Even though the beaver research group that formed last march has (temporarily?) disbanded, our chief historian has been soldiering bravely onward, pouring through volumes and looking for evidence of beaver in the sierras prior to the 1900’s. His Wikipedia beaver-in-Tahoe page has grown to stunning proportions. He introduced his thesis at the Santa Clara creeks conference to rave reviews, and then submitted it as an abstract for a paper which was accepted for presentation at the salmonid restoration conference in March. Recently, he has been working to persuade some Tahoe scientists to see the light since the rumor that beaver aren’t native is making the rounds again for the current batch of beaver killing in Truckee.
The other day he pointed my attention to this from the Tahoe Science Institute:
Summer 2009 (clarification of one point of this article is required – beaver were native to the Sierra Nevada, apparently got trapped out by the early 1800s, and then were reintroduced in the 1930s and 1940s. While we don’t usually point people to Wikipedia for their research, there is a fairly exhaustive treatise on the matter, with references, HERE)
Chipping away at beaver mythology, one branch at a time! Thanks Rick, we’re grateful for your patient persistence. I mention this because last night he sent out the final edits of archeologist Chuck James paper on beaver prevalence which will eventually be submitted for publication. Let’s hope we can convince a few journals to be interested. As Rick is fond of noting, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” (Thomas Paine) It’s important for people to stop using lies about nativity as an excuse for killing beavers. Not that they won’t find plenty of others, but its a start.
Other good news to start the work week? Our own Cheryl Reynolds gave me a lovely beaver tote for Christmas that was so adorable I had to track down the makers. I wrote BlueQ just last night to see if they’d considering making a donation for the festival. You never know what will happen when you ask. I heard back from them today that they were pretty much persuaded by the secret-weapon photo I sent. Fingers crossed, expect the best ever goody-bag at this year’s beaver festival!
