Now this has got to be the icing on the cake. I don’t remember phys.org ever writing about Martinez. Notice there’s hardly a name in this story that we recognize even though I wrote about this three times. That’s what I mean by a deep bench. They have many important beaver advocates that they can endlessly trot out.
The big-toothed rodents were nearly hunted to extinction during the 19th century in the mountain-encircled community, along with other areas of North America. But Utah State University scientists say the furry mammals are emerging as a valuable resource in restoring ecosystems imperiled by land use practices, drought and a changing climate.
“Beavers play a critical role in maintaining healthy aquatic and riparian habitat, which we desperately need in arid Utah,” says USU researcher Elijah Portugal. “Beaver dams store water in springtime, slow down the release of snowpack and prevent water from moving too quickly and evaporating, which benefits wildlife and all downstream users. Their dams also capture sediment, which improves water quality,”
“Beavers are brilliant engineers, providing multiple benefits that are difficult and expensive for humans to accomplish,” says Nick Bouwes, adjunct faculty member in USU’s Department of Watershed Sciences and owner of Eco Logical Research. “We believe there are ways to co-exist with beavers, while mitigating their harmful habits.”
To this end, Bouwes, Portugal, their students, Utah Conservation Corps members and community volunteers gathered at the Logan Walmart Oct. 12, 2015, to install two pond levelers, crafted in the USU lab, to the store’s surrounding waters. The cage-like levelers, made from wire, are connected to large plastic tubes that allow water to pass, while catching debris, and prevent beavers from building dams to flood-inducing heights. The researchers installed a leveler on each of two beaver dams on the south side of Walmart’s property.
“The levelers will maintain the height of the ponds at a safe, desired level, without disturbing the beavers and their efforts,” Bouwes says. “It’s a winning solution for Walmart, the beavers and the surrounding community.”
This article is surprising in so many ways, not only does it prove that Utah believes in beavers. It proves that they believe in Climate Change! I love how we now suddenly read Elijah Portugals name even through it never crossed our path before. Because in Utah, there are so many people who understand beavers we have advocates to spare.
Imagine: Extra advocates!
This kind of abundance doesn’t just happen. Its fiercely cultivated at the local, organizational and institutional level. It’s what made Utah the first state in the nation to develop a beaver management plan for the forestry service. It’s what allowed Utah to pull off successful beaver festivals using the work of mostly students and government agencies. It’s why I get happy every time I see them in a headline because I know the end result is going to be awesome.
And you should never, never under estimate how much of that is ultimately due to the work of this remarkable woman.
Oh sure. No beaver news for 5 whole days and then an EXPLOSION of stories to share. Well, we have to start with this, because I told you it was coming 10 days ago.
Beaver, whose dams help slow the flow of water, play a key role in the health of our forests. They create wetlands, reduce the force of floods, and expand riparian habitat for wildlife. In our new 13-minute video “Beaver: Back to the Future,” four Forest Service employees and a retired Regional Forester eloquently and enthusiastically praise the power of beaver to beneficially restore and manage national forest water flows in the face of climate change.
Wasn’t that awesome? Everyone did such a fantastic and compelling job. And Trout Unlimited funded. How long must we wait for it to catch on. The smartest beaver folk in three states. Now only 47 more to go!
Maybe Coca cola can help. Beaver: the paws that refreshes!
What do Coca-Cola and beavers have in common? It sounds like the setup of a bad joke, but the fates of beavers and bottlers look increasingly intertwined. Coke is funding the deployment of beavers in the United States to build dams and create ponds that can replenish water supplies for local ecosystems and ultimately, people.
Coke’s deployment of engineering rodents has a similar goal: getting water into the ground. Before Europeans’ arrival on the continent, beavers lived in nearly every headwaters stream in North America, and they shaped the continent.
“They were everywhere and having a huge impact on the landscape and the hydrology,” said Frances Backhouse, a Victoria, British Columbia–based author whose book, Once They Were Hats, about the history and environmental role of beavers, will be published Oct. 1.
“Beavers mean higher water tables and water on the landscape throughout the dry seasons as well wet seasons,” she said. They are, according to Backhouse, “the only animal in the world that can rival us in terms of engineering the landscape.”
The funding repairs stream crossings and restores streams damaged by wildfires in California, New Mexico, Illinois, Michigan, and Colorado. It is helping to pay for the beaver project, which seeks to boost water retention in the Upper Methow River watershed in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state.
Natural solutions like deploying the beavers are a good value, said Radtke. An earlier project in the Sierra Nevada Mountains used heavy equipment to install a series of plugs to contain water so it could seep into sediment. “It was fantastic,” he said. “It was working. But it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The Upper Methow Beaver Project, a joint effort of five organizations, accomplishes the same thing for less. Coke’s investment in the project in 2014 was around $40,000. Total project cost for that year was $271,000.
