Linus Pauling Middle School students Nick Hentzel, center, and J.D. Pinion, right, join parent-volunteer Tessa Hanover as they paddle through the waters of Clemens Mill Pond while taking part in the 2012 Newton Creek Wetlands Stewardship Field Day on Tuesday morning

Learning afloat

By Raju Woodward, Corvallis Gazette-Times

Students use canoes to learn more about beavers and habitat

PHILOMATH — If you want to learn about beavers, you want to be able to take a close look at the semi-aquatic rodents and their habitat.  So what better way to learn about the creatures than by canoe?

So it was on Tuesday that sixth-grade students from Linus Pauling Middle School donned life jackets, grabbed paddles and made their way around Clemens Mill Pond in canoes. They weren’t disappointed.

“We saw like six beaver lodges!,” said sixth-grader Julia Harrington. “It was cool to see them up close instead of just hearing about them in a classroom.”

Can I go to school there? What a great idea! One is so rarely jealous of sixth graders, but this does the trick! Gosh did you ever think about having a beaver festival in Corvalis? We could maybe have coffee. Apparently this is part of the Mary’s River Watershed Wetland Stewardship Field Day event. Kids spend 45 minutes at 12 different stations!

But the most popular station appeared to be the beavers and canoeing station, especially with Tuesday’s sunny and warm weather.  “This one was my favorite because it involved so much activity,” said Rosa Mendoza. “We were always moving and doing something.”

Also, for some students it marked the first time they had been in a canoe. In addition to studying beaver habitats, students learned canoe safety procedures and how to use paddles to move canoes effectively.

“The hardest part was sitting down inside the canoe,” said Zack Plawman. “It felt like we might tip over into the water. But after that it was fine.”

Ahh the tippy canoe! Nothing quite replaces it. Congratulations for learning so much about canoeing and beavers! Of course the french vouyageurs used canoes to ruthlessly pursue millions of beavers while bellowing out  jaunty songs to regulate paddle pace…

But as a woman who has traversed many, many river miles by canoe over the past two decades I can tell you that it still happens to be a great way to understand beavers.

Now because all beaver news doesn’t come from Martinez, here’s a fairly heart-warming story from Holyoke Massachusetts. What do you know, a whole story from the Bay state without a false complaint that the population has exploded! Nice.

And because nothing in a beaver’s world is ever without conflict, here’s the irritating conclusion of the “Ickiest Story Ever Told” from Orrington Maine story where a failed flow device lead to a flooded dam and the washout of a major road way.

11 beavers caught in Orrington since dam burst

ORRINGTON, Maine — Nearly a dozen beavers, part of a colony that built an approximately 80-foot dam on Swetts Pond Road that failed in March, have been trapped, Town Manager Paul White said Tuesday.

“Eleven have been relocated,” he said. “Don’t ask me where because I couldn’t tell you. All I know is they’re out of Orrington.”

A trapper was called in by property owner Larry Pelletier after the beaver dam broke March 23 and caused extensive damage to the road and a portion of the nearby railroad tracks.

Were Hancock traps used? And were family members relocated as a group? Will the next flow device installed in Maine be checked from time to make sure its functional? And since papers always pride themselves in telling ‘both sides of the story’ will there be a follow-up report of all the good beaver do in Orrington?

Just don’t ask.

I woke up this morning to two breathless emails today proclaiming the successful formation and recognition of the New 4-season Wildlife League at last night’s home owners meeting in El Dorado Hills. I’m not exactly sure why being in a club requires board approval (obviously if Worth A Dam needed permission from the city to exist we’d all have a lot more free time.) But it did, and they worked hard to get it and after some whining about mosquitoes and mean media attention, permission for the club passed by 3-2. If I get their permission I’ll post the emails which are an exciting read.

Now that there an official  club, they’re off to the races to try and get rid of those nasty trappers. As we said all along ‘cubby’ was never a bachelor, and they have seen as many as three beavers at a time since his death. One beaver friend wrote that she’s heard noises, so I’m sure that kits are on the horizon. Hopefully they’ll join us for the festival and you all can meet them and extend your congratulations on their new league recognition!

And while we’re on the subject of bureaucracy and all its splendor, it’s that time again where the nice people at the Parks, Recreation,  Marina and Cultural Commission consider permission for the Beaver Festival this summer. The first  year it was a rocky night. Then it was a begrudging pagaent with an inevitable conclusion. Last year it was a friendly breeze of recognition and respect. Who knows what will find this year? The good news is that our application was approved. If you want to come lend your support we’re at the front of the agenda at city hall 7pm tonight.

On a related note the Journal of Fish and Game had a very positive response to our initial paper about the historic prevalence of beaver in California, asked us to divide into two and submit by today for possible publication in the next issue. Rick made sure they were mailed with final tweaks last night, so now there’s just waiting to see what happens.

