Sick beaver chauffeured 400 km to new lodgings
A volu
nteer driver from Stittsville, Ont., has successfully chauffeured a sick beaver to its new home in Rosseau, Ont., nearly 400 kilometres west of Ottawa — a dam long road trip.
The beaver, whose plight caught the attention of many Canadian
s on social media, was found dehydrated, underweight and lethargic in an Ottawa-area backyard.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary tweeted an urgent plea for a driver to pick up the 11-kilogram beaver and take it to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, which is better equipped to treat the animal.
It took only 30 minutes for Mary Herbert — a self-confessed “beaver fan” — to respond to the request.
“Where I live we have beaver ponds close by. It’s just nice when I’m out walking with my dog seeingthe beavers,” said Herbert. “When an animal needed aid I figured I could step up to the plate and do it.”
Kudos for Mary, Rideau Valley Wildlife workers and Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, for helping out this little beaver in distress. And congratulations to the CBC for recognizing this as cheerfully Canadian story. It’s a fun listen and you will enjoy it.
In case the name Stittsville sounds familiar it should, because its where artist Anita Utas was trying to save urban beavers a few years back. Remember her? She was watching over a family who lived in a housing pond. The city insisted it wasn’t a family, the father wasn’t killed, there weren’t kits, and that they wouldn’t be harmed, that they had listened to resident outcry. They then waited until a national holiday weekend in Canada to rip the beavers out and later told Anita that the mother and two kits were “RELOCATED”. Two months later they sent her footage of grown beavers that couldn’t POSSIBLY be the kits, saying they had all matured handily and not to worry about it. Remember?
Anyway, the actions of this monumental weasel was once Stittsville’s biggest claim to beaver fame. But now Mary’s heroic rescue is. Making headlines all over including the Huffington Post this morning.
Congratulations!
You were promised a good story from the ECOLOGIST yesterday, and I do not disappoint. How’s this from Oliver Tickle?
Carlisle floods: bring back the trees, and the beavers!
The key to reducing the risk of more floods like those in Carlisle is to realise that conventional ‘flood defence’ can never provide security against the ever more extreme weather events that global warming will bring. We must embrace natural solutions to holding back flood waters: more trees; and bring back the beavers!
Trees are important for another reason too. They are food for beavers, and beavers use them to build their dams. And beavers will do all the work of damming up the streams and gullies for us, free of charge. And that’s absolutely key to restoring landcapes and making them water retentive.
We should therefore select water-loving species that are palatable to beavers – like poplars, willows, sallows and alders – and establish them along watercourses, ditches, streams, ponds and eroded upland gullies.
There”s no doubt that beavers would make an even better job of it, and at much lower cost, so long as we provide them with the trees they need to eat and build their dams with, and give them the freedom to reproduce and spread across the uplands and valleys to recreate truly living landscapes.
The dams would not just reduce flood risk: they would also prevent the summer droughts to which the area is also prone as a result of the rapid water drainage, and restore healthy river flows throughout the year.
I, of course, couldn’t agree more. Great work! People need reminding that beavers have managed water for a long time and understand their job better than we do. England is really helping with that message.
Yesterday’s conference call had the added weight of Dr. Michael Pollock and Dr. Ellen Wohl, which made it a slightly more breathless look at the urban beaver chapter. Ellen is being asked to consider tweaking her very smart tool for evaluating risk of wood in streams versus the benefit, to include beaver dams, which was really exciting. But my favorite moment was when Pollock said that cities needed to think about Education first, then Mitigation, when encountering beaver problems. Then use Relocation before employing trapping.
Which sounded PERFECT to my beaver-lovin’ ears, but needed a little tweaking. What do you think?
