Tag: Protecting trees from Beavers

Class reunion: Stand-outs and Drop-outs

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Who's Killing Beavers Now? November 4, 2013

Mary Willson: Curiosity-driven life

Mary Willson sets up a mist net during her work involving American Dippers. They banded caught birds and, over the course of their study, found that contrary to the results of a study conducted outside Alaska, male American Dippers in this environment play a role in nest sanitation.

Though it’s hard to pinpoint when she first became interested in ecology, she was always curious about the world. It was when she was in graduate school that she discovered instead of going to the library to look something up, she could go outside and find out for herself.

“The answer was not in the literature. It was essentially an unknown, and you could go and find it out. That’s very cool,” she said. After her first grad school course, “there was really no turning back.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. She is the friend of Bob Armstrong in Juneau that worked on the Mendenhall glacier treasure, which I still love leafing through. The pair also invited Mike Callahan come out, survey the area and to do a beaver management plan for the site in 2009 and lead a volunteer group in the meantime to keep removing dams so that no one needed to trap them. Looks like she’s still a believer.

Willson goes for regular walks with friends including Armstrong and Hocker, on which they usually find at least three or four really interesting things to explore, she said. She volunteers as a member of the informally-dubbed “beaver patrol,” which helps monitor beaver habitat and ensure dams don’t negatively affect trails or other wildlife around the Mendenhall Lake and Dredge Lake.

“The idea is that you don’t have to kill the beavers. They’re actually useful. We like them, but they make ponds that are very good for juvenile coho,” Willson said. The ponds also create habitat for ducks, sandpipers, warblers, and other birds.

Yes they do, Mary. Nicely put. You are the voice of nature in Juneau, was just met some folks who lived in Alaska and sang your praises. Keep preaching the beaver gospel and let us know if you ever need help.

And because this is OLD HOME week at beaver central, we might as well visit an old classmate that didn’t do as well.

Beavers return to Park at Riverwalk

In 2007, a beaver which destroyed several trees along the bike path received an outpouring of support from the community after California Department of Fish & Game officials issued a kill order. The issue received national attention and the kill order was later rescinded.

According to Bakersfield City Clerk Roberta Gafford, beavers have been spotted recently at The Park at River Walk .In a release, Gafford said that “staff is in the process of wrapping trees with green nylon fencing, and will continue to monitor tree damage.”

That’s right, the city that famously learned the hard way that orange netting to protect trees doesn’t work and looks silly has turned over a new leaf. After years of letters of phone calls from me personally, as well as countless others, they finally understand that killing beavers brings national controversy their way and they have learned the error of their ways. They fully understand why that netting failed last time.

It was the wrong color.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? February 13, 2013

Recently there was another article about protecting trees by trapping beavers. I wrote the editor and received an invitation to write an op-ed in response. Okay then! I thought I’d practice here.

Trapping, as you know, is a short-term solution that will need to be repeated again and again when new beavers return to the area, often within the year. It almost always makes more sense to keep the beavers you have, solve any problems they are causing directly, and let them use their naturally territorial behaviors to keep others away.

Protecting trees is a fairly easy problem to fix. Wrapping them with in a cylinder of wire (not chicken wire because beavers are way bigger than chickens) 2×4 galvanized fencing is best and will guarantee the trees will be protected. Remember to leave enough space for the tree to grow! Another, less obtrusive idea is to use abrasive painting. Chose a latex paint that matches the color of the bark, and add heavy mason sand to the mix at the last moment, and paint the trunks to about 4 feet. The beavers dislike the gritty texture and will not chew. This will need to be repeated every two years or so.

Remember that beaver chewed trees will ‘coppice’ which is an old forestry term referring to hard cutting back a tree so that it grows in bushy and more dense. This is why beavers are so important to the nesting numbers of migratory and songbirds – their chewing creates iprime real estate for a host of bird life. Willow is very fast-growing and if the stumps are left in the ground they will replenish quickly. In Martinez we have seen our urban willow re-flourish time and time again.

Research has shown that Beaver activity has a dynamic and generative impact on willow. In addition to cutting trees, their ponding and damming actually creates more ideal riparian border for willow to sprout. In fact some researchers have even referred to beaver as “willow farmers”. One USFS project in Oregon recently introduced beavers specifically to enrich the riparian border. Remember that in West Sacramento and Martinez beavers eat lots of other foods as well, including tules, fennel, blackberries and pond weed!

Why should a city learn to tolerate beavers? They are a keystone species that create a dramatic impact on the spaces they cultivate – even urban and suburban spaces. Here in Martinez we have documented several new species of birds and fish since they colonized our creek, as well as otter and mink! In addition, beavers are considered a ‘charismatic species’ which means that children love to learn about them and they provide a great educational tool for teaching about habitat, ecosystems and stewardship.

Why not involve the local boyscout troop or science class planting willow shoots every spring? To see these techniques first-hand for yourself, why not ride amtrak to Martinez and check out our urban beaver habit. We even have a beaver festival in August. This year will be the sixth.

