Because the beaver isn't just an animal; it's an ecosystem!

Category: Beavers and Ice


The first day of any beaver conference I attended I always just hummed all over with a sense of comfort and well-being  to be surrounded by smarter people than I who knew why beavers mattered and could carry the message forward. On the morning of the second day I would feel a little like I had just joined a really important ‘club’ and together we were going to make a difference.

But by the afternoon of the second day I was invariably getting frustrated by people who looked at beavers as a “Means to an End“. These biologists and hydrologists valued the service of beavers – not the animals themselves. They surely hadn’t spent 100 mornings alone with them over a decade and learned how they explored, talked, argued and played.

There are few actors in this drama that understand that aspect of how I came to care about beavers. So I was delighted to come across this photo yesterday, which I think tells the beaver drama story better than any data ever could.

Beaver Breaking through the Ice: Edward Episcipo

I know we all think anthropormorphism is a thing to be avoided, but you truly cannot avoid attributing the feeling of PROUD to that amiably hard-working beaver who emerged from the dark frozen world by skill of his claws and teeth. For days and months he has sat alone in the dark with his family, nothing to do but groom and nothing to eat but old gnawed twigs. And now he’s FREE!

This photo was inexplicably the second prize winner of the recent Chesapeake Bay Foundation contest for 2018. The first prize went to a paddle boarder shot which I guess is explained by the fact that they are  more interested in humans using their waters than beavers.

But I love this photo as I have loved no others. I feel that it explains in a single wordless image what the hell I have been doing with my life since 2007. Beavers are mellow even when they do amazingly difficult things. Even when they face challenges like busting through the ice ceiling or living in an urban creek. They work cheerfully to get what they need and they don’t give up until it’s clearly time, and then they just move on to some other effort.

Beavers are cool.

Which brings us to this second photo today posted in the humbly-named periodical “Vancouver is Awesome”.

Disoriented beaver gets washed up onto B.C. bridge deck amidst flooding

Road superintendent Jay Shumaker sees a lot of interesting stuff on the job for VSA Highway Maintenance, and he shared a story with us from yesterday over the phone.

It happened last night around 7:30 while he and his crew were monitoring a bridge about 10 kilometres west of Merritt, where you’ve likely heard there’s been flooding.

Out of nowhere, a large beaver got “tossed up onto the bridge deck” after floating from somewhere upstream.

The creature looked disoriented and began walking around in circles, trying to figure out what had just happened to it.Eventually it found its way over a berm the crew had put into place and back to the edge of the creek, where it jumped into the water and continued to get hauled downstream.

While people are being asked to evacuate by the government as water levels rise, the beavers also seem to be getting displaced – albeit a little more aggressively – by Mother Nature.

Why did the beaver cross the bridge?

To get to the other side, of course.. Because even when it’s flooding and you get thrown onto the cement you just keep going. That’s just what beavers do.


Salmon-arm British Columbia is located above washington state about midway between Vancouvery and Calgary. It is far enough north that it should know be well able to tell the difference between the national animal and an invasive rodent. But I guess not.

Beavers and balloons blamed for power outages in 2017

BC Hydro compiles a list of most memorable outages of last year

From beavers to balloons, to ships — BC Hydro is recounting the most memorable causes of power outages in 2017. Crews responded to more than 17,800 outages last years with wildfires in the Central and Southern Interior topping the list.

  • A squirrel chewed through a piece of electrical equipment causing it to catch fire and 180 customers in Burnaby – including a local cheese factory – to lose power.
  • Loose birthday party balloons contacted power lines and caused an outage to 800 in downtown Vancouver on a Friday evening.
  • A beaver gnawed a tree that fell on a power line, causing the community of Hixon in Northern B.C. to lose power.

If you don’t know what the animal LOOKS like, how can you possibly know it was responsible for the crime?


Brittany Crossman

Speaking of what beavers look like, there are some nice wintry beaver photos this morning. This one was uploaded to the Canadian Geographic Photo Club by Brittany Crossman from Riverside Canada and shows a pair of beavers in an icy pond.

