tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577747013940695662024-02-19T01:14:06.564-08:00Southland BeaverThis is a blog about beavers. Specifically it is a blog about beavers in southern California. A robust body of evidence is coming to light pointing to beaver historically ranging from Santa Barbara to San Diego counties. The reintroduction and expansion of existing beaver populations in these lands offers much benefit to the beleaguered riparian systems of southern California. It is my hope this blog will help people understand and appreciate the potential for beaver in the southland.Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-43870435007888654832015-07-01T15:06:00.000-07:002015-07-15T16:57:01.280-07:00Drought Tolerant Beavers of the Santa YnezHey now.... some new stuff going on in <i>Castor</i> land. Yesterday saw the unveiling of the magnum opus on beaver restoration <b><i>The Beaver Restoration Guidebook: Working With Beaver to Restore Streams, Wetlands, and Floodplains </i></b>pdf <a href="https://nplcc.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/2013_Documents/Using_Beavers_For_Climate/BRG%20v.1.0%20final%20reduced.pdf">here</a>. I am greatly pleased with the work and it is most useful to have so much pertinent information at hand in one spot that can hopefully guide future beaver restoration/protection work. Great job and kudos to Castro, Pollock, Jordan, Lewallen & Woodruff (although you guys <i>just gots</i> to put southland beaver in your list of beaver links/blogs, come on now!!)<br />
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Last Saturday I took a trip to check out the beaver activity at my usual spot on Santa Ynez river of Santa Barbara county. Last summer I was gravely concerned for the ability of these beavers to survive the excruciating drought conditions of this watershed. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/10/santa-ynez-river-beavers-pulling.html">fresh beaver sign in October of last year </a>in an area that just several months prior in l<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/07/odds-n-ends.html">ate July was bone dry</a> - and bone dry for at least several months. This got me thinking about how these beavers survive these conditions. Do they migrate up or downstream? Relocate to nearby golf ponds? I now think that these beavers in fact hunker down in their bank burrows and just wait out the dry season - an idea I elaborated on in my last post: <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2015/06/do-drought-prone-beaver-populations.html">Do Drought Prone Beavers Aestivate?</a><br />
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The answer to that last question - if you are not among the 41 people who actually read it on this blog - (sheesh people come on this is a very interesting topic, I put that post on my paleo blog and it has got over 400 hits as of today!!) is that they probably don't aestivate in the truest sense of the word (asestivate is basically a summer hibernation) but that they probably do go into a bit of slight summer torpor. This is more or less analogous to the winter adaptation of cold adapted beaver. By staying in their cool bank burrows, largely living off fat with minimal foraging, and generally shutting things down a bit and staying out of sight of predators these drought tolerant beavers have adapted to an ephemeral water regime. And that is my working hypothesis so far.<br />
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The evidence I observed on this trip is very much in line with that idea.<br />
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Above is the state of the river very close to the first beaver denning area I have identified. Notice how many of the willow have already lost their leaves - it appears the vegetation here has also adapted to such a strong oscillation of seasonal water availability.<br />
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These are the two pools that remain in the river immediately adjacent to several bank burrows currently underwater. I think that the beaver depend on these relict pools of water until Cachuma dam release flows occur in late August - October. You might not immediately recognize this as active beaver habitat but check out these pics below.<br />
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Can you see that fairly obvious and well marked trail above the water line, and what appears to be a bit of a browse line on the hillside vegetation? I don't think that the beaver eat very much this time of year, just enough to keep up their intestinal biome. But those are beaver sign in my estimation and the proximity to the water allows quick escape from predators into their underwater bank burrow. Later on by late July/August this area will be almost completely dry with the burrow exposed.<br />
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And the real clincher was a pretty obvious rear beaver paw track at a nearby grimy little pool.<br />
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I then moved on to a site further upriver that maintains pools into the dry season, has loads of bank burrows, and a series of pretty spectacular beaver ponds adjacent.<br />
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The beaver ponds had seen better days and there was no fresh sign, probably because foraging here this time of year exposes them to predator risk.<br />
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As you can see these series of ponds dry out completely and this seems to be the pattern every summer I visit them. I consider these to be more satellite territories as I have never seem any evidence of bank burrows, lodges, or permanent year round habitation. When the water returns the willows and especially the cattail beds become flush with life and as soon as that happens I see beaver activity here, especially uprooted cattails. It is also worth noting that the dams are all quite leaky and often fall into disrepair.<br />
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I often hear about how diligent beaver are about damming up the slightest leak in their dams. But the beaver who frequent these dams appear to be a little blase about keeping super tidy dams. They just want to slow the water down enough for the emergent vegetation to get a good toehold.<br />
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Where I think the beavers who frequent these "satellite ponds" live is in an adjacent stretch of the river where again we see the same pattern as the first bank burrow. Fairly steep gradient, sandstone or loose alluvial soils, large tree roots providing anchorage, north facing for coolness, and at least some persistent pools of water providing drinking water well into the dry season.<br />
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This picture below captures that area where there at least half a dozen bank burrows including the only recent chew marks on a tree I saw on this visit.<br />
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Note the fairly recent chew mark on a willow adjacent to this bank burrow built into a large willow root ball. I got a close up below unfortunately my focus was a little off.<br />
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I think that beaver might often resist chopping down the trees that their bank burrows are built into or are adjacent to. They provide stability to their burrow and cover from predators.<br />
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Clever beavers.<br />
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I saw little in the way of aquatic life, native or non-native. In the past I have found abundant crayfish, bullfrogs, and bullfrog tadpoles in these ponds. But several years of brutal drought have killed them off as well as a big ol' blue heron I see every time I come down this stretch. I have seen a trout fry at least once in the first pool but no fish at all this time. I saw a western pond turtle once, but they, like the beaver are likely sequestered away this time of year in burrows. I saw abundant CA quail, wild turkey in the river bed for the first time, and red tailed hawk as well.<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-23575829179038205272015-06-24T15:05:00.000-07:002015-07-15T16:57:16.609-07:00Do Drought Prone Beaver Populations Aestivate?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz29ylPW9P9u3jjbmOOmJEvnKQ8SnD1GtCCUgZ-m6naHsiu68jHjaXXu0xrxenCbPOLBRXq44fzdTY2FgK4Ag' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<i>As some of my readers know I maintain a blog about both paleontology (<a href="http://antediluviansalad.blogspot/">antediluviansalad.blogspot</a>) and beavers (southlandbeaver.blogspot). This post gives me a chance to actually merge the two blogs a bit!!</i><br />
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Take a second to watch the video I posted above. It is an exquisitely preserved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron">synchotron</a> rendered 3-D preservation of two Triassic animals; a stem amphibian <i>Broomistega; </i>and a stem mammal therapsid <i>Thrinaxodon. </i>The most parsimonious interpretation that the authors of the paper in question <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064978">link</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966;">Fernandez V, Abdala F, Carlson KJ, Cook DC, Rubidge BS, Yates A, et al. (2013) Synchrotron Reveals Early Triassic Odd Couple: Injured Amphibian and Aestivating Therapsid Share Burrow. PLoS ONE 8(6): e64978. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064978</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">)</span></span> come to is that the two organisms coexisted in a burrow to survive a harrowing drought. Such a tactic is widespread in organisms that must persist through both seasonally cold and/or hot/dry conditions. Metabolism can be slowed a bit and even enter a state of torpor, or more appropriately termed in the dry season aestivation - which is pretty much the equivalent of winter hibernation. Now trying to parcel out where the distinction lies between rest, sleep, torpor, hibernation, aestivation is a hard nut to crack. Truth be told all these phases are probably best understood on a continuum from rest < sleep < torpor < hibernation/aestivation < dormancy.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0064978.g001" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0064978.g001" height="346" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Broomistega</i> (grey) & <i>Thrinaxodon</i>(brown) preserved in burrow credit Fernandez et.al 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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From the paper:<br />
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Now hopefully the connection does not go over your head. As a putative "mammal ancestor" modern mammals share this genetic legacy of "torpor" which is still often used in many modern mammals - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_mouse_lemur">even primates</a> - and which may have even allowed mammals to survive the Cretaceous mass extinction while non-avian dinosaurs did not.<br />
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<i>And now onto the beaver part.....</i><br />
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Several years ago when I first started to get interested in beaver in California and other arid places one of my chief stumbling blocks was trying to grapple with the idea of putting such a water dependent critter into a habitat where water has a very ephemeral presence on the landscape. This was of course before I got into contact with Rick Lanman, Heidi Perryman and other beaver notaries and discovered that beaver not only can live in such areas but are doing so right now in places such as the Mojave River in San Bernardino county socal (<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-mojave-river-beaver.html">here</a> and <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/04/mojave-river-beaver.html">here</a>), Santa Margarita River in Orange/San Diego counties (<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/07/southern-californias-santa-margarita.html">here</a>), and various river systems throughout Arizona/Nevada/Utah/and New Mexico. <br />
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And, among many others, the river system I am most familiar with in regards to beaver in arid lands: the Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara county which I have covered extensively (<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2013/09/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river.html">here</a>, <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/beaversalmonid-workshop-part-ii-santa.html">here</a>, <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river-ii.html">here</a>, <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/can-beaver-ponds-actually-reduce.html">here</a>, <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/07/odds-n-ends.html">here</a>, <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/10/santa-ynez-river-beavers-pulling.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-blair-witch-beavers-of-santa-ynez.html">here</a>). Based on my personal observations, communications, and GEOlocate mapping viewings the Santa Ynez beaver population might be in the hundreds or even more despite the fact that the river system is highly augmented by human flow discharges from Cachuma Lake and is prone to all the flooding/droughts/ and water shortages that characterize a river system in coastal central/southern California.<br />
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Long story short even in the best of years the river runs mainly dry during several months of the year and during drought times (as we are in now) the river might be mainly dry from May to late August/September (if Cachuma does a late season water release for downstream senior water rights entitled farmers). We are, at a minimum, looking at 4-5 months of dry river.<br />
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How do beaver survive in conditions waffling between this,<br />
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and this?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijz_zI5We2qiBTKBNgORtg2ph92oDytNtZ7TnJDTBK7mKR6ouqhWayOq5bUA8SpXSHF19U_z1G4troPRML1I4VgZ_etVnXfIAfDLTT0tXQjaGPTa7Eth5JeQ0dfUAa8LT_0s1wKsvGgtNr/w1305-h734-no/20140714_175440.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijz_zI5We2qiBTKBNgORtg2ph92oDytNtZ7TnJDTBK7mKR6ouqhWayOq5bUA8SpXSHF19U_z1G4troPRML1I4VgZ_etVnXfIAfDLTT0tXQjaGPTa7Eth5JeQ0dfUAa8LT_0s1wKsvGgtNr/w1305-h734-no/20140714_175440.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
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Now I have had a lot of pet hypotheses that I have been spinning around to explain this anachronism; <i>Maybe beavers migrate downstream or upstream to areas of permanent discharge from wastewater treatment plants downstream or mandatory steelhead discharges from Cachuma upsteam</i>; <i>Maybe beaver are not as territorial here and share these resources in drought times</i>; <i>Maybe they relocate to the several golf ponds on surrounding golf courses. </i><br />
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But all of these hypotheses have their problems. Beaver are known to be terrritorial. Golf ponds do not line the whole river. And even if they did relocate up/downsteam that is still a trek of several dozens of kilometers for the beaver in the center of river course. And then this trek has to be done with kits in tow because kits stay with their parents for several years. This would be a very hazardous risk due to the abundant predators of the river: there are for sure bobcats, coyotes, and cougar - probably black bear too. I have seen predator track/activity such as this gnarled mule deer spine in the river bed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7yDl8VuRzdp8_PtNmlCksvq0fMQXs9QAFbax9oGNZgbvnK4a6QpL8kgYDvLBCstZ2tf2emhcOEql9GshhLfJe_jH1-mBdp6ODahhDOSAKaf3T70di3VtqzVDwe7tfIrQUzq3Fi9EvCGa8/s1600/20150306_122637.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7yDl8VuRzdp8_PtNmlCksvq0fMQXs9QAFbax9oGNZgbvnK4a6QpL8kgYDvLBCstZ2tf2emhcOEql9GshhLfJe_jH1-mBdp6ODahhDOSAKaf3T70di3VtqzVDwe7tfIrQUzq3Fi9EvCGa8/s400/20150306_122637.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">likely predator activity, probably coyote. mule deer spine Santa Ynez River</td></tr>
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I now think all those ideas are too flawed and what makes most sense to me is this: beaver along the Santa Ynez - and probably most arid condition beaver populations - hunker down in their bank burrows and go into a bit of torpor. They probably don't aestivate to the true definition of the word which is basically a summer version of hibernation - and we know that beaver do not hibernate.<br />
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Probably the best summary of known beaver "thermoregulatory" tactics is the one on the USDA page on beaver (Baker & Hill 2003 pdf <a href="http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/beaver_damage/downloads/Baker%20and%20Hill%20Beaver%20Chapter.pdf">link</a>):<br />
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In a sense arid beaver simply "flip the script" in the parlance of the time and do what beaver do in winter in high latitude/frost prone areas of the range except that they do it in the summer as opposed to the winter. As most beaver in arid areas dig bank burrows this makes for more of cool temperature thermal refuge to inhibit water loss. Note that lodges - made of wood usually - would still swelter in the sun but several feet underground is a much cooler refuge. If beaver can position their burrow next to a small pool of water - either dug into the substrate or provided for by human activities - this provides a pool for defecation and drinking (eww I know both in the same pool). And if the the beaver can stockpile a food source or be close enough to find some forage this will provide the sustenance. But all in all I think beaver strategy is to hunker down, eat very little, drink very little, survive on fat, and most of all just stay out of sight as much as possible to avoid predator attention. A waiting game for the water which I fully think beaver are capable of.<br />
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And I have some photographs/videos to embellish my case:<br />
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from July 2014<br />
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Now this fetid pool was the last bit of water in an area usually brimming with beaver activity. If you look closely you can make out two probable bank burrows. You will also notice several logs/branches on the ground. The outer bark is chewed off and note that the tree above - which more or denotes how high the water would usually be here - has its outer bark chewed off. Again I don't think beaver eat very much in this period - probably only enough to keep their intestinal biome optimized - but live off fat stored in their body and especially their tail.<br />
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I believe the depth of this pool is maintained by the beavers themselves to serve as a water reserve during the drought. This area of the river is full of rocks and since this pool occurs on a very rocky/cobbly part of the river these beaver are actively moving the rocks out of this deep part to dam up other parts. It should also not go unnoticed that this deepening of the channel - some claim beaver do the opposite but I disagree here - would serve as a nice cold water refuge for salmonids in years where drought was not so intense. Unfortunately non-native bullfrog are fully established in this stretch of the river and that is all I saw in this pool were goobly-gobbly looking bullfrog tadpoles.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rock dam near bank burrow and deep pool</td></tr>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rLHYV86S0vI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rLHYV86S0vI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Above is a video I shot showing this same area in April of that same year showing this pool in higher water times when I already suspected the usage here. You will note the two leaning trees that you can see in the pic above. I sound a little wheezy because at the time I was suffering a bit of iron deficiency.<br />
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And some beaver burrows upriver - remember this is in April of a drought year - so when I went back this area was completely dried up as you can see in the 2nd dry season pic above.<br />
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And then there was the <a href="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/beavers.html">documentation</a> on the San Pedro River of Arizona of beaver, bank burrow, and small dug out pool that I covered before <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/beaversalmonid-workshop-part-ii-santa.html">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-06SP_DNbeaverden_0011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-06SP_DNbeaverden_0011.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-06SP_beaverden_0014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-06SP_beaverden_0014.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-12SPRV_beaver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/mammals/rodents/beavers/09-02-12SPRV_beaver.jpg" height="216" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Desert Beavers on San Pedro River AZ</td></tr>
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And astute beaver readers can probably recall a none too dissimilar situation of a beaver bunkering down on the Guadalupe River of Santa Clara county in drought conditions surviving off of a leaky culvert which I <a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/2014/09/21/beaver-resilience/">read about on Heidi Perryman's Martinez Beavers blog</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DSC02639.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DSC02639.jpeg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dry Guadalupe Summer 2014 credit Roger Castillo</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/10653742_667508093345785_4447968827182793828_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/10653742_667508093345785_4447968827182793828_n.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beaver Gnawed Cottonwood on Dry Guadalupe credit Steve Holmes</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Beavers-using-culvert-in-drought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Beavers-using-culvert-in-drought.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Water culvert exploiting Guadalupe beaver credit Gred Kerekez (c)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Capture9-1024x509.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Capture9-1024x509.jpg" height="198" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reed bed w/beaver in cool/hidden spot w/water nearby from culvert</td></tr>
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So in conclusion I doubt arid adapted beaver aestivate in the truest sense of the word but by just slowing things down a bit, bunkering down in a cool burrow, and sequestering away a source of water and just enough food beaver can find a way to squeeze through dry spells. Again, as discussed in the paleo paper on stem amphibians/mammals in arid climes this adaptation need not necessitate a strong drop in metabolism in line with true aestivation but it can significantly aide in resource poor/hot environments. And this is not a radical new adaptation for this species - it is simply the inverse of what northern/cold climate beaver do. Instead of buckling down for a couple months in the winter time arid adapted beaver adopt this behavior in the summer.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQd_k1gOXfQz9qPJy9vymxhk3a3V_A9jgRGtNdbO3QMjbW6Y0DS-Wvdg0H3Gja94rSbHUYk4LUuz2_Vj4fA-eUtGol-JszQOycROj8NCQvraKnqmlptN9HskO0DXuMJsxM_iFget2upyab/s1600/Dried+beaver+pond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQd_k1gOXfQz9qPJy9vymxhk3a3V_A9jgRGtNdbO3QMjbW6Y0DS-Wvdg0H3Gja94rSbHUYk4LUuz2_Vj4fA-eUtGol-JszQOycROj8NCQvraKnqmlptN9HskO0DXuMJsxM_iFget2upyab/s400/Dried+beaver+pond.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dried beaver pond. Santa Ynez River</td></tr>
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and nile crocodiles <a href="http://www.tanzaniasafaris.info/Katavi/background3.htm">digging into and surviving in caves</a> dug into river banks to survive drought in Africa just because....<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSti4jkCuE-MxgJUk3Xqk5w6j1eDoYzKS-FGjQHKDCXvB5Fs3uRmlRney1uH4pSyYq0p_J0XFgWka9cwAZ3MhzpuFEhEmyK9ZrCoJnd25oY-BAvx4JR3U_dqb1ZzA5PEjkCpIekBfelzMK/s1600/Picture+27.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSti4jkCuE-MxgJUk3Xqk5w6j1eDoYzKS-FGjQHKDCXvB5Fs3uRmlRney1uH4pSyYq0p_J0XFgWka9cwAZ3MhzpuFEhEmyK9ZrCoJnd25oY-BAvx4JR3U_dqb1ZzA5PEjkCpIekBfelzMK/s400/Picture+27.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-33069847479040627162015-06-21T14:06:00.000-07:002015-07-15T16:57:30.960-07:00Southland Beaver Lives!!!Ok now I am not really the type to apologize for not posting recently on a blog which I do for free... cuz, you know, I do it for free. And sometimes life gets in the way, I am busy with my other blog, and sometimes you just need to step away when the pace of change frustrates you.<br />