A final word about the website, which has been sluggish and protesty lately. I got rid of some favorite old plugins this am that seemed to be slowing things down. Fingers crossed everything will run better now. I hated to let go of our  2008 and Earthday slideshow, as it really seemed like the beginning of everything, but I’ll mark its memorial with one of my favorites.

Cheryl sent this lovely photo of the beavers in Benicia last night, and I knew you’d want to see it. Here’s hoping that’s GQ or one of his relatives all grown up and on his own!

Beaver moving Mud: Photo-Cheryl Reynolds

When beaver are taken at an early age they are very easily domesticated, and are so esteemed as pets iv the Far West and fur countries that almost every tradingpost or camp can exhibit three or four. It is no uncommon occurrence to see one running about an Indian lodge, submitting patiently to the wiles and caprices of the little savages, or joining in their sports, and frequently receiving with the papoose the nourishment from the maternal breast. The cry of the “kitten,” too, is so exactly like that of an unweaned child that one is readily mistaken for the other by even the initiated.

On one occasion this writer visited a wigwam at Little Traverse,Mich., for the purpose of viewing a “real, live baby beaver.” “He cry all same as papoose,” remarked the squaw, as she brought the little follow forward, at the same time giving him an unmerciful pinch that caused him to set up a doleful little wail that, had he not been forewarned, he should certainly have believed to proceed from a minute, black-eyed specimen of an aboriginal infant that, swathed in cloth,beads and bark, and bound fast, mummylike, to a board, stood leaned up against the wall.

[Popular Science Monthly.]

Silent spring for Bay Area’s raptors?

Rodenticide-related wildlife mortality may seem an abstract issue until your child finds two dead hawks in the backyard wading pool. That happened to Berkeley resident Dan Rubino on the Fourth of July in 2007. Rubino sought out his neighbor Lisa Owens Viani, who has a background in wildlife rehabilitation. She identified the birds as juvenile Cooper’s hawks, the offspring of one of 13 local pairs.

Owens Viani suspected rodenticide poisoning: “When Dan told me they were going to the pool, I knew right away what it was. I knew they would be bleeding internally and looking for water.”

Joe Eaton & Ron Sullivan

Thus begins part one of the two part series describing the danger that second generation anti-coagulate rodenticides (SGAR) pose to birds of prey. See, folks use the poisons to kill rats, but the rats take a while to die. Raptors eat the toxic rats and get killed themselves. In 2003 the EPA responded to growing concern and litigation by requiring that SGARs would stop being sold to the public in 2011. They wanted them marketed only to wildlife control specialists, but that hasn’t exactly happened. In the mean time, children are finding cooper’s hawks in their wading pools.

So long-time beaver friend Lisa Owens Viani (formerly of SFEP and now of Golden Gate Audubon) has taken up the gauntlet and is marching city by city getting them to agree not to use or sell SGARs. She has started the aptly named organization Raptors Are The Solution (RATS) and is working hard to raise awareness. Go read the entire article and give RATS a thumbs up on facebook. This is just another example of narrow thinking having very broad consequences that cause unanticipated results. More vicious poisons to kill more rats leads to more raptors dying leading ironically to more rats because there are no more predators and the demand for even more vicious poisons to control a booming population. Repeat as necessary.

The article is written by Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan. Joe wrote my favorite article about mother beaver’s death and is a long time beaver supporter. In March, we attended a St. Patrick’s Day Dinner with them at Lisa and Riley’s home in Berkeley, it was a wonderful evening with stories about bird watching, wildlife rescue, and city council struggles of epic proportions. Riley (author of the most famous creek restoration book and working on her second) is top tier of the water boards where people send really thorny problems. She told very amusing stories of a certain Hollywood royalty  mogul in the Bay Area once asking for permission to fill in the creek behind his house with cement so his children could cross it easily to get to school!

Bridges are SO passe.

The second installation of the article comes next week and will talk about what citizens groups can do and are doing. Don’t miss it. I keep telling Lisa that RATS needs a booth at the Beaver Festival to raise awareness and connect with folks out here, but does she listen?

The Cedar Glen Golf Course of Massachusetts is in dire straights. A crisis of epic proportions faces their rolling greens and plaid pants. No one in the entire state or in the vast caverns of the Boston Globe or the local University can possibly offer them a shred of real advice. Yesterday the unthinkable happened and the golf course had to turn visitors away.

But a freshly constructed dam – a 25-foot-wide mound of stripped branches and bark – had turned swaths of pristine greenway into swampland.

The course was so waterlogged Thursday by beavers’ handiwork that Burton Page, who runs the business, was forced to close down for the day, estimating $10,000 in lost revenue.

Oh no! Not a beaver dam in a stream by a golf course in Massachusetts! Next thing you’ll tell me is that this would NEVER have happened if it wasn’t for those awful trapping rules that turned Bay State into beaver slums!

Let me get this straight. You asked for permission to divert the water around the dam so that the stream wouldn’t flood. Um, what would prevent the beavers from building a dam in THAT stream next? Well, I’m sure they had a fantastic idea for that too, because just look at their ingenious back-up plan.

