Tag: Louise Ramsay

Fortune Favors the Beaver

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? June 2, 2016

Yesterday was a day of gifts. Early in the day Julian Fraser posted this photo from States Coffee downtown, and asked if I had something to do with it. I replied that I was innocent of contribution, but sure wanted to ask for one to be donated to the silent auction at the Beaver Festival. He took it upon himself to ask the manager Julian Gomez who thought it was a wonderful idea but needed to check with his boss. A few hours later I got a call to pick up one of these:

Hooohooo hooo! Apparently they’re nearly sold out so you may want to bid on it in person in August. Thanks Julian and Justin! And thank you States Coffee for coalescing the community just like the beavers did before you! Later in the day the mail contained this special donation signed by the author.

When I wrote to thank him, he warmly responded this;

i love what you are doing and am happy to help!

John Muir Laws

As if this all these rewards weren’t heady enough, at the end of the day I received notice of this article about Louise Ramsay.

Beavers are helping to restore the biodiversity to the Perthshire countryside

It is an immensely beneficial animal, restoring biodiversity to the countryside, and where it builds dams in riparian forest, slowing the flow of water in a way that may contribute to the moderation or prevention of flooding downstream, as well as holding water in times of drought – that in the highly managed farmland of the low-ground the beaver can be challenging.

Beavers are also not good garden animals.

For example, if your garden is next to a stream or pond inhabited by beavers you may prefer to wrap any trees you want to protect with wire mesh before a beaver comes and chews them.

But, on the plus side, the branches in the water create a microhabitat which is a playground for small fish, giving them somewhere to hide from predators. The lying trunk of the dead tree will become home to many fungi and invertebrates and a crossing point for red squirrels.

On low-ground farms beavers may present problems if they build dams in ditches (and water backs up into valuable arable fields), or burrow into flood banks and weaken them.

Luckily there are solutions to these problems. Various devices such as pond levellers and beaver deceivers have been developed in North America and used with considerable success. Electric fencing can be used in suitable situations.

The good news is that one or two local people in this area are now learning how to apply the best of American beaver mitigation to our farmland – and all they need now is some farmers to try it out.

The wider environment wins because it gets more wildlife habitat, and if there is any agricultural run-off coming from the fields then much of it will be stripped out by the dams and wetlands, purifying the water that goes into the river and ultimately the sea, preserving more aquatic wildlife.

Ahh Louise! If only there were a primary election coming up for you as beaver president! This is a fantastic article that carefully lays out my two favorite beaver talking points: how and why! I have found that both are ESSENTIAL in changing minds. Thank you for making our case so clear and talking frankly about problems and solutions. Scotland beavers are lucky to have you, as are we all!

Invoking the past to change the future

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and climate change, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? March 1, 2016

Leave it to Louise Ramsay of Scotland to tie it all together. Beautiful, writing that echoes with history and foreshadow.

Beavers and the conflict in the Scottish countryside

Last July, Alyth flooded badly and a young farmer started a rumour that the beavers on our land had exacerbated the flood. He tweeted his theory to the media and the story spread like wildfire, though very few locals believed it: apart from anything else, it was clear that upstream beaver dams had all held firm.

SNH then commissioned a study that showed the beavers were not to blame. But this month things got even better when research that has been done on our land over the last 13 years by Stirling University was published and the beavers were not just exonerated, but shown to actually slow floodwaters and thus reduce the impact of flooding, as well as increasing biodiversity & soil retention and stripping out pollutants.

Of course, for these farmers the presence of beavers is something real in a way that for the majority of people it isn’t. They have to deal with beavers busily trying to re-wild their land, to slow the flow of water in their ditches which are meant to hurry water off the fields as fast as possible. They have to confront the beavers’ desire to create wildlife rich, bee loud, water purifying wetland habitat by backing water up into the edges and hollows of their valuable arable fields, and they are not over the moon about it.