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That being said there is some good news.<br />
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<b>Southland beaver recently passed 20,000 page views!!</b> That might not sound like a lot but this is a fairly niche blog and it's not exactly click bait posts that I like to write so I am happy that the blog, even when I go away for it for awhile is still getting a pretty constant trickle of hits and views. 20-40 hits per day is pretty good when I am not regularly updating. And maybe some strands of the populace are waking up to the potential for beaver not only in California but other arid climes. I have made contacts with people from Arizona and Spain who have similar storylines invovlving beaver in arid lands.<br />
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<b>I will be going on a month long beaver safari!!</b> I just landed a month long filed position in Monterey county on the Arroyo Seco tributary of Salinas river. I am really looking forward to this one as it is an un-dammed, native trout/steelhead creek with some interesting herp fauna to boot. We will be investigating the use of non-natives in beaver ponds. I know that this a controversial topic for beaver enthusiasts because it has the potential to paint beaver in a bad light as crayfish, bullfrogs, bass, carp, and other introduced species do find potential habitat in beaver ponds <i>BUT</i> as I have discussed before <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/can-beaver-ponds-actually-reduce.html">here</a> there is potential for beaver ponds to actually mitigate alien species by concentrating them at specific sites which allow top predator herons, mergansers, raccoons, otters, garter snakes and other predators to move in and gobble up the non-natives. Look at it this way if you are a hungry great blue heron you can gobble up one or two big bullfrogs and be full <i>or</i> hunt all day long to find smaller, more cryptic native California tree frogs. A big, mucky carp is a lot easier for a raccoon to catch than a nimble, wary rainbow trout. Predators do have optimal foraging strategies and many non-natives are readily gobbled up by our native predators.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/night-heron-with-fish1-1024x682.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/night-heron-with-fish1-1024x682.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Native Black Crowned Night Heron catches non-native large mouth bass in native beaver pond Napa CA credit Hank Miller c/o <a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/2014/06/21/napa-beaver-drama-unfolds/">Martinez Beaver</a></td></tr>
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And towards a more holistic approach to non-natives: in lieu of the fact that California does not have a statewide program for completely eliminating non-natives nor do we see the political will to fund such a massive project why should we punch downwards on beaver? I mean, beaver or no beaver non-natives are going to be in our systems. If there are no beaver ponds the non-natives will finds spots in any nook or cranny that suits them. The L.A. river has no beavers and it also has no native fish species left. Also keep in mind that most of our systems have man-made lakes or reservoirs that connect with the rivers and which are stocked intentionally with non-natives by CDFW. So unless we get rid of these founding populations of invasives that connect with and reinoculate river systems every time there is a water discharge, what are we really talking about here? <i>The beaver can not be the scapegoat for our mismanagement of native ecosystems.</i><br />
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Let me reframe the debate concerning non-natives. I am in touch with a lot of people in the bird world. One of the most devastating actors that thwart native passerines is the brown headed cowbird - a nest parasite. Now although it is not strictly an introduced species in California- the proliferation of pastureland has increased its presence in many parts of the state. This has created the implementation of trapping programs to diminish the brown headed cowbird. But, interestingly, there is some thought that complete eradication of the cowbird is not wanted. The reasoning is that if there is not some pressure from cowbirds the native birds will never evolve defensive strategies to thwart them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cowbird trap Vern-Freeman Diversion</td></tr>
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I think a more nuanced approach to beaver and non-natives may prove useful. Yes beaver ponds provide habitat for non-native species. No we can never get rid of all non-natives. Beaver ponds also provide habitat for natives and generally increase the habitat diversity for everything in the system, especially top-tier predators that may preferentially seek out and consume the larger, more obvious non-native species thus mitigating the negative effects of non-natives on natives. And finally allowing non-natives and natives to eoexist may prove useful in allowing natives to develop evolutionary coping mechanisms to deal with these pressures. <i>Beaver ponds may in fact prove a useful arena to allow such coping mechanisms to evolve.</i><br />
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<b>I have a variety of new and interesting thought pieces on beavers biology and ecology.</b><br />
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I want to explore the "hidden" diversity of semi-aquatic herps in California and how the loss of beaver habitat may have negatively affected these species.<br />
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I plant on presenting a new and exciting theory for how beaver cope with and survive in drought prone habitats. Stay tuned, southland beaver world exclusive.<br />
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And I want to lay out my idea for "intentional living" with beavers. A novel and exciting idea I have been gestating upon to not only restore beaver to wild lands but deliberately use beaver in tandem with water diverting methods to maximize wetland restoration, aquaculture production, groundwater infiltration, agriculture, and generally safeguard human water resources while simultaneously increasing available wetland habitat.<br />
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-34511170123187219582015-02-17T20:31:00.001-08:002015-07-15T16:58:03.059-07:00Mongolia Has A More Progressive Beaver Reintroduction Policy Than California<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ok so I have not written a post here in a bit - sorry my beaver faithful. Part of it is just frustration at the state of affairs in California with beaver policy and part of it is I just feel like I am repeating the same ol' story line to a small cadre of people who basically agree with me. Preaching to the choir if you will. It is also very distressing that after a good rainy start to the wet season California, especially the southland, is heading into its fourth year in a row of drought. And <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140213-california-drought-record-agriculture-pdo-climate/">megadroughts in the southwest </a>might just be the new normal for the upcoming century. </span><br />
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<a href="http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Drought-2-650x435.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" src="http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Drought-2-650x435.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So I want to poke a little fun at California's archaic beaver policy - one in which it is illegal for wildlife management and private citizenry to relocate beaver into needed watersheds and/or relocate problem beavers. Which basically equates to nuisance beavers typically being "disappeared" as quietly as possible because people do not want to make the effort to coexist.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now I had always heard about Mongolia having beaver- yeah that Mongolia of the Khans, the steppe, and the Gobi desert. Despite our image of dry desert plains Mongolia has a variety of habitats and in areas is wooded with actual running rivers. And in several of the rivers still reside Eurasian beaver (<i>Castor fiber</i>) or sometimes referred to as the Sino-Mongolia beaver and given subspecies designation (<i>Castor fiber birulai</i>) - although a true subspecies designation is unlikely.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It turns out China maintains the Bulgan Beaver Nature Preserve near the border with Mongolia and which <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5487776">has a couple of hundred beaver</a>. The Ulungur watershed, in China and Mongolia, of which the Beaver preserve is a part of is a little known area but due to its isolation has served as bit of a refuge for Eurasian beaver while most of the rest of the continent has lost its beaver.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But what got a little media attention in 2012 was the good news that Mongolia <a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65797">was set to reestablish beavers gifted from Germany and Russia on the third largest river in the country - the river Tuul</a>. This river, which flows through and nourishes the capital and largest city Ulaanbataar, has as of late been plagued with diminishing flows and pollution. Reintroduction of beaver in this watershed, so it is hoped, can attenuate diminishing flows and bolster the sagging wetlands along the river which were in the past reportedly some of the most picturesque in central Asia.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The French missionary <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Francois_Gerbillon" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="Jean-Francois Gerbillon">Jean-Francois Gerbillon</a>, who traveled many times through Mongolia, gave a description of the Tuul river in his Journal entry dated August 3, 1698:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">This River (Tula) takes it source in the Kentay mountains, a 120 li from the Kerlon river. At first it flows South-West. Then it makes a direct turn towards the West after passing a mountain (Mount Bogd Khan Uul in southern Ulan Bator) at the foot of which we camped and which is located precisely to the West of the place where the small Terelki River empties into the Tula. It is much bigger than the Kerlon. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">Its waters are extraordinarily clear</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> and flows over a bed of river stones. Nothing approaches the agreeableness of its banks in all the extent of the plain. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">Its banks are covered in beautiful woods. Because the river divides into many branches, separating and rejoining, it forms quite a few small islands, full of diverse trees very thick and bushy, which are the most agreeable trees in the world</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> and which offered a delicious freshness in the great heat where we were. The current of this River is very rapid. Beyond the trees, on one side and the other, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">one can see an abundantly fertile prairie</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">. In one word, it is the most agreeable Canton that I ever remember seeing in all </span></span></i></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tuul River, Mongolia. public domain.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One wonders how much beaver played a role in the once stunning and fertile river valley of the Tuul and if they can do it again. The Khan would be pleased.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I looked into this beaver reintroduction campaign I noted that Mongolia first announced their plans in 2012 and from what I gather were set for the long haul in terms of instigating a robust reintroduction campaign. But that was a couple of years ago and I have not heard anything as of late with regards to reintroduction happening. Anybody hear anything from Mongolia???</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It should be interesting to watch how beaver reintroduction in Mongolia plays out. While Mongolia's neighbors of China and Russia get all the attention, Mongolia <a href="http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1617540/forward-steppe">has quietly been growing economically and culturally</a>. Mineral wealth has stimulated the economy and the push pull of traditional culture/western influence is playing out as we speak in a population primarily under the age of 30. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Water will no doubt play a crucial role in the future of this growing country.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit Marika Dee. Women pose at River Beach, popular spot for young people on bank of Tuul River outside Ulaanbataar. Insert hackneyed beaver pun.<br />
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-64632217794312058372014-12-22T11:29:00.000-08:002015-07-15T16:58:18.250-07:00State of the Beaver Address… Improving!!As the year ends there are a lot of good things to be thankful for when it comes to beaver/human relations and there have been a lot of promising developments that encourage and emboldens the struggle for beaver believers.<br />
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On the local front we saw the publication of Lanman et al. <a href="https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=78258&inline=1">Historical Range of Beaver in Coastal California: A Review of the Evidence</a> which I discussed <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-levee-broke-beaver-historically.html">here</a>. The paper which, well to put it no uncertain terms, justifies the blog you are reading as I am an advocate for restoring beaver to coastal southern Californian watersheds from which they have been extirpated. Although the paper did not set the world ablaze and there have been some critics - I think ultimately the paper will act as a slow burning ember and continually stoke the embers of restoration. Already we are seeing the conversation shift will several notable features (<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/06/beavers-used-to-be-almost-everywhere-in.html">here </a>and <a href="http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/environment-and-nature/20141220/leave-it-to-beavers-california-joins-other-states-in-embracing-the-rodent">here</a>) stating simply that beaver were in the past native to most of the state of California. And there has been no organized rebuttal to the paper even though the CDFW still seems to posit beavers as non-native to most of the state (ironically they published the paper). But the CDFW has changed their view in the past, they changed their view on wolves in the state last year did you notice? The thing with revolutions, especially academic ones, is that it takes years and sometimes decades to change entrenched notions. Sometimes many of the staunch opponents to new knowledge who serve as "gatekeepers" in a sense have to... how should I put it... well father time is undefeated and when the older crop dies off so does their entrenched ideas. And a younger generation takes over who came up with the knowledge always at hand. Oh and I just saw today, which my parents linked to me (yes they are in the beaver believer cult), an online article noting beaver benefits from the local free press. <a href="http://www.vcstar.com/news/state/beavers-can-help-rebuld-californias-wetlands">Beavers Can Help Rebuild California's Wetlands</a>. Maybe I should write a larger piece for them in their dead tree edition that really highlights ventura counties connection to beaver - the Sespe River specimen from the Lanman paper was a cornerstone piece of evidence remember.<br />
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On a more personal note the Santa Ynez River beavers that I have been visiting and watching seem to have made it through the drought. Where they go and how they cope in a river that pretty much dries up completely for long stretches is still a mystery but I have my ideas. If you have not followed my complete series of posts on these amazingly adaptable beavers of the Santa Barbara wine country below is the complete rundown:<br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2013/09/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river.html">9/23/2013 Beaver Safari on the Santa Ynez River</a><br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/beaversalmonid-workshop-part-ii-santa.html">3/24/2014 Beaver/Salmonid Workshop Part II: Santa Ynez Beaver Tour</a><br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river-ii.html">5/1/2014 Beaver Safari on the Santa Ynez River Part II: Surviving the Drought</a><br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/07/odds-n-ends.html">7/29/2014 Odds N' Ends</a>. the most depressing documentation of a river pretty much turned into a dust bowl.<br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/10/santa-ynez-river-beavers-pulling.html">10/22/2014 Santa Ynez Beavers Pulling Through in the Drought</a> despite the river completely drying up the beavers recolonized it with the return of flows from Cachuma reservoir!!<br />
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<a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-blair-witch-beavers-of-santa-ynez.html">11/3/2014 The Blair Witch Beavers of the Santa Ynez River</a> further evidence of beaver persistence and documentation of a novel method of river water diversion/modifying river flow by beavers? And some bearded guy posing in front of a beaver pond.</div>
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On a more big picture note this past year also saw the widely acclaimed and excellent NOVA documentary Leave it to Beavers. Which if you have not seen yet and have not forced your friends and family to watch stop what you are doing right now (well you can finish reading this post) and go watch it on youtube, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/leave-it-to-beavers-leave-it-to-beavers/8836/">NOVA/PBS</a>, and it also available on netflix.</div>
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We also saw several western states in need of water such as New Mexico move in a direction towards proactive beaver programs and a growth in awareness and advocacy for beaver to restore wetlands/mitigate drought through a number of webinars/studies/articles to long to get into but these are encouraging and I don't think we have seen the peak yet!! The Beaver Believers documentary got funded. The Damnation film was released and met with critical acclaim and is also available to watch on Netflix. Although the film is not specifically about beavers - or even salmon per se - it does speak to a growing appreciation of natural behaving watersheds. And Patagonia, which produced the film, is a Ventura county company and several of the makers of the film are very pro-beaver and very interested in southern steelhead. </div>
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Yes all of these developments (and more which I probably forgot) are encouraging and shine a light on the growing pro-beaver sentiment in North America, and let's not forget over the pond in Scotland/England where similar struggles are occurring with regards to native vs non-native status, salmon movement etc etc. But I would be remiss if I were to suggest that there was not also bad news and I want to focus on two stories that also came up.</div>
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1) Beaver and invasive species. For me this is an issue of perspective and putting the onus where it belongs. Several papers have came out suggesting that beaver modifications can provide habitat for non-native species. I might diverge from some of my colleagues in the beaver believer movement on this one but it is no great controversy to me that the slow flowing waters of a beaver pond make great habitat for many of the prime suspects in California invasive species - crayfish, bullfrogs, carp, large/smallmouth bass - I have seen several of these species in beaver ponds first hand. What I take issue with is inculcating beaver as public enemy number one in non-native species problems and using the habitat that they create as an argument against protection/reintroduction. The onus has to go on the species that put the non-natives there in the first place, <i>Homo sapiens</i>, us. And if the CDFW does not come up with a comprehensive plan for dealing with invasive species, if they continue to stock lakes/reservoirs with them and collect fees for fishing for them, and CA lacks the public or private will to eradicate them: we might as well admit that invasives are here to stay. What often gets left out of the invasive species question with regards to beaver is that the LA river has no beaver in it and is 100% non-native fish species. There is not a native species left in that watershed!! Invasive species might just be the new normal and at least we can still have the herons, egrets, kingfishers, mergansers, white pelicans, and raptors that love to eat invasives and also love to fish in beaver ponds. </div>
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2) Beavers and climate change. This one is patently ridiculous and am surprised it got the traction it got. But a paper published recently <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-014-0575-y/fulltext.html">here</a> got some attention on the far right leaning news blog The Daily Caller <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/18/study-beaver-dams-make-global-warming-worse/#disqus_thread">here</a> and also the science blog ZME <a href="http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/beaver-damn-climate-change-17122014/">here</a>. Now I want to qualify this by pointing out that I emailed the lead author with my concerns over his study several days ago and put him on notice that I was going to be critically discussing his paper in the future and that if he had some words in his defense now was the time to let it be known. Crickets chirping is the only sound I got back from him. With regards to the paper itself the study sought to quantify the amount of degassing methane arising from beaver ponds on the three continents that they live on. The paper took this quantification, the efflux of carbon from beaver ponds via methane, and used that number to suggest that growing and expanding beaver populations will further increase global warming at some appreciable levels (but far below what humans or even cows do). Now I hope you caught the big problem with this study - they only looked at eflux and not influx of carbon. All the wetlands beaver create, all that vegetation, the expanded riparian corridor, the stages of a beaver pond which often silt in and go back to rich canopy forest - all of those factors which suck up tons of carbon from the atmosphere and often sequester it away underground were not looked at in factoring out the total carbon balance of influx/efflux of carbon in beaver mediated wetlands. That is a damming indictment on this study!! In fact I think it very much more reasonable to hypothesize beaver wetlands sequester away much more carbon from the atmosphere than they put into it!! As to how this study got published, peer reviewed and so on we can only speculate. But the real damage done is towards the casual reader of articles noting this study and simply equating beavers with global warming via methane outgassing.</div>
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Now for the Daily Caller article I am sure it is no surprise to you that the writer did not take a critical look at the obvious problems with this study. But the article did say this towards the end: <b style="font-style: italic;">"Does this mean that the government will have to start regulating beaver dams? Or maybe culling certain amounts of beavers every year? Only time will tell?" </b>Now for such a reactionary, right leaning blog you can imagine how the comments section went - the commentators went straight into hackneyed beaver puns or climate change denier mode of course!! Which means my comments, which were negative towards the paper (but not towards the reality of anthropogenic climate change) got upvoted to number one probably because a lot of readers conflated my criticism with a criticism of climate change in general!! Irony, sweet-sweet irony. And if you read further you can see where I demolish a commentator's assertion that the near extermination of beavers saved untold millions from the ravages of Hantavirus. I won. That being said wading into the morass of the comments section is a soul destroying venture but you gotta do the dirty work sometimes...</div>
