Credit: UT Jackson School of Geosciences/ National Center for Health Statistics/ USDA Forest Service.
A new species of ancient beaver that was rediscovered by researchers in The University of Texas at Austin’s fossil collections has been named after Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of popular travel centers known for its cartoon beaver mascot. The beaver is called Anchitheriomys buceei, or “A. buceei” for short. Steve May, a research associate at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, said that the beaver’s Texas connection and a chance encounter with a Buc-ee’s billboard are what inspired the name.
May is the lead author of the paper that describes A. buceei, along with another, much smaller, species of fossil beaver. Published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, the paper provides an overview of beaver occurrences along the Texas Gulf Coast from 15 million to 22 million years ago based on bones and archival records in the UT collections.
While driving down a highway in 2020, May spotted a Buc-ee’s billboard that said “This is Beaver Country.” The phrase brought to mind the Texas beaver fossils he had been studying at UT’s Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, it is beaver country, and it has been for millions of years,'” May said.
A. buceei lived in Texas about 15 million years ago. To the casual observer, it probably wouldn’t have looked much different from beavers living in Texas today, according to study co-author Matthew Brown, the director of the Jackson School’s vertebrate paleontology collections. However, one key difference is size. A. buceei was bigger—about 30% larger than modern beavers—though still much smaller than the bear-size beavers that lived in North America during the last Ice Age.
The UT collections includes A. buceei fossils from six Texas sites. But most of what researchers know about the new fossil beaver comes from a unique partial skull from Burkeville, Texas. The fossil is a fusion of bone and brain cast that was created when sediment naturally seeped into the beaver’s brain cavity eons ago, creating a rock replica of the brain as the specimen fossilized.
See the rest of the article. And there is another bit of news on PHYS-ORG that might lessen concerns about the greenhouse gas produced in wetlands.
Annual mean near-surface air temperature response to methane, decomposed into (a) longwave and shortwave effects; (b) longwave effects only; and (c) shortwave effects only. Credit: Robert Allen/UCR
Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat. Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.
“A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because the blanket inhibits your body’s ability to send its heat into the air. This is the same concept,” explained Robert Allen, UCR assistant professor of Earth sciences.
In addition to absorbing longwave energy, it turns out methane also absorbs incoming energy from the sun, known as shortwave energy. “This should warm the planet,” said Allen, who led the research project. “But counterintuitively, the shortwave absorption encourages changes in clouds that have a slight cooling effect.”
This effect is detailed in the journal Nature Geoscience, alongside a second finding that the research team did not fully expect. Though methane generally increases the amount of precipitation, accounting for the absorption of shortwave energy suppresses that increase by 60%.
Both types of energy—longwave (from Earth) and shortwave (from sun)—escape from the atmosphere more than they are absorbed into it. The atmosphere needs compensation for the escaped energy, which it gets from heat created as water vapor condenses into rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
“Essentially, precipitation acts as a heat source, making sure the atmosphere maintains a balance of energy,” said study co-author Ryan Kramer, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Methane changes this equation. By holding on to energy from the sun, methane is introducing heat the atmosphere no longer needs to get from precipitation.
Additionally, methane shortwave absorption decreases the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface. This in turn reduces the amount of water that evaporates. Generally, precipitation and evaporation are equal, so a decrease in evaporation leads to a decrease in precipitation.
“This has implications for understanding in more detail how methane and perhaps other greenhouses gases can impact the climate system,” Allen said. “Shortwave absorption softens the overall warming and rain-increasing effects but does not eradicate them at all.”
. . .
Scientific interest in methane has increased in recent years as levels of emissions have increased. Much comes from industrial sources, as well as from agricultural activities and landfill. Methane emissions are also likely to increase as frozen ground underlying the Arctic begins to thaw.
Regardless of our contribution to the atmosphere, as the first article shows, we beaver folks have been at this for a very long time. It’s your recent behavior that’s causing the problems! Check out the report.
Are you looking for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education, storm water management and a role model?
I offer you the beaver!
Within sight of the lights of Owen Field lies a beaver’s dam. What a learning opportunity for Norman’s children.
You want more engineers? I can’t think of a better teacher than a beaver. They are one of the smartest animals we know. Construction management is no problem for them. They are the original “design and build” construction company.
You want a role model?
