Tag: Louise Ramsay

Gravity and Inspiration

heidi08 Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? November 2, 2014

Louise Ramsay is the tireless champion for the free beavers in Scotland and was the keynote speaker at the last State of the Beaver conference. She is wife to Paul Ramsay whose great-great-whatever was the physician of King Alexander the II who, in 1232 out of gratitude for an early successful surgery, gifted the estate where they both live (with beavers) today . Both are very well spoken and Louise has a blog that is far too modestly named for her delightful prose. She recently wrote about the DEFRA bruhaha over the Devon beavers and gave me permission to share this with you. Enjoy.

In the darkest hours of the night beavers go determinedly about the business of returning the landscape to the way it was in the middle ages, a way that we humans have entirely forgotten. They cut trees and build dams and make silvery pools in the midst of woods that quickly fill with trout. The new dams look bright with orangey sticks stripped of their bark by beaver teeth, and woven ingeniously together to hold back a cliff of water, several feet high.

As the dams get older plants grow over them and camouflage the beavers’ work. They incorporate themselves into the new landscape of pools and braided waterways to the extent that their beavery origins are almost indecipherable. The variety of plant species multiplies in and near the water and the new wetlands hum and flutter with life of all kinds.

Since their escapes in the early years of the 21st century these fast swimming creatures have found their way, in search of each other and new territories, around the whole network of waterways that make up the catchment, from Kinloch Rannoch in the west to Forfar Loch in the East, and from the Tummel in the north to the Farg in the south. There are probably about three hundred of them in the catchment now. They have bred and reared kits by rivers, lochs, streams and ditches. Where the waterways are small they have built a lodge and dams to make a string of pools, but where there is a deep fast flowing river they have burrowed into the bank and thatched a roof for themselves out of willow branches coppiced from the bankside vegetation. The kits live indoors for the first few weeks, learning to swim in a puddle within the outer part of the lodge. Then at about three months old they come out into the river or the pond to take their chance with predators, currents and other dangers.

The beavers that used to be here, until the sixteenth century were all trapped out for their warm, waterproof fur, which was made into fine felt hats for gentlemen. They came back, through their own enterprise, by escaping from enclosures. They slipped silently and secretly back into the landscape before many people noticed them, spreading across the catchment, sleek & nonchanlant, unaware of their celebrity and the tangle of legalities that their presence has created. I hope that the River Otter beavers will have the same success and somehow manage to reclaim many of their old haunts in the rivers of Devonshire and begin to thread their silver strand of watery life through the landscape there.

If you need reminding about the beaver story in Scotland, here’s my interview with Paul when he has just learned that the free beavers were no longer going to be trapped.

And just in case you need more amazing things this morning, I thought I’d share the work of Michael Grab of Colorado, whose incomprehensible talent uses instinct , artistry and physics to accomplish these glorious pieces using only what he calls “Gravity Glue.” By which he means No glue but

And here he is building an archway with no keystone. Ask any river how hard it is.

Water Managers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental January 20, 2014

6 Scary Facts About California’s Drought

6 Scary Facts About California’s Drought. Last year was California’s driest on record for much of the state, and this year, conditions are only worsening. Sixty-three percent of the state is in extreme drought, and Sierra Nevada snow pack is now running at just 10 to 30 percent of normal. “We’re heading into what is near the lowest three year period in the instrumental record” for snow pack, says hydrologist Roger Bales of the University of California-Merced.

California’s governor has declared an official state of drought, and there is an alarming discussion about the event becoming the new normal in our state. Will this be the factor that reintroduces beavers to our conversation? I wrote the State secretary of Natural Resources this weekend. As he grew up in Vallejo, I feel there’s a thin chance he might know the something about the story of the Martinez Beavers and someone on his staff will respond. I also commented about the idea on this article at Mother Jones and someone wrote back directing me to read Eric Collier’s “Three against the wilderness” which is about the best I can hope for.

Meanwhile I woke up to discover this from our very good friend Louise Ramsay in Scotland.

