BEAVER DEFENDERS NEVER RETIRE

Maybe things do change in D.C. after all. Just check out this new report from the hill.

Eager Beavers

What An Increase in Beavers Might Mean for the District

The District is located at the confluence of two rivers, a city built around streams, marshes and wetlands. It’s the home of 800,000 people. It is also the perfect habitat for beavers. Over the past few years, residents and visitors have increasingly spotted the sleek, orange-toothed rodents and their activity in and around the city’s waters.

One of those places is Kingmn Island, where Friends of Kingman Island Vice President Lora Nunn and her family like to explore along the shoreline, he colooking for what her two children call ”beaver evidence”; trunks stripped of bark; trees felled, leaving pointed stumps; dams in the water. If they are very lucky, they will spot a beaver itself, swimming in the water under the bridge between Heritage and Kingman Islands.

“They leave significant evidence on a tree that is unmistakably beaver,” said Nunn. “The kids love seeing it.”

Funny thing, You know who else lives in Kingman Island? Dr, John Hadidian, the new retired science director for the Humane Society, You know the responsible for getting Skip Lisle to do workshop in Massachusetts which was attended by one young Mike Callahan so that he could learn to install flow devices himself and eventually start the Beaver Institute which has educated so many since then,

The beaver activity is proof of a tremendous resurgence. What does that mean for the District’s environment, its wildlife and its residents?

“Absolute beaver numbers are always going to be limited by the fact that they can only occupy stream channel and flood plains,” agrees City Wildlife’s Dr. John Hadidian, formerly a scientist with both the Humane Society of the US and National Park Service (NPS). “That’s something that [only] extends 100 to 300 feet from the water, depending on tributary size. “

Beavers are nature’s engineers, so well-known for their abilities that a determined beaver is the logo for the MIT athletic teams, the Engineers. Beavers dam rivers and streams to create ponds where they build their underwater homes, or lodges. In their lodges, they raise multi-generation families—babies, called kits, will live with their parents for two years, helping to raise the next yearlings.

tandTheir environmental modifications can have many benefits. Beaver dams slow the flow of water, creating new wetlands that can become the ideal habitat for birds and animals like muskrats, shorebirds and ducks as well as amphibian and plant life. The dams also act as natural filtration systems, capturing pollutants and silt before they can enter the river.

Beaver activity is tremendously beneficial to the District, said Jorge Bogantes Montero, Stewardship Program Specialist for the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS).

Excellent! I’m thrilled to know John is still standing up for beavers, even from retirement. John was an early helper in the Martinez campaign and a good friend if Sherrie Tippie]s. I consider him a founding father in my own conversion.

The AWS team was walking upstream, focused on the area’s mussel population, when they realized the path of the stream looked different.

“I said, that’s weird,” Bogantes recalled. “I wonder why that is.” Walking up to the culvert where the tributary passes under the parking lot of New Smyrna Missionary Baptist Church, they found a big beaver dam. When they returned in February 2022, Bogantes counted up to four more dams.

Many stream restoration systems are inspired by the work of beavers, he said, but the DOEE project attracted nature’s experts in engineered waterland restoration. “The beaver dams you see at Nash Run are exactly doing that,” he said, “slowing down the water, filtering nutrients, trash, sediment. It’s exactly what we need.”

“We just have to evaluate the side effects [on] the people.”

Yayaya, Worrying about the people is always the majority of the job, That’s where the heavy lifting comes in,

There are devices that can maintain water levels—pond levelers—that can also help resolve flooding conflicts, though none are yet known to be in use in the District. Trees can be protected wo spray repellents, or more effectively, with wire mesh. NPS has employed the latter measure for some time.

McGinty said rangers are monitoring the situation. If there is a significant negative impact, he added, NPS might have to consider relocating the beavers.

Well I’m sure John has rallied a team of smart and willing volunteers thawill see this through to the next chapter,. Old beaver defenders never quit they just know when to colonize

Tick, tick, tick…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, New Species January 15, 2013

I am officially a week away from driving to Oregon for the State of the Beaver conference. I am starting to get nervous. Last week I heard from Suzanne Fouty that she won’t be attending due to another conference, and Sherri Tippie called yesterday to confer that she won’t be there either because of knee surgery. I’m very, very disappointed because listening to Sherri last time was my most inspiring moment at the conference. The moment where I felt beavers were absolutely in good hands whether I helped any or not. What will inspire me this year?

