Well yesterday was fun, with little messages of encouragement for our 10th year from folks around the globe. Now it’s time to get back to work. You know what they say, before anniversaries “Chop wood, carry water“, and after anniversaries”Chop wood carry water“. Or something like that.

Here are two articles that deserve our attention. I’ll start with the grating one first. Why is it every article written about Peter Busher annoys me more than it interests me? Over the years I have come to think he basically knows his beavers, but he honestly doesn’t seem to like them very much.

The Secret Sex Lives of Beavers

The population boom can raise alarms in communities. Beavers are often viewed as a nuisance, causing millions of dollars in damage each year by chewing fences, trees, and decks. They build dams, which leads to flooding of homes, crops, and railroads.

But some behaviors can be beneficial, says Peter Busher, a College of General Studies professor of natural sciences and mathematics and chair of the division. Beaver dam building expands wetlands, whose functions include filtering toxins from water, supporting biodiversity, and mitigating floods.

Busher has been studying beavers for four decades and was the first person to track the animals by tagging them with radio transmitters. He does his research in the Quabbin Reservation in Central Massachusetts, where 150 to 300 beavers constitute the nation’s longest-studied population, says Busher. Hoping to learn how humans can better coexist with beaver populations, he examines mating habits, birthrates, group structure, and how the animals migrate from one area to another. His findings could inform decisions about how communities respond to beaver activity and manage the animal’s population, both in Massachusetts and across the country.

Although beavers are among only 3 percent of mammals that are socially monogamous, raising their young exclusively with one partner, researchers do not know much about their pairing behavior. Do the parents also mate with other beavers and raise a mixed brood, or are they sexually exclusive? Busher wants to find out. He suspects that genetically monogamous beaver populations—those that tend to mate with one partner—increase more slowly and may stay in an area longer. If one of these populations were removed because of nuisance activity, he says, the area would likely be free of beavers for a while. But if the population were more promiscuous, new beavers could move into the area at any time; communities would then need to develop a long-term animal removal plan.

Promiscuous beavers? Honestly? Is that honestly what you think? Who thinks like that? Have you looked at every OTHER variable in their habitat that might differ between various beavers to rule out that food availability, or population, or stream gradient and prove that these it doesn’t influence which beaver are promiscuous and which aren’t? I’m sure, as a scientist, you would do ALL THAT before LEAPING to the assumption that DNA is responsible. I mean this is almost like race research.

How much trouble would you be in if you were posing that certain ethnicitys were more promiscuous?

The best research I have read on the topic described beavers as “opportunistic monogomists” – meaning if the right conditions happened to arise they would take advantage of them and mate outside the pair bond, and if they never arose it would be mostly okay with it and get on with the business of taking care of the family. I remember being amused when Rickipedia commented that this was pretty much the same for most male humans.

But Dr. Busher is trying to prove that it’s a beavers genes that make him roam. So that those prolific beavers we can kill more, and the faithful homebodies we can work with.

Are you sure you teach in Massachusetts? Because this theory is starting to sound positively republican to me!

The article that really interested me today comes from the irreplaceable George Monbiot and discusses the use of better language about ecology to capture public interest. Rusty of Napa sent it my way and I’m glad he did.

Forget ‘the environment’: we need new words to convey life’s wonders

If Moses had promised the Israelites a land flowing with mammary secretions and insect vomit, would they have followed him into Canaan? Though this means milk and honey, I doubt it would have inspired them.

So why do we use such language to describe the natural wonders of the world? There are examples everywhere, but I will illustrate the problem with a few from the UK. On land, places in which nature is protected are called “sites of special scientific interest”. At sea, they are labelled “no-take zones” or “reference areas”. Had you set out to estrange people from the living world, you could scarcely have done better.

The catastrophic failure by ecologists to listen to what cognitive linguists and social psychologists have been telling them has led to the worst framing of all: “natural capital”. This term informs us that nature is subordinate to the human economy, and loses its value when it cannot be measured by money. It leads almost inexorably to the claim made by the government agency Natural England: “The critical role of a properly functioning natural environment is delivering economic prosperity.”

I’m fully on board with the need to use language that enlivens and engages us rather than regulates our attention. But sometimes we are talking to politicians or biologists and need to convince them, and we think that kind of language carries more sway? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the only thing that matters to decision makers is what we celebrated yesterday: public pressure and votes. So engaging the public is more important than sounding objective.

This is my FAVORITE part.

On Sunday evening, I went to see the beavers that have begun to repopulate the river Otter in Devon. I joined the people quietly processing up the bank to their lodge. The friend I walked with commented: “It’s like a pilgrimage, isn’t it?” When we arrived at the beaver lodge, we found a crowd standing in total silence under the trees. When first a kingfisher appeared, then a beaver, you could read the enchantment and delight in every face.

Our awe of nature, and the silence we must observe when we watch wild animals, hints, I believe, at the origins of religion.

Something about that sentence feels very, very true for this woman who spent so many years in the company of beavers. (Not that we were silent the whole time.) Our beavers had train whistles and garbage trucks to get used to, and could handle a little talking. But there was definitely awed silence at times. Like when kits emerged or when an uncommon behavior was scene.

