In addition to folks going out of their way to save beavers, they are also hiring people to do it the right way! Ben Goldfarb posted these photos of him and Mike Callahan working together to install a culvert protection fence (beaver deceiver) on Tuesday. You’ll not it is not the customary trapezoidal shape because of the site demands. I’m especially happy that Ben and Mike like working together because apparently when this author gig is all over Ben is thinking he’ll become the flow device expert in Connecticut, where he plans to settle.
First you clean out the culvert
Mike Callahan in the water
Author and soon to be beaver installer Ben Goldfarb
Tadaa!
.Mike was busy helping friends this week. Art Wolinsky in New Ham[shire also posted this time lapse video of his installation of culvert protection on Monday at Art’s Sherwood Glen’s condiminum as well.
It’s so fun to see it all come together!
More videos posted this morning, this from the West Hampton Trail Cam that we’ve been watching.
The article says the tussle is likely courtship. I relly don’t think so, considering we filmed mating and wrestling both. When ever we filmed this behavior it was with two yearlings wrestling to see who was stronger. Like on this lovely morning nine years ago.
As if the week could get any better for beavers! This morning a wonderful podcast appeared about beavers that brilliantly covered my two FAVORITE talking points about them. How and Why we should coexist!
It’s Saturday morning.What ever your plans MAKE TIME to listen to this.
Almost wiped out centuries ago by fur trappers, beavers have made a comeback in North America, including the Mid-Atlantic and the Chesapeake Region. While many see them as a nuisance — slayers of trees, builders of dams that flood roads and farm land — biologists and natural resource managers see good in the beaver comeback. Their dams create rich habitat for other mammals and fish while filtering sediment and damaging nutrients from waters that flow to the Chesapeake Bay.
The Bush administration owes America an apology and a box of chocolates. Not only did it bamboozle us into a never-ending war and destroy our favorite city, it also ruined the way we view policy “Naming” forevermore. Now when we read a bill coming out of the senate called “Lunches for children” for example, we immediately assume it means the bill will STEAL all lunches for children. If we see an initiative called “Respect your elders” we know for a fact that social security is threatened.
I resent that American can’t ‘mean things’ anymore, don’t you?
I know Mike Callahan does, because with this plan he sincerely wants to improve road safety. It sounds like a wonderful idea that will save taxpayers millions of dollars annually. But the Bush administration has ruined the way I read this title. I’m sorry, but it has.
If every at-risk road culverts in this country were properly protected from beaver damming, then taxpayers, road crews, beavers, biodiversity, water storage and watersheds would all benefit.
To make this vision a reality the Beaver Institute, Inc. is proud to announce our first nationwide program, called the “Safe Roads Initiative”. This program will provide beaver control expertise to any interested Highway Department in the country. As the testimonials and instructional videos at www.beaverinstitute.org/education/youtube-videos/ show, road crews can save significant time, save money, increase road safety, and improve wildlife passage and stewardship with these proven techniques.
Our Safe Roads Initiative was inspired by the highly successful Nion Robert Thieriot beaver management grant program which jump started nonlethal beaver management in a rural area of Massachusetts where problematic beavers were traditionally trapped and killed. See www.mspca.org/beaverfunding.
Whoo hoo! A trapezoidal fence in every culvert! (Not quite as catchy as a “chicken in every pot’ but it has promise.) Congratulations to Mike and the Beaver Institute Gang for finding new ways to solve problems and dream big. If every road was protected from beaver damming then drivers AND beavers would sure be a lot safer.
While we’re on the subject of good ideas, lets give a shout out to this event posted in the community calendar in the Troy New York Record.
THACHER NATURE CENTER: Busy Beavers, 3:30 p.m. Late fall is when beavers really get busy! They are building up their lodge and storing food for the long winter ahead. Learn about these industrious animals and their adaptations for life in icy waters. A short indoor presentation will be followed by an easy walk to a small, well-establish ed beaver pond to quietly observe for about 20 minutes in hopes of viewing a beaver in action. This program is appropriate for adults and school-aged children. Space is limited, please call 518-872-0800 to register and for meeting place.
Great idea! Now it’s wonderful that you would gather at a beaver pond and teach children what they do, but you’re crazy if you expect to see beavers at 3:30 in the afternoon in December. All that will happen of course is that those kids will get frustrated and impatient and think beavers are boring.
I have a better idea. Why not be beaver ‘detectives” and teach the kids to find beaver clues at the pond to ‘solve’ the case! There will be plenty of chewed branches and other signs of beaver activity and it won’t be frustrating because you won’t be waiting for something that isn’t coming. Plus you’ll be teaching them that a very large part of watching nature is observing its clues and using what you learn to infer what’s happening.
In Kingston Ontario, just across the border from New York, city Council member Lisa Osanic just made HISTORY by presenting arguments for no longer killing beavers but using flow devices instead in the entire city. She submitted a petition with 1000 signatures. No I’m not kidding.
Residents want Kingston to protect one of Canada’s national symbols.
Coun. Lisa Osanic presented a 1,000-name petition that urges the city to stop killing beavers, citing the practice as cruel and unnecessary. The industrious creatures are known for their dam-building abilities. The city currently hires a trapper to exterminate beavers through the use of underwater traps.
However, Coun. Osanic says there are other humane, non-lethal devices that can be used. She pointed to the City of London and Ontario’s use of flow devices to prevent beaver dam flooding.Coun. Osanic says an expert from Boston taught London city officials how the device works, and she wants local officials to be taught as well.
It was years ago that residents from Cornwall brought Mike Callahan out to install a flow device to save some beavers. This summer a petition was started to do the same in Kingston. This just goes to show the kind of RIPPLE effect that those earlier actions had. Hurray for everyone involved, and Hurray most of all to our newest beaver friend Counselor Lisa Osanic!