Time to bring back Nature’s flood management engineer – the beaver

By Louise Ramsay

As climate change brings more rain, Britain is suffering from the extinction here of our native flood engineer – the beaver. Louise Ramsay says it’s high time to re-introduce these charismatic rodents all over Britain.

There used to be a creature in Britain which helped significantly with this effort. It was made extinct here around four centuries ago, but recent reintroductions of this rodent have shown the vital role they once had in reducing flooding – and how they could take up that mantle once more.

In spite of their reputation for causing floods, beavers also have the capacity for mitigating the impact of flooding, but on a rather bigger scale. In times of heavy rain or sudden snow melt, the water rushing down from the highlands would be slowed up and absorbed more effectively by the large ponds, wetlands and streams with flights of beaver dams, than by deep cut ditches designed to channel water as fast as possible on to the next place.

Louise Ramsay remains one of the most inspirational women on the planet. Her keynote address at the last beaver conference was one of my favorite things EVER. And I am enormously pleased that she’s hard at work on the beaver front in Scotland. In case you need a reminder about her and Paul’s amazing story, here’s my interview with Paul on the subject of the free beavers of the River Tay. It contains an interview with her from the BBC.

Paul Ramsay (Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay)

Louise ended her wonderful presentation at the conference with a passage from the 19th century poet Gerald Manly Hopkins from his work ‘Inversnaid‘. I remarked at the time it could not have been better chosen or better delivered.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Highland Heroes

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History January 27, 2013

The ‘science’ at a beaver conference can get a little heavy. Lots of figures and graphs, from folks who are mostly interested in justifying beavers as a ‘means to an end‘. That’s very useful for creating persuasive arguments, but not great for telling stories. Even though the science is essential, to my mind what a conference also needs is ‘heart’.

Meet team heart.

Louise and Paul Ramsay were an epiphenomena at the conference. They flew in from Scotland specifically for the event, and dazzled us all with their tales of the highlands. In her presentation Louise showed an image of their house, and pointed out that when the left section was built in the 16th century, there had probably been beavers in the surrounding waterways, but by the time the larger right portion had been added in the 1700’s, beavers were long gone. Whether it was Paul’s forlorn admission that he had actually been arrested for ‘introducing an inappropriate animal’ (charges were eventually dropped), or Louise’s fearless and deftly delivered Scots brogue reading of Robert Burns at the awards dinner, they dazzled everyone.

Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush,

We’ll over the border, and gie them a brush;

There’s somebody there we’ll teach better behaviour,

Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!

Only a truly brave woman could read that aloud to a roomful of 150 people, and then soberly explain that at the time this was written beaver had been extinct in Scotland for so long that the poem is referring to ‘fixing one’s hat’ and not the animal (or the anatomy). Honestly, they were both amazing, but Louise as ‘keystone’ speaker at the awards dinner was breath-taking.

What I never realized was that the original ‘escape’ of the free Tay beavers had happened years before the bruhaha, before the knapdale trial, and with no interest by the BBC. Beavers had been spotted around the Tay since the early 2000’s and certainly before the Ramsay’s ever got their own. Beavers that had made their own way in the world long before Knapdale ever got permission and funding to try an official go.

How proud was I to see that the graphics I had made for their facebook page had made it into Louise’s striking presentation! From Eric behind bars to Rob Roy and the ‘tomb of the unknown beaver’. It’s always nice to contribute.

Louise and Paul have spent years talking endlessly to the media, public figures, the community, organizing meetings, children’s groups, an official charity, a website, reviewing international law, knowing when to push and when to demur, I can honestly say that their job was much, much harder than ours. (And I don’t say that very often.) It made it all the more moving to see how cordial and sanguine they both still are.

Louise ended her wonderful presentation with a passage from the 19th century poet Gerald Manly Hopkins from his work ‘Inversnaid‘. It could not have been better chosen or better delivered.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Friends & Foes

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Video May 4, 2012

Do you remember the condominium group in New Hampshire that worked to solve their culvert problems without killing beavers? They had at least one retired engineer on board who was fascinated by the puzzle. He worked with Mike Callahan to chisel out solutions, and recently brought him a donation of Beaver Beer as compensation. Well, encouraged by his success he has now started a beaver blog! It’s called “Sherwood Beavers“. Here’s the story and the first blog entry.