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“It turns out that beavers work cheaper than big, heavy, yellow equipment,” said Radtke.
Ya think?
Alright, credit where credit’s due, relocating beavers to save water is MUCH better than killing them, and kudos to Coke for having the sense to fund a winner. But really the ideal place for beavers to be improving water is everywhere there is water and people to drink it, and I’ll be happiest when they are allowed to relocate themselves.
Smiling beaver kit by Cheryl Reynolds
Update on the little munchkin at Lindsay who survived the night and was looking healthier today. He’ll be ready to leave in a couple days, and if they can’t locate his family he’ll go to our friends at Sonoma Wildlife Rescue to mature and learn to be a beaver. This morning Cheryl and Kelly went out looking for his family and may have seen another kit and some chewed tulles. Fingers crossed he’ll be reunited with loved ones soon.
One of the nice things about my unofficial unpaid beaver publicist job is that things drop sometimes into my mailbox that I wasn’t expecting. Like yesterday when a preview copy of Sarah Koenisberg’s documentary short on beaver reintroduction in three states arrived. It was sent with a note from a student of Mary Obrien who said Mary wanted me to have it because of all the “Transformative work” I do and to let them know if we wanted more copies.
Transformative? Me? You mean like a beaver?
It was gripping and informative, under 15 minutes long, starting with a segment on Mary and beaver reintroduction in Escalante, then a conversation with Michael Pollock about beaver reintroduction in Bridge Creek Oregon, and then Kent Woodruff and the Methow in Washington. There were lots of other voices I didn’t know before, basically saying the similar wonderful things. These animals can be our allies. Let them do their jobs and work as partners in the important job of saving water and restoring streams.
I wish I could share it but they won’t be releasing the online version for another 2 weeks. I promise to put it up just as soon as I can. For now I’ll just tell you the Very Best Part:
I watched the credits all the way to the end of course and guess who paid for it? The Grand Canyon Land Trust (of course) AND Trout Unlimited.
Sometimes beaver dams can be detrimental to fish habitat. Low elevation trout streams such as all the trout streams in Floyd County warm quickly in summer. When the water temperature gets too warm in a trout stream the Georgia Department of Natural Resources will discontinue stocking trout until the water cools, which is usually late in the fall. The DNR rarely stocks streams in the fall or winter so it is usually the following spring before the creek will get a fresh batch of trout for the anglers to catch.
One such creek that has a beaver dam that warms the trout stream is Johns Creek. The Coosa Valley Chapter has spent thousnds of man hours making improvements at Johns Creek. We have improved camping areas, protected stream banks and in addition to installing trout stocking tubes we have worked regularly to improve trout habitat in the stream. Just this weekend we worked with the U.S. Forest Service placing “large woody debris” in the stream to improve trout shelter and increase the macro-invertebrate (insect food that trout eat) habitat. We also did temperature monitoring at several locations at the stream. This temperature monitoring has been on-going for several years now and will continue for several more.
A major portion of Johns Creek originates from a series of springs at the Pocket Campground. There are several beaver ponds downstream of the campground. I have checked the temperature above and below the beaver ponds twice this year and the water upstream from the ponds the temperature has been 58 degrees both times. In August the afternoon air temperature was 85 degrees and the water below the dams was 69. Just yesterday, a cool day, the water below the beaver dams was 68.
Any temperature above 70 or so becomes closer to the critical level of trout tolerance. We need to keep a record of stream temperature levels if we want to keep a healthy population in the creek.
Yesterday, Joe Wheaton’s webinar offered an intelligent and dynamic look at the issue of beaver and climate change. I was particular struck by this slide about the projections for snow pack water storage in the western states. Look at California. We’ve been relying on the sierra snow pack for so long we can hardly imagine living without it. This slide predicts climate change will lower that by a a third in 2050. Hmm you’d think that would make folks interested in the best water saving engineer the world has ever known, wouldn’t you?
It was fun to know a lot of the people attending the webinar. I would have loved to see the ones I didn’t know so I could track them down! I was glad to see that this website was prominently featured under additional resources.
Big smile too when he talked about the awesome research on beaver prevalence from those great researchers in California! (blush). He walked us through the BRAT tool application which he has completed for all of Utah, and talked about some applications in the Appalachians he’s doing now. Afterward there was time for questions and answers and someone asked about how to get change to happen in his community. Joe had an interesting answer about communicating to interested parties by using voices from their own experience. He thought that it was important to be pragmatic and know the science, and he thought things like “beaver festivals” were of limited value at changing minds.
