Tag: Kate Lundquist

The California Beaver Coalition

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? September 4, 2015

Great news from our beaver friends! I love opening the paper to read an article about beaver advocacy that isn’t in Martinez. We just need 100’s more of these. It’s a big state.

Sherri Hasenfas — Sheri Hartstein Sierra Wildlife Coalition

Beaver population thriving at Lake Tahoe thanks to local volunteers

TAHOE-TRUCKEE, Calif. — Beavers at Lake Tahoe are faring better than they were just a few years ago, thanks to the efforts of Sherry Guzzi and her posse of volunteers, collectively known as the Sierra Wildlife Coalition.

As is the case with many people who become passionate defenders of wildlife, Sherry’s involvement began with the death of a beaver family that had become dear to her and countless other residents and visitors to Kings Beach during the fall of 2010.

This family of four beavers, two adults and two young, had built themselves a lodge in Griff Creek, which runs near Highway 267 in Kings Beach, before flowing beneath the road and into Lake Tahoe.

Obviously, we can’t allow homes, roads or businesses to be flooded so what is to be done? Sadly, in this instance, authorities decided to remove the lodge and kill the beavers.

Even more sadly, this particular dam did not threaten any structures, as the dam was only one foot high and any resulting overflow would have gone into the nearby culvert.

The killing of the beavers did not sit well with the humans who had become enamored with the animals from watching their daily activities.

Sherry, along with co-founder Mary Long, created the Sierra Wildlife Coalition with the purpose of serving as champions of wildlife, and particularly beavers.

Ooooh I love a good creation story! I remember the Griff creek beavers especially because Worth A Dam donated our first beaver management scholarship towards fixing the problem and our own Lory went to Tahoe to educate support. Ahh memories. Seems like yesterday.

sherryandted — Sherry and Ted Guzzi in their native habitat.

Go read the whole thing which ends with a touching poem by Mary’s daughter. SWC under Sherry’s leadership has done outstanding beaver work, with Ted installing flow devices, teams exhibiting and educating at events, and all making sure beaver decisions are made with the right information. Sherry just gave her first beaver presentation for the public at Taylor Creek the day before the beaver festival! It was extremely well received and she still managed to drive down and exhibit in Martinez the next morning. Now that’s dedication!

It’s not only in Tahoe where beaver friends are at work. Nearby in Napa they’re busy too.

‘Wild Napa’ lecture series to focus on beavers

The “Wild Napa” lecture series continues this month with a special presentation on beavers. Hosted by the Napa County Resource Conservation District, the event will be held next Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Covered will be the history and ecology of beavers and how they are helping urban and rural communities across the state to restore watersheds, recover endangered species, and increase climate change resiliency. Brock Doman and Kate Lundquist of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center will share their research to re-evaluate the historic range of beaver in California, and discuss how you can contribute to the Bring Back the Beaver campaign.

Optional guided tour of the active beaver dams on Napa Creek. To join this tour, meet behind the Firefighter’s Museum at 1201 Main St.

Following the tour, the talk will start at 7 p.m. at The Black and White Collective (enter through Napa Bookmine at 964 Pearl St.). Attendance is free and no registration is needed.

Napa is in for a treat. And Napa beavers should get ready to have their virtues extolled. I think Rusty and Robin will be there for sure. And Cheryl said she was planning to try and attend. It’s a great opportunity to spread the word and learn about beavers from the folks that are working closely with Fish and Wildlife to nudge our beaver policies forward. Just in case you can’t make it, here’s a nice introduction to Brock, who has a dynamic, biologic and stream oriented speaking style that you just can’t mistake.

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Beavers with Benefits

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2014

Someone has finally got the beavers and water story right. And it’s about time.

Leave it to beavers: California joins other states in embracing the rodent

AR-141229981.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667 — A beaver dam spans the length of Los Gatos Creek. (Thomas Mendoza — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

LOS GATOS >> Californians are crossing their fingers for more rain after three punishing years of drought have left streams, rivers and wetland parched.

One animal has the potential to restore these dry landscapes.

Go ahead, guess which one. I’ll wait.

Isn’t this a fabulous start to an article? Before you do anything click on the link so they get to count hits for the report. It will convince them that this interests people. We met the reporter Samantha Clark before when she covered the beavers in San Jose for the campus paper. Now she has landed a gig with the Santa Crus Sentinel. Turns out she used to go to school with my neice so maybe osmosis has something to do with her remarkably being the first reporter in the state to get the water story right.

“This state has lost more of its wetlands than all other states, and beavers can rebuild those wetlands,” said Rick Lanman of the Institute for Historical Ecology in Los Altos. “Knowing that it is native should help guide restoration efforts.”

