To all Republicans, sane and not so sane.

This is a direct copy of an article on FB by Christina Lorey.  Good on you Christina.  I couldn't have said it better.  Criminals like Trump will arise in all societies.  The measure of a society is how you stop their actions and restore sanity to your society.  America has failed miserably in this and it is the responsibility of Representatives and Senators of the Republican party who have the majority in all four branches of government.  (Supreme Court, Presidency, House of Representives, Senate).  The rule of law is, and has been for many years, a joke in America.  Trump is just the latest and most extreme example and it has exposed that America is a failed society.

 

From Christina Lorey, on FB:

A message to all sane Republicans:

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals.
You said nothing.

He bulldozed the East Wing.
You said nothing.

He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing.

He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing.

He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing.

He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing.

He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing.

He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing.

His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing.

He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing.

His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing.

He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing.

He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing.

It’s time to start talking.

How to build a beaver deceiver

So why would you want to build a Beaver Deceiver.  Beavers build dams.  Dams make ponds.   This can result in the flooding of something you don't want flooded or can wash away of a piece of road if they dam up a culvert.  If you go the 'human way' and kill or remove the   beavers, you will have a life time job.   Do the job right and build a beaver deceiver and you have solved the problem  You can now benefit from all the myriad  benefits that beaver ponds create.

So how do you build a simple beaver deceiver when your only aim is to limit the level of  the water in a beaver pond (ie - not to protect a culvert).  You start by getting a piece of that black corrugated pipe of a suitable diameter (big enough to take care of the flow of the stream during the spring melt).  It must be long enough to go from the deepest part of the pond, usually found a couple of meters upstream of the dam and to extend a little beyond the dam.  To install it, you cut away a little material in the middle of the top of the beaver dam and lay the pipe in this notch.  Pound a couple of wooden stakes into the top of the dam, one on either side of the pipe and connect them with a board or similar which rests on top of the pipe.  This board will hold the pipe down while the beavers  repair the damage that night that you have done.

Now as shown in the diagram above, you must build some sort of a cage for the inflow end of the pipe.  It should have a mesh lid on it an set so that the top of the cage is below the water level.  In fact it is best if it is below the level that ice or any other floating object will reach.  The wire mesh that is used to reinforce concrete slabs is a good choice and myself, I prefer a round design rather than the rectangular one shown.  Cut off the cross (horizontal) bars from the bottom of the mesh so that the cage can be pounded into the bottom of the pond.

So how about protecting a culvert.  Proceed as above but make sure that the pipe is long enough to extend into the culvert.  Construct a cage over the rest of the culvert.  One more thing and you are finished.  You are in danger of siphoning down the pond and you don't want that.  Beaver pond complexes are a great tourist attraction besides all the good that they do.  Take a hole saw on a battery drill and make a few holes on the top of the pipe where the pipe leaves the dam plus a couple more.  This will break the siphon.

Did climate change wipe out the mega-fauna

Around the time of the transition ~12,000 years ago, between a world with continental glaciers as much as 3km deep, extending, in North America to below the USA-Canadian border, and our present more benign climate, mega-fauna disappeared from  the Americas.  So was this due to the change in the climate as we left, what is popularly called an Ice Age to our present warmer climate.  First we have to establish some terms and a little background.

Over the past 2.75m (million) years, the world has gone through about 40 cycles of Continental glaciers and warmer periods, such as we are living in at present.  During the first half of this 2.75m year period, the cycles were about 41k (thousand) years while over the past half of this two and three quarter million year Ice Age, cycles have been about 100k years.  The exact timelines are hard to establish on the land, because each cold period, when kilometer-thick glaciers grind across the landscape, they wipe out the record of previous glacial an interglacial periods.