This of course sparked a response from me (no, really?) and an interesting conversation ensued by email. I asked Joe, Mike and Mary for permission to share their responses and thought you would be interested in what they had to say. The conversation isn’t over by any means, and if you want to add your thoughts you can always send them to me.
Thanks for the great seminar Joe, I really enjoyed it, but was left with lots to think about with the question at the end about attitude change and beavers.
This is an issue near and dear to my heart especially since I’ve kind of been involved in all aspects of this over the last 8 years, with the festival, our historic prevalence papers, and the website. I think what has been very clear to me is that beaver attitude change operates on three vastly different fronts – really a trident of change – and those three prongs tend to have very different foot-soldiers. In my observation they are in danger of thinking they’re the most important. But ultimately they are all essential, probably each necessary but not sufficient.
In Martinez public opinion was the engine that started everything, Nothing else could have done that. There would never have been a subcommittee to persuade without that. That meant kids and parents and people getting personally involved and all the layman mistakes that entails. It meant beaver tails and cameras and a festival. Public involvement drives media. And media gets people’s attention and attention interests politicians.
Popular opinion and media moved the politicians in our city to try something new. I won’t hesitate to say ‘shamed’. No amount of science or data could have done that. Even advice from other cities who had been through the same situation wouldn’t have done that. Even financial “proof” wouldn’t have done that. Only the bright light of public attention forced them to study the issue at all, which made it possible for me to take the time to learn everything I could and use the science to move the scientists on the committee. They were persuaded by the science and that made a difference.
But it was public opinion that made it possible to get the city to hire Skip to actually do the work. And it was his expertise that allowed that work to prove itself. which persuaded city government to allow it. If his flow device hadn’t worked none of the above would have mattered, because flooding would have trumped. And if the people hadn’t rallied no amount of persuasion would have forced the city to hire Skip.
Public outcry moves politicians, sometimes. Science convinces scientists, sometimes. And pragmatic success makes it all work, sometimes. None of these work in a vacuum. That’s what I’ve learned in Martinez. I just wanted to say my idea about that.
Thanks for a great conference Joe and Mary!
heidi
Thanks for you kind words and thoughtful analysis of my off-the-cuff responses to some of those questions.
I like how you’ve identified three very different foot soldiers. I hope I did not come off as too dismissive of any of those groups. To be clear, I certainly don’t think science is the most important group ;). I also agree, they all have an important role to play and you’re absolutely right that the public awareness and support is critical and the result of the outreach.
Thinking about my response in retrospect, I probably should have qualified that. I feel like today, mainly thanks to the outreach efforts of folks like you, the Lands Council, Mary, Wildearth Guardians, Mike, etc., the public support and awareness part has largely been won. That’s not to say that we should stop doing any of those outreach efforts, and keeping up those efforts is important. However, from my narrow perspective as a scientist, and from my own experiences in working on restoration projects, I feel like the most pressing urgency for outreach needs to be targeted at a much narrower audience. Targeted interactions with the folks who can either make this stuff happen (i.e. decision makers, managers, and to a lesser extent practitioners), and the folks who can keep it from happening (i.e. certain interest groups, specific land owners, specific decision makers and managers) are critically important now. The public pressure exists now on both those groups because of the outreach efforts. In my limited experience, these groups are actually surprisingly receptive too. I guess I feel like I can be most effective by engaging with those groups, recognizing their concerns, and attempting to propose solutions that pay due considerations to their concerns and consider this broader agenda.
There is not a right or wrong… like you say, we all have a role to play. You’re spot on with the observation that the facts and science don’t necessarily matter. Scientists love to believe that their data and analyses make the difference. Fortunately, there are still some decision makers who like to leverage such data and information to inform their decisions that allow us to keep that delusion alive. However, perception is ultimately far more important in influencing the decision. Where the rubber meets the road is when decisions are made and actions taken; the effectiveness of those actions and their impact depends both on how accurate those perceptions were and how well the data and analyses describe or forecast reality.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing the ideas and perspective, and keep up the great work. I am so slammed these days that when I eventually look at my own web pages I’m always embarrassed how out of date they are. I love that you keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and spread that word. We’ll keep chipping away at the science where we can. BTW- nice articles on the expanded range work in CA… very cool.
Best Wishes
Joe
Joe thank you for your thoughtful remarks which I will read over again many times. But I just want to say quickly that I wasn’t trying to say science was useless. I was just saying that it doesn’t convince everyone. Climate change is a case in point. And I don’t think the battle of public opinion is as far along as you might. I think we underestimate the value of storytelling. Heidi
Hi All,
Joe, thank you for an interesting and informative webinar yesterday. I appreciate you doing it, and I rest assured I did not feel that your “off-the-cuff” answers in any way diminished the importance that the non-scientific community has in promoting coexistence with beavers.