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As for the ZME article, which does take a more nuanced tone and notes that the methane outgassing from beaver ponds is paltry compared to other natural/manmade sources, it was still distressing because it gave a platform to a study with some obvious flaws and it is a purported science blog. The author who wrote it even has a background in geophysics and interest in environmental protection. Looks like a good background to catch some obvious flaws and maybe even make a good beaver ally? But nope. He published the post without doing due dilligence. After I called him out for it and linked to the exact article (which he did not bother to do on his own blog) he deleted one of my posts and offered no apology for his oversight. So Mihai Andrei the below picture is for you but you did worse because it was not a facebook post but a science blog post with which you you gave avenue to a misleading paper. </div>
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Ok, Ok end of rant. To sandwich the bad news with some good news and for your winter wonderment I give you this:<br />
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Lake Elmo Winter Beavers photographed by John Warner (story <a href="http://lastbestnews.com/site/2014/12/lake-elmo-beavers-cute-yes-but-something-of-a-nuisance/">here</a> is not so magickal)<br />
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<a href="http://lastbestnews.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Beaver9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lastbestnews.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Beaver9.jpg" height="424" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beaver-and-kits-in-snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beaver-and-kits-in-snow.jpg" height="434" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beaver-reaching-snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beaver-reaching-snow.jpg" height="436" width="640" /></a></div>
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and probably the best thing I have read on beavers in a while, and a beautiful free xmas present to the world is the outstanding ebook with loads of info/photographs and all kinds of awesome stuff I did not even know (that beaver eat horsetails!?! that stuff is full of silica!!) It's free check it out!!<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.naturebob.com/sites/default/files/Willson%2C%20Armstrong%2C%20Beaver.pdf">Beavers By the Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau Alaska by Mary F. Willson & Robert H. Armstrong</a></span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYHUb8119Y2WQr2MXU6v7BBTeGVUWBrwfOX-HAdKYveFiACFAgR5tmDRs48ranGhCefxaSdUuR9GYkAiEUizy5Y-x8NRAQJDcJ1AJ-_6BsN4KwGdnYhGskgD6t-8FsaschAmHLZuUGMpSo/s1600/Picture+27.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYHUb8119Y2WQr2MXU6v7BBTeGVUWBrwfOX-HAdKYveFiACFAgR5tmDRs48ranGhCefxaSdUuR9GYkAiEUizy5Y-x8NRAQJDcJ1AJ-_6BsN4KwGdnYhGskgD6t-8FsaschAmHLZuUGMpSo/s1600/Picture+27.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Merry Xmas & Happy New Year!! Cheers!!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mendenhall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mendenhall.jpg" height="478" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Most Epic Beaver Dam Ever? Bob Armstrong, Mendenhall Glacier Alaska</td></tr>
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-5538617365594807332014-12-02T08:27:00.000-08:002015-07-15T16:58:35.037-07:00When Communities Don't Take Ownership Of Their Rivers Guess Who Does?Although this is a blog about beavers, specifically in southern California, any talk of beavers naturally lends itself into a very META analysis of water and watersheds in general. This post definitely falls under this banner.<br />
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The above is a picture taken underneath the Victoria bridge overpass of the Santa Clara river which straddles the cities of Oxnard and Ventura in Ventura county. Now regardless of your opinion of "graffiti art" - I quite like and would draw a distinct line between this and "graffiti tagging" - I highlight this picture because when communities are cut off from their rivers, or more often than not lawfully forbidden from entering their rivers, guess who takes sole ownership of said rivers? These abandoned rivers become the province of the homeless, the dispossessed, the drug dependent, and the artists who can't find a canvas elsewhere. My point here is not to bash these groups; the path towards addressing these social issues is obviously beyond the scope of this post. But I find a disconnect in many of our communities in that the rivers that should be the jewel of our urban, suburban, or rural communities - usually becomes the last recompense of some of the most marginalized groups in said communities. And that these marginalized groups find haven in rivers, does not speak well too the value many communities places on these rivers, de facto viewing rivers themselves as marginalized pieces of the landscape. And like the marginalized groups inhabiting them, avoiding at all costs to personalize, make contact with, engage with, or hold in high esteem at all. Instead forget, ignore, and marginalize the rivers that houses said groups further.<br />
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A relatively too frequent thing happens when I engage people who live in a community about a river that flows through that same community. Usually they do not even know the name of the river I speak of and will something to the effect of, <i>"Oh you mean that thing that floods occasionally that I cross on the 101 freeway? Yeah I usually think of it as a big drainage ditch and don't go down there because there are a lot of dangerous homeless and drug addicts living in it."</i><br />
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And the above sentiment is pretty much par for the course. Apathy no doubt has crept in. But it is not entirely the fault of the person in question. Communities are literally cut off from their rivers by signs legally prohibiting them from entering, by walls, fences, and private property. No wonder the apathy and disinterest when people are not even allowed to get in physical proximity to the rivers in their very own communities. <b>When rivers are outlawed only outlaws live in rivers.</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33MHi0Yz55vCH0znUASm-yR7olAoAlgB2rNGW3AWi7MGb9wih3pSJ_Y0taaMF2eB8FBVNfM-CDuUm2Jd6I2MqJATtvcC1gvsqjgV9dAB_JDQPzfmppXw_lzLRjXOLLJK39nb9l079uFmx/s1600/20140620_142342.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33MHi0Yz55vCH0znUASm-yR7olAoAlgB2rNGW3AWi7MGb9wih3pSJ_Y0taaMF2eB8FBVNfM-CDuUm2Jd6I2MqJATtvcC1gvsqjgV9dAB_JDQPzfmppXw_lzLRjXOLLJK39nb9l079uFmx/s1600/20140620_142342.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Clara River. Santa Paula. great potential beaver habitat btw</td></tr>
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Interestingly a strange thing occurs, at least here in southern California, when a river is restored or revitalized - said revitalization efforts pay a nod to the ecological health of the river, but emphasis is geared more towards making the river a "human playground". Recently the Santa Ana River has received attention for restoration efforts, but in all actuality the "restoration" is nominal, the push is towards making the river navigable for kayaks and rafting. Here is a line lifted directly from the abc news report:<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">"There is a big push to reclaim the Santa Ana River. It's become </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966;">overrun with vegetation and rocks</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">, but now a local group is working to clear the waterway for kayaking and rafting."</span></span></i><br />
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<a href="http://abc7.com/news/rafting-the-santa-ana-river-group-pushes-restoration/406277/">Video and Link Here.</a> Now let's unpack that statement a bit. They use the word "reclaim", but reclaim for what or better yet for whom? And then the zinger <i>"overrun with vegetation and rocks". </i>Now it would be one thing if they were talking about invasive arundo reed or rocks/concrete dumped by humans. But they are not. <i>Rocks and vegetation are natural and beneficial parts of a river for crying out loud. </i>What they are referring to, if you watch the video or read article, is naturally occurring willow/cottonwood trees that line the river. Good things. Even in restoration efforts we can't seem to stop wanting to control/modify/or usurp rivers for our own purposes. Why do we have to make rivers "playgrounds" for people. Can't we just let a river be a river?<br />
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Can we strike a compromise between complete apathy of our watersheds/rivers to total control/augmentation/human mediated use?<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-33366458472889402242014-11-03T21:21:00.000-08:002015-07-15T16:58:52.565-07:00The Blair Witch Beavers of the Santa Ynez River<br />
All right today I want to go over my idea on what the hell those intrepid beavers of the Santa Ynez River were doing making all those strange rock piles across the river when the river was essentially drying up. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">They were not making the beginning stages of a dam <i>but were instead actively hydro engineering the river itself to best suit their needs!!!</i> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">This is my working hypothesis and let me explain my reasoning.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">As I have mentioned in several past posts the Santa Ynez is a human modified river in terms of flow. It largely dries up starting in spring depending on how much rain we get. Water is usually released late summer/early fall to satisfy downstream senior water rights. Beaver on this river have adapted to this unusual water regime for at least several decades since reintroduction in the middle of the last century (but remnant endemic populations can not be ruled out).</span><br />
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Above is a pic of the unique rock constructions I am talking about. This pic was photographed in late April 2014 and the river was already well on its way to drying up. Upstream is a section of small, rocky riffles and above that is what I believe to be an old disused beaver pond. Immediately downstream is a slower section of river and a new dam under construction and a potential beaver bank burrow I have located. (New readers should be aware that humans constructing these rock piles is unlikely as there is no path here and only a steep bank and marshy area on the right side - a residential area is nearby to the left however)<br />
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This is a picture of the beginning of a new dam taken in late April 2014 a little downstream of the above rock piles.<br />
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Now above is a picture of the river with substantial flow from a late season water release taken in October at the location of the strange rock piles pictured above. What you can see is that when water hits the first pile of rocks it forces it slow down and spread out - a speed bump. The water also has substantially eroded the bank on the other side creating a nice deep pool where there was not one before. In a sense accentuating a nice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalweg">thalweg</a>.<br />
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In this pic above you are looking at the second pile of rocks. Water, after it has flowed over the first pile of rocks and starts to erode and enlarge the hole is held back a bit by the second pile of rocks to further increase the "thalweg" effect.<br />
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So what in a sense the beavers are doing is modifying a section of the river that runs relatively fast - a riffle section, not great habitat for a beaver due to the lack of swimmable sections and sparse vegetation - and using the power of the moving water to carve out a deeper pool and create more amenable habitat and slower flow which the beaver prefer. What is not pictured is that a few meters away from this thalweg is a marshy creek area. Separating the river and this marshy area is more rocks and debris. Given enough time and erosive potential of the river I think that the two area can merge over time. I will monitor this.<br />
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What should not go understated is that the bulk of this activity was underway before there was any substantial water flow at all. The beaver were not only actively managing where and how the water flowed but they were predicting the return of the water flow itself.<br />
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Pretty cool no? These beaver never cease to amaze me making a go at it in the ephemeral Santa Ynez River.<br />
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And a bearded bad ass in front of a beaver pond.<br />
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And a big dump of youtube clips from the same excursion in October.<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-56690000651375405192014-10-22T21:19:00.001-07:002015-07-15T16:59:13.085-07:00Santa Ynez River Beavers Pulling Through in the DroughtIt was with some trepidation that I returned to my study site on the Santa Ynez River on Sunday October 12th 2014. The good news is that a water release was ongoing from Cachuma Reservior (senior water rights is a powerful thing even in drought years!), what I was worried about was that the period of no water was potentially devastating to the beaver. After all the last time <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/07/odds-n-ends.html">I went to this area in late July</a> it was bone dry - so dry the willows and cottonwoods were prematurely shedding their leaves and the only water left was a greasy little pool.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXrehkgaUuzlUc8unyPKULhYKfs_YuCbeSm7QRDa84ZclDB2r6g8LTD6OeNTGzCq-XdWaDOrx1o3Ech57I-yH5Zeyk6e2rO21RXdpNYEJFioxmAeSDy5yv-qrXxIZ2lz5eTbORZtC0jorS/w1305-h734-no/20140714_164744.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXrehkgaUuzlUc8unyPKULhYKfs_YuCbeSm7QRDa84ZclDB2r6g8LTD6OeNTGzCq-XdWaDOrx1o3Ech57I-yH5Zeyk6e2rO21RXdpNYEJFioxmAeSDy5yv-qrXxIZ2lz5eTbORZtC0jorS/w1305-h734-no/20140714_164744.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dry Santa Ynez River late July</td></tr>
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In areas where I had found abundant and fresh beaver sign - freshly knawed/felled trees, pulled up cattails, bank burrow slide marks - I found no sign of recent beaver activity. Do they move up or down the river to other sources of water? There is always some release from Cachuma to feed a steelhead creek and there is wastewater release year round further downstream. Or do they seek refuge in golf ponds? There are several golf ponds nearby. Both hypotheses are possible and not necessarily mutually exclusive at this point and not outside the adaptive potential of this animal. The golf pond hypothesis seems more tenable given that upstream and downstream movements towards water would entail movements of several kilometers, with kits in tow potentially, and traversing through other beavers territories. But then again although this drought is exceptional there is always some degree of drying of this river annually after the winter/spring rains and before the first release from Cachuma (usually Sep/Oct). Given that this beaver population, descended as it is from a few individuals released by CDFW in the middle of the last century, is more or less kissing cousins - perhaps territorial claims are lessened a bit in drought times? But that this population has adapted to this unusual water regime over several decades, and survived other droughts before, gave me some glimmer of hope that they indeed had found ways to survive the drought conditions and came back.<br />
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The beavers did not disappoint.<br />
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The first tentative signs of beaver activity were adjacent to a large beaver pond which can actually be seen to the right in the picture above. Beaver have siphoned off a little side channel to the right and created a nice big pool.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsa-2LIaJnv0BtbKHMcVxIGnWNit8Ch6Ufc8hFfg8TpFGPbWRK__8fpGPnp_lTtp8FNTPSxNsplKfv954JKSQZLNjVbJD8xbKk3pBH7b_kZmfvQufivPKQxZhR_7mTveyODMmKL4gtiiOW/s1600/20141012_133736-EFFECTS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsa-2LIaJnv0BtbKHMcVxIGnWNit8Ch6Ufc8hFfg8TpFGPbWRK__8fpGPnp_lTtp8FNTPSxNsplKfv954JKSQZLNjVbJD8xbKk3pBH7b_kZmfvQufivPKQxZhR_7mTveyODMmKL4gtiiOW/s1600/20141012_133736-EFFECTS.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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As you can see the vegetation/trees are brown - a testament to how dry the river got. As I investigated the pool I found several trail marks and side channels suggestive of beaver movement between this pool and the main river channel.<br />
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They might not be too obvious from the pics these were definite trails/paths created by something going from the pool to the river. That they were created by beaver most likely was substantiated by a recently knawed tree:<br />
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All together this was some very promising observation of beaver sign and good evidence hat they had came back into this area of the river. But I was very eager to revisit an interesting area upriver where over the last several months I observed some very suspicious rock piles appearing on the river. Yes these rock piles were either the work of beaver, people, or the Blair Witch.<br />
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Here are some pics from May when the river was already well underway in drying up:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE1oOtZHVOcvVMbRa8__q9uOiX1W5KYeObQzQkNGeUWYZCIlyyyXkn26EwapbInzWyzDfsR879BI_ACQLGoPZp0mabbku1hyphenhyphennAbkVlj5KpJ_BMsIkQaOPdlNH0d3jz73sRq5EyXHxKVy7Q/w1333-h750-no/14+-+12" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE1oOtZHVOcvVMbRa8__q9uOiX1W5KYeObQzQkNGeUWYZCIlyyyXkn26EwapbInzWyzDfsR879BI_ACQLGoPZp0mabbku1hyphenhyphennAbkVlj5KpJ_BMsIkQaOPdlNH0d3jz73sRq5EyXHxKVy7Q/w1333-h750-no/14+-+12" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_V3Lvun5bu9ykQ5W0685ENdbn8AyWhkY6sGSz0lJf4U2D5mwE6bETxf1B7cGOWDij4MZ7jow0LdHI5Zf8j38XwJyoj376PTsPfF7GcR1vAa531au7ML1PaVU2INE9xjCGVG5fJTDL8WL/w1333-h750-no/14+-+17" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_V3Lvun5bu9ykQ5W0685ENdbn8AyWhkY6sGSz0lJf4U2D5mwE6bETxf1B7cGOWDij4MZ7jow0LdHI5Zf8j38XwJyoj376PTsPfF7GcR1vAa531au7ML1PaVU2INE9xjCGVG5fJTDL8WL/w1333-h750-no/14+-+17" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From May 2014</td></tr>
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As you can they are definite piles of rocks and many people who saw the pics felt that humans had constructed them. What argues against these three rock bridges being constructed by humans is; they are not on a path or hiking trail; on the other side is a steep unscalable oak shrouded hill and cattail marsh; and interestingly as seen on the bottom pic there are two adjacent rock piles. Why would people create two adjacent rock walkways so close in an area of the river that is easily traversed anyways?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDjyx6bBQl59gS38cRRerEuVdXI6yNZSryhJzddyEWPf0S_Fs8vBAtVesUroyZJkjfhbnSWgE1XahYz7DTS8lym6FEAMM8L6H_0pHwUYjc4bZR-K4odiB9lA2svgRmbepJJH4XC4SUsAE/s1600/20140714_165832.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDjyx6bBQl59gS38cRRerEuVdXI6yNZSryhJzddyEWPf0S_Fs8vBAtVesUroyZJkjfhbnSWgE1XahYz7DTS8lym6FEAMM8L6H_0pHwUYjc4bZR-K4odiB9lA2svgRmbepJJH4XC4SUsAE/s1600/20140714_165832.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from July 2014</td></tr>
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With the return of substantial flows to the river on this trip I had my answers and I can almost unequivocally say that these rock piles were created by beaver.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3vXZTqEr-T1JSNtSkj848Nt17ZWSovXnBKxRB72CzF6EML7qPGgwQyjAYBuZBziHpdzTvPRL43IiB4osw512SrrzIOR47NZeFQtIDscNNqF5mjePh8RzH0rL4EVbZyH0MbixvGWN5alXb/s1600/20141012_141834.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3vXZTqEr-T1JSNtSkj848Nt17ZWSovXnBKxRB72CzF6EML7qPGgwQyjAYBuZBziHpdzTvPRL43IiB4osw512SrrzIOR47NZeFQtIDscNNqF5mjePh8RzH0rL4EVbZyH0MbixvGWN5alXb/s1600/20141012_141834.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The above pic is actually the single rock pile seen in the pic above. Obvious that the rocks placed down were actually the foundation for what is now seen to be an obvious and growing beaver dam. Not only was the rock pile created by beaver but they were making it as the river was drying up and anticipating the return of water flows. Very Cool.<br />
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But what about the twim set of rock piles? Just as it is hard to imagine why humans would construct such a weird design, why would beaver make such a funny design - surely in this stretch of the river, moving at high velocity, it was not an ideal spot to place a dam?<br />
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Well if you want to know what my working hypothesis is for those strange Blair-Witch beaver rock pile designs you will just have to tune in later as I will explore this facet and other things I saw on the Santa Ynez River in a later post!!!<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-57991025358913027242014-10-03T11:42:00.001-07:002015-07-15T17:35:19.978-07:00Sespe Creek is Hurting in the Drought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sespe Creek. Duane Nash 9/29/14</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the Ventura county back country is a special creek and wildlife area - the Sespe wilderness area. Not only is it undammed and relatively pristine compared to other southern Californian watersheds - the creek and it's surrounding watershed serve as critical habitat for California condors, desert bighorn sheep (following a successful reintroduction campaign), southern steelhead trout, arroyo toad, red-legged frog, western pond turtle, pacific lamprey, numerous threatened riparian/chaparral birds and many other species. This wilderness was also a last holdout for California grizzly and today still hosts black bear, puma, bobcat, coyote, and badger among other predators. And oh yeah, the story of beaver in California - and especially southern California - is intimately linked with the Sespe (<a href="https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=78258&inline=1">from Lanman et. al. 2013</a>):</span><br />
