There are a few things I set aside for reading later – you know truly remarkable affirming news that you can savor at leisure. I would include Summer’s issue of Defenders of Wildlife in that catagory. Particularly the article called “Eager for Beavers” by Heidi Ridgley. If you haven’t read it go do your self a favor and check it out.
“These dams act like speed bumps,” says O’Brien, a botanist and Utah forests program manager for the Arizona-based Grand Canyon Trust. “If water hits one, it wells up over the flood plain, slowing down the water. If that dam crashes and burns in the flood, the water will hit another one like stair steps. The rushing water gets slowed at every turn.”
The generous article stars two of my favorite heroes; Mary O’Brien who I first read about in the Greatest Beaver Story Ever Written, and Sherri Tippie who I talked in a panic to on November 6th, 2007 to see about getting our beavers safely relocated. It lovingly outlines the good that beavers do for the watershed, and talks about our foolish human habit of killing them. It even outlines specific tools to regulate problematic behavior, although I think she got the names reversed.
Solutions to the diverging needs of humans and beavers do abound, though—and they come with clever names: “beaver deceivers” and “castor masters” (Castor being the Latin genus for beaver). Deceivers work by allowing water from a beaver-dammed pond—water that is about to back up and flood over a road, for instance—to escape without the beaver ever hearing it trickle away. “The sound of water running drives beavers nuts,” says O’Brien. “They will try to plug up the leaks.” The pond is kept at the desired level by inserting a pipe in the dam that allows the water to release underwater—right under the beaver’s nose. Castor masters are wire fences with strong posts. They keep beavers from plugging up culverts, which divert water under roads to avoid wash-outs. In this case, beavers hear the water but they can’t get access to the culvert to plug it.
The beaver-savvy folk of Martinez know that what we have in Martinez is a Castor Master, and that culvert defenses are beaver deceivers. Oh well, I’m sure Heidi’s head was filled with lots of ideas and questions at once. She got the idea that beavers help the environment. She got the idea that there were ways to solve problems. And she got the idea that some kinds of rhyming words were involved, which is more than most. I wish she would would have included the generic term ‘flow devices’ so the options can be more generally discussed. If someone reads this article and puts a ‘beaver deceiver’ on a dam they’ll be very disappointed.
This is my favorite part of the article and why Mary is my personal beaver hero.
“People sometimes get excited to tell me they’ve seen a beaver dam,” says O’Brien. “They have no concept that there should be 15 in that one area. We don’t have the cultural memory of how many beaver dams used to fill a stream because the beavers were mostly gone before white people settled here.” Tasha Creek is an exception with its 17 active beaver dams.
Mary was very intrigued this year by the idea of our beaver festival. I got the feeling she might just make the trip and visit some day. In the mean time the author of the article was disappointed that she never got to see any beavers on their trek. Heidi? Do I have some good news for you! The article ends with this adorable acknowledgment.
As a little girl, Senior Editor Heidi Ridgley’s favorite stuffed animal was a beaver she named Thumper.
Because that was a great article and you had a stuffed beaver named Thumper Heidi, you get my thanks and a present. Let me know when you’re in the Bay Area and I’ll take you to see some beavers that will not disappoint.
Photo Courtesy of Sherri Tippie