It’s May, so I can’t think of a better time to start a beaver blog. The story is about to get very, very interesting! Art’s profile says he recently retired from teaching schools how to better teach technology. Lets hope he is inspired to keep teaching how to live with beavers! Welcome aboard Art. Great first act! Here’s a sample of what you’ll see soon.

Now for the ‘foe’ part of the title there’s this headline from the BBC:

‘Secret Tay beaver cull plan’ claim denied

Wildlife campaigners have said they fear landowners may be planning a secret cull of beavers living in the wild on the Tay, with the approval of the authorities. The Scottish government insisted the claims are untrue, but said the animals do not have full legal protection.

Ugh. So our hard working champions in Scotland are worried that even though the government has said ‘lets not kill them and study them for now’ they’ve had secret contact with worried farmers and given consent to kill them anyway. Let the farmers take the heat and get the government outta the crosshairs to put the beaver firmly back in the crosshairs where it belongs.

Louise Ramsay of the Scottish Wild Beaver Group said: “The Scottish government’s official position is that it doesn’t consider the beavers to be protected, although it wants landowners and farmers only to use lethal control as a last resort.

“But we have had two separate reports that the Scottish government wants the beavers dead and would like landowners’ support in conducting a cull, but keeping it quiet.”

First horror and then praise! GO LOUISE!!! She is doing such a remarkable job! They’ve been worrying about the protection issue for a while. See native wildlife is protected in Scotland, but evil criminally released beavers are NOT. That’s why I’ve been worried about the meme that the they know the beavers were deliberately released (not escaped) which suspiciously appeared at the very same time the ‘beavers have been spared’ announcement came.

So the original beavers were the result of a criminal act and all the subsequent generations of beavers are therefore not subject to the same protections as innocent wildlife. The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons.

To say this article has created a stir is an understatement. But the Ramsays are being so clever here I honestly can’t tell if they’re terrified or getting ready to say ‘check mate’. I know I’d feel very threatened if I were in their situation, but I’m not from a 1000+ year old prominent family descended from the physician to the king. With the recent panic in Devon when they learned that the discovered beaver wasn’t the LOST beaver, I would expect this to get more complicated before it gets less. We’d better all stay tuned!

Beavers or Bureaucracy?

heidi08 Uncategorized December 4, 2010

Is it me or does that beaver sound vaguely Scottish? On a related note Louise Ramsay of the Tay Beaver Bruhaha offers this excellent read…

Here is an article by Jim Crumley in the Dundee Courier today. It is very entertainly written and highly recommended if you have a moment.

Jim Crumley

I SUPPOSE I should really know better by now, but I have been trying to fathom the logic that underpins the thought processes of the denizens of that strange and faraway land known as Scottish Natural Heritage.

“Oh, what now?” I hear you ask, the answer to which is,“Beavers.”

It seems that SNH has commissioned the services of SASA, that’s the Scottish Agricultural Sciences Agency since you ask, and no, I’d never heard of it either, but I do lead a rather sheltered life, and have never had cause to prompt an investigation of potato blight, which I gather is the agency’s stock-in-trade. But SASA has another arrow in its quiver, which is to go Pied-Piper-like around the land ridding it of vertebrate pests – rabbits, mink, rats, that kind of thing – a skill that SNH has called on in an attempt to rid Tayside of its beavers.

“Hold on,” I hear you say, you being of a thoughtful turn of mind, “surely SNH wants to establish a beaver population in Scotland? Didn’t it fund a reintroduction scheme in Argyll?”

You see, I knew I could count on you to ask intelligent questions. Yes is the answer to both questions. You may be surprised to learn (I know I was pretty astounded), that putting a handful of beavers back in to Argyll has cost £2million, which seems to my o-level arithmetic to work out at rather more than £100,000 a beaver.

