Tag: Owens Valley Beavers

Good news and a goodbye

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? June 8, 2014

Natural flood engineers

Some say beavers are a cheap alternative for mitigation

In the midst of frenzied flood prevention work throughout Alberta, some river ecology specialists are looking to the beaver to protect the province’s watersheds. A group of wildlife management organizations including the Alberta Habitat Management Society (known as Cows and Fish), the Miistakis Institute and the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area are working together on a series of projects to demonstrate how beavers are integral to natural flood and drought prevention and riparian health.

I think I finally understand how Medicine Hat got so smart about beavers! I also realize I’ve been in the beaver biz for so long I re-discoved my comment about how they mistakenly used the muskrat photo from High Country News. (Let’s give credit where credit is due – it was a GREAT article. But lousy photo). I like everything else about this video except the part where it implies humans are needed to determine the appropriate beaver population. Sheesh.

Cows and Fish riparian specialist Kathryn Hull has been involved with beaver management for the City of Calgary since 2007. She says that although Calgary will still trap destructive beavers and break up dams, the city is still quite progressive in managing the animals.

“Sadly for beavers, many of our urban riparian landscapes are really no longer functional ecosystems that can sustain or be resilient to beaver impacts,” she says. “There’s a lot of rock, a lot of rip-rapping being put in along the banks to protect those banks from erosion…. That’s of course a choice and consequence of developing within the flood plain. We’re now having to do this to protect our infrastructure, but of course it doesn’t offer much habitat,” she adds.

Hmm. I know a particular city with sheetpile, rip-rap and concrete where beavers fit in just fine! We should talk.

Another kindly beaver read this morning comes from Charelston. It isn’t as positive as the one from Alberta, but remember, it’s from West Virginia and we’re grading on a curve.

Scott Shalaway: Beaver tales

Though large and common, beavers are seldom seen unless you know where to look. The best time to see beavers is at dusk on a summer evening. And the best place is on quiet water from a kayak or canoe.

Or a bridge in Martinez. This is basically a ‘beavers are fun to watch’ article, but I never discount the value of paying attention, with a very minor tweak interest can turn into caring, and caring can turn into advocacy.

Remember, that’s how I got started.

As the pond grows, the area’s soil chemistry changes and water tolerant trees such as willows and alders, invade. Not surprisingly, the bark and tender twigs of these trees are favorite beaver foods. The pond itself invites wood ducks, black ducks, muskrats, otters, mink, and trout. Fly fisherman value the locations of secluded beaver ponds.

See what I mean?

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Speaking of beaver advocates, I got word this week that friend of this website and general wildlife advocate Donna Richardson died after a riding incident near the iconic Hollywood sign. You may remember Donna was instrumental in pushing the Los Angelos Department of Water and Power in Owen’s Valley to respond to beavers in other ways than trapping. Donna discovered they had been ripping out dams with a helicopter and a grappling hook, inspiring one my favorite graphics of all times. As we strategized about various effective approaches, Donna would often jokingly refer to me as her Best Beaver-Friend Forever. Ultimately her dedication made a huge difference in the outcome. As a thank you for her heroic deeds I sent her a very small beaver chew from one of our many samples. Her partner Alan wrote me this week and said;

One of Donna’s proudest moments in her life came from her successful effort to persuade the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to end its practice of trapping and killing beavers in the Owens Valley. She was inspired by your earlier success in Martinez and she could not have accomplished her mission without the encouragement and support you gave to her. The card you sent to Donna with the wonderful beaver photo and the wooden icon you gave her still remain in the place where she put them, on a small table close to our dining area. They meant a lot to her and they mean a lot to me.

Sniff. Oh, Alan we are so sorry for your loss, and so grateful our beaver paths crossed. Thank you for your beautiful words, and I’m so glad those simple treasures can continue to mean a lot to you. Under other circumstances I might be surprised that I feel such sorrow about a woman I never met, but I have never forgotten this essential truth:

Beavers change things. It’s what they do.

Rest now, BFFF. In your honor I’m adding a new category to the post classifications. I call it “Who’s saving beavers now?”

