I have been getting a bundle of anxious emails from folks alarmed by the upcoming series of rains and worried about the beaver dams. Obviously the city was concerned as well and dragged the recently felled willow out of the creek Friday. (You silly beavers didn’t eat fast enough. Languid beavers, who knew?) Main Street Martinez is sending out messages warning where to get your sandbags, and reminding everyone of all the “hard work the city did to widen the flood plain” (and remove the beavers food). Remember that beavers are used to rebuilding and not looking foward to an early retirement any time soon.
One of the unique benefits of having an english husband is that he is obsessed with weather reports. At last count the treasurer of Worth A Dam had 35 weather sites bookmarked on this computer. He reads conflicting reports, like a hedge fund investor reads the pros and cons. He even insists on tapping the barometer in the living room several times a day. We naturally put him in charge of monitoring storm conditions and letting us know when the beavers are going to be in trouble.
Jon writes:
It seems there are going to be three storms, the worst one will be the last from Wednesday into Thursday, and this will be the one to watch. The good thing about it is there will be a break between each one. The other thing is that not all there forecast models are in agreement, some are saying dryer conditions. The NWS is still saying wait and see they have not issued any warnings yet.
So we’ll sit tight and see what happens. One of these days our little Victorian is going to get washed right down Castro Street into the beavers. I’m sure they’ll waive as we float by. “We told you to build more dams,” they’d shout over the noise of rushing water.
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Other news updates: First remember beaver friend Gail in New Jersey who wrote about the situation in Franklin Swamp? We managed to send a little attention there way and make some new friends around the country. I heard yesterday this update:
I just spoke with Nancy, the Mayor’s secretary about the latest beaver news. She told me that DC has been in touch with Laura Simon from HSUS about doing a presentation about the beavers to the schools. She was working it out with the Board of Education. I can’t believe they would teach kids about the beavers if they were not going to make an effort to keep them here. I’ll let you know when I have more info.
Hurray! Go Laura and go Gail! Teaching children about beavers is the single sneakiest way to secure their safety. Just look at the slide show at the left of this post, which contains drawings by not one but two of the daughters of a certain anti-beaver city councilman.
New Jersey successes not enough for you? Things look better for the Lincoln Park Beavers in Illinois, too. You might recall the beavers were the special concern of our wikipedia friend, who went to med school nearby and had connected with a current med student who was similarly pro-castor.
Back in the early part of this year the parks department and the Conservancy wanted those beavers out. (Beavers eat trees. Lincoln Conservancy Protects Trees etc.) They hired the mirthlessly-named company “On Target Wildlife Control” to live trap and relocate the beavers, except mom beaver didn’t read the “live” label on her trap and subsequently drowned.
Ring a bell? Well, the beavers are back in the limelight and their supporters are the subject of a recent article on “Lincoln Park Now“. It mentions the widespread good feeling towards the beavers, the facebook page, the wikipedia page, and then notes that “Our beaver even gets mentioned in this California beaver fan blog that’s totally and completely serious about celebrating and supporting beaver welfare.”
Totally and completely serious about celebrating and supporting beaver welfare! Gosh I have to find that blog! Maybe I can email the author and we can collaborate and combine resources. I’m so glad to learn that there is another active website following beaver welfare in California!
Oh. Its Us.
Well, yeah for the coverage. And boo for being the only one. Now lets talk content. I couldn’t help but notice that you refer to the beaver as “he”. I’d like to clarify that beavers are social animals and that any beaver who has built a lodge has a family or is expecting one. Do what you can to start describing this as a family unit, because I believe the “bachelor language” is used to make it easier to justify beaver death and removal. (As I said before, everyone understands that young men living on their own can get into trouble, but no one wants to think of a child left alone because daddy never came home.)
The primary concern your article mentions is birds. Beavers will take trees, and birds need trees, so that means bird lovers aren’t beaver lovers. Ahhh, its nice to have this chance to talk. First take a moment to look at the post from two days ago. It contains reference to a publication by Audubon in 1940 about the way that beavers make habitat for birds. How about this August 2007 article from the National Audubon magazine about how a beaver outside the Bronx zoo helped the bird population there.
“The beaver is nicknamed Jose after US representative Jose Serrano who secured 15 million in federal funding for restoration of the formerly garbage-clogged waterway…Here is nature doing what we couldn’t even imagine, says Eric Sanderson, an ecologist with the wildlife conservation society that overseas the Bronx zoo. The rebounding Bronx river is now home to 45 species of fish and serves as a migratory corridor for birds.”
That fly-by-night researcher was working on a project to generate a program for identifying what a habitat looked like based on the presence of a single species. He called it the Muir Web. He used this web to create an ambitious reconstruction of what what New York looked like 400 years ago. The “Manhatta” project became a major exhibit in the Museum of the City of New York and was the subject of this September’s cover issue of National Geographic.
If you still need convincing that beavers are good for birds, read about the study released this year by Hilary Cooke of Alberta Canada. Science Daily summarize the findings here, but the article is in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of the Western North American Naturalist. And when your done looking it up, wrap your most important trees with 2×4 steel gauge wire or paint the trunks with sand. We’d be happy to help if there are any questions.
Alright, that’s enough beaver news for one day. Stay dry and stay tuned!
