Tag: Leonard Houston

The Beaver State Beckons

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers November 14, 2014

The agenda is out for the State of the Beaver Conference 2015 and it looks amazing. Starting with the Keynote speaker Lixing Sun, the co-author of the most famous beaver book yet written. (Books really, because it’s so popular there’s a second edition.)

Now maybe you’re thinking”why should I care” or “I hate Oregon in February” and “I don’t need to hear the latest beaver research”. But if you were thinking that you’d be thinking wrong. I’m going to assume that whoever you are you drink water, live on a rapidly heating planet, and are a citizen of a government with limited resources for fixing those things. The world needs beavers, and the only way it’s going to get them is if people like you stand up and teach people why they matter and how to live with them. This conference will make you better at that and you’ll hear from great minds like,

Instream Salmon habitat restoration and unintended benefits for west side beavers Robert Nichols, USDA Forest Service Fish Biologist

NWRC Beaver Research Update: From the Beaver State to the Heart of Dixie Ph.D. Jimmy Taylor,National Wildlife Research Center

Mathematical Ecologist, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center Ph.D. Chris Jordan

Flow Devices – Controlling Beaver Dam Flooding, and Facilitating Salmon Passage Michael Callahan, Beaver Solutions Inc

Beaver Restoration in Urban Creeks Ph.D. Heidi Perryman, Worth a Dam, Martinez Beavers

Not to mention that it looks like this morning I just managed to get Derek Gow from Cornwall on the schedule. So you’ll be personally updated on the most famous beavers in the world. As well as a watershed-beaver introduction by this persuasive gentleman:

The conference is truly one-of-a-kind, inexpensive, and ecologically invaluable. The hotel is nice and beaver friendly, the casino thinks beavers are good luck, and you will meet amazing people that will become amazing friends. Register here and I’ll see you in Canyonville!

Now there is lots more to say, including beavers being threatened in BWW’s home town, (if you can believe it) and moderately good news from DEFRA about the Devon beavers. but I wrote this post this morning at 7am, worked on the graphics for leonard and promptly lost it the entire column in the ether so had to do EVERYTHING again.

This beaver reporter needs a break.

Tidings of Beaver Comfort and Joy

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Environmental June 26, 2014

Backyard beaver

Living on Bear Creek, we take great pleasure in watching the wildlife. A few days ago, my partner, Tom, came running in shouting, “Beaver! Beaver in the river!” He grabbed his binoculars and raced to the back window.

I grew up in a big city and thought beavers were ancient, extinct creatures seen only in picture books. I was shocked to actually see one in my backyard.

She was standing in the water on her hind legs, reaching for leaves on a tree that had fallen across the creek. Through the binoculars, I could see her chubby, brown belly and her tiny little hands carefully picking the leaves and stuffing them into her mouth. After she had eaten everything she could reach, she let go and floated down the river.

The image of the beaver stayed with me all that day and into the next. It felt like a gift meant to be treasured. I kept telling myself: Don’t forget the beaver. Hold on to the image of her in your mind.

The Daily Tidings is a charming media group out of Oregon and Jessica Bryan’s joyful descant on having a beaver in her backyard is a welcome change. You might want to go read the whole thing so they can count your traffic as evidence that beavers sell subscriptions! In the mean time, I will just think about what we’ve all learned from keeping beavers in our minds.

Yesterday I received a pressured email from Michelle Roberts of NBC Bay Area wanting to talk about beavers and turtles – she said she saw an article where I discussed (I can’t imagine?). We set up an interview that got eclipsed by several fires and arrests in the South Bay, so I introduced her to Beaver friend Leslee Hamilton of the Guadelupe River Park Conservancy and she did a short interview at the end of last nights news, which I sadly can’t find online. You might have seen it? I also spent the day fixing our paypal link and learning about Paypal Here which will let us take credit cards at the beaver festival!

Cheryl took this awesome photo Sunday night with our new festival team members after our cheerful, productive dinner. Clearly the beavers were grateful for our hard planning work and decided to put on a show. If you made a paper bag beaver puppet at Earth Day you know that kits start out with white teeth which turn orange as they grow because of the iron in their diet. This teenager shows us he’s well is well on his way to the bright orange badge of adulthood. See for yourself for yourself:

Yearling 2014 — Yearling shows off 2014 his growing up teeth – Cheryl Reynolds

Word is out about the 2015 State of the Beaver Conference. Leonard is happily lining up presenters and sponsors. He has asked me to present again on our famous urban beavers, and we found the perfect house by the river belonging to his friends which we can rent that will take the dog. (No WIFI though, so you may have to live without my dulcet ramblings for a few days.) Maybe I can dash something out at the hotel during the breaks!

