Tag: Skip Lisle

Seeing the forest for the trees…

heidi08 Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers January 15, 2014

Recognize this handsome face? Martinez should especially. This is Skip Lisle who installed our flow device at Alhambra Creek 6 years and 2 weeks ago. He and beavers are the subject of an excellent article in the winter 2013 issue of Woodland by Madeline Bodin.

Skip Lisle has been living with beavers all his life. The relationship hasn’t always been a peaceful one. As a child, his family moved to a forested valley in southern Vermont. Lisle grew up hunting and fishing, so when beavers dammed the road culvert next to the house, threatening to flood the road, his parents assigned him the chore of shooting the beavers to eliminate the problem. But soon, new beavers came and dammed the same culvert.

Lisle, young as he was, knew there had to be a better way to deal with the beavers. He began developing a solution as a teenager. After years of working in construction and earning a master’s degree in wildlife management, he perfected it.

Today Lisle lives with his family in the house where he grew up. The house is surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped beaver pond and expansive wetlands. The dirt road next to the house remains dry. Wood ducks and mergansers nest on the pond. Frogs trill and red-winged blackbirds sing there each spring. Moose wade, looking for lunch. On summer evenings Lisle and his wife relax on a deck at the water’s edge, keeping an eye out for the v-shaped wakes on the pond that show that their busy neighbors are at work.

Mind you, yesterday when Mary O’brien sent me the article I was stunned to find it had a huge photo of a NUTRIA in the opening paragraphs. I of course laughed hardily and wrote the editor who last night wrote me back sheepishly that they had paid for a stock photo that was mislabled. What a surprise! But this morning when I look at the site the nutria is gone and a beaver is there instead. Like magic! (Heidi magic?)

In the West, beavers provide an additional benefit. “In the arid regions, water is life,” says Jeremy Christensen, a wildlife associate with the Grand Canyon Trust, a group that works to conserve the Colorado Plateau. “When beavers build dams, they create a capture-and-storage system for rainfall and snow.”

You bet they do! Thanks Jeremy! When I despair that all the big beaver players are going to turn 70 in a decade or so and they’ll be no one left to carry on this work, I remember Jeremy Christensen, and Amy Chadwick, and Adrian Nelson. Beavers: the next generation.

“Since humans want to harvest trees and beavers want to harvest trees, it can be hard for them to coexist,” says Michael Callahan, owner of Beaver Solutions, a Massachusetts based beaver consultant and mitigation expert.

When they have a choice, beavers eat willow and aspen, trees with low value. But tree chewing is usually a minor issue, the experts say. It is the beavers’ dam building that typically causes the most costly damage, plugging culverts and flooding roads. Sometimes beavers will create a pond over a well or other drinking water supply, which is a health hazard.

To reap the benefits that beavers provide, says Callahan, “the key is to keep them welcome, and that means intervening when they cause problems for people.”

Skip and Mike in the same article! This reads like a Who’s who of beavers. The article clearly outlines protecting culverts, controlling pondheight, and discusses relocation being an option in some states. It even talks to Jimmy Taylor.

Studies by the U.S. Forest Service and local public utilities confirm that flow-control devices have a high success rate. But sometimes a landowner can’t use such a device at a beaver problem site, says Jimmy Taylor, the project leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center.

Hmmm, Skip, Mike, Jeremy, Jimmy, what about Sherri? Don’t worry, here she is:

Tippie began live-trapping beavers in 1985, when she saw on the news that beavers on a Colorado golf course were going to be killed. A professional dancer and hairdresser at the time, she borrowed traps from the state division of wildlife and found a home in Rocky Mountain National Park for the beavers she caught.

Wow what a great article! You really should go read the whole thing! The only thing missing is urban beavers and a certain BEAVER FESTIVAL which I won’t even mention. Of course if the author had talked to me, I could have told her not to run that silly nutria photo in the first place.

Just sayin’…

While others may look at beavers and see a nuisance, Lisle, sitting in his living room overlooking the beaver pond, sees redemption. “ When the Earth is losing natural landscapes every day,” he says, “it is incredibly powerful and encouraging that we are gaining these marshes and meadows.”

Live Free or Kill a Beaver!

State removing ‘nuisance’ beavers near Exeter dam

(Translation: ‘Nuisance beaver’ = Beaver).

EXETER — The state has hired a wildlife control operator who began trapping a group of beavers that built a dam off Brentwood Road and caused water from Little River to spill onto nearby properties, according to town and state officials.

Town officials asked for the state’s help in dealing with the beavers as Brentwood Road/Route 111A is a state road. If the town had to pay to have the beavers trapped, it could have cost as much as $3,000, Town Manager Russ Dean said.

Neighbors have complained about the flooding since they noticed the waters of Little River rising. In a letter sent to town officials in November when the problem first began, Dr. Thomas Oxnard, a Greenleaf Drive resident, said the water level “has been approaching the road for the last few years.”