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">A MaNIS search combined with</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">direct inquiries to California museums for pre-1923 Castor specimens located only a single</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">vouchered specimen. That specimen, a beaver skull (catalogued MVZ Mammals 4918)</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">was collected by John Hornung on 19 May 1906 on Sespe Creek, a tributary of the Santa</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Clara River, Ventura County. Grinnell (1937) was hesitant to accept the provenance of</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">this specimen and placed a question mark by its location on his range map. Hornung, an</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">NHMLAC zoologist, had collected many specimens for the MVZ as well as the American</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Museum of Natural History (Loomis 1901, Osborn 1910) and CAS (Howell 1923). Recently</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">digitized correspondence between Grinnell and Hornung has become available and settles</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">this longstanding question. When Grinnell wrote Hornung asking for further details regarding</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">the specimen; Hornung (1914:1-2) wrote back: “... In reference to the beaver, I will say</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">that I murdered the specimen in question 3 miles east of Cold Springs. I was on horseback</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">and saw on the river, enormously swollen as the date which you have [19 May 1906], what</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">appeared to me as a dead large dog surrounded by branches of a big stump. This stump</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">was swimming in the water, but anchored in a tangled mass of some kind of a vine. After</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">some maneuvering I could reach this animal with a stick. As soon as I touched it, it showed</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">its teeth, and I knew then what unexpected find I had made…A shot ended the animal’s</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">sufferings, and I secured the skull which you have…”. Hartman Cold Springs Ranch (34°</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">33’ N, 119° 15’ W) is located on upper Sespe Creek in the Sierra Madre Mountains at 1,025</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">m elevation and the creek along this stretch is quite low gradient, i.e. suitable beaver habitat.</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Interestingly there is a Beaver Camp on the USGS GNIS at 1,000 m elevation about 1 km</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">east of Hartman Cold Springs Ranch, although its toponomastic origin is not known (Figure</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">3). In addition to the 1906 Sespe Creek beaver specimen, Hornung (1914:2) told Grinnell:</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">“There are still quite a few beaver in Southern California, myself being so lucky as to get</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">hold of one as late as Dec. 24, 1913, 3 weeks ago.”</span></i></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Interestingly sporadic/anecdotal beaver sightings occurred right up until the 2000's. My own middle school biology teacher, Tim Peddicord, recalls seeing a beaver in Lions Creek ( a tributary to Sespe) in the 1960's. Whether or not the sightings are due to remnants of an original population or translocations that the CDFG did in the middle of the 20th century is anyones guess. And whether or not beaver are still holding out in isolated pockets of the Sespe is a (remote) possibility as well. I did notice some interesting and suggestive features on the Sespe when I recently went up and down it with GEOlocate.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Now most likely the suggestion of beaver activity in these pictures is just that - a suggestion - but there is the possibility that these features are the result of ancient beaver dams. The Sespe is known for deep pools that retain water during the dry season and which serve as refugia for fish and other aquatic organisms. Below is a picture of one such pool in wetter times after the last rainy season.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Such deep, permanent and snow melt fed pools (it is at about 3000') of course are the exact sort of place rainbow trout - or a beaver - can make a home of. And altogether the relative isolation (i.e. lack of conflict with agriculture/man), abundance of habitat, historical occurrence there, potential benefit to fisheries/other riparian species, low gradient, and history of species reintroduction in the area (desert bighorn sheep/California condor) puts the Sespe wilderness high on my personal list of watersheds in southern California that beaver SHOULD be put back into.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Potential difficulties include the lack of political will on the part of the CDFW services to 1) finally admit they are native 2) come up with a comprehensive management/restoration plan.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">And as noted earlier there are abundant predators in the Sespe so any reintroduction should be into spots with year round water/deep pools/hiding spots/alluvial banks for bank burrows.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">And another difficulty for beaver in the Sespe, indeed all of California: <i><b>Is this drought simply the new normal?</b></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Now I know that is a disturbing and alarming thought but a <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_26627640/californias-drought-linked-greenhouse-gases-climate-change">controversial paper </a>from Stanford scientists suggests that the stubborn high pressure ridge diverting storms away from California might be here to stay. Well at this point there are differing opinions and data - we shall see. Although it would not hurt to plan for the worse.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">But back to the Sespe. I got word from a friend on facebook that the pools were drying up and concentrating fish. Not just the small pools that may normally go dry... but the big, deep ones that generally always retain some water through the year. This was scary but, given that the Sespe is about 45 minutes away from me, I had to go check it out. Things did not look promising, when, as I drove through Rose Valley on the way to trailhead I noticed some failing pines (sugar pines?).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I honestly don't know if the trees are failing due to the drought or Japanes bark beetles - but as I was driving by a gun club I did not get out of my truck to investigate further. Depressing either way.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">And when I got to Sespe Creek itself it has in fact, gone underground for long stretches.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The last picture is near the confluence of Lions Creek with Sespe Creek. For comparison below is a picture in the same area, in wetter times.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">As I found out there were several deep pools that remained and offered hope for surviving fish and drinking water for the wildlife. I found one particularly nice, deep shaded pool after doing a little bushwhacking (and constantly checking for ticks/lions/bears).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">And also the better known "Piedra Blanca pool" a well known swimming, diving pool was reduced to a grimy little wallow full of bullhead catfish and some unidentified fish (non-native) that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=921EaX6Ssww">kept biting and nibbling my hand</a> when I put my hand in. I did not see any native trout but they were probably deeper amidst the rocks.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Anyways I have some youtube videos I posted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuYIbUVqK0l9DeRLTfYxUoA">to my channel</a>, feel free to subscribe and you will be my first subsribee!! I would post them here but blogger is giving me grief right now and not allowing that... </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Until I post again Cheers and Pray for Rain!!!</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Black Bear paw print. Piedra Blanca Pool 9/29/14 Duane Nash</td></tr>
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-33699961738780747602014-09-07T00:51:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:00:03.396-07:00The Mojave River Beaver Continues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMX3jtVjsB3Us4WqVUp8acpev_wHa3WO5YOVhN7JfwrR2PiwBNfEduoTxTl5zwm1Dg3V-ujwlVP2ydCn4Hel1fhLRHpBcLu6UgOEninBYL8L2qUoGwF1Gr640AFH7oTKAeENyesSPiJSEu/s1600/Picture+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMX3jtVjsB3Us4WqVUp8acpev_wHa3WO5YOVhN7JfwrR2PiwBNfEduoTxTl5zwm1Dg3V-ujwlVP2ydCn4Hel1fhLRHpBcLu6UgOEninBYL8L2qUoGwF1Gr640AFH7oTKAeENyesSPiJSEu/s1600/Picture+2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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And that is the last bit of surface flow in the Mojave River after coming off Deep Creek before it goes underground. Does not look very good for a beaver? No riparian corridor but Lawrence of Arabia amounts of sand. Until the river does something miraculous and resurfaces about 8 miles downstream at Mojave Narrows Regional Park where a confluence of geology forces the water back up. And discovering this amazing desert oasis are beavers from the nearby San Bernardino mountains where several translocations took place last century.<br />
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And they seem to like the desert.<br />
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Victorville looks like a veritable haven for beavers smack dab right in the middle of one of the most well known deserts in the world.<br />
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Look at that big body of water, the whole pond is about 750 feet long!!<br />
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You can actually back up and see the swath of riparian green - largely created by the beavers - contrasted sharply against the desert from outer space!! Beaver can attenuate waning surface flows and even more substantially increase subsurface flows.<br />
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A little bit after Victorville the river submerges underground again and the river become a wide sandy wash as pictured below.<br />
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So pretty cool little desert population of beaver. In the areas with surface flows the beaver have found them and greatly augmented the habitat for plants and wildlife, and deepened and widened the channel for more persistent year round flows and groundwater percolation. The Mojave River is a noted habitat for several endangered reptiles and amphibians - especially western pond turtles - and doubtless multitudes of bird species. Unfortunately the lone native fish - The Mojave Tui Chub - has more or less been pushed to the brink of extinction by its non - native introduced relative the Arroyo Chub. Interestingly the Mojave Tui Chub is an ice age holdover from when the Mojave river used to flow into a permanent lake so beaver would have likely benefited this fish as they prefer slow moving, lentic waters.<br />
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-28392725384312287392014-09-05T15:54:00.001-07:002015-07-15T17:00:16.897-07:00Why Are Rivers In Northern California Starting to Look Like Rivers In Southern California?Ah the old southern vs northern Californian debate.... a little background from where I am coming from I have family in the Bay Area dating to the gold rush and even though I currently live in southern California and was born and raised here - I did go to school and live in northern California from 1997 to 2010. So bottom line is I feel first and foremost that I am Californian. Now you can inject any arguments and historical anecdotes that vilify southern California in terms of water usage - and truth be told southern California is and continues to be negligent both in terms of public and governmental use of water. But when it comes to bad, outdated policy and the loss of perennial flows and natural habitat both the North and South have blood on their hands. Remember for every Owens Valley there is also a Hetch Hetchy Valley.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Hetch_Hetchy_Valley.jpg/1280px-Hetch_Hetchy_Valley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Hetch_Hetchy_Valley.jpg/1280px-Hetch_Hetchy_Valley.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hetch Hetchy Valley- the "other" Yosemite, now a reservoir for Bay Area</td></tr>
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I want to direct your attention to a YouTube clip The Eel River Has Stopped Flowing:<br />
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Now down here in socal we are used to seeing our rivers look like this, in fact this is more water than one should expect in a southern river by this time of the year. However the Eel River is not supposed to look like this. By the way it is named the Eel River for the historical abundance of lamprey that were found here - which are not true eels.<br />
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Let us see.... is there any other bad news I can throw at you? There has been the suggestion that the drought we are experiencing in California and the west may in fact be the start of a prolonged multi-decade drought or that even these rainfall patterns are the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/californias-drought-could-last-for-years/">new normal</a>. Cry me a (drying) river...<br />
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<a href="http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/07/15/20140708_ca_trd.jpg?itok=kheB1MJ-" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/07/15/20140708_ca_trd.jpg?itok=kheB1MJ-" height="492" width="640" /></a></div>
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Northern and Southern California needs to get some common sense groundwater management, get rid of all the lawns, stop growing rice and nut crops, and start importing non-native beavers from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_eradication_in_Tierra_del_Fuego">Patagonia and Argentina</a> to restore groundwater in ALL watersheds!!! <b>Every problem is a chance for a creative solution!!!</b><br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-28591282386763986832014-08-19T23:33:00.002-07:002015-07-15T17:00:32.812-07:00England Looks In No Way Like Southern California<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuklLlG0NJwZyVqnifdmD-uhB7VZJ7fv8bXfpSEvw7bLSHZkrclh5pok0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuklLlG0NJwZyVqnifdmD-uhB7VZJ7fv8bXfpSEvw7bLSHZkrclh5pok0" height="178" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: large;">"You know what's remarkable is how much England looks in no way like Southern California."</span></b></i><br />
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Above is one of my favorite lines from <i>Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me</i>. If you need a refresher Austin is cruising the "English countryside" with Felicity Shagwell when he makes the comment. The irony of course, being that the scene and the whole movie were filmed in southern California.<br />
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Now taken as it is we have a great example of Michael Myers penchant for witty, off the cuff dialogue - the line was not scripted - and Heather Graham simply mutters <i>"What?"</i> in reply. But such a line, innocuous as it is, can take on some deeper meaning. For starters the native chaparral vegetation which dominates the coastal hillside of southern California and central California, along with oak savanna and coastal sage-scrub, is often featured in movies not explicitly taking place in California but filmed there due to the proximity of the film industry. Indeed the famous Hollywood sign is on a hillside of chaparral vegetation. In stands of old growth manzanita the tangle can get over 30 feet tall and by all accounts chaparral was actually some of the most productive grizzly habitat in the state. While it is true fire is part of this habitat, it has become apparent that the frequency of fire due to anthropogenic causes has increased over time to the detriment of the ecosystem. Interestingly the fire barriers created by people seeking to separate the brush from their property might be accelerating fire risk due to non-native grasses moving in and spreading fires.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sespe Wilderness. Ventura backcountry</td></tr>
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With its ubiquity in many of the most iconic spots in California and its export around the world via the film industry you might think native Californians would take pride in this unique biome found in only a few places on the planet. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth.<br />
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For the most part large swaths of the population look at chaparral as a prickly, dry, combustible, menace. Fortunately there are lovers of chaparral - a notable example being <a href="http://www.californiachaparral.org/">the chaparral institute</a> - which I encourage you to check out.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Growth Manzanita. San Luis Obispo county</td></tr>
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It is for shame that California does not herald the unique chaparral biome to the extent it is does the redwood forest - or other parts of the country celebrate their native flora. I mean just check out how cool the twisted, gnarled bark of old growth manzanita looks. Now imagine all of coastal southern and central mountains dominated by stands of old growth manzanita. And this tall canopy creating shade and thermal refuge for amphibians, fungi, wildflowers, reptiles and mosses that one would not expect in such an arid climate. Grizzly bears carving out intricate mazes and centuries old foot paths through the tangle of growth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwe-MRuaC8BBhh-AhoYxtzZ2P8vklRM2n9SGtwzCQfFMN8mfn-805aaMPDVm64nr3WGeYySfu61uwsyRCpxdYyzDtaCBLfgRJG6WcG4IaS8I2wLC9siSDK8svL-9X0ILO2lAYFs-353pHt/s1600/Ol+Manzanita.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwe-MRuaC8BBhh-AhoYxtzZ2P8vklRM2n9SGtwzCQfFMN8mfn-805aaMPDVm64nr3WGeYySfu61uwsyRCpxdYyzDtaCBLfgRJG6WcG4IaS8I2wLC9siSDK8svL-9X0ILO2lAYFs-353pHt/s1600/Ol+Manzanita.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Now to get back to what I was saying about Californians having at best an ambivalent relationship with chaparral and much of the native vegetation. This became especially obvious to me working at a retail plant nursery in the Bay Area. I would try and chide and cajole customers to the native plant section but often time with frustrating results. People from the east coast wanted eastern Lilacs not ceanothus. Everyone insists on a lawn and water hungry annuals. About right here you can insert a discussion on planting for a drought tolerant landscape - especially in, you know, a time of drought.<br />
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Now let me dovetail this discussion into the insights gleaned by Heidi Perryman and others concerning why and how often beaver are lethally trapped in California over the last 20 months.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Capture5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Capture5.jpg" height="363" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Martinez Beavers</td></tr>
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As discussed already on Martinez Beavers - <a href="http://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/2014/08/12/dying-for-information/">Dying For Information</a> - over 36% of complaints stem from either agriculture (20%) or to trees/landscaping (16%). Although dealing with beaver in agricultural situations can be tricky - live trapping and relocation should be the option - it is the high number of reports of damage to trees and landscaping which resulted in 41 kills that is most distressing. And this is because it is easily remedied by a simple wire mesh around the trunk or bad tasting paint - but no plastic por favor. Or, as I would like to see, simply letting the area in question go native to the willows, cottonwood, sycamore and other trees than can coppice, resprout, and reseed in the wetland provided. Check out this cute blog <a href="http://www.georgiabackyardnature.com/georgia_backyard_nature/beaver/">Georgia Backyard Nature</a> and the authors love/hate story of beaver felling valued trees. You can see that several of the trees the author bemoaned the loss of due to beaver actually resprouted and several other trees reseeded in the habitat made by the beaver.<br />
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But this recalcitrance to just let things go back to what is there naturally - whether it be your cities creek side park or beaver pond adjacent to your landscaped property - really speaks to the ambivalent relationship Californians have with chaparral. It is our emblematic native vegetation. In the past it provided sanctuary for grizzly in daunting chaparral mazes and today it fuels massive fires that threaten urban sprawl. In the past grizzly was seen as a challenge and menace to be eliminated by California settlers. Today fire is seen as a threat to California that needs managing. Both fire and the grizzly are intimately linked with the chaparral.<br />
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Whether it be fire, grizzly, or beaver it seems we have a tendency to try and demonize, eliminate, trap, or suppress it as opposed to understand, value, and cohabitate with it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Monica Mountains near Pt Mugu. Camarillo Springs Fire</td></tr>
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One piece of good news is that there were no depredations for beaver in southern California during this period!!<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-85452110026706751952014-08-05T15:34:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:00:51.624-07:00Southland Beaver at the Martinez Beaver Festival!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitclerrZ0f8SIUpnlpjuDibJEuoanxJDU7tOrHu9wU6qeij0Zg5l6arsK3YlEFLM6OCgrAwjq7yMLWIcNDMI_qKwKhs7HVCVT7ZKxprOH3exUW5oRMGWdT2Q7WK-MuGq_mXVHtYX-bHVxg/w1080-h608-no/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitclerrZ0f8SIUpnlpjuDibJEuoanxJDU7tOrHu9wU6qeij0Zg5l6arsK3YlEFLM6OCgrAwjq7yMLWIcNDMI_qKwKhs7HVCVT7ZKxprOH3exUW5oRMGWdT2Q7WK-MuGq_mXVHtYX-bHVxg/w1080-h608-no/image.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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Just got back from my norcal trip to Martinez to host a booth at the annual Martinez Beaver Festival. It was a blast and met loads of cool people and made some nice contacts. Martinez is such a cool and funky little east bay town - when I lived in the Bay area I never got a chance to see this town but I really liked the vibe of the town.<br />
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There were over 40 booths with topics ranging from native gardening to cougars. But I noticed a common theme of grass roots, volunteer driven protection of animals and natural places. We should expect and encourage such groups in the future as governmental agencies only do so much. And CDFW, like any monolithic bureaucracy, can not pivot quickly enough to address multifaceted and quickly emerging topics in California's human mediated ecology.<br />
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The crowd was great, never too many people and the people I got a chance to really talk to seemed genuinely intrigued by the strange and little known saga of beaver in California. I did not come across anyone adverse to what I want to do and most seemed on the same page with me as far as putting more beaver in California, especially southern California <i>(but one person wryly added do not take our northern Californian beaver). </i>There were a lot more adults than I expected and although there were a lot of kids they did not dominate and seemed especially interested in the science. I myself brought 10 skins of birds that utilize riparian/pond habitat, my mural, and loads of photographs of beaver ponds, google earth imagery. People were impressed that beaver lived in such arid climes as the Mojave River.<br />
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After the festival I got a chance to explore Alhambra Creek and hopefully check out the beavers. I had it on good word that they usually start coming out around 6:30 so I had some down time to photograph and hang out at the local tavern. I had long known of the tidal influence from the nearby delta on this creek but was impressed by how much of it there was.<br />
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Above is the secondary dam before high tide. At high tide this dam was completely submerged and the beaver do a little maintenance after every high tide cycle evidently. Me and several other beaver watchers hung around for the nightly beaver watch. I myself was dead set on seeing a beaver as I have never seen a live, wild beaver (hark hark insert beaver pun of your choice here) and I was promised that the Alhambra beavers are pretty people friendly. At about 6:30, like promised, things started happening. A ripple here, a splash here I watched from the bridge overlooking one of the most active bank burrows. And then I did some counter surveillance at the main dam. And finally there was a beaver in the water - just lazing along. Me and several others were treated to quite a show at the main dam as one fairly big beaver - the good for nothing uncle some people claimed - made several up close appearances. My photos are all out of focus and wacky but hey - whatevs.<br />
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I though it was really cool how the beaver utilized the rising tide to get to vegetation normally out of reach. They especially liked the black berry bushes!!<br />
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Anyways blogger is not letting me link to youtube videos but if you want to check out my videos go to my youtube channel at <a href="s://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuYIbUVqK0l9DeRLTfYxUoA">Duane Nash</a>.<br />
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I also got some nice shots of a pond turtle.<br />
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Anyways had a blast, thanks Heidi, Cheryl and everyone else involved!!<br />