All information was not lost, though.   Ice itself is one path to documenting past fluctuations.  The Antarctic has been glaciated for at least 34m years and the ice is built up in layers which are much like tree rings.  Generally (not always) one layer is laid down per year*.  Glaciation has fluctuated but there is a reliable, continuous record over at least 800,000 years.   In addition there are ocean bottom sediments and a peculiar meteor crater in Northern Siberia called El'Gy'Gytgyn that has a sediment record which extends over 3.6m years.

*Sometimes a layer is not laid down in a given year and a warm period can wipe out a number of layers. A unseasonable warm period in the middle of a year can result in two rings for a year.  But there are work-arounds for these problems.

As mentioned something interesting,  has been observed from these records.  It is that for the first half of this 2.75m year period of alterations between icy and less icy times, the cycle length has been about 41k years while for the second half of this period, the cycle is closer to 100k years*.  Incidentally, the previous warm period goes by various names but the one that many 'westerners' use is the Eemian interglacial period.  The one we are in now is called the Holocene Interglacial Period.

*For some reason different Milankovitch Cycles dominated at the beginning of this 
Ice age than more recently.  Note that the Ice Age has not ended.  We are just in one of the interglacial periods and by now should have been,  sliding toward the next Glacial period (but are not).

The popular literature and even some scientists call the most recent glaciated period an Ice Age. Even in the above video this is so. I have no objection to this term (not much!!!) but if we use it to describe the recent glaciated period then we have to  use a different name for the 2.75m year period during which we have had  many alternations between warm and cold periods.  

So for the rest of this diatribe, I am going to call the last 2.75m year ice age, an Ice Age and will call glaciated periods 'Glacial Periods' and the warmer interglacial periods, 'Interglacial Periods'.  At present we are in the so called Holocene Interglacial Period and as mentioned, the previous one is called the Eemian Interglacial period*.

*Previous Interglacial Periods have different names but in order from the most recent to more ancient ones they are often called, Eemian, La Bouchet, Parfleet, Hoxnian, MI13, Cromerian, Holstein, Waalian, Bramertenian, Passtonian etc.  

Now we come to two problems if we want to insist on the theory that the transition from the recent Glaciated Period to the present Holocene Interglacial period caused the demise of the immensely varied mega-fauna of the Americas.  

I think everyone would agree that, based on our present knowledge of how long it takes to create a new species, that all this megafauna didn't evolve over the past 100k years.  To put it another way, the ancestors of the elephant types, Camel types, Giant ground sloths, Giant beavers, Equinine species and so forth existed at the start of the 2.75m Ice age that we are still in.  Undoubtedly they evolved special adaptations to glaciation over the glaciated periods of the 2.75m year ice age. For instance, greater harryness or thickness of blubber might have increased as we slid into an Glacial Period and decreased as we left a Glacial Period*.  

*If you think that evolution is always a very very slow process, look at how the Galapagos finches change their bill shape over El Nino, La Nina cycles as the food supply changes. Or for that matter look at the proliferation of Dinosaur types following the end-Triasic extinction of the existing reptiles when the Ecological niches suddenly were empty.

The critical point is that they didn't go extinct, during previous slides from a warm period into a cold period or from a cold period into a warm period.  And there were at least 40 such cycles.  So why would we think that the change in the climate, which happened many times before caused their demise only this time.  

In addition, the record from the previous 4 cycles, for which we have the best information, were very similar to the most recent one.  A great treatment of the past handful of glacial cycles is found in the book Plows Plagues and Petroleum by Ruddiman*

*Ruddiman makes a very convincing argument that man has been interfering with the climate for at least the past 8000 years and that the level of interference was just about enough to counter what should have been our next slide into  a glacial period.  Now we have too much of a good thing.

The second problem is the evidence from other continents.  The incredibly varied population of mega-Marsupials and Monotremes in Australia went extinct about  45k years ago, around the time that man arrived in Australia.  The amazingly varied mega-fauna of the Americas disappeared around 12k years ago, just as the first people spread through the Americas and the mega fauna of, of New Zealand, consisting of giant ground living birds, plus a giant eagle and many species of 'dickie birds' disappeared 700 years ago just as the first people arrived in New Zealand.  Coincidence??  I don't think so.