Lets pause a minute just to savor the delicious word choice at work here. The innocuous and unassuming phrase “bee loud” just appears to be an oddly phrased reference to noisy insects, unless you are familiar with arguably the most famous poem describing longing for rural life in the context of the city that was ever written. You may know it as the Lake at Innisfree. Do not think, for one moment, that it was by accident Louise evoked that hymnal of longing for a wild life. She wants the reader to remember their own longing clover and clear water. Here’s Mr. Yeats himself singing his words.

People remember more farmland birds in the past, more butterflies, more flowers, more bees. Now they see farming methods which use artificial fertilisers produced by the use of large amounts of fossil fuels, raided from the earth, set alight and polluting the sky. They see huge tractors with deep ploughs churning the earth, and they see brown water flowing off the land in times of flood and brown dust blowing in the air in dry summers. They worry that the very soil on which our food security depends, is in danger of impoverishment, and of being blown away or washed out to sea. They worry rightly. This kind of farming which has been the prevalent kind for the last 50 years, is extractive not regenerative. According to a Sheffield University study published in the Farmers Weekly it has left us with soils that in many cases just have 100 harvests left.

Meanwhile uphill, on the sheep farms, we landowners are also under scrutiny from the progressively larger sector of the public that is getting its head round the thorny questions of flood prevention and biodiversity loss in the uplands. Sheep farming has been carried out in some of our hills for hundreds of years, often responsibly and with great dedication, and some sheep farmers are not surprisingly upset to be told they are ‘sheepwrecking’ the countryside. But as globalization hits the price the farmer gets for lamb it becomes difficult to justify economically such a highly subsidized traditional activity, and as climate change progresses it becomes harder to defend environmentally, especially in our highest and most vulnerable landscapes.

As organisations like Nourish Scotland know all too well, we need to take a long hard look at agriculture and try and be more rational and less traditional in our approach. We need to look back, but also forward to new kinds of farming being tried around the world. We need to consider the true costs of various kinds of farming and see whether they can really justify the impacts they have by the food security they offer us. Ask again whether its true that higher productivity of industrial farming really gives it the edge over organic farming. Look at the possibilities for influencing what people eat and steer them towards food grown in the least extractive, most regenerative ways.

With climate change, its causes and its effects, fossil fuels and flooding, or drought or storms, everything has to change. We can’t go on as we are just watching it get worse and we farmers and landowners, who after all have a far bigger impact than most people, a far greater chance to make a difference for good or bad, really need to start listening to what the rest of the population are saying and change our ways before things get any worse. Just for a small but symbolic start let’s hope by the time you are reading this beavers will be legally protected in Scotland and the farmers will be applying their pragmatic minds to the question of mitigation rather than getting their guns out of the locked cupboard and heading for the waters edge at dusk.

Beautiful summing up Louise! You have embroidered the separate threads of beavers, food politics, climate change and biodiversity into a delicate and powerful coat of arms for supporters to brandish in united sensibility. This was a well done piece of inspiration and perspiration and we here in Martinez could not be more impressed! I hope this finely crafted article gets all the audience it deserves!

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Yesterday was cheerfully blessed with a couple more donations. The first this charming print by Shirley Harvey of Montreal Canada. I know several bass players who will start a bidding war for this.

And some striking prints from Amy Calderwood’s Vavooxi of Kansas. Isn’t this beautiful?

Blame it on the Rodent Again

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Forests, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 6, 2015

Last night, this was the headline on Iowa’s The Gazette:

Discerning readers will be scratching their head and saying, “hey that’s not a beaver”. And they’d be right. It’s actually a ground hog! The paper posted a mislabeled photo by mistake. I wrote the author, Michael Castranova, last night and he immediately wrote back. This morning there is no photo, only a very interesting article about the pilgrims and the fur trade.

The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, a New History,” explains that, “In the 1620s, a single beaver pelt fetched the same amount of money required to rent nine acres of English farmland for a year.”