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-63336438158601034672014-07-29T22:27:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:01:08.713-07:00Odds N' EndsOk so I have not posted for a while but that does not mean I don't have a lot of stuff that I want to talk about. So I am going to use this post as a catch all for a whole slew of stuff that could easily be 3 or 4 posts.<br />
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First things first I have realized I need help in getting southland beaver up to the next level. I work two jobs, have another blog (antediluvian salad) that I like to update at least once a week, as well as you know, just life... so I am asking for help. If jump starting a nonprofit centered around beaver advocacy, protection, and reintroduction in southern/central California strikes your fancy please contact me @ duanen8@gmail.com. Or if you are just curious and want to brainstorm ideas that is fine as well. If you are good at organizing things/paperwork/bureaucracy those skills would be especially handy as they are not my strong suits.<br />
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I have been busy though prepping for the Martinez Beaver festival where I will have a booth. As you can see I have designed a new banner for the site, color pencils btw and it took several months (but relatively short sessions each time). I also have been sending emails concerning the prospects of beaver in California watersheds. I plastered various staff at the CA department of Fish and Wildlife; deer people, small game people, fish people, bird people, just about any department I could find got an email from yours truly. Below is a copy of what I wrote.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"></span></b></span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Hello my name is Duane Nash and I want to draw your attention to a recent paper published by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife titled The Historical Range of Beaver (Castor canadensis) in Coastal California: A Review of the Evidence by Lanman et. al. found online here</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><a href="https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=78258&inline=1" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/<wbr></wbr>FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=<wbr></wbr>78258&inline=1</i></span></a></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This thorough review of the distribution of beaver in California extends their accepted range to include coastal southern California, the Sierra, and all of Northern California. Evidence for beaver in southern California includes biological specimens (collected from Sespe River 1906), ethnographic evidence including native American place names, words for beaver, beaver artifacts and beaver ceremonial customs including Chumash, and historical accounts from European colonization. It is likely that much of the beaver population in California, especially southern California, was eradicated prior to the gold rush by fur trappers - especially through the use of steel traps. </i></span></span></b></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Reintroduction, protection, and expansion of existing beaver populations in southern California dating from translocations performed by the department of fish and game in the early 20th century offer a pragmatic tool to enhance watershed health. Beaver have been documented to raise local water tables through their damming, creating year round flows and pools in creeks that formerly went dry such as in Susie Creek, Nevada. The diversity and extent of riparian habitat that beaver provide create abundant habitat for riparian organisms as well as secondary benefits to all animals in arid climates due to more dependable and consistent water regimes. Notable endangered, threatened, and species of concern that beaver benefit in southern California watersheds include southern steelhead (beaver ponds creating ideal feeding habitats for young fish and refugia for oversummering ocean run adults), pacific lamprey, tidewater goby, unarmored three-spine stickleback, western pond turtle, red-legged frog, least bell’s vireo, and willow flycatcher. Additionally beaver habitat provides habitat for numerous other non-threatened but declining birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and others. Finally the woody debris that beaver transport into a watershed kickstart detrital food chains ultimately creating more abundant invertebtrate communites which benefits species higher up on the food chain, including humans that eat fish.</i></span></span></b></div>
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<i><br /></i></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Beaver benefits to humans include, besides the above mentioned restored natural habitats which serve as a cognitive restorative tool for humans, an ability to both replenish aquifers and buffer against floods. A series of beaver dams works as a veritable series of speed bumps on flowing water helping to slow and spread the sometimes torrential downpours in arid regions. Unlike human made dams, water diversions, and spreading grounds to recharge aquifers beavers perform the same function but allow ecological connectivity. Fish can pass through, around, or over dams during high flows. In especially high flows dams will blow out. Finally beaver offer added economic incentive by attracting nature lovers, fishers, and bird watchers to impoverished communities.</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>It is my hope that you consider beaver a useful, pragmatic, and necessary tool in watershed health for these and other reasons. I believe it would be most fortuitous and timely for your organization to team up with beaver and embrace the most important keystone species on the North American continent.</i></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Duane Nash</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>southlandbeaver.blogspot</i></span></span></b><br />
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I think it covers the bases nicely, no? But for my efforts, I emailed over 50 members of CDFW and got '0' replies. A big nada. Zilch. Now I know people are busy and yada, yada how dare I consider publicly funded branches of the government to, you know, respond to the public. But come on now just maybe one reply? Anyways the web address to wildlife programs at CDFW is <a href="http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/email.html">http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/email.html</a><br />
and if a few souls out there happen to read this and send staff more emails about beaver in California well that would just make my day. <i>Constant pressure, constantly applied. </i><br />
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Also if you like my letter feel free to copy and post it if you feel inspired to start petitioning your local agencies about beaver.<br />
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On a positive note I did get a reply and a meeting from a local, very powerful environmental ally. Can't apply for funding yet as I don't have non-profit status but if I could get them as beaver allies it could prove very fruitful. Let's just say they are very opposed to man-made dams but not necessarily beaver made dams.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1 Billion Dollars for the L.A. River?!?</span></b><br />
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Maybe you did not know L.A. had a river, much less 1 billion dollars to help restore it. But never the less this might just happen. http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80339241/<br />
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Personally I have mixed feelings about this. Much of the river, as you probably know, is channelized. Plans include widening parts of the river and amending recreational corridors along the river. Although there is a claim to return it to its 'wild state' this is doubtful because historically the L.A. River meandered all over the floodplain and I doubt that the Staples Center is going to be relocated for a properly meandering river. But it is encouraging that there is some type of energy building up for watershed health. But I would much rather have seen the money go to the Santa Clara River which is unchannelized and still has some of its native fish, unlike the L.A. river which has no native fish left and plenty of invasives. Oh yeah, invasive species and beaver are a recurring theme here. The L.A. River has no beaver as well - can't blame the beaver for this one now can we? BTW the angeleno chumash had a word for beaver and wore beaver pelts. Would be nice if a little bit of that 1 billion was used for a beaver feasibility study in the L.A. river...<br />
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But it is still over all great that this appears to be happening and a lot of people worked long and hard for this river. Even if 80% of the flow is treated effluent.<br />
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Heres a nice video of it: <a href="http://vimeo.com/27662703">http://vimeo.com/27662703</a><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-ward/the-original-geo-engineers_b_5630356.html">Beaver in the Huffington Post!!!!</a></span></b><br />
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This i<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-ward/the-original-geo-engineers_b_5630356.html">s a good article</a> and very positive towards beaver - and rightly negative towards cattle. As usual Heidi Perryman beat me to the comments section - that lady is on it!! But this is big exposure for beaver and it roundly criticizes the horrible water policies out west, especially when it come to cattle. I actually wrote about the cowbow mythos a while back on my other blog antediluvian salad, <a href="http://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/2012/10/cowboys-and-dinosaurs.html">cowboys and dinosaurs</a>. Essentially, contrary to what cattle ranchers would like you to believe, cattle are not desert animals nor did much of the land cattle are put on in the west ever support native bison. Where do cattle do best? Riverine forests, just the habitat their wild progenitor the auroch preferred. Georgia and Alabama are actually superior cattle range than Nevada and Texas!!<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Drought Rages On: But Does the Average Californian Know or Care About Where Their Water Comes From?</span></b><br />
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<b>500$ fine for wasting water in California, or end up like the guy below.</b><br />
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Yep it is pretty hot out there, and pretty dry. I recently went down to check on the closest beaver population to me at the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara county. Let's just say it was so dry that the cottonwoods and willows were shedding their leaves like it was October. Not good. I don't know what happened to the beavers in the stretch of the river I go to. Did they flee to local golf ponds? Move up or down river? Let's hope they have the ecological flexibility to find a safe haven as I did not see any fresh beaver sign in an area usually brimming with beaver sign and the only pool of water was a decrepit pool full of trapped bull frog tadpoles. Anyways kind of depressing but I believe in just laying the ugly truth out there...<br />
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Yes, that is the most janky duck blind ever... and completely bone dry in an area with usually some water.<br />
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Dried up cattails in a beaver pond. Beaver can help keep areas wetter, but if the faucet at Cachuma reservoir is completely shut off and local farmers aggressively pump out every last trickle of groundwater,,, not much left for the wildlife.<br />
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To the left along the bank are a series of beaver bank burrows. Did not see any recent activity. Where do they go?<br />
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This is the freshest beaver sign I saw, a chewed stump. Hard to gage when it was cut... maybe a couple of weeks?<br />
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If you want to see what this river looks like during a water release when it is full of water check out this post: <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2013/09/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river.html">Beaver Safari on the Santa Ynez River</a><br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-4953428844421344802014-07-11T21:53:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:01:31.140-07:00Southern California's Santa Margarita River: Undammed by Man, But Not BeaverOne of the more astonishing things I come across when I talk to people about beaver in arid southern California is that not only have they never thought about beaver here - they are shocked to learn <i>Castor canadensis</i> is already here!! From just a few males and females translocated by some a very prescient California Department of Fish and Game (now wildlife) officers these founding beavers, perhaps even mating with remnant populations of beaver in southern California have created stable and increasing beaver populations in several watersheds in southern California as well as the rest of the state. Kate Lundquist of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">(</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.oaecwater.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.oaecwater.org</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">)</span> kindly furnished me with the below map as well as additional detailed listings of the several hundred beaver translocations that took place in the early to mid 20th century.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirsGGKehoh_iZjgXj6fvawld7njzPEP_wLEnOY4_FYdvrZhkcJzxfBmyhT2X1xM0AoK4DG1E0msvY4m8sCiYLtZ3BLzEErzy2ZsCSFhQHSknx4adYcbwfPKx8rqwXaRIsZi26w7sRSgYGp/s1600/new+picture+28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirsGGKehoh_iZjgXj6fvawld7njzPEP_wLEnOY4_FYdvrZhkcJzxfBmyhT2X1xM0AoK4DG1E0msvY4m8sCiYLtZ3BLzEErzy2ZsCSFhQHSknx4adYcbwfPKx8rqwXaRIsZi26w7sRSgYGp/s1600/new+picture+28.png" width="488" /></a></div>
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Of course one should take note of the now outdated "original range map of beaver" as interpreted by Grinnel. New date has come to light showing that the historical range of beaver in California is best reflected by the map below per the work of<a href="https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=78258&inline=1"> Lanman et. al. 2013</a>.<br />
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Now for this post I want to focus on a little heralded population of southern beavers represented by the stippled red dots on the river second from the bottom on the coast of California. That little river, better described as a creek in all actuality, is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Margarita_River">Santa Margarita River</a>. It's only about 30 miles long and like all rivers in socal is best described as intermittent. Formed by the confluence of Temecula and Murrieta Creeks, there are several well known beaver dams at the confluence. Now I have actually never visted this river but with the magic of google maps one can easily enough find the dams, from outer space!!<br />
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Hopefully you can see where I have measured this pond at about 47 meters (152 feet). Pretty nice litle beaver pond. Now I only recently started spending significant time tracing river/stream courses looking for beaver ponds and it is very fun I must admit. In fact I would suggest doing so is the best teaching tool for looking from a landscape perspective at where, how, and to what extent beaver do their work. I highly suggest it!!<br />
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Look at this big pond above over 140 meters (462 feet long) !! This might actually be an old dam, you can see it is not too well maintained. Or it might be a naturally occurring pool but the vegetated downstream section makes me thing mud was piled up there at one point.<br />
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Here is a pic of a series of dams that stretches over 357 meters long, for us Americans that is over 1170 feet long!! That has got to be a good amount of water storage. In fact a series of step dams seems to be a common style of dam in these low water volume watersheds. As you can see it is in a bit of a valley bottom. This is what beavers like, they are looking for alluvial - that means sediment bottomed - valleys at relatively low gradients. Along the coast range in southern California such a style of river/creek bottom is rare, but present in all watersheds. Although socal has a lot of high gradient, rocky bottomed creeks - they eventually plateau out in either wide bottomed valleys or the coastal floodplain.<br />
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Above is another example of a beaver pond at over 264 meters (868 feet long) in a broad, alluvial valley. Remember, having that alluvium, i.e. mud, to play around with allows the emergent vegetation and the riparian layer to develop that beaver need. This is why bedrock bottomed creeks/slot canyons are not so great for beaver dams. Hard for the vegetation to get a toehold.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIYRBqJ0jbaCW0XRqxonNWCok21w4PUcaBbB6PW7s9plaBs7Q6WbMiv1zWyARscnIu2jjkwOGRX0zzzX2jaAWl2js0iesPV-Dx-PeoUVsptICtDRgpXXCMGnTGX_k9eyCFfBWDcjs0abTB/s1600/Picture+25.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIYRBqJ0jbaCW0XRqxonNWCok21w4PUcaBbB6PW7s9plaBs7Q6WbMiv1zWyARscnIu2jjkwOGRX0zzzX2jaAWl2js0iesPV-Dx-PeoUVsptICtDRgpXXCMGnTGX_k9eyCFfBWDcjs0abTB/s1600/Picture+25.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Look at the dams above. You can see that vegetation is filling in the ponds. Chances are if beaver were not along this stretch of the river it would be completely dry. But beaver activity, I suspect deepening of the pools by beaver allows year round refugia. And this is a common theme looking at beaver activity along southern California streams/rivers. Long stretches of no water, followed by a gradual increase of vegetation and some surface flows and then you start to see hints of beaver activity and them <i>voila </i>active beaver ponds. Did the beaver seek out the springs of water or did they over time create them? You get into a little bit of a chicken vs egg conundrum. I am reminded of the Chumash oral tradition<br />
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">Timbrook (2007:180) relates</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">a Chumash story where “a willow stick that had been cut by a beaver was thought to have</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">the power to bring water. The Chumash would treat the stick with ‘ayip (a ritually powerful</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">substance made from alum) and then plant it in the ground to create a permanent spring of</span></b></i></div>
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">water.” </span> </span></b></i><br />
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Now that is a very powerful and eloquent parable for the beaver in southern California. In fact that story is more potent and powerful than just about anything I have came up with on this blog!!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiekPAHGuBXQput8QzE_oMWt-yuiDlC_aTKIL3hqui8cKlft0NubEIX3CI6PfkB2-CL84Vri02TpkfJDLuDZvZo3tRBL3pfFuDYARvchOATyZGFLlXd_E-w4EfEG3cQ1xuvEqbU3mF9uj4t/s1600/Picture+27.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiekPAHGuBXQput8QzE_oMWt-yuiDlC_aTKIL3hqui8cKlft0NubEIX3CI6PfkB2-CL84Vri02TpkfJDLuDZvZo3tRBL3pfFuDYARvchOATyZGFLlXd_E-w4EfEG3cQ1xuvEqbU3mF9uj4t/s1600/Picture+27.png" width="376" /></a></div>
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Now the Santa Margarita has several good things going for it. Its in a relatively remote section bordering San Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles counties and parts of it go through an ecological preserve of UC San Diego and Camp Pendleton both sites of which beaver are on. Military bases and environmental conservation make for strange bedfellows but you would be surprised. Also the Nature Conservancy has invested in the river. And no dams. Unfortunately non-native beasties have heavily infiltrated the system. And as is usually the case beaver - not humans as should logically be the conclusion - are posited as responsible for the spread of invasives. From a paper Status and Distribution of Fishes in the Santa Margarita River USGS May 2000 available online:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>While the presence of beaver ponds to slow the water flow (thereby locally </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>reducing the gradient) could be interpreted as favorable to stickleback, this would only be </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>the case if the exotics were absent. In addition, the beaver dams cause increased water </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>temperatures that would be detrimental to the stickleback. Threespine stickleback have </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>thermal requirements higher that rainbow trout but lower than arroyo chub (Swift 1989) </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>and would do better in the cooler flowing waters of the natural stream. Stickleback were </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>undoubtedly numerous in the large slowly flowing, algae filled pools in the gorge before </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>the advent of exotic species. In any case the necessity to limit or exclude beaver ponds as </i></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>favoring exotic predatory exotic species overrides any consideration of possibly </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>increasing habitat for stickleback that do now currently inhabit the drainage. </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2_icBtO9AaIxlgfww-vOfGOTdo49ZzswjJMShRSEWfjjaR6Fs21c75KxWVIAobMYMftTCrYDKPMvTsp4Jl-8LmdQWjAWM5rHh-XP1Ma8NHRuydgpfALpeO_I1gGR_FUFkaXLKgiguWCp/s1600/Picture+33.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2_icBtO9AaIxlgfww-vOfGOTdo49ZzswjJMShRSEWfjjaR6Fs21c75KxWVIAobMYMftTCrYDKPMvTsp4Jl-8LmdQWjAWM5rHh-XP1Ma8NHRuydgpfALpeO_I1gGR_FUFkaXLKgiguWCp/s1600/Picture+33.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Now they only assert the beaver ponds are raising water temperatures - they actually do not measure them. How the ponds affect water temperature depends on how much hyporheic exchange is going on - as well as how deep the pond is.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Gasterosteus_aculeatus.jpg/250px-Gasterosteus_aculeatus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Gasterosteus_aculeatus.jpg/250px-Gasterosteus_aculeatus.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">three-spined stickleback</td></tr>
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Of the four originally native species to the river steelhead, pacific lamprey, arroyo chub, and threespine stickleback only arroyo chub was found in their survey. Interestingly striped mullet, an estuarine fish, went pretty far upriver. And as you can see from the list of exotics, it is a system dominated by them. How are we to say with or without beaver that the natives would not be in trouble? I mean this is the situation on the Santa Clara River where there are no beaver but plenty of non-natives.<br />
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Nope I consider blaming beaver for the spread of invasives a bit of a logical fallacy - if you want to blame something blame humans - we put them there.<br />
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A big dilemma with non-natives and something that I think should be iterated is that many of the species in question are from the east coast of America. So beaver dams are not anything new to the ecology of these species. Furthermore if you are a green sunfish or a largemouth bass you do not really care if you are in a beaver pond, an irrigation ditch, or an oxbow - you found a good home. And secondly these east coast fish evolved in more competitive, diverse assemblages of fish than western species. So when push comes to shove they are just a bit more pugnacious, aggressive, and voracious than native fish. Holds true for bullfrogs and Louisiana swamp crawfish.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/images/414/10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/images/414/10.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/journal/414/journal_3.htm">Fishing for Beaver Pond Bass</a> - it's a thing</td></tr>
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In fact in the case of bass there is a little bit of <a href="http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/journal/414/journal_3.htm">fisherman's cult emerging concerning bass and beaver ponds</a>. Turns out, surprise surprise, the prized game fish just loves to hole up in beaver ponds and especially likes all the woody debris in the dam to hide out in during the day.<br />
