On Bridge Creek, a tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon, scientists with NOAA Fisheries’ National Marine Fisheries Service are installing a series of structures as part of a unique, low-cost approach to stream restoration.
The simple structures provide footholds in the degraded stream channel where beaver can build stable dams and establish colonies. By partnering with the beaver, the scientists hope to accelerate stream recovery and improve production of the creek’s wild steelhead population, which is part of a larger steelhead population listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The simple, cost-effective treatment being applied on Bridge Creek could have far-reaching applications in the Columbia River Basin.
“Bridge Creek is typical of many degraded streams in the western United States,” says Michael Pollock, biologist with NMFS’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. The creek has been confined to a narrow, incised trench, and high flows rarely reach its former floodplain. One of the main ways to improve habitat conditions in this situation is to reconnect the stream with its former floodplain. This helps restore basic geomorphic, hydrologic and ecological functions, and, in turn, create better habitat for steelhead.”
Make sure you go read the whole thing! Be kind to the earth today, and for the second anniversary of the gulf oil spill, and the soul crushing burden of how depressing it is that we now have shrimp born without eyes, let’s watch this again. When I couldn’t sleep last night I was trying to imagine how columns of this elixir under the ocean could help pick up all that missing oil two years later.
Looks like the Pittsburg zoo is doing a spring wildlife month, where every day in April they are releasing an educational film about an animal. Guess what gets top billing?
Welcome to “Out of the Wild,” a daily series from The Tribune-Democrat, working with the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. Every day in April, we’ll introduce you to a different North American animal – with information about each species’ habitat, behavior, diet and unique or interesting features.
Not a bad choice for your first effort! I’m not sure you clarified the ‘debate’ about whether beavers harm or improve the environment. You made it sound exactly like the ‘debate’ on whether the glass is half empty or half full. Tell me a real reason people think beavers harm the environment and then we’ll have a ‘debate’, but let me warn you, beavers are excellent debaters!
There’s good news across the pacific coast, starting with the 30th Annual Salmon Restoration conference this week in Davis. Registration is closed but there will be a convergence of beaver friends making implicit and not so implicit arguments about the role of beaver dams. Oh and Chuck Bonham the new director of Fish & Game will be giving one of the opening addresses so you know this message is getting to the right ears.
Ooh Ooh! I know! Call on me! The whole thing will start off with a bang when Brock gives a talk focused on salmon and beaver…I’m apparently not supposed to say anything but since no one really pays that much attention to what I say I will pass along his description…
Also – SRF is gonna be fun – we have my beaver focused talk on Wed., we have Michael Pollock talking, Eli, OAEC WATER and Sanctuary Forest/Mattole will all be tabling together at Friday night’s poster session – so beaver-palooza will be in full swing that night – and for your ears only there is rumor that on Sat., night of the banquet there will be a skit featuring a face off debate between a human large woody engineer and a beaver all sizes of wood engineer!
Back story: creek people used to ‘clean up’ woody debris by hauling it away, and then found out that it was VERY important to the food chain and fish. So now they are busy ‘installing woody debris’ themselves. Of course we all know who would happilydo that for free, but there is a running argument whether it’s better to install debris or let beavers do it (because you know beavers are so icky!). Here’s Pollock’s slide on the issue. LWD stands for large woody debris and ‘smolt’ are baby salmon. Oh and Eli’s poster presentation will include my slide on the different types of flow devices so we can promote effective beaver management!
Hope someone films the skit I’m not supposed to have written about! I’ll make sure to tell you all about it!
Brock also let me know that he will be Keynote Speaker for the Eel River Symposium later this month. The lineup looks amazing and since we know their are beaver on the Eel it would be good to teach people why they’re useful.
Not to be outdone, I just heard from Leonard Houston of the Beaver Advocacy Committee in Oregon that he has been asked to be on a beaver panel this month for the Oregon Desert Association coming up in September in Bend. Preach Beavers to the Desert, Leonard!
What else? Oh the charming city of Nashua of the infamous beaver incident printed my letter to the paper today. Non-suscribers can’t read it, but I’ll give you the text.
