BABY STEPS FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 Beavers March 24, 2018

When I was an psychology intern I once asked a supervisor why he liked working with alcoholics, (which since I was determined to be a child therapist never appealed to me). His answer stuck in my head and stayed with me all these years. He answered frankly, “I was in therapy for seven years. In all that time I changed this much” (he demonstrated an tiny gap between his thumb and forefinger).

“When I work with an alcoholic they can turn their entire life around

Which springs to mind when I consider writing about this very minute victory that dogged persistence achieved. It didn’t take seven years, but gosh it feels like it.

I think it was in ancient days of yore when I was asked to co-author the chapter on urban beavers for the beaver restoration guidebook. I remember being so excited and proud I couldn’t sleep before our first conference call, and working literally hours on every single paragraph. As excited as I was to work on a chapter about coexisting with beavers in an urban setting. that’s how disappointed I was to see the final edited version with a horrific sentence that had been ‘edited in’ by unknown fingers.

Salisbury and White (2015) conclude that there will always be a need to manage wildlife populations in urban settings to reduce human -wildlife conflicts and to provide the missing natural forms of population regulation, such as predation. Careful consideration is warranted for balancing the benefits of accommodating wildlife with the need for minimizing the consequences for both people and animals. When the benefits provided by urban beaver outweigh the costs to a community, then beaver based stream management options should be explored. An example from Martinez, California (see page 22) illustrates the myriad of community benefits derived from just a single beaver colony. However, relocating beaver to wilder places (see Chapter 5: Relocating Beaver ) might be the preferred alternative for both beaver and people, as demonstrated by Wildlife 2000 in Colorado.

Basically that sentence erased everything I had worked towards and suggested those beavers might have been happier if I had just allowed them to be relocated instead. I don’t want to be too dramatic but to me it was kind of like the opposite of a “It’s a wonderful life” it where Clarence the angel scratched his head and said, gosh “everything really would have been better if you had never been born“.

Rogue sentences are hard to trace and harder to erase. There were a host of editors and readers of the document, and no one said they knew how the mysterious sentence got in there. I was warned before hand that every comment had to be backed up with science and not to site “Gray literature”. Even so, there did not appear to be a reference for explaining why beavers would have been happier without Martinez.

(I can’t even imagine how you would research something like that? How do tell when a beaver is happy anyway?)

Anyway I kept poking, prodding and nudging to get this changed, I wheedled and implored and I’m sure it was Kent Woodruff who took mercy on me and finally got it edited. (Thank you, Kent!) Yesterday Greg Lewallen sent these changes to ask if I was happy with them.

In communities where concerns over coexistence have not been properly addressed and management steps have not been taken to ensure the success of urban beaver colonization, then allowing beaver colonization within these communities may not be the appropriate response. In those instances, relocating beaver to wilder places (see Chapter 5: Relocating Beaver) might be the preferred alternative for both beaver and people, as demonstrated by Wildlife 2000 in Colorado.

Ahhh. So there were magic things we did in Martinez that let those crazy urban beavers succeed where they might otherwise have failed? I guess. We installed a flow device and made people stop trying to kill them, that was really helpful. We wrapped trees and held a beaver festival. It was never rocket science. Any city could do it.

But assuming it survives some more ghost edits, it feels a little better anyway.

On a clear day, you can see for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Who's saving beavers now? November 12, 2015

Here’s a nice article from last month’s Freshwater Magazine. It’s a sweet piece of writing with some delicious frosting added yesterday that I’ll tell you about later. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

When a group of five scientists in the Pacific Northwest began advertising for workshops on the science of beaver restoration, they didn’t anticipate a few things.

The workshops would be filled to capacity within a week. There was so much interest they needed to increase both the workshop size and the total number of workshops offered. There would be a waitlist, followed by phone calls and emails from people clamoring to get in.

“People are starting to see the value of beaver for more than just their pelts or more than just pests, but how we can work in concert with them to fix more rivers and streams.”

Regulatory agency staff, nonprofits, tribal representatives, private landowners, members of the general public and others paid the $50 fee for one-day intensives on the science behind how beaver restore streams.

But the sharing of knowledge and best practices would live beyond the day-long events. Workshop discussions were captured in an official guidebook on beaver restoration, published this past June.

“The publication is meant to be an accessible resource for anyone using beaver to restore waterways,” said Greg Lewallen, a master’s student at Portland State University and the research assistant for the project. “With enough educational outreach, the perception of these animals will start to change. That’s why it’s critical we continue to spread the word about the large role that these animals play in ecosystems.”

This article does a great job of emphasizing how thrilled they were by the response they got. Waiting lists are a reminder that the west was hungry for this information. You probably remember this publication from the delightful cover that featured Cheryl’s photo. People were really excited by this information. Now the crew was so estatic by the response they got that they want to work on volume II.

Only in this second version they want to include a chapter on the topic dearest to my heart. Are you sitting down? They want to include a chapter on this:

Did you know that 81% of all Americans live in urban settings? So if most of us are going to deal with beavers its going to be someplace next to sidewalks and parking meters. And if the fact that they were including a chapter on the topic was all the news for this morning, that would be enough. I’d be in heaven floating on a pink fluffy cloud.

