After reading a very sad article yesterday where HSUS’ Laura Simon discussed a Barred Owl caught by a leg hold trap, I wrote our old friend friend to commiserate and offer support.  Turns out she is located in Connecticut and was very unhappy about the loss. Laura is a good friend of Mike Callahan of beaver solutions, and got him to apply for the Christine Stevens Award for his DVD project. I accidentally ‘met’ her when I contacted John Hadidian of HSUS about the Rossmoor Woodpeckers and she was covering for his vacation. I hadn’t realized she was from the only state where HSUS covers beaver problems. Did she know whether Skip Hilliker had been consulted in the New Forests Association case? Sadly he was not. One of her higher-ups in HSUS had called Mr. Peterson and offered their help but it had been declined.

You’ll remember this is the case where the treasurer of the Wildlife Association decided to write a message on his list-serv about the need to kill their beavers and the best way to do it without annoying animal rights interference. He also helpfully suggested what the home owners should complain about so they could blame their intervention on those complaints down the road. It was a stunning example of what goes on (I won’t even say behind the scenes) at a Home Owner’s Association.

So yesterday I forwarded Mr. Peterson my response from Laura and said I was so confused why he hadn’t contacted her. She followed up with another offer to connect with him and we crossed our fingers and waited. This morning he wrote her back, inviting her to come see the difficulties for herself. He said he was working with an engineering firm who is advising that the whole tunnel needs replacing because this one is completely obstructed by beavers. They have applied for a grant on the work, but in the meantime he would be happy to hear her thoughts.

Gosh. The news is next-door to being hopeful. Inviting Laura to come check out the scene is good. Asking engineers is not good. I’m mystified about how come the beavers wouldn’t plug up a “new tunnel” but I assume he’s relying on the fact that they’ll be dead to keep them in line. It would be great to bring in some culvert work and block it with a trapezoidal fence to keep them out of the tunnels altogether. I’m eager to see what happens, and you can be sure I’ll keep you posted.

Oh,BTW, for those of you interested in our local new beaver developments, Jon saw two yearlings on the dam-let last night, and one was scenting!

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

One thing you have to admire about beavers is their commitment to work. Oh its nothing like our TypeA/driven/greedy/soulless workaholic-ism. It’s completely different. Do you remember inventing a new game as a child? It was wholly absorbing until mom brought grilled cheese sandwiches and then you were munchingly engrossed in lunch and laughing about emily’s hair sticking straight up, and then after lunch back to the game only you made three changes so that new people could play and instead of a butterfly restaurant you were a zoo keeper whose crocodile could paint.

This is the ambling, creative, purposeful way that beavers work. They don’t ever expect to be finished, and they don’t mind at all stopping to munch a willow branch or wrestle with their brother. They are happy to work alone, and equally happy to share the load. They might do very little, or an exhausting lot, depending on the materials, the moment and their mood. If there is a way to be a “zen workaholic” beavers have found it.

Which is offered by way of introduction to the new goings on at the footbridge lately. Cheryl went down yesterday to help a visiting Humbolt student make plaster casts of beaver footprints, and noticed some new activity in the first scrape, upstream of the footbridge. The photo is of a new dam-let to the right of the creek in the scrape, entirely made of mud and tulles, and bordered by a lovely new channel the beavers have dug right to the center of the tulles. The picture above is taken from the upstream corner, facing the footbridge, with the actual creek not shown but running along to the left.

Beaver canals are an important addition, and one we’ve been waiting for. Also a mysterious pile of dirt that I think is a scent mound, which is another expected (but until now not seen) addition. Jon saw what might have been “scenting” behavior yesterday as a large beaver climbed onto the dam several times. We recently learned that these mounds can be both a “keep out” sign to other beavers, and a “SWF” personal ad for a beaver whose lost its mate or is looking for one. All in all its a pretty exciting development for the end of November. Maybe you’ll want to stop by and see for yourself.

With the lovely full Beaver Moon earlier this month. It’s official. We’re in beaver-trapping season. Historically the winter months were chosen so their fur would be at its thickest and the pelts worth most. Also the ice and snow makes them easier to track. This article from Cornwall, Ontario, highlights the risks that these traps can have for other (more valued) animals.

