Tag: Samantha Clark

Beavers & Water, Beavers & Water, Repeat as necessary.

Beautiful letter from Robin in Napa

Remember the importance of beavers in ecosystem

In speaking of water conservation, don’t forget our natural hydro-engineer, the beaver. Beaver dams create wetlands that provide habitat for mammals, fish, frogs, waterfowl and songbirds. These ponds lessen erosion, improve water quality and recharge aquifers. Research has shown they benefit salmon and trout, and are actually vital to restoring wild coho populations. The ponds not only help fishermen, but by raising water tables help ranchers and farmers.

The importance of beavers in the ecosystem was understood nearly 100 years ago, when they had been fur trapped out of existence in California, and Fish & Game commenced a lengthy reintroduction program. Today, many hundreds are taken by depredation permit each year, though coexistence is attainable. In Napa and Sonoma, beavers are routinely killed along creeks in Carneros. Perhaps it is time this drought-ridden state relearned an old lesson.

Robin Ellison

Great letter Robin! She even flushed out a beaver-phobe who commented that beaver droppings cause life threatening illnesses. Robin hit all the right points, and she didn’t let a boohoo drought article pass without mentioning the water-savers. I’m thrilled to think that we’ve played any kind of roll in inspiring the folks in Napa to carry the beaver torch. And to be honest, I’m reminded of how the beaver world used to treat me. Like a pleasantly surprising wildcard that cost them nothing and just added to the conversation. The first beaver conference was a fairytale. People treated me like a lucky penny and I had zero shoes to fill. There’s something to be said for anonymity were nobody expects anything from you.

(I would enjoy it now while you can.)

Speaking of which, our friends in Scotland held their first-ever beaver conference this weekend. They brought out Mike Callahan to talk flow devices, and the event was well attended. Here’s a photo:

How about an encore? Okay, I just came across Samantha Clark’s article again, which was picked up by a water blog and run under this fitting headline:

Can Beavers Save California?

Californians are crossing their fingers for more rain after three punishing years of drought have left streams, rivers and wetland parched.

One animal has the potential to restore these dry landscapes.

With their industrial buck teeth and flat tails, beavers and their dams offer a defense against drought, a solution to reversing the effects of climate change. The rodents are known as ecosystem engineers. And they once populated most of California (and the Bay Area) until fur traders nearly wiped them out in the 19th century.

“This state has lost more of its wetlands than all other states, and beavers can rebuild those wetlands,” said Rick Lanman of the Institute for Historical Ecology in Los Altos. “Knowing that it is native should help guide restoration efforts.”

Beaver dams bestow benefits to the environment that we humans can’t easily copy. They turn land into a sponge for water. Their gnawing and nesting promotes richer soil and slows down water, improving imperiled fish habitat. Their dams raise water tables, nourishing shrubbery alongside streams that stabilize eroding banks and add habitat for birds and deer. They also help the endangered California Red-legged frog.

Ahh I love that article. If you missed the original, go read it now. There are even some late-breaking quotes from Heidi Perryman about those crazy Martinez beavers. Sadly there is NO mention of a flow device to control flooding or how we managed to coexist with beavers in an urban creek. The paragraph at the end is about how destructive beavers are. But it’s a good article if you just don’t read the last part. And it’s nice to see it living on at the Pure Water Gazette.

Finally a great retelling of osage myth from Ted Stillwell in Missouri

The Beaver and the Crow

I was talking to a longtime friend, who is Osage Indian, recently and was telling him about a pet crow I spent the summer with when I was about 8 out on the farm. For some reason he couldn’t fly, but Crow and I became great friends and had a lot of fun together. My friend frowned and said, “Be leery of crows, as they are mischief makers. Then he related an old Indian legend to me, which I would like to share.

Beaver had his home in a clear, fresh, spring water lake. The waters were cool and deep – just right for Beaver, and Beaver was happy. Because he was happy, he was content and had no other wish than to have his snug round house upon the lake forever.

Crow also lived in the land of the clear, fresh water lake. Crow was a jealous person and it made him very angry to see Beaver so content. Crow was a mischief maker and where there was peace, Crow came to bring trouble. And so, Beaver attracted his notice and became a mark for his displeasure.