The second is from our friends Phil Price and Julie Lamont who are vacationing in wintry yellowstone because they are hardy folks and that’s the kind of thing they do. They were excited to find this on an exploration yesterday,

First beaver sighting ever in Yellowstone – and in winter, no less. Clipped willow branches and drag marks on the snow and ice led us to this beaver’s lodge – and as we scanned the area at evening, in hopes of a glimpse, there he was, at the edge of the water. Nature’s best engineers; the Army Corps could learn a lesson or two…

I asked if Phil if he thought this was a hole  they made and maintained and he answered

“This section of river has several open leads that I think are naturally open in the unseasonably warm weather here right now (around 30 daytime, 10 at night… Both are about 20 degrees warmer than normal). Maybe the beaver would have to work to keep them open in normal weather, but not right now.”

Beaver in Yellostone: Phil Price

As a special historic treat, here’s his lovely and well-spoken wife Julia at our very first beaver festival in a video letter to the mayor.


It’s amazing how beavers can stroll blithely along the countryside, nibbling things and minding their own business and suddenly make an otherwise perfectly sane institution lose its frickin’ mind. I mean suddenly all the normally important distinctions between cause and effect go RIGHT out the window, and researchers are left with gibberish.

Case in point? This mornings NYT

Beavers Emerge as Agents of Arctic Destruction

Even as climate change shrinks some populations of arctic animals like polar bears and caribou, beavers may be taking advantage of warming temperatures to expand their range. But as the beavers head north, their very presence may worsen the effects of climate change.

The issue isn’t just that the beavers are moving into a new environment — it’s that they’re gentrifying it.

Take the dams they build on rivers and streams to slow the flow of water and create the pools in which they construct their dens. In other habitats, where the dams help filter pollutants from water and mitigate the effects of droughts and floods, they are generally seen as a net benefit. But in the tundra, the vast treeless region in the Far North, beaver behavior creates new water channels that can thaw the permanently frozen ground, or permafrost.

“When you start flooding areas with permafrost you immediately trigger permafrost degradation,” said Ken Tape, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who has researched the beavers. “You start thawing the frozen ground that’s holding the soil together, and that water and soil and other things are washed away.”

What remains is a pitted landscape, with boggy depressions, that directs warmer water onto the permafrost, leading to further thawing. As permafrost thaws it releases carbon dioxide and methane, which in turn contributes to global warming and helps increase the speed that the Arctic, which is already warming faster than the rest of the planet, defrosts. Worldwide, permafrost is estimated to contain twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.

Oh sure. It’s the beavers. Blame them for this melting permafrost and our collapsing polar bears. Because it surely can’t be our fault for destroying the planet with carbon and passing a tax bill that allows drilling in ANWAR yesterday.

Hey, wait a  minute. Where is ANWAR anyway?

 

Gosh’ I bet it’s harder to drive all those rigging trucks across marshy unfrozen land, You better kill all the beavers you see right away. And just to make sure you don’t catch any flack for it, say you’re doing it to prevent release of green house gasses See if you can make NYT do a story on it. They’ll saying anything bad about beavers.

Yeahhh….that’s the ticket.

A mere 4 months ago the alzheimer-plagued gray lady released a very helpful melting permafrost interactive. And beavers weren’t even to blame. Go figure.

Alaska’s permafrost, shown here in 2010, is no longer permanent. It is starting to thaw.

YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.

But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.

Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.

That was then this is now, I guess. The story today did release some beautiful satellite maps showing the changes they were blaming on beavers. The maps start with 1950 and progress to 2012. It looks to me like an ad campaign promoting how valuable they are on the landscape.

But I’m told I’m quirky.

The moral of this story that the new york times missed? Here’s my takeaway. If you’re going to have climate change anyway (and we are) you are WAY BETTER OFF if you have it with beavers. Period.

“Beavers are these agents of disturbance that come from outside of the ecosystem and impose their construction, their activities on this landscape,” said Dr. Tape. “Probably the best analog for beavers in the Arctic are mankind.”


Mymymy, yesterday was a wonderkin for beavers. The news just kept coming all day from a great article on Buzzfeed to a podcast about visiting beavers to the SINGLE best video moment I have ever seen.  (This from acclaimed photographer Jim Brandenburg and unrelated to the UK news but believe me when I say you have to watch it.)

This Is Why Beavers Being Reintroduced In Britain Is A Good And Important Thing

And in 2011, a small group was introduced in a fenced-off part of west Devon. Then, in 2015, some more were let loose in the River Otter, also Devon, as part of a five-year trial. And, basically, it’s been a huge success! Beavers create natural wetlands, improve local wildlife, probably reduce the risk of flooding, and improve water quality.

