TAKING INIATIVE

heidi08 Beavers and Roadways December 7, 2017

The Bush administration owes America an apology and a box of chocolates. Not only did it bamboozle us into a never-ending war and destroy our favorite city, it also ruined the way we view policy “Naming” forevermore. Now when we read a bill coming out of the senate called “Lunches for children” for example, we immediately assume it means the bill will STEAL all lunches for children. If we see an initiative called “Respect your elders” we know for a fact that social security is threatened.

I resent that American can’t ‘mean things’ anymore, don’t you?

I know Mike Callahan does, because with this plan he sincerely wants to improve road safety. It sounds like a wonderful idea that will save taxpayers millions of dollars annually. But the Bush administration has ruined the way I read this title. I’m sorry, but it has.

Our new “Safe Roads Initiative”

If every at-risk road culverts in this country were properly protected from beaver damming, then taxpayers, road crews, beavers, biodiversity, water storage and watersheds would all benefit.

To make this vision a reality the Beaver Institute, Inc. is proud to announce our first nationwide program, called the “Safe Roads Initiative”. This program will provide beaver control expertise to any interested Highway Department in the country. As the testimonials and instructional videos at www.beaverinstitute.org/education/youtube-videos/ show, road crews can save significant time, save money, increase road safety, and improve wildlife passage and stewardship with these proven techniques.

Our Safe Roads Initiative was inspired by the highly successful Nion Robert Thieriot beaver management grant program which jump started nonlethal beaver management in a rural area of Massachusetts where problematic beavers were traditionally trapped and killed. See www.mspca.org/beaverfunding.

Whoo hoo! A trapezoidal fence in every culvert! (Not quite as catchy as a “chicken in every pot’ but it has promise.) Congratulations to Mike and the Beaver Institute Gang for finding new ways to solve problems and dream big. If every road was protected from beaver damming then drivers AND beavers would sure be a lot safer.

While we’re on the subject of good ideas, lets give a shout out to this event posted in the community calendar in the Troy New York Record.

Community calendar:

THACHER NATURE CENTER: Busy Beavers, 3:30 p.m. Late fall is when beavers really get busy! They are building up their lodge and storing food for the long winter ahead. Learn about these industrious animals and their adaptations for life in icy waters. A short indoor presentation will be followed by an easy walk to a small, well-establish ed beaver pond to quietly observe for about 20 minutes in hopes of viewing a beaver in action. This program is appropriate for adults and school-aged children. Space is limited, please call 518-872-0800 to register and for meeting place.

Great idea! Now it’s wonderful that you would gather at a beaver pond and teach children what they do, but you’re crazy if you expect to see beavers at 3:30 in the afternoon in December. All that will happen of course is that those kids will get frustrated and impatient and think beavers are boring.

I have a better idea. Why not be beaver ‘detectives” and teach the kids to find beaver clues at the pond to ‘solve’ the case! There will be plenty of chewed branches and other signs of beaver activity and it won’t be frustrating because you won’t be waiting for something that isn’t coming. Plus you’ll be teaching them that a very large part of watching nature is observing its clues and using what you learn to infer what’s happening.

Nature doesn’t come with subtitles.

In downtown Napa Rusty Cohn was a ‘beaver detective’ yesterday and took this photo of the work that’s been done on that dam recently. He notes “Water level seems to have been raised approx. 2 feet by the dam.“

The beavers don’t mind that its small. They know well that the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.

Just the good beaver news

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers and water, Mike Callahan, Who's saving beavers now? May 7, 2017

We had a great day yesterday and were especially happy to meet four separate people before 1 who started out by explaining that they attended “that big meeting to save the beavers way back when.” I was especially happy that the four strangers all said they didn’t speak because everyone there was doing such a great job already. I am always very happy to meet people that didn’t speak at that meeting. Because it means there were so many more people there that I even knew about.

No wonder the city council looked pale!

More good news about the Beaver Institute, still in it’s formative stages. Director Mike Callahan wrote me this week that he had just finished the first grant application.

Yesterday I sent in our first grant application for the Beaver Institute. Hopefully we’ll be awarded $10K from the Animal Welfare Institute, with us providing an equal amount for a big website, training webinars, getting the DVD on-line, and training and certifying flow device installers in 5 states, with a 5 year goal of a network of certified installers in all 49 beaver-inhabited states. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.

I love love LOVE the idea of certified installers. That means no more lying public works employee saying they installed a beaver deceiver because they inserted a broken pipe or half a straw. Will it be like a drivers test? Will their be a written portion?

I heard yesterday that Worth A Dam was awarded our grant from the CCC Fish and Wildlife Commission for the beaver festival activity that will let children earn their wildlife tattoos. Hurray!!! That’s 1000 dollars we won’t have to pay for. Something in me must have wanted to educate the commissioners as well, because this was the opening paragraph of the application:

The importance of beaver and their dams to salmonids, biodiversity, nitrate removal and water storage is becoming ever more widely recognized. In a recent article about restoring beaver populations in the United Kingdom, science writer Alex Riley aptly observed, “A beaver is not just an animal. It is an ecosystem.” This quote starkly illustrates how dramatically beaver presence enriches our creeks, and conversely, how severely beaver removal depletes them. Despite this, and despite the success of management techniques demonstrated for a decade in Martinez, beaver depredation remains common. Last year in this county alone, the 7 beaver depredation permits issued included three for an unlimited take. We do not emphasize enough that every time beaver removal occurs there are significant consequences for fish and wildlife, something that ecological education should strive to correct. With this in mind, our project was designed to teach children the importance of beavers’ role in the ecosystem, highlighting the direct impact they have on other wildlife.