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The way I see it the issue of invasives in California/arid watersheds is as such:<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1) Do nothing. Admit they are too widespread and numerous to control. The new fish fauna is an alien fish fauna and this is the new normal. This is what seems to be happening anyways and is pretty much the default solution based on what I have seen. All those man made dams and reservoirs are stocked with non-native species for fishing purposes. Whenever there is a flood or water release the downstream river from the reservoir is inoculated with non-natives.</span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2) Do everything. Massive campaigns of eradication including hand capture, fishing, electroshock netting to eradicate non-natives. Several complete sweeps of entire watersheds necessary. Stringent laws enacted to penalize intentional release of non-natives. Somehow eradicate founding populations of non-natives from lakes and reservoirs. Likelihood virtually nil considering the scope, magnitude and prices involved. Would require a seismic shift in societal attitude.</span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3) Mitigation. Find ways for natives and non-natives to coexist. Electroshock areas and clean out non-natives but leave natives. Encourage restoration of native predatory birds, mammals, and reptiles to hold non-natives in check. Probably the best and most practical option for maintaining native populations.</span></b><br />
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As I have <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/can-beaver-ponds-actually-reduce.html">discussed before</a> beaver ponds can be utilized as a tool for trapping out non-natives. If we know such and such non-native species is utilizing beaver ponds preferentially that species can be targeted at beaver ponds. Hand capture, netting, electroshock can be utilized to clean out the unwanted but leave in the wanted. Encourage the return of native predators to hold aliens species at check. Beaver ponds are easily found via google maps and can thus be cleaned occasionally of non-natives.<br />
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Cheers!!!<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-48495839243967694012014-06-27T11:02:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:01:59.029-07:00Organic Debris Creates Bigger, Fatter Fish<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">I was alerted to <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140611093228.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fplants_animals%2Fecology+%28Ecology+Research+News+--+ScienceDaily%29#.U5zure3B7x8.email">this recent study</a> via Rick Meril who runs the very prolific blog <a href="http://yotes-wolves-cougars.blogspot.com/2014/06/debris-from-forests-that-washes-into.html">Coyotes, Wolves, and Cougars...... forever!</a> and although I first noticed it a couple of days ago I am just getting around to talking about it today as I find it very pertinent to all things beaver.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Basically what the Cambridge researchers were looking at is the respective importance of organic debris versus algae in terms of fish health. Essentially zooplankton - which is more or less a catch all for various small to microscopic crustaceans, insects, worms, protists, and other invertebrate critters which collectively form the base of aquatic food chains i.e. fish food - can feed upon primary productive pathways or detrital pathways. In plain speak they can feed on water plants, usually algae, or also graze on the bacteria and fungi breaking down plant material - leaves, woody debris. In an elegant example of the scientific method the researchers were able to control both inputs by looking at watersheds with pristine, old growth forests (lots of organic debris) and watersheds bordering strip-mined and deforested landscapes. Furthermore by analyzing the carbon isotope signatures in fish taken from these waters the scientists were able to trace where the carbon came from because algal carbon is going to bear a different isotope than carbon derived from land plants (forest debris washed into the system). </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">While it has long been recognized that terrestrial organic input is an important factor in watershed and fish health, the study is alarming in addressing how important it is.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">"We found fish that had almost 70% of their biomass made from carbon that came from trees and leaves instead of aquatic food chain sources," said Dr Andrew Tanentzap from Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences, and lead author of the new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications.</span></b></i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptrdQveh1TTXf00YhmNlpgXY5PhQTP6pu6zP8TSqJ5j1A5evO8_1WM1qdGjKzecfW7BCbIYnY9T1a7H6Vmo39p649HSqtS8tEHmGDpM8VBnnGiqlTJhWmaB30zhwwxekwtK3G4JbO7Y7w/s1600/River+Tour+-+16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptrdQveh1TTXf00YhmNlpgXY5PhQTP6pu6zP8TSqJ5j1A5evO8_1WM1qdGjKzecfW7BCbIYnY9T1a7H6Vmo39p649HSqtS8tEHmGDpM8VBnnGiqlTJhWmaB30zhwwxekwtK3G4JbO7Y7w/s1600/River+Tour+-+16.jpg" width="223" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><i>Ok think about that for a second, 70% of their mass is derived from eating critters that fed off of stuff that was feeding off of dead land plants washed into the river. </i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"></span></i></span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">"More than 60% of the world's fresh water is in the boreal areas such as Canada, Scandinavia and large parts of Siberia. These areas are suffering from human disturbance such as logging, mining, and forest fires resulting from climate change -- all occurrences predicted to intensify in coming years," said Tanentzap.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">The scientists studied eight different 'watersheds' surrounding the lake: a given area across which all the moisture drains into a single stream. When these fast-moving streams -- full of detritus from forest foliage -- hit the slow-moving lake, the debris falls out of suspension and sinks, forming layers of sediment which create mini deltas.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Debris is broken down by bacteria, which is in turn consumed by zooplankton: tiny translucent creatures that also feed on algae. The fish then feed on the zooplankton. Until recently, algae were believed to be the only source of food for zooplankton, but the new research builds on previous work that showed they also feed on bacteria from forest matter drained into lakes.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">The researchers worked along the food chains in the mini deltas. "Where you have more dissolved forest matter you have more bacteria, more bacteria equals more zooplankton; areas with the most zooplankton had the largest 'fattest' fish," said Tanentzap.</span></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Going a little further the authors also suggest such importance of organic debris is important in all freshwater ecosystems from the poles to the tropics.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">"While we've only studied boreal regions, these results are likely to bear out globally. Forest loss is damaging aquatic food chains of which many humans are a part."</span></i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ok if you are like me you probably realized that it is easy to substitute beaver ponds for lakes and also substitute the active transport of organic matter by beaver into freshwater systems for the passive natural input. If you accept these intuitive substitutions it becomes logical to suggest beaver activity is bolstering aquatic food chains. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And here is your bonus google satellite view of beaver dams from Lundy Valley in the eastern Sierra.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I can't believe I never thought to look at beaver dams this way - the satellite views really let you see the large scale landscape transformation that beaver dams achieve!!</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFWEvs223s6gRP9iJQqrqO7IPOjsoP7WB0lo41uCUlhEEdurHFa0K0cywx8EcGiplE6wwdzA1lVV8_QfKPfC9oP4IyDyDVeBj1IgGTYzmB4E3t5O2t3_mRJXf7CL26oxQ-eNbJgkNHpkHs/s1600/Lundy+Valley+14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFWEvs223s6gRP9iJQqrqO7IPOjsoP7WB0lo41uCUlhEEdurHFa0K0cywx8EcGiplE6wwdzA1lVV8_QfKPfC9oP4IyDyDVeBj1IgGTYzmB4E3t5O2t3_mRJXf7CL26oxQ-eNbJgkNHpkHs/s1600/Lundy+Valley+14.png" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Lundy Valley beaver dams, the large dam to right is over 200 feet across!! Google Satellite (c)</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Andrew J. Tanentzap, Erik J. Szkokan-Emilson, Brian W. Kielstra, Michael T. Arts, Norman D. Yan, John M. Gunn. <strong>Forests fuel fish growth in freshwater deltas</strong>.<em>Nature Communications</em>, 2014; 5 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms5077" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">10.1038/ncomms5077</a></span></span><br />
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-82001816456924099672014-06-20T01:40:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:02:17.318-07:00"Beavers Used to Be Almost Everywhere in California" Bay NatureThe issue of beaver in California got a booster shot today as it is featured prominently in Bay Nature, the article titles simply <a href="http://baynature.org/articles/beavers-used-to-be-almost-everywhere-in-california/#comment-333178">Beaver Used to Be Almost Everywhere in California</a>. The backbone of the article is a <a href="https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=78258&inline=1">certain paper</a> recently published in CDFW revamping the historical range of beaver in California. I might have talked about the paper <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-levee-broke-beaver-historically.html">once</a> or <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/beaversalmonid-workshop-part-ii-santa.html">twice</a> before. The article very succinctly ties together a lot of the main points of contention that the paper grapples with. From the "fur desert" perpetrated by the Hudson Bay Company to the lack of knowledge that Grinnel and Tapp had to contend with, if you are new to the issue of beaver in California this article does a great job of introducing the topic to you. I must also commend the author of the article Alison Hawkes for gathering some great quotes from some of the authors of the paper.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://baynature.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IMG_0726-1024x682.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://baynature.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IMG_0726-1024x682.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cheryl Reynolds. Worth A Dam</td></tr>
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<i>"All of San Jose was a gigantic wetland with tens of thousands of elk and huge flocks of waterfowl that would have darkened the sky."</i><br />
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<i>"We have the least understanding of any state on what used to live here."</i><br />
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Rick Lanman, Institute of Historical Ecology<br />
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<i>"I knew this assumption that beaver were never in the Bay Area was bogus just from life experience. There was a beaver right under I-680 when I would drive home. I knew they were there."</i><br />
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Heidi Perryman, Martinez Beavers/Worth a Dam<br />
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I want to concentrate on this next quote by Brock Dolman of the Water Institute at Occidental College as it pertains directly to the question of beavers at the limit of their range in coastal California, namely southern California.<br />
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<i>"We felt the missing piece was that beaver were never as numerous (as otters) and a group of native folks set on capturing them wouldn't take long in eradicating them, especially in riparian systems where there is not a lot of room to move."</i><br />
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Now I think this quote really contains a lot of good stuff but I think it might go over a lot of people's heads. First off we should clarify that otter refers to sea otter, and they roamed all the way down into Baja. And they were ruthlessly hunted for their pelts by fur trappers. Once the sea otters started getting low in number trappers looked at what else was around. By supplying native Americans with steel traps, the wary and elusive beaver - normally a difficult quarry - was now an easy and reliable source of fur to trade with the Europeans. Now with this in mind we must remind ourselves that coastal California, especially getting into southern California, never had the water and therefore the population of beavers that areas like the delta or wetter parts of the continent had. Each watershed may have had very low or even ephemeral populations of beavers even before trapping commenced. It is entirely possible that beaver would become locally extinct in a watershed and then reestablished several times over even without human interference. There was in all probability a waxing and waning of beaver populations at the limits of their range, becoming more pronounced into southern California. Keep in mind that even without human intervention California has seen some serious droughts in the not so distant past - which by themselves limited beaver populations in California.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.a-state-of-change.com/images2/Jaguars-Desert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.a-state-of-change.com/images2/Jaguars-Desert.jpg" height="473" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jaguar in southern California painting by Laura Cunningham</td></tr>
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I also think, when discussing beaver at the limits of their range. it useful to talk about jaguar in California. Yes jaguar ranged perhaps as far north as the Bay area historically. If you do some Internet sleuthing you will come across records of jaguar in Palm Springs and Monterey, California. But jaguar were rare here in California even before European colonization. They were at the northern limit of their range. In all probability jaguar sporadically made it further up into the Pacific Northwest or Rocky mountains. But we will probably never find good records of them there as they were exceedingly rare even in the best of times. Likewise even in areas where they maintained populations we may never see records of them there. I think a similar situation is going on with the spotty record of beaver on the coast especially in southern California. They were never that common to begin with.<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-53818393297964662932014-06-11T22:13:00.002-07:002015-07-15T17:35:49.953-07:00River Restoration... If You Want ItFor this post I want to concentrate on several positive stories on river restoration. One does not have to look far these days to be pummeled into a state of angry depression. So only good new today. Beaver are just one piece of the puzzle with regards to watershed health. I would offer the most important factor in watershed health/river restoration in compromised ecosystems is the still daunting task of increasing public awareness and interest in healthy rivers.<br />
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For any seemingly insurmountable challenge an invisible tipping point exists. Where the shackles that bind us to social inertia, inaction, and pragmatic pessimism, are quickly stripped away and revealed for what they are: human constructs. What mankind has created, mankind can destroy.<br />
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"A couple of decades ago it was radical in terms of thinking you can take a dam out... unthinkable... the conversation has changed."</span></b></i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzj9TxbMosR4sLnnLhVAZO-MKMDwJMP5TTV5icqf5P_EXqJ6ENJ54VRTiG8Nyx1w59Fp7Ca1OKCwFVQ10EXnqnhOviMKtTrcj3YuB7RQQIAwHMbH2YWu5W_PLDKB1-JEnTigDH5-YTgvx/s1600/Picture+8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzj9TxbMosR4sLnnLhVAZO-MKMDwJMP5TTV5icqf5P_EXqJ6ENJ54VRTiG8Nyx1w59Fp7Ca1OKCwFVQ10EXnqnhOviMKtTrcj3YuB7RQQIAwHMbH2YWu5W_PLDKB1-JEnTigDH5-YTgvx/s1600/Picture+8.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></i>
<span class="Apple-style-span">Last week I was very fortunate and blessed to see a screening of a very important, compelling, and timely film: Damnation. It was all you can hope for in terms of making a profound argument for letting the rivers of America run free and wild. I will not attempt to summarize or recap the points the film made you should just go see it for yourself.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;"><b><a href="http://vimeo.com/41319363">Damnation Vimeo Preview</a></b></span></div>
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What was especially important to me with regards to this film was that a key dam featured in the film, a noted dead beat dam, is Matilija dam of Ventura county. Matilija creek is a steelhead creek and the dam serves zero purpose what so ever being completely silted in. Patagonia, a company based in Ventura, produced and screened the film at their yard and have long championed removal of the dam. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggMmKOpJTzF6dgsFAY3YjSN8h0MEZp9ebRSeYxEimsGkV2dhv4p2DvaeW3GdPBiX6gI-MYiAkRl_piR359AsJvfp81A7ylaMe0Q_ny_0WC0Ew9cIlyrHKZtd3GorvGa6O565sePiXdZlBK/s1600/Picture+9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggMmKOpJTzF6dgsFAY3YjSN8h0MEZp9ebRSeYxEimsGkV2dhv4p2DvaeW3GdPBiX6gI-MYiAkRl_piR359AsJvfp81A7ylaMe0Q_ny_0WC0Ew9cIlyrHKZtd3GorvGa6O565sePiXdZlBK/s1600/Picture+9.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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From tearing down dams to building small ones (the beaver variety of course!!). Make sure you check out and support the Beaver Believers with a taxable donation for their kickstarter. I just donated 25$, i would have loved to have donated more but I am a wage slave... But my 25$ gets me on the wall, gets me stickers, a digital download of the film and a beaver believers shot glass!! Awesome!! 23 days to go to reach the extended goal of 12,000$!! Good job believers!!!</div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Water is one of the most sacred, magical, and powerful gifts that we have ever been given, and we need to remember that because we have forgotten it."</span></i></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsmLGg1ftLjOdwvisQtXpW0ENXo30MYvNrd4-ujUnrN4XgDijwrhC_uk_9Wy6v0befgiV6hSLNweeBFoo8YxIvHGyDp4AtjUzgKb_OfkjF1LKitXY8fh8Tls3S97SHBRSEszY4rIdQ6Hmq/s1600/Picture+10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsmLGg1ftLjOdwvisQtXpW0ENXo30MYvNrd4-ujUnrN4XgDijwrhC_uk_9Wy6v0befgiV6hSLNweeBFoo8YxIvHGyDp4AtjUzgKb_OfkjF1LKitXY8fh8Tls3S97SHBRSEszY4rIdQ6Hmq/s1600/Picture+10.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><i>"If we can put beaver back in the majority of the streams where they used to be is exactly what we should be doing."</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;"><b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sarahkoenigsberg/the-beaver-believers-a-documentary">Beaver Believers Vimeo Link and Donate</a></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIpnX6QjIB9kw7DRFik0pBU9ENBSPFsiVpzAZ6XdfXlhnybHrqWSHzVUEkMXmIpgyghyphenhyphenuLoetNc6GEKXkMSBZ9QCIJaIHeX7BGOLFYatuX0ZeYnqBern4EZ0fPogl9q7V6CIezXImLZbH3/s1600/Picture+11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIpnX6QjIB9kw7DRFik0pBU9ENBSPFsiVpzAZ6XdfXlhnybHrqWSHzVUEkMXmIpgyghyphenhyphenuLoetNc6GEKXkMSBZ9QCIJaIHeX7BGOLFYatuX0ZeYnqBern4EZ0fPogl9q7V6CIezXImLZbH3/s1600/Picture+11.png" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Films such as these, and the powerful messages behind them, offer hope that a new dawn is rising with regards to our attitude towards the lands we live on and the wild beings we share the earth with. It is important to remind ourselves that every journey begins with the first step and that </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>the darkest hour is just before dawn.</i></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/1780028_756679347686198_1567239513_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/1780028_756679347686198_1567239513_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Nash. Oxnard CA</td></tr>
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Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-79728486577588390652014-05-30T00:05:00.001-07:002014-05-30T14:56:57.430-07:00Vern-Freeman Diversion Part 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Above is a picture of water in southern California. Look closely because it is going away... Now what you are looking at is one of the main channels leading to the dozens of acres of man made ponds that recharge the aquifer on the Oxnard plain. The water is diverted from the Santa Clara River at this specific spot because of the congruence of the river leaving a wide valley and maximum percolation utility for the aquifer. Why is recharging the aquifer so important? Because growing strawberries in a semidesert. And because agriculture is taking out more than is being put back naturally. And because strawberries do not grow on salt water. And salt water intrusion occurs in places like Oxnard when freshwater groundwater reserves are tapped so long and hard that salt water creeps in. And it takes about 40 gallons of freshwater to combat 1 gallon of saltwater. Despite all these measures, it is quite possible that the water situation in Ventura county will be handed over to the feds through a process known as adjudication. Because we could not handle our resources responsibly the adults will have to step in.<br />
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What should be immediately apparent to you is that the Saticoy settling ponds as they are affectionately known are mainly dry. These ponds should be full this time of year doing their job recharging the aquifer. But nothing.<br />
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Depressed yet? I do not want to get you on a complete downer but it gets worse. Although the pools create habitat for numerous birds and there are some fish (non native for the most part), reptiles, and amphibians that use the ponds - what you should notice is that all emergent vegetation is completely scoured away. No willows, tules, cattails - all plants that would thrive in such an environment and provide crucial habitat - are scoured away to prevent clogging of the gravity fed system of pipes, berms, and levees.<br />
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Now the word mitigation gets used a lot when discussing the complex matter of nature being steamrolled by human wants and interests. It usually goes something like this (to paraphrase) <i>"We are going to do so much damage to the system, I mean just completely disrupt things that for a little pity party we will do this little token of appreciation over here for you (insert park, nature center etc etc)." </i><br />
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Well how about this for mitigation? Let the settling ponds re-vegetate and naturalize a bit, providing habitat for wildlife. It might take a little bit of extra work keeping the culvert clear, minimizing disruption and what not. But why can't it be done? Perhaps these extra costs could themselves be mitigated by allowing fishermen and bird watchers onto the property for a nominal fee? Kayaking anybody?<br />
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My point is this: the Vern-Freeman diversion though it provides a necessary service to the agricultural economy of this region can not escape the burden of proof that it, like all man-made water diversions/dams, has imposed a huge burden on the evolutionary, geological, and ecological processes of the Santa Clara river watershed. Is United Water doing all that it can in its power to mitigate these damages?<br />
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Well as I pointed out above I do not think so, but in all fairness as my <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/southland-beaver-visits-vern-freeman.html">last post addressed</a> they are doing much more than they have in the past by taking a pro-active approach to fish passage, designing a new fish ladder, getting a cool fish camera etc etc.<br />
