‘The Gifts we are Given”

web_mon_facts_j_1393068cl-8 — Jill Mcqueston: The Globe & Mail

It was the moment of the big release! And then nothing happened. I opened the cage door expecting a frantic flurry and all I got was the feeling that I just acquired a new pet. While the three of us sat side by side on a knoll overlooking rolling farmland and a winding river, I felt a rare serenity.

This is a fun article. I like almost everything about it. She explains that at the time she was living on a 60 acre fish hatchery in Quebec. (That made me think of the Methow Project.) (Of course the irony is that if more people tolerated beavers Quebec wouldn’t need a fish hatchery in the first place.) The good-hearted writer was bothered by a beaver whose dams threatened to flood her home, so after months of painstakingly removing them by hand (only to have them instantly rebuilt) she decided to call in a trapper. The trapper promised to live trap the beaver and take it to someplace wonderful, but the night before he came she realized that might be the afterlife.

She woke up early and emptied the trap herself.

We paid big bucks for the assurance that the little guy would be safely trapped and transported in a cage to a “beaver heaven.” But that morning I had the sinking feeling that the “heaven” in question would be the biblical kind. Disguising myself with a baseball cap and a man’s jacket (I knew the neighbours would not approve of my impending actions), I hauled out the wheelbarrow. I summoned a strength I didn’t know that my skinny arms had in order to lift the heavy cage, complete with the captured critter, onto the wheelbarrow. After covering the cage with a blanket, Gypsy and I set off with our charge along a dirt road to find a release spot.

I had always thought that there were two kinds of people in the world. The kind who were sensitive and caring about all that was vulnerable, and the kind who were not.

She uses the incident to comment on moral relativity in human responses to animals, and show how compassion is always a little expensive. True, but I can’t help but wish that rather than spend time musing on the moral lessons of her past she had used the Google to find information about beaver management. Relocating one beaver is not likely to solve her problem, but a properly installed flow device would.

The irony of course is that even though she is working so hard to take care of this beaver, relocating him with no family members in a strange land is likely terminal anyway. Not to mention she probably has a family of beavers on her property, so she won’t have solved her problem OR saved his life.

I dispatched this to the Globe and Mail, let’s hope if they don’t print it they at least send it to her for next time!

Almost the Right Answer

Ms. McQueston’s lovely article communicated a thoughtful regard for wildlife and I wish I was lucky enough to be her neighbor. I would have told her about the use of proven, inexpensive flow devices that can safely control pond height and prevent her home from flooding. Maybe I would have explained over coffee that beavers are a keystone species and create habitat for birds, fish and wildlife that she can enjoy for years to come. Over the back fence I could have told her how the dams raise the water table, prevent drought and improve water quality. Later when we were alone I could explain how very unlikely it is that all her problems were caused by a single beaver, and that the remaining family is likely expecting new kits in the summer. I would pat her hand and say this was a noble effort but since beavers are highly social animals (and very territorial!) relocating a single family member is usually a prolonged death sentence.

Since we’re sadly not neighbors I can only hope that she reads this and continues to look for better solutions next time.

For the longest time, the very best beaver article ever written was featured in the High Country News and described the ‘working beaver conference’ in 2009. It introduced me to heroes like Mary O’Brien, Michael Pollock and Suzanne Fouty and set in motion a discussion of beavers as an restorative species that I don’t think could have been possible otherwise.

Well now, Kevin Taylor’s breathtaking article finally has some competition. Today’s Globe and Mail features a truly stunning look at beavers as ecosystem engineers with extensive reports from Glynnis Hood, Steve Zack and Duncan Haley. The benefits of beavers to water, pollution, fish, birds, soil and carbon storage are discussed in two full pages of good news. There is even a section on flow devices and their value in tricking beavers to prevent flooding.

Our bucktoothed icon is hard-working and monogamous, steadfast and stable in the Canuck way. But beloved? Not when one drops a tree on your cottage or floods your land with its dam. These days, however, the beaver has a new brand: eco-saviour. An increasingly vocal group of scientists and conservationists believes the dam-building rodent is an overlooked tool to mitigate climate change – a natural remedy for our sick rivers and ravaged wildlife. Fly away with that, bald eagle.

Did anyone else just get chills? Well this increasingly vocal group of scientists clearly came back from the state of the beaver conference fired up and ready to go! This is a fantastic read, and I just took a moment to write Erin and thank her for the most thorough bit of beaver reporting I have seen in 5 years.

The challenge, the researcher says, is to find a balance with the beaver – to put them where they happily improve the environment, in healthy numbers, without clashing against urban sprawl. “It’s as though two control freaks are competing for the same environment, and there’s been this ongoing battle ever since,” says Dr. Hood, who has just completed the manuscript for a new book, The Beaver Manifesto: In Defence of Tenacity. She spent 19 years on the front lines as a warden for Parks Canada while humans and beavers tussled over land – when the phone rang, she says, you could usually count on a beaver being involved somehow. “We like nature as long as it’s well behaved,” Dr. Hood says, “and once it starts getting the crayons and running loose, then we get worked up about it.” Except that now may be time for one control freak to step aside – and let a few well-placed beavers run loose with the crayons.

Well there’s my reading list in waiting. I can’t wait to read that book. I think she should sneak us a chapter for preview right away. I may not be able to wait until it comes out. The article is a beautiful look at what beavers do best. Go read the entire thing. There is even a page of ‘Fun facts‘ that are actually fun (and actually facts!).

Deceiving beavers

Trap one beaver family, and another will inevitable move in. But beavers build dams where they hear running water, so devices have been designed to reduce the noise with pipe and fencing around culverts to prevent the flooding of roads and farmland. The animals also don’t climb very well, so fencing trees tends to stop beaver activity.

I ‘m not sure why I feel so exhilarated by this article. It seems like so many beaver threads are coming together at once: I did a delightful interview with the Sonoma Tribune yesterday for a beaver article that’s coming out on Tuesday to talk about the presentation Thursday night. The Michigan radio program is still buzzing in my ears and I’m definitely proud of my beaver service over the past three weeks. Maybe its the faint echo of Egyptian triumph against tyranny I’m feeling, or maybe it’s the Wisconsin-feuled notion that beaver voices are finally using their collective bargaining rights! “Hey-hey! Ho-ho! Killing Beaver’s got to go!” Or something like that…