Sometimes I get the weird feeling that getting a PhD in child psychology was the perfect training for doing a kid’s education beaver festival grant. Maybe it was destiny after all?

More good news, there was an excellent article in the Sunday Times yesterday in the UK. The paper is mostly behind a subscriber wall but I could tell from the first two paragraphs I wanted to see the rest. I of course went begging from my friends for help and the Scottish professor from Edinburgh was happy to assist. Thanks!

Busy beavers shore up our defences

If only someone in authority had had the foresight to call for beavers, thousands of flood victims across the country may not have ended up forced out of their homes with nowhere to go.

A new report by Devon Wildlife Trust uses scientific data from a pilot scheme to reveal that the rodent engineers are able to staunch floodwater by using their dams to store it in pools and canals, thereby lessening the impact downriver. The dams, constructed from mud and sticks, leak a continuous stream of water, which allows the ponds to refill during heavy rainfall. Beavers constantly adjust their water systems, increasing the number and size of dams, pools and canals to accommodate the volume of water.

The statistical data, gathered in what is believed to be the only scientific study of its type in the world, reveal that beavers could also be an alternative to hosepipe bans in times of drought because the dams continue to leak water downstream, even when upstream ponds have run dry. In dry parts of America, Coca-Cola has successfully used beavers to replenish water. The trust’s report also found that as water progresses through the beavers’ dams, it is purged of contaminants such as farming fertilisers and silt.

Isn’t that wonderful? Just in case you don’t have a Scottish professor friend, you can go read the whole thing here. But the upshot is that beavers make water better, and we need them in the places where we live because they will help waterways behave better. Ahh!

Finally a wonderful donation to the silent auction came from the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation this week. I originally glimpsed this wonderful 50th anniversary shirt on photographers Tom Rusert’s FB feed, and then asked friend Susan Kirks for an introduction to the group producing it, who was able to introduce me to the director, who in addition to promising one was kind enough to introduce me to the artist, Molly Eckler, a local artist in Sebastapol that has done amazing work for Point Reyes, The Laguna Foundation and others. Molly was kind enough offer a slough of posters as well. In fact we’re picking them up this weekend on our way to Safari West and I can’t wait. It’s kind of incredible how the intricate path we have walked these past 10 years links everything so seamlessly together. Thank you to Everyone!

Introducing: The Beaver Institute

heidi08 Beaver Conference, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Mike Callahan, The Beaver Institute March 4, 2017

You might remember that before the conference I mentioned that Mike Callahan had some big news he wanted to unfurl, well here it is:

The Beaver Institute™ is launched!

At the Conference I had the great pleasure of announcing that a new national charitable 510(c)3 nonprofit organization is being formed specifically to support beavers. It will be called The Beaver Institute™, and it will raise funds to support a myriad of beaver coexistence efforts on a national level, including key flow device installations, training installers, supporting scientific beaver management research and public outreach.

Here in Massachusetts a small grant program has subsidized many flow device installations and has been a huge success in demonstrating their effectiveness and changing a culture of lethal trapping to one of beaver coexistence. It is our hope that this model can be replicated on a national scale.

The Beaver Institute™ is still being formed so I welcome you to join as a charter member and submit any questions or suggestions to me by email or on the Beaver Management facebook page for projects you feel the Beaver Institute could support. Also if you have any suggestions for fundraising or connections with grant funders please let us know. The Board of Directors is also looking for beaver experts to serve on their Advisory Board.

I really think we can move beaver management forward at a significantly faster pace with a nationally focused nonprofit organization. More details to follow on this forum as they develop.

The Beaver Institute! What a wonderful platform for beaver advocacy and research! Congratulations Mike for leaping into the non-profit fray. We will help any way we can and do our best to get the news out. Hey maybe there could be a grant for a sister beaver conference on the East Coast in even years? Or a Massachusetts beaver festival to teach folks what to appreciate about the animal they go crazy over. You need to bring some academic types on board. Who’s on the beaver faculty at MIT or Cambridge?

And the whole thing can’t get going soon enough in my book. Medford is in dire need of a beaver intelligence transfusion, so maybe you have your first pilot project right there.

Understanding the warrant: Beaver management money

Beavers are such a pervasive presence in Medfield, they’re making an appearance at Town Meeting.

Tucked among the more than 40 articles voters will decide on at the April 24 Town Meeting is $5,000 “for the purpose of trapping beavers and removing beaver dams throughout the Town.”

“They build dams in culverts,” Town Administrator Michael Sullivan said. When left unchecked, he said, “They were flooding people’s backyards and affecting their septic systems.”

The Town Administrator, according to the article, is the town position authorized to spend the funds. Sullivan said the town spends about the same amount every year, using trapper Barry Mandell.

“You could bring the Conibear and the foothold (trap) back,” Mandell said, and encourage recreational trapping, “but then you’ll have negligent trappers catching dogs.”

Beavers are an issue across much of Massachusetts, and a regular appearance in town budgets.

Hey, I’ve got an idea for a BI project. Chose a small community around Medford and install culvert protection on every road like they do in Grafton where Skip Lisle is a Selectman. Get a big piece of paper and add up all the money it costs you on one half, then add the 5ooo you spend trapping every single year on the other half. Make sure to figure any extra hours public works spends ripping out debris or hiring back hoes to do the work. As well as every single minute you spend talking to the public to explain the need for this.