The only conclusion that seems reasonable to me is that in every case, the first people who arrived in a new land multiplied and ate their way through all the megafauna.  There are at least three reasons that many people find this conclusion is hard to accept.

Leaving aside the nutters who believe that the world is only ~6000 years old, It is very hard to grasp deep-time.  Even grasping the length of time back to the previous warm period, which is 62 time as long as from the time of Christ to the present, is hard.  Grasping the idea of millions of years is even more daunting.  

A secibd problem is our difficulty in accepting exponential growth.  It is hard to grasp how fast a small starter population of people can multiply in an environment when all those edible animals are completely unwary of people and all that energy rich meat is there for the taking.  Lets be really conservative and say that a population of humans can double each generation and a generation is 25 years.  I think you would agree that in the absence of birth control methods, this is ridiculously conservative.  Take a starter population of two and see how many individuals we would have in 20 generations (20 x 25 years = 500 years).  Raise 2 to the power of 20 and you get 1,048,576 people.  One more generation (25 years) and you have 2,097152 people.  One more and you have 4,194,304.  You see where this is going.  Exponential growth which only added a handful of people at the beginning each generation is now adding 2m people every generation.

Of course, a starter population would likely be a small tribe which for genetic reasons would be far more viable.

The further reason is PC (political correctness).  We have got so used to maintaining the legend that the first people, whether from the Americas, from Australia or from New Zealand are great ecologists and couldn't possibly be responsible for the demise of the mega fauna of their home range.  In fact they are just people like we are and find it hard to moderate their motivations for the greater long term good of themselves and their societies.  We Europeans have only recently realized what damage we have done to the environment and are far from catching up and modifying our actions to preserve what we have left.  Why do we think that an earlier population of humans would do any better when faced with unbelievable abundance.

 The third reason is hubris.  For some reason we see ourselves as more intelligent than our distant ancestors when recent findings show that this is, pretty clearly not the case.  They just applied their intelligence to different problems.  Just imagine how you would fair if transported back into a glacial period in Europe in a period in which Neanderthals and our ancestors survived and thrived.  

And fourth, we can't imagine that they were capable of killing such huge animals.  If you have this bias, just look at how the pigmies in the jungles kill jungle elephants or how the bushmen of the Kalahari, kill Kudu.

This leaves a contrary problem.  How did some of the mega-fauna of Africa survive until Europeans arrived on the continent.  After all this is where man evolve.  The only explanation I can think of is that the animals evolved a fear of man as man became more and more able to kill them and to kill them at greater and greater distances (first thrusting spears, then throwing spears, then the throwing sticks (atiatl) for throwing spears and then bow and arrow) not to forget the sling for throwing stones.  Animals would have learned that when the strange two legged animal was around, they kept getting hit by heavy and pointy objects. Thus the animals probably evolved avoiding behaviors as man became more and more able to kill them and to kill them at greater distances. A process just like the antelope learning to avoid predatory cats. 

Perhaps, as we Europeans apologize for the wrongs we did to the  ancestors of the first people, we should ask for an apology for the destruction of the mega-fauna at the hands of their ancestors.

Benefits from Beavers

                                                    Benefits From Beavers

It is clear why people feel a certain amount of angst regarding beavers.  A rising pond can threaten infrastructure.  If beavers dam a culvert under a road, a piece of the road can be washed away.  If they dam a stream that runs beside a dwelling, the rising water could flood the house or cabin.  If they build a dam beside an orchard, your fruit trees can be felled.  But with a little thought, one can install a cheap, easily constructed 'beaver deceiver' which protects the road or dwelling.  And a little wire mesh around the trunk of a tree will protect it.  If you keep trying to destroy a dam  or kill the beavers, you will have a lifetime job as new beavers move in and start damming all over again.  Spend a little time and thought and do it right and do it once.  A well designed beaver deceiver will last for decades and allow you  to enjoy the myriad benefits that beavers bring.    So what are these benefits.  They are profound and long lasting.