That’s because in small streams, they create dams, which in turn create ponds. (Eurasian beavers only do this in smaller streams, so that they have deep water. In bigger rivers, they don’t need to. North American beavers, which live in the dams themselves rather than holes in the riverbank, create dams in much bigger rivers.) They also dig channels and sluices to connect ponds and generally manage the waterways.

“A beaver is what is called a keystone species,” George Monbiot, the writer, environmentalist and “rewilding” advocate, told BuzzFeed News. “An animal that has a far bigger impact on its environment than its numbers alone would suggest. And the impact of beavers on other wildlife is entirely positive.

Ahhh the beaver defenders of the UK have SUCH a deep bench! With players like Monbiot and entire wildlife trusts to defend them. I honestly can’t decide whether I’m more envious or impressed!

A spokesperson for the Devon Wildlife Trust told BuzzFeed News that while it was too soon to have strong evidence from the River Otter trial, the enclosed west Devon experience was very positive. “You can literally see the improvements in water quality,” he said. “A bottle of water from upstream is brown; from downstream, filtered through the dams, it’s clear.”

And they’ve created a network of dams and ponds, which retains water in heavy rain and releases it gradually. “It’s a much greater capacity to store water,” said the spokesperson, “so it should reduce flooding downstream.”

And in the wetland areas that the beavers have created, they’ve seen “a big increase in aquatic invertebrates, a 1,000% increase in frogspawn, which is great for things that eat frogspawn. The height of vegetation has increased. The number of bat species has increased because there are loads more insects for them to feed on.”

And people really like having beavers in their local area. They’re just really cool, big, exciting animals, and you don’t see many like them in Britain.

Me too! I like having them around too! Let’s face it: beavers ARE cool. It says it right there in Buzzfeed so it must be true. If this aren’t hasn’t convinced you of the real excitement that these flat-tailed wonders create, listen to this podcast from Scotland Outside where the announcer actually gets to visit for himself.

It’s a delightful bit of banter, but if you don’t have time for the full discussion (which touches on pargeting historic homes and the invasion of non-native pink salmon), go straight to the beaver parts at 26.12 and 48.00 for the actual sighting. I’m thinking you’ll get the hang of the Scottish brogue after you listen for a bit. Enjoy!

Wasn’t that a delight? I love listening to people discover how very magical it can be to wait in the stillness for a glimpse of beavers. Because I spent so much time doing just that and it changed my life forever.

And if all those wonders aren’t wonderful enough, hold onto your hats and your very socks because THIS video from National Geographic famed Jim Brandenburg will blow you away. Every single one of the 60 seconds is breathtakingly beautiful, but the last five will warm the cockles of your heart for the next three months to come.

Trust me.


Well yesterday was fun, with little messages of encouragement for our 10th year  from folks around the globe. Now it’s time to get back to work. You know what they say, before anniversaries “Chop  wood, carry water“, and after anniversaries”Chop wood carry water“. Or something like that.

Here are two articles that deserve our attention. I’ll start with the grating one first. Why is it every article written about Peter Busher annoys me more than it interests me? Over the years I have come to think he basically knows his beavers, but he honestly doesn’t seem to like them very much.

The Secret Sex Lives of Beavers

The population boom can raise alarms in communities. Beavers are often viewed as a nuisance, causing millions of dollars in damage each year by chewing fences, trees, and decks. They build dams, which leads to flooding of homes, crops, and railroads.

But some behaviors can be beneficial, says Peter Busher, a College of General Studies professor of natural sciences and mathematics and chair of the division. Beaver dam building expands wetlands, whose functions include filtering toxins from water, supporting biodiversity, and mitigating floods.

Peter Busher poses with beaver captured for analysis

Busher has been studying beavers for four decades and was the first person to track the animals by tagging them with radio transmitters. He does his research in the Quabbin Reservation in Central Massachusetts, where 150 to 300 beavers con­stitute the nation’s longest-studied population, says Busher. Hoping to learn how humans can better coexist with beaver populations, he examines mating habits, birthrates, group structure, and how the animals migrate from one area to another. His findings could inform deci­sions about how communities respond to beaver activity and manage the animal’s population, both in Massachusetts and across the country.

