Halcyon Days of Summer

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Festival July 30, 2011

A flooded Highway 9 in Blue River during July’s high water hearkens back to a Western landscape governed by beavers.

It’s been said that the West we’re accustomed to — the “fast-flowing streams and invitingly open banks, celebrated in photographs and songs and pickup truck commercials,” Kevin Taylor wrote in the June 2009 issue of High Country News — is an illusion. It’s a message Grand Canyon Trust project manager Mary O’Brien preached in Taylor’s story.

Janice Kurbjun

Gosh it’s nice to see a reminder of Taylor’s seminal article again after all this time. I love that it made enough of an impression to get a mention two years later. I remember being so excited to read it and learn about heroine Mary O’brien preaching beaver gospel with “her thick rope of a gray braid” that when I travelled to Oregon for the conference I scoured the 200+ attendees looking for that rope.

(I quickly realized there were far too many gray ropes to identify hers in particular, and had to wait until we were properly introduced. Now she’s coming to the beaver festival to see about starting her own in Utah, and you’ll have a chance to see for yourself!)

Looks like at least half the gospel was heard in Colorado, since everyone is willing to admit that beavers are a Keystone species but no one seems willing or able to install a flow device.

“There’s been some pesky ones up there by Highway 9,” he said of the beavers — and Blue River second-home owner Mark Ronchetti agrees. Speaking on a drive to his Albuquerque, N.M. broadcast meteorologist job, he said when he bought his 9-acre property the area was “so choked off by beavers building dams that it stopped up the water to make it like wetlands.”

He said he found 10 to 15 dams “clogging the flow” that he’s since broken up. He’s also relocated some of the architects because beavers are such hard workers, they’ll rebuild a dam within days, sometime hours.

“Without that, the house would’ve been flooded,” Ronchetti said. He’s noticed properties north of his lot that are vacant, and where beavers are happily abiding. “It’s been ignored,” he said. “I understand having beavers and habitat, but we can’t just let it go. Some wetlands is good, but there must be some control of what’s going on. The Blue River has got to be able to flow through there.”

Hmm. “We only need so much of this habitat business. A river has to get where its going, otherwise they’ll be anarchy! I can’t be held responsible for ripping families apart when there are young to take care of. I’m a meteorologist for gawdsake. Never mind that if I move THESE beavers I’ll just get new ones. You can’t expect me to think of past tomorrow’s forecast.”

Taylor called the rodent a time shifter, “having the power to extend the release of water late into summer, saturating the ground and healing watersheds. It has the power to re-create the primordial, wetter West that existed for millennia — a West we just missed seeing.”

Beaver activity can transform an ephemeral stream that traditionally runs for just a few days in spring into one that lasts for several months. The present disconnect with the beaver comes largely from the trapping era, when beavers were extensively eliminated. North America had an estimated 60 million beaver before European settlement, which eventually dropped in a century of trapping to roughly 100,000, common figures show. According to Taylor, the West held just a fraction of that. They’ve since made a comeback that beaver-restorers believe still has a long way to go.

They are a keystone species that restores riparian habitat and raises the water table. Their fur was used for felt in beaver hats, a fashion later replaced by silk hats — a shift that likely saved the beaver from extinction, according to the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

“No mammal other than humans has a great an influence on its surroundings. This is a ‘keystone species’ in riparian communities; without them the ecosystem would change dramatically,” states the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The ponds that well up behind their dams create navigable waters beneath the ice so they can be active year-round.

Ahh Kevin, we missed you. It’s great to read you again. Come to think of it your article never mentioned flow devices. That might have been a mistake. Not quite sure the state of Colorado is quite ready for your vision. They seem to be missing a lot of the point.

Further north, in Silverthorne, public works director Bill Linfield and his crew spend hours, days and sometimes up to a month in spring breaking dams at Straight Creek as it approaches the outlets and Willow Creek upstream from the Willowbrook neighborhood.

Wetlands in Willow Creek require Linfield’s crew to go in with wader and pull the dams apart “one stick at a time,” Linfield said. “By the next morning, the beaver has rebuilt the dam. It’s a constant battle.”

