Ahh the subtle reference to the beaver reproduction menance! I’m pretty sure that what Mr. Trush meant to say wasn’t “If you have two beavers they’ll start damming your stream, trapping silt, improving water quality, and raising families that help them improve habitat for wildlife, coppice trees to bring in homes for new migratory birds and the next thing you know you have a sediment-rich meadow that takes care of native plants for years to come”. Hmm. Our wikipedia friend Rick who will be presenting at the conference this weekend has been exchanging emails about whether beavers were ever native in the area of Mono basin. (Of course they couldn’t live in Mono Lake as it is too salty even for them!) I thought I’d give you a glimpse of his efforts.
Non-native beaver arrives at Lee Vining Creek
Greg, Information Specialist
Beavers were introduced into Lundy Canyon long ago, and in recent years have been spreading to other nearby creeks such as Wilson Creek and DeChambeau Creek. Dead beavers have been seen more than once in the last several years along Mono Lake between Old Marina and Lee Vining Creek. About three weeks ago we were informed by Dr. Roland Knapp of beaver sign along Lee Vining Creek below the diversion dam.
So Rick wrote his usual thoughtful letter to Greg and introduced the research that suggests that the ‘introduction’ was actually a ‘re-introduction”. The mono lake specialist was very interested and eager to talk about these thoughts but noted that there was no documented visitation of Mono basin by Americans until 1852, and if there were trappers in the area earlier wouldn’t they have written about it? There was some fascinating back and forth, but I thought I’d give you Rick’s most recent letter as its a great summary of trapping activity in the region.
Peter Skene Ogden was complaining about Americans on the lower Humboldt in 1829 – 80 Americans to his 28 man fur brigade. Those early American trappers were likely not literature diary-keepers, instead they were lugging around beaver traps, pelts and guns. I think Americans were tramping all about the eastern Sierra and not writing any notes or records. Stephen Meek was on the Truckee, Carson and Walker Rivers in 1833 and setting traps. He does not tell his story until he is an old man. His brother Joe Meek gave his story to a newspaper in 1837, corroborating his brother’s later story. Ogden with the HBC regarded the Humboldt as the richest beaver river ANYWHERE. From these locations, the Mono Basin is a hop-skip and a jump for beaver who can travel dozens of miles overland in a day.
Beaver were ubiquitous from the arctic to northern Mexico, from Atlantic to Pacific, in every mountain range. Until Grinnell wrote in 1937 that there never were beaver in the Sierra Nevada, no other mountain range in the US or Canada had proved to be impassable to beaver. Grinnell relied on contemporary trappers’ accounts, despite him being an esteemed naturalist. His argument has never made sense, why would an animal as ubiquitous as the beaver find the Sierra so impenetrable? Versus the Rockies? Versus the Santa Catalina Mountains in southern Arizona (the San Pedro River used to be called the Beaver River)? So my simplest argument is, what kind of fiendish natural barrier would have kept them out of the Mono Basin? It makes sense they would not have lived in Mono Lake as they do not build lodges in saltwater (although they do in brackish Puget Sound in the Skagit River Delta).
With beaver so nearby historically in the Carson (which of course connects to the Humboldt River in wet years) as supported by trapper oral histories, Powers account of beaver fur strips in the hair of the Paiute, and a pre-European word for beaver in Washo, it is difficult to believe that an animal that can move dozens of miles in a day overland would not have found Lee Vining Creek. The beavers arriving there now likely found it the same way the historic beavers did, moving in from watersheds north or west in the Sierra, into the Mono Basin. Unless we think someone recently plopped them into Lee Vining Creek, isn’t the most parsimonious explanation simply that beaver have naturally RETURNED to their historic territory, as no real physical barrier was ever there to stop them?
Suitable habitat, ethnographic records, oral histories, trapper records, and the known ability of beaver to move from one watershed to the next, in my mind shifts the burden of proof to those that argue that beaver were never there. The argument that a lack of archaeological or historical records proves that beaver were not there historically is not a proof, it is just conjecture. For example, a look at FaunMap would lead you to conclude that there were never sea otter in Central Coastal California.
The presence of flat meadows with deeply incised, eroded channels suggests that some agent constructed the meadows. Repairing these with earth moving equipment doing pond and plug or major road building in meadows has lead to the recent discoveries of remnant beaver dam wood in the high Sierra. If similar efforts dig up some wood in the Mono Basin then, I agree, let’s get it to UN-Reno’s dendrochronology lab or radiocarbon date it!
Hmmm….the story just keeps unfolding, but as always Rick, we are grateful for your cheerful approach to history. If you would like to meet the historian in person you should come this weekend to the Santa Clara Creeks Conference in San Jose. “Dams: Beaver fever and Concrete Regrets”. I suppose you can guess which part we’ll be talking about!
Don’t forget to vote!
