Now THIS feels like a send-off! I got a call from the Gazette yesterday about the upcoming conference and a note from Leonard Houston (conference organizer) that they called them about it as well. When I called Greta back she was on the phone with (wait for it) APHIS. Go read Greta’s outstanding article!
Seems someone sent her the 2009 stats for the numbers of beaver killed in CA by the USDA. (I wonder where someone could have gotten that?) Anyway she was startled at the numbers, and more stunned when I told her that APHIS was a small fraction of the number of beavers killed each year.
APHIS told her predictably that ”Flow Devices Don’t Work” and she wants to know what’s going to change this! When are attitudes about beavers going to keep up with current research? Will the conference help? Does Martinez prove anything? When is it going to be different?
I said…hmmm…have you ever seen an ocean liner try to do a U-turn? It takes a LONGGGGGGGGGGGG time. Change is coming in increments you can measure in nano tools. That’s what the conference is about. Do some flow devices fail? Absolutely. it depends on how skilled the installation is. If your plumber did heart surgery on you it might fail too, that doesn’t mean the technique itself is unsuccessful.
She did a bang-up job talking about the pragmatic benefits of beaver in today’s paper and wants to have a longer conversation about it when I come back. I always love to get folk riled about beaver stats, and I’m sure I’ll come back brimming with things to talk about.
State of the Beaver Conference 2011 takes place in Canyonville, Oregon Feb. 2-4, and Heidi Perryman of Worth A Dam, the Martinez Beavers’ protectors, is a presenter. Heidi will speak about Urban Beavers and management in the urban setting. The Martinez Beavers are the beacon of hope for beaver protection – and appreciation – in a protected and managed habitat.
Go read the entire thing. Susan does such a graceful job outlying upcoming events that she even manages to plug the beaver festival! Thanks all for an excellent send off. I’ll try to post pictures of beaverly famous people soon wearing Worth A Dam t-shirts. In the mean time I’ll leave you in Lory Bruno’s capable hands until I get back or burst with gossip and have to sneak in and share. Be nice to your debut blogger! Make her love this job a lot so I can sneak a day off once in while!
Go Beavers! And don’t laugh about the music. I actually exchanged emails with Dr. Townsend about the possibility of sending a pep band to the conference. He liked the idea, but the timing was off. Still, maybe next year?
“They’re very industrious and build wonderful things” said Wayne Hoffman, MidCoast Watersheds Council coordinator, in a presentation, “Beavers: Engineering Healthy Watersheds” at the Seaside Public Library Wednesday night. The Necanicum Watershed Council, with the North Coast Land Conservancy, a land trust that owns properties from the Columbia River Estuary to Lincoln City, hosted Hoffman as a part of the “Listening to the Land” series. Humans and beavers can coexist, maintain Hoffman and the NCLC. It just sometimes takes creative solutions.
This article was passed on the AP with various headlines suggesting a delightful beaver-affirming read, but it starts out more like the compliment from a very difficult grandmother: you have to scour through the insults and read between the lines to find the good stuff.
” It’s easy to see they’re rodents.” Some beavers are just not master architect material, and he’s witnessed beaver activity that’s made him shake his head. “I haven’t had a lot of success in understanding the minds of beavers,” he said. These large rodents can be big pests, making water flow where it shouldn’t (onto roads, across property) and gnawing on valuable trees.
I’m not sure why one’s own failure to understand something makes that thing inscrutable…(it’s not like our doctors get away with saying, I have no idea why you feel sick, that’s weird!”) But I’ll give Wayne the benefit of the doubt because Len says he knows him and he’s a good guy and a beaver believer. Of course I promptly wrote to invite him to the State of the Beaver Conference but apparently the River Restoration Conference is at the same time.
They’ve agreed for the future to pick different dates so as not to force folks to choose (would you rather save beavers or creeks?). Looking at some of the negative messages my guess is that Wayne (or the author) is just doing that thing where you pretend to dislike something that’s unpopular so that you can win more trust from the crowd when you later tell them its a good idea. (What a cynical friend would call the “Obama hippie-punch that sometimes precedes bad news for the GOP.’)
So after he talks a bit of smack about beavers he gets to the good stuff.
Humans and beavers can coexist, maintain Hoffman and the NCLC. It just sometimes takes creative solutions. If a culvert is consistently getting clogged because of beaver activities, a bigger culvert or a bridge can be installed. There are ways to fund these projects if a landowner can’t personally afford to do it, said Hoffman and Celeste Coulter, stewardship director for NCLC. The NCLC, as a nonprofit, has access to all sorts of grants, Coulter said. “We’re always willing to work with landowners,” she said.
