Icebreaker! Moment a beaver smashes through the frozen surface of a lake to grab a branch and then dives back underneath

Mr Digout said he had noticed the ‘adult female had a daily routine of swimming around the pond and breaking the ice at certain spots’.

The beaver, which is Canada’s official symbol, circles for a few moments before diving back below the surface. The large semi-aquatic mammals are herbivores and consume mostly tree bark, often chewing down trees for building material.

Mr Digout said he had noticed the ‘adult female had a daily routine of swimming around the pond and breaking the ice at certain spots’. The beaver, which is Canada’s official symbol, circles for a few moments before diving back below the surface. The large semi-aquatic mammals are herbivores and consume mostly tree bark, often chewing down trees for building material.

Isn’t that wonderful? And aren’t beavers wonderful? No matter how hard your day is I bet you didn’t have to start it by breaking through some ice with your head to get breakfast. Mike’s hard work and shivering effort has paid off with international fame. The Daily Mail has an odd soft spot for beavers. They are a rough tabloid magazine that doesn’t exactly appeal to educated naturalists, but the love their beavers. They published a story about our father beaver raising the kits alone many years ago.

As long as you don’t read the comments you’ll be fine.

Still congratulations to Mike! And lets hope the high profile of Saskatchewan gets people thinking of the animal in a new way. Here’s the other video I set aside to share. Notice she’s using her teeth to nibble the ice out of the way.

Yesterday’s conference was fascinating and really fun to be a part of. Lea Knutson of the Hermit Peak Alliance gave an awesome presentation about incorporating land owner support and how to deal with their very real beaver apprehensions. They showed a new film that hasn’t been released yet about beavers as neighbors. Aaron Hall of Defenders of Wildlife gave a excellent, practical, no nonsense talk about how to solve beaver conflicts the right way. But my favorite part was the informal presentation by organic farmer Ralph Vigil of the NM acequia commission, who said after talking about all the ways they could cause issues for farmer, in a rugged burst of enthusiasm;

“Beavers fucking belong here“

Whoa. I could not have said it better myself, Ralph.

The next one is friday and is all about why beaver. If you want to register I think you still can.

Why Beavers? – Friday, October 30th, 1:00 – 3:30 pm MDT

Zoom Meeting Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvc-msqDMoHtCnKyKWXYLHllcaMyVjTegB

Ben Goldfarb – author– Regional History of Beavers
Kai-T Blue Sky – independent biologist, Cochiti Pueblo – Tribal cultural perspective on beavers
Meaghan Conway – NMDGF – ecological role of beavers for other wildlife
Bill Zeedyk – ecological role of beavers for water conservation

See you there?

I am pretty particular when it comes to a beaver relocation story. In order for me to feel truly positive about a moving-beaver article it has to have a few key points. First off, it has to make clear why beavers matter. Next, it has to mention that there are easy solutions that might have been done to keep those beavers where they were in the first place. And lastly and most importantly, it has to involve Sherri Tippie.

This one meets all the criteria.

Nature’s Engineers Help Defenders Prevent, Protect and Restore

Beaver are natures engineers, changing the world around them. They are safest from predators when swimming in water, so they build dams to make ponds that they can swim in. These ponds allow them to safely enter their lodge from underwater, and access more trees and herbaceous plants without leaving the water. They modify their habitat for themselves, but their actions have huge impacts on other species. Fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, aquatic insects, trees and plants all benefit from the changes that beaver create on the landscape.

Sometimes, beaver cause trouble for landowners because they change their habitat so much. There are simple solutions which often allow landowners to live with beaver, such as fencing trees to protect them, but on some occasions, this is not possible. In those instances, Defenders tries to relocate the entire beaver family to lands where they are wanted.

Two down, one to go.

This August, Defenders, along with local live-trapper Sherri Tippie from Wildlife2000, relocated a beaver family north of Denver, Colorado. Relocating a beaver family is a lot of work. Beavers live in extended families, often with four generations living in the same lodge. A mated pair, this year’s kits, and juveniles from the past one or two summers all live together. We set live-traps in the evening and check them first thing in the morning. The traps work like a giant suitcase, folding up when a beaver steps in the middle. We moved nine individuals, including five kits born this spring, to new habitat in the mountains. Their new home used to have beaver, but they have been absent for several years. The old beaver ponds are still there but have not been maintained. The new family will likely repair these ponds, and hopefully create new ones of their own, creating and improving habitat for at-risk native species such as cutthroat trout, leopard frogs, and boreal toads.

Huzzah! We have a trifecta! Nothing but good news in this beaver relocation. Wonderful to read about, Well, except for the line about beavers living in the lodge with four generations. i know what they mean but that’s not accurately phrased. That would be like kits living with their great grandparents, right? Technically there are two generations (parents and children) and two batches (kits and yearlings).

In light of the new Endangered Species Act regulations released last week, it’s as important as ever that we prevent species from needing to be listed. The habitat that we allow beaver to create on the landscape are critical for some of these imperiled species, and the presence of indicator species like amphibians help to show that the habitats are healthy. Defenders works to prevent, protect, and restore: prevent species from becoming endangered, protect already imperiled species, and restore species to the landscape. Beaver are one of the many natural tools that fit in our arsenal for wildlife conservation!

Lovely to see. Thanks Aaron Hall for this excellent article. I had cued it up for yesterday’s post but the local headline of “otters teaching beavers” pushed it back a day. It’s great to see Sherri at work, doing what she does better than anyone in all the world.

Speaking of sticking with what you know, I got an inspiration yesterday to do a booklet specifically about urban beavers and have it available for Beaver Con 202o. I wrote folks asking for their contributions and I’m going to need your help too. If you were lucky enough to watch beavers in your city, maybe you could send me a line or two about what it was like? Send it to mtzbeavers@gmail.com. I’d love to put together something that captures not only how to manage beavers without trapping and why its good for wildlife, but how it enriches communities of humans too.

Here’s the possible first page. What do you think?