Beavers mate for life and are fiercely loyal to their families along with being very protective. “Tail slapping” against the water’s surface is an indication to their family that danger is approaching.
You want a hard worker?
“Busy as a beaver” as the old saying goes. A harder worker hasn’t been made. They start early and finish late.
A grand park along the Canadian River with a nature center and an outdoor classroom would give students a unique learning environment.
So how does a beaver build a dam?
Phase 1: They drop trees in a stream resulting in the water slowing down.
Phase 2: Then they gather branches, sticks and rocks in their mouths and swim out to the felled trees. Using their front paws, they start plugging holes constructing a dam that slows the flow of the stream. It creates a pond behind the dam.
They build their houses, called lodges, in the water. The dams create ponds that slow the water down (this is the central theme of todays column #payattention) so it doesn’t wash away their house. Good idea, eager beaver.
Here’s another good idea of the beaver. They build their lodges with underwater entrances. Predators have a tougher time getting to them this way i.e., they have to hold their breath and swim underwater. There aren’t many beaver predators that are snorkelers. I can only think of one. Us!
Beavers are always thinking ahead.
They manipulate their environment in order to survive. Again, very cleaver eager beaver.
Beavers love willow branches and will store them at the bottom of their pond for winter eating. Beavers don’t want to venture far in the winter to gather food since they are targets for all those hungry predators.
Beavers are herbivores, meaning they only eat plants.
Beavers are the original stormwater engineers. Shawn O’Leary, Norman’s public works director, gave a lecture once about stormwater. He said, “the number one principle to remember about stormwater/rain runoff management is — SLOW IT DOWN.” Fast water erodes the land, floods our streets and muddies our drinking water.
Beavers were designed for stormwater management. They are nature’s stormwater mitigator. Beaver dams are like speed bumps in creeks. They improve water quality by allowing pollutants to settle purifying dirty runoff water.
Beaver ponds also lessen the damage from droughts. They hold water for thirsty animals to drink. They are a natural filtration system, slowing down the water as it moves down stream.
Beaver dams create wetlands that are critical habitats for thousands of other species of animals. Birds, amphibians, fish and aquatic insects all benefit from the hard-working beaver.
My youngest sister, Deb, and I were hiking remote trails in the Dolly Sods region of West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains when we happened upon something we’d never seen before. A massive wooden dam the length of a football field and intricately laced with twigs and small logs. It was so sturdy we explored it. It was the work of nature’s busiest mammals. Beavers.
Nature’s engineers are no strangers to Bucks County. They helped define its early history until hunted to extinction. Lenape Indians named streams for them — “amochkhannes”. That’s “amoch” for beaver and “khannes” for creeks. Tongue-tangled English settlers figured out the meaning. “Oh, beaver . . . beaver creek!” they declared. The translation endured for the longest at 11 miles in Nockamixon and Tinicum townships.
Amochkhannes were just about everywhere. On tributaries draining the Great Swamp below Quakertown, the plateau between Ottsville and the Delaware River in Upper Bucks and lowland streams of Central and Lower Bucks. Beaver ponds provided drinking water for livestock, places to fish and a natural means of flood control. It seemed the perfect symbiosis between humans and beavers. What’s more, the critters love working the dreadful night shift.
By the 1700s, a beaver holocaust was underway. European tailors couldn’t keep up with demand for the soft, furry pelts to make top hats and felt-trimmed haute couture.
Photo taken in 1886 of beaver fur top hats in North Dakota (public domain)
Discovery of “castoreum” from beaver sex glands also became a key ingredient in perfume.
An 1811 beaver derived French perfume (public domain)
When the source of beavers dried up in Russia, furriers turned to an endless supply in North America. Indians and immigrant trappers raced to feed the market. Slaughter of beavers was relentless.
Hunters earned $4 a pelt. In today’s currency, that would be $80. A hunter could earn $4,000 for the typical 50-pelt haul.
Uncontrolled harvesting exterminated beavers from Pennsylvania and most Eastern states. A miracle saved those left in North America when beaver fur fell out of fashion. The hunts subsided. The hunts subsided. By the 20th century, citizens began realizing the animals’ environmental benefits. “Today this aquatic fur bearer is back,” declared the Pennsylvania Game Commission last year.
