavers have dubbed beavers “ecosystem engineers” and “agents of Arctic destruction and have accused them of “running amok in the Arctic.” That because their landscaping may speed up the thawing of permafrost and release more climate-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“They can do all of that. They can be a major disturbance, but they are a natural force in nature,” said Hood.

Well yes they are natural. Hurricanes and earthquakes are Natural too. It doesn’t mean anyone likes them. Glynnis can’t you use that big old brain of yours to say something nice about beavers?

“I don’t think they are the only reason that the Arctic is warming and permafrost is melting,” she said, adding that she prefers to see beavers as “our ecological second chance” because they also create biodiversity.”

Next time LEAD WITH THAT okay???

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!

‘GETTING IN GOOD TROUBLE’ FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers and Flooding, What's killing beavers now? July 28, 2020

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

John Lewis speaking atop the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

It occurred to me watching the profound tribute to his life over the past few days that what happened in Martinez – what happened to my life in particular in the cataclysmic 2007 was that I got into some “Good Trouble“. Through no planning of my own I found myself scrambling to slow down the massive machinery of extermination and stop the fast moving train of reactive fear. At the time everyone acted like it was such an affront. Such a challenge to the way things were done. I can remember being lectured by the female clergy at the Rotary meeting I presented and was was scolded by council member Janet Kennedy. Why wasn’t I more patient and appreciative? I remember how scary and difficult everything was. I remember how it felt like I was weighing my responses more carefully than I had for any single thing I had ever done in my life before or since.

Mind you, I’m not saying it’s anywhere near as brave or important as what he spent his life doing. But battling to redeem the waterways of America’s is a little brave. And a little important. And its the kind of good trouble I seem to be equipped for, so I think I’ll keep doing it a while longer

I’d like to cause some “Good Trouble” in Sturgeon at the moment.

Sturgeon County offers beaver bounty to combat flooding issues

Sturgeon County will offer a beaver bounty to address flooding issues affecting the area north of Edmonton. The beaver control incentive policy, a first for the county, was approved by council last week and will start in August.

The program will pay $20 to property owners in the area in exchange for a beaver tail, along with the signing of an affidavit stating the beaver was found on private property within the county.

That means that if you kill an entire family you might make a cool hundred bucks! Gosh that will come in handy with the pandemic and all. Mind you this is Alberta. And you have the smartest researcher in all of Canada about 45 minutes away. And hey Glynnis is training a team of students to install flow devices for free, but heck. Blame the beaver. How bad can it get?

“Beavers are an important part of the ecosystem,” he said.

“When the population is balanced they can absolutely assist in some of the areas, but right now what we do find is that they end up plugging up culverts, they create dams that redirect water flow to areas that then end up flooding out roads, create washouts, damage infrastructure and flood agriculture lands so they end up being a pest in that area.”

So we know that sometimes, hypothetically speaking they are good. But now not so much. They are just using all this water to make more water! And we need our farms and roads! But the article must be written by a friend. Because it ends of a very positive note.

Glynnis Hood, a professor with the U of A’s Augustana campus in Camrose was recently awarded a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada to build a model to test the claim that beaver habitats lead to flooding

She’s studied the animals for the past 20 years.

“Beavers often get blamed for flood events, especially the major ones,” Hood wrote in an article on the U of A’s website.

“Some believe that beaver dams store so much water that big rains add to the volume and cause flooding. Others say that beaver dams actually help hold back water that would have otherwise flooded property.

“You end up with this two-sided view of whether or not dams upstream are good, or if they’re creating even worse floods that you would have expected.”

The research project is expected to continue over the next five years.

GO GLYNNIS! She’s a very serious researcher with years of academia behind her title. She is Interested in science and relying on peer review. She would never describe herself as causing “Good trouble” on behalf of beavers.

But she is.