Well that’s better. No mention of beaver deceivers’/trapazoidal culvert fencing but its a good start. Len tells me that Celeste is a member of the beaver advocacy committee and will be at the conference in February. That’s promising.
“Beavers can be pests,” Hoffman admitted, but having them around can provide both an ecological and a public benefit. “In my opinion, it’s worth the investment,” he said. Beavers encourage other plant and animal life in and around the ponds they make when they dam streams; they can change the hydrology of stream systems across land in positive ways; and, more importantly for this region, they create excellent salmon habitat good news for conservationists and fishers alike, Hoffman said.
Impressive. We’re only on the second page of the article before we actually get to the point. I’m inclined to blame Ms. Wilson, but who knows what happened to the story she originally wrote? Wayne, though, is a little cautious for my beaver-bold tastes. How about rather than “In my opinion” you say “The research shows us again and again that it’s worth the investment.” Hmm, maybe its not a very scientific-minded crowd. Then how about “I’ve seen countless landowners come to realize that its worth the investment”?
The dams create calm pond areas where juvenile salmon can feed and grow large and strong. These fish have a better chance of later surviving in the ocean. But beaver populations have been on the decline. There had been anecdotal information coming in for years: landowners who said, “Well, we used to have beavers, but we haven’t seen them for a while.” There were old dams that hadn’t been tended in a long time and evidence of places where ponds used to be. In 2006 and 2007, a series of studies Hoffman took part in, showed a decline in dams across the region. Between 1992 and 1997, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Aquatic Habitat Inventory recorded 71 dams in one area. However, in 2007, “We walked the same dams and found three,” Hoffman said. The story was similar almost everywhere they went, at the Tillamook Basin, at the Upper Five Rivers and at the Yaquina Basin.
A landscape without as many beavers, Hoffman said, is a landscape that’s not as good for fish and other ecosystems. When beavers build dams, they help distribute nutrients up and down water systems. Take away the dam, and nutrients tend to collect farther away from the headwaters, leaving the headwaters thin on nutrients while other places are glutted.
Not enough beavers! There’s the real story! The headline of KATU got it right. Talk about ‘burying your lead’! This is what the article SHOULD be about. Numbers dropped drastically? Gosh I can’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with ORS 610.002 which moved beavers to the “Predator status” so that they could be lethally hunted on private lands without any permit or cumbersome counting.
The funny thing is that beavers on public land are classified as a protected fur-bearer. Are there signs posts? I sure hope Oregon’s beavers can tell the difference. The article meanders through a host of possible explanations without mentioning the status issue, possibly blaming cougars or reed-canary grass. (It’s always good to blame the loss of one species on the encroachment of another provided that the encroaching species isn’t human). And then Wayne offers some possible solutions:
What’s the solution? Hoffman isn’t sure. He has some ideas, though: reduce trapping, make habitats safer for beavers, restore food supplies, get rid of Reed canary grass, and reduce the beaver-human conflicts by replacing small culverts with bigger ones. Maybe even provide compensation for landowners who are willing to let beavers stay on the land.
I like that last one the best. It’s easy enough to provide a property tax reduction for landowners who can demonstrate active colonies on site. I still like the idea of a salmon tax where you charge people to get RID of beavers and the funds go into watershed restoration and beaver management. Still, none of these ideas is possible until Oregon takes the dreaded step and withdraws beavers from 610.002. As long as private landowners can do what they please to colonies with no report and no paperwork you have no way to control the trapping that occurs.
Maybe its time to classify beaver as something OTHER than a predator?
by Will Harling, Executive Director, of Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Recent studies from Washington and Oregon by NOAA scientist Michael Pollock and others are further defining the intimate relationship between beaver, beaver ponds, and coho smolt production. A recent multi-year study being prepared for publication by the Karuk Tribe, Yurok Tribe, Larry Lestelle, and others, on the ecology of coho in the Klamath River identifies the lack of low-velocity habitats, primarily during winter flood events, as a major potential limiting factor to coho distribution and abundance3. Further studies are needed to relate the loss of beaver and associated habitats to the loss of coho in the Klamath River, but based on other studies, it appears that beaver ponds would provide much needed overwintering and summer rearing habitat for juvenile coho.
