Tag: Sharon Brown

And you thought you’d read it all…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Who's saving beavers now? December 26, 2014

Scottish beavers break tradition with wife-swapping

Beavers are known for their monogamy and mating for life.

But when two pairs were introduced to the wild west coast of Scotland, they let standards slip and promptly indulged in a partner-swap.

The five-year Scottish Beaver Trial was held in Knapdale Forest in mid-Argyll, and beavers remain in the area. Field operations manager for the trial, Roisin Campbell-Palmer, said: “During the monitoring period one of the interesting observations was that two pairs swapped partners.

“Beavers usually mate for life, however these were all young adults encouraged to form pairs either in captivity prior to release or at the release site after the loss of an original mate.

“When given the freedom to choose a mate on their own, they obviously preferred a different arrangement.

All of Europe is shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that beavers would rather pick their own life partner than let some skinny Norwegian tech assign one randomly for them. Hand them the smelling salts and the fainting couches. I, for one am not in the least surprised. First of all, how do we know this was wife-swapping? Beavers societies are matriarchal in structure, so wouldn’t it be better to call this a a case of “husband-swapping” instead?

Second of all, I remember Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife advising me once that Dorothy Richards had been surprised when a female beaver she wanted to have kits turned down the mate she introduced and picked her own. We can only wonder why. “His dams were uneven? He snored in the lodge? His Castoreum smelled funny?” We might never know. But we at least know this.

Beavers like to make their OWN decisions. (They are not unlike people in this regard.)

“This is actually a natural and positive outcome as animals selecting their own partners are shown to have strong pair bonds and higher reproductive rates.”

The beavers – who came from Norway – were obviously happy with their new companions because soon one of the pairs bred for the first time, and the other female was suspected of being pregnant, although no kits were ever seen.

BWW to the rescue!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Who's saving beavers now? December 3, 2014

Town, residents to work on solution to beaver dams

Owen and Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife, an educational

nonprofit with 30 years of experience in providing solutions for beaver problems, visited Carlson Road on Nov. 13

and said in a report to the town council the water level at the culvert outlet across from the Prestigiacomo pond was three feet below the road surface.

“A downstream dam that rises only a few inches above the water level is unlikely to cause a problem because of the almost three feet of clearance to the road surface,” said Owen Brown, adding maintaining secondary dams is not a high priority for beavers. “But they will maintain their primary dam as if their lives depend on it, because they do. If the water in that pond is drained, the beavers will lose access to their winter food cache.”

Sharon Brown added it’s not unusual for beavers to reduce the amount of road flooding.

“Having dams upstream — such as the one across the road from Gordon Robotham’s home on Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo’s land — slows and stabilizes the water flow because beavers build leaky dams,” she said. “The water isn’t completely trapped.”

The Browns added during a deluge this past spring, water just downstream of Carlson Road rose high enough to threaten the road. Since the dam just downstream on Robothom’s side of the road was likely at least two feet under during the event, they said in their report to the town it was their opinion the dam did not cause the flooding.

It was a few weeks ago I saw a news item about the beaver dams in Dolgeville NY causing concern among the city council. I recognized the location and thought since it was in Sharon and Owen’s city they’d want to know. Obviously they’ve been hard at work since then, with some pretty great results. Looks like they even got locals to stand up for the beavers as well.

DOLGEVILLE — Leave the beaver dams along Carlson Road alone.

That’s the message residents who live along the road in the town of Manheim have for the town council and anyone else who wants to have the dams removed.

“There’s been no flooding since the beavers came in years ago,” said Gordon Robotham. “If there’s a problem with the beavers, it should have come up before now.”

Like Robotham, Barry and Debbie Prestigiacomo have a beaver pond on their property. They installed a leveler system with a 12-inch diameter pipe in the dam last year to manage the water level, and said they have not experienced any problems since.

“There’s also gates or fencing that can be used to protect the culverts. The beavers don’t have to be killed to address the town’s concerns,” said Barry Prestigiacomo.

Manheim Town Supervisor John Haughton said the town only recently received a legal opinion from attorney Kenneth Ayers that any damage to the road as a result of flooding caused by the beaver dams would be the town’s responsibility to repair.

Ahh, memories! It was a letter from the lawyer of the 500 block on Main Street that started the excitement in Martinez all those years ago. (It’s always a lawyer!) Well it looks like Owen and Sharon knew what to do to fix things. I’m not worried about these beavers at all anymore. Too bad we don’t have little beaver M.A.S.H. units all over the country that can swoop in and solve problems at a moments notice.. We need at least one in every state, maybe as many as the state has electoral votes.

Someday!

Beaver Summit

heidi08 Beavers, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Why We Care October 11, 2012

This film was made by last night’s dinner guests. The narration is by Sharon Brown and the filming by her husband Owen. Owen is a doctor of Chemistry and Sharon a biologist, who became friends with Dorothy Richards of ‘BeaverSprite’ and inherited her preserve and work to form Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife. Amongst their many adventures teaching, writing, and advocating for beavers they once adopted orphaned set of four kits and raised them for two years before setting them free on their own. You can see it was a fairly memorable experience.

Jon, Heidi, Owen, Sharon, Kate, Lory (and Cheryl taking the picture!)

The couple came first to our house for lemonade and beaver talk, and then came with us down to see Junior and Mom swimming about the dams, before joining us for dinner at Lemongrass. Most of Worth A Dam was there, and Kate from the OAEC water institute drove down from Sonoma to meet them. It was a strangely familiar meeting, in which many beaver tales (tails?) were swapped. I tried to put Owen to work finding a scent mound for us, because he has a great nose for castor! But sadly none were forthcoming. They are off for an adventure in the city today and heading next for the sierras to meet Mary and Sherry and check out their flow devices. Worth A Dam is thrilled they made the trip and wishes them the happiest of trails!