It’s stunning to me that in the entire community of Nashua there is apparently not anyone who recognizes that a young, dispersing beaver is trying to get to the water and will likely be hit by traffic if not assisted. Exposing school children to this heartless failure is unfortunate. This could have been a powerful opportunity to show children what communities can accomplish when they work together and how good it feels to help each other or another species. Instead it was a flurry of morning activity ending with a pointless death. Dispersal of young beavers seeking their own territory happens every march, and Nashua should learn from this event and have a plan to deal better with it next time.
Wow. Yesterday was a dazzling blur, and I’m still trying to feel my way through it. We woke up early to pick Michael Pollock up at the train station, then drove to the meeting at Occidentalwhere we found a room full of 20+ folks I had been emailing for the past year from various government and environmental agencies all ready to work hard, talk about beavers and change the way folks saw the role of beavers in watershed.
Some of them I knew, like Brock, Rick, Lisa and our Tahoe friends, but some were a delightful introduction to someone I had swapped email with but never met. It was a positive, knowledgeable, cheerful, pragmatic and very intriguing group. Michael found out at the last minute that he lost travel funding so Worth A Dam made the decision to pay for him to come down. I figured that having him there would really make a difference and was worth the train ticket. Brock and Rick are kicking in too.
The meeting was well facilitated by the OAEC’s director Dave Henson, and started with introductions and background. Then Rick and I reviewed the historical distribution paper and talked about where beaver belonged. Pollock made the excellent point that he couldn’t think of another instance where government agencies were relying so heavily on a 70 year old paper, and we all talked about how to change the mindset of today.
Then he presented his data from the current work which is looking particularly at beavers and steelhead, having pretty handily answered any Coho questions. After which we were treated to a delicious lunch, mostly grown on site, and a tour of the gardens. I chatted with our Tahoe friends about their upcoming grant project to get funding for school presentations and their 501.3(c) application.
After lunch we talked about obstacles and made schemes for the work that needs to be done to get a beaver management plan at CDFG that recognized beaver’s incredible assets, acknowledged the damage done to habitat and wetlands by their removal, and required that certain steps be taken to try and solve the problem humanely before trapping. Then we went around the room and discussed what we had taken from the day and what we were going to do next to advance our goals.
Somewhere in the day,Eli Asarian agreed to do the hydrology graph for our article, Lisa gave me a present of a lovely antique postcard from her grandmother, Rick gave me an adorable and entirely fitting ornament of a beaver curled up in a gift box, and Pollock gave me a series of frames containing the historic 1930 article fromPopular Science about beavers on Mars – along with the most whimsically charming beaver card I believe I will ever see that he bought in Montana. Here’s the Monte Dolack painting that it’s from.
Afterwards there was dinner, conversation, and wine before a stroll under a brightly jeweled cold and clear starry sky that poured the Milky Way right onto our car.
Chuck James, the archeologist who found the remnant beaver dam all those years ago and kick started the historic paper with his efforts, followed us back to Vallejo before heading off to Redding), and we got home sleepy and dazzled from the day. After a chat by the fire and look at the giant beaver skull (which Pollock had always wanted to see) and the scrapbook of our first year’s beaver story, (which he was less eager to see but he just had to look at to ‘get’ Martinez story), we brought him back to the train station where he embarked on another 22 hour journey home.
(My lost weekend was unbelievable, but his has to be something out of Salvador Dali.)
Well 2012 might not be the “year of the beaver” but I am more hopeful than ever before that big things are moving and shifting on the beaver front. This is as good an opportunity as any to thank the literally thousand of helpers that have cared about our beavers, cared about beavers in general, or taught us valuable lessons along the way.
It is said that the journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step but when I finally fell asleep last night it felt more like we had just taken a series of sprinting leaps.
Today I heard from Michael Pollock who is on his way to Scott Valley for a FIRST EVER beaver workshop tomorrow – and no before you ask, its not “how to kill beavers faster, or what are the twenty five best reasons to kill beavers?” It’s something completely different. Check out the lineup which is not exactly heavy with traditional beaver-loving types.
