Price Edward Island looms large in my mind for exactly two reasons. The first because it was home of the very famous fictitious town of Avonlea where Lucy Maud Montgomery set the story of her delightful heroine “Anne of Avonlea” in 1908. The beloved book has been translated into 36 languages and sold over 50 million copies, and is foremost among the things every slightly imaginative child reads in her early years.
The second thing I learned about P.E.I. is that it has a notoriously complicated relationship with beavers – even to the point of insisting at one time that they weren’t native to the island. Their intolerance and ignorance of beavers is among one of the first things I ever came to learn on this twisted journey. Like you, I had once thought they were impervious to the things that other parts of Canada had learned in regards to their value.
Mark today on the calendar because that might not be true any more.
11 things you always wanted to know about beavers on P.E.I.
Beavers have been in the news on P.E.I. recently — some have been busy builders in Bedeque and another was a visible victim of illness in the P.E.I. National Park.
“Beavers are almost ubiquitous, and virtually every watershed in the province would have some presence of beavers,” says Garry Gregory, a P.E.I. wildlife biologist with Forests, Fish and Wildlife who agreed to share his extensive knowledge of beavers.
Did you catch that? Not only do beavers belong here, but they belong practically everywhere! Garry Gregory is that remarkable biologist that knows his beavers. In fact, of the 11 facts he gives the paper only ONE of them is obviously incorrect. (After 11 years of reading beaver misinformation I am definitely grading on a curve – he gets an A in my book.”. Fact #7 is my personal favorite.
“If a beaver is present in a wetland, it’s not hard to tell,” Gregory said.
Beavers can’t help their natural instinct to build dams to protect themselves, Gregory said. They also build dams in order to flood land.
“A beaver is a bit clumsy on land, but if it can swim to its food, then it’s much more readily available to him,” Gregory explained. “So he’ll flood a large area to create a large surface area of pond.”
Not only do beavers want their ponds to be wide, they also want them deep, Gregory said. Since they do not hibernate, they need water to be deep enough that the water doesn’t freeze all the way to the bottom.
While dams and flooding can be a nuisance, the positive part of the beaver’s natural industry is that dams create a lot of wetland habitat for species such as songbirds and bats.
“So they’re incredibly important landscape architects,” said Gregory. “Sometimes it’s a bit overlooked, their importance.”
I also like how the article has several photos and NOT ONE of them is a nutria or muskrat or prairie dog! Practically unheard of!
His one mistaken fact is about how long beavers can hold their breath – he says only 4-5 minutes which is true for the otter but not for the beaver which can, as you know, hold its breath three times longer. I’m okay with that mistake because if people think they need to be MORE careful about letting beavers breathe that’s cool with me. (I was way more upset by the snapple lid that once upon a time said they could hold their breath for 45 minutes! Sheesh! Lawsuit waiting to happen!)
Welcome to the beaver defenders club, Garry. We are so glad to have you! As Anne herself one wisely noted:
Looks like yesterday’s review helped Ben Golfarb’s book a bit on the old Amazon-meter, which is excellent for beavers. I also learned that he will be interviewed on National Geographic Books in July, now we just need him to get some June gigs so we can promote the festival a bit!
Terry Ball, director of streets and stormwater for city of Tulsa, knows about beavers dispersing and building new homes. It picks up in the spring, but keeping tabs on beaver construction is actually a year-round chore, he said.
Some years ago, during a canoe trip down the Dumoine River in Quebec, I saw a piece of wood floating in the water. It had been worked by beavers, and, stripped clean, looked lovely. I picked it up and brought it along — across several portages. This was the beginning of what I call my collection of “beaver sculptures.” It has since grown to include well over 100 pieces.
The bark is partly or wholly removed, which renders the wood either clean beige (sometimes close to white) or else interspersed with clusters of bark that can be brown, black, and occasionally red.
have a snobby friend who insists that this is not art. “Okay,” I reply, “then it is craft.” That is the difference between beaver sculptures and driftwood: both can be lovely, but only one has been worked by skilled craft, not just by nature and time. It’s amazing how many different shapes can come from these mammals, simply engaged in gathering food and building structures.
I personally believe that some of these sculptures merit display. I check every day for an email from the New York Museum of Modern Art begging me to exhibit them. Otherwise, the exhibit belongs in a museum of nature. In the meantime, 35 of them are displayed in the country house: on the walls, the floor, the fireplace, hanging from the ceiling — wherever.
When I was a teenager my father was the oversight supervisor for the first major windmill built in Northern California. It was a towering structure with a single blade longer than a football field. It stood atop a barren hill in Cordelia where the wind was sometimes so strong it could hold you upright if you leaned out into it. Standing under it was like being below a giant scythe at harvest that swept by again and again just missing you every time. Years after it was built my father loved to bring guests to its strange wonder, proud of his role in its launch. I remember one of the things I was most struck by at that time was learning that PGE had to hire biologists to identify any birds that were killed by that giant blade and report them. I remember thinking that counting dead birds was a very strange way to make a living.
Think about that a moment. Since the end of WWI we have agreed with many other countries that killing birds was a big deal. MBTA has enjoyed such broad support in so many regions of the world that I admit even I was surprised by this. (I’ve been known to watch jealously as birders made friends with politicians because of the luxuries afforded by that standard.) Saving birds is usually much easier than saving beavers. Both sides of the aisle have often acted like a friend to birds. I guess birds don’t build dams and they usually fly somewhere else before they get too annoying. Audubon has never been the Sierra Club – nor had to be. They are polite and mind their manners working with industry and big business to help winged creatures they care about. 
Announcing that business has a permanent ‘open season’ on birds is a huge deal for birds AND humans. I have to say I’m curious how this will affect the ‘polite’ birders of the world. Maybe they’ll get a little more noisy and start to sound more like the people who protect beavers or coyotes.
Beavers are a critical asset in Washington, assuring that healthy riparian zones are maintained, especially in the dry climate east of the Cascades. Beaver dams and ponds support native vegetation and wetlands along streams, trap sediment, recharge groundwater, and improve water quality. Over the last two centuries, these benefits have been lost in many watersheds, following human development, beaver removal, channel deepening, and other impacts. 
Where beaver ponds had once provided grade control and covered large areas of the floodplain, the now-drier soils began to favor invasive plant species. The understory is now dominated by reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea) and Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense), further suppressing growth of native sedge and forb species. The only remaining native riparian species still easily found in the project area is gray alder (Alnus incana), with a few isolated willow (Salix spp.) plants.
