The most important beavery thing you can see this morning isn’t here. It’s on The Monte Verde beaver website. I’ve never even such a well designed page. Prepare to be impressed and go look for yourself. Just so we’re clear I have NO idea how she did this an you will never be served such elegant fair at this dining hall.
Congratulations Laurie!
Well lookee there! Beavers were on the radio in Wisconsin yesterday, along with our good friend Bob Boucher. Take a listen.
Beavers are the largest rodent in North America. They also have a sizable impact on the environment. We learn more about the dam-building animals.
Just so you know that photo was snagged from a beaver article in High Country News and isn’t a beaver. It’s a muskrat. But misinformation lasts a long time and the truth hardly sticks around. You know how it is.
Good morning! A new beaver fossil find in Montana might be important to the way we think about beavers and how they evolved. Plus, it’s a fun story to start a wednesday with.
30-million-year-old amphibious beaver fossil is oldest ever foundA new analysis of a beaver anklebone fossil found in Montana suggests the evolution of semi-aquatic beavers may have occurred at least 7 million years earlier than previously thought, and happened in North America rather than Eurasia.
In the study, Ohio State University evolutionary biologist Jonathan Calede describes the find as the oldest known amphibious beaver in the world and the oldest amphibious rodent in North America. He named the newly discovered species Microtheriomys articulaquaticus.
Calede’s findings resulted from comparing measurements of the new species’ anklebone to about 340 other rodent specimens to categorize how it moved around in its environment—which indicated this animal was a swimmer. The Montana-based bone was determined to be 30 million years old—the oldest previously identified semi-aquatic beaver lived in France 23 million years ago.
Beavers and other rodents can tell us a lot about mammalian evolution, said Calede, an assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State’s Marion campus.
7 million years older than we thought. Of course beavers have existed longer and done more than we ever thought possible. It looks like these beavers ADAPTED to aquatic life, even though they weren’t designed for it.
Running computational analyses of the data in multiple ways, he arrived at a new hypothesis for the evolution of amphibious beavers, proposing that they started to swim as a result of exaptation—the co-opting of an existing anatomy—leading, in this case, to a new lifestyle.
“In this case, the adaptations to burrowing were co-opted to transition to a semi-aquatic locomotion,” he said. “The ancestor of all beavers that have ever existed was most likely a burrower, and the semi-aquatic behavior of modern beavers evolved from a burrowing ecology. Beavers went from digging burrows to swimming in water.
“It’s not necessarily surprising because movement through dirt or water requires similar adaptations in skeletons and muscles.”
So one day 35 million years ago some burrowing beavers thought, “Dam I’m in a rut. I feel like I’m going around in circles and not getting anywhere in life” And he crawled across to where the sparkling water met the sky and thought “I think I can do this!”
Fossils of fish and frogs and the nature of the rocks where Microtheriomys articulaquaticus fossils were found suggested it had been an aquatic environment, providing additional evidence to support the hypothesis, Calede said.
Fossils are usually dated based on their location between layers of rocks whose age is determined by the detection of the radioactive decay of elements left behind by volcanic activity. But in this case, Calede was able to age the specimen at a precise 29.92 million years old because of its location within, rather than above or below, a layer of ashes.
“The oldest semi-aquatic beaver we knew of in North America before this was 17 or 18 million years old,” he said. “And the oldest aquatic beaver in the world, before this one, was from France and is about 23 million years old.
Beavers have been adapting to massive changes for 30 million years. No wonder they’re so dam good at it.
Some good news for our friends down south. Not about beavers mind you. They’ll still kill those for threatening the solid gold arroyo toad habitat which in fact they do not do at all. But hey, it’s still good news.
With development proceeding at a rapid pace in California—between 2001 and 2017, the Golden State lost more than one million acres of wildlands¹—open space is an increasingly valuable commodity. Thankfully, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla (both Democrats) recently took a significant step to protect a large part of Riverside County in Southern California, one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, from further development by introducing legislation to establish the Western Riverside National Wildlife Refuge.
Western Riverside would be one of the largest urban refuges in the nation and provide increased access to nature for nearby Latino communities. Our partners at Hispanic Access Foundation have set up a webpage explaining the new refuge’s benefits here.
For more than a year, Senator Feinstein has been working with the county, groups like Defenders and Hispanic Access Foundation, and other policymakers to identify key areas that provide vital habitat for more than 146 species like the endangered Quino checkerspot butterfly and the California red-legged frog.
Well that sounds good doesn’t it? Any thing we can do to preserve wild spaces is good in my book.
In addition to creating new and much-needed public access nature points for the entire region, the refuge would also generate jobs and safeguard clean water and air.