Wyatt Walsh was walking his dog in Guindon Park last week when he almost got trapped. He unknowingly stepped on a beaver trap, but fortunately, it had already been set off. “If it hadn’t been disengaged, it would have gotten my dog.”

The horrors! A cruel, inhumane trap used to maim and kill an unwanted pest nearly injured an animal that people choose on purpose! Oh the humanity! Fortunately Wyatt and his pooch got away safely and the city agreed to put up “killing fields” signs to warn hapless pedestrians.

City parks and landscaping supervisor Laurie Weatherall said there are “two or three” traps being used in Guindon Park, over the past few weeks. Weatherall said they initially had concerns about erecting signs as they feared it could attract unwanted attention to the traps. As for the traps, Weatherall said they aren’t located directly on the trails.

Did you catch that? We would have warned people about the risk but some crazy beaver-huggers might have gotten upset if we tipped them off. It is hard to kill beavers when your busy getting angry phone calls. You can bet these are leg hold traps, too, so there’s no need to check them often. The dead animal will just stay put until you can get to it.

Expect that the snap of leg hold traps, or the clink of conibear, or even the rattle of hancock (live until shot through the head with a .22) traps takes some 5-10 beavers a week, per trapper. Several hundred a season. Although no one really knows the number because no one tallys the bodies. In season there’s no need to report how many were taken. If you imagine every community like Cornwall or Oshawa or Martinez taking out 2-3 colonies of beavers multiplied by 50 states and several hundred municipalities the death count is fairly staggering.

Meanwhile, cities bemoan their decreasing rainfall, hurt from their lost salmon season, or worry about the quality of the water they’re filling with pesticides and fertilizers. They keep dutifully writing checks to their scrubby trappers and begrudgingly put out warning signs that no beavers can read. Then they wonder why the population rebounds in a year or two and the check needs to be bigger.

Here’s the only good part of the article:

Walsh believes the trap he encountered had already been set off intentionally by someone else and placed next to a culvert, where he came across it.

Votes have been trickling in for the title of the first ever Worth A Dam newsletter, designed by beaver friend KDC. I thought I’d keep you posted on how the results are moving along and encourage those who haven’t voted to get on the ball! The Vista survey is an enormously expensive tool whose “free trial” period will run out ridiculously soon. So vote now or forever hold your peace!

1 Beaver Briefs

2 Chew on this

4. View from the Bridge

4 Tails of the City

8 Another Dam Newsletter

Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter

Ocean Spray’s float titled “Woodland Family Gathering” includes a 16-foot tall goose, 12-foot tall beaver and 5-foot tall mouse and other woodland friends gathered to enjoy the bounty of the Thanksgiving harvest among 10-foot long ears of corn, pumpkins, squash and delicious cranberries.

Wonder if they are interested in loaning it out for a certain local festival? Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving All!

Before the beavers came to Martinez, in all the wide world we had only seen one. A single tail slap when we canoed up this river in Mendocino. (Mybluehouse is my non-beaver account). It was thrilling, and I wished we had seen more, but it had to suffice until beavers moved in downtown.

After our beavers moved in we felt like we were finally getting a glimpse of a treasure that always hid beneath the surface before. Given the distance between Martinez and Mendocino there must be thousands of beavers just waiting to be discovered by someone had the time and energy to locate them. As avid canoe-ers we are fairly familiar with the waterways between here and Big River. Surely we would come across more beavers now that we know what to look for?

Only yesterday I got an email from Brock Dolan talking about “reintroducing” beavers to Russian River. I wrote back with disbelief. What made him think beavers weren’t there already? In a large river beavers won’t build dams, and they would use bank lodges which are harder to spot. He very convincingly told me had explored every mile of the river and all of its forking tributaries, and knew people who lived on it, kayaked it, hiked it every day. He sent a round of emails to people who had done water studies for DFG, or for their own non profits. And everyone agreed. No beavers in Russian River. None at all.