And it sure felt like the very best parts of church to me.

if we called protected areas “places of natural wonder”, we would not only speak to people’s love of nature, but also establish an aspiration that conveys what they ought to be. Let’s stop using the word environment, and use terms such as “living planet” and “natural world” instead, as they allow us to form a picture of what we are describing. Let’s abandon the term climate change and start saying “climate breakdown”. Instead of extinction, let’s adopt the word promoted by the lawyer Polly Higgins: ecocide.

We are blessed with a wealth of nature and a wealth of language. Let us bring them together and use one to defend the other.

Thank you, George for another beautiful column. I’m envious of the people who got to walk alongside you on the way to see those special Devon beavers. We very rarely feel reverence for what we consume or eliminate as inconvenient. But I have seen it time again on children’s faces watching our beavers.

Maybe its reverence, more than science, that protects nature.

Stop the control freaks who want to capture England’s wild beavers

The government is going against public opinion, and its reasons for wanting to rehome beavers in Devon fall apart easily

British people love wildlife, but the government, yet again, seems determined to show that it hates it.

An opinion poll in Scotland found that 86% of respondents were in favour of reintroducing the beaver. As most people seem to understand, it’s a magnificent animal which can enrich our lives and our countryside. It was once part of our native fauna, but was exterminated by hunting. It’s also a critically important species, essential to the functioning of aquatic ecosystems.

So when beavers were discovered, living and breeding on the River Otter in Devon, after they escaped from a collection somewhere, the public reaction was, overwhelmingly, delight. It’s the first population to live freely in England for hundreds of years.

So how does the government respond to this enthusiasm? “We intend to recapture and rehome the wild beavers in Devon,” says the environment minister, George Eustice. Why?

The government gives the following reasons for capturing England’s only free beavers:

Depending on the source of the animals, they could be carrying a disease not currently present in the UK. In addition, beavers have not been an established part of our wildlife for the last 500 years. Our landscape and habitats have changed since then and we need to assess the impact they could have.

Let’s take these one by one. The disease it’s referring to is alveolar echinococcosis, which infects animals and (less frequently) humans, and is caused by the fox tapeworm (Echinococcus multilocularis). It can be carried by many species. As the government says, the disease is not present in the UK, and it should certainly be kept out.

A government assessment notes that the probability of a beaver brought to Britain being infected with this tapeworm “is negligible if sourced from a free area (e.g. Norway) and low if sourced from an endemic area (e.g. Bavaria).” Free means places without fox tapeworm; endemic means places where some animals are infected.

We don’t yet know where the Devon beavers (or their ancestors) originated. But there’s a straightforward, single-step test for determining whether or not they are carrying Echinococcus multilocularis: a DNA analysis of their faeces. It’s so accurate that you can detect the presence of the tapeworm from less than a single egg. In other words, you can discover whether or not England’s only free beavers are carrying the disease without having to capture them.

This is one of those articles that’s so well written and spot-on in every single way that it’s impossible to choose the ‘good bits’ to quote. You need to go read the whole thing, especially the part where he talks about staying with Paul and Louise in Bamff and delighting in their beavers firsthand.

A couple of months ago, I visited Bamff in Perthshire, where beavers have been allowed to recolonise the valley of a small stream. The results are astonishing: a transformation from dull pastureland to a mosaic of ponds and marshes, little lawns (maintained by the beavers) and coppiced trees, swarming with life of all kinds.

In the evening, hiding under the trees, I watched the beavers, which are shy animals, emerging from their dams, swimming around the pools they have created, feeding and playing. I defy you to do the same without becoming entranced. Watching them turn from hippo to dolphin and back again as they moved between land and water, picking up hints about their elaborate social structures as they groomed each other and swam together, seeing them navigate the marshy maze they’ve built, I was overtaken by an awe and enchantment that I have seldom felt in this country.

Good lord. Can you imagine the conversation that night sitting down to a pint (or a sherry?) with Paul and Louise by a crackling fire in the great room and talking about a UK filled with beavers? I am so jealous I can almost taste it. But thank God for the Ramsay’s and their gentrified protection of beavers. They bring a very classy element to the discussion.

As for the claim that “Our landscape and habitats have changed since then and we need to assess the impact they could have”, Miles King has neatly swatted it on his excellent blog:

Sorry? Defra are suggesting that a once ubiquitous native mammal, which was hunted to extinction, might not fit into our modern landscape and habitats. Surely that’s a problem with our perception of landscape, not an argument for removing a native mammal. As for habitats, look at the equivalent habitats in Europe with beavers and compare them with the UK habitats without, then tell me we will be better off without them … The point is that beavers create habitats and public environmental goods that we have missed for the last 500 years; habitats that support a whole range of other species. Is it better to create a pond with a Hy-mac, or have a beaver create one?

When the given excuses fall apart so readily, we need to look for other explanations. One, perhaps, is this government’s obsession with control, and its apparent desire to imprison anything and anyone that does not conform to an ever narrower range of prescribed behaviour. Another is its determination to appease powerful interest groups, even if they carry almost none of the public with them.

In this case the group lobbying hardest for their removal is, incomprehensibly, the Angling Trust.

