There was a nice article about the festival in its new location in the Martinez News Gazette Thursday. I vaguely remember chatting with the reporter, Donna Beth during the day before a sea of children commanded my attention.
Amy G. Hall, the Napa street painter, paints a beaver dam during the Beaver Festival in Susana Park
“It’s perfect for artwork, perfect for the stage, and people love it,” Perryman said from her own both, where she distributed sheets on which children could affix stickers they obtained from other groups after learning how important beavers are to their surroundings.
Those sheets, once decorated, resembled the chalk mural by Amy G. Hall, the Napa street painter. Hall wasn’t the only one to apply chalk to sidewalk during the festival. Anyone with a yen to do so was invited to create their own illustrations to the walkways
It’s nice to see how inviting the event looked from the sidewalk, like a real community festival, irresistibly inviting you in.
(I’m almost wish I could have been there myself, but of course, we were rather busy that day,)
Meanwhile the beaver world continues with its steady list of accomplishments that have nothing whatsoever to do with Martinez.
Project relocates nuisance beavers into tributary streams along Methow River
Winthrop – Colville Tribes’ Fish and Wildlife is continuing its salmon recovery efforts in the Methow River basin with the help of some furry friends. The department is in its fifth year relocating beavers to key parts of the river as part of the Methow Salmon Recovery project to improve habitat for “threatened” Upper Columbia River steelhead and “endangered” spring Chinook, as well as coho, and summer Chinook.
According to Wagner, project goals are to improve fish habitat by: reducing summer water temperatures, increasing late summer stream flows, increasing juvenile salmonid rearing habitat, improving stream habitat complexity, trapping stream sediment, and in some cases reconnecting floodplains.
The question really is how will Kent Woodruff’s brainchild and project survive after Kent himself has retired? Will there be a lasting legacy that carries itself forward without his watchful eye?
I’m guessing yes. This is such a beloved project with so many partners that I’m betting it will carry on in Kent’s name long after he is smoking a pipe comfortably on the porch, Suzanne Fouty was asking me the same question about the beaver festival when she was here and that future I’m less sure of.
I’m not sure anyone else would be dam fool enough to take it on.
The Methow Beaver Project is an enormously successful beaver reintroduction project in the Northwest of Washington. It was the brain child of beaver friend Dr. Kent Woodruff of the USFS and has literally convinced thousands of people to think differently about beaver benefits. They asked me yesterday if I would share this for their fundraiser and I said I’d be happy to. All beaver defenders owe a tremendous amount to Methow who were the first to learn how reintroduction could be successful on a larger scale and have advanced understandingin pairing beavers successfully and getting them to stay put in their new home so they can start changing the landscape. Kent also provided the lovely quote for our newsletter you see at the right. (Because beaver people stick together – get it?)
The Methow Beaver Project has been working to relocate beavers in the Methow Valley for the past decade as a natural way to restore riparian habitat and address climate change. Although we are affiliated with numerous agencies we are independent and totally grant supported by individual contributors like you and private foundations. Your support during the Give Methow campaign will enable the Methow Beaver Project to continue our restoration efforts to the benefit of flora, fauna, fish, and you. We’ll be using your donation to purchase beaver food, educational and outreach materials, volunteer training materials, and to support our ongoing scientific investigations.
The Give Methow campaign, put on by the Community Foundation of North Central Washington, makes every cent of your donation go to your favorite organization (they cover the CC fees) and based on the amount each organization raises, additional funds from their “stretch pool” is allotted. Finally, every Monday someone who donates will be drawn and receive $500 to go to the Methow group of their choosing.
Meanwhile we’re getting ready for Saturday’s Wild Birds Unlimited event in pleasant hill. I thought I might as well start promoting our new and improved beaver festival so I put this together. What do you think?