Martinez has now had interstate beaver pilgrimages from Washington, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Kentucky and New York. Not bad for a small town! (Still waiting for Alberta and Colorado!)

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Now its off to Canton PA where some beavers are willfully rebuilding their dam even after a backhoe has generously removed it three times. The nerve! It’s like they think they have a right to exist and feed their family or something!

CANTON – There’s some persistent beavers in the borough. At Canton Borough Council’s meeting this week, councilman Kurt Bastion, the street superintendent, spoke on the issue during the street department report. The problem isn’t new. State officials have been involved in the past, trapping the beavers, but they keep coming back. The dams are a danger because they can exacerbate flooding.

He said a beaver dam was torn out three times with a backhoe, and “the next day it was right back there again.”“We’re going to have to address that issue some other way,” he said.

Ooh, I know, I know! call on me!

“Mike Lovegreen from the Bradford County Conservation District had talked to one of the residents on Lycoming Street about this, I want to say maybe at the beginning of summer or end of spring,” she said. “There is a grant available to the residents that the municipality would apply for, but the residents need to come up with a plan, prior to us being able to apply for that.”

Well, okay, you tried “Quint” and it didn’t work. How about trying Mike or Skip? Beaver Solutions is 5 hours away and Beaver Deceivers International is 7. Either one could install a flow device that controls dam height and prevents flooding but keeps a pond high enough for these beavers to store food for the winter freeze. Gosh you could even buy the DVD and do this work yourself! Maybe get the community to volunteer and have a potluck with the rest of the grant money that night?

Or you could keep doing the exact same thing over and over again and acting surprised when it fails? Lots of folks choose that option.

And then there were three…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental May 20, 2011

Yesterday beaver watchers were treated to the sight of three beavers in the bank near the footbridge. Three! This morning we watched from 5:30 to 7:00 and saw no one but these three little fuzzy ducks, who had gone to nap on the bank while mom preened. Two days ago there were four and a week ago there were eight, but such is the life of baby ducks! Lets hope these last three are the smartest ever.

What I was able to see, though, was video footage of three otters at the old lodge taken on wednesday morning by Moses who sadly declined to share it with the website. They were popping out of the water, chewing dramatically and going in and out the lodge. Otters are talented in lots of ways, but they can’t dig their own burrows or make a lodge. They are ‘obligate nesters’ of a sort. They often use abandoned beaver lodges to have pups, who are born helpless and furless and unlike beavers, can’t swim for weeks. Every year we have seen otters march hopefully into our beavers lodges and watched as beavers marched them right out. This year things may be different.

After a while the otters started to do something I have never seen before. Ripping out tules and carrying them into the lodge. A lot of tules. Bedding? Certainly they aren’t planning to eat them. It looked very much like nesting but it is late in the year for mom to pup I think, and unlikely that two others would be with her when she did. I can’t imagine what was going on but I’m inclined to think that it has something to do with why none of our three beavers went upstream to sleep yesterday. Hmmm. Stay tuned and keep watch on the upper pond.

Yesterday I got word from Sharon Brown of Beavers:Wetlands & Wildlife that an article she wrote with hydrologist Suzanne Fouty was appearing in this Sping’s issue of LAKELINE magazine. It’s sadly not available online, but I’ll give you an illicit taste in case you want to track it down. Great work ladies, if I wasn’t a beaver fan already this would be a powerful sell!

Beaver Wetlands

Gudrun

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Uncategorized, Who's Killing Beavers Now? January 8, 2011

Woman risks fine, jail over well-being of beavers

Gudrun Scott tried to safely relocate beavers from a dangerous situation along a state road. For her trouble, she was ticketed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation — and several of the beavers were later killed by vehicular traffic. On Monday, Scott’s case will be heard in Alfred Town Court, where she faces a maximum $250 fine and/or 15 days in jail. Scott believes the environmental policies for beavers — New York’s “state animal”—are antiquated and must be changed — especially the agency’s reluctance to relocate beavers instead of killing them.

Now that’s a story worth waking up to! Gundrun contacted me on Facebook a while back and I put her in touch with Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife. Now Sharon will be appearing at her hearing. Seems Gundrun had some nice farmland where the beavers she enjoyed eventually moved on. She wanted some new ones and asked the humanitarians at DEC how to get them. They came and checked her property but never got back to her so her husband learned how to do ‘live trapping’ and decided to rescue some beavers in the middle of the interstate. An officer showed up and opened the trap and let the animal out on the freeway. Where it was promptly hit by a car. Then he fined her 250 dollars for trapping out of season.

All the makings of a successful LA LAW episode.

Biologist Sharon Brown, who also directs Beavers, Wetlands and Wildlife, an educational non-profit in the Adirondack foothills, said the DEC has made some changes in its thinking towards beavers, but not enough. “State wildlife agencies in general were created to deal with nuisance animals and to support hunting and trapping, and that has been a big part of the philosophy they operate under,” Brown said. “Even though we now know more about their ecological benefits since the days when beavers were almost wiped out [by trapping], the policies are changing too slowly.”

Gudrun and Sharon are upset because beaver relocation is illegal in New York (and California and Massachusetts and..well you get the idea.) They argue that beavers are so good for the watershed and do such important jobs that reasonable compassionate humans should be able to take them from one place where they’re causing problems and move them gently to a new place where they can live in peace.

Wouldn’t you like to read that testimony when she appears monday? Good luck Gudrun! You have all the support you need. Classy BWW will be your expert witness but remember Worth A Dam will bring you the cake with a file in it if you need us.