Roseville’s beavers shape landscape
Roseville resident Cynthia Schiada photographed the pond that developed behind Woodcreek High School in 2006. The pond dried up about two years ago, after the city had a beaver dam removed.
A few years ago, a pond existed behind Woodcreek High School to the delight of Roseville residents.
And who did they have to thank? The Roseville beaver population. But these creatures often wreak havoc on the natural ecosystem, or go against city planning, by building dams.
Excuses people make for killing beavers: #21,936.
I thought I’d seen everything in my five years as beaver crossing guard. I mean I’ve seen people say they need to kill beavers to protect trees, protect roads, protect salmon, protect nesting birds, and protect water quality, protect erosion and protect banks. But I’ve never seen this before. Roseville has risen to a new level on the beaver-phobic meter.
“The dam (in Kaseberg Creek) went unchecked for some time and the area was inundated with water,” Castelluccio said. “As a pond formed it began to hinder vernal pools in the area.”
Mr. Castelluccio is doing something very special here and I feel we should all take a moment to appreciate his work for the open spaces of Roseville. By using the term “vernal pools” he is employing a principal strategy in crowd management: “appearicus intelligentius obscura” in which the speaker invokes some word or phase the listeners will not understand to give the appearance of explaining his behavior. Nice work!
But beyond this initial obfuscation, Mr. Castelluccio is in fact waging a second battle intended for the more informed citizens of Roseville. Initially outlined by the famous case of EPA v Everything, the principal of this technique is to claim that something wild and inconvenient interferes with something else that’s more important but slightly less inconvenient, thus trumping the need to protect nature by promoting the obvious need to destroy it.
Vernal pools are ephemeral puddles of water during the winter and spring collected over hard substrate that won’t allow moisture to seep in. Since they are spontaneous, unconnected and temporary, they do not have fish, which makes them a fairly excellent place for certain frogs and salamanders to lay their eggs. Later when they dry up they become fertile patches of rare wild flowers or plants that are unique on the terrain.
They are a real thing, and an unique ecosystem with their own defenders, such as Vernalpools.org which explains their role and will even lead you on a tour of some better examples. They are a rapidly shrinking resource in California and their dwindling numbers have been repeatedly litigated and the subject of much alarm. By invoking this precious resource that an open space manager is charged to protect, Brian justifies removal of the beaver pond with “spotted owl” alacrity.
Never mind that the city of Roseville has probably bulldozed over half dozen vernal pools in the last 30 minutes – never mind that beaver ponds are essential to thousands of species, many of them rare or endangered — never mind even that raising the watertable could theoretically cause more and different Vernal Pools to be formed. I am reminded of the very special beaver shooting at a local reservoir in which they said the killing was necessary to protect the ‘red-legged frogs’.
Put two environmental groups in a jar, shake the jar, and keep them busy fighting each other while you build another parking lot.
Well, Roseville I hope your calculators are working. Because I want you to count every species in that beaver pond and assign a numerical weight to its value that takes into account both its rare nature, its relative importance to other species, and its visibility factor that allows it to be appreciated and enjoyed by residents – all times 4 because beaver ponds are there every season. And then do the same thing for your rare fairy shrimp or marsh grass and sit down at a city council meeting and say these are our choices. Because supporting one ephemeral aspect of nature does not prevent you from being responsible for the less temporary parts.
Roseville has begun to monitor beaver dams with GPS to determine if the animals return to prime locations. There are 70 miles of creeks in the city and 2,000 acres of preserves. When determining whether to remove a dam, the city looks at potential problems. Do they flood bike trails or roads, cause erosion of bridges or harm infrastructure? Do they pool up water causing oak trees to go underwater and die?
“In an urban environment, we take all those things into consideration,” Castelluccio said.
I’ll bet you do.
