I’m happy to announce that my woeful complaints yesterday about the Eco-lab that received funding for future genetic and hormonal research on beavers was a false alarm! I wrote the grant-givers yesterday that they should let the beavers do some restoration instead and apparently my letter was forwarded to the director of the program. He wrote me back, defending his beaver creds, and letting me know about the good work they do. With his permission I’ll post the letter here so you all can feel better about Indiana.
Dear Dr. Perryman,
The Nina Maso n Pulliam EcoLab at Marian University is a 55 acre natural area with ~20 acres of wetlands that are being actively managed by our two free-living colonies of beaver. The fact that the EcoLab is a functioning landscape where beaver are free to chop down trees and shrubs, build dams, dredge beaver canals and do the “ecosystem engineering” that they do is the aspect of the EcoLab that we are most proud of. It is also what thrills the thousands of preK-12 students the most when they visit – we love to let the students discover how beaver manipulate the landscape; how similar they are to us in many ways. Kids love to explore the Pulliam EcoLab looking for signs that beaver are present. And, when they get the chance some overcast morning, to hear the slap of the beaver’s tail it’s unforgettable! One student actually wrote a book about her experience in the EcoLab entitled “The Slap of the Beaver’s Tail!” In some instances we also have the kids collect water samples in the inflow and outflow of the beaver-managed wetlands to see how these wetlands contribute to the health of our watershed, and, of course to us. You can’t learn to love something if you don’t know it. We give urban kids that chance who may never before have been outside in anything resembling a natural area.
I agree with you that beaver do a great job of ecological restoration! What they don’t do, however is remove invasive exotic plants like Amur Honeysuckle, Common Buckthorn and Privet. Further, they can’t increase the diminished diversity of a site that was formerly a farm field. We have also put a lot of effort into creating trails for humans, so that our students, the k-12 students, and the general public can be exposed to a small piece of native Indiana.
The genetic research we do on Beaver is non-invasive – we take hair samples from “snags” that we put along some of their routes. We are trying to understand how beaver in an urban environment disperse. The EcoLab appears to be a source population, but, because it is surrounded by the inhospitable “habitat” of the city, we are interested to see how the city affects beaver dispersal and thus their population genetics.
We do hormonal and behavioral work on territorial Song Sparrows in the urban “wild.” It is invasive, that is, we do take small blood samples. But we are learning about how basic breeding biology is affected by the fragmented urban environment.
We believe that the benefit to beavers and birds of these research projects and others by academics and animal lovers around the world outweigh the costs in many cases. I understand that your values may be different, and that you might think that research on animals may not be justified. On this point, but perhaps not many others, I respectfully disagree.
Sincerely,
David Benson
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David P. Benson, Ph.D. Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Science Director, Marian University EcoLab 317-955-6028 Marian University 3200 Cold Spring Road Indianapolis, IN 46222 http://wetland.marian.edu
Obviously he mistook my letter for a PETA don’t-mess-with-animals alarm. How could he reasonably be expected to know that I limit my obsession to a single engineering species at the moment? True, I’m not crazy about animal research, and I think any mother prescribed thalidomide in the fifties will tell you there are limits to its value, (and don’t get me started talking about Seligman and scottie dogs for gods sake) BUT I’m really happy they enjoy their two colonies and that the beavers have a free and happy space to be-aver about.
(And now that we’re on the same team, tell me more about DNA testing those snags because we’ve got some beavers in Cordelia, Vallejo and Napa and I’d love to know if they’re relatives!)
Friends of beavers in Indiana are definitely worth remembering. You can check out their excellent facebook page here.
