Good Lord its monday again so I think we need a positive read to start our week in the right direction. This definitely qualifies.

FAUNA: Close Encounters of the Castor Kind

by Mary Parker Sonis

It is surprising that some people still regard our largest North American rodent as a pest. Humans and beavers are the only animals that actively change their environment; however, only the beaver can be relied upon to consistently improve the environment. When a beaver dams a waterway to establish a deep pond, the end result is an increased area of open water, and extensive wetlands, with multiple channels. These wetlands are not only great nesting sites for waterfowl and other wildlife, but they slow the flow of a stream, which mitigates erosion while removing sediment and pollutants from the water. The presence of beaver colonies has a positive effect on fish populations as well.

Did I mention Mary’s in North Carolina? The state that used an awful lot of stimulus money to kill beavers?  The State that famously wanted beavers out of an audubon creek they were trying to restore? Not only is this article good news for the region, it’s good period. It might be one of four favorite beaver articles ever! (Thank goodness the list is getting longer by the day!)

By now, the beavers are quite used to my visits. I love to watch them interact. The male and female will often eat at separate channels, but when they pass each other in the creek, they pause to touch noses. When the kit whimpers, a parent will quietly reassure the youngster with a nose touch and perhaps a share of the particular stick they are stripping of bark. I have never witnessed any act of aggression between family members. Occasionally, I will see the adult pair canoodling at creeks edge. They gently touch noses and cheeks together when they meet, and then go about their grazing.

So Mary has a colony near her home that she visits regularly and has seen the family grow and change (like us). It’s lovely to read as someone discovers them and their habits. I remember, almost with the wispy magic of childhood, the feeling of filming our beavers in the beginning – before the drama and the November 7th meeting and the media and Worth A Dam. In those days I always stood at the Escobar bridge to film  with my sleepy old dog Caly laying on the sidewalk beside me. Somehow the primary dam seemed impossibly far away, like a dreamscape, and the creek seemed mystically to go on forever, the old lodge the center of all beaver activity.

In the next few weeks, the new kits will be shyly swimming in Bolin Creek. As tiny kits, they are vulnerable to predation by coyotes, foxes and great horned owls, so they are likely to dive underwater at any moment. It will be a joy to follow a fourth generation of this peaceful family. With all that they offer, from balancing stream ecology to providing homes for wildlife, it is no surprise that Native Americans called the beaver “the sacred center.”

Thanks for the lovely read Mary, and we want a follow-up article to learn how everyone’s getting along. You recalled some magical days, and here’s a glimpse of what it was like back then.  This was filmed on June 23rd, 2007, (the moring we were leaving for  a week of camping in the sierras), with my old camera and old computer and the most basic windows movie maker. The kit is grown and dispersed, the tree where the owls nested is long since shaved and empty of owls, but this is still magic to me.