It’s official. There will be no Salmon fishing season this year off California or Oregon Coasts. An unprecedented reduction in fish population has called for drastic measures that have signaled both governors to declare a State of Emergency and ask for federal assistance. In the Sacramento River alone, our estimated population has dropped from 800,000 fish counted last year to a mere 70,000 seen this year. Keep in mind that a “drastic” reduction is defined as a 20% loss in population. This change is closer to a 90% decrease and experts disagree about whether it is even reversible. Environment California has led this research and pressed the administration for better regulation of the fishing industry.

So why is the lost Salmon an appropriate subject for a beaver blog? Because there is a strong relationship between the species. Research has consistently shown that dams are instrumental in providing necessary still habitat for young Salmon. A Haida legend tells of the beaver producing the salmon and teaching it to jump. This year at the TWS conference attended by s/c member Igor Skaredoff, there was a lecture on using the beaver as a restoration tool for the salmon population. Kelly Moore, the NW manager of Oregon Department of Fish Game and Wildlife described the relationship thusly:

As for the relationship between beaver and fish populations, staff at our lab has conducted research that clearly showed the importance of beaver ponds and associated habitat features to coho salmon, steelhead, and resident cutthroat trout. The primary effect is on over winter survival of juvenile salmonids – streams with abundant beaver created habitat had 2-3 times better over winter survival rates than streams with simpler riffle-pool structure.

So as California and Oregon see thousands of fisherman go without work, a booming food industry dry into decay and find themselves asking FEMA for help, they might consider asking beavers for assistance too. The pacific northwest clearly needs its salmon; more people need to understand that this means we desperately need our beavers too.

Heidi P. Perryman, Ph.D.

Now for the real news…

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association is the respected name in news that is too big to ignore. When there’s a hurricane approaching or a tornado warning or a sudden snowfall in the sierras, NOAA is the best predictor of what’s to come. It was report from NOAA that indicated to Louisana that Katrina was making her angry way to the coast. It’s NOAA that’s tracking newly formed “Bill” now and whatever Carley or Catherine that comes next.

I was surprised, then, when beaver friend Lisa Owens Viani sent me their new report on restoration measures for creeks. Its slick online tool “River rat” has everything you need for getting your tired, littered creek back to “Ship-shape” standards. It has advice on all the various tools you need to repair your watershed, and talks about the multiple hazards for our dwindling salmon population,

Guess what the NOAA recommends for increasing the numbers of salmon in an urban or rural creek? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a “B”. It’s those crazy dams that everyone’s talking about! Apparently they make habitat for juvenile salmon in the winter, and the more salmon that survive early life to try their tails in the open ocean, the bigger crop your likely to have down the road.

Guess what they DON’T say is a problem for salmon? Beaver dams! NOAA is no fly-by-night, crazy beaver-luving organization. They are the arguably the single most trusted government agency in the world, so if they say beaver dams don’t hurt salmon I think we should probably isten. Apparently our very smart salmon can wait until high water periods and hop on over. Hmm, I think we might know this tune. Hum a few bars and let’s all join in! Afterwards maybe we can play a drinking game and do a shot for all time times we heard someone pretend to be worried that saving beavers will “hurt” the salmon population.

The loss of beavers, and subsequent degradation and failure of their dams and  associated wetlands, has dramatically affected the hydrology and sediment regimes of many western streams. Impacts associated with beaver decline are particularly pronounced in semi-arid regions and likely contributed to impacts associated with grazing, resulting in accelerated channel incision and associated lowering of groundwater levels and loss of summer base flows (Pollock et al. 2007).A recent comprehensive literature review of the effects of beaver impoundments on fish (Pollock et al. 2003) illustrates that loss of beavers in all probability was directly related to significant population declines of virtually all native fish species cohabiting with beaver.

pg 70: Science based tools for evaluating Stream Engineering Management and Restoration Proposals. Prepared for NOAA Fisheries and US Fish and Wildlife Services. April 2009

Scratch that idea. No drinking game. We need to be sober to spread this good news. Who wants to break it to Scotland?

Yesterday’s chronicle had an alarming article about our unfortunate salmon whose dwindling numbers got the year off from fishing on the California Coast. Turns out that even though the governor took the fishermen away, mother nature took away their water too, so while we’re waiting for their numbers to recover their wondering where the streams went.