Two people that are still on the agenda that I am looking forward to meeting are John Hadidian of HSUS and Jimmy Taylor of APHIS. Kind of an unlikely combination but I’m sure if you could get those too laughing and drunk in a corner you could change the world. Well, I’ll give it my best shot. I’ll get to hear Mary O’brien, Jeff Baldwin and Eli Asarian. Worth A Dam is paying travel expenses for Michael Pollock to be there. And of course our good friends Paul and Louise Ramsay who are zipping out all the way from Scotland.

Yesterday I talked to Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions just to make sure that I could give the ‘we-want-to-save-beavers’ his contact info so they could chat about how they might install a flow device here. I’m hopeful that they might be able to work something out because Mike is traveling back to California for a beaver management workshop in Douglas City and he’s planning a visit to see our beavers on the way! (If they finally agree to show themselves, that is!)

A big thank you to Shell who just sent a $900.00 check for last year’s festival, and to Kiwanis who just encouraged us to reapply again for this year! I thought it’s a good morning for some appreciate for our old beaver friend Glenn Hori who has been keeping an eye on some river otters at Heather Farms. He photographed four yesterday, which is pretty amazing.

four otters at hidden lakes — Otters at Heather Farms (2013) - Glenn Hori

Although not as amazing as this photograph from 2007 by Sean Merrigan and recently posted on facebook by our otter friends. Yes, that’s a sea otter floating toward the golden gate.

Conference Eve

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions February 2, 2010

Tomorrow begins the “State of the Beaver Conference” in Oregon. I am beyond jealous of the great minds who will gather to talk about the valued relationship between beaver and salmon. Tomorrow at noon will be the Umpqua tribal welcome and conference overview. Then the entire event launched with John Hadidian of HSUS talking about Urban Wildlife. John is the author of “wild neighbors“, a friend of the Martinez Beavers, both our familiar flow-device installers, and generously sent me an autographed copy of his book when I initially wrote him in a panic two years ago. I am eager to have long conversations with him about my idea for a beaver management internship through AmeriCorp that would train half time with both Mike and Skip, taking care of beavers for generations to come. Next is a discussion of the beaver in Europe by Duncan Halley, who it says has a PhD in zoology and a BA in psychology. Coincidence? I think not!

But the star of tomorrow’s opening day will be Michael Pollock of NOAA Northwestern Fisheries talking about the relationship between beavers and salmon. Michael was the reason I was most willing to drive 8 hours to get to the seven feathers casino, and I was delighted when our wikipedia friend nudged him into contacting me. He said that he had family in the area and would be willing to come down at any juncture to give a talk or education program for us. He also said (and this sealed his popularity in my heart forever) that he was once a member of his city council and knew first hand how remarkably pompous and foolish their discussions and decisions could be. Be still my heart! He speaks at 2:45 and I’m guessing will be the recipient of many avid listeners.

Sigh, its no use. I better confess it now. I’m a beaver groupie.

It’s just as well I’m not there. I’d be in the audience with my cigarette lighter raised the whole time. Don’t even get me started talking about Mary O’Brien’s presentation Friday morning. I can’t possibly swoon this early in the morning…

This Just In: People with Creek Property Object to Beavers!!!

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports, Creative Solutions July 7, 2009

The New York Times Lead story in the Science Section was a series of NIMBY beaver tales. I like to think the Grey Lady slapped the Grey Owl soundly in the face yesterday and invited him into the parking lot for a bit of fist-to-cuffs. Apparently, 30 minutes away from Mike Callahan’s business in Massachusetts, (you know the one cryptically named “Beaver Solutions“) city engineers are beside themselves wondering what to do about the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, beaver problem.