Hand me the popcorn. If George Moonbiot is really going after the beaver-phobic anglers, I want a front row seat. I am sick and tired of pretend fishermen being revered when they lie about beavers.

I find the trust’s position astonishing. Throughout the period in which beavers last lived in Britain, almost all our rivers swarmed with vast runs of migratory fish such as salmon, sea trout, lampreys and shad. Giant sturgeon swam from the sea into the heart of Britain. Huge burbot lurked on the river beds. Today, burbot and sturgeon are extinct here and the populations of many other species, especially the migratory fish, have been greatly reduced.

Studies show that in both Sweden and Poland, the trout in beaver ponds are on average larger than those in the other parts of the streams: the ponds provide them with habitats and shelter they cannot find elsewhere. Young salmon grow faster and are in better condition where beavers make their dams than in other stretches.

I’m an angler, and the Angling Trust does not represent me on this issue. I know others who are disgusted by the trust’s position, and it would not be surprising to discover that the majority of its members belong to the 86%. Most anglers, in my experience, have a powerful connection with nature. The chance of seeing remarkable wild animals while waiting quietly on the riverbank is a major part of why we do it.

When I visited Bamff in May, the pools and runs the beavers had created were stippled with rising brown trout, feasting on the resurgent insect life. Hawthorn flies and iron blue duns – species of great interest to anglers – clouded the air, in greater numbers than I’ve seen anywhere else in Britain. Why would people who fish not want this?

Oh my goodness. I think I have a crush on Mr. Moonbiot. I haven’t read anything so fun in a while. This should throw a monkey wrench into the works at DEFRA. I hope so anyway. In the meantime I’m just happy Paul and Louise are out there on the front lines, making a difference.

Oh and guess who just came back from a visit with them? Our old friend from New Zealand, William Hughes Games. He wrote about his lovely adventure here, you’ll definitely want to see the visit through his eyes. He also took on those stubborn anglers, well armed with research.

Benefits of Beavers to Fish

However, it would be hard to justify beaver dams just on the fact that they don’t impede the migration of salmon and trout. The really important reason for beaver ponds vis a vis fish is that they are fantastic nurseries for fish. Rather than typing the whole story again, have a look at this site. In point form, Beaver ponds:

* catch twigs, wood chips leaves and so forth which powers a cellulose based detritus cycle which feeds juvenile salmon

* catch spent adult salmon in the fall and incorporate their nutrients into the pond ecology and ecology of the surrounding area – also feeding juvenile salmon when they hatch out in the spring.

* increase the total amount of salmon habitat by turning seasonal streams into perrenial streams and providing perennial ponds.

* clear the water of silt making the habitat more acceptable for salmon and trout and allowing light down to the bottom of the stream so that water plants can root and grow.

* provide deep water where predatory wading birds can not operate

* provide many nooks and cranies around the lodge and dam were small fish can hide.

* provide quiet water so that the energy the fish takes in with its food is used for growth instead of for fighting currents.

* evens out stream temperature.

Oh and because the Gods of beavers combine all intelligent things eventually, William ends his entry with a quote from Mr. Moonbiot on re-wildling.

Lastly a word about rewilding, not from me but from George Monbiot. I put this in because many people in Scotland, amongst them beaver enthusiasts, are determined, in so far as possible, to bring back the exact variety of Castor fiber that existed in Scotland before it was extirpated. The Norwegian variety seems to be the favored one. I can see where they are coming from but I would be inclined to bring some beavers from all over Europe, introduce them into various catchments and see which variety does best in an ecology which is nothing like it was 400 years ago, never mind a thousand years ago. Further more, let them breed together when they meet and with this greater available genetic pool, develop a beaver by natural selection which is most suited to Scotland. George Monbiot, it his book Feral, p8 expresses it much better than I could.

“So young a word , yet so many meanings. By the time ‘rewilding’ entered the dictionary, in 2011, it was already hotly contested. When it was first formulated, it meant releasing captive animals into the wild. Soon the definition expanded to describe the reintroduction of animals and plants species to habitats from which they had been excised. Some people began using it to mean the rehabilitation, not just of particular species, but of entire ecosystems; a restoration of wilderness. Anarcho-primitivists then applied the word to human life, proposing a wilding of people and their cultures. The two definitions of interest to me, however, differ slightly from all of these.

The rewilding of natural ecosystems that fascinates me is not an attempt to restore them to any prior state, but to permit ecological processes to resume. In countries such as my own [UK], the conservation movement, while well intentioned, has sought to freeze living systems in time. It attempts to prevent animals and plants from either leaving or – if they do not live there already – entering. It seeks to manage nature as if tending a garden. Many of the ecosystems, such as heaths and moorland, blanket bog and rough grass, that it tries to preserve, are dominated by the low, scrubby vegetation which remains after forests have been repeatedly cleared and burnt. This vegetation is cherished by wildlife groups, and they prevent it from reverting to wood-land through intensive grazing by sheep, cattle and horses. It is as if conservationists in the Amazon had decided to protect the cattle ranches, rather than the rainforest.”

by the by, have a look at George’s TED talk on rewilding.

Ok.