Jim Sterba – Worth A Dam

Good News from the North

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental August 22, 2013

Why Toronto residents must embrace city wildlife

Gladstone thinks it’s only fair she puts out a welcome mat for urban wildlife. “We are taking over their habitats,” she says. “They will stay and we have to learn to live with them.”

Her view is embraced by naturalists and conservationists. Animal populations have rebounded in North American cities and everyone — two legged and four — must adapt. But this accommodation will take effort: “We’ve largely taken ourselves out of the working landscape and mostly forsaken both the destructive ways and the stewardship skills of our ancestors,” says Jim Sterba in his engaging 2012 book, Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds. “But the comeback of wildlife and forests all but demands that we reconnect to the natural world around us, relearn old stewardship skills and develop new ways of practising those skills better.”

It’s not the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe. They (and countless others) reviewed Sterba’s handy published excuses for killing wildlife without so much as a single inconvenint fact check. We had to wait for the Toronto Star to put this brilliant piece together. Go read the whole thing all the way through, and email it to five of your friends. Then send a note of thanks to the author Liz Scrivener, who deserves a TON of credit.

Take the worrisome example of beavers.

“Beaver numbers are definitely high,” confirms manager Toninger. “We have beavers swimming around million-dollar yachts on the harbourfront.”

Most complaints are about beavers damming and causing flooding in recreation areas but on occasion the problem involves backyards. In the winter, problems associated with North America’s largest rodent concern damage to trees. “They can level a whole forest and over the course of a winter can take down hundreds of trees.”

Residents usually want beavers trapped and relocated. But that’s not the way nature works, Toninger explains.

“Our understanding of wildlife is scripted,” he says, referencing Walt Disney. “That you can trap him and somehow he’d be happy and frolic somewhere else. You’d be trapping beaver for the rest of your existence. Move him somewhere else and the beaver dies a lonely existence in an area it doesn’t know. It can’t set up a territory and can’t feed. They are not like deer. They need a home base, they need a lodge. It’s no different than a stranger picking up your teenage son and taking him to a country he doesn’t know.”

The conservation authority recommends installing a system of pipes called “beaver deceivers” or “beaver bafflers” so beavers can learn to live with lower water levels. Trees can be protected by wrapping them with wire.

Hurray for the conservation authority! Hurray for Liz and the Toronto Star! Honestly when I read this article I get the strangest feeling all over that there are a few reasonable humans in the world. It’s very, very strange, and wonderful!

I hope Mr. Sterba suffers from terrible indigestion today.

Our friends working on the beaver believers project have surface again after some much-needed rest. They posted this picture with USFS geomorphologist Suzanne Fouty.

Well this will certainly be a memorable summer for each one of them. I can’t imagine how Sarah is going to go through all that footage and end up with a 20 minute documentary, but I’m very intrigued to find out!

They also posted some stills of their interviews so far. You might recognize these folk.

“Beaver Believers: A film about water, climate change and passionate people who care about our most industrious furry friend.”

The Great Canadian EcoFest!

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 31, 2013

Congratulations to our hardworking friends in Kamoka where they are organizing their first-ever Great Canadian Eco-fest. Getting folks to pay attention, try something new, and put it in the paper is hard to do, so I couldn’t be happier for them.

“We wanted a large community event in Komoka, and tossed around a few ideas, but it was my wife who came up with the idea if an EcoFest,” said Steve Galinas. “She has been involved with animal rehabilitation groups and thought about organizing an event for those groups, but that is a very small niche so it evolved into eco-friendly”

The great Komoka eco-fest will be held at the community center (soccer fields) on sunday June 23 from 10-5. “We definitely hope this will be an annual event” Galinas said.

I tracked down Margaret last year when I first got wind of this. She told me that the inspiration came to her when she was listening to Adrian Nelson at Fur-Bearer Defenders talk about our Beaver Festival! We’ve been swapping ideas about whom to invite and how to make it kid friendly. Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary will be there to educate folks about living with beavers and why they’re good for the ecosystem. (You may remember that sanctuary was started by Audrey Tournay who was the first woman who showed that rehabbed beavers could be released in the wild. This video just brought tears to my eyes so I’m guessing you’ll enjoy it)

Say it with me now: small, small beaver world! Good luck Steve and Margaret! I wish we could be there, but you can bet we will in spirit! Send us photos.