Beavers don't generally just build one dam.  They have their main pond where their lodge and food-store is located, but they tend to build lesser dams up and downstream from the main pond.  And because the surface of a water table intersects a stream at the surface of the stream, a beaver dam can store far more water in the surrounding land than in the pond(s).  

Beavers control floods. When an extreme rain event occurs, the series of dams and the surrounding water table not only store water but also slow down the water.  This all contributes to reducing the flood peak and hence, reducing down stream damage.  If you have a village that is periodically flooded, you really do want beavers in every stream of your catchment.  And as we go down the climate change path, droughts are more severe and rain events more extreme.

Beavers supply water in the summer.  Beaver dams are always a bit leaky and as their water goes down, water from the surrounding water table leaks into the stream.  Water leaks through the surrounding land on either side of the dam into the stream further down.  This ensures that streams that once went dry each summer, keeps flowing all year round.  A good example happened in 1948 in Vancouver, Canada.

In the winter of 47-48 there was an extremely heavy snow pack  in the catchment of the Frazer River.  Melting didn't start until very late in the season and then the melt came hard and fast.  The lower mainland; the Frazer River delta, where lots of farming occurred, was flooded even up to the second floor of some houses. The only creek that didn't contribute to this flood was Meldrum Creek which is located across the river from Williams Lake.  More than a decade earlier, Eric Collier (Three Against the Wilderness)  had introduced two pair of beaver to the area and they had multiplied and populated the catchment of Meldrum Creek.  Incidentally the ranchers further down slope from Eric's operation were delighted because they now had stock water all summer.

Beavers recharge water tables.  Close to a beaver pond the water table is raised.  Once the water is underground it is protected from evaporation and as it seeps through the ground, it is purified.  Protection from evaporation is another way that water is provided for the summer when the rains fail.

Beavers create great fire breaks.  Not only are beaver ponds good fire breaks, themselves, but beavers clear the trees over a few tens of meters on either side of their pond.  Now if a fire starts somewhere between two tributaries, it is likely that only that area will burn rather than the whole countryside.  Animal that are in the burning section find refuge in the ponds and in the un-burnt area across the stream.  In the fullness of time, the burnt area will go through a regenerative succession of plants, creating ecologies that don't exist under a close-canopy forest.  Fire now enriches and stabilizes the environment rather than destroying it.

Beavers diversify the environment  The areas that the beavers clear of trees on either side of their ponds, now get light right down to the ground which also diversifies the ecology of the area from what used to be only forest.  Forage, which was hard to find is now readily available.

Beaver ponds  are ideal nurseries for fish.  Much of the water in a beaver pond is too deep for wading birds and there are lots of hiding places in the submerged parts of beaver dams, beaver lodges, and beaver food stores for small fish to avoid larger fish.  And when most species of salmon spawn, they die and their bodies drift downstream.  If there are beaver ponds, this rich source of nutrients is caught and incorporated into the pond and even up-slope as grazers feed along pond edges and poop up-slope.  What a great reversal from the general flow of nutrients from the land to the oceans.  This enrichment of the pond also feeds their fry who swim downstream from the redds to the ponds and later to the sea.  Have a look at an Article titled Rivers Are Life, in the Fall 2026 River Issue of Yukon on Page 27.

 

Beaver ponds purify the water flowing through them.  Their effect of settling out silt and floating twigs, leaves, branches and logs is obvious but beaver ponds also remove nitrates, phosphates and other 'ates' that are dissolved in the water.  The water in a beaver pond is aerobic (oxygenated) and under aerobic conditions, a variety of micro-organisms can use cellulose for energy.  About half of the dry weight of leaves, twigs and branches is cellulose and a beaver pond is full of them.  but the micro-organisms need all the 'ates' to build their bodies.  They take them from the water.  Aquatic vegetation does likewise.  And of course these two paths of primary production provide food for an extensive food web both in the pond and in the surrounding land.

