Tag: Lisa Owens-Viani

CALIFORNIA’S CLIMATE WARRIORS

So this weekend I got to glimpses into actual developments on the funding for beaver restoration in California. The first came when I heard a friend of this website and beavers in general is sitting for his second interview tomorrow for CDFW’s new Beaver Restoration Program. And I thought WHOA it’s really happening.

Then I got a early scan of the article friend Lisa Owen’s Viani wrote for Landscape Arcitecture about the project overall and I realized that the beaver world as we know it was really changing.

New Funding will create dedicated staff to support colonies of California’s Climate warrior Herbivores

When governor Gavin Newsom released his budget in June it contained a small but mighty line item: 1.67 million for fiscal year 2022-2023 to support a new beaver restoration program. The program which will receive 1.44 million the following fiscal year will fund five new permanent positions in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for monitoring and restoring beavers as well as equipment for tagging and relocating beavers and monitoring their health.

So there it is, In black and white. Really happening and maybe an actual friend of this website and beavers themselves will get one of those jobs. Lisa does a good job with the article talking to all the usual suspects but this quote made me pause;

[Emily] Fairfax who has studied beavers and wildfire resilience says there are plenty of areas, especially in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains where fire risk is extremely high and watersheds and streams are severally degraded. It is in areas like these that beavers can really help…

As long as care is taken to carefully relocate beavers from areas like the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, where they have been known to cause conflicts for landowners, these ecosystem engineers can thrive with only a bit of habitat.

Which of course got my attention. Because those could have been OUR beavers. And more than this, what happens to a beaver in the delta, whose never lived through a winter freeze and knows nothing of keeping a food cache when it is suddenly transported to the snowy sierras? Obviously there’s no time for a learning curve when you are trapped in your lodge frozen and starving. Our beavers never kept a food cache. What would have happened to them if they were moved to a stream where it suddenly froze solid?

This makes me want to start lots of conversations among folks who might know. Obviously there’s an instinctive part of cacheing food – but I think it might get triggered by a social message from another beaver whose doing it too. Like a kind of fixed action pattern. If it didn’t beavers in temperate climates like Napa and Sonoma would do it too, right?

Let’s not use our shiny new beaver dollars to move delta beavers into the snow so they can starve to death, okay?

The state’s proposal is poised for success, Fairfax says, “It’s not just about relocation or coexistence, it’s the whole beaver package, meeting with people, doing outreach, hiring staff, doing it right. This is the time we have a spotlight on us as a state for beaver work.”

Well I like that part a LOT! Just don’t move all our delta beavers please. We like them.

SMOKEY THE BEAVER ON THE L.A.M.

heidi08 Beavers April 4, 2020

So do you remember how we’re always looking for reasons to cooperate with beavers so that the people in power will stop killing them? And remember how our friend Emily Fairfax recently presented on the important topic of beavers and fire prevention to the forest service and just recently at our last beaver conference? Well hot off the virtual presses in this months Landscape Architecture Magazine….

Isn’t that awesome??? Click on it to zoom closer or the above link to read in the magazine. Emily gave such excellent quotes too. And if you look very carefully you might also notice that the author of this fine article is Lisa Owens Viani who is one of the very special guests at our annual winter ravioli feast and has been for the past decade.

Because sometimes when you want the very best you have to work for it.

BEAVERS AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

heidi08 Urban beavers January 18, 2019

Every now and then it’s fun when the right worlds collide. Like when your friends from the Astronomy department have fun hanging out with your friends from Mod Lit at your Christmas Party. The two seemed worlds apart and you never expected them to get along. But suddenly Marcus and Jasmine are laughing together and sipping eggnog from the same coffee cup.

Well, welcome to the christmas party.