Defenders of Wildlife thanks Senators Feinstein and Padilla for introducing S. 4669. Establishing the new refuge is a truly bipartisan effort: Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA-42) also played a leadership role by introducing a similar bill in the House of Representatives. Stay tuned to the Hispanic Access Foundation webpage for updates and opportunities to weigh in to support this urban wildlife refuge!
Wonderful! Now if we could just get Diane and Alex to protect those little agents of biodiversity, drought and fire protection all over the state that would be great,
This was a blast from the past.
It showed up on my beaver news feed which means someone must have recently published this comment submitted in 2020. You’ve heard the expression I assume, “Tossing out the baby with the bathwater” which, when imagining it’s origins, has always alarmed and amused me in equal parts. Well it looks like ODFW has revised their positions and done nothing to address the really difficult one. Big Surprise, (Just so you know Suzanne Fouty USED to be on the beaver working group but when they decided to ignore all the good parts of advice and just pick the stupid ones she polietely told them to find a new chump to pretend to listen to.) ‘m guessing they’re still choosing the stupid ones.
I welcome this opportunity to give testimony concerning the beaver
Management Working Group (BMWG) recommendations. I speak from one
who has broad land management and coho recovery experience and someone
who works with broad coalitions to effect positive change. I am also the Chair
for the Midcoast Watersheds Council which was formed 26 years ago. The
Council deals with about 1 million acres from Cascade Head to Heceta Head.
Our Council is just one of about 65 watershed council around the state and
about 300 around the region that are trying to improve water quality for their
communities as well as well as working to recover ESA listed salmon
population in their watersheds.
While there are number of valuable recommendations identified in the
BMWG document I find it lacking in a number of ways. The BWMG did not
truly deal with issues that are pertinent to key challenges facing Oregon now
and into the future—namely coho and other ESA salmon recovery recommendations, Clean Water Act implementation, drought, fires and investments in restoration as well as the potential economic and ecological benefits of robust beaver populations.
This is the thing about be on the front lines in shaping policy. You have to always be politely manipulating and massaging egos so that you can inch a little closer to the right answer. You have to appear at all times interested in their stupid opinions. You have to appear to be constantly re-evaluating yours. Allow me to be the first to tell you It is BEYOND EXHAUSTING. My three months on the beaver subcommittee scarred me for the rest of my adult life and lead to this snarky spirited website where I can say whatever the heck I feel like to nobody in particular.
Remember I have worked in prisons. With child molesters. In a psych word of angry teenagers. But nothing, NOTHING is worse than a policy discussion about beavers with people that are motivated not to have beavers. It is true my persuasive powers ultimately lead to success but it was SOOO HARD.
I feel you Paul.
The BMWG recommendations does not acknowledge the issue of 82 Strategy species that would directly benefit from having beavers fully utilizing their former range. The ecological ripple would be undeniable. We know beavers and their dams can provide many ecosystem benefits including migratory bird habitat in our beaver ponds, wetlands, a nd the wet meadows they form.
We know that their work creates a complexity and diversity of riparian habitat conditions across a watershed which increases food sources, and expands rearing areas, including snags, for cavity nesting species. These habitat features help multiple, sensitive, and declining species identified in the Conservation Strategy like the Willow Flycatcher, Yellow Warbler, Belted Kingfisher and other neotropical migratory birds.
3)We know there is a link between water quality and water quantity and the work of beavers. We also know there is a link between salmon recovery and beavers. There are 11 ESA listed salmon stocks with federal recovery plans and that improved water quality and stream complexity are just a few of several key factors identified for recovery of those stocks.
Go Paul! You remember how when you were a kid and there was something you didn’t want to hear you’d stick your fingers in your ears and start singing loudly to yourself so that the noise blocked it out? Well I think ODFW was doing that.
Again, robust beaver populations would work in Oregon’s streams –improving water quality and quantity. And of course this keystone species would work for natural storage in the upper basins on federal lands. And they work for free.
Oregon can beneficially influence all these issues immediately by ending trapping on public lands by revisiting OAR 635–050–0070 to protect the ecological benefits of beaver in Oregon watersheds on public lands. This does not preclude the tool to trap beavers if deemed necessary by the agencies involved, but we would encourage the agencies to first try non–lethal controls first given its effectiveness and benefits to fish, wildlife, water quality and water quantity.
The opportunity to implement a significant change for climate is within your
power. The time for action is now – this issue is challenging for sure but all
Oregonians would benefit from the leadership of the Commission.
Paul Engelmeyer,
There he is. Giving them every chance to look like they thought of the right answer themselves. He attaches videos and research to back up his points. But this is NOT the kind of argument you win by being right. Paul.
It’s the kind of argument you only win when it is delivered in a crowded auditorium filled with 500 third graders dressed in beaver tales. With the evening news camera rolling. N
This is war Paul. You have to be willing to use the right weapons.