So to Weston and the Fellowship, this seemed liked a reasonable business risk: Put up the cash for a number determined folk who were in a rush to flee the country — King James I referred to the Puritans as “pestes,” and the 30-Years War was about to chase them out of the Netherlands where these one-time farmers had taken up clothing-factory jobs — and then, oh boy, just wait for those spiffy beaver pelts to come flowing back.

But as with many a business venture, several calculations came undone. One of the two hired ships sprung more leaks than a rusty colander and had to turn back. And, in their dash to get going, they’d shipped out in September 1620 rather than wait until spring. That meant by the time they reached North America, two months later, planting season — and one assumes, beaver-catching season — was well and truly past.

And, even worse, they landed 200 miles off course. What they found upon arrival was not other colonists but “a whole country of woods and thickets.” Almost half the colonists died that first winter, and the Mayflower was sent back to England in 1621 with no financial benefit for the investors.

Now I knew Canada was settled by folk looking for beaver pelts, but I had NO IDEA America was. The price of a pelt was worth a year’s rent for 9 acres of farmland? Think about that, nearly a decade in a prime live-work space that will provide your home and your income. For one lousy beaver. Who knew? I think when I made this graphic years ago I was just kidding. Apparently it was almost true, or would have been true if they knew how to find them. Considering that in 1620 when they left there hadn’t been beaver in England for nearly 200 years. Nobody knew what they looked like. And nobody’s grandfather could tell them how to catch one.

Onto a great article from Louise Ramsay about the issue of farmers shooting beavers, this time in the ecologist.

Scotland’s wild beaver ‘shoot to kill’ policy is illegal and wrong

The Tay Beavers began when three of the animals escaped from a wildlife park in 2001. Nine years later, having bred and dispersed and been added to by subsequent escapes from enclosures in the same catchment, they came under threat of official elimination in the autumn of 2010.

A campaign to save them led to a SNH study that estimated their numbers at 106-187 (midpoint 147) in 2012 and mapped their spread across hundreds of square miles of the linked catchments of the Earn and Tay, from Rannoch to Comrie, Blair Atholl, Forfar and Bridge of Earn.

The presence of beavers and the wetlands that they build also brings great improvements in biodiversity, and the mitigation of both flooding and drought by re-naturalisation of the waterways. Recent research by Dr Alan Law has shown how beaver dams reduce peak flow by an average of 18 hours. A fact he tweeted in reaction to a farmer who falsely accused the beavers of having made the flooding worse.

In California, beavers are also credited with restoring rivers, wetlands and watersheds, creating conditions for the return of Coho salmon and increases in their populations.

We are calling on SNH and the Scottish Government to immediately place a moratorium on the shooting of beavers as another breeding season approaches, and to afford the animals the legal protection they are due as soon as possible.

But above all the two bodies – and nature lovers everywhere – need to recognise that the return to Scotland of this wonderful keystone species is something to be enjoyed and celebrated.

Nicely done, Louise. There are grand videos on the article too, as well as a link to Maria Finn’s California beaver article, so go see for yourself. Probably more so than any woman on the planet I feel a deep kinship with Louise who’s mild-mannered life was completely transformed by some unsuspecting beavers. She’s done a valiant job trying to keep all the correct people talking to each other, and managing some pretty challenging personalities with a single goal. And now, after finally getting the reprieve from the government they worked so hard to achieve, she is dealing with farmers shooting the beavers she worked to save.

Battle on!