But that is not all. No, that is not all.

Now if you want to study tortoises you go to the Galapagos, if you want to see the works of Michaelanglo you go to Rome, and apparently if you want to learn about Urban Beavers you contact Martinez. Greg wrote me this week and we arranged a fantastic phone call for yesterday, where I told him the long and winding story of our beavers and the tireless work the people of Martinez had done to save them.

I was so flattered to be asked, and thrilled to think that before our city the topic of Urban Beavers was never even discussed. (In fact the words were probably only paired as an obscure reference to leggy females that drank Manhattans and smoked black cigarettes.) But now the words actually existed. And Urban Beavers were a THING, like open space or two-way traffic. And they wanted to include them in the next edition!!!

My excitement could only be described with this video short.

So I was as excited as little Madeline here during our conversation, and kept missing words and skipping over myself. But, since this was a story I had told a thousand times before, I found my way well enough. And before the conversation was over, a little moth of a thought started fluttering wistfully in my mind. I shushed it away many times but it came only back stronger.

What if I could be a co-author on this chapter. Was it even possible?

All through the hour long conversation I waived the fluttering thought away and tried to imagine whether I was qualified for such an auspicious venture. It’s true I had already co-authored two papers on beavers that were published in scientific journals. And a few in my trained field of psychology, where I had even been sole author. So maybe it wasn’t a crazy idea. But was it impossible? This was NOAA, Fish and Wildlife and the USFS; did my scrabbling, back room beaver-tactics really belong there?

Well, some dreams never see the light of day, and some apples fall to the ground before they ripen.We can never know what would have happened if I had summoned the courage to ask Greg if I could be a co-author of the chapter.

Because HE ASKED ME FIRST.

Guess what I answered. Go ahead, guess, I can wait.

Just Desserts for beavers

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and Birds, Beavers and Frogs, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? July 1, 2015

There are not one but TWO awesome pieces of beaver news this morning. I’ll start with the pièce de résistance, a phrase which literally means the thing with staying power. Because that’s what this is. Really.

Michael Pollock sent it to me yesterday on it’s glorious release. He said getting out 1.0 was grueling and he was still seeing typos, but he asked me to give him thoughts about 2.o down the line. Check out the title photograph for which it credits the Worth A Dam FOUNDATION. We would have liked Cheryl’s name too but I’m happy we got the website. And this is exactly the kind of place we want our photos to be. Just read for yourself.

Beaver as a Partner in Restoration

More and more, restoration practitioners are using beaver to accomplish stream, wetland, and floodplain restoration. This is happening because, by constructing dams that impound water and retain sediment, beaver substantially alter the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the surrounding river ecosystem, providing benefits to plants, fish, and wildlife. The possible results are many, inclusive of : higher water tables; reconnected and expanded floodplains; more hyporheic exchange; higher summer base flows; expanded wetlands; improved water quality; greater habitat complexity; more diversity and richness in the populations of plants, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals; and overall increased complexity of the river ecosystem.

It starts with a review of the hydromorphic and geological effects of beaver dams, then talks about filtration, groundwater and biodiversity. Honestly. for the beaver nay-eayers on your list, this is a big dose of science from the heavy weights FWS, NOAA, and USFS. Even if you can read nothing else, take a look at the first chapter because it says literally everything you know to win the next five arguments you have about beavers.

Chapter 1—Effects of Beaver Dams on Physical and Biological Processes

Beaver impoundments change the spatial distribution of water (groundwater, pond, or stream), as well as the timing of its release and residence time in the watershed. Beaver dams impound water in ponds and pools, and these impoundments slow the flow of the stream; this holds the water within the stream reach for longer periods and can increase base flows (reviewed in Pollock et al. 2003). Indeed, some perennial streams transform into intermittent and/or ephemeral streams following the removal of beaver dams (Finley 1937, Wilen et al. 1975).

Conversely, reintroduced beaver have transformed some intermittent streams back to perennial streams (Dalke 1947, Pollock et al. 2003), and recolonizing beaver have transformed slightly losing streams to gaining streams ((Majerova et al. 2015).

Honestly every ecologist and politician needs to read this from cover to cover. It ends with first hand case studies of watersheds where beaver were introduced. And describes the successes they observed. I already told Michael it needs a section on restoration in URBAN streams and he says he lobbied for its inclusion but was denied.Thus far. Another something for version 2.0.

At the end is a list of resources for answering any burning beaver question that might arise. And guess what’s first?

That’s right. Listed before the established forefathers of Beaver Solutions and BWW, the little upstart crows of beavers from martinez have first place in the queue. Along with the cover placement. We are the Alpha and the Omega of living with beavers. Could there be a better sign that we are doing the right thing? Not for me there couldn’t. (I mean another thousand readers couldn’t hurt, but I’d rather be the GO TO spot when folks have burning questions than anything else.)

Honestly the whole thing is such a useful, instructive, science-based labor of love that it will take me weeks to fully read. I did my best to splash its announcement around the four corners of the internet, but feel free to share with your unpersuaded friend(s) of choice. What a fine ending to June!

I think I’ll leave the DU article for tomorrow. But if you want a sneak peak here it is.