This article reads like a who’s who in beaver doxology honestly, just wait.

Beaver dams bestow benefits to the environment that we humans can’t easily copy. They turn land into a sponge for water. Their gnawing and nesting promotes richer soil and slows down water, improving imperiled fish habitat. Their dams raise water tables, nourishing shrubbery alongside streams that stabilize eroding banks and add habitat for birds and deer. They also help the endangered California Red-legged frog.

“There’s a growing interest in using beaver as a habitat restoration tool,” said Michael M. Pollock, an ecosystems analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. “They create good wetland habitat much more cheaply than other restoration methods.”

Samantha did her homework, tracking down Rick, and Michael. They are busy men but the generally make time to talk about beavers, I’ve been very impressed.

“It would be great if we could recognize the benefit of the beaver and to resolve conflict nonlethally and manage them to continue receiving those benefits,” said Kate Lundquist, director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute, a group that is drafting beaver policy recommendations for state Fish and Wildlife.

I am so happy to read an article that’s actually promoting beaver benefits in California! (And not complaining about methane emissions.) But there seems to be one voice missing. Rick, Michael, Kate, hmmm now who could it be?

Since beavers moved to the Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, the area has seen new species flourish. By moving mud, the beavers create a haven for bugs.

“Because we have an insect bloom, we have a bloom of all the different fish and animals up the food chain,” said Heidi Perryman, founder of the beaver advocacy group Worth a Dam and who led the effort to save a Martinez beaver family from extermination. “We’ve identified three new species of fish and seven species of bird. And we see more otter and mink than we ever saw before.”

Ohhh that’s who was missing! Someone whose learned how to live with beavers and seen it first hand! Not bad. Samantha doesn’t do enough to talk about HOW to live with beavers, but she nails WHY.

In San Jose, a beaver has taken refuge in the dry Guadalupe River. The critter’s dam outside a dripping storm drain created a tiny oasis.

“They can get by with very little,” Pollock said. “In a number of cases, they’ve built on streams that have run dry and because they have built the dams, water flows again.”

Because beavers are so good at recharging ground water, they can make streams flow when they would otherwise run dry such as during the summer months.

If I were a state facing drought for the past 3 three years, I’d be thinking about this article and these plucky rodents and re-examing my policies. Wouldn’t you?

Happy Solstice Everyone! Beavers get easier to see after today!

Could Fish Victory become Beaver Victory?

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History June 12, 2014

Salmon win court ruling that ‘sets aside’ Marin countywide plan

In a sharply critical decision that leaves Marin’s planning document in legal limbo, an appellate court ordered more analysis of how development affects San Geronimo Valley’s endangered coho salmon.

The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco reversed a Marin Superior Court decision, “sets aside” the 2007 countywide plan and its environmental report pending study of the impact of creekside building on salmon, and declared that a building ban was improperly imposed in San Geronimo.

Did you read about the Marin appellate decision protecting salmon? Our friends at SPAWN took the powers that be to court with the backing of some 22 conservation organizations and won a decision that is making no friends among the developers.

Fishery activists at the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network of Forest Knolls, which contested county compliance with state environmental law and sued to get tougher creekside building rules, hailed the ruling as a triumph. “We hope that after this decision, county supervisors are ready to work together so we can save these species from extinction,” said Todd Steiner, head of the salmon network.

“The judges agreed with Spawn that the county acted unlawfully because the environmental impact report provides no help to decision-makers or the public to understand the likely consequences of allowable build out,” said Deborah Sivas of Stanford Law School’s Environmental Clinic, which represented the salmon network along with attorney Michael Graf.

If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Michael Graf was the attorney who represented Worth A Dam in the failed effort to stop the sheet pile from going through the beaver lodge. Remember? He generously charged us very little and got his friend the geomorphologist to walk our creek and do the same. The city didn’t mind breaking the law anyway, but that’s blood under the bridge now. Seems like eons ago that I was worried the sheet pile would kill the beavers or drive them away. Congratulations Michael and SPAWN for a fight well won!

All this lays the foundation for the NEXT lawsuit to appear in Marin. One where trapping ‘nuisance’ beavers is considered a threat to the salmon population. What’s that you say, beavers weren’t native to Marin? (Or Alameda? Or San Jose?) Guess what was published and went online yesterday?

Here’s the abstract, but you really need to go read the whole thing. Eli’s graphs are stunning.