There was a rickety bridge I used to cross when I walked across the creek to my volunteer job back in the long-agoes. Every time I did so I began by carefully considering whether the rotten old thing would be strong enough to hold me one more time. In the back of my mind I knew I should give up and go the long way – but the long way was very long. And the parts of the bridge without holes were pretty sturdy looking. Eventually I would pick my way across the strongest bits surprised that the thing which looked so worn out still had strength left in it. In all those years I never fell 25 feet to my death and it never failed me.
I’m hoping that our democracy is like that bridge this morning. Meanwhile, let’s talk about beavers.
Beaver Phys.org has a very nice story about climate change and our favorite topic, so this article about the Wildlife Conservation Society is exactly the right place to start. I especially love the title:
Beavers, high elevation streams, and oyster reefs are just three of the weapons in the fight against climate change discussed in 14 Solutions to Problems Climate Change Poses for Conservation, a new report released today by WCS.
From re-introduced beavers restoring the water storage capacity of ecosystems in Utah and Washington, to redesigned culverts that accommodate flooding in Upstate New York, the report showcases 14 inventive “real-world” solutions to a warming climate threatening wildlife and ecosystems worldwide.
Solutions profiled include traditional and innovative conservation tools applied strategically to address climate change impacts such as decreasing water availability, increasing risk of flooding and wildfires, rising sea levels, direct effects on species and habitats, and changing land use and human behaviors.
WCS Climate Adaptation Fund Program Director Darren Long said, “We are thrilled to share our ’14 Solutions’ report, and for others to learn from the adaptation work of those whose projects are showcased here. These solutions are on the leading edge of a field where traditional conservation work is no longer sustainable or strategic in light of climate change.”
One of those fourteen solutions was a grant to the Methow Project in Washington, another was building pretend beaver dams in Montana. Go read the report here, and just be grateful there are little steps we can make to help ourselves, and organizations like WCS to help us do it.
Time to visit Boston College where Beaver researcher Peter Busher has some interesting desk-o-rations. HDr. Busher hasn’t always been what I call a beaver believer, but he’s always been interested in the animal. Go to the website where you can see an interactive page that allows you to click on specific items and learn why they’re on his desk. I am currently wondering if this intriguing fact is true:
You know I’m already off to examine ALL the beaver chews in our house and compare incisor width. I asked a few experts whether they agree, because it’s nothing I ever head before. Oooh interesting.
Now onto Nebraska where their Ground water festival is in full swing. It’s been going on since 1988 so okay, they have us beat. But I’m not exactly impressed with the activity or the teaching about beavers! (Troubling statements will appear in red!)
Build, Beaver, Build was a new activity presented by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission at the Children’s Groundwater Festival on Tuesday at Central Community College in Grand Island.Monica Macoubrie, wildlife education assistant, quizzed Boone Central fourth-graders about beavers and why they are critical to groundwater.
After her instruction, the kids enjoyed making an edible beaver lodge out of pretzels and chocolate frosting.
“We talk about why beaver dams are so important for groundwater and all the other species that use the wetland areas,” Macoubrie said. “Then they make their own beaver lodges. Lodges are different than dams, and we want to show the kids the difference.”
Macoubrie passed a couple of props, including a beaver skull, around to the students. She told them that beavers are members of the rodent family and that the unique orange coloring of their teeth is characteristic of rodents.
Really? Are rabbit teeth orange? Prairie dog?
Scientists classify beavers as keystone creatures because the ponds and wetlands created by their lodges are also used by many other animals and plants. Macoubrie quizzed the students about what kinds of creatures depend on the wetlands created by beavers.
“Keystone species are anything that affects other animals,” she said. “Without our keystone species, those other animals would not be as abundant as they are.”
Another reason beavers are a keystone species is the fact that half of all threatened and endangered animals in North America rely on wetlands.
“Without those beavers, we would not have half of those animals,” Macoubrie said.
Which half, the front half?
She said beaver populations are doing well in Nebraska.
“They are considered a least concerned species, so we have a lot of them,” Macoubrie said.In fact, Nebraska Game and Parks officials are sometimes called to help relocate beavers when their dams present a flooding problem for property, she said.
