Meanwhile in Oregon, they had another beaver event Thursday Night based on the Beaver Tales Art show. They have been slowly drawing such important folks out of the woodwork to talk about beaver benefits. Thursday it was the turn of retired biology teacher turned wildlife photographer Neil Maine.
To celebrate beavers and their contribution to the ecology of the North Coast, the nonprofit organizations have teamed up with local businesses to host the Beaver Tales Art Exhibit and Sale in Seaside. The purpose of the exhibit is to highlight the importance of beavers in creating wetlands and other aquatic habitat.
Neal Maine will explain how beavers engineer wetlands on the North Coast, and how people can learn to take advantage of their environmental benefits while protecting property from flooding and other damage. Maine’s vast experience in studying and photographing wildlife enables him to tell fascinating stories about these industrious little rodents that most people never se
This is probably a relative of the beavers currently working Stanley Marsh; Neal Maine caught this beaver in action at Thompson Creek a couple of years ago.
Here I was thinking what a negligent lapse it was that I didn’t already know who Neil Maine was until I saw I had already written about him way back in 2015 when the North Coast Land Conservancy used this photo for their great restoration project letting beavers do the restoration at Stanley Marsh.
(And just in case you’re wondering yes, that actually looks like a muskrat to me too.)
Anyway Neil has definitely photographed real beavers as well, and I’m sure he had an awesome presentation that evening. The articles I saw offered a couple amazing photos of his that were definitely not muskrat-y. The art show Beaver Tales has really put together a fantastic beaver ad-campaign whose benefits will be felt for years. Kudos to the Wetland Conservancy and the North Coast Land Trust for pulling it off.
When you think of it, it’s pretty darned generous of beavers to groom every day just so that we get a nice chance to photograph them.
The waterway formerly known as Ditch Creek, trickling into Stanley Marsh on the east side of Seaside, is undergoing an incredible transformation—or perhaps incredible is the wrong word. In fact, it is exactly what you would expect to see after you take a few simple steps to invite beavers into the landscape.
It was suggested to the developer that he consider compensating for the loss of the wetlands at his place of business by enhancing the wetland at Stanley Marsh. Doug Ray of Carex Consulting is a former board member and big fan of NCLC; he was able to create a plan for his client that matched NCLC’s vision of stewardship for the property: rather than bringing in lots of heavy equipment to reshape the land according to a human’s idea of restoration, take simple steps to create the conditions that would encourage nature’s own wetland engineers—beavers—to do it.
For their part, the beavers are just taking care of themselves, creating and growing ponds that allow them to travel by water and avoid terrestrial predators. In that process, they’re also creating refuges for juvenile salmon, shorebirds such as snipes, songbirds such as bluebirds that use the hummocks in the marsh—all those species and many more have been spotted in the newly inundated marsh this spring. “This diversity of life—it can’t be there without what beavers do,” Doug says. “They’re a keystone species.”
It’s definitely not a ‘ditch creek’ anymore. It’s like Beavertopia.”
Fantastic work and an excellent new word from Doug Ray! This is smart beaver-assisted restoration which will quickly make the beaver rounds I’m sure. I must confess that my favorite part is when they put in the ‘starter dam’ to attract the beavers, but the beavers decided to build their own from scratch 3 feet upstream! Nobody knows creeks better than beavers.
The article has the misfortune to start out with this photo described as a beaver. Ahem.
This is probably a relative of the beavers currently working Stanley Marsh; Neal Maine caught this beaver in action at Thompson Creek a couple of years ago.
I don’t blame Neal. It looks exactly like this photo of a “beaver” from the famous High Country News Article.
There’s a reason they look alike. And it’s because neither of them are beavers. They’re both muskrats as we know too well here at beaver central. I wrote HCN ages ago to change this, but they decided in their infinite wisdom to ignore me. So let’s see if NCLT is more responsive.
Never mind. It’s a great article. And if more people follow its advice they will all end up seeing the real thing more often and being able to tell the difference for themselves!
If you hadn’t figured it out already, all involved (including staff at the land management agencies) are thrilled with the outcome; the project’s success has exceed all expectations. “It’s just this miracle that results from letting the beavers do their work,” as Doug puts it.
“I kept my faith in the beavers.”
As should we all, Doug. Nicely put.
There’s some nice new research from Cherie Westbrook in Alberta, who might want to re-estabilsh her beaver cred after her silly ‘beaver cause global warming’ research last year. This is much better, and is featured today in science news.
MONTREAL — Busy beavers can curtail rising floodwaters, new research shows. The work suggests that beaver dams can provide natural flood protection and that officials should consider encouraging beaver construction projects as part of flood prevention plans, the researchers say.
As 19 centimeters of rain soaked Alberta, Canada, over three days in June 2013, Westbrook, of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and colleagues monitored beaver dams along a stream. Water levels behind the dams rose 10 to 50 centimeters during the storm, postponing and reducing the peak surge of water flowing down the stream.
During the rainstorm, a 10-meter-wide breach burst open in one of the dams, causing a torrent of water to gush downstream. Surprisingly, despite the large rupture, the damaged dam still held back 15 centimeters of water as the storm progressed.
Excellent! It must be great to be a beaver researcher looking into benefits. Because you never run out of material. I’m sure as the climate changes they’ll be contrasting poles of interest all across the world. Beaver dams help flooding. Beaver dams help drought.
Don’t you sometimes get the feeling that no matter what science finds people will ignore it and kill them anyway? I mean we’re already ignoring their impact on salmon, trout, frogs, drought, flooding. I suppose tomorrow they might report that beaver dams reduce Alzheimer’s and we will still keep right on trapping them.
Courtesy of Neal Maine The North Coast Land Conservancy will hold a Saturday work day Feb. 23, to help restore beaver habitat at Stanley Marsh. Submitted photo by Neal Maine/PacificLight Images
SEASIDE – Join the North Coast Land Conservancy (NCLC) Saturday Morning Stewardship volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 23, to help build safe homes for the North Oregon Coast’s best construction engineers – beavers. At the NCLC’s 80-acre Thompson Creek-Stanley Marsh property in Seaside, beavers are playing a key role in restoring ecological balance to the creek and surrounding wetlands. Thanks in no small part to the beaver’s good work, Thompson Creek now supports the largest run of native coastal coho salmon for a stream its size on the North Oregon coast.
You dream about things like this. You imagine the day over and over again in your head, making a scrap book of your crazy hopes so you can glance at it when you get discouraged. You pretend each day that maybe a glimmer like this will someday come around the corner. You hardly need a whiff on the horizon to keep you going. But nothing prepares you for this. Nothing.
In the fall of 2012, volunteers created habitat for resident beaver colonies at Stanley Marsh by providing foundation points for dam construction in Ditch Creek, excavating old pasture to create permanent wetland habitat, and building beaver kit houses to provide denning habitat for beaver families. During the upcoming work party, work will continue to add the finishing touches to the beaver kit houses by planting and stacking willows around the openings and walls of the lodges and plant additional wetland scrub-shrub species to provide food and shelter habitat for beavers.
Volunteers making stater homes for beavers. Planting trees to encourage them. Dam assembly kits where its easier to get traction. The North Coast Land Conservancy is a smart, savvy and very effective group of river keepers. Go check out their website if you want a reminder on how to do it right. And if you have cousins or uncles in Oregon tell them to turn out to help this Saturday!
Meanwhile in Oregon, they had another beaver event Thursday Night based on the Beaver Tales Art show. They have been slowly drawing such important folks out of the woodwork to talk about beaver benefits. Thursday it was the turn of retired biology teacher turned wildlife photographer Neil Maine.