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis ) has not been considered native to the watersheds of coastal California or the San Francisco Bay Area. These assertions form the basis of current wildlife management policies regarding that aquatic mammal, and they date to the first half of the 20th century. This review challenges those long-held assumptions based on verifiable (physical) and documented (reliable observational) records. Novel findings are facilitated by recently digitized information largely inaccessible prior to the 21st century. Understanding that beaver are native to California’s coastal watersheds is important, as their role in groundwater recharge, repair of stream channel incision, and restoration of wetlands may be critically important to the conservation of threatened salmonids, as well as endangered amphibians and riparian-dependent birds,

The timing on this could NOT be better, as we head off to the Salmonid Restoration Conference this week. It ends with a piercing reminder of how important beavers are to salmon, which I’m hoping the timing of the Marin decision bumps into the news cycle. There are a lot of parts I love about this paper, and Rick’s son did a stunning job of pulling the whole thing together, but you’ll pardon me if this is my very favorite part:

Today California’s coastal beaver are widely regarded as the non-native survivors of twentieth century translocations, and when they cause flooding problems or fell trees, depredation permits are often provided. Understanding beaver as native to coastal ecosystems may impact this decision-making.

Of course, I would have phrased less subtly, like STOP PRETENDING YOU’RE KILLING BEAVERS BECAUSE THEY AREN’T NATIVE, IDIOTS, but this paper and the sierra ones should permanently bury the myths about beaver absence from most of California.

49 other states never believed it anyway. I’m glad we finally tackled the 50th.

ṱ’ek:e

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers September 18, 2013

Working with Beaver-A Dam Good Idea!

Wednesday, October 9, 7:00-9:00pm

Presentation with Kate Lundquist of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and Edward Willie, Educator and Pomo Indian This presentation is in association with Pomo Honoring Month and The Pomo Project.

$10 at the door. No RSVP necessary.

Heron Hall, Laguna Environmental Center, 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95401

You might recognize Kate from our last two beaver festivals, the most recent paper we’ve been working on regarding beavers in coastal rivers and the OAEC but the new face presenting with her will be Edward Willie, of Pomo descent and eager to add his voice to the team. He is an artist, herbalist and native ecologist currently furthering his education in permaculture. Pomo territory stretched from the Pacific Coast, along the Russian river and on to Clear Lake. We know the Southern Pomo had a word for beaver ṱ’ek:e (N. ALexander Walker, personal communication, 2011-01-23) Beavers appeared in their Coyote legends and learning more about beaver in the area will be very important for ultimately restoring those streams to support salmon.

Expect very good things from their presentation in October.

“Discovering it for Wyoming”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental February 23, 2013

One of my favorite comediennes, Paula Poundstone, used to do a bit about the irony of Columbus claiming to discover America when there were already a bunch of people living there. When as an industrious student she had raised this point to her teacher she had said “Yes but he was discovering it FOR SPAIN”. As in it may have been important to all these other folks but Spain didn’t know about it. Paula would talk about how off-putting that might be, sitting alone in your apartment and having someone ride up with a flag and “discover” it for Spain, and how that might feel.

Which is kind of how I felt when I read this article from Wyoming yesterday.

This is one of many dams built in the Pole Mountain Unit of the Medicine Bow National Forest. Courtesy photo

Student studies beaver ponds on Pole Mountain

Hundreds of beavers live in the Pole Mountain area, changing the landscape each time they build a dam and flood a meadow.

As the landscape changes under their watch, so do the plants, wildlife and fisheries. Matt Hayes, a University of Wyoming graduate student, found a way to quantify some of those changes for his thesis project, which he completed in November. Hayes’ advisor was associate professor Scott Miller.

The project was funded by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“A lot of times we focus on beavers being negative, but when managing Pole Mountain, the beavers are instrumental to these fluctuating changes that are happening in riparian areas,” Hayes said. “You have to have those changes throughout the system to have the healthy system we have up there.”

Well, alright then! It turns out beavers are helpful in Wyoming too! Sorry, that’s overgeneralizing, they’re helpful on Pole mountain in Wyoming. Better do other graduate research on every mountain in the state to make sure it applies. I mean we certainly can’t apply research from Alberta and New Mexico and Maine and Alaska to someplace like Wyoming. It might be totally different.

Hayes said beavers might be a possible management tool when looking at increasing winter forage or rejuvenating aspen growth.

Beaver ponds hold snowmelt for long into the summer, keeping storm run-off from flooding downstream, plus they contribute to the quality of fishing in Pole Mountain.

“Without beaver ponds, there wouldn’t be any fishing habitat,” he said.

Alright then. Kill the fatted calf or whatever. Late to the table is still at the table! Beaver Festival Wyoming anyone?

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This appeared yesterday from Kate Lundquist of the OAEC, shown here watching beavers in the black hat on the footbridge. Enjoy!