California’s drought has increased wildfires, caused an economic crisis in the state’s agriculture industry and a shrinking water supply. But experts say three years of arid weather may also be the final blow for coho, already reeling from pollution and population growth.

Federal fisheries regulators say the disappearance of coho salmon in Marin County is not an isolated incident, and that studies find they are vanishing along the state’s central and northern coast. Coho live in coastal streams where they mature before moving to the ocean, and then back to freshwater to reproduce.

“There are definitely alarmingly low numbers of adult returns and spawning decreases,” National Marine Fisheries Service fishery biologist Jeffrey Jahn said. “And the fish that are produced by the few coho who do make it back have to deal with these drought conditions, which is affecting the status of the species.”

I don’t mean to sound like a broken record or anything, but hey you know what’s good at trapping water to control for drought conditions? Um, beaver dams! And guess what gives fantastic habitat for juvenile salmon to winter? Um, beaver dams! And guess what NOAA says is the number one factor that determines whether you have enough salmon in your creek? Um, beaver dams!

And guess how many times beavers are mentioned in this article? (I’ll give you a hint: its  a round number).

Mind you this is an AP writer, so maybe our local reporters would be more educated. I promptly wrote the biologist Chris Pincetich who works with the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN) (now that’s a smart name…I can respect that name!) I suggested maybe he check out Pollock’s research on beavers and salmon and consider using our high-profile vegetarians to help salmon around the state.

Let’s see what happens.

I got an email a while back from a Dean Wilson in Santa Rosa. He said he had written a song about our beavers and wanted to share. I wasn’t expecting such a professional recording and snappy tune, but it turns out he’s the guitar player for “Laughing Gravy” and recorded the tune at Jackalope Records. I like the music very much, but honestly was a little uneasy with a message that reflected only the fear of Martinez and none of the benefits of the beavers.

So of course, being the shameless beaver advocate that I am, I decided to write him some additional verses and see if I might persuade him either to play these or write his own.  In the meantime, here’s my suggestions using the same basic meter and rhyme scheme of his song. I told him when he moves firmly in the supporter camp we can make sure his song gets heard by beaver lovers everywhere!

My cousin Jake’s a fisherman

And salmon is his trade

Ain’t worked a single goddamn day

Since the salmon ban was made

We need more salmon in our creeks

More salmon in our sea

NOAA analysts

Says beavers are the key.

Well beaver dams hold water back

Trap silt and filter too

insects start to multiply

So fishes all renew

A lot of birds and animals

Come out to hunt and play

And beavers make this possible

If you can let them stay

So let the damn dam stand, boys

Lets let the damn dam stand

Those furry eager beaver dams

Will give our creeks a hand

A simple pipe and cage can keep

The dam from getting tall

And in the mean time beavers

Give new habitat to all

Thanks Dean for your hard work and cheerful inspiration! Maybe LG wants to do a special performance at the beaver festival next summer?

Have you ever opened your email and something wonderful popped out? Well this weekend I found out about the State of the Beaver 2010 conference in Oregon put together by the Beaver Advocacy Committee of SURCP.

We need water! We want our native salmon runs back! And we want them for less cost, no additional taxes and less paper work! Welcome to the State of the Beaver 2010 Conference where we will learn to work with beavers to gain their benefits and minimize the problems they can cause.

The three day venue February 3, 4 and 5  will feature our good friends Skip Lisle, Sherrie Tippie and John Hadidian, as we as the exciting new addition of Dr. Michael Pollack of the NOAA. He’s the chief researcher of the beavers and salmon study group paper we wrote about earlier. Go read the agenda because there’s three days worth of goodies no self-respecting beaver fan would want to miss, including a great discussion on the importance of beavers to the native americans and the new research on reintroduction in Europe.

BAC Co-chairs, Leonard and Lois Houston, wrote me in 2008 after hearing about our struggle to save the Martinez Beavers. They tell me they are currently hard at work with a five year radio tracking research project to locate the movements of nuisance beavers. Oregon has been a pioneer in beaver reintroduction as a tool for increasing salmon. A mere 6 and a half hours from Martinez, the conference is chock full of remarkable things and you can bet Worth A Dam will be there.