Although beavers are among only 3 percent of mammals that are socially monogamous, raising their young exclusively with one partner, researchers do not know much about their pairing behavior. Do the parents also mate with other beavers and raise a mixed brood, or are they sexually exclusive? Busher wants to find out. He suspects that genetically monogamous beaver populations—those that tend to mate with one partner—increase more slowly and may stay in an area longer. If one of these populations were removed because of nuisance activity, he says, the area would likely be free of beavers for a while. But if the population were more promiscuous, new beavers could move into the area at any time; communities would then need to develop a long-term animal removal plan.

Promiscuous beavers? Honestly? Is that honestly what you think? Who thinks like that? Have you looked at every OTHER variable in their habitat that might differ between various beavers to rule out that food availability, or population, or stream gradient and prove that these it doesn’t influence which beaver are promiscuous and which aren’t? I’m sure, as a scientist, you would do ALL THAT before LEAPING to the assumption that DNA is responsible. I mean this is almost like race research.

How much trouble would you be in if you were posing that certain ethnicitys were more promiscuous?

The best research I have read on the topic described beavers as “opportunistic monogomists” – meaning if the right conditions happened to arise they would take advantage of them and mate outside the pair bond, and if they never arose it would be mostly okay with it and get on with the business of taking care of the family. I remember being amused when Rickipedia commented that this was pretty much the same for most male humans.

But Dr. Busher is trying to prove that it’s a beavers genes that make him roam. So that those prolific beavers we can kill more, and the faithful homebodies we can work with.

Are you sure you teach in Massachusetts? Because this theory is starting to sound positively republican to me!


The article that really interested me today comes from the irreplaceable George Monbiot and discusses the use of better language about ecology to capture public interest. Rusty of Napa sent it my way and I’m glad he did.

Forget ‘the environment’: we need new words to convey life’s wonders

If Moses had promised the Israelites a land flowing with mammary secretions and insect vomit, would they have followed him into Canaan? Though this means milk and honey, I doubt it would have inspired them.

So why do we use such language to describe the natural wonders of the world? There are examples everywhere, but I will illustrate the problem with a few from the UK. On land, places in which nature is protected are called “sites of special scientific interest”. At sea, they are labelled “no-take zones” or “reference areas”. Had you set out to estrange people from the living world, you could scarcely have done better.

The catastrophic failure by ecologists to listen to what cognitive linguists and social psychologists have been telling them has led to the worst framing of all: “natural capital”. This term informs us that nature is subordinate to the human economy, and loses its value when it cannot be measured by money. It leads almost inexorably to the claim made by the government agency Natural England: “The critical role of a properly functioning natural environment is delivering economic prosperity.”

I’m fully on board with the need to use language that enlivens and engages us rather than regulates our attention. But sometimes we are talking to politicians or biologists and need to convince them, and we think that kind of language carries more sway? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the only thing that matters to decision makers is what we celebrated yesterday: public pressure and votes. So engaging the public is more important than sounding objective.

This is my FAVORITE part.

On Sunday evening, I went to see the beavers that have begun to repopulate the river Otter in Devon. I joined the people quietly processing up the bank to their lodge. The friend I walked with commented: “It’s like a pilgrimage, isn’t it?” When we arrived at the beaver lodge, we found a crowd standing in total silence under the trees. When first a kingfisher appeared, then a beaver, you could read the enchantment and delight in every face.

Our awe of nature, and the silence we must observe when we watch wild animals, hints, I believe, at the origins of religion.

Something about that sentence feels very, very true for this woman who spent so many years in the company of beavers. (Not that we were silent the whole time.) Our beavers had train whistles and garbage trucks to get used to, and could handle a little talking. But there was definitely awed silence at times. Like when kits emerged or when an uncommon behavior was scene.

And it sure felt like the very best parts of church to me.

if we called protected areas “places of natural wonder”, we would not only speak to people’s love of nature, but also establish an aspiration that conveys what they ought to be. Let’s stop using the word environment, and use terms such as “living planet” and “natural world” instead, as they allow us to form a picture of what we are describing. Let’s abandon the term climate change and start saying “climate breakdown”. Instead of extinction, let’s adopt the word promoted by the lawyer Polly Higgins: ecocide.

We are blessed with a wealth of nature and a wealth of language. Let us bring them together and use one to defend the other.

Thank you, George for another beautiful column. I’m envious of the people who got to walk alongside you on the way to see those special Devon beavers. We very rarely feel reverence for what we consume or eliminate as inconvenient. But I have seen it time again on children’s faces watching our beavers.

Maybe its reverence, more than science, that protects nature.

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