The ‘beaver brand’ is one that inspires customer loyalty, or at least enduring name recognition. Just look at the excitement this morning along the Rogue River in Michigan.
Are There Beavers Living in Booth Park?
One reader was wondering that very thing, tweeting a picture of what appears to be a beaver dam along the wood chip trail in Birmingham’s Booth Park.
According to the photographer, resident Mary Ellen Johnson, the photo was snapped this weekend during a walk along the trail. Her dog, she said, even used the collection of sticks, leaves and mud to cross the Rouge River as it runs through that section of Booth Park.
Beavers in the Rouge River have been top of mind for many area naturalists recently. In the spring newsletter for the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Environmental Interpretative Center (EIC), the EIC’s Rich Simek writes that he snapped a picture of a beaver swimming in the Rouge River in Dearborn in July 2012.
I love love love the fact that cities who polluted their water for years and years (in 1969 it even caught fire) get excited when they think they see beavers because it means things are getting better. (Which it does.) In a nano span of a hair’s breadth they will rapidly reach the tipping point where they start to panic that beavers are going to flood everything and ruin the roads and eat all those trees they planted. So enjoy it while you can, Birmingham.
Sadly, I don’t see a beaver dam in that photo, and none of the logs appear chewed, BUT if there isn’t a dam yet, there will be one day, so they might as well use all this public interest to educate the community about living with beavers. Am I right?
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Need more proof that beavers bring loyal fans? How about this letter to the editor after the article that ran earlier this week in Wyoming. If you can read through the local color its a pretty nice reminder that folks seem to like beavers – at least more than they like city officials.
Leave the beaver alone
I’m a proud flag-flying, dues-paying member of the LTB (Leave The Beaver)…
The city has decided to eradicate (relocate) a beaver in a waterway within the city to prevent floods. Aside from the fact it rarely, if ever, rains here anyway, we apparently need flood control. The beaver must go say the city fathers, but we argue the beaver has some overlooked benefits. It is in a beaver’s nature to build a dam which creates a pond. The pond could be utilized to eliminate the need for a fancy new swimming pool in the proposed new high school. (Didn’t we just build a fancy new swimming pool a few years ago?) This would save the taxpayers some $10 million plus. The students could use the pond as an outdoor lab to study the beaver going about his/her work. This would obviate the need for a lab in the new Taj Mahal, I mean to say “school,” saving taxpayers $1.75 million. A track could be built around the pond and a couple of bleachers installed, both to watch track meets and the beaver. Private money could build the concession stands, saving another $2.8 million. Of course, all the figures are just cost estimates so the saving produced by the beaver could be much greater. Problems solved all thanks to the humble beaver.
Thanks Wyatt! Of course I would have gone with raising the water table and increasing fish and game populations. But, hey, a beaver pond swimming pool is good too. I guess. Beaver festival Laramie anyone?
