I saw this photo and Sharon’s facebook page and knew you’d want to see it too. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife was enormously helpful back in the early days of struggling to slow down the city’s beaver-extermination-runaway-train. To give a little context to this enviable photo, she put together a bio for some nice monday morning reading. Enjoy!
Sharon Brown is a biologist and co-founder of the educational nonprofit Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW, BeaversWW.org). Her work involves consulting, writing and giving programs nationwide to help people understand the benefits of beaver wetlands and peacefully resolve conflicts with keystone species.
Brown volunteered as a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for 15 years, and the photo shows her swimming with an orphaned beaver kit. She explains, “This is Bounce, a kit I rehabbed with her three siblings, after their mother was run over. The kits were a bit nervous about the big pond after paddling in a bathtub—and I later found a large snapping turtle there that I relocated—so I swam with them a few times.”
She documented highlights in the lives of the four kits in the video “Hi, I’m a Beaver” that has been shown at museums (soon it will be available as a DVD). Brown and her husband Owen are featured in a “Coexisting with Beavers” DVD that includes half an hour of beaver natural history plus a 12-minute segment on installing a Flexible Leveler to manage water levels at road culverts or beaver dams.
Brown is the editor of Beaversprite, the quarterly of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW), and wrote the script for the nonprofit’s website. She has had articles and photos published in a variety of national magazines and taught college level biology courses prior to concentrating on beavers.
She became interested in beavers after meeting Dorothy Richards, who studied that species for 50 years at Beaversprite Sanctuary in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. After Mrs. Richards’ death in 1985, Brown and her husband Owen created the nonprofit to honor the “Beaver Woman’s” legacy by focusing on the ecological significance of beavers. She says, “Beavers can help combat climate change because the wetlands they maintain absorb carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, and beaver dams slow the flow of streams which lessens the damage done by major floods and droughts.”
The Browns share their 300-acre Wildsprite Sanctuary in the Adirondack foothills with a variety of wildlife, including two beaver families.