I heard this weekend from Kent Woodruff (USFS retired) who was in Oregon looking to connect with Suzanne Fouty (Also USFS not yet retired). Turns out now they’ll be taking a camping trip in the back woods to watch the eclipse together with friends! How beavery is that? Here in Martinez we don’t get a total but we’re still excited. This is a great resource if you want to see what to expect where you are. I don’t think the beavers have ever seen a total eclipse before but I’m assuming they’ll sleep through it. If you are looking for truly remarkable ways to record the experience or maybe keep your child curious, here’s what our good friend Jack Laws suggests.
After 10 years on the beaver beat you think you’ve seen it all. You get a little jaded. There’s nothing new under the sun you say to yourself. But sometimes you have to admit that it’s time to admit the truth. It’s time to quote Lily Tomlin again.
“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”
Take this article from Massachusetts for example, where a forest manager has been explaining his continual removal of beaver dams because the property should be classified as agriculture. You know, I grow trees! The headline says it all. It means I’m going to keep looking for information until someone tells me what I want to hear.
A request by John Mirick to continue to work to maintain existing water levels and flow on his Chapter 61 property, and clean, clear and restore existing manmade and natural management system for ongoing agricultural commodities, raised lengthy discussion among conservation commission members at their June 20 meeting.
The DEP advised the commission of a beaver dam breaching on the property. Commissioners visited the site in April and learned that sticks had been taken out of the spillway and were piled up in a field and eventually burned to maintain the natural flow of the brook. Beavers have constructed two additional dams on the brook.
“We have to come to a determination about what activities are permissible in the stream within the Wetlands Act,” said commission chairman Brian Keevan.
The property has been in the Forestry Program since the 1970s. The beavers moved into the stream in 2008 and property owner John Mirick has kept the spillway open since then by removing some of the sticks. An enforcement action was issued to put a time frame on the project and give Mirick time to file a notice of intent to manage the water levels or ask for a request for determination.
Mirick said he’d talked with Peter Mirick from Mass Fish & Wildlife and was told that forestry is agriculture and he could maintain the water channel to keep it open. About once a week we pull out sticks and once a year burn them, he said. It seems to me it falls under the regulations to maintain the area for agricultural use, to restore or maintain a man-made water system, and to maintain the flow on existing waterways, he said. “So it appeared to me to be exempt under the regulations. We’re just trying to maintain the water level, not lower it,” said Mirick. “If the water backs up it saturates the soil and kills the trees.”
“Breaching a beaver dam isn’t allowed,” said Commissioner John Vieira. He said there are devices that can be used to control water level when beavers are present. “We’ve been asked to look into this and render a decision,” said Vieira. When beaver activity has created a public safety problem there is a process you have to go through, he added. They can be trapped and the board of health is usually contacted and they work with the commission, said Vieira. Breaching a dam changes the hydrology of the surrounding area so it’s considered an alteration, he said.
I didn’t destroy the building your honor, I just took out some of the concrete and a few of the girders, the rest fell down on it’s own! At least Commissioner Vieira has hear of flow devices before and knows this problem has a solution. I believe this particular forest is a whopping 2 hour drive from Mike Callahan and beaver solutions. You would think the word had trickled down by now. Apparently Mirick will keep right on searching for answers until he finds the one that tells him to keep doing exactly the same thing over and over.
I realize I’m not being very patient here. But this man is arguably in the best place for solving beaver problems in the entire country, if not the world. And not only has he not gone to see Mike or bought the DVD or talked to a neighbor, he hasn’t even cracked open a website to read about it. Just a reminder the the city of Martinez brought in an expert from Vermont because everyone in our town 3000 miles away had done their homework and read about the solutions in 2007.
And we’re not exactly a university town, if you take my meaning.
More confusion from this article posted yesterday about famed photographer Rick Price of Canada. It’s quite a nice article about how he captures wildlife in their element, but it has one photo of a beaver I cannot comprehend. Maybe you can help me?
This is a busy time of year for Alberta’s wild animals as they emerge after the long winter — even if we don’t get to see most of the action. But with skill, patience and some long lenses, nature photographer Rick Price recently snapped these great shots of beavers in Hinton and bears in the mountain parks.
“The trick to beaver sightings is that they are only out at extreme dawn and dusk, and the other 95 per cent of the day you won’t see them,” he said.
Okay, there are lots of photos like the one above that we totally recognize and understand but then there’s the one I can’t get my head around. It honestly doesn’t even really look real. The caption says “don’t be fooled by this the fuzzy appearance, this is a ferocious rodent”. But honestly what puzzles me isn’t the ferocious part, or the larger bottom teeth, it’s the fact that those sets of teeth are two different colors.
Now we are taught that beaver teeth turn orange from the iron in their diet, and kit teeth are white until they eat enough solid food. But does this mean that all beavers only eat with their bottom teeth? Or that this particular beaver only eats with his bottom teeth? Jon doesn’t think the top incisors even look like teeth.
Has the evil hand of photoshop has played a part?
You, tell me. I don’t know. I just am well aware that it’s not what anyone would expect. Remember we have one shot of upper and lower teeth from our good friend Sylvie, and I believe they were all the same color. So is this a fake? Or a freak?
To make this vision a reality the Beaver Institute, Inc. is proud to announce our first nationwide program, called the “Safe Roads Initiative”. This program will provide beaver control expertise to any interested Highway Department in the country. As the testimonials and instructional videos at 
his is a busy time of year for Alberta’s wild animals as they emerge after the long winter — even if we don’t get to see most of the action. But with skill, patience and some long lenses, nature 