Where are they beavers near the coast? Well we have the ones reported in Sonoma a while back. A colony in Big River in Mendocino. That’s it. That’s the known population density. Remember that Fort Ross, the Russian trading post, grew specifically out of the beaver trade.

However the founding of permanent British and American Settlements on the Pacific Coast , took place as part of the terrestial, rather than maritime,  fur trade. The westward expansion of trading outposts took place with amazing rapidity as the commercial exploitation of beaver and other valued pelts devastated faunal populations from local rivers and creeks.

Historical Archeology: Back From the Edge Martin Hall & Stephan Silliman pg 275

So beavers in every “river, brook and rill” were trapped and skinned and the fur traders were so good at their job, the remaining beaver along the pacific are few and far between.  To think that I personally have seen all the beavers from Martinez to Mendocino is a terrifying thought.

We know we have beavers in the delta. We heard from someone who had two in a creek in Danville. We know they’re in Los Gatos Creek. We know they’re in Sonoma and Sutter Creek. We know there’s a colony in Cordelia. Where are the beavers on Russian River? Willow Creek? Napa River? Gualala River? Where are the beavers in the Albion, the Noyo or Ten Mile River?

“Dead!” I answered, and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.

California is “hollow” of beavers. Its center echoes with the ring of places they should be but aren’t. No wonder NOAA says that loss of beaver habitat has been the prime assault to Salmon. No wonder we complain of droughts and damage. No wonder people think beavers eat fish, or mistake them for Nutria or muskrats or otters. No wonder a city could go into two years of apoplexy by being forced to deal with this simple social mammal.

It’s a beaver wasteland out there.

the dam for free? Or something like that. There has been a strain of articles recently about the role that little dams have in helping wintering salmonids. (Fish of the family Salmonidae, including salmon, trout, chars, whitefish, ciscoes and grayling) The begrudging recognition is that beavers might be helpful in keeping little amounts of dammed water for these important fish. No one sounds very happy about it. It’s has been greeted with all the enthusiasm that eating broccoli can reduce your risk of colon cancer.

Recently I’ve been exchanging emails with Brock Dolman, who is the director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center Water Institute and has been very involved with watershed and environmental education. They are the group responsible for the “Bioneers” conferences, which we talked about in the past and which at least one beaver supporter attended. Amidst their lovely grounds you can take courses in watershed restoration or learn how to garden organically. Brock has become excited about the research linking beavers to salmon, and connected with Gordon Leppig a Staff Environmental Scientist of the Northern division of the California Deparment of Fish & Game. Together the two of them are working on a massive literature review of the relationship between beavers and salmon.

Now getting Fish & Game to think about beavers as anything other than a reason to issue a permit to trap is a big deal. So already I’m excited. Yesterday he sent me an email from a friend with whom he’d been discussing this idea and who responded, “well if dams are good for salmon, lets just dress up in beaver costumes and build some.” This proposal was hailed as avoiding beaver-driven complications such as trees and flooding and permits to trap.

Hey, maybe its just me, but you know what else is really good at dressing up in beaver costumes and buildling beaver dams? BEAVERS. They are excellent at it and their costumes are very convincing. You can wrap important trees to discourage chewing. You can install flow devices if dams get too high and block with trapezoidal fencing of culverts get blocked. You can rely on coppicing to replace the bushy willow growth that comes back making better habitat for nests. And you won’t need to have a potluck every time you get the volunteers together to make repairs.

The beavers will be on site 24/7 and do the work for free.

Still. Beavers=Salmon. Let’s all repeat that. Solidly advertising the relationship between beavers and salmon is going to be the single best thing we can do to help beavers. I told Brock I’d help in any way I could, and gave him the information we’d gathered so far. If there are 5 people in the state who care about beavers, there are 5000 who care about salmon. There are salmon lobbyists. And someday, if we do our job well enough, and support the science strongly enough, and spread the word far enough, they’ll be beaver lobbyists too.

How about a “Salmon Tax” that a city or industry would need to pay for altering their watershed including removing their beavers? That might encourage them to stop and think about which is more expensive?