I’d say “Hurray! The best dam engineers are back! Don’t damn them for their fur ever again!”
Beavers! They’re baaack! Beavers are amazing animals. Hear about their incredible physiology, Heidi Perryman and Mitch Avalon relate the story of the Martinez beavers, and what’s next for them in the Bay Area.
Over the past decade, beaver populations have returned to southeast Michigan in places such as Belle Isle, Stony Island, the Conner Creek Power Plant and other places along the Detroit River.
Why did beaver populations decline?
When settlers moved into metro Detroit, beaver trapping for the fur trade was plentiful, eliminating much of the population. The existence of this species was almost wiped out due to 300 years of trapping and trading. Along with trapping, industrialization and habitat loss pushed beavers out of the area and they were last reported in 1877 as a result, said Great Lakes Now.
When did beavers return to the area?
Beavers were first reported back in the area in 2008, according to Friends of the Rouge. For the first time in over 100 years, beavers gnawed away at trees and built damns near Conners Creek Power Plant. Since then, beaver sightings in the Detroit and Rouge Rivers aren’t uncommon and continues to increase.
But not necessarily welcome throughout.
Are beavers good for urbanized areas?
The DNR has beavers categorized as nuisance wildlife due to damage caused in urban and industrialized areas. They often gnaw on trees and their damns cause flooding and problems for homeowners. The DNR does offer trapping services and permits for those impacted in certain areas.
Cooley wrote the DNR is given a difficult hand because they want beavers around but not at the expense of someone’s property.
“Beaver in residential areas typically lead to problems, it’s their nature to back up and flood a waterway to create a pond,” he wrote. “Up North or out in the country, they can do that and it doesn’t impact anyone, most people would never even know it happened. However, down here in southeast Michigan if they back up a drain or a river, it is eventually going to flood someone’s yard and possibly impact their house.”
The Cropton Forest beaver project, which saw two beavers released on enclosed land upstream of Sinnington in April 2019, has been credited with helping to reduce the flood risk for the village and for transforming the ecology of the area for the good.
The five year project, which is overseen by Forestry England, hopes to examine the impact of re-introducing beavers to the wild in England after they were hunted to extinction in the sixteenth century. It’s one of a number of pilots across the UK which have support from a number of organisations including the RSPB.
Ecologist Cath Bashforth next to a beaver dam at Cropton Forest in North Yorkshire. The beavers in the pilot scheme at the enclosure have “far exceeded” her expectations. (Image: Forestry England)
At the centre of the North Yorkshire beavers’ habitat is an enormous 70m long dam that the original beavers have built over the years alongside the kits that they’ve had since being re-introduced to the area four years ago.
Ecologist Cath Bashforth, who leads the project, said that the pilot has “far exceeded what we expected.
“We never expected such a dramatic impact in such a short space of time.”
In terms of the dramatic impact, the slowing of water flow through the site helps protect downstream areas from flooding, however the beavers’ presence has a knock on effect in many areas surrounding their habitat.
“At the start of the trial we had some fantastic volunteers who helped us take a baseline biodiversity survey to examine what impact the beavers would have,” says Cath.
The view of the enormous beaver dam in Cropton Forest from above. (Image: Forestry England)
Having built their enormous dam along with five or six smaller ones Cath is optimistic that the beavers will be able to stay in North Yorkshire on conclusion of the pilot scheme.
As the project looks to reach its conclusion in a little over a year, the fate of the beavers presently on site remains undecided.
Peregrine Audubon Society Program will be hosting a zoom presentation on Tuesday, March 21 at 7 p.m. featuring The Beaver Believers hosted by Sarah Koenigsberg of the Beaver Coalition.
In this film, we follow our Beaver Believers out into some truly spectacular landscapes of the interior West, from the east slopes of the Cascade mountains in Washington to the Rockies in Colorado, from the parched red rock deserts of southern Utah to an urban park in central California.
We take you to places where beaver have already begun to transform damaged watersheds, and we learn of the many challenges that stand in the way of larger scale efforts to use beaver as a restoration tool, including trapping, which is tragically still legal in most states.
Perhaps most importantly, we meet incredible people who, undaunted by climate change, are working tirelessly to protect and restore beaver out on the landscape, who embody the spirit and joy that comes from “thinking like a beaver,” who show us that collaboration and watershed restoration truly are possible. All we have to do is let the beaver come home.