The dam is in the woods across from Greenleaf Drive.

“In the past, heavy rain storms have flooded over the road and at times closed the road to traffic,” Oxnard wrote. “I fear this will happen again.”

He also noted the beaver dam has caused large areas of “standing water on both sides of the road and the woods.”

I know it is uncharitable of me to refer to concerned citizens of the Granite State as “Whining” but I can’t help it. This postage stamp of a state is surrounded on all sides by beaver experts who could fix that flooding with a flow device in less time than it takes to wash the license plates where their snappy motto appears. (Did you know, in 1971 the legislature mandated that ‘Live Free or Die’ would replace the boring old motto SCENIC – which explains a lot.) If you lived in New Hampshire you could barely walk out your door or swing a dead cat without hitting someone who knows how to handle this problem much smarter. Vermont fits together snugly with the state like horses stand nose to tail, or some other well-known numerical positions. Skip Lisle, the inventor of the beaver deceiver, with more than 30 years of expertise in this area is 122 miles a way and could fix this problem in his sleep.

(For problem-solving comparisons: Martinez brought Skip 3000 miles to handle our flooding concerns. New Hampshire can’t stroll across the dam state line to find answers?)

More than 90 percent of the time, trappers set up the traps to kill the beavers, Tate said. “In my experience there’s no sense relocating them because they just cause problems somewhere else,” he said.

Exeter Highway Superintendent Jay Perkins said it’s far from unusual for beavers to cause problems by damming up a stream or a river. “It’s New England,” he said.

Tate said despite efforts to address the Exeter situation, the problem statewide is not going to go away. “Beaver nuisance situations have been occurring since the presence of beavers,” Tate said. “They’ve always been present in New Hampshire and they’ve always caused problems.”

Yes beavers have always caused problems. Except for the during friggin’ fur trade when they made the greedy bastards come here in the first place. Honestly, this story just steams my cup. The reporter’s name for this story happens to be Jeff McMenemy. Which I can really, really believe.

He’s certainly no McFriend of beavers.

acorn — Photo: Skip Lisle installs “Castor Master” in Martinez CA 2008
Graphic: Schematic Drawing from Mike Callahan’s Flexible Leveler.

What do I know?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions November 20, 2013

Cory Cheever of Vermont Fish and Wildlife (left) works with volunteer Tom Prunier to build a beaver exclusion fence in a culvert in Putney. (Kayla Rice/Reformer)

In Putney, the challenge of living with beavers

PUTNEY — The town is trying to strike an appropriate balance with the beavers that live up in the Wilson Wetlands. Cory Cheever, a biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, was in Putney Tuesday to help members of the Putney Conservation Commission control beaver activity in the wetlands.

I got so excited about this article. A Fish and Wildlife Biologist installing a flow device instead of killing beavers! And in Vermont no less! So obviously they could hop up the road 24 minutes to Grafton and make sure Skip Lisle approves of their work, right? Maybe even get some help from the master on this! But if I was expecting the transfer or sharing of any knowledge I was sorely mistaken.

Cheever installed a series of his own dams — which looked a little like wire fencing placed in the water — in the culverts under Sand Hill Road to keep the beavers out while allowing them to live in the wetlands.

“This is a dam, from the beaver’s point of view this is a dam, but it is faulty, from a beaver’s point of view,” Kerrey said Tuesday while standing over one of the culverts. “It’s faulty because it has five holes in it, also known as culverts, so they are busy plugging those holes up.”

The Department of Fish and Wildlife has installed similar baffles all over the state.

That’s right, because BAFFLES are sooo much better than those other things that Skip or Mike install. So we had to start from scratch and re-invent the wheel to make it roll. Last year when we read about Mr. Cheever I wrote Skip and Mike to see if they had ever met, connected or exchanged a single email. I’m so innocent I was surprised when the answer came back “No.”

Well, maybe Fish and Wildlife is trying to avoid paying royalties to Skip by calling their design a baffle? Or maybe they genuinely just don’t know any better and didn’t open my copious emails the last time. In the vast scheme of things it doesn’t matter if Mr. Cheever makes up a different design or calls it a “beaver faker” as long as it works, right? I can’t get too upset about this article because look at this.

Kerrey says that when the water level dropped the Conservation Commission saw the need to bring the beavers back to dam up the flow. As challenging as the beavers are to live with, Kerrey said, it was still easier than bringing in a human specialist.

The beavers were able to bring the water level back up, but now they are damming up the culverts with their sticks.

“We would have had to figure out how to do that ourselves. We would have had to hire some engineer to figure out how to reestablish a wetland,” Kerry said. “Beavers already know how to do that. So we just decided we would wait for them. And we waited a little over year and the habitat for them is good so they showed up and they fixed everything, but they’re going a little overboard now.”

