This famous mountain lion who made a show Saturday of nibbling the Martinez beavers, has gone on to even greater things. Now he is in the New Yorker with Michelle Nijhuis new article on the stranded big cats of LA. Someone else we know is in the article too.
This particular mountain lion is no stranger to Angelenos. Three years ago, in early 2012, he left his home in the Santa Monica Mountains, crossed two eight-lane freeways, and, after travelling at least twenty miles, dead-ended in Griffith Park, a former ostrich farm that is now one of the country’s largest municipal green spaces. Biologists tranquilized the lion and fitted him with a radio collar; he became popularly known by his tag number, P-22.
The most promising location for the first mountain-lion crossing in the Los Angeles Basin would span ten busy lanes of traffic, and it is by no means guaranteed to deliver the genetic variation that the lions need. Yet the project has momentum. Beth Pratt, an energetic campaigner for the National Wildlife Federation, has won support from congressional representatives and local governments for a crossing in the Santa Monicas, and earlier this year the California State Coastal Conservancy awarded a million-dollar grant to the department of transportation for the design and permitting of the crossing, with the goal of beginning construction by 2018.
Beth has been a tireless voice for wildlife crossings for big cats in particular. She will be making her way to Martinez this summer for our own beaver festival. I’m thrilled this story made the New Yorker but it has prompted me to reconsider for myself how many articles about beaver have made the magazine in the last 25 years. Hmm, let me count.
Oh, that’s right. NONE. (Except cartoons. Beavers are funny.)
No single mention of beaver benefits or struggles in the New Yorker Magazine about salmon or water or even Scotland. Not even when the famous Jose was discovered in the Bronx river. Nothing since a 1991 article on Hope Buyukmihci and the formation of Beaver Defenders. I realize of course, mountain lions are sleek, sexy and powerful. But the beaver is the state animal of New York fer cryingoutloud. Let’s get interested in them!
The New Yorker is so far behind the times about beavers that they don’t even realize this cartoon isn’t comic at all. It’s just boring old prosaic truth. Like a telephone book. Beavers make the ecosystem work for them. And us.
Period.
Oh and the big beaver news of the day is that a beaver is being blamed for taking out power to thousands in Maine. I got ten alerts for it this morning, and now it’s made the Discovery News.
Beaver Knocks Down Tree, Thousands Lose Power
A beaver in Maine’s northern Aroostook County was doing what beavers do on Monday night — and chewed down a tree to help build its dam.
The problem is the tree happened to fall on a power transmission line and soon nearly 3,000 residents
“(The downed tree) is in a very remote, wooded area which has been challenging to reach, but workers will remain working to restore power by mid-morning,” Bob Potts, spokesperson for Emera, told the Bangor Daily Ne
No word yet on how, if they were able to get someone on site to identify the beaver-chewed culprit that caused the outage, they couldn’t get a crew there as well. Or how they know for certain it wasn’t the wind taking out a tree they should have trimmed years ago. But oh well. It’s a good beaver-blame anyway. In fact, this finger is pointed with such dexterity that the power company is even getting a news cycle boost out of it. Nicely done boys and girls.
I was a little confused about this though:
As often-cited W.T. Cox wrote in a 1940 article in American Forest, “Beavers do not belong in thickly-settled communities, since their flooding operations may become troublesome…
Would you call Martinez “thickly settled”?