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Scott Valley Beaver Technical Management WorkgroupSeptember 14th at 9:00am to 12:00pm at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Yreka Purpose of this meeting: Understanding the role and relationship of beaver, Coho and water quality as it relates to the different agencies and their policies. Facilitator: California Department of Fish and Game 9:00am – 9:15am Introductions9:15am – 9:45am Beaver Biology – Michael Pollack, NOAA 9:45am – 10:00am Beaver Status• Where are the beavers in Scott Valley and trend? 10:00am – 11:00am Agency’s Approach to Beaver Management • California Department of Fish & Game (CDFG)– Wildlife Program – Bob Schaefer – Fisheries Program – Pisano/Olswang/Bean • California Department of Water Resources• Federal Trapper- Dennis Moyles • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) – Cookson/Silveira– State of the Beaver Conferences 2010 & 2011 • Klamath National Forest (KNF)– Fishery and Wildlife Biologist • NOAA- National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) • Scott River Watershed Council (SRWC) – Charnna Gilmore 11:00am – 11:15am Break – See Scott Valley map on wall 11:15am – 11:45am Beavers – Pro and Cons 11:45am – 12:00pm Next Steps – Where do we go from here……..
Be still my beating heart! Fish and Game is facilitating a beaver workshop? OHHH MICHAEL!!! Preach gospel to the non believers and turn their faces towards the rising truth! Let California begin the trickle of understanding that will pour down the pacific coast and tap the heads of salmon counters all along the state! Put that federal trapper Dennis right in the VERY front row and give him a road to Damascus moment. Great things are beginning to happen in the northern parts of our watershed, and if people ever come to understand the truth anywhere, iIt will start there.
This great article by Will Harling is a fantastic introduction to the issue. After this taste gets your attention, go read the whole thing which should make converts out of the non-believers.
By Will Harling, Executive Director, Mid Klamath Watershed Council
After a sleepless full moon night with our 18 month old daughter, Rory, (a night where my wife bore the brunt of her midnight antics and our guests sleeping in the living room must have been guessing who was torturing who), I bundled our girl onto my back and walked down to the Klamath River in the pre-dawn light. To say I altruistically wanted everyone to sleep in would be a half-truth given the fishing pole in one hand, balancing out the diaper bag in the other. I had a spot in mind, just downstream of the Orleans Bar River Access, where the river slides over a broad riffle so shallow the fish are forced into a narrow slot that one could cast across, even with a groggy, grumpy, sleep-deprived toddler strapped to their back.
The relatively wide Orleans Valley gives the river a chance to meander a little here, reclaiming its sinuousity stolen over the past six million years as the Klamath Mountains began to rise from underneath, forcing it into steep sided canyons tracing fault lines in the uplifted bedrock just upstream and downstream of the valley. Fall chinook salmon moving upstream to spawn left wakes in the glassy water as they navigated up through the shallows, and the Klamath’s famed half-pounder steelhead run was coming in with them. Across the river, I noticed a furry head moving slowly upstream. The light brown tuft of hair visible above the water looked like what I thought a beaver would look like, but couldn’t be sure.
Just then I heard a rustle of grass and a swish of a tail on the near shore and backed into the willows to watch. Sure enough, a beaver was swimming up towards us along the edge of the river just 20 feet away. As it cleared the riffle, it moved out into the river and I slowly followed it upstream. Big whiskers and a large black snout, those dark beady eyes and two cute little ears quickly disappeared when it spotted me, and a loud thwack of its tail as it dove alerted it’s kin that danger was near. Walking home, giddy with excitement from this rare close encounter, I noticed all the stripped willow sticks along the shore, even a clump of uneaten willow shoved under an algal mat, possibly left for a mid-day snack.
Beaver are slowly coming back to the Klamath, recovering from intense trapping that began in the mid-1800’s and continuing for nearly a century after until they were almost extinct. In 1850 alone, famed frontiersman and trapper Stephen Meek and his party reportedly trapped 1800 beaver out of Scott Valley, which at the time was called Beaver Valley. The last beavers in Scott Valley were trapped out by Frank C. Jordan in the winter of 1929-1930 on Marlahan Slough1. Beaver throughout much of the Klamath basin suffered the same fate, and even today as they return to less inhabitated areas along the mainstem river and its tributaries, they are still shot and trapped in streams where their dams pose a perceived risk to residential and agricultural property.