Mission Intolerable!

heidi08 Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 6, 2011

Remember the beavers in Owens Valley? The LA Department of Water and Power decided that they posed a threat to their intricate canal system and needed killing. They announced a new trapper contract for March and were looking for just the right price to do the job. This barbarism caught the attention of a local animal defender who has been in contact with us, the Sierra Club, the SPCA and the Humane Society. She got a hold of a court document that casually mentioned using helicopters to remove beaver dams and was understandably curious. Fool that I was, I assured her that it probably meant using helicopters to fly someone into the back country and pick out the dam with a clam rake. Oh no gentle readers. She received this yesterday:

To clarify, the Department’s use of helicopters is limited to times when wets conditions do not permit vehicle and equipment access or the when use of equipment might result in undesired riparian damage. Typically a helicopter mounted with a cable and grab hook removes the dams and on occasion crews are flown in to remove the dams by hand. However, the Department does not attempt actual beaver control via helicopters.

Turn off those extra lights and dripping faucets Los Angeles! You ratepayers are covering tens of thousands of dollars for LADWP to hover over water surfaces in the hills, backing up and forth until the dams been hooked and then a few more sweeps to break up the debris. Then the whole process again a little downstream. Then the entire thing again next week when the beavers rebuild. That means the fuel, the pilot salary, and payment for the ‘hooker'(s)’.

The letter goes on to describe how beaver must be killed because they aren’t native to Owens Valley and are destroying the riparian habitat and making mosquitoes. Where to begin? Our historian friend points me to these references:

Beaver were re-introduced to the Owens Valley by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1948 in Baker Creek,[31] and have since spread throughout the Owens Valley.[32] Although it is controversial whether beaver were once native to the Owens Valley, there is growing evidence that they were native to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. In particular, the northern Paiute of Walker Lake, Honey Lake and Pyramid Lake have a word for beaver su-i’-tu-ti-kut’-teh.[33] When Stephen Powers visited the northern Paiute to collect Indian materials for the Smithsonian Institution in preparation for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he reported that the northern Paiute wrapped their hair in strips of beaver fur, made medicine from parts of beaver and that their creation legend included beaver. In addition, fur trapper Stephen Hall Meek “set his traps on the Truckee River in 1833”, which strongly suggests that he saw beaver or beaver sign.[34] Supporting this line of evidence, Tappe records in 1941 an eyewitness who said beaver were plentiful on the upper part of the Carson River and its tributaries in Alpine County until 1892 when they fell victim to heavy trapping.[35]

The letter doesn’t miss a single piece of BBM (blatant beaver misrepresentation), stopping to mention that beavers kill fish by raising water temperatures and lowering dissolved oxygen levels. All of which was painstakingly proven to be false by Dr. Pollock’s research on the effect of dams on groundwater temperatures. Never mind, it seems true to many, and that’s better than actual facts when it comes to making excuses for killing beavers.

LADWP has no prejudice towards beaver eradication, however, since the historical Owens Valley has no beaver population, inclusion of this species must be managed. This is why the state’s wildlife agency, CDFG, provides ultimate determinations on necessary beaver control and acceptable methods for our contractors to abide by. As a follow-up to my note last Friday, I was told today that we expect the trapping spec to be advertised again within a month.

And so it goes. LADWP has NO PREJUDICE towards those godless fish-killing, mosquito-bringing, tree-destroying, non-native beavers. They are just MANAGING them. They deserve a host of letters but allow me to say in closing, Northern California didn’t send Southern California all that water for you to kill beavers in.

Progress

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's Killing Beavers Now? March 10, 2011

Things are looking much better for the Owens Valley Beavers, previously doomed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power who announced in February that they were putting a contract on their lives. A feisty local advocate, gleaning information from this website, has taken it upon herself to champion their cause. We have been exchanging regular emails, crafting letters to LADWP, and planning her next moves. She has been horrified by conversations with Fish and game and has been judiciously hounding LASPCA, LA Sierra Club, and HSUS about their safety. I know Skip Lisle was contacted by HSUS about the work, and yesterday our LA-liaison finally saw things click into place. Maybe they can turn from a ‘who’s killing beavers now’ story into a ‘happy ending beaver story’. Fingers crossed.

