Things to come?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental February 19, 2013

Glynnis Hood’s excellent research on geese and beavers has been making the rounds, but a substantial piece appeared on Science: The Last Word yesterday. In addition to studying how beavers impact waterfowl, the article mentions several ongoing projects with students.

MSC student Nils Anderson is currently completing his thesis, under Professor Hood’s guidance, on how the modification of aquatic habitats by beavers influences amphibians. It will detail interesting findings about the way that digging of channels by beavers aids in the dispersal of metamorphosed wood frogs. There is also some indication that breeding adults returning to the pond might use these channels in a preferential nature.

How cool is that? How’d you like to get your dissertation by counting frogs in a beaver pond? Our own friend Jeff Alvarez of the Wildlife project. He has apparently had an article accepted for publication in Herpetological Review this summer. Apparently beaver lodges are very important to the endangered red-legged frogs, which should surprise no one! Check out some of the other research Glynnis is involved with.

“Dr Larson and I currently have a paper in review that presents results relating to aquatic macro-invertebrates,” Professor Hood told me. “Again the channels dug by beavers in their ponds seem to be hotspots for various taxa of aquatic macro-invertebrates, the predators in particular. We also have a paper in preparation that will reveal the dramatic physical alterations beavers make to these ponds and how those alterations influence landscape connectivity.”

I recently asked Glynnis how she managed to get such awesome press coverage from a million sources all on the same day her article was released. She said that the campus has a media specialist that writes and handles all their releases, and that she was wonderful. I obviously agree!

Maybe all these rumors of research don’t mean much to the average reader so here’s something that is truly inspiring. It’s an community climate change awareness art project that just happened in Oregon. Look at this video and imagine that instead of reminding people about climate change and salmon, it was reminding people about all the wildlife that depends on beavers.

Beaver Weapons

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 18, 2012

Beaver trapping class could pay off for students

The N.C. Trappers Association, working with the Soil and Water Conservation Service and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, will sponsor a free trapping class Saturday at the Agriculture Extension office in Whiteville. Lunch will be provided, but pre-registration is required.

Dan Jones of Fair Bluff, a member of the NCTA board of directors and one of the instructors, said the interest in the class has been amazing.

“We have a lot more folks interested than we thought,” he said, “and people were asking about catching coyotes, so we decided to expand the class.”

I’m a patient woman. You might not think it, but I am. I read crazy stupid fabricated things about beavers every day and I still try not to swear and instead to express things creatively using a poem or a graphic or a story if I can. I’ve been known to hear out horrifically and willfully inaccurate remarks, and bite my tongue or dig my fingernails into my clenched fist while I struggle to find the right way to eventually answer. It’s not like I expect miraculous changes of heart from places like Columbus North Carolina. But I do irrationally hope for an ounce of sense. I desperately try not to fill every column with the letters WTF printed over and over again, but HONESTLY. A beaver trapping class for children! And now you’re going to add coyotes too! Aren’t there more things you can kill?

How about puppies?

The class was originally designed to help local trappers learn how to take advantage of the county’s new beaver bounty program. Responding to complaints about continued beaver problems in the county, the Columbus County Board of Commissioners formed a beaver committee last year. The committee proposed either increasing the county’s share in the Beaver Management Assistance Program (BMAP), which is run through the local USDA APHIS office, or establishing a bounty system. The commissioners approved both Monday. (See related story in The News Reporter).

APHIS! Perfect! So our federal tax dollars are paying to teach Jimmy how to trap beavers and coyotes! Registration includes lunch! And it’s filling up fast! How on earth could this story possibly get ANY better?

The name of the town is Whiteville.

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Need some good beaver news to rinse with? How about this story in Alberta

Wild St. Albert — busy, busy beavers

Wooly lumberjacks build homes for many

BEAVERING AWAY — A beaver nibbles on some aspen leaves in the John E. Poole wetland near Big Lake. St. Albert is home to many beavers, which can spell trouble for local trees. Ludo Bogaert

Suddenly, a shot rang out. CRACK! After a few confused moments, during which I tried to find the unseen hunter and give him a piece of my mind, it happened again. CRACK!

Eventually, I realized the truth; this was no lone gunman, but a busy beaver, smacking its tail against the water as it dived into the Sturgeon.

Beavers are everywhere in the Sturgeon, and are one of the most influential engineers on its waters. Beavers are actually a big benefit to the Sturgeon, Veenstra says, as they keep its water levels high.

Alberta was a much drier place in the absence of the beaver, Foote says. Their dams enhance groundwater recharge and create homes for moose, muskrats and bufflehead ducks. “They are an ecosystem engineer.”

Mind you, this is a actually a “dammed” with faint praise article because I had to cut and paste from both ends to put together a positive paragraph. We’re grading on a curve and it’s better than Whiteville. For some inexplicable reason they went through the trouble to get beaver commentary from the University of Alberta but NOT from Dr. Glynnis Hood, professor at the University and author of the Beaver Manifesto and charming, attractive, brilliant, carefree dropper of much, much better beaver copy than this:

“Contrary to popular belief, Foote notes, the tail is not used as a weapon and is not used to carry mud. “It’s also not very edible.”

Weapon?

