Jon was treated to a whirlwind of goodwill at the bustling, dynamic, constantly updating bird rescue at IBRRC. He was put immediately to work under the direction of their head “handyman” who is a retired refinery worker married to one of the regular volunteers. Together they built cages, fences, ramps and perches for some 700 complaining and pecky rescued birds (more were delivered by the Coast Guard).

Both days he was there volunteers filled the place, some drop ins and locals who just wanted to help. Yesterday a maintenance crew from nearby 6-Flags amusement park was “loaned” for the effort, and since they were used to building tanks for dolphins, they were naturals at building tanks for scoters and murres.

Jon came home smiling and exhausted both days, and promptly sent a volunteer alert to his fellow employees at the powerplant, who in turn want to help out anyway that they can. If you’re  interested in offering a few hours of help, contact the good folk at IBRRC or just drop in. Monetary Donations are needed also. IBRRC will tell you what they need and show you what to do. Don’t know anything about birds or which end of a hammer to hold? How about laundry? Food service? Clean-up? Think of something you can do, because they most likely need it and will be appreciative. You’ll feel great after and bouyed with a spirit that knows that there are good people doing grand things in the world. I promise.

Guess whose in the news this morning for ripping out a dam and wrapping trees with chicken wire? Good old North Carolina, the city of Greensboro to be precise. Seems those darn beavers keep taking city trees and building in an area where the banks are susceptible to erosion. (um are there banks that aren’t?) The city brought in their back hoe and are threatening to use their boy-toys again if the beavers dare rebuild.

Insert chalk outline here:

Beavers have chewed through several tree trunks by  Latham Park and near the Elm Street bridge  (H. Scott Hoffmann / News & Record)

Municipal workers spent part of Tuesday removing the beavers’ dam from North Buffalo Creek with the backhoe. And they wrapped the park’s most vulnerable trees nearby in protective wire mesh to discourage the workaholic critters from rebuilding in the same spot, just north of Moses Cone Hospital not far from an Audubon Society natural area.

Not far from the Audubon Society nature area? Oh dear! You better get rid of those beavers right away or they’ll start encouraging wood duck and night heron and you know how Audubon hates that. Next thing you know all that coppiced new growth from the trees they took will be producing nesting habitat for thrushes and finches, and nothing makes an Audubon member more irritated than having too many bird species to look up in their Sibleys.

The beavers will either take the hint and skedaddle or they will try to rebuild the dam just east of North Elm Street, a spot where their appetite for trees has been a problem. City administrators also fear the beaver dam’s potential for triggering erosion, which would further pollute a stream Greensboro officials are trying to revive.

Really, they’ve been trying so hard to restore that stream? Gosh, that’s awful. Watershed restoration is such a key civic responsibility. Too bad there wasn’t some team of ecological aquatic engineers that could take on that job, restore the banks, raise the watertable, improve water quality bring fish and wildlife while simultaneously trapping silt and buildup. It’s a big job, it would be great if they could live on site too, and do repairs constantly. Still, Greenboro’s not made of money. They obviously just spent their last dime on overtime for the men, gas for the backhoe and chicken wire to wrap those trees. Where would they ever find a team like that to work for free?

“If the beavers can’t find anything to eat, they will likely move on,” said biologist David Mizejewski,  whose Animal Planet series included an episode on beavers.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOP THE PRESSES.

Animal Planet? As in Animals on this planet? Okay, you do know, Mr. Biologist from Animal Planet, the episode on beavers featured Skip Lisle installing a flow device in Canada, right? I don’t mean to startle you but these devices work in America too. You could chose the ideal height your eroding bank should be at, invest a day’s work for Skip to come down and train y’all how to do it, and then have the beavers keep restoring that creek for you? Just want to make sure you’re aware of your options, here.

Vermont, where Lisle lives,  is 15 hours away. Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts, is 11 hours away. Both could solve this problem easily for you, and both are headed towards the frozen winter in their area and won’t have much to do for a while. Didn’t North Carolina get Stimulus money for beaver management? Why not take 5000 of those dollars and pay to have an expert solve your problem so that several better experts can restore your creeks?

Best part of the article:

If the beavers rebuild their dam near Latham Park, the city will remove it again, Phlegar said. He hopes for the best, but he’s also prepared for the possibility that the beavers will leave the park only to set up housekeeping in an equally inappropriate area somewhere else. What are the odds that might happen? “That’s the $6 million question,” he said.

Let’s see, what are the odds of beavers sticking around someplace they call home even though people do enormously annoying things that interfere with their food supply and dams, and the beavers just determinedly rebuilding? Martinez? Any Comments?