Nuts for Scottish Beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? August 23, 2015

11913903_920262254682244_6973812627803513536_n — Rhona Forrester

So ITV is the Un-BBC in the UK with slightly more hip programming. “Nature nuts” stars a famous gay (they say ‘camp’) comedian traipsing about the country looking for and learning about wildlife. In the most recent episode he went to Scotland and visited Bob Smith of the Free Tay Beaver group. Bob brought him by canoe out to the beavers he’s been following, and the host brought along a camera man from David Attenborough to catch the first signs of the kits. Here they are discussing strategy. The host is on the stump throne, and Bob is seated with the canoe paddle.Of course I wanted to watch it right away, but the cruelty of nationality forbade me. It’s online there but it tells you you need to be in the UK to partake. Sigh. I knocked desperately on a few doors and begged as heartily as I could and was kindly sent a copy by a fairy godmother who warned me against sharing. I thanked my lucky stars and settled down for the treat. And what a treat! Beautiful photography, fun interactions and a beaver setting to envy. Of course the camerman captured the new kit and of COURSE I wept to see him swimming peacefully along in such pristine habitat. I assume this will be available outside the UK eventually and I will make sure to post it here, because you need to see it!

11903716_920261854682284_3042440587892140657_n — Rhona Forrester

Some of the folks from the free Tay beaver group turned out for the shoot, you can see Paul Ramsay in the middle there. Everyone was excited by the final episode, which you can see by looking at the Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay facebook page.

The habitat is so different from ours I was gripped with envy I can’t fully describe. A huge traditional lodge of sticks and a hanging forest to forage. No trash or homeless. And a beautiful pond to canoe across and see the beavers from their element.

11219724_920261531348983_4739336096757531898_n — Rhona Forrester

I’m so proud of what Scotland has accomplished this last decade. They overturned centuries of beaver ignorance and pushed their ecosystem value onto center stage. Both with the formal trial and the informal wild beavers. They generated interest and appreciation for a species that hadn’t been seen since the 1600’s. It has helped beavers not just in the UK but in every country by changing, informing and enriching the ecological conversation.

I’m especially honored to have met Paul and Louise and played a very small part in helping them coordinate support and generate media attention. I just read this morning that Paul is currently working on a book, which I, for one, cannot WAIT to read! Their beaver work is truly and EPIC TAIL.

11855681_1117893984905616_2249730862182012702_n — Mum & Kit on the Ericht: Bob Beaver-Boy Smith

From the very wet to the very dry.

heidi08 Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? July 18, 2015

Incredible scenes as homes and businesses are flooded in Alyth

Torrential downpours caused widespread devastation in Alyth yesterday morning. Rescue crews used inflatable boats to free people trapped in their homes and businesses in the flood-hit town centre.

Alyth Burn, which runs through the community, overflowed after debris and fallen trees blocked a series of bridges. Locals told The Courier a large section of the town centre was under water within minutes.

Why is this beaver news? Because this video was shot about 4 miles from the home of Paul and Louise Ramsay, and they are frantically trying to reassure folks that beavers can make this better, or at least not make it worse. It is true that beaver dams can function as ‘speed bumps’ in the stream to slow the water down. But frankly when I look at that level of flooding I sadly think beaver dams won’t matter at all one way or the other. This is what global warming looks like. California gets so little rain that we can’t even imagine what this would be like, and Scotland gets more than it can handle.

Stay safe Paul and Louise, and I hope your beavers stay safe too. From Scotland to Texas, I thought this very different story might help dry us out.

Clean restrooms and a giant beaver

Let us pause to ponder the supersize mentality that has led to the proliferation of monster convenience stores, where gas pumps stretch far as the eye can see. The merchandise includes deer feeders, barbecue smokers, an extensive clothing line, an overwhelming array of road snacks, 80 soda dispensers — and America’s cleanest bathrooms.

That would be Buc-ees, a 60,000-square-foot emporium that just opened its 23rd Texas store in Terrell. We stopped there last Sunday on the way back from Frisco — along with what appeared to be several thousand other curious customers — to get gas and use those famed restroom facilities.

It relies on the rest of us eager to sample the utterly over-the-top ambiance of Buc-ees, where a bronze statue of a beaver stands guard outside the entrance.

It turns out Texas is closer than you might suspect, because long-time supporter Janet Thew made a generous donation of Buc’ee merchandise to the silent auction. Which I’m thinking you just might need to bid on.

This is apparently the luckiest beaver in Texas.