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And finally, this being a beaver blog after all, what is the connection to beaver? You should know that the Sespe River is the primary tributary of the Santa Clara River- providing about 40% of the flow into the river. And if you are up to date on your beaver studies in socal you should also know that a primary piece of data used in the Lanman et al paper on historic range of beaver in California was a beaver collected in 1906 on the Sespe prior to statewide translocations of beaver. Beaver are native to this watershed. While some parts of the Santa Clara do become dry sandy washes unsuitable for beaver other parts such as the diversion and upriver in Santa Paula contains some flows year round. Beaver could live here. Take a look at the video below on how the channel is maintained to see the habitat here for them.<br />
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And take a look slightly upriver in the city of Santa Paula. You will notice good flow, abundant riparian vegetation, and where some diversions have created some faux beaver ponds already.<br />
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And check out the habitat on the Santa Paula Creek, a tributary nearby:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Paula Creek</td></tr>
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Now if you think like me you have already made the connection. Humans divert river water into man made ponds to allow water to slowly percolate back into and recharge over drafted aquifer. What furry, buck toothed critter do we all know that does that already? And does it for free while at the same time providing abundant habitat for other critters? Hmmmm.... United Water engaged in multiple law suits with environmental groups, fish groups, municipalities over water rates, looming adjudication. Beaver involved in 0.0 lawsuits. Charge nothing for their water. Allow fish passage. Allow percolation.<br />
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One specific issue at the diversion was the issue of high sediment load in the water. Before going into the Saticoy ponds the water is shunted through a series of settling ponds where the sediment is allowed to drop out of the water so as not to gunk up the pipes.<br />
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One word of encouragement. According to Steve Howard, senior fisheries biologist at Freeman, they decided not to trap out the badgers who have begun colonizing the dry settling ponds. Even though their aggressive digging could destabilize earthen berms they opted to utilize the mustelids as rodent control for a booming ground squirrel population. Maybe if United Water decides to take a "let nature do the job" attitude towards badgers there is hope for beavers and United Water collaborating in the future? Perhaps as a collaborative partner in groundwater recharge?<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"The arrogance of man is in thinking he is in control of nature and not the other way around."</span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Godzilla 2014</span></i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dinosaur trap at Vern-Freeman (cowbird trap-nest parasite)</td></tr>
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-88385741003051105572014-05-21T17:33:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:36:16.561-07:00Leave It to Beavers... some thoughtsFirst of all if you missed it or just want to see the beaver epicness all over again <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2365243455/">here</a>. Video was having trouble loading however...<br />
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So it has been a week since PBS premiered Leave it to Beavers and as you may know the show was a resounding success. I personally thought the show did a great job of distilling all the different strands of knowledge, controversy, and potential that go with beavers in today's world. The personality driven stories of beaver rescues and rehabilitation were well done and well received. The whimpering cries of infant beavers, very child-like, will doubtless drive up interest and passion for beaver based on the cuteness factor alone. I never knew that the young were so vocal myself. But I have to admit, what made the most impact for me out of all the segments was the part on Suzie Creek in Nevada.<br />
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To see the transformation of that creek from a greasy little cattle trodden dribble of water to a lush oasis of life with a robust riparian corridor- that really reinforced the importance of beaver in arid lands and inspired me to keep up what I am doing. One of the two scientists in that scene likened beaver ponds to little savings accounts of water on the landscape. In a climate regime where snowpack is becoming less dependable as a source of water retention on the landscape it is beaver ponds that stockpile and release water slowly into the landscape. Perfectly done.<br />
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And the other section that really stuck out to me was the underwater footage, I just love scenes of beaver swimming underwater. <i><b>SOOOO COOOOOL</b></i>. Seriously if I could just have a video montage of beaver swimming underwater I would watch that video on loop more times I should mention even on a beaver blog.<br />
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The three dimensional landscape of beaver ponds, I think mentioned during the section in Canada (Alberta?) was also a stand out for me. The amount to which beaver penetrate into and modify the substrate in their own ponds was awesome. Beavers will take the mud from the bottom and fill in their dams with it. In deepening ponds beaver increase invertebrate diversity and also provide deep, cool refugia for heat sensitive fish. In deepening their pools beavers lower the amount of surface area exposed to the sun, less evaporation occurs, and beaver ponds keep and retain the water better than surrounding areas.<br />
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Anyways congrats to PBS on producing such a timely doc on beavers and keep fighting the good fight!!!<br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-30940908793727263672014-05-18T18:16:00.000-07:002015-07-15T17:36:52.297-07:00Southland Beaver Visits the Vern-Freeman Diversion Dam Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Among the river systems of southern California it is the Santa Clara River that offers perhaps the most promising hope for restorations. Unlike the Santa Ynez river it is not dammed. Unlike the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana rivers it is not channelized. As the largest river system in southern California that is not dammed and not channelized the Santa Clara has garnered much attention from groups such as the Nature Conservancy who are working to protect large chunks of this watershed. Many unique and imperiled species utilize the Santa Clara River as habitat. Riparian species of concern include western pond turtle, unarmored three spine stickleback, tidewater goby, southern steelhead, pacific lamprey, Santa Ana sucker, arroyo toad, southwestern willow flycatcher, least bell's vireo, western yellow-billed cuckoo, and red-legged frogs- among others. Additionally the Santa Clara River maintains connectivity with many of its tributaries the larger including Sespe Creek, Santa Paula Creek, Piru Creek, and Castaic Creek. Several of these creeks, most notably the Sespe, are undammed and offer miles of prime steelhead habitat and produce ocean bound smolts annually. Regular readers should recognize <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sespe_Creek">Sespe Creek</a> as the source creek from which a beaver specimen was captured in 1906 by Dr. John Hornung and was a foundational piece in the recently published paper by Lanman et al proving the <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-levee-broke-beaver-historically.html">historical presence of beaver in coastal southern Californian streams</a>. But more on the prospects of beaver reintroduction into this watershed later.<br />
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Despite the rosy picture I paint the Santa Clara has some definite issues. Chief among these are invasive plants and animals (especially the giant reed <i>Arundo donax</i>), agricultural and urban runoff, groundwater pumping, agricultural diversions, and last, but not least, the Vern-Freeman diversion installed in 1991. For a brief history of the dam check <a href="http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/may/26/little-known-freeman-diversion-shaped-ventura/">this out</a>. This diversion was built to direct flows from the river to recharge the Oxnard aquifer and protect against salt-water intrusion. The Oxnard plain is an agricultural hub. Chances are if you eat a lot of strawberries you have probably ate an Oxnard strawberry, which was watered by water provided by the Vern-Freeman diversion, which was water taken from the Santa Clara River. While at first the diversion was hailed as a major success - increased reliance on high water crops, miscalculations on the amount of water that can be withdrawn, the recognition of southern steelhead as federally endangered species in 1997, and several drought episodes including the current one - have all compiled to put the diversion and the agency that runs it, United Water, through some very pressing times. United Water has went through and is currently engaged with several lawsuits ranging from municipality water rates to securing better flows and passage for fish movement.<br />
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It is in this context that southland beaver was permitted to view and be granted access to the diversion by the senior fisheries biologist employed at United Water's Vern-Freeman diversion dam, Steve Howard. For reference sake the diversion is located about 1/2 between Santa Paula and the ocean on the map above.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Senior Fisheries Biologist Steve Howard explains Vern-Freeman Diversion Santa Clara River</span></div>
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Now, here I want to thank Steve again for spending two hours of his time taking me around and answering all of my questions. I was pleased to find out he is a true fish guy and this was good news because I had long held negative connotations for United Water with regards to their fish work. But Steve seems like the right guy for the job and as we talked I could see he really was making some strident efforts for steelhead and lamprey (don't forget the lamprey!!) in this river. I learned that because of downstream down cutting of the river due to quarry work, the diversion was actually offering some benefit by preventing the down cutting to continue upstream.<br />
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So what kind of fish passage does the Vern-Freeman have? Well watch the video below as Steve explains the Denil fish way they use, why it is not the best system for the river, and how they are going to improve it. World exclusive on southland beaver!!<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Denil Fishway on Vern-Freeman and New Passageway Coming!!</span></div>
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Did you catch all that? The problem with this particular fish passageway on this particular river is that when the Santa Clara rages, it really rages. Steve told me he has seen the river in such flow that as it crossed the diversion wall, it scarcely dropped in height at all. Now for a steelhead trying to find its way upstream in such a torrent, in flows that come and go quickly, it may miss it's opportunity to pass by keying in on the area of highest flows (the diversion wall itself) and missing the passageway. Let us look a bit at the Denial fish passageway.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Denil Fish Passageway</span></div>
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Now if a steelhead makes it up through the ladder, how would Steve know that it made it through? Well it turns out that the steelhead on this particular passageway are some of the most highly scrutinized fish in the world. Steelhead have to pass through a point where they are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L795LKzO7Nc">on motion detection camera from two angles as well as infrared detection</a>. Pretty sweet...<br />
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So despite all the difficulties with steelhead on this river going through this particular diversion- have any made it through? Turns out yes, in 2012 two mature ocean-grown steelhead made it back up and through the diversion. Steve has the video to prove it which I will show below.<br />
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Well need less to say Steve said he was jumping through the roof when those two steelies made it through in 2012.<br />
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Some may wonder- <i>why are all these resources and water being given to a fish?</i><br />
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Now for me southern steelhead are some of the coolest fish around. I mean big fish like those two make it up through largely intermittent to totally dry rivers during brief high flow events in a mad dash to their spawning grounds in perennial, spring and snowmelt fed streams. For any readers here from more wetter parts of the world the picture below shows how much of the lower Santa Clara looks the vast majority of the year, if not a sandy wash.<br />
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Until it looks like this:<br />
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<a href="http://www.spl.usace.army.mil/portals/17/siteimages/projectsstudies/HarvardBlvdBridge2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.spl.usace.army.mil/portals/17/siteimages/projectsstudies/HarvardBlvdBridge2.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></div>
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And even with all the crap we throw at them they still make a go at it. People can learn a lot from this fish in my estimation. That fish to me is very inspiring, more so than most humans at least.<br />
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<i>More to come including how channel maintenance is achieved, fish traps, settling ponds, percolation, bird life at the diversion, problems with badgers and I ask the question: </i><br />
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is the Vern-Freeman diversion doing what beaver would do naturally? (and for free)</span></b></i><br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-30486052414550328122014-05-14T17:42:00.005-07:002015-07-15T17:37:15.792-07:00The Beaver Zeitgeist Continues: PBS Premiere Tonight of Leave it to Beavers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><i>Get Excited!!!!!</i></span></b></div>
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"<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Beaver are definitely a keystone species in an aquatic ecosystem. A keystone is like a bridge and you have that one stone that will hold that whole bridge together- that will lock it in. If you pull that one stone out it all collapses in on intself. Beaver lock the aquatic ecoystem in."</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sherri Tippie</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Why Beavers Build Dams</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"One technique is to slice 1/2 way through and let the wind do the rest."</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"The incisors are strengthened with iron which makes them orange... they grow continuously and even self sharpen."</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-50125654764032932542014-05-14T12:05:00.002-07:002015-07-15T17:37:35.962-07:00Can Beaver Ponds Actually Reduce Invasive Species?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/American_Bullfrog_Rana_catesbeiana_Front_838px.jpg/220px-American_Bullfrog_Rana_catesbeiana_Front_838px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/American_Bullfrog_Rana_catesbeiana_Front_838px.jpg/220px-American_Bullfrog_Rana_catesbeiana_Front_838px.jpg" height="260" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American bullfrog (common in CA but not native)</td></tr>
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One of the chief indictments against beavers, especially in areas where they are not yet established, is that the modifications that they make will greatly augment the available habitat for non-native invasive species. Now depending on where you live this can be a whole assortment of wetland loving critters. Beaver ponds being lentic habitats, that is they are bodies of slow moving waters, invasive species that are attracted and benefit from this environment include a whole slew of things where I live in California. But the usual suspects include both signal and Louisiana crayfish, African clawed frogs, American bullfrogs, catfish species but most commonly bullhead, large and small mouthed bass, and common carp. There are others but these are the main culprits. They all love sluggish, stagnant water- and they like it warm. Beaver ponds can create certainly make for warmer waters in the shallower parts of their pond.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stagnant Pool on Santa Clara River Oxnard. Duane Nash</td></tr>
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Although it makes intuitive sense that beaver modifications would greatly augment the habitat for these destructive invasives, as is often posited, we should not be satisfied with mere assertions but actually investigate this question more assiduously.<br />
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Let us look and see if there are any characteristics that unify these California invasives. As mentioned earlier they like the water slow and they like it warm. It should also be noted that the species I listed above are all highly fecund. They make a load of babies. A common carp can produce about a million offspring in a season. So when conditions are right, food is plentiful and the water is warm- every species listed can reproduce and grow fast. The big down side to all these non-natives is that not only do they crowd out the natives and out compete for spawning sites, critical refugia- they are more often than not highly predaceous on them during one or more of their life stages. For instance bullfrogs can eat hatchling western pond turtles, carp can eat the eggs of all fish/amphibians but not the adults.<br />
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<b>Bullfrogs Eat Everything</b></div>
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Yep these invasives in California are especially troublesome due to their often voracious and omnivorous dining habits. Some such as the African clawed frog- a problem in the Santa Clara river watershed -are just ridiculously gluttonous. These weird, fully aquatic, frogs were actually commonly used as proxies for pregnancy tests!!<br />
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<b>African Clawed Frogs Are Piggies</b></div>
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But with regards to these nasty invasives- predatory as they may be- these animals are not top predators. Bullfrogs, bass, crayfish are better thought of as <b style="font-style: italic;">mesopredators </b>"middle predators". They eat animals, but animals also commonly eat them. And at least in California these non-natives have a host of predators that can and do eat them such as raccoons, herons, mergansers, garter snakes, and ospreys among others. The trick is to get the predators to the prey....<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTlSKffiSPw">Walt and the Beaver</a> (link)</span></b></div>
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Please do yourself a favor and watch professor Walt talk about his experience with beaver on the upper Verde river of Arizona. The whole video is outstanding but what is most interesting and pertinent to our discussion here starts at about 3:30. Here he goes on to describe that although the river system he is discussing, the upper Verde river, has an invasive species problem his qualitative observations (he is a professor) have suggested that beaver ponds have actually lowered invasives while natives have rebounded.... How is this possible?</div>
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The key player in this scenario Walt posits is the river otter (<i>Lontra canadensis</i>). With the return of beaver ponds otter have returned to the river as well. These deep, slow pools give the otter the habitat it prefers. Otters, like any predator, have an optimal foraging strategy. Why waste your efforts on catching multiple small prey items when you can catch a few larger animals and get the calories you need without all that extra effort? And in these beaver ponds the larger, non-native fish such as bass and large bullfrogs are being preferentially preyed on by otter. The smaller, quicker, and more cryptic native fish and amphibians are being consumed as well but not to the same extent. Several interesting ecological processes are putatively occurring here.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1) Beaver, a keystone species, is living up to its name in providing habitat conducive to otter.</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2) Otter, being top predators within the aquatic realm have reestablished and are starting to exert strong top down control. Top predators are now recognized as crucial elements in optimally functioning ecosystems.</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3) These invasives, which prior to the return of beaver and otter to the system, were enjoying optimal success due to a phenomena referred to as "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopredator_release_hypothesis">mesopredator release hypothesis</a>" now have to contend with a growing and hungry population of river otters.</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">4) Being larger, commoner, and more conspicuous than the native aquatic organisms otters feed on the non-natives preferentially. Again, exerting top down control and following optimal foraging strategy otter start to make significant impacts on the ecology of the ecosystem.</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">5) With their chief competitors and predators lessened in population density due to otter predation native species can expand.</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>6) Because beaver ponds allow interactions between native and non-native species this allows non-native species to evolve defenses against them, which in the long run may be most pragmatic because it is highly unlikely that humans will exterminate completely non-native aquatics.</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><i>And in this manner beaver ponds may actually be minimizing the impacts of non-native species on the upper Verde river of Arizona.</i></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nature.org/cs/groups/webcontent/@web/@arizona/documents/media/verde-slideshow-beaver-lodge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nature.org/cs/groups/webcontent/@web/@arizona/documents/media/verde-slideshow-beaver-lodge.jpg" height="353" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beaver Lodge and dam Upper Verde River. Nature Conservancy</td></tr>
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Now obviously much of the story involving beaver/otter/invasive species on the Upper Verde river of Arizona is anecdotal, we need proper peer reviewed studies, but I would like to add my own observations on beaver ponds and invasive species on the Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara county. As I detailed on a <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2014/05/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river-ii.html">recent post</a> the Santa Ynez has dropped precipitously due to drought and the low amount of water in Cachuma reservoir. But I also suggested that these beaver have developed strategies for dealing with the low water. Never the less it was a bit of a disturbing site to see and photograph the wonderful beaver ponds dried up.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dried beaver pond. Santa Ynez river CA. Duane Nash</td></tr>
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But as distressing as this image is here this is where I will suggest such occurences may be actually doing some ecological benefit. Compared to many of our native fish/amphibians the invasive aquatic organisms are highly dependent on water. Bullfrogs are very aquatic compared to native amphibians which can survive drought and go underground and into dormancy. When these beaver ponds start to dry up, although they served a great home and sanctuary to non-native species when there is water, these very same beaver ponds may serve as death traps.<br />
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<b>Bullfrog Tadpoles Stranded in Drying Beaver Pond. Santa Ynez River.</b></div>