The coalition is dedicated to strategically advancing a paradigm shift in society’s relationship with beaver. Learn more at beavercoalition.org
The film crew from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom visited three sites in the Methow Valley to highlight the role of beavers in restoring a healthy ecosystem. Local beavers — and work by the Methow Beaver Project (MBP) to create a healthy ecosystem — are starring in an upcoming episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The “Eager Beavers” episode on the long-running nature show features three sites in the Methow Valley — a Twisp River side channel and the Bear Creek and Texas Creek watersheds. The program also highlights beaver-restoration work in Oregon and California. Eager Beavers, part of the Protecting the Wild series, premiers this month at WildKingdom.com. The beaver project is hosting a free screening on March 17. The episode showcases the role beavers play in creating a sustainable future across the country and, in particular, in the arid West, MBP Restoration and Outreach Assistant Willie Duguay said. The Wild Kingdom crew went to the Bear Creek watershed where beavers are helping reclaim an area that burned in the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire. The crew also looked at the connections between beavers and salmon habitat. Eager Beavers chronicles changing attitudes toward beavers. After widespread trapping, beavers had been extirpated from the West by the early 19th century. With few beavers on the landscape, people settled along rivers and took advantage of fertile soil in former floodplains, according to MBP.“ Long thought to be a nuisance animal, beavers have been waiting for their time to shine. Now as climate change, drought and other damaging ecological factors severely impact groundwater and wetland habitats, science is finally understanding the importance of these natural engineers for the health of our planet,” Wild Kingdom said.
Also, if you’re in the vicinity of Methow Valley, there will be a free screening:
The Methow Beaver Project is screening “Eager Beavers” on Friday, March 17, at 6 p.m. at the Methow Valley Community Center in Twisp. There will be beaver-themed trivia and a Q&A session. Admission is free. Beverages for adults and children will be available for purchase.
The episode will also be screened that same night at 6 p.m. at the Community Cultural Center in Tonasket.
Eager Beavers can be viewed on WildKingdom.com starting March 19.
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, one of the earliest TV shows to feature nature and adventure, broadcast its first show 60 years ago. The Protecting the Wild series will be hosted by Peter Gros, co-host of the original series.
Eager Beavers is the sixth episode in the 10-part series.
In the meantime you can travel back in time to the early 1980s when Wild Kingdom aired Valley of the Beavers, which was shot in Canada. Probably due to the difficulty of finding healthy beaver habitat in the US at that time.
I came across an interesting article today about a research studying the incidence of fur-bearers past and present. It got all my attention with a phrase I’ve heard from Rick many times “Shifting Baselines” which basically means we assume what we are seeing means that’s what we’ve always seen. For example like the wildly crazy people in Wisconsin who insist that the beaver population is BIGGER than is ever been.
The article mentioned a project they are working on with some grad students up in the coast of maine about the now extinct “Sea mink”. Apparently the only evidence of this species now are some jawbones that were found in midden heaps. Just like we found beaver bones in the shell mounds in Emeryville. The mink was apparently very attractive to trappers because of its large size. Having more fur to go around proved its undoing, and even though it had been written about for years. it officially was extinct by 1903.
NORMAN, OKLA. – Over the years, humans have had a profound effect on biodiversity. Whether through population, land use, exploitation or lifestyle, everywhere people go, they have an impact on the environment and ecosystem services that we all rely on.
This pattern is exemplified by the beaver and its extirpation (local extinction) in the northeastern part of the country, a result of the fur trade industry between roughly 1600-1900. European demand for mammal pelts, such as the beaver, altered life for Indigenous North Americans and shifted thousands of years of traditional harvest practices.
While existing research has given us some insight, scientists hope the eager beaver and its furry cohorts will improve our understanding of the past, and better manage current and future conservation efforts for these furbearers.
Courtney Hofman, President’s Associates Presidential Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, is leading a project studying how human management schemes and Indigenous relationships influenced furbearers, specifically beaver, mink and muskrat.
Hofman’s work is the focus of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The four-year study uses ancient DNA samples derived from archaeological specimens housed at the Smithsonian Institute’s Natural History Museum and among other museums, as well as samples from modern beaver, mink and muskrat provided by wildlife managers and fur-trappers, to better understand the relationship between people and these animals. The study incorporates a diverse group of collaborators, including the Smithsonian, Middlebury College, the University of Maine and tribal partners.
