Yesterday we drove again to the eastern side of the Sierras where we had accidentally found a series of beaver dams years ago. Turns out this fork of the carson river is central to the debate of whether beavers are native at higher elevations. Fish and Game says that all the beavers around Tahoe and Yosemite were ‘introduced’ in the 20’s. There are plenty who argue that this was actually a ‘reintroduction’ and point to trapping records and native lore to support it.
One tipping place of the debate seems to be the Washo tribe. These were the natives to the Lake Tahoe Region and were intimately connected with the eastern sierras. There is an argument that says that there couldn’t have been native beaver ‘because there’s no word for beaver in Washo’. However, our wikipedia friend whose looking into this recently found an online Washo database put together by the University of Chicago where the word for beaver is clearly listed.
c’imhélhel
It turns out that the very area in question, the sight of the fork of the Carson River where this debate is playing out, is the place where we stumbled upon beavers 8 years ago. We were drawn by the strange lunar landscape of the high desert, intrigued by the tribal lands of the Hung-a-lei-ti tribe, fascinated by the miles of sage and pinyon pine – suddenly on display after driving through a vista of fur trees. We followed the footsteps of Kit Carson and were ultimately directed to this very spot.
As you can see, the beavers here are clearly going about their business. They abandon the 5 year investment in their curving dams downstream and just started in on several new ones upstream. With singular and furry focus they are entirely indifferent to the argument of whether or not they have a right to be there. Isn’t that wonderful?
