A Day of Too Much Beaver News

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Who's Killing Beavers Now?, Who's saving beavers now? October 9, 2014

Yesterday was crazy with beaver activity in the news, but the awesome part that tipped my scales on the wow-meter was that one of the folks of the friends of the free beavers on the River Tay in Scotland got a Freedom of Information Act request from DEFRA with all the correspondence on beavers in the British waterways.

That means all the emails where they talked about lying, got ready to lie, lied and bragged to each other about lying are there for the world to see. The request had been public around 6 hours when this story was published in the Guardian.

Health watchdog contradicts claims Devon beavers pose human health risk

Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have repeatedly said that the beavers, thought to be the first in the wild in England for centuries, could threaten human health because they may be carrying a disease that the UK is currently free of.

But Defra documents and emails, released under Freedom of Information rules, reveal that while Public Health England (PHE) is concerned about the disease, it does not believe the beavers would increase the risk to human health from the tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis (EM).

“PHE accept that the main risk of an incursion is likely to be through international movements of pets, both legal and illegal… Therefore they are not convinced that the three Devon beavers necessarily represent a significant increase in overall risk,” a Defra official emailed colleagues after meeting with Public Health England.

But that’s the special lie we picked! Are you saying it doesn’t sound true enough to the experts? We’re DEFRA. We’ll make it true! So they went on their merry way saying there was a chance of disease even though the experts told them there wasn’t. And that’s why THIS was the email heard around the world.

The whole cache is a treasure trove, especially the indignant letters from citizens outraged at the decision and their pained justifying responses.See if you can find mine! It’s nice to know that those things are kept somewhere, although it did give me a mad longing to see the FOIA on correspondence regarding the Martinez Beavers in 2007.

(Mostly I just want to see letters between the mayor and Mary Tappel. But that’s just me.)

If you’re too mature to have fun playing in DEFRA’s dirty underthings, there was also an EXCELLENT beaver report on NPR KNAU in Arizona yesterday. Click to listen to a short but sweet reminder of why beavers matter.

And just in case you thought the beaver news cycle passed Martinez by, they rolled out the swanky new website for our sponsor Inquiring Systems Inc yesterday. Check us out under ““projects“. I think we’re placed according to how many hits we get, because we keep moving around. So CLICK on this, please and remind the world that beavers matter.

I’m very happy they highlighted this quote:

AS CALIFORNIA FACES MORE DROUGHT YEARS, IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO COEXIST WITH THESE IMPORTANT ‘WATER SAVERS’.

Mostly good news for beaver friends…

heidi08 Beavers August 29, 2011

The folks at Save the Free Beaver of the River Tay in Scotland, have landed a major friend with the Perthshire festival, which is a 6-day extravaganza of amazing music and food set at castles around the area. Outdoor events this year include a beaver walk which gathers at the estate of our friend Paul Ramsay and ambles along looking at habitat. It will truly be a wonderful event, and I’m as jealous as I can be that Scotland is so far from Martinez.

Perfect timing too, as it will occur on the first quarter of the Beaver Moon.

beaver walk — Click to go to Beaver walk website.

The post Irene news is mostly good, with lots of rain and modest winds falling upon beaver friends in NY, NJ, VT, CT and MA. I received some all clears that I’ll pass along

TS Irene did not affect us here at all! It is over and blue skies came out. We’ve had much had worse rain and wind with thunderstorms in the past year. What is weird though is that while we got no more than 3 inches of rain and zero wind, other western MA communities less than 30 miles away got dumped on and are experiencing some serious flooding problems! Lots of highways are flooded and closed. So it could have been worse, but unfortunately not everyone was as lucky as us.

Mike Callahan Beaver Solutions

And from Sarah Summerville of the Unexpected wildlife refuge in NJ this morning

We’re fine here at the refuge, aside from flooding (but we are mostly wetlands). The sump pump is coming on a lot to empty the basement; perhaps I shall have an indoor pool! Mom was out last night checking on her new expanded borders. They probably have a couple extra acres in their pond from Irene. Blessings!

Thanks for the shout out, Sarah

And from Sharon & Owen of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife in NY

Lots of tree damage in this area (southwest foothills of NY’s Adirondacks). We had no power yesterday, and about 9 pm a NiMo worker came to say the outage was due to a tree falling on a electric line along the nearest paved road and the tree was still on fire. Later when we took a look, the fire was out, a crew was there and the large tree was blocking most of the road. We noticed it was a poplar (beavers’ favorite) and asked them not to chip the branches.

This morning we were surprised to find the poplar still in the road with lots of cones around it —must’ve been more urgent sites to handle. Deep ruts in the mud on one shoulder showed where vehicles were passing. So Owen grabbed a chain saw, hooked up the trailer and in less than an hour we’d hauled two big loads. Caution: don’t try this unless you’re experienced with a chain saw (we heat with wood, except for our solar addition), and it’s a country road with little traffic.

Took one load north to a beaver dam with a flex leveler that’d prevented a catastrophic road washout in 2006, according to the then highway supervisor. Rest will go to a south colony later today. Flash flooding is happening in many areas and the extra food and building materials will help nature’s engineers to manage this.

News from Vermont where Skip is, looks like more water than wind and waiting waiting waiting for the rivers to let them know if they’re going to flood. (Apparently Vermont is having the worst floods in a hundred years). I’m hopeful he’s still has power and I’ll let you know when I hear from him.

In the meantime, it looks like beavers and a big chunk of America lucked out.

Light-Hearted

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental February 21, 2011

I thought today should be full of easy enjoyments, and good cheer. I’ll start with the photos from the t-shirt sales of our friends in Scotland who are trying to save the free beavers of the river Tay.

Pretty cute huh? One of their members recently posted a picture of a chewed tree that the Angler society called “Suspected beaver damage”.It made me giggle so much I had to do this in response.

Now that was fun! Speaking of chewed trees, Jon unwrapped the willows we planted in 2008 and they have now all been felled and eaten! We’ll be talking about doing a 2011 planting tomorrow at the Friends of Alhambra Creek Meeting. If you’d like to donate your labor, organization, or spare change, the beavers would appreciate it!

precarious — Before the sand-painting of trunks by the primary dam.

A final bit of enjoyment for a Monday morning (that is a holiday for many but not for me because I’ve taken TOO many days off to go to Oregon). I just found this on youtube and can’t remember seeing it before. It’s delightful. I love that the beaver is an old man. I don’t suppose Disney knew that the native name for beaver of the Karuk tribe in northernmost California is sah-pihnîich which translates literally to “by-the-River Old-man”. Perfect!