Beavers protect culverts and bridges.  There is an irony for you.  We only concentrate on the damming of culverts by beavers which is an easily fixed problem.  Beavers protect culverts by remove floating trash including logs from the water which each spring tend to be flushed down streams and rivers.  This actually protects culverts under roads.  In the fullness of time, the floating debris becomes water logged and sinks to the bottom of the pond.  Note that if a beaver deceiver is installed to protect a culvert, which beavers otherwise could dam up overnight, the beaver deceiver takes water from the bottom of the pond, where there is no floating debris or ice.  Read Building Besides Rivers by Benoit Turcotte from the Fall 2026 Edition of The River Issue of Yukon.

Beavers greatly enrich and stabilize the local ecology.  Read Eric's book (mentioned above) to see the difference that the introduction of beavers into the Meldrum Creek catchment made.

Beavers greatly reduce mosquitoes and biting and biting midges (no-see-ums).  Three types of Arctic fish that feed on mosquito larvae are Arctic Greyling, small trout and native arctic minnows.  Different fish do the job in warmer climates.  Mosquitoes look for quiet water to lay their eggs and  any pond that doesn't have a populations of something that eats mosquito larvae turns into a mosquito breeding farm.  The quiet water of a beaver pond, especially in amongst the fringe vegetation, the is ideal for mosquitoes to lay their eggs.  But when they hatch out, as long as the beaver ponds have been there for a while and have any or all of the above mentioned fish, the larvae of these pests don't have a chance.  In addition, beaver ponds breed dragon flies which swoop over open water, hoovering up flying insects.  Likewise swallows swoop over water surfaces, hoovering up flying insects where they can fly, uninterrupted by trees and brush.

Beavers attract tourism.    This is especially so if along a walk there are explanations of all the good that beavers do and how to mitigate any harm they may do using beaver deceivers.  One could even install a beaver deceiver in one of their minor ponds just to demonstrate the principle along with a plaque showing a diagram and explaining the system.  One of the beaver benefit could be put on each plaque as people walk the path along a beaver dam complex giving them time to think and discuss.  Canadians really do need to be educated about their national animal.

  Beavers produce rich bottom land.  Over time a beaver pond will fill with sediment and organic material and the beavers may exhaust the supply of nearby trees.    (Incidentally, they also eat a large variety of aquatic plants including water lilies and  skunk cabbage).  The dams then begin to leak and the beaver ponds become a stepped series of beaver meadows.  In the fullness of time trees once more start to grow on the banks  where the ponds used to be.  Another family of beavers will move in and another layer is added.  In the long term, this creates the rich, deep 'bottom land' that you read about in western novels.

The problem with our relations with beavers is that the damage they can do is short term and in our face (and easily fixed) while the benefits are long term and profound and humans are not so good at 'long term.  Just look at what we are doing to our environment and our climate.  It is up to those of us who do 'long term' to try to spread the word to those that do not.

                                                   Suggested reading list

Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier  (of course)

King Fish by David Montgomery (and all his other books.  They are eye opening, especially Growing a Revolution)

Pilgrims of the Wild and The Adventures of Sajo and  Her Beaver People, both by Grey Owl (AS Belaney - If you can find them.  Both from 1935.  Would be well worth reprinting)

Beavers: Boreal Ecosystem Engineers by Carol A Johnston (far too expensive to buy.  I think there may be a kindle edition available)

Building Beside Rivers from p28 of the fall 2026 issue of  Yukon by Benoit Turcotte.  

