Boxford Middleton Topsfield — We humans spend our time on — and along — a web of asphalt roads. Another mammal population lives in and along our swamps, brooks, and rivers. Most humans rarely see beavers although they have become common here in the last 15 years. So here we have two populations within the same area on what town officials might call overlay zoning districts.
Humans not long ago clearly had the upper hand in all things. They could even trap and kill members of this minority population, one that preceded ours by hundreds of thousands of years. Now we wisely protect them. Despite this new status our two populations don’t freely intermingle.
What a nice read from our ‘soon-to-be’ friends in Massachusetts! The Middleton Stream Team does great work and I thought I’d share their story for this gray Sunday. These stream keepers know their beaver allies well and recognize that beavers help them keep the waters of Middleton in ship-shape. Looks like they even appreciate their handiwork toothiwork!
We, Closeteers, Stream Teamers and other outdoor folks, never tire of the beaver works we find. There are 40 dams we know of in Middleton alone and at least that many lodges. Some of us who look for them see fewer than three or four a year not counting road kills after floods. However, evidences of their works are common, some even vast and spectacular such as dead red maple swamps of over half-a-hundred acres. One impoundment we often visit is that around Pond Meadow Pond in the wilds near where North Andover, Boxford and Middleton join. The bleached corpses of still standing red maples, Atlantic white cedars and perimeter upland oaks and white pines stretch a mile east and west and southwest to northeast from North Liberty Street almost to Middleton Road in Boxford. These roughly 300 contiguous acres are inundated by only three dams that were built by animals a third our size without axes, chainsaws, or dozers. The quiet tools of each are two incisors, strong jaws, forelegs and paws, persistence and engineering skills evolved over time beyond our ken. One dam we marvel at is 200-feet long with a 4-foot head; head is the vertical distance between the water level above the dam to that just downstream below. Another lower dam of softer plants and mud stretches from Middleton to Topsfield — 400-feet across the Nichols Brook floodplain.
Yes the water-watchers and the beaver-watchers are good friends. As should be the salmon-watchers and the bird-watchers and the climate-change watchers. Come to think of it, everyone should be friends with beavers. It’s just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches on. In the mean time, I’ve been invited to speak in February to our own stream watchers (Friends of Alhambra Creek) who I am asking to be involved in this years tree-planting. If you need proof that the planting trees matters to our beavers, here’s evidence from this weekend that our beavers approve and find the practice delicious. This tree was from our 2008 planting and recently unwrapped for their banquet. Since an adult took a large tree in the beginning of the month, I’m assuming that it was a demonstration to the three kits who wanted to try it themselves in miniature. Three ‘chips off the old block’ indeed! Your donation to our tree replacement fund would be very much appreciated.
