Do you remember those books you loved before you could read easily? We called them ‘picture books’ and they were illustrated in such an understandable way that you always knew exactly what was happening without a single written word?
Well think of today’s post as a ‘picture book’.
I just learned how to make a GIF of some of my favorite 2008 Dad footage. Most of the tailslapping I saw from the beavers happened in their first two years with us. Obviously they grew more accustomed to people in their lives and it was directed at us less frequently. Maybe it was never directed at us anyway. There were nearly always otters around when they slapped and it was nearly always spring. I’m guessing they were protecting these:
I consider Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust in Kent a major beaver ally. He also happens to be my most reliable ally when it comes to finding beaver information in the UK. He’s wonderfully intelligent and earnest on camera and absolutely emphasizes the right things when talking about beavers. Apparently his dedication even won over journalist and Countryfile star Ellie Harrison, who surprised him this weekend with this.
Well deserved! Could NOT happen to a better beaver defender!
Finally Rusty of Napa photoghraped his first beavers together yesterday and his enviable fortune is our good luck this morning. Enjoy!
Shall the year of the buck-toothed beaver be upon us soon?
Beavers in this country happen to have their own fan club. I’ve heard from a few of its members this past week after my story about beavers was posted online.
“We were so happy to see it here in Martinez, CA,” Heidi Perryman, president and founder of an organization called Worth a Dam, wrote in an email. In her town, “we worked to coexist with beavers nearly 10 years ago by installing a flow device to control flooding. Now because of our safe, beaver-tended wetlands we regularly see otter, steelhead, wood duck and mink in our urban stream! And celebrate every year with an annual beaver festival.”
That’s right, folks, an annual beaver festival.
What’s unusual about that I ask? It’s always weird to discover my own words on someone else’s web page, but I’m really happy I wrote Whitney after her Urban beaver article last week. She wrote back that she had come across information from our website but felt it was too far away to be relevant to her article.
I guess we just got relevant.
Perhaps we are entering into a new age, the age of the interminable beaver. These buck-toothed, fluffy (when dry), flat-tailed tumblers of trees and engineers of our ecosystems are beginning to get a little more recognition rather than sheer derision in neighborhoods where they were once considered a nuisance.
When I told our editor Karl Blankenship that I wanted to write this story about beavers — spurred by a study out of the Northeast that looked at the nitrogen removal attributes of their dams — he sent me a trove of notes he’d collected about the critters. We’ve been watching beavers for a while, waiting for the pendulum to swing back in their favor, I suppose. Other comments on the story indicate the Year of Beaver might not be far away for our Bay area as well:
“Let’s hear a cheer for the eager beavers and clean water!” writes one commenter.
I like everything about this, but I disagree with Whitney and Karl in one respect. We can’t wait for the pendulum to “swing back”.We have to push it there.
Here’s just on reason why:
Climate models forecast significant changes in California’s temperature and precipitation patterns. Those changes are likely to affect fluvial and riparian habitat. Across the American West several researchers and civil society groups promote increased beaver (Castor canadensis) presence as a means to moderate such changes. Where beaver dams are persistent, they may sequester sediment and create wet meadows that can moderate floods, augment early summer baseflows, sequester carbon in soils and standing biomass, decrease ecological problems posed by earlier spring stream recession, and potentially help cool early summer and post-wildfire stream temperatures.
Go read the entire article here. Like any good researcher he spends a long time explaining why its true, then says it might not be true in other areas and more research is still needed. He also ends with the gloomy paragraph that beaver damage to infrastructure might be too expensive for most areas to manage. Hrmph. But I like any article that clutters the journal of fish and wildlife with more beavers, and Jeff’s a good beaver friend. So maybe they made him add that last paragraph.
Finally, a lovely 5 minutes from our friend Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust.
What has big hind feet and leaves a trail into the river that can be mistaken for an alligator slide?
A beaver.
That’s the consensus among wildlife experts and trappers about tracks found on Thursday on the Allegheny River bank in Cheswick.
He said he wouldn’t expect an alligator to leave a “trough” 3 to 4 inches deep like Gerhard described.
To leave a track that big the alligator would have to be very large, which means it likely would have been raised then released as an adult because a juvenile wouldn’t survive our winters.
The other telltale sign is that a close-up photograph that Gerhard took of one of the tracks shows three toes and a rear foot pad.
It more closely resembles a beaver track, rather than that of an alligator, which has more toes.
Why wouldn’t there be an alligator in Cheswick Pennsylvania? Never mind that it snows two feet every year and alligators are cold blooded. The witness is sure of it! Better ask a trapper for advice. Whatever it is, we’re sure that it’s icky. So killing it is our only possible recourse.
Was it a soldier beaver? (PA will never live that down. I think that was one of my top five favorite posts of all times.)
Mean while in the Duck Creek subdivision in Chicago they’ve had 6 inches of rain in two days, and homes are flooding. (Homes built illegally in a flood plain mind you, but never mind that.) They’re sure the flooding is caused by – what else? A beaver.
PORTAGE TOWNSHIP — The township trustee says Porter County officials told him they’ve removed a beaver dam that caused severe flooding recently in the Duck Creek subdivision, but residents have more questions and a regional water expert said other measures could be taken to reduce flooding problems.
Trustee Brendan Clancy said county officials told him that beavers built a dam near a standpipe in one of the nearby ponds, which worsened flooding of the subdivision’s streets and some homes about four weeks ago, when the area was hit with 6 inches of rain over two days.
6 inches of rain in two days? Good thing Global warming is a myth. I guess hundreds of thousands showed up for the myth march yesterday. On a related note, I have something VERY interesting to share about climate change and the Public Trust, but I’ll wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a great BBC radio program on reWilding that aired yesterday and was put up by Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust. Enjoy!
Shall the year of the buck-toothed beaver be upon us soon?
