One of my personal great underground beaver campaigns is correcting the ‘beaver as nutria’ myth. Photos of nutria are routinely tossed around on the internet(s) showing close-ups of animals that appear somewhat beaverish in nature from the front, but would, (if you could turn them around) have a long skinny tail from the back.
Take for example this photo:
This was taken by photographer David Westphalen and sold to Painet as an image available for download purchase. It’s a nice photo, crisp and detailed with only one small problem. It’s NOT a beaver. It’s a nutria Myocastor coypus (Coypu). Because its for sale on a major photo outlet it gets downloaded incorrectly all the time. I have written Mr. Westphalen and Painet about the error and have received zero response for my effort.
So Far.
Recently this image appeared on the NPS page for Fort Smith National Park in Arizona. That was a bridge to far. We can’t have the national park service posting bogus photos of beavers. I wrote the rangers twice about the mistake and suggested the check out this newspaper article about it. I got a response yesterday from the ranger who referred it to their IT ranger who will be removing it when he gets back to work. How cool is that? He should also ask for a refund from Painet and maybe that would help the larger campaign. I also suggested he might want a REAL beaver photo from our own Cheryl Reynolds.
Well, one down, 99 to go.