Get your Sunday morning coffee and pastry-of-choice to curl up with Will’s delightful account of the relationship between beavers and salmon. His friend Brock Dolman nudged the article our way, and I have been sending it to everyone I can think of. The Klamath is a much-guarded river that has active stewards from headwaters to mouth. It is also the site of some truly MASSIVE historic beaver trapping in California.
Beaver are slowly coming back to the Klamath, recovering from intense trapping that began in the mid-1800’s and continued for nearly a century after, until beavers were almost extinct. In 1850 alone, famed frontiersman and trapper Stephen Meek and his party reportedly trapped 1800 beaver out of Scott Valley, which at the time was called Beaver Valley. The last beavers in Scott Valley were trapped out by Frank C. Jordan in the winter of 1929-1930 on Marlahan Slough1.
1800 beavers. Ugh. My favorite part of the article details the plan between the Mid Klamath Watershed Council (MKWC) and various tribes to create an engineered log jam in a section of the stream that would divert water and create a great wintering space for salmonids – no doubt filling out forms and applying for grants and getting property owner permission…
This spring, MKWC proposed a project near the mouth of Boise Creek, a tributary to the Klamath near Orleans on property owned by the Coates Vineyard and Winery, that would have used an engineered log jam to re-route the creek around a bedrock cascade barrier at the mouth through a series of existing ponds maintained by several families of beavers (Figure 1). However, before the project could be implemented, beavers constructed a five foot tall dam across the creek at the exact location of the proposed log jam, diverting a portion of Boise Creek through their ponds, and into the Klamath River at a location that provides adult and juvenile fish access. MKWC and Karuk Tribe biologists have observed thousands of juvenile chinook and coho utilizing these ponds through the summer, and moving through the ponds into Boise Creek above the barrier! This fall and winter, we will see if the beavers have also effectively redesigned the creek to allow for adult spawning chinook and coho salmon to access more than three miles of high quality spawning habitat above the barrier.
Sometimes nature knows best. And sometimes she needs a helping hand….
Seiad Creek provides an example of what can be accomplished on larger tributaries, such as the Scott River (once called Beaver River) which has also been degraded through channelization, dewatering, beaver extirpation, and upslope management. Innovative research by Michael Pollock and others on a small tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon is demonstrating how degraded stream and riparian habitat can be restored by working with beavers to aggrade streams, connect off-channel habitats, restore groundwater and increase stream sinuosity. At a presentation in Whitethorn organized by Tasha McKee from the Sanctuary Forest this past September, Dr. Pollock showed how wood posts pounded into an incised stream channel at key locations allowed beavers to recolonize sections of the stream and create stable dams that would otherwise be washed out during high flows, resulting in increased off-channel habitat, decreased erosion, and aggradation of the stream channel.
Wood posts to help prevent washouts! Be still my heart! (Shhh, don’t tell our beavers, they’ll be jealous.) It’s all I can do as it is to keep from bringing a sandbag or two during the rains.)
The restoration of threatened coho salmon popolations in the Klamath River system may be intricately tied to enhanced beaver populations and restoration projects that mimic the positive benefits of beaver dams. Educating the public about the critical role of beaver in restoring coho salmon populations in the Klamath River and other coho salmon streams in Northwest California may also help to decrease take of beaver as a nuisance species and allow them to reclaim their role as an ecological process shaping our streams and valleys.
I love everything about that paragraph except the word ‘mimic’. I have very little patience for killing off beavers and then using bulldozers to do “pretend beaver works” in our streams.From a Cost-benefit analysis perspective alone its ridiculous. And from a beaver-advocate perspective it’s sacriledge. Anyway, this is a beautiful article. Read the whole thing and pass it along. In the meantime I am happy to announce that I bought my plane ticket for Oregon yesterday for the State of the Beaver Conference. I will fly to Eugene and get a lift down from Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions who will be coming from Massachusetts via Portland. Assuming the hotel has Wifi I will continue to endeavor to bring you the very best in developing beaver news, discoveries, and gossip.
It’s official, the partial schedule for the 2011 State of the Beaver conference is out and I couldn’t be happier. I present just after Sherri Tippie and before Mike Callahan, which if you think about it, is a pretty nice beaver-loving sandwich. Yesterday I introduced Brock Dolman to Leonoard Houston who organizes the conference and now he’ll be presenting on watersheds as well. Brock was so enjoying my lyrics to the ‘beaver and the salmon should be friends’ that he wants to find some eco-singers to do it at the salmon conference cabaret, which made me very proud. I also introduced him to Tom Rusert of Sonoma Birding where I’ll be doing a beaver talk in February. Their recent Mt. Lion talk had 250 attendees! Tom was interested in maybe doing one on the beaver salmon relationship, so I suggested he talk to Brock and they’re getting together to chat next week. Small beaver world.