There are a few pieces of beaver news this morning, so I thought you’d enjoy a miscellany. First, Jon is off to Cordelia to make bird cages for IBRRC and generally offer a helping hand. Wish him a squaky, pecky, helpful day! Cheryl has been there from dawn to way-past-dusk every day since Saturday, and asked him to lend a hand. Their recent shipment from the coast guard had some 500 birds, so they need all the help they can get.

Photo: Paul Kelway IBRRC

Last week the remarkable Marin Watershed project S.T.R.A.W. (Students & Teachers Restoring A Watershed) saw its documentary screening in San Francisco. I’d been reading about them and was encouraged to make first contact. Were the children interested in letting beavers help them with their restoration work? Would they like to have some conversations about the role of beavers in the watershed? I got a lovely email back from education director Laurette Rogers, who notes that beavers are one of her favorite animals. She described getting a giggle when some restoration willows they were working on for a project in San Joaquin suddenly “disappeared”. She never saw the culprits but they slapped their tails at her!

A Simple Question Trailer from Trent Boeschen on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, I got a call from the president-elect of the Rotary club in Pleasant Hill, saying she had heard from a friend how delightful the beaver presentation was last week and would I come and talk to them? My Rotary club experience in Martinez was hardly the most heart-warming moment of my beaver adventures, so I am eager to replace that memory with a better one. Plus my head was buzzing when I noticed that the letterhead of her email said she worked for the Pleasant Hill Parks Department. I can’t think of anyone I’d more like to convince about beaver benefits, so of course I agreed!

Long time beaver friend and Food Bank Coordinator Kathy Gleason dropped me a note that someone had donated a large beaver stuffed toy of mother and baby, and would I like to add it to the display table? Thank you very much, Kathy. It’s been a week of odd fortune. Monday I got an email from a physician in the South Bay, telling me too look up the exciting Utah beaver reintroduction, and incidentally telling me about beaver history in San Jose.

did you know that Captain John Sutter bought 1,500 beaver pelts in 1841 at Mission San Jose! This means they clearly were distributed throughout the Bay Area.

He let me know that he’d been doing research about the area in the 1800’s and would be happy to share other related pieces.Of course we’d love to hear them.

Finally, this morning, I got a call rom a woman who had enjoyed our “charm bracelet activity” and who wanted information about where to buy the charms and how to implement it. Seems her daughter is a girl scout leader in North Carolina and she wants to encourage her to do it there. Ahhh,  disciples in beaver-killin North Carolina. Nothing could make me happier. I will write back immediately! If you’re interested, I added the curriculum to the “teachers” part of the website. The charms can be purchased cheaply here:

Regular readers of this blog will remember our beaver friend in Massachusetts, Mike Callahan.

Back in the murky grip of winter, when Californians were waiting for the temperature to drop and East Coasters were trying to remember what the earth looked like under its white blanket, beaver friend Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts was hatching a plan. He wondered about making a series of DVD’s to train willing people to do sensible beaver management. His idea was to create something accessible and hands-on enough to be used by public works crews and maintenance workers across the nation.

Mike talked with the Humane Society and Audubon who were very excited about the project and directed him to apply for the AWI Christine Stevens Grant. Which he did, arguing convincingly that teaching cities to take care of beavers would take care of waterfowl, take care of amphibians, take care of muskrats and minks and otters and improve water quality.

He applied and found out this summer that he was awarded a $10,000 grant for the production. He hired Pinehurst Pictures and Sound to  handle the project. A videographer and good friend is shooting the footage. They’ve been filming installs with the fall colors as a backdrop. As the water gets colder and more uninviting, he’s starting to think about next steps.

Target audience, segment length, teaching emphasis, marketing, outreach, spreading the word. These are things that Worth A Dam has done fairly well, so he asked for our input on the process. Beaver people (and I assume wildlife workers in general) can sometimes be so focused on the important work they do that it’s hard to think about media or outreach. Having stalked the wisest of beaver minds persistently for the past two years, I can honestly say that these wizards are not even great about talking to each other, let alone the rest of the non-believing world. Partly its because they are modest, generally private people, who don’t spend hours bragging about what they do. (You’ll note, for instance, that there are no beaver-management bloggers.) But what good is a brilliant  instructional DVD if no one sees it? If a tree falls in the forest and no one chews it, does it still taste delicious? A project that could save thousands of beavers is worth selling with some great publicity, I’m thinking.

Since Mike’s a huge Patriots fan, I’ll use football lingo. Go Long!