I always remember enjoying my astronomy class. I liked staring up at the constantly rotating planetarium ceiling, and I liked writing notes with a flashlight. I even enjoyed the weird math procedures necessary to add hours of ascension, which is almost unheard of in my “math is hard” brain. I remember one night the teacher telling us to look for the nebula near the spiral and me whispering to my classmate in a panic “What’s the spiral?” Was he referring to our galaxy? Some weird space shape newly documented? We generated anxious questions along the whole back row until a very calm person in front of us said that by “spiral” he was referring to the binding of the notebook.

Oh.

Anyway, notwithstanding that memorable bit of panicked stupidity (or perhaps because of it) I liked astronomy. I especially liked the idea that certain constellations, like the big dipper, were “circumpolar” meaning if your latitude was high enough they never set at all for you but simply rotated around the sky like the lable on a record. I mention this because one of our most important beaver friends, Mike Callahan of beaver Solutions, is this very day in Juneau Alaska under a circumpolar (but very rainy sky) and getting ready for some beaver management training next week.

You’ll remember that Bob Armstrong got together a group of volunteers to work on keeping the pathways and culverts clear when some Mendenhall Glacier beavers started to outwear their welcome. Like all problem solving involving beavers, the only solution offered was the final solution, and Bob wasn’t willing to let that happen. So he and a group of scrappy beaver-saving friends showed up on weekends to mitigate the damage. I read about this wildly familiar dedication and wrote Bob to start a dialogue. I learned that their primary concern was dealing with the beavers in a way that did not block salmon passage. I put him in touch with Skip Lisle and Mike Callahan, and talked about solutions.

Mike and Bob talked about beavers and big pictures and longer term solutions that helped, rather than hurt, salmon. They arranged for Mike to come to Juneau this week, and he’s even staying in Bob’s home and getting the inside view. Two weeks before he was leaving he got word that he had received the AWI grant, and agreed with my suggestion that Juneau training would be an ideal place to film, so his videographer friend is coming with him and will catch the training for posterity.

In the meantime beaver friend LB is happy to hear that Bob is a nice guy in person because she’s meeting him for a blitzkreig beaver tour of the Mendenhall Glacier when she visits Juneau next month.

Just in case you forgot the lovely view those beavers wake up to each evening, here’s a reminder. Imagine this with dripping rain and 50 degree weather and you’ll have some idea how it looks to Mike right now.

Photo: Bob Armstrong from The Mendenhall Glacier Beavers

Now the state of Washington has a lot of wetlands, and has learned a thing or two (often the hard way) about water management. I wonder what they recommend for managing creeks and streams in urban and rural areas? Check out this report, sent to me by our beaver friend Jake Jacobsen, Watershed Steward of Stillaquamish County. It lists a series of techniques for restoration of streams, channel modification, salmonid spawning gravel, and nutrient supplementation.

Check out technique 8 on the list: “Beaver re-introduction.”

This exhaustive report, offered by the Washington department of Fish & Wildlife (notice the difference already?) documents the postive effects of beavers on waterways;

2. PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS

Successful reintroduction of beaver has demonstrated: 1) an elevated water table upstream of the dam, which in turn improves vegetation condition, reduces water velocities, reduces bank erosion, and improves fish habitat (increased water depth, better food production, higher dissolved oxygen, and various water temperatures), 2) reduced sedimentation downstream of the dam, 3) increased water storage, 4) improved water quality, and 5) more waterfowl nesting and brooding areas. These effects, at the landscape level, influence the population dynamics, food supply, and predation of most riparian1 and aquatic species. Beaver dams on coastal streams increase landscape-scale habitat diversity by creating a unique wetland type for that area.

