Cheryl’s a busy woman, but she found time yesterday to send off some of her excellent photos of our project With the kids on Earth day. I thought you’d want to see the enchanting concentration of children hard at work on their tribute. Formatting on cannot be helped at the moment, but they are worth sharing away.

The watching parents would encourage kids or discourage scribbling. I chatted with several about how beavers helped salmon. I especially liked the father of the adorable twins who, when I asked them if they wanted to help us with our banner, cleverly scoffed, “oh no, we don’t like to do art at all, do we?” And they jointly exclaimed their protest and rushed to the table to start right away. Meanwhile other cities are learning to appreciate beavers too, like Dunkirk, New York where Audubon will be soon hosting some of our friends.

Beavers: a peculiar animal that can change its habitat

Close encounters with wildlife seem to go one of two ways: amazement or annoyance. A beaver that is awesome in a close-up encounter in the wilderness might be annoying in a close-up encounter, while cleaning out a drain plugged with beaver debris. Audubon wrestles with the problem of beavers that are awesome for visitors to the trails; but they are annoying for the volunteers and staff that try to keep the beavers from flooding the grounds.

Audubon will host a program on how to live with beavers on April 27 at 10 a.m. Owen and Sharon Brown, founders of the Adirondack non-profit Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife put this program together. Their combined degrees in material engineering and biology give them the perfect insight in how to work with and around the beavers that cause flooding and other problems.

Wonderful, Sharon and Owen. I’m glad you’ll be teaching Audubon about beavers, but good lord you better start with this reporter, who in the entire article never even mentions WHY beavers are valuable to have around! Especially at some place like Audubon. Ahem.