Whether it is raising a child or creating the right conditions for attitude changes towards beavers, it takes a village. I like Heidi’s term of a “triad” as a good way to visualize the public outreach, hands-on implementation, and scientific research working together to support coexistence with beavers.
In my experience what happened first was that there were individuals who did not want the beavers killed that were causing problems. Their passion is what created the need and desire for an alternative approach. Even when all the wildlife professionals were saying the flow devices did not work, isolated committed individuals were willing to take a chance on any alternative that would spare the beavers. Without those idealist people, my work never would have gotten off the ground. When these people were able to band together as they did in Martinez, then public officials were sometimes willing to listen and try these alternatives. It is my experience that cultural attitude change on a societal scale is an absolute necessity for longstanding changes for beaver management. Society’s attitudes and values determines where its energy and money are spent. So public outreach and education is not only necessary to get things started, but are also necessary for long-term success.
The second fork of the triad is the physical work that must be done to provide real solutions to real problems. Without successful solutions, then even the most committed individuals and groups will soon be tuned out by society. In my experience, talking usually did very little to change people’s opinions. Everyone has an opinion and are usually reluctant to change it. However, when talking was combined with real life examples of problems being solved, that is what changed most people’s minds and opened them up to the possibility of coexistence. And when those solutions were able to not only solve the problem but do it in a way that was better than the old solution, then wow, interest in these solutions began to expand rapidly. As more and more flow devices got installed, more and more people witnessed them and real momentum was achieved. I am amazed that here in MA flow devices went from being universally dismissed less than 20 years ago to now being widely recognized as the preferred management technique.
Now that flow devices are well established in my small area of the country we have only just begun the task of their widespread adoption. Solid scientific research is crucial to make this next step. Government agencies, and other groups as well as interested individuals want unbiased evidence of a solution’s effectiveness before adopting it. As we heard in the webinar yesterday, people want to know if are there any scientific studies looking at these solutions. These studies are the tools for widespread adoption of coexistence. Being able to cite scientific literature referencing what has worked elsewhere is immensely powerful when these solutions are being considered in other parts of the country where they do not have a large number of flow devices to see for themselves. Whether it is basic research on the geomorphological or hydrologic changes beavers create or hard numbers of flow device successes, it all matters and adds to the momentum of change.
I am grateful for the work each of you are doing. It is a great team to be on!
All the best, Mike Callahan
Lovely description of the triad, Mike.
And a value of all of us being in communication is that in different communities, different social/political regions of the U.S. (and world), and different geographical interactions with human infrastructure, one leg of the triad may be worked out differently than in another.
Socially, geographically, and politically, for instance, Martinez, CA is quite different than Garfield County in so. Utah. So it not only takes a village, as Mike says, it takes a really adaptable, flexible village, with the team learning from each other as well as helping each other. Which we do.
Mary Obrien
FWIW, I don’t know how ‘flexible’ Martinez is. Because if another family of beavers were causing a problem today they’d still trap. Just as quickly and silently as possible.
One huge part I forgot to mention on the trident was the beavers themselves. Who happened to move into the downtown creek where everyone could see them. If they had picked someplace more private, the public would have never cared. Heidi
As you can no doubt see, this is a complicated conversation that could take place over several decades and hopefully a couple tall beers. I’m extremely grateful that they were all so approachable on the topic and allowed me to share their comments with you. It is a privilege to be part of this discussion. You can watch the entire seminar online here and it is definitely worth your time.
Joe Wheaton’s BRAT (Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool) tool has been successfully applied in Utah, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and New Mexico. He was one of the very first respectable professors to support this website. And we recently had a wonderful argument about the difference between being a ‘beaver advocate’ and a ‘beaver benefits advocate’. (You can guess which one I am.) Wonderful because Joe listened and heard my point of view and understood it, and then it turned out that the thing I was worried about didn’t even happen and we were both relieved!) I was surprised to stumble across this on youtube, and you’ll probably enjoy it.
I was especially happy with the sections on stream incision and dam washouts still restoring aggredation, and the fish research from the work they’re doing with Michael Pollock at John Day. Here’s a happy take away that you can employ to silence any annoying fisherman who objects to beavers. The tall one represents beaver ponds.
You can totally tell how old this film is by how long Mary’s hair is. Get your ruler.
Ecologists enlist beavers, walmart in wetlands conservation effort
The big-toothed rodents were nearly hunted to extinction during the 19th century in the mountain-encircled community, along with other areas of North America. But Utah State University scientists say the furry mammals are emerging as a valuable resource in restoring ecosystems imperiled by land use practices, drought and a changing climate.
almart’s property.
