Meanwhile in Oregon, they had another beaver event Thursday Night based on the Beaver Tales Art show. They have been slowly drawing such important folks out of the woodwork to talk about beaver benefits. Thursday it was the turn of retired biology teacher turned wildlife photographer Neil Maine.
To celebrate beavers and their contribution to the ecology of the North Coast, the nonprofit organizations have teamed up with local businesses to host the Beaver Tales Art Exhibit and Sale in Seaside. The purpose of the exhibit is to highlight the importance of beavers in creating wetlands and other aquatic habitat.
Neal Maine will explain how beavers engineer wetlands on the North Coast, and how people can learn to take advantage of their environmental benefits while protecting property from flooding and other damage. Maine’s vast experience in studying and photographing wildlife enables him to tell fascinating stories about these industrious little rodents that most people never se
Here I was thinking what a negligent lapse it was that I didn’t already know who Neil Maine was until I saw I had already written about him way back in 2015 when the North Coast Land Conservancy used this photo for their great restoration project letting beavers do the restoration at Stanley Marsh.
(And just in case you’re wondering yes, that actually looks like a muskrat to me too.)
Anyway Neil has definitely photographed real beavers as well, and I’m sure he had an awesome presentation that evening. The articles I saw offered a couple amazing photos of his that were definitely not muskrat-y. The art show Beaver Tales has really put together a fantastic beaver ad-campaign whose benefits will be felt for years. Kudos to the Wetland Conservancy and the North Coast Land Trust for pulling it off.
When you think of it, it’s pretty darned generous of beavers to groom every day just so that we get a nice chance to photograph them.
