sherri worth a dam

By Ron Hellstern • 17 hours ago

Nice job Ron, although you’re wrong to say beavers just make things better in natural areas. Beavers in cities make a huge difference too if folks are smart enough to let them. Just ask us!

Speaking of smart folks who want to let beavers make a difference, I heard from our friend Carmen in Texas yesterday. The beavers on her lake are still hanging around despite the efforts her neighbors are making to trap them. Carmen is trying to lure them to a spring near her property and away from danger. Looks like it’s working. This was a photo of a favorite tree of hers,

Beavers certainly come with their own set of challenges, that’s for sure. But Carmen is up to the task and got help wrapping all the trees on her land yesterday. The chewing doesn’t go all the way around, so she is hopeful by some miracle that tree will make it.

When I see chewing on a tree that big, I think yearling. I’m sure the adults know better than to take on something that crazy. That beavers eyes are bigger than his ~~stomach~~ er teeth!

Oh and just so we don’t totally forget Ben’s book today, I have two little presents for him. The first is that I added a library link to some of the best reviews he’s had so far. And the second is this adorable photo new member

Lynita Shimizu posted on the beaver managment Facebook page. I agree that Eager makes a great summer read!

This is Carmen Sosa.

She is the president of the Farm and Food Coalition in Tyler Texas which is east of Dallas. She is responsible for the wonderful farmers market in Rose city and works to connect sustainable growers with restaurants and their community.

Carmen contacted me a few weeks ago regarding the beavers near her home on Placid lake. In the past the corporate association who handles their properties has regularly trapped out beavers and otters. (Otters because they’ll eat up all the fish, and beavers just because.) In addition to trapping she says they destroy lodges using the common in Texas ‘kerosene in a mason jar’ method.

(!)

Carmen wanted something different for these beavers and asked if we could help.

I introduced her to a fairly well connected beaver friend near by, and gave her lots of information. She was able to read up, confer and even consult some GIS water table maps. We were both hopeful that this could make a difference and that these beavers would have the chance that so few beavers in Texas have.

Yesterday was the big meeting. And even though she came armed with cheerful information and intention they voted to do the same thing they always do. This morning they would call the trapper out and the home owner nearest the lodge would burn it out.

Carmen wrote me in despair last night. She had kayaked out to see the beavers and was desperate to do something rather than let them be killed in their sleep. I didn’t really know what to tell her, but I shared her sorrow and alarm.

Mostly I thought about our beavers. And how lucky it was that things turned out differently for them. We don’t like to think it but it was a razor thin path to victory and for such a long time it could easily have gone either way.

For Carmen, who surrounds herself with green and growing things, this calamity of death is more than a hardship. What comfort I can offer is that she can use this lost effort to form a coalition of like minds for the future, so that the next beavers, or maybe the ones after that, are luckier than these,

The arc of ecology is long indeed, but it bends towards beavers.