There’s still time to vote:

Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter

This year we were contacted by a physician in the South Bay with an interest in beavers and beaver history. RL offered to help update our Wikipedia pages and gave us some information on his local beavers. If you haven’t checked out his lovely entries, prominently featuring our own Cheryl Reynolds photographs, I would do so. Highlights include:

The Martinez Beavers entry

Yearling Beaver in Alhambra Creek, downtown Martinez Photo by Cheryl Reynolds, Courtesy of Worth a Dam 2008

The Martinez beavers are a family of beavers living in Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, California. Prior to the arrival of the beavers, Martinez was best known as the longtime home of naturalist John Muir. Two adult beavers arrived in late 2006^[1], proceeding to produce 4 kits over the course of the summer. After a controversial decision by the City of Martinez to exterminate the beavers, local conservationists organized to overturn the decision, forming an organization called Worth a Dam.^[2]. Subsequently, wildlife populations have increased in diversity along the Alhambra Creek watershed.

The Alhambra Creek Entry

Beaver in Alhambra Creek: Past and Present Belted Kingfisher eating fish above Alhambra Creek beaver pond In November, 2009 the Martinez City Council approved the placement of an 81 tile wildlife mural on the Escobar Street bridge. The mural was created by schoolchildren and donated by Worth a Dam to memorialize the beavers and other fauna in Alhambra Creek.[9]

The Martinez Ca Entry

Beaver controversy

Mink Returns to Alhambra Creek Beaver Pond Photo By Cheryl Reynolds Courtesy of Worth A Dam 2009

In early 2007, a group of beavers settled in a section of Alhambra Creek that flows through the city.^[11] The beavers and their dam became a local attraction. Because the six foot high, 30 foot wide dam created a potential flood hazard, local officials proposed to remove the beavers. Increased run-off from developed areas along the creek has increased flooding in Martinez, a low lying city built on a flood plain, in recent decades. Although Martinez had completed the construction of a $9.7 million dollar flood control project in 1999, the downtown was flooded in 2005, ironically two years before the beavers arrived. A City Council subcommittee was formed to consider whether the beavers could be protected and flood risk managed, and was given 90 days to issue a report to the full council for a vote.^[12] During this period, expert Skip Lisle was hired to install a flow device that could reduce the level of impounded water behind the beaver dam and mitigate flooding risk above the beaver dam.^[13] The beavers have received national attention, amateur video coverage, a webpage devoted to them, and a new nonprofit organization (”Worth A Dam”) formed.^[14] The beaver have transformed Alhambra Creek from a trickle into multiple dams and beaver ponds, which in turn, lead to the return of steelhead trout and river otter in 2008, and mink in 2009.^[15][16]

Back in the dramatic days of eminent beaver death, I struggled with these pages. They were changed every day (sometimes several times a day!) until they got marked as “controversial” and everything was challenged as unsubstantiated. For example, the November 7th meeting was described as being attended by “people from out of town” which any one looking at the video can easily contest. It was so frustrating making references that were deleted that I eventually gave up and decided to focus on the web page which I could control and no one else could change. Thank goodness RL came along, because these lovely, professional entries add alot of visibility to our beavers. I couldn’t be more grateful.

And if you haven’t voted in the “Name the Newsletter” survey, please do so now!

Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter

Ahhh you have to love the BBC when it comes to nature photography! They always offer the kindest insights. I don’t exactly agree that the beaver is “only interested in the bark”. I believe he’s gnawing rapidly through that trunk so that the tree will fall in the water and that moose won’t be able to steal as much of it. But it’s a nice idea, and certainly one reason why beavers might “time” their tree felling to avoid giving a free lunch.

Three yearlings this morning at the dams, which are looking sturdy. Please take a moment to vote in our newsletter-naming poll. The average completion time is 30 seconds. I promise it won’t be annoying. Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter

Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter

New Title based on a suggestion from friend JO: Tails of the city! If you like it better you can vote again and your previous entry will be replaced. Maybe you have a better idea? Write and let us know!

Help us pick the right title for our Newsletter