Time for an awesome letter to the editor from our friend author Judith K. Berg, You might remember she is the author of Otter Spirit and Conversations with a beaver and donated copies to our last silent auction. This was published in the Register-Guard in Eugene Oregon.
Well well well, she reads he national geographic too!
Smokey Beaver?
As devastating fires sweep across the American West, we thank firefighters for their diligent work. However, among them emerges an unsung non-human firefighter to which we also pay tribute — the American beaver.
Science, reflected in natural history, is on the move. A recent, timely publication by Emily Fairfax, in Ecological Applications, explains how our family-oriented ecosystem engineer adds another attribute to its vast repertoire. Fairfax’s results show that beavers’ canal-digging, dam-building and pond-creating endeavors irrigate extensive stream corridors, which, in turn, create fireproof refuges for plants and animals. In some cases, their engineered landscapes can even stop fires in their tracks. Wow!
Judith explained once that she was amazed how rich beaver habitat was and how much we owe them for their many good works. I couldn’t agree more, and am glad she published this letter locally. Maybe we all should be doing that.
With climate change upon us, the future holds more wildfire devastation. However, our willing beavers present us with a natural-based solution in areas where they‘ve developed enhanced waterways.
Yet humans continue to kill this special species to solve a few flood-control issues caused by beaver behaviors, even though there are proven non-lethal flood-prevention devices, such as “Beaver Deceivers,” that can be used.
Science continues to discover the many contributions bestowed on planet Earth by beavers. Now, we can add firefighting! Let’s thank them for that.
Oh my goodness. Let’s follow her lead and publish something similar in Napa and Sonoma and Santa Clara and LA. We are going to need a beaver army to fight this.
Looking for more accomplishments? How about carving the oldest wood idol in the world? Circa 11,000 it has held up to the test of time. On display in a museum in western siberia:
Beaver’s teeth ‘used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world’
Dating back 11,000 years – with a coded message left by ancient man from the Mesolithic Age – the Shigir Idol is almost three times as old as the Egyptian pyramids.
New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact.
Originally dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in the Ural Mountains in 1890, the remarkable seven-faced Idol is now on display in a glass sarcophagus in a museum in Yekaterinburg.
The faces were ‘the last to be carved because apart from chisels, some very interesting tools – made of halves of beaver lower jaws – were used’.
It’s not that remote of a history, because local tribes in Brentwood and Antioch were burried with beaver mandibles. Beavers change things. Its what they do.
This dropped yesterday and is my new favorite thing in the world.
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