USDA killing beavers – Worth A Dam

Several aspen trees were felled by beaver along the Blue River in Warriors Mark recently. Special to the Daily

Am I the only one that gets a kind of tingly feeling when a paper runs a photo like this? Colorado Summit Daily has a fairly nice glimpse this morning of beavers-getting-ready-for-winter.

Beavers are active this time of the year!

My friend Terese Keil, property manager for Trappers Villas, called me the other day to tell me a bunch of landscaping aspen had been chewed down literally overnight by beavers.

A call to Fish and Wildlife confirmed several reports of beaver activity in Summit County and loss of trees on properties. Apparently, they are busy building dams and lodges in preparation for winter. The advice was to protect the trees with wire mesh along the bottom of the trunks.

Beavers are prolific engineers and builders, and prefer to work mostly at night; their specially adapted incisor teeth and powerful lower jaw muscles allow them to chew down trees. Their teeth never stop growing, and their four front teeth are self-sharpening. They have been seen to work as a team to carry a large piece of timber.

The author Joanne Stolen is a retired microbiology professor from Rutgers – now turned artist and living in Breckenridge, CO. This is a mere 2.5 hour drive from Sherri Tippie so I’m going to imagine that if they aren’t friends already they soon will be. In the mean time I have been perusing the linocuts on her art website and noticing there wasn’t a beaver yet. I’m guessing she’ll be inspired to fix that oversight very soon!

There are typically two dens or rooms within a beaver lodge, one for drying off after exiting the water, and the second, a drier, inner chamber is where the beaver family actually lives. Special to the Daily

And remember this Wednesday I will be talking at the Rossmoor Nature Association about our beavers and their effect on our creek. You know you have friends there, so see if you can get an invitation. I’d love to see some familiar faces.

Oh and if you need provoking after a weekend that was just too relaxing go read this morning’s whimper from Mississippi where they are bemoaning the fact that the federal governement (which they mostly don’t believe in) is now only going to pay for half the cost of killing beavers with the USDA and isn’t that a shame? I mean its not like the state needs the water or the wooducks or the trout or the filtration. Obviously those beavers have to be killed because flow devices never work and Uncle Sam needs to do it!

Remind me why I pay taxes again.

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee,

For this revolt of thine methinks is like

Another fall of man.

Henry V Act II: scene ii

Wildlife agents hunt beavers to stop floods in Federal Way

State wildlife agents are hunting beavers in Federal Way over concerns of flooding on South 373rd Street. The rising water levels in the Hylebos Creek, as caused by beaver dams, pose a threat to the road’s infrastructure and the safety of drivers.

Three beavers were trapped and euthanized this week at the Federal Way site. The department is looking for one more beaver, said Matt Cleland, district supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Wildlife Services.

Oh my goodness. Another city bringing in the feds to trap beavers. USDA to the rescue! Where is this anyway, Arkansas? Montana? Oh, no. Its in WASHINGTON STATE. That’s right, the place where everyone knows better and they just passed a unanimous beaver relocation bill this year. The place where the lands council whose highly successful beaver program has been on NPR, the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal is just 300 miles away.

In 2007, the Spring Valley Restoration Project was intended to control flooding on South 373rd Street and expand the spawning grounds for salmon. WSDOT built a bridge and rerouted the creek through a culvert. Friends of the Hylebos, a local conservation group, helped plant trees and vegetation at the site.

However, beavers soon moved in and built large dams. The dams have raised the water level to just inches below the bridge while flooding the surrounding properties.

Let me get this straight. You just restored the area to encourage salmon. And beavers moved in which you should know will encourage salmon more right? But now there’s too much nature in this natural area so your bringing in APHIS to kill some of it? Makes sense to me.

“We weren’t going to remove them until the water got that close to the bridge,” said Carl Ward, a biologist for WSDOT. “One of the dams is 6 feet tall and has flooded 10 acres. … They built a second dam, which made it a lot worse.”

Ward acknowledged that more beavers will eventually build dams in that area.

Ya think?

Comment from Leonard Houston of the BAC in Oregon:

In the article you will see that WDOT put in a bridge and rerouted the creek through a culvert, if that is not a reporter error then that is the most backward approach to road infrastructure and fish passage I ever heard of, here as most places we take out culverts and put in bridges to prevent blockage points by beavers and debris and to allow unobstructed passage to fish.

Hard to believe Michael Pollock lives just miles away and no one thought of working with NOAA or USFWS . This whole project stinks of poor planning with no forethought to long term management issues involved in every stream restoration project especially those conducted in beaver habitat.

Honestly, I don’t know whether to be mortified or amused by this tom-foolery. I love how much smarter Washington is than California, it encourages me all the time with what is possible. I love their successful programs and their smart public works. But to be truthful its a little daunting to see them so consistently be so much better than us. It’s like the big brother whose reputation you know you can never possibly live up to.

Well, looks like your brother has just totaled the family car and his halo will be a little bent for a while.