DESIGN, BUILD—AND LET BUILD

BY LISA OWENS VIANI

As public support for trapping has waned, beavers are making a comeback in urban waterways around the country. In Seattle, they are now said to be found in every suitable stream and water body, and some project designers now see them as partners in wetland restoration rather than nuisances. They say the benefits beavers bring to an ecosystem outweigh the challenges, and point out that working with them is far less expensive—and more humane—than trapping.

“Beavers construct wetlands that hold back and store water, allowing for groundwater recharge and pollution sequestration, and increasing biodiversity,” says Ben Dittbrenner, the aquatic ecologist and executive director of Beavers Northwest. “We do the same thing for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they do it for free.” This past October, Dittbrenner, the biologist David Bailey, and Ken Yocom, ASLA, an associate professor and chair of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Washington, published a study that examines the influence of beavers on three wetland projects in Seattle and makes recommendations for managing them adaptively.

Call this the paragraphs I never thought I’d see. All about the benefits of urban beavers from landscape architecture magazine. These are the things that happen when the right worlds collide and Heidi sends Ben’s article excitedly around to all her friends.

Dittbrenner says that as urban beaver populations increase, designers should assume that beavers will colonize their project, especially if the animals are already in the vicinity. “It makes sense to stop and think about how these animals might affect these urban designs before we spend all this money to build them.”

A beaver carries new dam material. Image courtesy Cheryl Reynolds, Worth a Dam.

Now obviously we know the photographer behind that lovely beaver photo, but how on earth did a landscape magazine get it? And who is this Lisa Owens Viani person who wrote this article?

That would be the woman in the right front corner of this photo of our ravioli feast in 2017. Lisa is the founder of RATS (Raptors are the solution) who I met a decade ago when she worked for the SF Estuary Project and who at the time was wise enough to realize that the Martinez beaver story was a story of restoration, not just a quirky news item. Directly to my left is the woman behind this photo.

Small world.

They also installed in-stream wood structures, knowing that beavers would put them to use. “What beavers do to create landscapes is phenomenal,” Yocom says. “Your design is just the beginning. We have to let go and be willing to work with ecological processes instead of being invested in a strict aesthetic.”

WONDERFUL! Now Ben wasn’t at the Ravioli feed but goodness knows if he was in a 25 mile radius he would have been! Of course I sent this right away to the mayor and the city engineer. It’s great to see this paper get top billing and have the tools discussed in a public forum.

And it’s thrilling to imagine that someday when beavers show up in a city park some well-read person might – even just for a moment – not think its a catastrophe.

Message Delivery

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers February 27, 2015

Indiana University researcher reports that isolated wetlands matter a great deal – just not the things that make and maintain them.

Isolated wetlands have significant impact on water quality

Geographically isolated wetlands play an outsized role in providing clean water and other environmental benefits even though they may lack the regulatory protections of other wetlands, according to an article by Indiana University researchers and colleagues.

Given those benefits, the authors argue, decision-makers should assume that isolated wetlands are critical for protecting aquatic systems, and the burden of proof should be on those who argue on a case-by-case basis that individual wetlands need not be protected.

“Geographically isolated wetlands provide important benefits such as sediment and carbon retention, nutrient transformation and water-quality improvement, all of which are critical for maintaining water quality,” said lead author John M. Marton, assistant scientist at the IU Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs. “We demonstrate that continued loss of these wetlands would likely cause serious harm to North American waters.”

Yes it’s true, wetlands are really important, especially when they’re in unconnected areas that aren’t attached to other wetlands. Our top notch researchers think they’re so important that people should be prevented from ripping out those wetlands. And the government should play a roll in making them.

We don’t have the foggiest idea of how those wetlands get there, but we know they’re important.

Yes, webs are important but spiders don’t matter at all, nests are invaluable but we aren’t sure what makes them. and eggs are vital but who cares about chickens?

Oh alright, maybe you’re getting the football very close to the end zone and it’s up to some other researcher or environmental attorney to get it over the line. Certainly this lays a certain foundation. And I would know JUST where to look for argument if I were trying to save beaver in Indiana.

