Our friends Frances Backhouse, Glynnis Hood, Mike Callahan and Jim and Judy Atkinson on CBC Radio. Well worth a listen on a Saturday morning. If this sounds familiar. you’re not crazy. It first aired last November. It as so nice, they played it twice!

Rethinking the Beaver: Why beavers and humans have to learn to get along

Four centuries of fur-trade trapping nearly wiped beavers off the North American map. Now they’re back, big time, and we’re discovering that sharing the landscape with such tenacious ecosystem engineers isn’t always easy. We’re also learning that there are compelling reasons to try to coexist with this iconic species. Contributor Frances Backhouse explores how two control freaks — humans and beavers — can get along.

I especially love the discussion of the blackfoot mythology. It’s delightful to hear it explained by Eldon:

Eldon Yellowhorn  is a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, where he teaches in the Department of First Nations Studies and the Department of Archaeology. He is from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta.

And of course our good friends Jim and Judy Atkinson! Listening to her talk about the community response to the beavers is like looking through our scrapbook. I especially love listening to her discuss vocalization of the young. But beavers aren’t just reruns, there are also new reports about their glorious benefits. This time from Planet magazine.

BUSY BEAVERS

Beavers in Washington state are being relocated to areas where they will make a positive impact on ecosystems.

Projects to relocate beavers to threatened habitats across the Pacific Northwest, such as the Methow Beaver Project, aim to restore and make such areas more resilient. New research indicates beavers and their dams may be a natural check against some impacts of climate change.

The goal of the Methow Beaver Project is to relocate beavers causing problems on private land in urban and suburban areas to the Methow Valley of Washington State, located along the eastern side of the North Cascades. Here, their architectural tendencies can be put to work. Beavers cause headaches by plugging road culverts, cutting down trees and flooding commercial orchards. A small number of beavers behind such problems are trapped, brought to the Winthrop National Hatchery, tagged, weighed, photographed and then wait there to be relocated.

More robustly kind things to say about the Methow project.  This one especially warming because of the attention to detail about the busy beavers themselves. I especially liked this:

“The beavers are very easy to work with,” said Nelson. “They are very docile, it’s like working with a dog or a cat. They all have personalities. Some of them will huddle in their lodges in the hatchery with their eyes closed like, ‘this is a horrible thing, it will all go away soon.’ And then some will just swim with great confidence like [they] own the place.”

One memorable beaver that Nelson encountered was dubbed “Half-Tail Dale” by the team. He came into the hatchery with half of his tail and one of his back feet missing.

“What a survivor, you know? He was a hearty fellow. We had great appreciation for him,” said Nelson.

Half-tail Dale! I sometimes get weary of the catching and caging of beavers in concrete, but this account observing individual personalities makes me quite a bit happier. I seem to remember a very famously scarred beaver tail that basically started this website.