And because I never get tired of arguing about Jim Sterba’s ‘kill ’em all’ manifesto…

Earth Island gets a letter

Shortsighted Solutions

In his book Nature Wars (reviewed by Jason Mark in your Spring 2013 issue), Jim Sterba fails to recognize that, often, nonlethal solutions to wild animal encroachments are both less expensive and more permanent than trapping. He never acknowledges that beaver flooding can be effectively controlled with flow devices, allowing the beavers to remain. Or that new colonies can be naturally discouraged using the beavers’ own territorial behaviors. He never admits that beaver-created wetlands promote fish, birds, and wildlife while raising the water table. I am saddened to see Earth Island Journal promote his book.

Heidi Perryman, Martinez, CA

P.S. I sent this as a special gift to Margaret’s frazzled email earlier this week, hoping it would buoy her spirit as it always does mine.

Beavers may help geese, but in Alabama we kill them both!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 1, 2013

Outdoors just for kids: Some geese rely on beavers

Geese and beavers are very different animals. One is a bird covered with feathers, and the other is a really big furry rodent that eats trees. They have one very essential thing in common, though — they both need water to live in. And it turns out that beavers can actually help geese find a place to live.

Check out this sweet article for children in the Billings Montana Gazette and think about cities that teach children the important relationships between species. Then read this. Never mind that in Billings they’re publishing children’s articles about how beavers and geese are friends, in Pell City Alabama they know just what to do with that friendship.

Pell City Parks and Recreation Department Director Bubba Edge said the parks and recreation department staff will identify the nests, then do both egg addling and oiling around the first of April.

“We are working under the direction of Alabama Power Company, which has control over all streams leading to the lake,” he said. “The beaver dam is holding back water, which allows bacteria to accumulate. Then when we have heavy rains that wash the water over the dam, it ends up in the lake. A free-flowing stream will hopefully eliminate the problem.”

Draper said under the direction of Alabama Power Company, the city would likely use the USDA to trap the beavers.

The dam is holding back water which allows bacteria to accumulate? You can guess how thoughtfully I wrote the major players in this article. I’ll let you know if I hear anything positive back. The reporter has already written to explain that geese aren’t native, cause a lot of problems, and the lake is a reservoir so the beaver bacterias might be more dangerous.

Hmm. I don’t know what to say about that. But I do know that there are lots of places they want to kill beaver in California and defend it by saying “beaver aren’t native to the area and cause a lot of problems“. That seems to be just what you say before killing something that people might object to. (In fact if you ever travel to an unknown land and you overhear folks start saying that about YOU I would definitely watch your back.)

A glimmer on the horizon? The handy manual for self-justification for killing wildlife, Jim Sterba’s book [no link on purpose] NATURE WARS, has been discussed in every paper from the Wall Street Journal to the Boston Globe. Folks just can’t get enough of his exciting excuses for defending our homeland from Nature. (And killing beavers! Don’t forget the beaver killing!) Recently Earth Island shockingly added its voice to the bandwagon. Which, after I had hired a crane to assist in picking my jaw up off the floor, I just had to respond to.

In telling this story, Sterba, a flint-eyed former Wall Street Journal reporter, is at times excessively harsh toward the tender hearted suburbanites opposed to lethal animal control methods. But his central point is sound: Too many people have gone too far in romanticizing animals – and that makes it difficult to think clearly about how best to manage our involvement with other species. When every deer is Bambi, sound ecosystem stewardship becomes impossible.

Grrr. Yes it’s all those wacky compassionISTAS out there, keeping us from killing responsibly. I commented the following

Sterba fails to recognize that often non-lethal solutions are both less expensive and more permanent than trapping. He never acknowledges that beaver flooding can be effectively controlled with flow devices, allowing the beavers to remain and discourage new colonies naturally with their territorial behaviors. He never admits that beaver-created wetlands promote fish, birds and wildlife while raising the water table. I am saddened to see Earth Island promote his short sighted solutions.

Which, surprisingly, prompted a letter back from the editor, thanking me for my “thoughtful comments” and saying that they would run it as a letter in their print edition this summer. Good. Earth Island does great work and they should know better than that.

And by the way if they’d like to do a beaver article for that issue, I’d be happy to help.