Of course I asked Brock if the beavers get a ‘finders fee’? And he assured me that he was “fee-ling” out multiple property owners in the region to find volunteers for a beaver re-introduction project, which is the best kind of fee!
Anyway, since I introduced myself to Susan, Susan to Tom, and Tom to Brock, I’m thinking of starting my own ecological escort service. I even made this comercial for GQ yesterday!
You might remember that last year I wrote about the “State of the Beaver” Conference in Oregon organized by the South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership and the Cow-Creek Umpqua at their casino in Canyonville, Oregon. Everyone of beaver note was there, including Skip Lisle, Sherri Tippie and Michael Pollock. I very much wanted to be there too, and I wrote Leonard Houston begging for 15 minutes of space for the famous Martinez Beavers. He promised to make room but in the end our timing didn’t work out and we mournfully decided not to go.
Guess what came in the email box Friday?
I wouldn’t exactly describe it as an invitation. It was more like a royal summons without the letter head. It said “Heidi, we have added you onto the schedule on the second day of the conference, along with Sherri Tippie, Glynnis Hood and Steve Zack. We’ll pay food and lodging and if Worth A Dam covers your travel expenses we’ll add your organization as a sponsor.” He went on to add,
We are targeting Traditional Ecological Knowledge, wetlands, climate change, beavers birds and wildlife and breakaway brainstorming sessions on day 3. We will of course be including non-lethal management and alternative solutions for problematic beavers. Lot to squeeze in but we are going too.
Now, dear readers, let me just say privately to you how enormously affirming it is to be formally on the schedule and granted accommodations. (Come to think of it, I have, in my vast professional career – for which I went to college for ten – count them ten years and received a license from the State of California – I have as a psychologist attended many conferences from Louisiana to Michigan where I’ve presented and even been paid for my time but have been given accommodations for exactly ONE of them.) Hmm. Apparently my psychological skills are a dime a dozen. But my beaver skills, for which I received no formal training whatsoever, might be worth investing in! Who knew?
Readers of this website must all know Sherri Tippie, but the other names might be less familiar. Glynnis Hood is the Canadian researcher who has been the driving force behind the argument that beavers can mitigate the effects of climate change.
“Removal of beaver should be considered an environmental disturbance on par with in-filling, peat mining and industrial water extraction,” said researcher Glynnis Hood, lead author on the study and an assistant professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose, Canada.
Not to be out done, Steve Zack is the co-author behind the “Beaver Dams increase songbirds” research. I remember when his article came out the folks at Wild Birds Unlimited laminated several summary pages for us and were very pleased to finally have a formal reason to explain their friendliness to the beavers. Being in the same lineup as these remarkable heroes from the beaver-research frontlines is intimidating in the extreme, but also very, very exciting.
(What do I know about beavers really that’s worth a an hour of anyone’s time in that setting? These folk don’t need to be told that beavers mate for life and don’t eat fish! What does an accidental beaver advocate have to contribute to the conversation? I mean besides having a lot of great footage and images of them, observing their effects close at hand every day for the past four years, organizing opposition to local government, coordinating support, using research to combat ignorance, endless education and outreach, seeing the beavers make a difference in hundreds of children’s lives, and seeing hundreds of children make a difference in the beavers lives, maintaining a website that has become a global hub of beaver information, helping launch a DVD about beaver management, reviewing and advising countless cases of beaver activity across the nation, instigating a research project to document historic beaver prevalence in california, and getting famous beaver folk to spend a little more time talking to each other.)
Come to think of it, I guess I have rather a lot to say.
Okay, I won’t be intimidated. This is a great club to be invited to. I’ll sit in the front row, write everything down and ask a hundred questions. I’ll sing the praises of Worth A Dam and argue that any city smarter than a beaver can keep a beaver. I’ll show how beaver families interact and if anyone asks me my ideas about charging property owners a ‘salmon tax’ for killing beavers I’ll make sure I let them know where I stand.
Thanks, Len.
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On a separate note, GTK wonders how many beaver mom’s can possibly die in one year?
Now THIS feels like a send-off! I got a call from the Gazette yesterday about the upcoming conference and a note from Leonard Houston (conference organizer) that they called them about it as well. When I called Greta back she was on the phone with (wait for it) APHIS. Go read Greta’s outstanding article!