Maasa

 When the Europeans got to America in 1492, they discovered that the local people had developed many new vegetables from the local plants.  While in Europe, the farmers had developed the brassica family (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli etc), the Americans had concentrated on the Solanaceae family (Tomatoes, potatoes, Capsicums, egg plants and hot peppers) and from a scrubby little plant called Teosinte, (tea-o-sin-tay) they developed Corn.  Explorers took these back to Europe and Corn was a big hit.  When you plant grain crops like wheat, Rye, Barley and so forth, If all goes well, one seed gives you, typically, 25 seeds back.  Corn on the other hand gives you about 250 seeds per seed planted.  In addition it gives you large amounts of foliage that you can feed as-is to ruminants or make silage, also for feeding herbivores.

Corn (called maize in the UK) is a C4 plant while the members of the wheat family are C3 plants.  In C3 plants, Oxygen and Carbon dioxide compete with each other, in the chemical process of photosynthesis, limiting production.  C4 plants have somehow 'worked out' a system to diminish this competition and so fix far more Carbon from the atmosphere than C3 plants. (another notable C4 plant is sugar cane).  The explorers (or exploiters, if you like) brought back the plant but not the technology.  Corn seemed to be the ideal food to feed your workers but those that ate it to the exclusion of other crops, became sick.  Their skin roughened, they got diarrhea, dementia and died.  They had what we now call Pellagra which is a Niacin deficiency disease 

Sad, since Corn is actually rich in niacin but it is in a chemically bound up form which is not available to the human digestive system.  The Niacin is easily released and the Americans indigenous people had discovered how to do this.  They boiled the corn first in an alkaline solution.  They used wood ash which, once wetted, is rich in Potassium hydroxide. The precursor of niacin is tryptophan and the nixtamalization process releases this substance and the body turns it into Naicin.   At home we use Slaked lime which is Calcium hydroxide, also a strong base.  Just a quick diversion to describe how to treat corn for home use.

 

Nixtamalizatation

Take however many cups of corn kernels* you want to treat and weigh them.  Weigh out 2% as much Calcium Hydroxide.  Mix the corn and the lime (Calcium hydroxide) with lots of water in a large pot.  The corn is going to absorb a lot of water and expand.  

* Note we are not talking about the corn from corn on the cobb, which once dried is shriveled up but corn that has full rounded seeds when dry.  Flint corn is great for this. 

 

Do it in the morning and leave it to soak until the afternoon.  If necessary, add more water.  When cooked, the corn is going to expand even more and use up more water.  In the afternoon, boil the corn and lime mixture with occasional stirring to bring the lime up from the bottom of the pot.  Boil for at least half an hour or better still bring to a boil and simmer for one hour.  Add more water if necessary.  Stir, put on the lid and let it soak  overnight.

 

In the morning, rinse thoroughly until the water is clear and a much of the sloughed outer coat has been removed.  The outer skin of the corn will have sloughed off and the kernels will be a lovely yellow. Run the corn through your meat grinder with the finest holes you have. Package in plastic bags and freeze.  We find that 300g per package is a useful amount.  Now you can add a package to your bread, waffles, Pizza base, and best of all to a pot of Chilliconcarne that you want to thicken once  the beans have been cooked to tenderness.  

 

Why I say best of all is because the amino acids missing in corn are found in beans and vice versa.  Corn and beans together are a balanced protein but to be absorbed by the body, both must be eaten at the same time. A great meal for a vegetarian but you don't have to be a vegie to love a good pot of Chilli.

 

Masa is also made into tortillas and other favorite Mexican delicacies.  In some stores you can buy flour made from Masa.  It is called masa harina and is not the same as corn starch or corn flour.  These later have not been nixtamalized.  Note that another benefit of the process of nixtamalization is that phytotoxins have been removed, especially Aflatoxins.  Aflatoxins are highly carcinogenic compounds produced by a range of  molds.  They tend to contaminate seed crops, especially in warm, moist environments.

 

Anyway, I don't think the technology ever was used in Europe.  After all, what could a bunch of uneducated, pagan natives know.  Another example of  idiotic hubris.