I’m thinking the poster for such an important conference might need more pizazz. So I dressed it up a bit…too much?

“You have the right to remain ignorant, anything you learn may be used against you”

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 2, 2013

Two weeks ago I wrote about the west Sacramento beavers that were being trapped because they chewed trees. I had in my mind the decision tree of my own – either blasting their ignorance, or coaxing some wisdom into life by talking sense to power. I chose the latter, and wrote the forest manager and the editor with friendly suggestions and I didn’t use a single unkind word. I was rewarded by an invitation to write an op-ed for the paper, which I’m told ran this week. (The paper isn’t online. I found out about the article because Leonard Houston’s sister in law scanned it and sent it to me) I was thanked by the forest manager who said she was sending my letter on to all her colleagues.

Alright then. That worked well. Maybe you DO catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

But after all those successes I got word of a recent UPI article, two weeks later, describing the same thing, in the same alarming tones. Obviously a second press release was issued, maybe after my op ed ran? It’s the classic complain louder technique that we enjoyed when we were toddlers. If it works for three year olds why not try it for forest managers?

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 28 (UPI) — A beaver invasion in West Sacramento, Calif., has put homeowners on alert as police estimate as many as 30 rodents have infiltrated a neighborhood. “I started getting lots of calls from concerned residents,” West Sacramento’s Urban Forest Manager Dena Kirtley told KOVR-TV, Sacramento, in a report published Wednesday.

He said about six beavers have been trapped so far but many more are roaming the neighborhood, tearing down trees. “They can weigh upwards of 70 pounds and by the damage on the trees, were a good 4-feet tall,” Kirtley said.

Well, just dead actually.We don’t live trap beaver in California. Four feet tall, Dena? I guess maybe if they stretch on their webbed tippy toes, but there weren’t 6 beavers that were four feet tall, you killed some children too. Apparently once Sacramento minds are made up you can teach them very little.

—————————————————————

Quick burst of good news to wash that bad beaver-killin’ taste our of your mouth. Leonard Houston just got back from Eugene Oregon where he was part of a panel discussing beavers and salmon at the Environmental Law Conference.

Happy Fish and Wildlife Day!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Creek Seekers Poetry Contest, Educational, Environmental January 2, 2013

It’s official! CDFG has finally turned the page and traded in the “Game” for “Wildlife”. They’ve been busily assuring hunters that it changes nothing and they will be the same folks they always were, but I think there’s a big difference between “Game Wardens” and “Wildlife Wardens” and I couldn’t be happier about it!

And how to celebrate? Why not listen to this radio broadcast from yesterday’s Redwood public radio station with Stan Petrowski and Leonard Houston on our very favorite subject. Folks even got to call in and ask beaver questions, and someone wanted to know how beavers were treated in California! Follow the adorable link below to hear the whole thing, but you SIMPLY MUST click this little snippet to hear about our paper AND discover that the host actually came to Martinez!

Click to Play

Bank Lodge e-VENTS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, History June 13, 2012

This fascinating picture is from the photoblog Along the Airline Trail by Stan Malcom of CT and captures the surprising and watery moment when a cozy beaver lodge stopped being a cozy beaver lodge. It makes me think of those images from Katrina of folks retreating to roof, waiting for help . This can’t be an uncommon occurrence for beavers given that they live in water and water changes with the season. As good as they are at controlling and directing water, there must be moments like these, when even beavers have to wait out the floods in relative discomfort.

This makes me think of that big storm back in March of 2011 which washed out their dams and their beautiful lodge. The next morning we saw footprints in the mud where there home had been and I imagined our kits coming back and saying, where is our house? Kind of like how the inside of a tent, which could be a child’s cozy fort, disappears when the tent is collapsed and folded away.