(Two days ago, feeling the beginnings of success, she made a thank you donation to Worth A Dam. I asked her t-shirt size to send off and she demurred, saying all she really wished she could have was a beaver chew, too bad we didn’t have those for sale…)

Let’s just say I think she’ll enjoy her mail today.

Cheryl stopped by this morning and snapped this photo of a beaver near the footbridge. She writes “

Went out this am saw 2 beavers, one going across the break in the primary, got there just a couple minutes too late, basically saw a tail flip up and then he went upstream. 3 Kingfishers,were zooming up and down the creek. One kit (yearling!!) was under the blackberries upstream of the footbridge, I got a not so great early am shot of him.

Once upon a time…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Environmental, Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 15, 2011

Once upon a time, not long ago, there were some beavers swimming and chewing happily in the Owens Valley River in southern california. Hardly anyone noticed that their dams created habitat for numerous waterfowl – the felled trees made homes for obligate nesters, and chewing produced coppicing with dense bushy regrowth that migratory and song birds preferred. One tireless audubon advocate noticed that their ponds flooded some cottonwoods which were the homes of these remarkable birds.

That advocate wrote in the Eastern Sierra Newsletter:

It is important that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the California Department of Fish and Game address this critical issue sooner and not later. Audubon members are urged to contact the Inyo County Board of Supervisors, the California Department of Fish and Game in Bishop and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in Bishop to urge them to begin controlling beaver numbers along the lower Owens River in the Lone Pine area (and elsewhere in the southern valley?). The threat to the Great Blue Herons due to girdling or drowning of nesting trees is real and will worsen.

It seems Michael Prather’s warning was the ‘shot heard round LA’ – or at least provided an excellent excuse for the reflexive decision to kill beavers. Los Angeles Water & Power was only too happy to dress up their beaver killin’ in a feathered Audubon suit, and decide without debate that the beavers in an entire range should be killed to protect the birds. Never mind that this was all done 10 years ago with disastrous and well documented results.

‘‘Beavers Will Die So Birds Can Survive.’’ This headline ran in the local Riverside, California, newspaper in January 1999 (Farwell 1999a). It marked the beginning of an effort by the management of the Southwestern Riverside County Multi-Species Reserve to eliminate beavers with the purpose of protecting songbird habitat.

concluding

Observations at Lake Skinner produced insufficient data to demonstrate that beavers harmed habitat for either least Bell’s vireo or southwestern willow flycatcher. In general, vegetation ‘‘managed’’ by beavers favors songbirds, both by providing nesting opportunities and boosting insect populations as a food base, some examples of which are summarized by Mu ller-Schwarze and Sun (2003).

Environ Manage (2007) 39:460-471: Management by Assertion: Beavers and Songbirds at Lake Skinner (Riverside County, California)

Travis Longcore , Catherine Rich & Dietland Muller-Schwarze

Alright, maybe beavers are good for little tiny birds, but Mr. Prather was worried about majestic blue herons. What about them? Funny thing, here’s an interesting paper put forward by Fish & Game in New Hampshire. Click on the link to read the highlighted sections which demonstrate the herons often nest in flooded dead trees of beaver ponds, and are in fact dependent on them.

Great Blue Heron (and beaver dependence) Kelly JR New Hampshire Fish and Game

Well, maybe those New England herons are different? How do we know that beavers are good for this specific habitat in this specific waterway? It’s not like there’s an technical study done on this exact location to assess the impact of beavers in Owens valley.

Oh.

Beaver ponds generally provide unique and valuable habitat for many species of wildlife. Increased structural complexity and high interspersion of unique plant communities and habitat features are important factors influencing wildlife species presence and abundance. High breeding bird density, bird species richness and diversity, and total breeding bird biomass are typically associated with beaver ponds.

Well sure, there may be some incidental good that beavers do for an area, but its the conclusion of the report that really matters. I’m sure that the department of water and power wouldn’t have made the decision to kill all the beavers if the report they commissioned had recommended something else.

Although beaver activity has resulted in the removal of much willow and other shrub and woody vegetation and the dams create favorable tule conditions and reduce fish spawning habitat, they also provide important fish rearing habitat, mesic meadows, and promote the growth of other riparian species. It is most likely that the physical removal of beaver dams will result in more adverse environmental impacts than environmental benefits.

