Well, well, well, Norway is SHOCKED I tell you. Just shocked! That beavers have moved into the city park. Apparently that’s never happened before. Boy are they in for a learning curve.

Beavers move from the forest into town

After nearly becoming extinct in the late 1800s, Norway’s beaver population is now estimated to number more than 70,000. After making their mark in local forests around Oslo, some have even started moving into town, startling visitors to the Frogner Park and even residents of the city’s trendy Grünerløkka neighbourhood.

“Few animals, with the exception of us humans, can reform a landscape to the degree the beaver can,” notes Bjørn Vassnes, who writes an ecology column for newspaper Klassekampen. “They not only can cut down trees over a wide area, they also can change the hydrologic balance of an ecosystem.”

Vassnes wrote last week that such activity can do nature a favour, by limiting how water runs “from clouds to the sea,” thus dispersing water and restricting flood damage while also adding to biological diversity. That’s made them popular with ecologists and environmentalists even though the visual results of beaver activity isn’t very pretty.

Heh heh heh. I think your little nordic lives are about to get very very interesting.

City officials in Oslo are both surprised and a bit anxious after beavers have been sighted this spring from the Frogner Park in the west to the banks of the Aker River that runs from Nordmarka right through the heart of town. Newspaper Aftenposten reported how tourists in the Frogner Park were startled to see a normally nocturnal beaver swimming around in the park’s creek that’s fed by underground tunnels at both ends.

Then came beaver sightings along the Aker River (Akerselva) right near the former Ringnes Brewery that’s now a housing and commercial complex complete with one of Oslo’s largest cinemas.

Gosh beavers in the  middle of town! That’s soooo surprising! It almost never always happens! Let me see, do your towns have low gradient streams? Check√. And do your streams run through neglected wildlife corridors? Check √ And do you plant trees along them? Check√.

Hmm.

“This is rather fun and gives us an opportunity to see wildlife close at hand, in the middle of the city,” Terje Laskemoen of the city parks, recreation and environmental division (Bymiljøetaten) told Aftenposten.

“Seeing a beaver so far down the Aker River is suprising,” he added. “That another beaver made it all the way (from the forest bording the city) to the Frogner Park is very surprising.” Laskemoen stressed that it’s important for people to stay at a distance and show respect for Oslo’s latest arrivals.

Beavers are known to exist in populated areas, but problems can arise if trees start falling or if the beavers’ dams end up causing flooding instead of redirecting it. Laskemoen and his colleagues will be following beaver developments, and they may need to be captured and moved if they gnaw on too many trees in the park or along the river where people stroll as well. He said it “would be unfortunate” if the beavers start toppling trees.

“Beavers are usually afraid of people, though,” Laskemoen told Aftenposten. “I think they’ll end up leaving the park area pretty soon.”

Um, yeah. I’m sure that will happen of its own accord.

Hey guess who gets new beaver patients in nearby Sonoma? These little siblings where transferred from Gold County Wildlife Rescue in Red Bluff to Sonoma Wildlife Rescue in near by Sonoma. If there is one thing in all the world Red Bluff is good at. it’s making orphans. I’m thinking Cheryl is paying them a visit very soon. And gosh, someone donated Worth A Dam a beaver coat a while back, maybe they want to cuddle with it?

Your donations to care for these ADORABEAVERS goes here.