Is Fish and Wildlife paying for this? Or is it strictly something Cory convinces property owners to pay for in their spare time? I will write him again and see if we can’t possibly bring Mohamed to the mountain.

And speaking of experts I heard from Mike Callahan yesterday that he is on his way to Washington to film the salmon passing easily through his new adapted flow devices there. It seems that his auto cameras don’t pick up the passage which mostly happens at night, but Mike’s been assured the design works like a charm so he is going to spend some nights on sight with a camera at the ready!

He needs the footage of course for March when he’s coming to the Salmonid Restoration Federation along with all the OTHER beaver people!

The Beaver Gospel

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental July 3, 2013

In the beginning was the word and the word was with Glynnis and the word was Glynnis.

Glynnis indeed baptized with her water-drought-Alberta research, and her ecosystem research and her waterfowl research, thus showing us WHY to live with beavers, but one mightier (and taller) than her cameth to teach us HOW to live with beavers.

Amy Chadwick of Great West Engineering, left, and Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers International install the flow devices that will allow beaver and the wetlands they create to remain as important components of the stream system.

Skip Lisle of Grafton, Vt., and Amy Chadwick, of Missoula, along with her husband, Howard Williams, have partnered with Butte-Silver Bow County to install three “Beaver Deceivers” at culverts in the creek. The structures, made of cedar and concrete reinforcement wire, take up space so beavers won’t try to dam the whole channel.

The beavers plug culverts all along Blacktail Creek, Chadwick said. The dams can cause flooding problems for nearby residents — Chadwick pointed to sandbags stacked by a home nearest to the creek — and can cost municipalities thousands of dollars to dismantle.

Lisle, of Beaver Deceivers International, has been creating the structures for 20 to 30 years, and Chadwick and Williams are training under him, she said.

For truly this beaver challenge endureth but a moment; in this favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning when the flow device is installed and nature itself rejoices.

The constructed in this pilot project are designed to last at least 10-20 years with minimal maintenance.

Chadwick has been doing watershed assessments and stream and habitat assessments for 15 years. She said beavers are important to a stream’s ecosystem, and recently have been recognized as a stream restoration tool, she said.

This is the keystone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone.

Here endeth the lesson.

Friday is full of beaver friends!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 14, 2013

Great news from Montana where a pilot project for beaver deceivers is being launched and Skip Lisle and Amy Chadwick are at the helm.

Non-lethal beaver techniques for creek

In response to high annual maintenance costs at culverts plugged by beaver, the City-County of Butte-Silver Bow and Mile High Conservation District are sponsoring a pilot project to demonstrate non-lethal beaver management techniques for preventing culvert plugging and flooding of the pedestrian walkway along Blacktail Creek.

Amy Chadwick of Great West Engineering and Skip Lisle of Beaver Deceivers International will lead installation of the flow devices, which allow beaver and the wetlands they create to remain as important components of the stream system.

This is excellent news for Montana. I couldn’t be more certain that they will find they’re saving money installing flow devices instead of unclogging culverts and I couldn’t be happier that Amy Chadwick will be working along with him. We need a new generation of young women working on beaver issues and I want Amy to lead the wave. Unfortunately I can’t find a photo of her but we did meet at the conference and exchange emails. Trust me when I say we want her on our team! And if the name Skip doesn’t ring a bell, why not listen to the podcast interview we did?

Interview with Skip Lisle, inventor of the “Beaver Deceiver”. If he looks familar he should since he was the hero that saved the Martinez Beavers about 4 years ago! (Certain ladies may not recognize him with his shirt “on”.) I apologize in advance for the static on the line, but assure you he’s worth listening to

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Subscribe to all episodes in iTunes here.

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And another friendly face from this letter to the editor, also from Montana

Trapping: Protection theory doesn’t ring true

Scare tactics are the first resort for folks who have run out of arguments, which is likely why trappers often say that recreational trapping on public lands is necessary to protect us from disease, predators and pests.

The most commonly trapped “pest” species is the beaver. Beaver trapping is generally a private lands issue, so a block management model and trapping by trained authorities are more appropriate solutions than recreational trapping on public lands. More importantly, beaver provide vital services in an arid state like Montana. It makes a lot more sense to employ beaver deceivers (non-lethal devices that prevent beaver from damming sites like culverts), to relocate beaver or to find other creative ways to coexist with them, because they improve retention and filtration of water, soil conservation and riparian habitat.

Filip Panusz, Missoula

Filip! A fine letter like that deserves a thank you and a google search. Felip is the executive director of Footloose Montana, a nonprofit dedicated to trap free public lands.

Get it? Foot ”loose”. Hmm, smart about beavers and executive director of a nonprofit with a cleverly sassy name, might be a match made in heaven? Must go, I have a letter to write.