In the short term, maintenance staff have put out wooden pallets to help golfers traipse from one hole to the next. But it’s a less-than-perfect fix. On Thursday, the water level was so high that the pallets floated away.

Oh man, you mean you got those kind of mean wooden pallets that float? Of all the rotten luck! What will you do now? Apparently the golf course was denied  license to kill because health and human safety isn’t at stake. (And it happens to be May so orphaning a bunch of beavers isn’t usually great for public relations.) If only there were some dire consequences you could flog to get those stick-in-the-mud commissioners moving!

Ellsworth said he is also concerned that the standing water will cause an influx of mosquitoes that could carry disease and “I know [beavers] help the ecosystem and stuff,’’ Ellsworth said. “But when they start affecting homes and businesses, that’s another problem.’’

Really Mr. Ellsworth? Do you really know that beavers help the ecosystem and ‘stuff’? I’d be fascinated to hear you summarize some of the key examples of the way beaver improve the landscape and increase biodiversity. Since you already know about it we can just be quiet and let you review. I won’t interrupt.  Come to think of it, do you know what doesn’t increase biodiversity at all? Golf Courses.

Scott Jackson, who teaches in the department of environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and specializes in beavers, said the animals were almost entirely wiped out of Massachusetts centuries ago because of excessive trapping and deforestation.

Slowly, colonies have moved back east from New York, but they only reached Eastern Massachusetts in the past 15 to 20 years, Jackson said.“I grew up in Massachusetts, and we never talked about beavers or saw them,’’ Jackson said. “All this has happened fairly quickly

At last a real expert! Okay, so now we brought in a beaver expert from Massachusetts and he can finally set things straight. Obviously he knows all about flow devices right? And how to solve flooding problems without ruining streams, right? And he knows about Beaver Solutions right? And he and Mike Callahan probably get together every month for a beer to chat about beaver management right? And Mike comes sometimes to lecture his class on long term solutions right?

Jackson explained that if a property owner with a beaver problem does not qualify for an emergency permit from a board of health, he or she can request a permit from the Conservation Commission, but that process requires a public hearing and could take weeks.Even then, there are concerns about reestablishing water flow too quickly; another property downstream can experience inadvertent flooding.

Sigh. See I told you. Rare prehistoric giant beavers in Massachusetts are the only possible explanation.

Revised management plan lets rodents be relocated.

By Mark Havnes | The Salt Lake Tribune

Cedar City • The first relocation of beavers under a revised state management plan went swimmingly, according to state wildlife officials.

Since Friday, nine of the rodents have been released in a southern Utah stream in the Dixie National Forest under terms of a plan that allows biologists to trap and transplant beavers to sites where they can help restore watershed and landscapes.

This relocation was set in motion by Merril Evans, who owns irrigated pasture land in Panguitch where six of the beavers were trapped. Evans said he called the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and asked what he could do when he noticed beavers were cutting down trees on his property. He gave permission for the animals to be trapped.

“They were really great guys,” he said of a biologist and a volunteer from the Grand Canyon Trust. They not only trapped the rodents but protected still standing trees with wire fencing to prevent future problems from other beavers.

Utah has released a shiny new beaver management plan that allows beavers from problem areas to be moved to areas where beavers are needed. Check out the whole thing here and pause to appreciate the rolling mountains of hard work by Mary Obrien in bringing this about – she has literally been at this since long, long before I even found out that beavers don’t eat fish. If you never listened to her interview, you might enjoy it now, and get her introduction to the remarkable up-and-commer Jeremy Christiansen who is featured in the article.

The new management plan reflects the current thinking that beavers can improve landscapes. Jeremy Christensen, a biologist with the Grand Canyon Trust, which played an active role in revising the management plan, said the transplant should provide a prime example of how relocation can be used as a management tool.

Beaver dams are a natural way to regulate stream flows, especially in areas of heavy runoff where the animals have been eradicated. The dams create ponds that slowly let out water as needed. Once a pond is created, it can spur development of meadows and habitat for other species, including the boreal toad, listed as a sensitive species in Utah that survives best in conditions created by beavers,

Is it just me? Or in the back of your mind do you hear an old time radio announcer at the race track, broadcasting:

Washington is firmly in the lead, with only Oregon trailing at her heels. Idaho is cresting at the bend and around the stretch comes Utah! She’s gaining, look at that stride as she passes the others on the rail! Now its Utah and Washington neck and neck! Where did she come from? Washington is starting to look nervous as its first real competitor comes into her own! And in the lead by just a nose as they finish —–

Great work Utah! Finally a real horse race in the west! (Obviously California is still having some trouble trying to get out of  the gates.)

Oh and after all that excitement some relaxing Castor Fiber filmed was last night at Paul and Louise Ramsay’s beaver haven in Scotland. It was done by the creator of this remarkable blog which we should probably all be checking every morning (right after this one – of course!)