Agents of Change

heidi08 Beavers November 4, 2011

Haven’t bought Glynnis Hood’s new beaver manifesto yet? Well, this should whet your appetite.

In the mean time it’s as good a day as any to introduce my next new plan which is to do a series of interviews with beaver folk discussing how and why they got involved with the animal. I plan on podcasting the series under the title “Agents of Change” referring to the fact that beavers both change their environment AND the lives of people who defend them. I’ve already heard from more than 20 beaver advocates around the globe that they’d be happy to do an interview, now its just up to me to figure out the technology part and practice asking questions. How hard can that be? If you’ve ever done a podcast and you feel inclined to share, drop me a line.

Hood-winked

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental October 17, 2011

The rodent refuses to play by our rules

They grace our money and symbolize our national parks. Yet Canada is in conflict with the beaver. Its hard work and tenacity – traits we value – also put them at odds with us, explains Glynnis hood in this edited excerpt from The beaver manifesto

Early settlers wore beaver hats to keep warm and not for any sort of symbolism for or against the rodent. This one was spotted on the head of executive board member Paul Pruszynski at the 2006 Turin Olympic Winter Games. Photograph by: Donald Miralle, Getty Images, Calgary Herald

Go check out the glorious Glynnis Hood article in this sunday’s Calgary Herald. It is an excerpt from her new book and squarely confronts the myriad of reasons we dislike beavers – even though like broccoli or brusell sprouts – we know they’re good for us.

So why all the conflict between beavers and humans? My theory is that two control freaks will battle over the same tree until long after the last of its stump decays back into the forest. Humans simply do not like to be outdone by a rodent, plain and simple. The historical record, however, shows that not only the beaver but also the Norway rat and the mouse have almost always won the war. Although cockroaches are touted as the most persistent animals on the planet, they were never trapped for their furs, turned into hats or marketed as a perfume. The evidence is in, and rodents rule the world.

Hmm….When I was chatting with the grad student at the beaver dam about what research remains to be done I was tempted to say, “We don’t need any more research! We know beavers are good for water and insects and fish and birds and riparian borders and pollutants and soil and mammals and climate change! They only research left to do is why in the hell we are so resistant to an investment in our creeks that will do our job for us!”

(But being that her field is NOT psychology, that topic probably won’t inspire a dissertation.)

Go read the article, but I would venture to disagree with Glynnis on one point. Beavers aren’t control freaks. They could never have adapted as well as they have if they insisted on having things ‘their way’. I have seen beavers tolerate intrusions, thefts and interruptions a human could never endure. Beavers are more like very persistent buddists. They work very hard to do what’s possible, but when things are not possible they give up and do it somewhere else.

We should all be so pragmatic.

Speaking of what’s impossible, yesterday the universe has decided to play the very funny joke on me in the form of a trojan that opens security doors to my computer every time I do a google search. I am furiously working to repair it because an internet without the capacity to search is very like a perfectly tuned automobile with no tires, and a very very bad idea for anyone who saves beavers for a hobby. Microsoft said, pah, I don’t see anything! Anti-Malware said, ooh there’s something nasty but its too big for me to get. I am now on the 15 hour of an Ad-aware scan, and then it will be time to bring in the big guns, so wish me luck!

Beaver-gate?

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports September 23, 2011

Honestly, my phone rang off the hook yesterday, and every reporter who called me began the call by laughing hysterically. As civic marketing strategies go this ‘make-yourself-look-petty and incapable-of-learning-gracefully’ campaign is certainly paying off. I should really send the darlings at Mainstreet Martinez a thankyou note, because the beavers haven’t got a story in the SF Chronicle since 2009, and we didn’t even have to throw a festival or take anyone to court for this!

Let’s be reasonable. I wasn’t crazy about the beaver on the mural in the first place and I’ll tell you wby. It makes the city look to REASONABLE – as if they eventually saw the light and recognized the beaver as an asset to the community. It erases the gasping struggle that left claw marks down the length of Castro street where we had to drag them kicking and screaming every inch of the way to even approach doing the right thing. The mural inclusion of the beaver was a beautiful, responsive, act of ultimately false advertising right in the middle of town. It made our leaders look GOOD and even though we ultimately depend on them and want them to BE good, we don’t want them to get away with appearing to be good when they haven’t earned it.

So, in retrospect, this bit of participatory theater beaver cover-up is a more honest, community minded depiction of our history than anything the artist could have painted. And once again, Martinez shows to the world that its community heart is in the right place but its civic head is too busy (cutting off its nose to spite its face) to pay attention.

Which I’m never happy about, but as a piece of beaver attention-getting drama, works for me.

Meanwhile in the actual beaver world, Sherri Tippie and Mike Callahan are delivering their speeches today at the Living with Wildlife Agenda Conference. Their presentations are in the afternoon, and they met last night for dinner with the Canadian Documentary filmmakers who are interested in changing the story about beavers in the country. The entire venue got twice as big as it was planned and had to be move to a new setting. You can imagine how jealous I am that I can’t be there. I expect reports back from them and from Adrian Nelson who is kicking off the beaver discussion and I’ll let you know what I hear.

In the meantime guess what arrived at my house yesterday? I’ll give you a hint. The last word is Manifesto and the first word ain’t communist! I’ll be pouring through the pages post haste, and make sure I let you know when I get to the good parts.