Okay, in a metaphysical way, death IS a kind of relocation. The last relocation.
Marcia Lee, festival coordinator, said Cedar Hollow teachers Ashley Dvorak and Lola Hoover attended the festival with 44 students. Dodge Elementary teachers Michelle Carter, Alma Gutierrez, Amy Mingus and Nikki Stevens brought 67 students. Knickrehm Elementary teachers Sydney Gartner and Diane Meyer attended with 32 students. Trinity Lutheran teacher Wendy Heider brought 11 students.
Overall, 744 students attended this year’s festival with 43 teachers from 19 schools. More than 30,000 students have been educated at the festival since 1988. The Nebraska Children‘s Groundwater Festival has been replicated in 41 states in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, India and the United Kingdom.
The Groundwater festival is a big big deal with a big foundation and financial backers. In Platte Nebraska it is focused on regional issues and makes a huge difference. I can’t exactly argue with that and I’m glad they teach about beavers. Fracking pressures are driving water protections down in the region, and for people to learn more about what sustains them seems necessary. I can’t help be curious how much money fracking donates to these festivals. I’m sure its some respectable amount designed to influence and make things appear rosy.
But let’s face it, the ground water festival needs some better beaver education and activity. I think I’ll just drop them a note.
Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions just got back from Washington where he worked with the Methow Project and highway workers training folks to use flow devices. I think its pretty wonderful to have Kent and his merry band interested in solutions that allow pesky, trouble-making beavers to stay put instead of just whisking them away. I thought you’d want to see and hear about it. So these are Mike’s own words.
I was recently privileged to travel to north central WA State to train Okanogan County Highway personnel how to coexist with beavers. My thanks go to the Methow Beaver Project’s (MBP) Kent Woodruff and Julie Nelson for working to arrange it. We installed trapezoidal culvert fences at a couple of sites the County had been battling beavers at for some time.
Kent, Julie and Josh Thomson (County Highway Engineer) were instrumental in the planning and execution of these two projects. I was very impressed with the County Highway workers and of course the MBP personnel who jumped right in the water to help construct these flow devices.
That part of the country is so beautiful! I also got to see the Methow Beaver Project in person as they relocated beavers to their new habitats saving them from being killed. Their program is awesome and I have many great memories, such as Kent open flame grilling some fantastic Steelhead Trout!
Thanks for sharing your skills and letting us watch Mike! If you want to stay abreast of Mike’s work you should join the FB group “Beaver Management Forum” which always has interesting things.
Now for me, we’re still on vacation. And while it was uncomfortably warm on Saturday, I awake to rainstorms in the morning. So of course I did the only reasonable thing a person could do in the rain at the ocean. I played with my toys.
The Methow Beaver Project is a bit uncommon as far as forest health
restoration projects go, because it relies on one of nature’s greatest engineers – the beaver.
Beavers build dams on river
s and streams, and build homes (“lodges”) in the resulting bodies of still, deep water to protect against predators. Beavers play an important ecological role, because the reservoirs of water that beaver dams create also increase riparian habitat, reduce stream temperatures, restore stream complexity, capture sediment, and store millions of gallons of water underground in wetland ‘sponges’ that surround beaver colonies. This benefits the many fish, birds, amphibians, plants and people that make up the entire ecosystem.
Across the country today, there are fewer beavers than there used to be because their fur was very desirable to early American settlers and many landowners considered them to be a pest that damaged the landscape. As beavers were eradicated, the once complex wetlands that they helped to create disappeared as well.
Recently, low snowpack in the Cascade Mountains has resulted in less meltwater flowing through streams throughout the spring, summer and fall on the Methow Valley Ranger District of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in north central Washington State. The low water levels have negatively affected habitat for salmon, trout, frogs, eagles and many other species. Over the next 20 to 30 years, dramatically less snowpack is predicted.