Go read the rest of their fun story here and take time to enjoy some older beaver wisdom. I have to go now and watch my hummingbirds. They are going to fledge any minute!

Beavers with Benefits

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 21, 2014

Someone has finally got the beavers and water story right. And it’s about time.

Leave it to beavers: California joins other states in embracing the rodent

AR-141229981.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667 — A beaver dam spans the length of Los Gatos Creek. (Thomas Mendoza — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

LOS GATOS >> Californians are crossing their fingers for more rain after three punishing years of drought have left streams, rivers and wetland parched.

One animal has the potential to restore these dry landscapes.

Go ahead, guess which one. I’ll wait.

Isn’t this a fabulous start to an article? Before you do anything click on the link so they get to count hits for the report. It will convince them that this interests people. We met the reporter Samantha Clark before when she covered the beavers in San Jose for the campus paper. Now she has landed a gig with the Santa Crus Sentinel. Turns out she used to go to school with my neice so maybe osmosis has something to do with her remarkably being the first reporter in the state to get the water story right.

This article reads like a who’s who in beaver doxology honestly, just wait.

“There’s a growing interest in using beaver as a habitat restoration tool,” said Michael M. Pollock, an ecosystems analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. “They create good wetland habitat much more cheaply than other restoration methods.”

Samantha did her homework, tracking down Rick, and Michael. They are busy men but the generally make time to talk about beavers, I’ve been very impressed.

“It would be great if we could recognize the benefit of the beaver and to resolve conflict nonlethally and manage them to continue receiving those benefits,” said Kate Lundquist, director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute, a group that is drafting beaver policy recommendations for state Fish and Wildlife.

I am so happy to read an article that’s actually promoting beaver benefits in California! (And not complaining about methane emissions.) But there seems to be one voice missing. Rick, Michael, Kate, hmmm now who could it be?

Since beavers moved to the Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, the area has seen new species flourish. By moving mud, the beavers create a haven for bugs.

“Because we have an insect bloom, we have a bloom of all the different fish and animals up the food chain,” said Heidi Perryman, founder of the beaver advocacy group Worth a Dam and who led the effort to save a Martinez beaver family from extermination. “We’ve identified three new species of fish and seven species of bird. And we see more otter and mink than we ever saw before.”

Ohhh that’s who was missing! Someone whose learned how to live with beavers and seen it first hand! Not bad. Samantha doesn’t do enough to talk about HOW to live with beavers, but she nails WHY.

In San Jose, a beaver has taken refuge in the dry Guadalupe River. The critter’s dam outside a dripping storm drain created a tiny oasis.

“They can get by with very little,” Pollock said. “In a number of cases, they’ve built on streams that have run dry and because they have built the dams, water flows again.”

Because beavers are so good at recharging ground water, they can make streams flow when they would otherwise run dry such as during the summer months.

If I were a state facing drought for the past 3 three years, I’d be thinking about this article and these plucky rodents and re-examing my policies. Wouldn’t you?

Happy Solstice Everyone! Beavers get easier to see after today!

Wag the beaver?

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Who's Killing Beavers Now? April 12, 2013

Belarus is the land of more than 10 thousand lakes and 20 thousand rivers. Due to its water expanses Belarus is often called “a blue-eyed country”. A great number of folktales are connected with lakes, springs and rivers.

Sigh. Do you ever get the feeling that the whole of beaver news is controlled by this enormously powerful cartel that will NOT allow a single positive news cycle regarding the animal to exist unchallenged? I’m imagining a ‘wag the dog-type’ war room with multiple video screens where they constantly monitor the tone of beaver news around the world for positive threads that would threaten the supervillan-esq international campaign to eliminate beavers forever. And when a story like San Jose starts soaking the airways with good feeling and benevolence they BANG! SLAM! BLAST! insert one of their own, guaranteed to eclipse it many, many times over.

