South Hills Wildlife Ponds Offer a Scenic Getaway with Abundant Wildlife
HANSEN • Three men stopped their off-road vehicles, dust blowing up behind them, and pulled out a trail map. They were enjoying the backcountry scenery and plentiful wildlife, Koop said. And lots of beaver dams.
“There are some right up there,” he said, pointing toward brown fields beyond the dirt road not far from the Diamondfield Jack campground. I had noticed the ponds earlier that morning, but didn’t see any dams. And it’s beaver lodges that had drawn me to the hills that day.
Imagine some guys driving in their OHVs to look for some beaver dams! And not to shoot them or blow up said dams but to see wildlife! Be still my heart. Where is this ‘et in Arcadia Ego?’ This Brave New World of beavers? It’s IDAHO, fast vying for third place in ‘castor-perceptum’ behind Washington and Utah. (California of course being stuck in the dark ages except for this ONE bright bay area spot.) Go read the whole thing for a treat of the first order!
Beavers, it appeared, had been busy — much busier than it seemed necessary to build the one lodge sitting serenely in the glassy pond.
“Beavers have been known to eat themselves out of house and home — if they eat too fast and vegetation doesn’t keep up with their needs,” said Tom Bandolin, wildlife biologist for the Sawtooth National Forest, in a separate interview. “Beaver populations can be dynamic, depending on what’s going on with the vegetation and how we manage it. I’ve seen places where beavers have lived for years, and then all of a sudden they’re gone. We can speculate what happened to them, but we really don’t know.”
Ok, a little beaver horror show to keep the cheap seats gasping, but all in all not bad press. Yes, beavers sometimes eat faster than trees can grow and need to move on. It’s what makes moraine meadows and the landscape of the entire United States. Oh and if you allow a little browse pressure, and keep the ungulates (cows, elk, deer) away from the new shoots coppicing will usually take care of the problem. Don’t forget the excellent interview with Suzanne Fouty that discusses this.
Well, regardless of the ‘damming with faint praise’ advice from the Sawtooth forest, this is a pretty lovely article. Why doesn’t the AP ever pick up something like this? They’re thrilled to run with Bad Beaver tales of flooding and chewing, but hardly anyone sits under the trees and notices what actually happens at a real beaver pond.
The Shoshone Wildlife Ponds, managed by the Sawtooth National Forest, not only are home to beavers, Bandolin said, but provide habitat and water for a variety of wildlife.
The ponds were enhanced about 20 years ago, he said, and draw the attention of antelope, elk and moose. It was obvious that various animals visit the ponds — which, on my visit, looked green because of reflected trees — because of the tracks imprinted in mud near the banks. Hummingbirds also live in the area, not only at a nearby, man-made hummingbird retreat but at the ponds themselves.
“Sit quietly and you’ll start to see them land in the willows and vegetation,” Bandolin said. What might be a surprise is actually seeing a beaver, especially one hard at work.
Beavers do great rehabilitation work, Bandolin said.“They are a really fascinating creature and can do a lot of good,” he said. “In a place where there’s been a natural disaster, for instance, which caused a lot of damage to banks. A beaver can go in there and dam it up, catch the sediment and stop the deterioration process.”
Yes it can! And here’s hoping that positive words about beavers from USDA go to all the right places. The author sits in the silence and watches hummingbirds land in the trees, reflecting at the end that beavers are very reclusive and hard to see. I can’t imagine where he got that idea.