Hofman said shifting baselines – the idea that as resources decline, each new generation accepts that what the previous generation experienced was normal – often make it hard to determine what should be considered normal in the area of ecological restoration. By extracting DNA from archaeological and historic specimens, scientists can get closer to the truth.
“We can use the archaeological record as a time machine to go back and see how much genetic diversity has been lost due to the fur trade and then think about how that impacts the management of these species today,” she said.
This brought back immediate memories of our historic beaver population papers and hunting about for ecological and tribal evidence of their presence in California. It is just crazy luck that any beavers ever remained on the landscape to allow us to repopulate their presence. They almost went the way of the sea mink.
“Sea mink, now extinct, lived on the coast of Maine. It was larger and probably smellier than the American mink. It went extinct in the late 1800s, probably due to overharvesting,” she said. “The larger sea mink was more attractive because for the same amount of effort you could get a bigger skin to sell.”
Hofman said most of what we know about sea mink is from the archaeological record. There’s not much other information available except in museums.
“We have been sequencing the DNA of extinct sea mink to figure out what this extinct species was and how it relates to the modern mink that live in North America today,” she said. “But there’s a shifting baselines question here because the sea mink went extinct and on the coastal islands where it used to live there’s a great interest in protecting sea birds and nesting sea birds. Closely related American mink from the mainland have been swimming out to these islands and predating on the sea birds living on the islands. Right now, managers are removing mink when they find them on these islands to protect the birds. But there used to be sea mink that lived on these islands that went extinct before our recent memory. Perhaps the sea birds on these islands, instead of being in decline, are fluctuating to population levels when the sea mink existed on the landscape.”
Sara Williams, a University of Oklahoma dual major in human health and biology as well as microbiology, and Elizabeth Austin, an environmental science and earth and climate science major at Middlebury College in Vermont, spent time interning at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, where they helped identify specimens for use in Hofman’s project, including the sea mink. They blogged about the experience before presenting their internship findings at the Furbearer’s Conference at Shoals Marine Lab in Maine, organized by Hofman and project co-investigator Alexis Mychajliw. This workshop brought together wildlife managers, fur trappers, archaeologists and Indigenous community members to help direct future research.
Interestingly enough, in some trapper journals I read for our research the sea otter was referred to as a SEA BEAVER. Because obviously beaver just means “An animal whose fur I want”. It’s also interesting because of the paucity of fossil record. People often say there are so few bones or skulls of beavers found in California that this is proof they weren’t native. Obviously being a marine mammal means your bone record is pretty hard to maintain.
This past June, Hofman and Mychajliw attended an archaeological field school led by Bonnie Newsom, a Penobscot Nation citizen, assistant professor at the University of Maine and senior personnel on the project. Newsom has done extensive work on Indigenous archaeological methods, utilizing language experts in her workshops to connect objects to the language.
“We’re using archaeological material from Wabanaki ancestors, so we want to make sure this project is inclusive of the people who lived on these landscapes and continue to live on these landscapes and seascapes,” Hofman said. “We’re looking at the human influence on the furbearers as part of this project, so making sure that those communities are represented is incredibly important.”
The project, “DISES: Cultural Resilience and Shifting Baselines of the North American Fur Trade,” is funded by the National Science Foundation Division of Research, Innovation, Synergies and Education, Award no. 2109168. The project began on Sept. 21, 2021, and is expected to be complete by Aug. 31, 2025. Principal investigator is Courtney Hofman. Co-principal investigators are Torben Rick (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) and Alexis Mychajliw (Middlebury College).
Just so you know. the National Science Foundation did not fund our beaver research. Even though I’m pretty sure sea mink never saved water or fought wildfires or improved biodiversity. Go figure. But that’s saltwater under the bridge now. Good luck on your shifting baselines research. Oh and by the way, I know what past generations of fur bearers would tell us about our current fur bearer population.
See the rest of the article. And there is another bit of news on PHYS-ORG that might lessen concerns about the greenhouse gas produced in wetlands.
Beavers! They’re baaack! Beavers are amazing animals. Hear about their incredible physiology, 