Beaver ponds can alter water chemistry by changing adsorption rates for nitrogen and phosphorus, by trapping coliform bacteria, and by increasing the retention and availability of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon1. Beaver-altered streams also cause taxonomic and functional changes in the benthic macroinvertebrate community due to the effects of impoundment and subsequent alteration of water temperature, water chemistry and plant growth. Beaver can also influence the flow regime within a watershed. Beaver ponds can improve infiltration and ground water storage by increasing the area where soil and water meet. Headwaters can retain more water from spring runoff and major storm events and release it more slowly, resulting in a higher water table and extended summer flows. This increase in water availability, both surface and subsurface, usually increases the width of the riparian zone and, consequently, favors wildlife communities that depend on that vegetation. The richness, diversity, and abundance of riparian-dependent birds, fish, herptiles, and mammals can increase as a result. Beaver ponds are important waterfowl production areas and can also be used during migration. In some high-elevation areas of the Rocky Mountains, these ponds are solely responsible for the majority of local duck production

In addition, species of high interest, such as trumpeter swans, sandhill cranes, moose, mink, and river otters, use beaver ponds for nesting or feeding areas3. Beaver ponds also provide very important salmon habitat in western Washington and Oregon. Juvenile coho and cutthroat are known to over-winter in beaver ponds and the loss of beaver pond habitat has resulted in the loss of salmon production potential.

Oh where was all this information when I was writing my part of the subcommittee report? Well, now you know I wasn’t making that stuff up. Just a reminder that our beavers are not available for relocation. You other cities will just have to find your own.

As if all that wasn’t reason enough to invest in the beavers, check out the new prominent campaign issue for Martinez City Council.

.

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

The National Park Service and Redwood Creek Nursery continue to help Redwood Creek reestablish its natural meandering course with occasional deep pools by strategically placing logs and woody debris in the creek;  restoring historic flood plains by removing levees; and actively encouraging the amount and diversity of streamside vegetation.

Salmons Struggle for Survival: Muir Woods National Monument. NPS US Dept of the Interior.

Your federal tax dollars at work proudly doing what beavers could do for free. Our Wikipedia friend has been finding a lot of these kinds of projects, where rangers are rebuilding dams to help salmon, usually after they rip them out to harm beavers. I suppose it keeps our goverment employees busy, but to be honest, when I talk to the rangers out at the John Muir Site they think they’re plenty busy already.

Why couldn’t we have beavers at Redwood Creek in Muir Woods? They aren’t going to eat the sequoias. They would add interest to the millions of tourists there every year, and they would help those special coho by making little dams along the creek that eeked out flow in the summer months, and slowed the current in the winter months.

The National Park System just released a massive report on whats wrong with that creek in particular, and why they didn’t see any salmon returning last season. Guess what it doesn’t mention? I guess NPS didn’t get the memo from NOAA? I guess they’re too busy to have a conversation with Michael Pollock of Northwest Fisheries. I guess they aren’t ready to overcome years of prejudice with just a few reams of hard scientific data?

Come into the light, NPS. It’s a beaver renaissance out there, and they have many, many uses.

Beaver friend, Brock Dolman of the OAEC (and featured speaker at John Muir Birthday Earth day!) rushed back from Redding to breathlessly describe the electric salmonid restoration conference he helped host which featured some surprisingly familiar faces. A shining star of the event was our new pal Michael Pollock talking about–you guessed it–the relationship between beavers and salmon. I don’t exactly have Brock’s permission to share the email but he didn’t exactly say not to either and I can’t be expected to keep news like this to myself. It’s THAT good!!!

Just back from an amazingly successful Salmonid Restoration Conference, where I moderated a 1/2 day session titled “Instream Flows for Salmonids” which had Michael Pollock as the final speaker. Over 200+ people packed into the room and filled every available space to hear his talk. There had been a lot of buzz being generated leading up to the session about beavers, and so lots of folks came to see & hear!! We then had an impromptu casual lunch time discussion that was open to everyone and over 60+ folks came to that as well!! All across the board there is a feeling of a swelling moment to bring beavers to the forefront of restoration!!!

Wow, think about what that means. There are watershed organizations across California worried about the salmon population. If a third of those tireless advocates became beaver believers we would be sitting on a beaver-boom town!  There really could be beavers in Sonoma and Marin and Los Angelos. We really could see a day when a city or property owner has to pay a “salmon tax” to get a permit to exterminate beavers! My fondest dream is that it becomes more cost effective to live with beavers than to kill them, and the funds for that “tax” go to a public account from which cities and property owners can take out loans to help pay for the installation of flow devices and culvert blockers. Ahhh a girl can dream. You can bet Worth A Dam will be happy to play a part in the process.