Which is why he’s relocated several of the beavers. This year, no trapping took place, but it’s been an almost annual occurrence since public works took on the task of protecting the outlet buildings and the Willowbrook houses.

“We don’t want to kill them. We just want them to go somewhere else,” Linfield said.

Once again for the folks at home, you want these beavers to stay just where they are. Honestly. If you move them out new beavers will move in and you’ll have to deal with this problem all over. Figure out what are the conditions you require to maintain safe roads, properties,ranches and find out what tools will allow you to have those conditions EVEN IF THE BEAVERS STAY. A flow device? A culvert fence? A dam reinforcement? Figure out the right tool(s) for the job and then build it. Then thank your lucky stars that those beavers will keep any others away.

Nice article, but missing key points of the sermon kinda reminded me of this,

The New Gold Standard

heidi08 Beaver News, Educational, Why We Care February 19, 2011

For the longest time, the very best beaver article ever written was featured in the High Country News and described the ‘working beaver conference’ in 2009. It introduced me to heroes like Mary O’Brien, Michael Pollock and Suzanne Fouty and set in motion a discussion of beavers as an restorative species that I don’t think could have been possible otherwise.

Well now, Kevin Taylor’s breathtaking article finally has some competition. Today’s Globe and Mail features a truly stunning look at beavers as ecosystem engineers with extensive reports from Glynnis Hood, Steve Zack and Duncan Haley. The benefits of beavers to water, pollution, fish, birds, soil and carbon storage are discussed in two full pages of good news. There is even a section on flow devices and their value in tricking beavers to prevent flooding.

Our bucktoothed icon is hard-working and monogamous, steadfast and stable in the Canuck way. But beloved? Not when one drops a tree on your cottage or floods your land with its dam. These days, however, the beaver has a new brand: eco-saviour. An increasingly vocal group of scientists and conservationists believes the dam-building rodent is an overlooked tool to mitigate climate change – a natural remedy for our sick rivers and ravaged wildlife. Fly away with that, bald eagle.

Did anyone else just get chills? Well this increasingly vocal group of scientists clearly came back from the state of the beaver conference fired up and ready to go! This is a fantastic read, and I just took a moment to write Erin and thank her for the most thorough bit of beaver reporting I have seen in 5 years.

The challenge, the researcher says, is to find a balance with the beaver – to put them where they happily improve the environment, in healthy numbers, without clashing against urban sprawl. “It’s as though two control freaks are competing for the same environment, and there’s been this ongoing battle ever since,” says Dr. Hood, who has just completed the manuscript for a new book, The Beaver Manifesto: In Defence of Tenacity. She spent 19 years on the front lines as a warden for Parks Canada while humans and beavers tussled over land – when the phone rang, she says, you could usually count on a beaver being involved somehow. “We like nature as long as it’s well behaved,” Dr. Hood says, “and once it starts getting the crayons and running loose, then we get worked up about it.” Except that now may be time for one control freak to step aside – and let a few well-placed beavers run loose with the crayons.

Well there’s my reading list in waiting. I can’t wait to read that book. I think she should sneak us a chapter for preview right away. I may not be able to wait until it comes out. The article is a beautiful look at what beavers do best. Go read the entire thing. There is even a page of ‘Fun facts‘ that are actually fun (and actually facts!).

Deceiving beavers

Trap one beaver family, and another will inevitable move in. But beavers build dams where they hear running water, so devices have been designed to reduce the noise with pipe and fencing around culverts to prevent the flooding of roads and farmland. The animals also don’t climb very well, so fencing trees tends to stop beaver activity.