I’m still thinking and mulling, but I gave him two basic ideas. The first is to watch for the next local public beaver issue that hits the media. These things happen all the time, especially in “help-we-can’t-use-cruel-inhumane-traps-and-we’re-surrounded-by-beavers” Massachusetts. (Not that they actually have more beavers, mind you, but they want people to THINK they do. With all that professional hand-wringing Fish and Wildlife have made some good friends in the media, but I digress). So thank the beaver-harrassers for working so hard to create sustaining contacts with the media and then use that visibility to walk heroically on the scene, volunteer to train public works or the highway workers or whoever and do 10 hours for free provided you can film it. Then you have the media relationship already started and you can use that momentum to highlight the DVD series which will be available soon and can teach any city/utilities to handle this problem!

The second thing I’d do is make a “postcard” announcing the DVD. I’d probably do this twice, once for the “this is coming” and the second for “its here”. Send the postcard to the directors of every department of public works, parks and recreation, state park, regional park, highway management, railroad division etc in your state. Seem daunting? It’s not impossible. There are 377 municipalities in Massachusetts. 5 minutes on the web can look up contact information for any one of those cities. 10 people working on this for three hours each will generate all the addresses you need (5 x 377= 31hours). Most directors will have email addresses listed so you can do the whole postcard “virtually”, generate a spreadsheet of the contacts, mail off your postcard with a single click,  and it will cost you nothing but time. Honestly I’d like it sent to every director of public works in each city in the country, but we’re going to need massive worth a dam volunteers to help look up all those addresses.

I had other suggestions…like extra footage about a variety of installs, a 15 minute segment on “why bother” discussing the benefits to the habitat, a short intro or trailer produced and released on youtube to send out with his mailing, a bullet point review at the end of each section, and of course, an outtakes reel for my personal enjoyment.

I’m thinking that my suggestions were a little overwhelming, but I’m pretty sure they’d help, and I’m even more certain its worth investing time and money in. I’m betting there’s a data base somewhere of directors of public works for the state of california…or the nation. Maybe it will just arrive mysteriously in my email one day. You never know, stranger things could happen.

Oh, one final thing Mike asked if I could help with? “Do I have any footage of beavers or creek animals that he could use for the natural history section?”

hahahahahahahaha.

Me? Beaver footage? If I can find anything else on my computer its a holy miracle.

Worth A Dam has been quietly mourning the fact that we had no kits that survived this year. It is hard to know why that was, but we know some reasons why it wasn’t. It was not because of inadequate food supply, because the rest of our family is looking quite fat and happy. Our beavers are eating mainly tulles with a side of willow, and with the entire marina at their disposal they aren’t running out of cattails any time soon. It was also probably not because the mink ate them. A beaver kit, even newborn, is the size of a guinea pig and a mink is smaller than a cat. Also mink are notoriously messy eaters and would likely leave clues. Jon has been checking the creek in the kayak and hasn’t seen signs of what happened. One benefit of the mink is that they are very high on the food chain, so if they were here and thriving it gives us an important clue about creek health, which suggest that it probably wasn’t something bad in the water either.

It may have something to do with mom’s eye condition, and her not being well enough to care for them. From what we could see she stopped milk production early and she may have just been unable to feed them. Or maybe they weren’t around anymore so milk production wasn’t triggered. A good portion of beaver watching is guesswork, and to be honest, we just don’t know why we didn’t have surviving kits this year.  We hope its a one-time event, and that we get a new batch next year, but we just don’t know what will happen.

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Which brings me to the title of this post. What happens next year? Normally kits hang around and become yearlings and last year’s-yearlings take off and become adults. What happens when you skip a generation? Our three yearlings are still here and healthy and almost ready for the world.  Will 2008 beavers be “failure to launch” yearlings? Will they stick around for an extra lesson in dam building and become bi-yearlings? The research says they can stay with the colony 2-3 years, so this could be the three they’re talking about. How will Mom and Dad feel about them sticking around? Aren’t you curious?

Speaking of curious, if you want to know more about the origins of algae bloom that is causing so much grief for the north coast’s seabirds (and our VP of wildlife!) check out this slideshow and lecture from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It’s a great introduction to the issue.

IBRRC brought back 100 birds last night, only 3 died in transport. Now they’re down to the grueling (and pecky!)  work of washing and hydrating each one. Latest Update Here. Cheryl was there to help and took this picture. And guess who else was there? Penny and John Weigand who did the Comeback Kids book on the Martinez Beavers. They are doing a similar book on IBRRC, and just happened to be visiting that day. What a lucky coincidence for them! And for all those birds who got rescued and will be given free health care.

