Beavers have returned to Evanston’s North Shore Channel after 10 years.
Staff at the Evanston Ecology Center, 2024 McCormick Blvd., discovered trees with fresh chewing marks and a dam along the bank of the canal last week, said Claire Alden, environmental educator at the center. Beavers disappeared from the area during the construction of waste tunnels underneath the canal in the 1990s, she said. “It’s exciting for us because it just shows the overall improving health of the canal,” Alden said.
Now that’s what I call a warm welcome! Looks like beavers are back in Evanston Canal just up the shore from where our own Wikipedia Rick went to med school! This is actually the very response EBRP had to our beavers! Privately. They knew it was a compliment for 50 years of restorative work, but they never wanted to say so out loud and enter the fray. The late and truly remarkable Hulet Hornbeck told me so himself.
(Beaver Swimming: Ayla Bouvette)
The area has a complicated history with beavers at best, displaying them happily in the zoo, killing them dramtically at Lincoln Park, then eventually earning the protection of countless advocates across country! Still this is a very good sign!
She said she invites Northwestern students to participate in the center’s canoeing programs to take a close look at the wildlife. “I’ll show them exactly where the dam is,” she said.
I’m betting that if she takes 16 students three times out in canoes to show them the dam, that these beavers stand a pretty good chance at being protected. Which is great, because the Evanston needs beavers and Illinois needs beaver education!
Al Dornisch (One Beaver Creek Place- Rachel Buller)
Maybe a beaver festival? Or a beaver Art Festival? Looking at the images on this page you can see the creatures inspire! Stranger things have happened! I just read this morning about a Beaver Festival in Georgia! Well, almost.
