Beavers: A Beneficial Nuisance

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Our stewardship coordinator Bengt Miller notes how we work alongside beavers in our restoration efforts, but sometimes they aren’t great coworkers, saying:

Skagit Fisheries has a complicated relationship with beavers. These large rodents have lived alongside
salmon for thousands of years. Beavers provide many benefits to salmon. They build dams that back up
water into ponds that provide wonderful habitat for juvenile salmon, and these same ponds can help
mitigate floods by absorbing lots of water and slowly releasing this water over time. During the dry
summer months these ponds are wonderful refugia for juvenile salmon. Scientific evidence also points
to the fact that these ponds help regulate water temperature. This will become increasingly important
as our climate continues to warm and the summer months become drier.
While beavers to provide much upside, sometimes working in their vicinity can be disheartening. Each
year Skagit Fisheries plants tens of thousands of trees in riparian areas to provide habitat for salmon.
These riparian areas are also the native range of beavers. Every year SFEG loses some number of trees
to beaver predation. It’s sad to see a thriving tree gnawed to the ground, but one can’t take it personally
because the beavers are only doing what comes instinctually. On the whole, it’s better for the salmon
the have beavers in the watershed than not.

 

Pictured is Muriel Troka, our restoration tech lead, with a tree that has seen better days…

 

Schools of Fish in the Classroom by Victoria Hartman, Education Intern

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 “I got to start this quarter at SFEG by joining the students of “Salmon in the Classroom” in kicking off the first steps of life for their salmon. I got to spend 3 days driving between the Marblemount hatchery and various schools in Skagit County. We started off each day picking up 400-600 salmon eggs, and then we would travel down to visit 2-3 schools a day and deliver the eggs to the pre-set up tanks. Once we arrived, we would guide the students on how to place their new eggs in their tanks. While they were placing the eggs in the tank we encouraged them to think of names that they would later give the salmon when we release them in March. All the students were very excited to participate and asked us fun questions about the eggs, or made interesting observations like “the eggs look like Orbeez”. Before this experience I’d never seen an eyed salmon egg up close, nor held one and they do indeed look like little Orbeez. It was quite surprising how durable they were. I look forward to joining the students as they watch their eggs as they hatch into alevin and grow into fry, as well as releasing them and sending them on their big journey of surviving in the wild.” Photos show salmon eggs with visible eyes, one of the first steps of development.

Reflecting on Education by Victoria Hartman

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Starting in September of this year, I’ve had the honor to work under Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group as an Educational Intern. Through this internship I’ve been able to use my BS in Biology to help teach the youth of Skagit county the importance of salmon ecology. From teaching them the information in the classroom, to applying it in real life on field trips, it has been an incredibly enjoyable experience.

I’ve been able to use my position to influence the youth into seeing the importance of their actions in relation to the environment. We were able to not only teach them but show them how certain actions they take can negatively or positively affect their surroundings. Positives being shown through our tree planting field trips and how maintaining a riparian forest helps the surrounding river and creatures that reside in it. Negatives they were shown were the failure of people cleaning up their left over trash in parks or the effect of what goes into their storm drain has on the surrounding body of water.

 

 

Throughout my time as an intern, I have been able to experience people taking what I say and truly learning how to value it. I was able to watch kids who knew salmon as just a dinner option, learn to appreciate the life cycle the salmon has to endure. They were able to learn fun tricks on how to remember the life cycle via bracelets we made together, as well as using the five finger trick to memorize the different species living in the Skagit Watershed. During this internship I was able to learn a lot of interesting facts about salmon and share the knowledge with kids of all ages and backgrounds. One of the most fascinating facts being that deer are sometimes known to feed on salmon carcasses.