Since our beavers lost their lodge, and the hardworking mother who always made them for them, they have become ‘bank dwellers’. Which, I’m learning, brings mysteries if its own.This illustration is from the chapter on beavers by Joseph Grinnell, published in 1937. He gets a lot of things woefully wrong in this chapter, saying California beavers don’t live above 300 meters elevation or leave footprints, but I have always thought this is an excellent drawing. Recently I got to wondering how beavers breathe in bank lodges. Island lodges have vent holes on the top so that fresh oxygen can get through. Sometimes I read descriptions of lodges in winter with steam rising from the vent, as if the beavers were inside smoking! Do bank lodges have vents? With all those hot bodies breathing into the same space, they must need fresh air from time to time!

Of course I did what I always do with these questions, and passed them around. I thought this morning I would share what wiser folks had to say about the answers. Enjoy!

Skip Lisle: Beaver Deceivers International

They make the tops of the chambers close to the surface of the ground so they “breath.” Because the ceilings are thin they are relatively easy to break through and therefore chambers often “open up” and can be viewed from above.

Owen Brown: Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife

Yes, but they are hard to find. Many lodges start out as bank burrows on a stream and then the sticks are placed on top of the vent holes on the bank. Then once the lodge is well under way they dam the stream and voila a lodge seems to have been built in the middle of a beaver pond.

When we raised 4 babies in our farm pond they built a bank burrow without me knowing since the entrance was under water. I noticed a pile of sticks on the shore and I moved them to a nicer location. The next day they had moved them back to the original location and that is how I found the vent hole. It is not very big at the surface and hard to find.

Mike Callahan: Beaver Solutions

Often the lodges are dug out under the root canopy of a bush or small tree which prevents the roof of the den from collapsing as well as allowing ventilation to occur. On rare occasions I’ll see sticks laid on the ground above the burrow as a “roof”. However, sometimes the ground seems thick where there does not seem to be a root system or roof of sticks for ventilation. On those occasions I am baffled as to how fresh air gets in.

Sherri Tippie: Wildlife 2000

Well, I’m sure they do because they’ve been doing it like that for a long time. I have seen however, I don’t know exactly how to explain it . . . . places behind the opening to a den where there are openings with sticks laced together – like an air hole. And, I’ve seen bank dens with nothing of the sort. The thing I’ve realized about beaver is, they really are all different. Some beaver do things one way,others do it differently. It really gets interesting when it comes to scent mounds. I have a slide of a scent mound that is so interesting!! I didn’t know what it was until I climbed down the bank and smelled it! It was a purple area in the sand, and it looked like a human had taken their four fingers and made a ran it criss crossed them. There were NO sticks! Just this purple place in the sand. But I would know that smell anywhere! It was really neat.

Joe Cannon: The Lands Council

Hmm. .. good question. I’ve been assuming that they don’t raise the kits in the type of bank lodge without the branch cover/ reinforcement on top (and venting). So you’re only seeing the bank holes with the Martinez beavers? I’m curious about this also.

Bob Arnebeck

Whenever I’ve explored abandoned bank lodges the extensive burrows in the bank have exhausted me — or I should say my kid, I used to push him into them with a flashlight. I’ve never pried in the winter looking for vent holes but the coyotes seem to have no trouble finding a place to dig in and I assume got a scent. In some cases the beavers seemed to be paying attention because they covered any holes that were dug. Of course in high water the entrance to burrows might be below the water but my impression is that the burrows are generally dug with part of the burrow entrance being open to the air which is why the beavers then pile on logs to hide the entrance. That said, I have seen beavers torpedo out of burrows entrances completely below the water, but that was in pretty porous bank of loose soil with several burrows with some completely open to the air. I think beavers are probably more comfortable in burrows than in lodges, at least my kid seemed to be.

Leonard Houston: Beaver Advocacy Committee

If the beavers are living in there then there is ventilation this is how the lodge or den is dried and vent holes often double as plunge holes allowing beavers to escape predators without making it back to the water

I have attached two photos one is a vent hole into a bank den as you can see it is to small for the animals to enter, the second is inside the bank den photoed by sticking the camera down the vent…….. there was two underwater entrances and a plunge hole and tunnel some 15 ft from the waters edge…..no kits were present at this site but we did have a breeding pair living here

It appears that the consensus of the experts is that bank lodges DO have vents to let in fresh air. So think of that the next time you’re watching the creek for movements!