There have been so many slow beaver new days that I’m delighted to say today is BURSTING with beaver stories. Finally! And they hit all the right notes, from serious, to endearing to comical. Have I told you lately that I love you Google? Let’s start with this great piece about Torrey Ritter’s work.
Eager beavers: Biologists study what drives big rodents to colonize
It was looking for answers to the questions of how beavers select habitat, and what humans might do to encourage them to colonize, that earned Torrey Ritter his master’s degree from Montana State University last year. Now a nongame biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Ritter and others radio-tagged 55 beavers in southwest Montana to track their movements and learn more about what appeals to the animals when they search for new habitat.
“There were two main components: following them through the dispersal process, looking at new habitats they want, but also the trials and tribulations it takes to start a new colony,” he said. “There’s significant interest in using beavers in (wetland) restoration, establishing them in areas they’ve not been in, and we wanted to figure out how they select new sites in the wild.”
How do they pick a homeland? I’m curious! I mean how did our beavers decide to settle in brackish water next to a train, traffic and garbage trucks. I’d love to know.
While beavers removing trees and causing flooding may damage infrastructure in some cases, they play the role of habitat creators for a variety of wildlife while also altering streams to provide water storage and recharge groundwater.
“We were doing beaver surveys … and I started to realize there’s a huge number of species we were only seeing in beaver habitat,” Ritter said, which included varieties of waterfowl, songbirds, shore birds and amphibians. “They really create a diverse habitat and (create) all those little ecological niches.”
You’re kidding! You mean beavers make habitat for species that only congregate in beaver habitat? And so killing beavers is like killing all those other species too? It’s almost like you’re saying beaver lives matter. That’s incredible!
“There’s a lot of interest, and people’s first reaction is to start moving beaver everywhere, and that’s not the solution,” Inman said. “If the willows aren’t there, they’re going to move, and if the structures aren’t there to prevent flooding they’re likely to get removed. So the benefits that beaver can provide is not a matter of moving beaver, it’s a matter of preparing the habitat to have beaver come naturally.”
Ritter and others found through the research that when beavers do migrate from their home range they prefer to take up residence in areas already modified by beavers. In areas beavers have not previously occupied, building artificial structures such as lodges or dams can keep beavers from quickly leaving the area.
So they want to settle in suitable habitat. That’s a shocker! And when they see some other beaver has settled there they decide its suitable. Another shocker. Hmmm that gives me an idea, maybe we should build a beaver dam in Alhambra Creek right by a nice bridge. Do you think the mayor would mind?
The longest dispersal in the southwest Montana study was 27 miles while one of the tracked beavers made nearly 15-mile nightly journeys.
“The main takeaways are that beavers are really good at dispersing and finding habitat to occupy, and areas without beavers may not indicate there are not enough beavers but that habitat may not be readily available,” Ritter said
Which is why they move into Martinez. Excellent. Remind me to go hang an ‘occupant wanted sign” downtown, will you?
And now, at LONG LAST, you all knew this was coming.
The hilarious, extremely convincing proposal to make a beaver emoji.
You might not realize it, but there is a whole host of texting scenarios in which you might require a beaver emoji. A text to your friends in Canada, for example, to express your mutual admiration for their national animal. Or an invite to a fellow enthusiast of nocturnal semi-aquatic mammals to rendezvous at the nearest state park. (Alas, there is no dam emoji.) Or—why not?—a euphemistic missive to a consenting fellow sexter. Beaver emojis: probably very useful!
You’re kidding. There’s been NO beaver emoji all this time? What on earth do all you people text about?
If any of those examples apply to you, you’re in luck. Come October, the beaver emoji will be among this year’s class of new emojis, though it may take a whole year after that for the bucktoothed rodent to hit your phone. The proposal to include the beaver emoji comes thanks to a cadre of Canadians, lesbians, semi-aquatic mammal enthusiasts, and emoji specialists who wrote an extremely convincing and rather hilarious proposal, which in March was submitted to the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit responsible for standardizing text and emoji across devices.
Just how much would you like to read that convincing and rather hilarious proposal? I dare say rather a lot. The important thing is that the beaver emoji is on its way. Coming soon to a phone near you.