I ‘m not sure why I feel so exhilarated by this article. It seems like so many beaver threads are coming together at once: I did a delightful interview with the Sonoma Tribune yesterday for a beaver article that’s coming out on Tuesday to talk about the presentation Thursday night. The Michigan radio program is still buzzing in my ears and I’m definitely proud of my beaver service over the past three weeks. Maybe its the faint echo of Egyptian triumph against tyranny I’m feeling, or maybe it’s the Wisconsin-feuled notion that beaver voices are finally using their collective bargaining rights! “Hey-hey! Ho-ho! Killing Beaver’s got to go!” Or something like that…

The Greatest Beaver Story Ever Told

heidi08 Beaver News, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental July 7, 2009

Several new and old Friends at the SFEP made sure to send me this article, which appeared in the June 1, 2009 Issue of the High Country News. Get your popcorn because author Kevin Taylor has given us the very best beaver article yet written and every page-turning wonder is a loving appreciation of our furry engineers and their role in the environment.The article is an outgrowth of the “Working Beavers Conference” offered in March, remember how yours truly sighed wistfully at the agenda for the two day workshop? I was pacified with promises of a podcast but it still isn’t (ahem!) available…never mind, read this:

“Castor canadensis, believe it or not, is a time shifter. The humble, hardworking rodent, through its dams and ponds, can extend the release of water late into summer, saturating the ground and healing watersheds. It has the power to re-create the primordial, wetter West that existed for millennia — a West we just missed seeing.

Restoration of the beaver is restoration of a landscape we don’t have a cultural connection to,” O’Brien says, “because they largely were trapped out.”

Let us repent.

Beaver are a keystone species: Amen. Beaver restore riparian habitat: Amen. Beaver raise up the water table: Amen. Beaver show us the Western landscape as it was just prior to permanent white settlement. A big amen for this.”

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=rn6w255CGkk]

Now there’s a church any lapsed Catholic can believe in! Gather the children around the fireside and enjoy this remarkable tale (tail?) of habitat restoration, drought mitigation, heroic rescue and the wisdom of the ages. Did you know that 200 years ago there were millions more beavers? Try 60-80 per mile of stream. That means between the train tracks and Susana St there might be ten colonies of beavers.

“North America had at least 60 million beaver before European settlement, according to the most-commonly cited estimate. Explorer David Thompson walked across much of the continent about 200 years ago and observed that it was “in the possession of two distinct races of beings, man and the beaver.”

Historical trapping records in the Colorado Rockies show “60 to 80 beaver” per mile of stream, says Trey Schillie, an ecosystem services analyst for the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region. That abundance was repeated across the West.”

Think about how different our streams and meadows and landscapes looked, and that’s the point. Stream beds meandered, water tables were higher, trees thrived along banks, streams weren’t undercut, and wildlife flourished. This was the America that produced a foodbelt that could feed the nation and the world. This was all possible because of beavers, and we nearly destroyed them without once understanding what we were giving up.

Water shortages, worsened by climate change and population growth, provided impetus for this Liberty Lake conference. Facing demands for more storable water in a semiarid region, for instance, Washington’s governors and the state Legislature have pushed the Columbia River Initiative since 2002, calling for a mix of new water projects and conservation. The state Department of Ecology’s Office of the Columbia River is involved, funded in 2006 with $200 million for its first 10 years. Those efforts have prompted ambitious proposals for constructing gargantuan new manmade impoundment dams.

Mike Petersen, director of The Lands Council, a Spokane-based conservation group, became alarmed at the scope of those proposals. There had to be something better than flooding more valleys behind hunks of concrete — but what? “How do you stop a massive dam project?” asks Brian Walker, the council’s watershed projects manager. “I’m not sure if I was drinking or if Mike was when we asked, ‘Hey, why not beavers? They build dams.’ ” High fives and a toast — clink! — for the beaver and for smaller, more ecosensitive dams!

From that sudsy brainstorming, The Lands Council pitched a beaver proposal to the Department of Ecology and won a $30,000 grant. With the money, the group is now studying 50 beaver ponds to determine their average water storage and identifying potential sites for restoring beaver. The Lands Council also helped organize the conference.

Every part of this article is quote-worthy, just go read the whole thing. There are favorite parts which I can’t wait to discuss with my beaver colleagues around the globe. Like the part where they are learning that water temperatures are actually LOWER in beaver ponds than undammed creeks. For years they’ve been spreading the rumor that dams raise water temperature and harm little trout, in fact its the only consistent negative finding about beavers. Turns out they might not have actually MEASURED temperatures or taken into account the fact deeper water is slower to warm up than shallow water… Go figure.

Thanks Estuary Friends for passing along this glorious account. I promise to think of you every time I smilingly re-read it.