The figure is all the more astounding when you consider that the Tayside population has established itself free of charge and is apparently self-sustaining, a state of affairs which poses a number of problems for SNH.

Firstly, the Argyll project begins to look like not very good value for money.

Secondly, the Tayside population seems to suggest that allowing nature to manage nature is a better idea than allowing people to do it, which is embarrassing at the very least for SNH, the Scottish Government’s advisor on conservation. Reading between the lines, it is fairly safe to assume that SNH feels that its Argyll project is threatened by the Tayside beavers. As the government scours the public sector for every unnecessary scrap of spending it can strike from the record as if it has never been, there must already be mutterings in dark corners that if we can have beavers on Tayside for nothing, why don’t we do away with the £100,000-a-head beavers in Argyll?

Hence the involvement of SASA whose role in all this will be to trap the Tayside beavers and either send them off to sundry zoos or otherwise dispose of them, which means killing them. They are, after all…wait for it, wait for it…the wrong kind of beavers.

The £100,000-a-head beavers are from Norway, and are thought to be genetically more or less identical to the long-extinct Scottish population. The problem with them is that they come from a localised Norwegian population and they have brought with them some of the obvious defects of sustained in-breeding. Several have died as a result.

The free Tayside beavers are from Bavaria. Actually they’re from Perthshire, which is where the origins of the population are thought to have escaped from a wildlife park, and where they seem to have established a breeding population in 2001, and from that small beginning they have migrated up into Angus and other parts of east Perthshire No-one knows how many there are and estimates seem to vary between about 30 and about 100.

So they seem to be prospering, and the slightly hybridised nature of the Eurasian beavers of Bavaria has none of the defects of the genetically pure but inbred European beavers from Norway. In other words, those animals defined as the wrong kind of beavers seem to be the right kind if the object of the exercise is to establish a wild population of breeding beavers.

And here is where the logic starts to fall apart at the seams. Instead of studying the Tayside animals to learn more about them from nature, SNH’s response has been to take nature out of the equation so that the only beaver study in the land is the one it has spent £2million on. Of course, studying the Argyll beavers is made simple by the fact that every beaver is radio-collared and micro-chipped and generally equipped with enough technology to make it worthwhile establishing a new branch of PC World in Oban. The Tayside animals have none of these things, and the only way you can watch is to practise stealth and patience and get cold and sit still and just watch them when they turn up.

When you watch their behaviour patterns represented as meandering lines on a graph on a laptop screen, you have achieved little more than reducing a wild animal to a computer game, which is hardly an accomplishment to be proud of. When you sit still outside in their world and watch their behaviour patterns unfold before your very eyes, you pay them the compliment of allowing them their mystery. They may or may not reveal their mysteries to what they judge to be the right kind of watching eyes.

And what is more valuable in terms of our understanding of this animal we have invited back into the land that once extinguished it: to watch it hamstrung with technology and fankled by bureaucracy, or to watch it on its own terms, as nature intended?

And here is another question I feel certain you are about to ask as the SASA people confront their task of capturing and quite possibly killing wild beavers: is that legal?

We may not have got around to a specific beaver protection law in Scotland yet: the introduction project is still officially a trial, which may yet be abandoned. But the EU species and habitats directive of 1992 requires member governments to look at ways of re-introducing lost mammal species, and the beaver is one of these, and whether it is Norwegian or Bavarian should not affect its right to protection within the reintroduction process.

In the same way, a sea eagle that wandered across the North Sea from mainland Europe would be given the same level of protection here as a sea eagle raised from the egg at a Scottish nest.

So it seems to me that nature is trying to tell us something with its Tayside beaver colony. We spend so much of our time and energy and resources trying to persuade nature to do our bidding, to operate within conditions we impose on it. Here is an all too rare opportunity to bear witness as nature unfolds the direct opposite of that process, as nature imposes new conditions on us. We should watch and learn and delight in the possibilities that will flow whenever we are willing to give nature its head.”