Tag: North Carolina Beavers

50 states of beaver

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers and salmon, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? October 12, 2014

Old Fort fifth-graders learn all about water-dwelling rodent

It isn’t every day that Old Fort fifth-grader Makayla Evans gets to dress up like a beaver.

Garbed in goggles, a blanket, sound-proof headphones, a trash bag and a pair of gloves, the fifth-grader stood in front of her classmates wearing items that represented different traits the rodent found all across North Carolina possesses.

“I’m going to hand Makayla this small canister of oil,” said Lake James State Park Ranger Kevin Bischof. “Can anyone guess what that represents on a beaver?”

“It’s what keeps their coat waterproof,” said one student as Bischof continued handing Evans more items to go with her makeshift costume.

Bischof’s presentation was part of an hour-long lesson in Joanna Graham’s science class at Old Fort Elementary, which was designed to help students better understand the American beaver.

Now we’re all read about the park system educational brilliance where they dress a kid in a fur coat and put on flippers and say ‘you’re a beaver’. But mind you this is North Carolina, which (if we’re being kind) has a fairly conflicted relationship with beavers, so we are really haooy 5th graders get beaver ed. But this blew me away:

“The beaver is a keystone species,” said Bischof. “If you remove them from an environment, it drastically changes. It takes constant maintenance to keep up a dam, and if a beaver is removed from the area then their dams will eventually deteriorate and change everything in the area where they’ve been.”

You can almost here the unspoken message “So tell you’re dad if he blows up that beaver dam it will be bad for everything”, can’t you? Of course I wrote Kevin right away. And our beaver friends in North Carolina to introduce them. Every now and then I start to think the landscape for beavers is changing all over the united states. Which is a pretty nice thought to have. Oh, and I sent along these:

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Researchers Say Beavers Are More Than Simple Pests

Yakima beaver relocation was on Scott Simon yesterday of NPR. More good promotion of beaver benefits, although I hate the headline. It reminds me of that scene in Tolkein’s the Two Towers, where the hobbits stumble on the oldest forest.

” What a pity! This shaggy old forest looked so different in the sunlight. I almost felt I liked the place.

‘Almost felt you liked the Forest! That’s good! That’s uncommonly kind of you,’ said a

strange voice. ‘Turn round and let me have a look at your faces. I almost feel that I dislike you both, but do not let us be hasty. Turn around!’ “

In addition to the usual beaver beatitudes there are a few choice quotes that I will offer without comment.

We try to catch the whole colony because beavers have incredibly intense family social bonds. So without taking the whole family colony, they’re more likely to go right back to where they once were caught in searching for their family members.

[Regarding their naming of beavers] It helps us bring light to sometimes sad instances where family members may have gotten lost behind.

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And now that we’re back from vacation I’m starting to think about Halloween decorations. We’re so lucky we may have just the thing! What do you think, too scary?

Mysteries

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions March 14, 2013

So yesterday I was idly thumbing though some news stories on beavers and I saw that Polk county in North Carolina is still hard at work trying to determine whether or not to allow trapping of fur-bearers.

Polk hears alternative to trapping furbearers

They recently had a big meeting and brought in a bunch of experts for the local commissioners to hash out the subject and brought Deborah ODonell who talked about coyotes not eating pets was advocating flow devices to control beaver flooding.

Oh and the punchline? She works for USDA.

On beavers, ODonnell said Colleen Olfenbuttel, biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resource Commission told her about the BMAP program, which is not designed to eradicate beaver population but rather assist the N.C. Department of Transportation, local government and private landholders.

The program cost the participating county $4,000 annually, ODonell said with more than 45 counties currently participating. When someone has a conflict with a beaver, a federal employee will visit the area to assess the problem and offer solutions, including a flow device, tree management or trapping some of the beaver, ODonnell said. She said the program is used to supplement existing solutions in the county and not designed to put trappers out of business.

“In 2006 a survey found that trapping as a solution to beaver problems had a 79 percent failure rate within two years due to re-settlement by new beavers,” ODonnell told commissioners. “Conditions that attract beaver will always attract beaver.”

She added that flow devices are relatively cost-effective, low maintenance solutions that regulate the water level of dams and keep culverts open. An example of a flow device is a beaver deceiver, ODonnell said, which is a cage-like device that is installed into the dam and keeps the dam open.

USDA teaching flow devices and wrapping trees? Wait, what?Away to the google I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter and thew up the sash – or something.

Beaver Management Assistance Program (BMAP)

A major goal of the BMAP is to educate the public and participating landholders about the best strategies for managing beaver damage including the pros and cons of removing beaver or using pond levelers, exclusion, or other non-lethal techniques.

Does all USDA have a program that teaches good sense about beavers? Have I been unjustifiably unkind to them all these years? Should I change my comments to reflect their good many deeds? Or maybe this is a special program that some states choose to ‘opt in’? Where can California sign up?

No where, it turns out. Because this program is limited to North Carolina.

Of course, you and I must have the same questions. How did a program like this get started in 2009 in NC? And why don’t we have one? Especially when South Carolina was famous for taking stimulus money to kill beavers? To the extent that I have any contacts at all, believe me when I say I am pursuing answers. In the mean time, we should all take a moment to get off our ‘California high- horse’ and salute the awesome talents of North Carolina.

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Now an update an a heartfelt apology. If you undertook the challenge yesterday of Bruce Thompson’s beaver crossword puzzle you no doubt are aware of my deep, deep deficiencies. It turns out I am a terrible beaver blogger and have woefully unprepared all of you for facing the intricacies of beaver world. There is so much I cannot teach you because I, in fact, do not know. For instance, there’s number 16. across “How do beavers keep warm in the winter”(two words).