CONCORD, Mass. — The dozens of public works officials, municipal engineers, conservation agents and others who crowded into a meeting room here one recent morning needed help. Property in their towns was flooding, they said. Culverts were clogged. Septic tanks were being overwhelmed.“We have a huge problem,” said David Pavlik, an engineer for the town of Lexington, where dams built by beavers have sent water flooding into the town’s sanitary sewers. “We trapped them,” he said. “We breached their dam. Nothing works. We are looking for long-term solutions.”

Ahhh not just “Beaver solutions”…”Beaver Final Solutions”. Hmmm I wonder what that might be. Apparently near extermination wasn’t long termy enough. And I assume you wouldn’t suggest moving all the housing and roads into the desert. What else could possibly be a solution that works forever? How about a commitment to solve problems creatively when they arise, to restrict beavers from places you don’t want them to be, and a plan to manage their behavior so that you can tolerate them in other places? How about you stop blowing up dams and thinking its going to change their behavior?

It hasn’t changed YOURS, its unlikely to change THEIRS.

Around the nation, decades of environmental regulation, conservation efforts and changing land use have brought many species, like beavers, so far back from the brink that they are viewed as nuisances. As Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University, put it, “We are finding they are inconvenient.”

Oh my God, No. Say it isn’t so. Not INCONVENIENT!!!!!!! The precious sacrament convenience of man is one of the seven golden benefits of walking upright, right after having our hands free and getting to have more sex than we have offspring. Don’t tell me its being threatened by the monogamous reproduction of an animal we nearly wiped off the planet 200 years ago. At long last beavers, have you no decency?

Today, Ms. Hajduk said, there are at least 30,000 beavers, all over the state.

Wow, that’s a lot. Maybe this whole environmental movement has gone too far. We obviously brought them back too much. How many did their used to be? 29,000? Oh wait, remember those historical trapping records that showed 60 to 80 beaver per mile of stream? I wonder how many miles of stream Massachusetts has. (Gosh the internet is useful. 4320 miles of stream in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.) Lets just multiply that by the low number of 60…how many beavers would we expect if we were back to that baseline? I mean if we had done an even adequate job of “bringing them back” 259,200. Let’s be generous and just round down to 200,000.

Uh oh. By the most conservative possible calculations, Massachusetts is short 170,000 beavers!

By 8 am yesterday morning I had received this article from three people. By nine I had written the author. And by ten had received an answer back. By 11, ten people had suggested I read it. The sad thing is that this slanderous bit of whining-from-people-who-should-know-better will have also been sent to every member of the city staff and council. Look, they’ll say! It’s in the NY Times! Beavers are harassing other cities not just ours! They’ll pat each other sympathetically on the back and say, I knew they weren’t worth a dam!

Never mind that the Ms Hajduk of the article will be presenting on beavers as PESTS at the next Urban Wildlife Conference in Massachusetts organized by John Hadidian of HSUS. John is a long time friend of the Martinez Beavers, and one speaker he just asked aboard is our own friend Mike Callahan who will be talking about flow devices, which we all know Fish & Game likes to say don’t work (except when they do). The conference is later this month and don’t you wish you could be there?

The article closes with mention of the good beavers can do in the habitat. Which is by far the best part, and the part the author anxiously pointed to when she wrote back.

As she and Dr. Griffin neared the pond, a group of wood ducks, alarmed by their approach, went squawking into the air. It was good to see them, Dr. Griffin said — they are among the species favored by hunters that the state is trying to encourage. She pointed to an osprey sitting on a dead tree. Ospreys were almost wiped out by DDT but are now back in Massachusetts, and this one was taking advantage of beaver-created habitat. Just then, a great blue heron glided to a landing in the pond, another guest of the beavers.

Impoundments like this one absorb water, especially in the spring, when streams swell with rain and snow runoff, Dr. Griffin said. And when the impoundment eventually silts up and the beavers move on, their dam will decay and the pond will drain, leaving unusually rich soil behind.

“These beaver meadows stand out like rich little oases,” Ms. Hajduk said.

Dr. Griffin said she and her colleagues emphasized these advantages in urging people to adopt “tolerance and coexistence as a first line of defense.”

Remember, no matter how much good they do, Massachusetts is still missing 170,000 beavers, so its a drop in the bucket.