Citing research literature, the authors say geographically isolated wetlands are highly effective “biogeochemical reactors” that improve water quality. They often retain water longer than protected waters, such as streams and wetlands that are directly connected to navigable water. And they have a higher ratio of perimeter to area, allowing more opportunities for reactions to take place.

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This morning a quick update from beaver friend Lisa Owens Viani, the founder of RATS, who guest posted this article on 10,000 birds. Apparently the raptor-killing fiends of the world have come up with the excellent idea to name their new rat poison “HAWK”, because you know, hawks kill rats too, get it?

It takes a lot of nerve—or something that can’t be printed here—to name your rat poison after the animals that so effectively and efficiently control rodents but that are also being poisoned—as “non target” animals—by your product. The label on Motomco/Bell Lab’s rodenticide “Hawk” even sports a drawing of a hawk getting ready to pounce. But “Hawk”’s active ingredient, a deadly second-generation anticoagulant, bromadialone, has been implicated in the deaths of Red-tailed Hawks, Red-shouldered Hawks, Cooper’s Hawks, and other raptors: American Kestrels, Barn Owls, Golden Eagles, Great Horned Owls, and Turkey Vultures. These birds are being poisoned after eating rodents that have been poisoned by products like “Hawk.”

You can read the entire article here. I told Lisa not to worry because this was such a tone deaf marketing decision they could easily turn it to their advantage. Instead of writing outraged letters or presenting them with a cease and desist letter. send the most flowery thank you card you can find, and say how much you appreciate their help in linking rat poison to hawks, reminding every single buyer who the real victims of their products are. That kind of branding is invaluable. It’s hard work doing it yourself and billboards are very expensive.

Ask when their similar products of OWL or BOBCAT will go on the market, and say you appreciate their help in this matter. If you thank them sincerely enough, I said, that label will disappear.

Three good things

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions June 25, 2013

More and more when I stumble towards the computer in the bleary hours and try an decide what to write about beavers, it is like being a raja sorting through a pile of rich jewels and deciding which to wear for the party. This morning I feel positively indulged with treasures. Let me assuage my Catholic guilt at having too much good fortune by sharing all of it with you! The first is from Melanie, who I met at the beaver dam Sunday night, and got her permission to post this morning. This is an example of how nurtured kits are by family members. We couldn’t even say if this is mom, because that’s a pretty big tail for our little mom. It might be dad or uncle for all I know, but I am certain beyond any doubt that beaver kits are loved.

Kit-adult nuzzle — Photo by Melanie 6-23-13

Many of you may be following the rodenticide-raptor problem which is killing and sickening hundreds and thousands of birds around the world and even prompted the EPA to rear its head in response. Our friend Lisa Owens Viani started the organization RATS {Raptors Are The Solution} to help educate and get cities to ban the poisons that are killing hawks an owls at an alarming rate. She has been hard at work to get the word out an asked me a while back if I thought Ian Timothy might be interested in helping and would I introduce them? So it turns out that Ian’s first natural passion was raptors and he was VERY interested. In the midst of going to Carnegie Hall and graduating from high school he agreed to work on this which was just released. Remember that telling the story is the most important thing we do, and Ian just made Lisa’s job a lot easier!

Isn’t that amazing? One of the things I love about his work, besides his delightful humor and artwork, is his compassion. He has the judgement not to show the dying hawk on camera just like he had the wisdom to show the teddy bear [and not its owner] get stuck in the trap. He gets the point across without shocking the viewer, which is very, very rare. I can’t wait to see what he does to improve Pixar!

A final jewel in today’s crown of beaver activity is this. The Beaver Whisperers aired in Canada in March this year, but the International Version is still being finalized. It will include a great segment on Sherri Tippie and have less of a Canadian focus. The producer has promised to generously donate a copy for the silent auction, but she let me watch the entire thing yesterday, which is where I saw this. I can’t tell you how irrationally happy this makes me.