That’s why U.S. Forest Service biologists like Kent Woodruff are working to reintroduce beavers to forest streams where they used to be common. Beavers can help make such ecosystems more resilient to future changes in climate by restoring ecological function. Not only do beaver dams increase water storage on the landscape, they improve water quality by reducing stream temperatures, increasing nutrient availability in streams, and increasing stream function by reconnecting floodplains.
Recently, the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society recognized the Methow Beaver Project, awarding it the Riparian Challenge Award for 2015. This award recognizes and encourages excellence in riparian and watershed habitat management, and celebrates the accomplishments of the project’s many partners, including its beaver engineers!
“We’re solving important problems one stick at a time,” Woodruff said.
And on the weighty day when USDA pinched their nostrils closed and forced themselves to mention the positive truth about beavers, Kent was standing there in uniform to ease the pain. A USFS biologist himself, Kent’s project carries the respectability that not even USDA can ignore forever. With so many partners and supporters the Methow project is guaranteed to make a difference, and Kent has worked hard to see that it will thrive long after he retires. It is remarkable, that even though Methow has been doing this work a long, long, LONG time, USDA is just starting to get the message.
New research by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that the effect beavers have on the environment may stem the decline of amphibians in places such as Grand Teton National Park.
The decade-long study found startling declines of amphibians in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and more gradual declines in Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks. It determined that further north in Glacier National Park the metamorphosing critters are faring better. Headed by Blake Hossack of the USGS, the research also determined that beavers create wet habitats that act as a hedge against declines in amphibians, which depend on water in their early life stages.
“Although beaver were uncommon, their creation or modification of wetlands was associated with higher colonization rates for four of five amphibian species, producing a 34 percent increase in occupancy in beaver-influenced wetlands compared to wetlands without beaver influence,” the study said. It was published recently in the journal Biological Conservation.
“Also, colonization rates and occupancy of boreal toads and Columbia spotted frogs were greater than two times higher in beaver-influenced wetlands,” the study said. “These strong relationships suggest management for beaver that fosters amphibian recovery could counter declines in some areas.”
The USGS, New Mexico State University, Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative and the National Park Service all collaborated on the study.
The influence of beavers is on display along Moose-Wilson Road in Grand Teton park, upstream of where the beaver pond borders the road, Patla said. During the study, she said, the aquatic rodents colonized a new area to the north.
“The beavers started moving upstream from there and making dams and they flooded a huge area,” Patla said.
Previously the habitat in the area consisted of “ancient” beaver ponds that had dried out and wasn’t great amphibian habitat.
After the beavers recolonized, “all four species were present and toads suddenly appeared for the first time,” Patla said. “Adults laid their eggs and rapidly colonized that area.
Whoa! You’re kidding me! You mean the actions of the “water-savers” actually benefited multiple species of “water-users”? That must come as a real surprise, since I’m sure you were taught in school that beavers were icky. And in California we’ve killed them for destroying frog habitat by “ruining vernal ponds.” And if you doubt it you should reread my column about it from 2012, back when I used to write fairly clever things.
Honestly I thought the ship of “Beavers help frogs” had sailed and was already in the general lexicon. But I forgot the need to repeat research to prove that results apply regionally. No word yet on when they’ll be releasing the papers on “Gravity still applies in Wyoming” or “Researchers confirm water tends to flow down hill in Jackson Hole, too.”
Sheesh.
I shouldn’t complain. USDA, USFS, USGS all in one day proclaiming beaver benefits. That’s got to be some kind of acronym milestone. I sure wish their was a department of Beaver Benefits. Maybe USBB?
Here’s some eye candy to start the weekend right. First kit filmed in the Scottish Beaver Trials this year.
Project relocates nuisance beavers into tributary streams along Methow River
Solutions profiled include traditional and innovative conservation tools applied strategically to address 
One of those fourteen solutions was a grant to the Methow Project in Washington, another was building pretend beaver dams in Montana. 
New research by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that the effect beavers have on the environment may stem the decline of amphibians in places such as Grand Teton National Park.