It is our conclusion that beaver dams should be left as they are, allow the natural forces associated with future out-of-channel and base flows to remove or incorporate them into the riverine ecosystem, but focus on controlling the number of beaver by reach through trapping as the management strategy.

Wow.

So a commissioned report advised keeping a healthy population of beavers, beaver dams have been proven to benefit birds including the great blue heron, and Mr. Prather is still able to say “eek beaver!” and provide environmental cover for a species genocide campaign that not a single reporter can be bothered to question.

Are we surprised?

(Many thanks to RL for finding the articles that made ashes of the Owens valley beaver killing argument.)

Loose Ends

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, In the News, kits, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 13, 2011

Damlet 2/12/11: Cheryl Reynolds Cheryl stopped by to take some pictures before the flyway festival so you could see the work in progress. Isn’t it a beauty? You can see it’s mostly made of reeds and mud, which is a great way to start a dam! Our wikipedia friend has just posted this update on the Owen’s Beavers bruhaha in LA. As usual, its some nicely referenced writing. Hopefully it will get the attention of some one in the media! Ecology The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) haOurs recently decided to trap beaver (Castor canadensis) out of the Owens Valley, claiming that beaver are damming flows into their diversions of water to Los Angeles.¹This decision runs counter to an independent assessment commissioned by LADWP and the Inyo County Water Department in 1997, where it was recommended that beaver be maintained in reasonable populations and their dams left in place because “Although beaver activity has resulted in the removal of much willow and other shrub and woody vegetation and the dams create favorable tule conditions and reduce fish spawning habitat, they also provide important fish rearing habitat, mesic meadows, and promote the growth of other riparian species. It is most likely that the physical removal of beaver dams will result in more adverse environmental impacts than environmental benefits.”²Beaver were re-introduced to the Owens Valley by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1948 in Baker Creek, and have since spread throughout the Owens Valley.³ Although it is controversial whether beaver were once native to the Owens Valley, there is growing evidence that they were native to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. In particular, the northern Paiuteof Walker Lake, Honey Lake and Pyramid Lake have a word for beaver su-i’-tu-ti-kut’-teh ⁴. When Stephen Powers visited the northern Paiute to collect Indian materials for the Smithsonian Institution in preparation for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, he reported that the northern Paiute wrapped their hair in strips of beaver fur, made medicine from parts of beaver and that their creation legend included beaver.⁵ In addition, fur trapper Stephen Hall Meek “set his traps on the Truckee River in 1833”, which strongly suggests that he saw beaver or beaver sign.6 Supporting this line of evidence, Tappe records in 1941 an eyewitness who said beaver were plentiful on the upper part of the Carson River and its tributaries in Alpine County until 1892 when they fell victim to heavy trapping.⁷ ^ “LA to hire beaver trappers for Owens Valley”. 2011-02-09. Retrieved 2011-02-12. ^ (1997) Technical Memorandum #3 Distribution and Abundance of Beaver in the Lower Owens River. Ecosystem Sciences. (Report). Retrieved 2011-02-12. ^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Baker Creek ^ Richard E. Warner, Kathleen M. Hendrix (1984). California riparian systems: ecology, conservation, and productive management. University of California Press. p. 80.ISBN 9780520050358. Retrieved 2011-02-12. ^ ^a ^b Don D. Fowler, Catherine S. Fowler, Stephen Powers (Summer-Autumn, 1970).“Stephen Powers’ “The Life and Culture of the Washo and Paiutes””. Ethnohistory, Vol. 17, No. 3/4: 117–149. Retrieved 2011-02-12. ^ Jesse D. Mason (1881). History of Amador County. Oakland, California: Thompson & West. Retrieved 2011-02-12. ^ Tappe, Donald T. (1942). “The Status of Beavers in California”. Game Bulletin No. 3(California Department of Fish & Game): 14. Retrieved 2011-02-12. Gosh wikipedia beaver editor. You’re the BEST! A final note, just got word from Stan (The president of SURCP) that he received the copy of my presentation and his VERY OWN KEYSTONE SPECIES charm bracelet! He says thank you very much!