Our friends at Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife selected this day as International Beaver day, and the good news is it’s catching on. I’m told that today is a great day to give a beaver talk, write a letter to an editor about beavers or set up a display. Hmmm. I already do that on the other 364 days of the year, so I thought I’d do something truly special today. I’ll teach you a brand new thing. I learned about the concept from Michael Pollock on our Yosemite trip, and have been waiting for the right moment to share. Of course the unflattering story line is entirely my own responsibility. I figure a time when we’re waiting for beavers to build is a good time to learn.
‘Only it is so VERY lonely here!’ [without the beaver dams] Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
‘Oh, don’t go on like that!’ cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. ‘Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come to-day. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!’
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. ‘Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?’ she asked. ‘That’s the way it’s done,’ the Queen said with great decision: ‘nobody can do two things at once, you know.
Consider this then:
A long time ago a tired researcher sat on his lawn chair and glared at the beaver dam in his stream and thought, I really need to blow that thing up, but first I’ll justify it. He took out the thermometer his wife had used to check his daughter’s temperature that morning and he measured the top two inches of water in the pond.
“Ah ha!” he said, comparing it to the top two inches of running water on the other side of the dam. “Beaver dams raise the water temperature and this hurts trout and salmon!” “Beavers destroy habitat for fish!” He trotted back into the house and wrote a paper which was published in the journal of wehatebeavers and soon the paper was quoted in ever other scientific paper on beaver dams known to man kind. (Then he blew up the dam which had been his goal all along, and alot of people were encouraged to blow up their dams too.) Soon every biology, hydrology and icthology student was taught that beaver dams raise the water temperature and regional agencies like Fish and Game or Department of Natural Resources wrote it into their policies and it became the great truth of the land. It was even quoted by the letter I responded to from LADWP yesterday. When a lone graduate student scratched his head and said, how do you know? He was nearly laughed off the campus and his thesis adviser had a tense conversation with his mother in the laundry room.
So it turns out that when you look at a stream there’s the water you CAN see, the ground water you CAN’T see, and this layer of soggy silt & pebbles that acts as a sponge between the creek bed and the water table. This layer is constantly moving water into the ground, and pulling groundwater back into the stream. Water in the ground is naturally cooler because it gets no sunlight at all so every time it seeps into the creek bank it lowers the water temperature a bit, and when water is returned to the creek bed it is cooler.
Michael Pollock, of NOAA northwest fisheries was interested in this dynamic, and particularly what it meant to that old story about beaver dams choking out salmon and trout. He decided to set up some thermometers at different layers in the water, and also below the subsurface of the stream to find out the truth, then he repeated this at different points along a stream. Before I show you what he found, you need to know that the headwaters of any stream is cooler than the mouth. So we expect the temperature to gradually go up as the water moves down stream.
Pollock et al (2007)
So reading the river from the headwaters on the right, the blue line is the subsurface temperatures and the lowest, which we would expect. The red line is the surface water of un-dammed areas, and the green line is the surface area in beaver pools. As you can see the red line is consistently higher than the green line, meaning that the surface area of beaver ponds is cooler than the surface area of free-flowing stream, the opposite of what our lawn chair researcher observed. Why is this?
I’m told the next graph has not yet been published so I shouldn’t post it on the web. Okay just imagine that the three measurements are combined we see this gradual sawtooth incline with a huge gap showing that the temperature suddenly falls. And guess where? There’s a huge temperature drop as tons of upwelling water seeps into the banks of the creek. It’s a beaver dam, whose deep pools increase the contact area of the water with the hyporheic zone, so there’s greater exchange and cooler temperatures. Say it with me now, “hyporheic exchange.” This is what the fish like. This is what enlivens the water and makes the creek more healthy. And this is why that researcher in his lawn chair all those years ago should be scornfully forgotten along with his entire findings.
Here’s the take home sentence for you to use in your next beaver argument, and you know you’ll have plenty.“Beaver dams cool streams by maximizing hyporheic exchange.”
Happy International Beaver Day! Celebrate by telling someone you know. Or everyone.
And if you can’t get there in person, get there in spirit by reading this:
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