Speaking of which, have you seen this? It is a remarkable example of the kind of politics I aspire to, charming, courageous, sneaky and impossible to ignore

There’s a massive algae bloom off the Oregon and Washington coast. No one knows why, but it means that the oceans are covered with a thick foam. The foam washes away the protective oils on the water birds, leaving them without the ability to repel water and stay warm. Thousands of birds are washing up on shore, many dead or too weak to survive. The rescue center seen above had stepped boldly up to take care of scoters, grebes, loons, murres, and other shore birds from washington, but now is overwhelmed by its own birds as the effects of the bloom move south. They were overwhelmed and sent some birds north to a sister facility. Now they need help from California.

Enter IBRRC. (International Bird Rescue & Research Center). They are experts at dealing with these kinds of situations, but this is different. It’s like the effect of an oil spill without the oil.. They dispatched a volunteer friday night to go to Oregon and rent a truck that could bring some 200 birds back to their head quarters in suisun in animal carriers. They are starting with the loons which are the most time sensitive. In anticipation of the arrival they put out a massive volunteer call which is how I heard about it. Our own Cheryl Reynolds, will be there monday and probably many days after to help.

P. CHILTON/Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team

A red-throated Loon, covered in foam, lies in the sand near the Klipsan beach approach on the northern end of the Long Beach Peninsula. The bird was still alive when this photo was taken.

If you can help IBRRC or the Wildlife Center in Astoria, please do. The frontline folk have been struggling to keep up and IBRRC has only dealt with this kind of bloom once before. No one knows why it happens. Sometimes its entirely natural, and sometimes its triggered by the actions of man. What would a sea be like with no shore birds? Help if you can.

Listen my children and understand
The beavers lost in Maryland
Bill Greene of Olde Stage Knolls remembers
The wetland built in past Decembers
Now are drained and barren land…

(apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Here’s a familiar story out of Bowie, Maryland with an exciting new twist. Seems home owner Bill Greene is pursuing legal action over his missing beavers after the Home Owner’s Association turned his “wetland” into a “dryland”.

Bill Greene used to enjoy the tranquility of the pond that once backed up to his and about 20 other houses in the Olde Stage Knolls neighborhood in Bowie.The pond, which was there before the housing development was built more than 18 years ago, was made by a beaver dam, said Greene and his neighbor, Jeanette Rodkey. But the beavers and the dam were removed and the pond consequently drained in March at the request the Olde Stage Homeowners Association, HOA president David Perroto said.

So Mr. Greene notified the Maryland Department of the Environment who came out and inspected the drained pond and dam-age. Turns out the MDE was very interested to learn that the HOA never obtained any permits for the work or the destruction of the beavers.

“I’m not a tree-hugger or something, but it really bothers me that this area was destroyed,” Greene said. “I think it’s important that people understand that even that five acres behind your home is wetlands and it’s protected.”

Ahhh, way to go, Bill! Even in your non-tree-hugging capacity, you tell em! It’s about time people realized that there are consequences for removing beavers, including destroying wetlands. Disabling valuable habitat is an expensive act that should never be undertaken lightly. Any environmental lawyers reading this? Pay attention. I think this could set a precedent. Right now if you want to mess with wetland in California, F&G makes you create some other wetland as compensation. How about if every time a beaver dam were destroyed the habitat had to be replaced somewhere else at the property owner’s expense?

Might slow down the “slash and burn” a bit.

Violations included work done on the site without authorization by MDE and the removal of sediment leading to water pollution.

Now we’re talking. Let’s discuss what is released when a dam is destroyed? And by extension what beaver dams hold back for us? Maybe the property owner who leaves one on his land should get a tax credit, because of all the good he’s doing for the water and the environment?

The case has been forwarded to the Maryland Attorney General’s Office by MDE for possible enforcement action, said MDE spokesman Jay Apperson, who declined to comment further on the specific case because it remains under review.The association’s liability insurance is paying for the cost of legal representation in the case and would cover any fines the state might assess, he said.The home owner’s association’s former management company, D.H. Bader Management Services, contracted with ABC All Wildlife for the work on behalf of the HOA, according to the MDE report. Representatives from D.H. Bader did not return calls for comment.

Like that name? “All Wildlife”. Um, maybe they left off the first part “we kill”? Or maybe ABC stands for “Always Bash Critters”? Here’s the address for the attorney general of Maryland in case you want to let him know why destroying Wetlands should have consequences.