To which the answer apparently is BROWN FAT. Which apparently is a real thing explaining the adipose tissue of certain animals that aren’t born lucky enough to be able to shiver to stay warm. No, I’m not kidding. This is the kind of information that you, a devoted reader of a beaver website – yea the ONLY beaver website to be updated daily – should dam well expect to know. And I have let you down.

I’m so sorry. Things will be different in the future. I promise.

Nothing Could Be Finer…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 27, 2012

The beavers are on the warpath in North Carolina, kicking ass and taking names building dams and taking trees along the 70 mile stretch from Cary to Greensboro. This picture was snapped by someone enjoying Bond Park and sent to a columnist who wrote that the beavers were ‘being relocated’, which I’m sure you understand as well as I do. (You know like when your parents told you that puppy went to ‘live on the farm’.)

I did a little searching for the Beaver Man and found the number is linked to the home of a 77 year old man in Stantonsburg NC. No business listing but his (?) son is listed as the rifle safety coordinator for the North Carolina Trappers Association, so that’s nice. Gosh, I can’t tell you how surprised I am that someone with the name ‘beaver man‘ on his truck turns out to be a trapper!

Well apparently they have lots of feelings about beavers in NC because look at this clip from Greensboro where they are worried that beavers will ruin their water quality.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but are you saying that this town rips out beaver dams over and over, tipping mud and silt and debris into the water again and again and then worries about water quality? Apparently the terms ’cause’ and ‘effect’ are not well understood in the area. Dear, challenged Greensboro. Don’t you know that beaver dams are sometimes called the ‘earth’s kidneys‘ because their filtering actually improves water quality?

Well, the benefits of beavers bandwagon may not have reached North Carolina yet, but it certainly has been making the rounds. Yesterday I received a call from Guelph, Ontario about printing my letter to the editor, a call from Maine from someone who wanted to save some beavers in the city park and start their own beaver festival there, and an email from Kentucky where a certain young stopmotion filmmaker we are fond of spent an hour with a reporter walking through bulldozed beaver habitat and talking about their benefits to the ecosystem.

To paraphrase for our friends in North Carolina: the arc of restoration may be long but it bends towards beavers!

Greensboro will ‘try’

heidi08 City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? September 19, 2010

Some back story. Greensboro has beaver problems. The city is prepared to kill them but residents don’t want them to. There’s a vet on the city council who doesn’t want to either. So she tried to get a change in the law that will allow them to be relocated instead. Turns out it’s possible.

That means one cruel reality for them: Greensboro’s proposed beaver management policy calls for euthanasia as the solution of last resort. “We’re going to do everything we can,” said Allan Williams, the city’s water resources director. “We’re not going to kill the little buggers unless we have to.”

That sentence is worth a column I think, and certainly a new feature on the ‘who’s killing beavers now’ roster. As you can tell by his affectionate compassion-weary language, Mr. Williams is HIGHLY motivated to find a means to solve their problem other than killing beavers. (Kind of like if you had put off doing your fourth grade mission report for four weeks and then your mom marches you into the library to get some books and you wander around sullenly and come out saying, I looked and looked but there are NO books in there!) He’s so motivated that the article says further down that they even looked into those new-fangled flow devices thingys that all the kids are talking about. He is sure they wouldn’t work for Greensboro, but they won’t kill the beavers until they HAVE to.

Translation: until there’s enough damage or threat of damage to create public cover for our decision.

Gosh I’m cynical, aren’t I? I better work on that. In the mean time let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time there was a city called Martinez where the public works department noticed some beavers in an urban creek. They called a neighboring city and said, what should we do? And the city said, kill em’! We do it all the time. Actually, you might know this story. There were some a lot of very difficult noisy residents in this town who said we don’t want you to kill them!!! And the city said, okay we’ll move them for you even though its usually illegal. And the residents said NO we want to keep them! Find another solution! The city said it’s hard but okay we’ll TRY. “We won’t kill the little buggers unless we have to.”

Some more back story: A year later one of these difficult residents was talking to a pointedly unnamed elected official of the city who said, we were so worried about what to do with these beavers! Then I went home and on Animal Planet there was this whole program with Skip Lisle installing a beaver deceiver and it saved the town! I was so happy, I called the director of public works and the city manager so we could watch it together.

Meanwhile there was a grand meeting with all the difficult townsfolk and the city where a very funny thing happened. Everyone standing in the audience talked about the use of flow devices to control beaver problems, and no one sitting on the stage did. How could it be that the simple act of sitting changed the conversation so drastically? At one point a standing woman said, “why doesn’t staff report contain any information about the use of flow devices?” And the city manager smiled weakly with all the charm of a two year old with cookies behind his back and answered “We didn’t think they would work for this area“.

So you see why I am cynical. In all the world of beaver killing there is really nothing new under the sun. Well Martinez has news for Greensboro. Our flow device was installed three years ago. The dam has been maintained at a safe height since that time. Our beavers have been a civic, environmental and social asset to this city. And yes, flow devices do work for this area.

When beaver activity causes damage or a public safety threat — and all other options fail — the city will consider trapping and killing the animals. “Under the laws of the state, you get to the point where all you can do is trap them,” Williams said. Wade said the city’s hands are tied because of the General Assembly’s decision. “It looks like they did everything they could not to bring the trappers in,” she said. Wade, who is running for state Senate, said if she is elected, she hopes to help Vaughan work on that issue next year.

If you would like to write Greensboro your very own thoughts here’s some addresses.

Mayor pro temp nancy.vaughan@greensboro-nc.gov

Council woman with a heart trudy.wade@greensboro-nc.gov

Allan E. Williams, P.E., Director
Allan.Williams@greensboro-nc.gov

david.phlegar@greensboro-nc.gov

Reporter amanda.lehmert@news-record.com