The Applegater

20 Spring 2018 Applegater L odge and R estaurant open 7 days a week H appy H our from 3 - 5 pm daily T uesday reduced rates on entrees W ednesday N ight L ive M usic, open till 1 1 pm Restaurant open 4 - 9 pm, Wednesday - Sunday Lodge open 7 days a week Wednesday Night Live Music, open till 11 pm Local musicians jam in restaurant on Sunday Lodge 541-846-6690 Restaurant 541-846-6082 Wedding/Special Events 541-660-0244 www.applegateriverlodge.com Applegate River Lodge & Restaurant Local musicians jam in restaurant Sundays Quinn's Well, Pump and Water Filtration is located at 6811 Williams Hwy. We install, maintain and repair complete water pumping systems, and we offer a complete line of water filtration equipment. Contact our professional staff by phone, e-mail, or visit our office. www.quinnswell.com CCB #192047 541-862-9355 541-772-7867 Call us Mon. - Fri. 8 - 5, you'll have a live person answer the phone that is ready to help you! Jeff & Tami Quinn Hollenbeck Solar powered pump sys - tems are becoming a thing of the future. "LORENTZ" Solar Pumps can offer inno - vative, cost saving and envi - ronmentally responsible solutions to your water pumping needs. This solar pump is an effective way to help reduce your carbon footprint, and give you more water independence. Many people think that solar pump systems are ade - quate for small systems only; however, "LORENTZ" Solar Systems can meet the needs of the biggest house - holds and gardens. With "LORENTZ" you can connect via Bluetooth and see realtime and historic data from your system. Please call Quinn's Pump Service for your free solar estimate. We would be more than happy to go over your needs and taylor a system that best suits your demand. SUN, WATER, LIFE. Water is a geological cocktail so DRINK MORE WATER! For many millions of years, in what we now call the Applegate watershed, beavers have been the senior landscape engineers. Since at least 12,000 years ago, humans have been living alongside the beaver. In the language of the Takelma, the Applegate is called "sbink," meaning Beaver Place. By the time the Takelma were violently displaced by the gold-rush settlers, fur trappers had already nearly exterminated the beaver. As a result, rivers and creeks flowed faster and wetlands had become meadows, drastically changing the landscape and ecosystems. Settlers brought cattle and grain seed, turning this ancient fertility into pastures and hayfields and introducing a different hydrological regime. Ancient wetlands are now a mosaic of ranches, farms, and homesteads with culverts, concrete dams, and ditches designed to move water quickly to where it is wanted and then to the sea. Today, as creeks are drying up, the beaver population is steadily on the rise, and beavers are still working with the ancient plan to slow water and create drought-proof wetlands. Using their time- How to 'Leave it to Beaver' without losing the farm BY TIMOTHY SEXAUER honored methods, they seek to fix any "leak" they discover in our fast-flowing hydrological system. Beavers' efforts to reengineer human creations often lead to blocked culverts, flooded basements, or dead fruit trees. e most common outcome of these human-beaver conflicts is that the human kills the beaver, a detriment to reestablishing healthy beaver populations that would help replenish our withering waterways. When I lived on a property with people who were concerned about the resident beaver, a friend introduced me to Jakob Shockey, restoration director for the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council and owner of Beaver State Wildlife Solutions. He taught me some tricks to deal with potential conflicts if we are willing to commit to a journey of observation and interaction. Here's a few of the more common useful techniques: 1. A pond leveler prevents things like flooded basements. It keeps the water passing through the dam at the desired height for pond level, secretly drawing water from the center of the beaver pond through a caged inlet. If you disguise the pipe with mud and sticks, the beavers should build their dam back up around it. 2. A trapezoidal fence protects culverts by keeping beavers away from the sound and feel of fast-moving water, which is their cue to build a dam (see Diagram 1). Debris buildup should occasionally be removed from along the fence to avoid prompting the beavers to build a dam on top of it. 3. The pipe and fence technique combines the benefits of both methods (see Diagram 2). Also, debris buildup on the trapezoidal fence is no longer an issue with a pipe feeding through it. 4. Most beaver kills happen when a beaver takes down the wrong tree. To protect our favorite trees, Jakob recommends painting the bottom few feet of the tree with a mixture of half natural latex paint and half sand. e beaver's teeth are its most important tool, and it will stop gnawing immediately upon feeling the grit of the sand. For protecting larger areas, an electric wire four inches off the ground will keep beaver out. Jakob says the key is mitigating human- beaver conflicts so we can retain beavers where they choose to reside. When they are secure in their chosen spot, they will naturally disperse their children farther up tributaries where we most need to restore water retention. It is up to us to educate ourselves and others about the many benefits of beaver to the land and, importantly, the ways that we can non- lethally deal with human-beaver conflicts. To that end, Mike Callahan, Jakob's beaver mitigation mentor, recently launched e Beaver Institute™. Beaverinstitute.org hosts a great deal of information about the ecology of beaver and how we benefit from it. ere is also a free extensive online database of documents and instructional videos about various conflict mitigation techniques and flow device construction. We have the tools needed to help our toothy, furry friends resume their important role in the hydrology and ecology of the Applegate watershed, without disrupting our human systems. Timothy Sexauer singingdirt27@gmail.com Diagrams: Mike Callahan, Beaver Institute. Jakob Shockey situates the cage before untying the float tube during a pond leveler installation. Photo: Timothy Sexauer. Diagram 1 Diagram 2

• Cover