Do you remember back a million years ago when our friends in Utah worked to install a flow device so some beavers could stick around near the walmart in Logan? It might of slipped your mind but at the time I was sure it was the beginning of a massive cascade that would sweep the nation. Apparently just down stream the beavers are still making a splash.
Like Yellowstone: Logan Canyon beaver colony attracting crowds
A family of beavers in Logan Canyon has gained celebrity status of sorts this summer, attracting spectators almost nightly to watch them go about their business.
One reason for the beavers’ popularity is that the dam and lodge they’ve built along Temple Fork are only a few paces from the road, so families can easily park and set out blankets and lawn chairs for the evening “shows.”
“It’s really interesting, almost a Yellowstone-ish experience where people can go up and watch animals’ behavior in their natural setting,” said Nate Norman, director of Utah State University’s Beaver Ecology and Relocation Center. “The beavers have gotten used to people being around, and in the evening they’ll come out and do their thing — chewing on sticks, grooming themselves, fixing their dam — in front of what’s turning out to be crowds of people.”
Whoo hoo! Hey I remember that kind of life. Yes beavers are fascinating to watch and can easily draw a crowd. Yes beavers can habituate and get used to people watching them over and over. Oh I never thought I’d say this, but I’m jealous of Utah right now.
Of course, like at Yellowstone National Park, crowds of people and wild animals sometimes don’t mix well, and there have been reports of some unruly Homo sapiens disrupting Temple Fork’s Mammalia rodentia — both unintentionally and on purpose.
“It’s a really neat place to go see beavers in action, but it’s starting to get really popular to the point where people are starting to harass them, like throwing rocks at them and crossing over to the other bank and getting too close,” said Norton’s assistant, Becky Yeager. “It’s a great opportunity for people to see them, but we have to educate people on how not to harass them.”
Grr. I believe the part about getting too close. But throwing rocks? That never even happened in Martinez the origin of all crazy beaver stories. I saw people sometimes throwing bread, Throwing sticks. Stupidly fishing and laughing when beavers swam to the line, but rocks? I’m not terribly worried because beavers in water are pretty good at getting away from annoying humans.
With this in mind, Norman and Yeager have discussed approaching the U.S. Forest Service and offering help in developing some signage at Temple Fork that gives visitors some guidance on respectfully observing the beavers. However, Forest Service biologist Paul Chase told The Herald Journal on Monday he’d likely advise against this since beaver colonies like this one never remain at one location.
“We certainly support that message, but these beaver lodges are fairly transient,” Chase said. “That one’s been there for three or four years and keeps expanding, but it likely won’t be there in three or four more years because they’ll be running out of food. They build their dams, they harvest all the aspen and willow in that location, and then they pack up and move. At some point in time, they’ll be back once the aspen gets rejuvenated to a size that they can utilize.”
Not really that transient if you consider that I was writing about the Logan beavers in wallmart in 2014.
Signs of this pattern are visible all along the Temple Fork trail in Logan Canyon, where remnants of former beaver dams and lodges are common. Depletion of trees in the area of the current thriving colony is also visible, and Chase said the beavers have lately been going farther and farther upstream to cut and gather more wood.
On a recent weekday evening, nine beavers of all sizes could be seen in and around the pond as two couples watched from blankets on the bank. The older of the beavers, who spent a lot of time out of the water on the opposite shore, are surprisingly large. Google searches indicate they can grow as long as 4 feet, including their tails, and sometimes weigh as much as 100 pounds.
The peacefulness of the scene was occasionally interrupted by the sound of the younger beavers slapping their tails on the water before diving under, then resurfacing across the pond.
The beavers at Temple Fork were not subjects in USU’s relocation program, but Norton and Yeager have been aware of the site’s growing popularity — as they are with most things beaver related hereabouts.
Their program, too, is getting a lot of attention of late. This summer it hosted Mike Rowe and the film crew of the popular television series “Dirty Jobs” for a segment to air later this year or early next year. They were also paid visits by CBS Morning and wildlife author Ben Goldfarb, who is doing an article on beavers for National Geographic.
The “Dirty Jobs” experience was described as intense, with Rowe arriving for one extremely busy day after a lot of preparation by his advance team.
The mission of USU’s beaver relocation program, based at the Predator Research Center in Millville, is to find new homes for beavers that are disrupting farmers, neighborhoods and infrastructure in populated areas. After trapping and quarantining the animals — preferably without separating families — the university’s biologists find a places in the wild where the beavers’ work as “nature’s engineers” will benefit habitat and other wildlife populations.
No no no. These beavers are just fine. Don’t you start relocating them too, okay? I dream of the day when all cities have a lodge like this where folks can lay a blanket to watch the beavers work. And articles like this are as common as shoe sales.