Well, okay. Maybe its just me. Certainly this happened (is happening, will have happened) with the horrific Belarus story. The fisherman who was bitten twice near Lake Shestakov and died from the blood loss because his companions could not stop the bleeding. One story reported a local Dr. saying that he probably would be alive if they had used a tourniquet (which is kind of stunning because isn’t that the first aid you learn in 4th grade?) Sometimes the story appears with other footage taken earlier in the month in another region of a beaver lunging at the cameraman who falls – a la the blair witch project. Sometimes its said that the video is from the attack itself, which isn’t possible since it was posted weeks before the story broke. It doesn’t matter, the story is a mashed up flaming fireball of fear now, hurtling around the globe. The man’s name isn’t being released so no awkward facts can hamper its freefall course and I can’t find a photo of the lake on the whole enormity of google because if you try to look it up there are literally hundreds and hundreds of pages with mug shots of fanged beavers and mislabeled nutria, groundhogs or muskrats trying to recreate the grisly scene of the crime.

Better kill the next one you see! Every mother with children is thinking. they might be rabid! Never mind that we even don’t know if this beaver was rabid because it ran away after biting him. The friends of the man speculated it was rabid because it was early morning and the beaver was walking and obviously beavers NEVER do that. Sigh. I can’t help it, a fantasy has popped in my mind that this was a young disperser leaving the pond for the first day of life on his own. Of course he was frightened, jumpy, scared. A scene from a James Dean movie where the hero over-reacts with tragic consequences that ruin his life forever, and scar countless others. (Stop that, Heidi!)

Well, the secret underground beaver lobby has more resources, better networks and for some reason it is remarkably easier to believe that beavers are murderers than it is to understand that beavers are good for salmon. I give up. You win this round handily, but all I can say is that our San Jose success must have really, really gotten their attention.

_______________________________________________________

Family of beavers found living in downtown San Jose

By Paul Rogers

A family of beavers has moved into Silicon Valley, taking up residence along the Guadalupe River in the heart of downtown San Jose.

The discovery of the three semi-aquatic rodents — famous for their flat tails, furry brown coats and huge teeth — a few hundred yards from freeways, tall office buildings and the HP Pavilion represents the most high-profile Bay Area resurgence of beavers since a beaver family settled in Martinez in 2006, sparking national headlines when city leaders at first tried to remove them, then backed down after public outcry.

As word about their new home spreads, the animals also are being held up as a symbol of the slow but steady environmental recovery of San Francisco Bay and its streams after decades of pollution and sprawl — a hopeful sign of the resilience of nature in the nation’s 10th largest city.

“Our female beaver produced 15 live births. They’ve all dispersed,” said Heidi Perryman, president of Worth a Dam, a Martinez nonprofit that advocates for that city’s beavers. “They could be in San Jose. There’s certainly a chance.”

There are still four beavers living in Martinez. Flood control concerns were reduced by putting a pipe in the beaver dam that regulates the flow of water. So if the water gets too high, it drains out downstream.

Beavers Return to San Jose

Post on Apr 11, 2013 by Samantha Clark from KQED

The swallows may not be flocking back to Capistrano these days, but the beavers have returned to San Jose. Even when they’re not receiving guests, curled wood shavings and girdled willow trees give the critters away. It started when a lone beaver was spotted in the Guadalupe River, just across the street from HP Pavilion in downtown San Jose.

Thrilled, the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy set up a trail camera to monitor its activity.

Then another beaver appeared. “I jumped up out of my chair and high-fived my wife and hugged her when I saw the second beaver,” said Greg Kerekes of the conservancy, after going through the camera footage.

Soon, he discovered that three beavers, a pregnant mother and her two yearlings, were keeping house at the confluence of the Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek. A family indicates they will likely settle, said conservancy executive director Leslee Hamilton.

Environmental educators hope the beavers will stay because they benefit wildlife and can help teach children about watersheds.

In 2007, a family of beavers also colonized Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez. “You could sit at Starbucks, drink your morning coffee and watch kits (young beavers) play,” said Heidi Perryman, president of Worth a Dam, a beaver advocacy organization. Since the beavers have settled in Martinez, the ecosystem has flourished, seeing at least 13 new species.