Heidi Perrman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

www.matinezbeavers.org

Pockets of Hope

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions December 16, 2012

Valley News Live – KVLY/KXJB – Fargo/Grand Forks

For some reason, North Dakota is surprisingly pragmatic about beavers. Even though Minnesota to the East and Wyoming to the west and Sascatchewan to the North and South Dakota right below them are all abysmal examples of beaver management, North Dakota is that rare glimpse of management with stewardship and understanding. I don’t really understand it. I just like it.

“Probably the most economical way of dealing with beaver is wrapping the trees, probably a couple three feet up as high as a beaver can stand off the ground, with chicken wire or some kind of wire mesh to keep the beavers in, they’ll leave it alone.” says Doug Leier with North Dakota Game and Fish.

Please explain to me why we get an answer like that from NDGF and can’t get a glimmer of hope out of California? I long to know, what Collier-reading nature-lovin’ wise ranger is lurking in the background or history of the department. This makes me weirdly happy, since if we are able to get a few states to pass the word we can seep beaver good news all around the country.

It could happen to you…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental November 19, 2012

Remember the beavers in Amherst New York that were chewing down memorial trees? They city voted to kill them (of course) and brought in the DEC who accidentally reported in front of a news camera that conibear traps drown the beaver. (I’m quite sure that his second day of ranger school he was told to never, never say that even if its true.) As a result tons of concerned folks poured into the city meeting and saved the day. Volunteers would wrap the trees and beavers wouldn’t be killed.

For Now.

Apparently it turns out that those selfish beavers still want to feed their families throughout the frozen winter and they think your ornamental birch would help nicely, thank you very much. Having a tree removed from your front yard apparently makes reasonable home owners postal because this lovely woman can’t see how her lawn’s rights aren’t worth an animals life. Go figure.

Never mind that there are volunteers that would have wrapped that tree for you if you picked up the phone and asked. I’m guessing you have WIVB on speed dial so its much easier to call them and whine about the damage than it is to bother and prevent it.

I’ve already heard from one of the volunteers this morning reminding the highway superintendent that they can help protect trees and that spending time wiping out beaver dams is not a very good use of public funds. Sharon and Owen Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife went out and toured the area personally, telling folks what steps to take. I guess they must have known that beavers cut down trees but they never thought they’d cut down THEIR trees.

You never think it will happen to you.

‘All I did was doubt that

You would eat my tree

and it happened to me“

Strawberry Creek Forever!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere July 8, 2012

Restoration project seeks to outwit beavers; volunteers fence trees near Strawberry Creek to deter rodents

Jessica Cejnar/The Times-Standard

”About three months ago, they [beavers] took down a couple hundred to 300 trees in two nights,” said Bob Pagliuco, a habitat restoration specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “So we banded together to come up with a solution.”

Some people wanted to remove or relocate the beavers, Pagliuco said. Others wanted to kill them. But beavers are important to the ecosystem and to coho salmon, Pagliuco said, so they came up with another solution.

About 30 volunteers descended upon Strawberry Creek on Saturday for the AmeriCorps’ volunteer day to help fence off the trees, which include willows, alders, spruce and redwoods. The volunteers come from the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, the California Conservation Corps and the non-profit group Pacific Coast Fish, Wildlife and Wetlands Restoration Association.

We first heard about this tree wrapping project from our beaver friend Eli Asarian at Riverbend Sciences in Eureka. He said that there was originally a request for a depredation (kill) permit and that it was denied. DENIED! The California Department of Fish and Game (North Coast) said “NO” you can’t kill the beavers until you tried another way to solve the problem. Wow! The mind reels! The jaw drops!

At that time the plan was to wrap the trees with chicken wire because they couldn’t afford much fencing wire. I contacted the project and explained that chicken wire would only work reliably on those beavers that were the same size as chickens! And thought that if they were going to undertake such a huge project and use all those volunteers it needed to be successful or otherwise folks will say its a wasted effort! I talked about the benefits of sand painting, which they could consider for the larger trees.

The volunteers will also apply a latex-sand paint to the trees to try to dissuade the beavers from eating them, said Todd Carlin, a member.

Well, okay then! Seems like folks at Strawberry Creek have all the right idea. Apparently they get this whole beaver benefit – keystone species – thing – and the Coho salmon message has hit home hard!

”We’re trying to keep mindful of the importance of beaver in the ecosystem, especially with coho salmon,” Carlin said. “We jumped on (the project) to serve as an example that you don’t need a depredation permit; you don’t need to relocate the beaver — they can cohabitate here. We’re just trying to see if this will be successful, and then we can apply it to other projects.”

”These dams they build back up water and create a pond environment,” he said. “What we’ve been finding in the winter and in summer, these pond environments are extremely productive. There’s lots of fish growing in beaver ponds, and they’re found to grow significantly faster than the fish growing higher up in the tributaries.”

In the withered desert of public opinion where minds are made up and nothing new grows, the hardened soil surrounding attitudes towards beavers has been hard packed for 50 years – but in the northern reaches of state the salmon message at least is starting to SINK IN. Good job all! Now trickle down here to the bay area, will ya?