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Now as the video above succinctly documents, these bullfrog tadpoles- whose parents probably enjoyed life in these lush, well vegetated ponds -are most likely doomed. Birds, raccoons, or simply lack of water will do them in.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXecrm-3qrJgk8LQiLWwTcEU1QAR_vsP-hmogFA9SAIgvReTJ6YhBBcXexC0o-L2l53VEN7F1O1d9RBttl77afWYOpmZwt8HYXY51cYNwe3FUxBtr6y7JbumHGfkC5giFuon6uutnQSywf/w237-h176-p-no/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXecrm-3qrJgk8LQiLWwTcEU1QAR_vsP-hmogFA9SAIgvReTJ6YhBBcXexC0o-L2l53VEN7F1O1d9RBttl77afWYOpmZwt8HYXY51cYNwe3FUxBtr6y7JbumHGfkC5giFuon6uutnQSywf/w237-h176-p-no/" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
Another common sight I witnessed in these drying beaver ponds were loads of chewed up Louisiana crayfish remains. Most likely raccoons did the damage, wading birds will simply swallow the crustacean whole.<br />
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Unlike the situation in the Verde river, we do not have river otters in southern California nor is there any suggestion that they were ever native here. But, in addition to raccoons, what we have a lot of is abundant and diverse avian predators of aquatic animals.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Clara River estuary. Great Blue Heron and White Pelicans. Duane Nash. March 2014</td></tr>
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The photo above is of the Santa Clara river estuary in Ventura county and you can see two high level avian aquatic predators. The great blue heron is a startlingly efficient and ruthless predator. It is a bird that really denotes the dinosaurian heritage of birds. As you can imagine great blue herons love beaver ponds and as I was exploring the Santa Ynez during this dry spell I kept on disturbing a flock of great egrets and one loud, croaking pissed off great blue heron. These guys were having a buffet on the stranded crayfish, fish, and tadpoles left in the ponds.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heron/Egret tracks on drying beaver pond. Santa Ynez river</td></tr>
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Great Blue herons are efficient predators but let us not pay short thrift to American white pelicans. These birds may actually be the most efficient and diligent of all freshwater predators, maybe even more so than river otters. Unlike our brown pelicans, white pelicans are cooperative predators of freshwater and estuarine environments. They do not plunge dive but they cooperatively shoal fish in shallow water.<br />
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So not only are white pelicans cooperative feeders they can also snag and swallow huge fish- including pretty huge carp, a non-native fish and probably what the white pelicans in the Santa Clara estuary were feeding on. I found this video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2kPX2yQbEQ">Nygren Pelicans feeding frenzy</a> that really highlights what a mass feeding spectacle a group of white pelicans can achieve, I highly recommend it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White Pelican going after Asian Carp. Bill Rudden</td></tr>
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White pelicans have already been <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/asian-carp-solution-for-the-great-lakes-bring-on-the-pelicans.html">posited as a control on invasive Asian carp</a> in the Great Lakes region and so why not Californian waterways? Well, white pelicans will not frequent narrow, confined channels. They like big, wide shallow bodies of water. In California this is primarily lakes/reservoirs/estuaries. But it is not without reason to suspect that big beaver ponds could provide such foraging habitats for white pelicans. If you do a little internet sleuthing <a href="http://paulburwell.photoshelter.com/gallery/American-White-Pelicans/G0000GfV859vnFVg/C0000VBxvhFav__s">you can find pics of white pelicans in beaver ponds or even standing on beaver dams</a>. <i>Maybe white pelicans are another species that has been setback due to loss of beaver habitat on this continent?</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.vaguebuttrue.com/images/1241561605-osprey%20gets%20carpWEBSITE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.vaguebuttrue.com/images/1241561605-osprey%20gets%20carpWEBSITE.jpg" height="292" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Osprey with carp</td></tr>
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Well hopefully you found this post interesting. The more I look at how complicated some of the issues I highlight are the more I see it is important to stay away from blanket statements. Can beaver ponds benefit invasives? Sure. But if you have abundant top predators the opposite may occur. Non-natives are expeditiously slaughtered and the native return. Beaver ponds, by actually creating the ideal habitat for non-natives, may actually be creating an environmental cul-de-sac that allows top predators to move in and decrease non-native populations- perhaps leaving the natives to repopulate.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great Egret and Great Blue Heron. Fillmore fish hatchery. Fillmore CA. Duane Nash</td></tr>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Don't forget Leave it to Beaver tonight on PBS!!!</span></b></i><br />
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<br />Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-41448444660734773772014-05-07T14:07:00.001-07:002015-07-15T17:37:54.454-07:00Lampreys Get No RespectSalmonids, and in my neck of the wood that is the steelhead/rainbow trout, get loads of attention with regards to the interaction between these species and beaver. Salmonids are game fish, they are symbols of pristine watersheds, they taste good, and they have an attractive elegance all of their own. And if you are a reader of this blog and other beaver blogs you are probably well aware of the numerous benefits that beaver modified watersheds offer to salmonids- larger deeper pools for fry to grow up in, woody debris and muddy bottoms stimulating invertebrate food chain, deep pools for protection from predators, cool thermal refugia through hyporheic exchange - <i>but I don't want to talk about salmonids today</i>. Today I want to talk about the <i>other</i> anadromous fish that often times shares watersheds with beaver and salmon. Smile for the camera I am looking at you Mr. Lamprey.<br />
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That the Pacific Lamprey (<i>Entosphenus tridentatus</i>) is historically one of the more maligned native fish, and I use the term fish here loosely as lamprey pre-date fish, is in no small part due to it's grotesque appearance and parasitic adult stage. I want to highlight that it is the adult phase that is parasitic as the juvenile phase plays a not too small role in river ecology as we will talk about later. It should also be reinforced that the parasitic adult phase do not limit their feeding to salmonids but also latch onto marine mammals and other fish. And as the picture below, taken at about 400 meters deep in the Monterey canyon off central CA feeding on a hake, attests they range deep.<br />
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But they do not latch onto fish when they return to coastal river systems nor do they always kill their host. Lamprey prefer similar environments as salmon to return to and lay eggs. It is not clear if lamprey return to their natal streams but they range from Alaska to southern California. Like salmon they do not feed on their return migration. Unlike salmon lamprey can not maintain speed in high velocity channels for long and will swim at bursts and then sucker on to rocks/branches/debris to rest. But as the photo below attests this allows lamprey to traverse falls that even salmon can not get up such as in the pic of Willamete falls below. Unfortunately fish passages that work for salmon may fail for lamprey.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Williamette Falls lamprey harvest. credit Dave Herasimtschuck. Freshwater Illustrated</td></tr>
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Take a close look at <a href="https://ndnhistoryresearch.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/1getimage-exe.jpg">this</a> picture of lamprey just carpeting Willamette Falls on the Columbia river. Such a scene, as many native American elders of the Pacific Northwest will tell you, was quite typical during the several runs that occurred annually on many rivers. Notice that the lamprey can literally scale waterfalls through their suction abilities. Pretty cool no? Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest who have seen the lamprey decline precipitously in just several decades have sounded the battle cry to save this little understood but pivotally important creature. Please take the time to watch video linked below.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIsRfSoCvXA">Why Pacific Lamprey Matter to Columbia Basin Tribes</a></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"How do we let something- 450-500 million years old -go extinct? Shame on us, the whole lot of us for not paying attention to what was going on"</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We are a big family we are the circle. So when one of us is in trouble that is when the rest of us have to do something and step in"</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"They amaze me, they are amazing creatures. My brother eel is cool- he is just flat cool."</span></i></b></div>
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So while native American cultures of the Pacific Northwest have long heralded lamprey as an important part of the their world the rest of us are slowly waking up to the importance of this creature. The USFW have actually created a cutesy cartoony lamprey character "Luna the Lampery" for lamprey awareness. </div>
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Check out their page <a href="http://www.fws.gov/external-affairs/dpps/visualmedia/printingandpublishing/publications/3011_PacificLampreyExprienceComplete.pdf">The Pacific Lamprey Experience</a>. Lamprey may be so important that their continued survival may be pivotal to the health of salmon fisheries. <i>How is that so?</i> you might be asking <i>They parasitize and sometimes kill salmonids?</i></div>
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<b><a href="http://crosscut.com/2012/03/02/environment/21920/The-lamprey-close-extinction-could-bring-down-NW-s/">The Lamprey, Close to Extinction, Could Bring Down NW Salmon Too</a></b></div>
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Turns out the lamprey youngsters, which are called ammocoetes, are not parasitic at all. In fact they do not even eat flesh- they filter the water, cleaning up algae, detritus and other bits from the water - and also burrow into the substrate. For these reasons they are often dubbed the earthworms of the river. </div>
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<a href="http://www.fws.gov/pacific/Fisheries/sphabcon/lamprey/Images/JuvenileTransformation_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.fws.gov/pacific/Fisheries/sphabcon/lamprey/Images/JuvenileTransformation_.jpg" height="195" width="400" /></a></div>
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At this stage, which may last 7 years, ammocoetes serve as food for a number of critters- especially salmonids. There are loads of examples of steelhead stomachs being found just crammed with these guys. So although later they parasitize salmon, for the majority of their life they serve as food for them. And through their filter feeding abilities they promote cleaner, and therefore more well oxygenated environments that we all know salmonids love.<br />
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As adults lamprey returning to spawn also may actually help salmonids. Because their flesh is richer and oiler than salmon and they are easier to catch than salmon- predators may preferentially take lamprey thus acting as a buffer to salmon predation where their migrations are coincident.<br />
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And finally after returning lamprey spawn and die their bodies can provide nutrients that promote an enriched food chain for salmon fry.<br />
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And now let us all tie it all back together with the beaver. From the USFW page on lamprey: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shortly after hatching in freshwater streams, lamprey larvae or ammocoetes drift downstream <i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">into areas of low velocity and fine substrates </span></b></i>where they burrow, and live as filter feeders for up to 7 years. <i>Hmmmm..... low velocity and fine substrates..... where might we find such habitat? Does anyone know of certain buck-toothed rodent that might actually create such habitats?</i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To drive the point home even further here is what the USFW says on their page The Pacific Lamprey Experience: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Urban development, forestry, and agricultural practices have resulted in a loss of wetlands, side channels, <b><i>and beaver ponds</i></b>, which the Pacific Lamprey ammocoetes prefer.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI9pU1Q1d3knO0SsMAdvJFrlCSkoDfnVNJiNYioMK4efbGEDJiFhtK51OSL32PMDuPp-MsO7PGgu7kypvtf5cZEGyAvV1kvLEkb60vX5HOTRfj7kjxD0Nwe0x2c_dICPdSVJ-_86MO6TWl/s1600/SAM_1791.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI9pU1Q1d3knO0SsMAdvJFrlCSkoDfnVNJiNYioMK4efbGEDJiFhtK51OSL32PMDuPp-MsO7PGgu7kypvtf5cZEGyAvV1kvLEkb60vX5HOTRfj7kjxD0Nwe0x2c_dICPdSVJ-_86MO6TWl/s1600/SAM_1791.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beaver side channel pond. Santa Ynez river</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes salmon need lamprey and <i>both salmon and lamprey need beaver</i>.</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/pgmain/img/oregonian/photo/2013/06/-c4b3ea64d9d6d855.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/pgmain/img/oregonian/photo/2013/06/-c4b3ea64d9d6d855.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Randy L. Rasmussen. The Oregonian</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>Duane Nashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14467779935085970909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3057774701394069566.post-17666157024251854482014-05-01T00:57:00.001-07:002015-07-15T17:38:13.820-07:00Beaver Safari on the Santa Ynez River II: Surviving the DroughtAs you may know the Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara county has one of the more robust populations of beaver in southern California. I went to the <a href="http://southlandbeaver.blogspot.com/2013/09/beaver-safari-on-santa-ynez-river.html">Santa Ynez last September and found lots of beaver sign</a>. At the time I was not aware of the strange water regime that this river is subjected to. When farmers downriver from the Cachuma reservoir are sucking air in their wells and need some <i>agua</i>, the Cachuma water board has to respect their senior water rights- because you know respect your elders - and so like some proverbial releasing of the Kraken water is let loose from the dam to reach them and recharge their wells. And so in hindsight it now appears evident that I had visited the river during one of these senior water rights releases. With this in mind I wanted to revisit the river and see how it, and possibly its beavers, are doing in a drought year and before any releases have occurred. The answer- things are looking pretty dry!!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5CcLtrb7dnbeyMPGAQYUT9d2W-4bhZna0UlDBrh6T8K6yY0bhgQZlj81rd80U78IL3W6fUAXjHKSkci7wBLfDGRgX2_Qs9qGpKeY3DqqyaeRQIQAhRJXyqaXomtKG4Wvy510ufbAk8Ll/w1333-h750-no/14+-+2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5CcLtrb7dnbeyMPGAQYUT9d2W-4bhZna0UlDBrh6T8K6yY0bhgQZlj81rd80U78IL3W6fUAXjHKSkci7wBLfDGRgX2_Qs9qGpKeY3DqqyaeRQIQAhRJXyqaXomtKG4Wvy510ufbAk8Ll/w1333-h750-no/14+-+2" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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For some comparison below is what the river looked like last September during the water release at the same spot.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQUj5GYEoYKMq59cpD0u8Nj3_bXOsGvxEcFTo3EZ6XaDXVnUFZk8Y48z3Boz7GGRfsE5xq0Ost_eGd9c23RIV4HuXDejRCKTJGuzo7LItcLylss1NV6LcQ5CdfhY00tAW2hCzf1GWsV3p/s400/SAM_1745.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQUj5GYEoYKMq59cpD0u8Nj3_bXOsGvxEcFTo3EZ6XaDXVnUFZk8Y48z3Boz7GGRfsE5xq0Ost_eGd9c23RIV4HuXDejRCKTJGuzo7LItcLylss1NV6LcQ5CdfhY00tAW2hCzf1GWsV3p/s400/SAM_1745.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Water makes quite a bit of difference does it not? One of the benefits of a largely dry river is it gave me a chance to investigate and get into places that I suspected were beaver ponds but were difficult to reach during high water. For instance in the wet picture you can see a little side pond which I suspected was beaver constructed. But instead of a full on dam the ingenious engineers had simply diverted off a side channel of the river, bermed it up and willows/vegetation grew over the beaver constructed water works. When I walked along the berm I found some old beaver gnaw marks as seen below...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-H5pNGqMxz8KgJI3huI4M5BD04Gc7d3vAmTFRp697L0r1IHuOn7g5Pami79SwA4p6NqH6u12BOBPMRBwE3TsRSHz9NHuNLCI5ZdVtAo09DZiWOVa8i6cnOvxbykFybEEPSz0Un6xdK1-i/w1333-h750-no/14+-+7" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-H5pNGqMxz8KgJI3huI4M5BD04Gc7d3vAmTFRp697L0r1IHuOn7g5Pami79SwA4p6NqH6u12BOBPMRBwE3TsRSHz9NHuNLCI5ZdVtAo09DZiWOVa8i6cnOvxbykFybEEPSz0Un6xdK1-i/w1333-h750-no/14+-+7" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
But does this drying river, remember it is only the end of April, forebode danger for the beaver population on this river? Well as I mentioned earlier there is a good chance for a senior water rights release later this year but regardless there were pools further upriver that were full of water and may indicate refugia for beaver and other aquatic/amphibious critters. And there is much to suggest that beaver are a lot more adaptable when it comes to changing capricious water conditions than might be generally expected. Looking upriver from Alisal bridge (Solvang) things looked a little bit more promising with regards to water.<br />
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Again though, for reference, below is the pic I took in September last year during the water release.<br />
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In fact if you look at the little side pond to the left, where it gets a few feet deep I found a western pond turtle- a threatened species -on this trip. So life was finding ways to hold on during this dry spell.<br />
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Western pond turtles of course are a species that I have often posited would benefit greatly through beaver habitat as they prefer slower, more relaxed bodies of water to inhabit. Going a little further upriver I came across a fairly large pool- deep enough to swim in - against a steep oak shrouded hill. There was one particular spot I was interested in, the deepest spot, because on the steep bank there was dense brush and felled trees. It looked like the perfect place for beaver to dig a secluded bank burrow and I would highly suspect that they do here.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/rLHYV86S0vI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Now one thing you will notice in the video are a couple of little rock dams both downriver and upriver from this spot. I did not think too much of them at the time, figuring they looked man made. But what if beaver made the little rock dams? Perhaps these rocks are just the foundation for a future dam? One thing I noticed during this visit as opposed to the last visit was that fresh beaver activity on trees was not found. Maybe the beaver, feeling restricted to the few big pools left were not venturing out to fell/or feed on trees but were staying close to these deep water refugia and feeding more on the aquatic plants/algae growing abundantly there? The more I explored the more I found evidence supporting my theory.<br />
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Weird hugh? I mean hikers all the time make such features to cross streams and there are people that go down here. But if these rock berms were made by people why two of them right after each other? And there is no trail on the other side just thick bush... Maybe these beaver just really like rocks?<br />
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Anyways, rock-working beaver aside I continued upriver to a spot where I knew of some nice beaver ponds in a maze of sedges and willow thickets. Last time I went here these ponds were waist deep and just really cool to explore. This time it was a little bit different...<br />
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Yep this beaver maze was a shell of it's former self. And there literally were tons of shells lying around from Louisiana crayfish that were consumed en masse after the ponds dried up. I bet raccoons were some of the main culprits but I saw loads of marauding great blue herons and great egrets just slurping up whatever critters were left in the last muddy pools. One slimy mud pool was interesting because it was dominated by bullfrog tadpoles. If you have not seen bullfrog tadpoles they are not your normal everyday polliwogs and are pretty big and ugly, just like the adults. Anyways I will talk more about the issue of invasives utilizing beaver ponds in a future post so I will save that stuff for later.<br />
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Yes I know the below pics are a little depressing but I have faith the beaver have seen this happen before and know how to adapt. But you can see some nice and very obvious dams and the ponds that they would have created.<br />
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Where do the beavers go when their ponds dry up? The vegetation may offer a clue. The above chewed willow stump, like the earlier pic, is obviously not a fresh chew. And as I mentioned earlier I saw no freshly chewed trees on this safari. This is in sharp contrast to my last excursion when I saw so many freshly chewed trees that I stopped photographing them. And while there was no fresh chew on trees I did see some uprooted sedges, with their rhizomes chewed off, a well known beaver treat. And not to far from the dried up beaver ponds I found another large, deep pool. Likely retaining water due to shallow bedrock forcing groundwater up here I suspected this pool may serve as a beaver refugia. And then I saw a pretty obvious trail through the emergent water plants which grew in abundance here.<br />
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Were does this trail lead to? A pool with some deep spots bordered by a relatively steep bank. And guess what I found when I investigated the bank. Some very probable and likely beaver bank burrows.<br />
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You can see one that enters at the water level and another slightly obscured at the upper right. I also went and filmed two other potential beaver burrows as seen in the video below.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fBX75dE53qY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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So I think I have got a pretty good grasp on how beaver utilize the Santa Ynez river, or at least a fairly good working hypothesis.<br />
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<i>During periods of high flows and water releases beaver are able to utilize more of the riparian area safely and efficiently. These times may also coincide with the greatest dam building activity. Tree felling and consumption is relatively high as beaver are never too far from the safety of water. Indeed sometimes the trees are growing in the water.</i><br />
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<i>During periods of low or no flows, a shift of range and diet occurs. It is well known that many beaver switch to a diet of succulent sedges/water plants/algae during summer months. For the beavers of the Santa Ynez such a change may be less of a choice but a matter of necessity. Because large, deep pools are at a premium and such pools withdraw away from the riparian edges where such trees grow- tree felling and consumption places a significant risk to predation to beavers as it pulls them away from deep water and is a relatively noisy and cumbersome affair. Instead beaver concentrate on algae/aquatic vegetation and remain as cryptic as possible due the relative lack of water cover.</i><br />
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<i>Steep banks of alluvial soil bordering perennial, deep pools may offer critical refugia for beaver living in this habitat especially during times of low flow.</i><br />
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<i>Such conditions, steep alluvial banks bordering deep, perennial pools, may offer another set of criteria when looking at potential sites for beaver restoration in arid habitats.</i><br />
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